Thursday, June 26, 2008

Avondale Brush Fire (Part 2)

The Gila River Brush Fire seemed to almost be dead earlier today (Judging by the amount of smoke we saw). Due to the heat and wind, the fire has grown. It has also moved to the East. Over 1500 acres have burned at this point!

I have uploaded more pictures and a short video on Flickr!

Another Avondale Brush Fire

Yesterday, around 4:30pm, I was swimming with Hope and Pacey. I noticed some gathering clouds and heard some thunder. We decided to be safe and get out of the pool. After drying off, I looked out my bedroom window and saw a beautiful lightning bolt strike near the mountains. A few minutes later, I looked again and saw a plume of smoke rising!

This is the second Avondale brush fire that we have witnessed recently. This one seems to be bigger and more intense than the last one we saw.

At last report, I heard that over 1,000 acres had burned. Due to so many fires in California, we are apparently having difficulty getting air support (The fire is a little difficult to get to). It looks like the fire died down a lot last night, but the valley is filled with smoke today (Yuck!). Let's hope it stays down!

I have posted some pictures of the fire on Flickr.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

CA and NM and NV

This week has been the week of travel for our family.

On Saturday, Tiffany's parents and niece and nephew drove to San Diego for a week long vacation. At the same time, Tiffany and Terah drove to New Mexico with the SMI teens from our church. They spent the week in NM holding 10 Vacation Bible Schools in the Gallup area.

On Monday, I flew up to Las Vegas for InfoComm 2008. We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. I had a great week networking and seeing new AV products on the market. The value of this week cannot be measured easily. Our company recently merged with another company so this was our first time meeting. It was also a great time to showcase the company and be seen. I walked around the show with my biggest client. It was great to see that everything I have been saying is in line with the industry. My position as of late has been a mixture of systems engineering, strategic planning and being a general technologist. So, it is great to see that the messages I am communicating are completely in line with what others are saying. It was a sort of validation that I needed, especially with my client being present.

I think it's time to unpack now and jump in the pool for a while- It's 110 (Las Vegas was also hot last week, but not as hot as Phoenix).

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Drive In Movies

Last night, we decided to go see a drive-in movie at the West Wind Glendale 9 Drive-In! Karl, a friend of ours, put a couch in the back of his truck for the movie. We arrived early to get a good spot and grill some dinner. Around 8:30pm, the movie began. Around 3:00am, we left.

Yeah- We had so much fun watching the first movie, we decided to stay and watch two more. The drive-in has 9 screens so we had a lot of choices!

This theater is definitely on the "What should I do Friday Night" list!!

Mogollon Rim and Fossil Springs

Since the valley is beginning to heat up during the day's, we decided to make an escape last weekend to the Mogollon Rim. Friday evening, after work, we met up with a few friends and drove up to the Mogollon Rim for some camping.

We arrived well after dark, but we found the campsite. After setting up the camp, we walked to the edge of the rim to see an amazing display of stars and beauty. I do not think I have ever been able to see so many stars at once.

After a rather chilly night, we woke up to hike the Fossil Springs trail near Strawberry, Arizona. The hike down to the springs was beautiful. When we arrived at the first pool of water, we jumped in and swam for a while. We knew that there was a dam nearby, so a few of us hiked down to the dam. The dam and area surrounding the dam was a virtual playground of fun. Rope swings, jumping off the dam, deep pools of water- Wow! I did not jump off the dam, but a couple of the guys we were with did (It was quite high actually). Tiffany and some people swam behind the waterfall. It was great. Tiffany and I had developed some blisters, so we took the easier route out of the springs while the other half of our group hiked back up to the truck. The hike out was fantastic. Most of the hike out was in the shade and ran along the river, so it was much easier than it would have been had we gone out the way we came in.

When we got back to the camp, I crashed. I could not even stay up for dinner (Which I heard was great).

After a great breakfast on Sunday, we all walked over to the rim to have a little Bible study. Studying the Bible with friends on a beautiful rim is awesome! We packed up camp and drove down to Pine for the Strawberry Festival. Unfortunately, they did not have any strawberry shortcake. Never the less, the small town festival was cute and fun.

We had a great time camping on the Mogollon Rim and hiking the Fossil Springs trail! We cannot wait to do it again soon!