BobRingReflections

Pat and I visited Prescott, Arizona early in October to attend an Arizona Highways workshop on taking photographs with an iPhone.   (Note:   I wrote about the history of Prescott in my September 12 th blog post.)   We drove up from Tucson on a Thursday, toured on our own on Friday, participated in the one-day class on Saturday, and returned to Tucson on Sunday.   We stayed at the historic and popular Hassayampa Inn, a favorite of Pat’s, and observed at least two weddings while we were there.   The predicted rainy weather held off until Saturday, affecting our photo workshop, but cleared by Sunday.   We left our regular cameras at home to concentrate on the iPhone weekend.   All photos shared below are from Pat’s iPhone X or my iPhone 7. We stayed at the historic Hassayampa Inn built in 1927. First Evening and Day on our Own After an early dinner on Friday, we walked around the downtown historic district of Prescott and were pleasantly s...

In late September, Pat and I visited the northern Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and the Black Hills of South Dakota on an eight-day Tauck tour.   We flew into Jackson, Wyoming, toured around Grand Teton National Park, bussed north to visit nearby Yellowstone National Park, and from there continued about 500 miles east to visit the Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore, before flying back to Tucson from Rapid City, South Dakota.   The route of our Western National Parks and Memorials tour. We selected late September for the trip in hopes of seeing fall colors and thankfully caught the aspens, cottonwoods, and willows “at their peak color,” except for the high altitudes in Yellowstone.   We “roughed” it in the national park lodges where there was no TV or Wi-Fi, and limited electric plugs for our multiple electronic devices.   The weather was sunny and clear in the Tetons, but cold and blustery with snow and sleet around Old Faithful in Yellowstone, then ni...

Pat and I will be visiting Prescott in October to participate in an Arizona Highways photoshoot class.   Even though we’ve been to Prescott many times in the past, I wanted to know more about the history of the town this time. Prescott (apparently pronounced “press-kit” by natives and “press-cot” by others) is a town of around 45 thousand people, located in the Bradshaw Mountains of north central Arizona at an elevation of 5,400 feet.   Prescott’s history includes that of Native Americans, who have lived in the Prescott area for hundreds of years, the town’s founding as a gold mining camp by white settlers in the 1860s, years as capital of the Arizona Territory, growth after Arizona statehood to become a tourist and recreation destination, and determined efforts to preserve its history and architecture. This modern street map of downtown Prescott highlights Montezuma and Gurley Streets, the center of the town's history. Native Americans The Yavapai have o...

Proposition:   The United States Postal Service (USPS) should be reorganized to eliminate unsolicited mail commonly known as junk-mail. The Problem Using their own numbers, the USPS delivered about 150 billion pieces of mail in fiscal year 2017.   Fifty three percent of that mail, almost 80 billion pieces, was what they call direct mail (alternately referred to as advertising or marketing mail).     The point is, most of this direct mail was unsolicited - things like travel brochures, political campaign flyers, magazines, address labels, real estate notices, senior living opportunities, charity solicitations, credit card offers, investment seminar invitations, sweepstakes offers, and a host of product or service advertising material including, circulars, flyers, newsletters, bulletins, catalogs, post cards, discount packs and coupons, sales letters, brochures, and product samples.   This junk-mail situation disturbs me greatly.   The issue...

A few years ago, for my 70 th birthday, Pat took me to the NCAA Basketball Final Four Tournament in Indianapolis.   This year, for her 70 th birthday, I took Pat to her favorite natural wonder, the Grand Canyon. In 1861, in an official report about a government expedition to the Grand Canyon, topographical engineer Lieutenant Joseph Ives said, “Ours has been the first and will doubtless be the last to visit this profitless locality.”   Despite this shortsighted condemnation, the Grand Canyon became a U.S. National Park in 1919, and in 2017 hosted over six million visitors from all over the world. So here is the story of Pat’s and my August 2018 rim-to-rim expedition to the Grand Canyon.   I hope you’re not expecting an account of a rough trail hike from one rim, down to the Colorado River, and up the other side to the opposite rim.   Get real - we’re over 70 years old!   What follows is the story of our road trip from Tucson to the south rim of the Gra...