To round out our time in Arizona, a club that is dedicated to Classic Ford Broncos, was having a shin dig in Black Canyon City. They call it the Stampede and it is their biggest event of the year.
I used to be a member of the club about 22 years ago when I lived in Mesa and it was fun to be hanging out with them again, even though I didn't find anyone who I remembered.
There must have been about 60 Bronco's there, although most were now more of a hobby or toy vehicle more than their daily drivers, and many of them were fairly beat up from years of trail riding. I had one of the cleaner and more polished ones and got many compliments on it, but most of the others had much higher lifts and bigger tires and were very modified for off-road use and were much more capable machines when it came to insane trails. Most of the members also didn't worry about needing to be able to drive it the next day (or a little body damage for that matter) and would take their machines out to trails that should be considered impassible and make them look easy, while I was trying to be very careful with mine as I need it to work for the long term without a good place to repair it.
My son and I had a great time showing off our truck and checking out all of the other trucks and we did enjoy a couple of the easier trail rides, while mom and daughter hung out at the in-laws for the weekend.
Group shot, that's mine third from right in the front row
These are for Grandma (my mom), she was hoping we would get a chance to see some desert flowers.
Son and I took a trip to Tucson for a weekend to visit the Pima Air Museum. His love of airplanes made this a must see. It is the biggest, non-government funded air museum in the U.S.A.
We saw many airplanes and he got to see some of his favorites. This place is huge and we took two days to see as much of it as we could.
We took a day to take a drive into the desert region Northeast of Apache Junction to go see the desert landscaping to include Canyon Lake. The lakes out here are all man made, by building dams at the end of canyons. This makes for a neat looking lake with canyon walls for the sides. The day we went was just a few days after a snow fall had hit the high desert and some of the mountains had snow still on them. My favorite is a mountain called Four Peaks. Yes there are four peaks on that mountain but it was a little hard to see that day due to the weather.
We made it to a little stage coach stop called Tortilla Flats that is more of a ghost town but it has a gift shop and we also got ice cream from the small bakery before returning home.
Lots of pictures of Arizona Desert and Canyon Lake, and Four Peaks. Enjoy.
During my kids involvement in CAP in their Virginia Beach squadron, they both earned their Model Rocketry Badge, but unfortunately the whole Hampton Roads area had a ban on shooting off rockets that could hit any kind of altitude due to all of the military aviation activity. We kept the rockets that they had built though and we made a day to go to the desert away from town to launch them. It was a lot of fun.
There happened to be a CAP squadron near us at Mesa's Falcon Field airport. It was a small squadron and both of my kids outranked just about all of them. They were able to contribute lots during the meetings as they also had the most experience when it came to how events should be run. The squadron took advantage of their experience too by making them a Flight Commander and a Flight Sargent, even though they knew we were only going to be in town a few months.
Son and Daughter in flag detail at change of command ceremony
While here in Arizona, we had Christmas with my In-Laws, Nana and Papa, and we celebrated several birthdays to include my daughter's, my mother's, and my wife's.
Most were spent going out to dinner to Organ Stop Pizza, but my daughter wanted a girls day out with Mom and Nana.
