Fall in my yard.

This is one of my favorite seasons.  Pears, apples, colored leaves, wearing a sweatshirt, I love the smell of burning leaves and football.  It's a beautiful day in Wisconsin.  

day 11 - Phoenix

Today we were on a mission to find Joel's grandparents marker at the cemetery.  We finally found it and then looked around Scottsdale for flowers.   We put this nice arrangement together.

It was a Fond du Lac day in Phoenix.  At the Brewers game we met up with our friend Paul from our former congregation who is in Arizona for vacation.

We headed to another Brewer game.  We got our VIP parking and 2nd row tickets behind home plate from the member at Cross of Glory who is head of grounds crew.  Joel had a JCM meeting with a pastor who was at the game.  Then met someone who teaches at WLC and made another connection.  They want to send students to 3rd world countries to do mission work.

We got to meet up with this fun group of people who just got here today from Fond du Lac.  We got to enjoy a cocktail hour at their vacation spot. Then headed across the street for some great Italian food.

Joel has a meeting tomorrow morning and then off to the airport.  We hate to leave this amazing weather but we are looking forward to going home and for me  to get back in my kitchen.  I refuse to come home with long pants and enclosed shoes so have my sandals and caprices on.

day 10 - in the car again

Good Morning from Phoenix:

I have one picture from Sunday. There are no others because we headed back from Bishop CA and it was the same scenery.  This was the cutest church, which was a house first, there were 6 pews on each side, there are 14 ladies, and 1 man in this congregation.  The pastor and his wife have 3 boys and the average age was 70ish.  Very loving people. Joel did not need a sound system while preaching here.   They had a brunch/lunch for us and Joel did his presentation.  Again, another group who is excited to start a JCM program.

We left at 12:30 and pulled into the hotel just before 10 a.m.  We traveled 586 up and down the mountains.  WOW !!!!  I even drove part of the way coming down into the out skirts of LA.  CRAZY!!!!!

We really don't know what time change we are on even though we are really trying to stay on central.  Joel was up at 4:45 a.m. doing e-mails.

Today we are going to look for Grandpa and Grandma Harting's cemetery marker, Phil wants a flag shirt, we have a Brewer game with our VIP parking and free tickets again.  Then two families from FDL are flying in today and we are having dinner with them.  Then Joel talks to 2 circuits tomorrow and then early afternoon we head home.

I told Joel yesterday that I am ready to head home.  It has been a great trip seeing God's creation in the West, meeting so many new people and spending time with Joel.  My pictures do not even capture the beauty of those snow capped mountains.

Here is a picture of the church we were at yesterday.

Day 9 - from San Diego to Bishop, CA

Today was another 6 hour travel day.  We have a guest writer on the blog... Joel.  He can tell you about all the excitement.

We left beautiful San Diego this morning and after an hour of crazy traffic as we skirted east of LA, we started to climb into the mountains.  Our drive today was through the high desert of the Mohave Desert and all the way along we had these snow-capped mountains - the southern end of the Sierra Nevadas on our left.

This shows you how the high desert looks.

LuAnn loves all the wonderful scenery along the way

More high desert

The further we went along, the more snow we saw on the mountains.  We were told that they just got the snow in the last several weeks.  They have had a 3 year drought

day 7 & 8

 We left Phoenix on Thursday afternoon.  Joel had a meeting at ALA in the morning and a lunch meeting after that.  We drove through the desert for 2 hours till we reached Tucson. He had a breakfast meeting and then we were on the road for 6 hours to San Diego. Crazy how we went from desert in AZ and crossing into CA having sand dunes.

 We had two hours to spend some time at the Pacific before Joel's dinner meeting.  We loved it!!!!!!

 Isn't this sand amazing

 more sand

 The boardwalk

 I put this picture on to show you how high the water came along the shore at times.  Once in awhile we felt we were going to fall from the force of the water.

 We had our guest pick where to go for dinner.  We went to a fish place ( there was shrimp for Joel) right on the bay.  It was where the Navy docked their boats.  I guess there is a story about this sailor kissing this young lady good-bye and not knowing who she was.  So people were trying imitate this couple.

This is downtown San Diego.