I did it....! I actually quit work.  April 1st was my last day.  So now I can say I'm 'retired'.

So, to celebrate my freedom, we took off on a road trip.  On April 5th we took the dog to Ryan's house and headed out; south to Des Moines, west across Iowa and Nebraska.  We had lots of rain and snow the first two days.  In Nebraska we saw flocks and flocks of blue heron.  The sky was littered with big V's of the birds.  Lots of birds resting in fields. Then we headed south west through Colorado.  We took some side roads to avoid going through Denver.  We hit the Interstate again at Colorado Springs.  Then we continued south to New Mexico, west at Albuquerque to Flagstaff and south to Phoenix.  It took 3 long days of driving to go 2000 miles.

In Phoenix we visited Alice and Roger, did a few maintenance chores for them, visited former Pine City friends, and walked around Sun City West enjoying the sunny warm weather.  It got up to 95 degrees, quite a change from Minnesota.  In fact, we are told there were two separate snow storms while we were gone, with one storm leaving behind a foot of snow.  Nice to miss those .

After 5 days relaxing in Phoenix we again hit the road, this time north to the Grand Canyon.  We left the interstate and headed to Prescott and north from there to the Grand Canyon.  We spent the whole afternoon walking the south rim.  We figure we walked about 5 miles.  The temperature was in the 70's with a little breeze,  very comfortable.  We were told it was 90 at the bottom of the canyon!  There were lots of people visiting and walking and this was not tourist season.  I don't think we would enjoy the crowds in the summer.  There were still a few small snow banks around.

I'll write more and post some pictures later.