We were blessed by Church today!

Today we went to Southwest Community Church and it was an amazing day.

The building and grounds are amazing!

This is the entry.  There is beautiful landscaping and even GRASS.

There is a wonderful statue at the entry...

...and we found a young lady to capture the moment for us.

Welcome to California and Father's Heart Ranch!

We arrived in California and at Father's Heart Ranch on Thursday.  Since then we have ventured down to Palm Springs and other places with the well known and famous.  Didn't see any of them!

I had a series of photos that I planned to put on this entry but the card all of the sudden became unreadable.  So, if I can retrieve them somehow I will place them later.  This is the entrance of Father's Heart Ranch, a home for abused and abandoned boys.

Another shot of the entry showing one of the housing units.

Here is a shot of the Santa Rosa Mountains which are to the south of us.

Here is our campsite.  As you can see we have already started laundry and there are two of our projects sitting in front of the home.  The picnic taable had no seats and the box on the back of the cart had no back.

This is the view looking north of our home. This is part of the Joshua Tree National Park.

Looking west we see part of the San Bernardino National Forest.  It is really dry here and still pretty warm, considering it is almost November.

A beautiful day in Silver City!

Yesterday (Sunday) and today have been great days.  On Sunday we visited a place in the middle of Silver City called Boston Hill.  It is really an old tailings pile from the bygone days of silver mining but now it is a place to hike and look at the beauty that nature provides.

Since they are the locals, Kirk and Rhonda took us to Boston Hill.  I certainly didn't know where we were going.

As you can see, a few months ago, while they were supposed to be getting their monsoon rains, all they got was a lot of lightning which set the hill on fire.

But, God is good and He has already, without any rain, begun the process of repopulating the area.

Then today we went to the Gila (pronounced Hila) National Forest...

.....to visit Whitewater Canyon and the Catwalk.

Please notice the sign.  There may be bears and rattle snakes on the trail!!!

Here we are at the entrance of the park.  Aren't we just the cutest couple!

There were hundreds of formations that were spectacular.  I know.  I took a picture of them all.

The "crew" seems to be lagging behind on the "Cat Walk".

The catwalk winds 1.1 miles up the canyon, not all as luxurious a walk as this.

Numerous places on the journey there were waterfalls and rapids.

The water was beautiful, and COLD.

No wonder the "crew" can't keep up.  They keep getting stuck on the narrow bridges.

At last we reached the end of the catwalk.  However, for those who are not faint at heart, just 2.2 more miles of crude trails and one can get clear to the top of the canyon.

We didn't make it that far but even the distance we went we were rewarded with sights like these small cactus growing out of the solid rock.

Eventually we made it back to the entrance again, a little tired but blessed.

Just a quick update.

Just to bring everyone up to date as to where we are, we are in the same RV park as our daughter Rhonda and her husband Kirk (not the Enterprise Kirk).

We are nestled in a quiet corner of the park very near the office.  It is a very nice park and we are again blessed to be able to spend some time with another one of our children.

Here is the office.  Qaint ain't it.  The whole park is clean and westerny, I guess that is why they call it the Rose Valley RV Ranch.

This is our kids campsite and if you look carefully just over the left corner you can see a patch of white in the background, that is our site.  We plan to leave here next Wednesday or Thursday and continue our journey to Father's Heart Ranch in Desert Hot Springs, CA.

Back to work!

Time for sitting around and watching is over.  The time at SBA was great and the surgery went well.  The PT ladies were so gentle but before we left they gave me some self torture equipment. 

This is one of them.  If I am going to get back to work I am going to have to be able to reach over my head again.  But first there is flexibility required.  Ouch!

To help us get going there were a group of people from our old Life Group who drove all the way to SBA to help us get things ready to hit the road.

Then the whole bunch of went to the local resturant and had a great time visiting and eating of course.

Of course we had to show the team the campus, including the Gazebo.  As you can see by the dress it was time to get out of SD.

All of those little things that have to be done when breaking camp.  Clean the carpets...

...clean and stow the tire covers.

We then headed south.  First stop was the farm in Kansas to exchange the Tracker for the Ranger pickup.  After a couple of modifications we headed for Denver to see the kids and grandkids.

We had a very lovely spot at the Cherry Creek RV camp.  Look at those trees!  Also, there is the long awaited Ranger which we must give a big THANK YOU to brother Pat as he made the trip to Council Bluffs to get the work done to make it towable.

We got to keep Mahlia over night one night.

Otherwise we saw Jake ...

...and T in their normal enviornment.

The scenery from the campground was wonderful (Go God Go!).

We also had the opportunity to host the Beaches (the wonderful couple who let us buy their motorhome) for supper one evening.

Then we hit the road again.  We saw a lot of this...

...and this!!!!!!

This was a rest stop as we entered New Mexico.

Doesn't look all that different than what we saw leaving Colorado.

Right now we are parked in the Rose Valley RV Ranch in Silver City, NM where we will get to spend a few days with our oldest daughter and her husband.  More later.

Wrap-up at SBA for 2011

Besides PT and a few odd jobs around the school, we decided that we should make a visit to the capital city, Pierre, SD. 

Just up river from Pierre is Lake Oahe, one of several dams on the Missouri River.  This view is of the intakes for the power plant.

This is a view of the power plant with it's surge silos and seven turbines.

Later we visited the Capital building.  It is a very beautiful building built in the early 1900's.

This placque sits in front of the Capital as a testament to the Founding Fathers of our nation.

As the building was restored they left the signs of an earlier version of potty.

Notice anything?  It took the members of the early government nearly 25 years of see the one upside down ballister.  When asked why he did it the mason said that it was to remind every one that man's work is always flawed and only God's work is perfect.  Notice also that the flaw was put in the third position to remind us of the Trinity.

A view across the rotunda.  The marble and paintings are wonderful.

This is a view of the house chambers.

And, of course I had to try out the desk in the entry of the governers office.

These are the Supreme court chambers.  Again there is beautiful and meaningful art and the beauty of the wood was retained remarkeably well, even through the upgrade to add computer screens for the Judges.  A little cute sidelight.  When they remodeled to add the computer screens to the panel in front of the judges, inside the panel were several whisky bottles which had been slid down into the panel with the cork down.  They were still partially full.

Outside of the Capital is a lovely lake which is fed buy a 92 degree F mineral spring.  Because of the heated spring, the lake never freezes.

Back at school, there was just one little job that the construction company had requested.  They want to move their construction trailer to a location behind the old gym.  Problem!  No electricity.

Problem solved.  I installed a 50 Amp sub panel from one of the unused breakers on the second floor.

And the construction crew all got a raise today as they started putting the roof on the gymnasium.

Yesterday they studded the front wall of the gym.

The next several pictures are of next years project.  This house was moved in here  recently and will become another staff house.  The house is 60 years old and needs a lot of work as you will be able to see in the next several pictures.  A new furnace has been installed to keep the house minimally heated this winter.  The house will require a lot of sheetrock work, new wiring, new plunbing, a new kitchen and upgraded baths.  That should be enough to keep us busy in 2012.