A visit to Cottonwood....

Thursday morning we drove to Cottonwood for a visit with Bob's brother, Ronnie. It is a nice drive, after you traverse the city of Phoenix, which consumes over an hour of travel time from the Mesa area. Phoenix is a huge city, with over 4 million people living in the city and the expected traffic backups! Navigating the traffic here is on par with Northern Virginia and DC!
Leaving Phoenix, at under 2000 feet, you climb to over 4700 feet passing thru the mountains on the way north to Cottonwood. It also becomes much colder.


There is rolling desert land and many saguaro cactus decorate the landscape.





The
"painted" colors of the desert stand in contrast to the San Fransisco peaks.



Nearing Cottonwood the snow covered San Fransisco Mountain peaks are clearly in view.





Bob and brother, Ronnie and the view from Ronnie's back yard in Cottonwoood

We had a nice visit with Ronnie and were glad to find him looking pretty well, considering what he has been thru in the last three weeks or so. He still has an IV implant to receive antibiotics daily, due to the infection he is battling. And his activity is very limited for the next two to three months until the blood clot is dissipated. He has such a great outlook and is so patient! He is committed to overcoming this setback and we have no doubt that he will!

We headed back to Mesa, hoping to beat the traffic tie-ups, but we managed to get in the beginnings of the "Superbowl" snarl ups as we passed Scottsdale and Glendale. We spent about 30 minutes in stop and go traffic as we passed near the University of Arizona. We are so glad that we're not too close to the Superbowl area as the traffic is predicted to be horrific for this weekend!

We spent another evening walking and hot tubbing and got a photo of the sunset thru the palms here at SunLife.