Arizona - in Flagstaff

Flagstaff KOA, Flagstaff
Tuesday, 8 through Saturday, 12 February 2022

(The font is weird because I couldn't pick up an internet signal for hours this morning, either on the campground's wifi or on my hot spot.  So I wrote this on my computer's word processing program.)

For several days, I saw 3 couples staying in the campground, each couple with 2 big dogs.  I couldn’t help but be a little envious that none of them had to manage both dogs at once.  Walking mine is not a relaxing event, what with both of them wanting to go different directions at different speeds and do different things when they get there.  But I can’t imagine not having them, either, and do not look forward to the day when Gracie will die from that probable brain tumor.  She’s still falling down now and then, but I can see she’s still happy.  And she never loses an opportunity to get dirty.

a sample of her no-longer-black coat

We went into town one day so I could get my second shingles shot.  I got the first back in Utah, where they told me I’d need to wait a few months to get the second.  I was pretty proud of myself for remembering.  Of course I got lost getting there because the streets weren’t labeled as I’d expected them to be, and of course I had trouble finding a safe place to turn around in, but we made it.

I  went back to Bushmaster Park so the dogs could walk.  Some folks were playing tennis (temps in the mid-50s!) and I was almost stunned that Gracie didn’t seem to mind it at all.  In the past, the sound of the tennis ball ponging back and forth has sent her into a frenzy of fear where Dext and I would have trouble keeping up with her mad dash in another direction.  But not today.  I do hope that’s a sign that at least some of her early fears are finally starting to dim.

In the park I saw an official sign saying: "Possession or Consumption of Spirituous Liquor Prohibited."  I've never seen that idea phrased quite like that.

And we stopped by a laundromat, where I went so I could wash my comforter in their bigger-than-normal machines.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with what you might call heartburn lately.  Probably the result of all that extra weight I gained in Dallas, but it still meant I was having to use 3 pillows to prop my head up at night, and sleep with my head at the foot of the bed because the slant of my campsite raised that end higher than the head.  Given my history of stomach ulcer and pre-cancerous esophagus condition, I of course started worrying.  A check of my old calendars made me realize I haven’t had an endoscopy done since Toledo, OH, almost 2 years ago.  So I decided to locate myself near Tucson and found a gastroenterologist there who agreed to take me next week (instead of waiting until April or some other future month).

To keep that appointment, I made travel plans to get down there.  I went through my list of places to visit while in Arizona and made a short list of those I definitely didn’t want to miss.

The only place in Phoenix that was a must-see for me was the state capitol building, and the only place in Tucson that ditto was the Saguaro National Monument, and I wanted to look for the Red Rock Scenic Byway on the way south, so I planned a driving route and places to stay to fit those places in.

The Tucson KOA was one of those enormous places that charges a lot and refuses to guarantee a campsite near a dog park or dog walk – so I opted to go back to the Benson KOA where I stayed when I first came to Arizona in December.

And while I was in Flagstaff, I spent an entire morning figuring out who to vote for on my primary ballot.  Since I vote in Texas, I always vote in the Republican primary, figuring the one who wins that contest will most likely be the winner of the general election (this being Texas).  It was a very long ballot and took me hours to look up each of the candidates for each of the offices – and a surprising number of them didn’t have anything like an official website, making it harder to figure out what kind of people they were and what they purported to stand for.

Once I’d gotten done with that (including a break to walk the dogs, because it was taking so long), then I had to figure out how to follow the convoluted instructions for mailing the ballot.  They changed the procedure and added new requirements for what to put on the ballot envelope, so I had to be careful.  I’ve read since then that those convoluted measures are exactly what’s causing many absentee ballots to be rejected.

I have a college eddication and still had trouble; and let’s face it, lots of voters using absentee ballots are elderly (we’re almost the only ones allowed to vote absentee in Texas now) and may also not be literate enough to figure out the directions.  I really hated the hoops they were making me jump through to exercise my right to vote.  And nobody can tell me these hoops will make the voting process safer or less open to fraud.  I vote in Collin County, which was one of the 4 counties that were selected to get a special audit to locate fraud in the 2020 election (the only one not heavily Democratic), so I know for certain fraud wasn’t the driving factor in these stupid ballot requirements.  Grrr.