Flagstaff in the fall

During fall break last Saturday I had the opportunity to travel up to Flagstaff with my friend Jenna.  (Hi Jenna!) Flagstaff is at an elevation of 7000 feet and is a beautiful and historic  town to visit in the fine forests of northern Arizona.  These are just a few of the great pictures I took of the downtown area while I was up there:

The Train Station/Visitor's Center:

Downtown Flagstaff:

A smiling tree:

And here is the Coconino County courthouse

Snowy in charge

Well it has been over two months since Snowy took charge of my apartment and she seems to be quite comfortable here...

Who's the father?

So I have been watching Elizabeth over the last few weeks and discovered that she is a mother now....  Here is Elizabeth with her little ducklings...

The Dust Storm

So tonight I survived my first Arizona dust storm...  It was definitely an unusual experience to see a 5000 Foot-high wall of dust roll through my neighborhood...  The wall of dust was a mile-high and nearly 60-miles in length...  enjoy the pictures!

Meet Elizabeth...

So here are a few pictures of San Lagos' resident duck leader "Elizabeth".   Reports indicate that she has lived here for about 6 years...  I captured these photos of her when she was right outside of my front door:

It's Snowy in Arizona...

So now I have a family .out here in Glendale.  Her name is Snowy and she is a beautiful Persian cat that I adopted last weekend from the Petco across the street through the Maricopa County Humane Society.  She has a somewhat angry-looking face but she really is the friendliest cat I have ever met... Although she does not meow, go figure... 

So now here are some pictures of Snowy in all of her furriness:

 

It's getting Hot Hot Hot...

So it has been hovering around 107-109 degrees every day this week and will probably continue to stay above 100+ degrees for at least another 3 or 4 weeks...

Home Sweet Home (Part III)

Ok, so here's my master bedroom and closet...  My new bed is super-comfy and I throughly enjoy not having to sleep in a twin size bed anymore.  And having a nice, big walk-in closet that is a big as the bathroom was in my old apartment is great too :-)

Home Sweet Home (Part II)

So heres a few photos of my living room, kitchen, and dining room in the evening:

Home Sweet Home

Ok, so it has been a while since I last posted...  I first wanted to share some of the fantastic views i have of the sun rising over the mountains just north of me at 5AM... I took these photos from my patio...  In the last photo my apartment is the one directly behind the fountain:

Early Morning Sunrise

I am gradually settling into my new home here in Glendale.  One of the things I have had to adjust to here in Arizona is the very early time at which the sun rises here.  Because Arizona does not change times back and forth throughout the year for daylight savings time, the sun rises around 4:45 AM at the peak of summer and sets by 8PM...  Here is what the view looked like while looking northeast from my patio at 4:50AM on Wednesday.

Cross-Country Driving

Well I have finally made it to Arizona...  

If you ever want to know just how big this country is try driving across it through the vast nothingness of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona...  But it was a very scenic trip and often the views were quite breathtaking...

The final stats of my journey were:

Miles Travelled:   2158.7 miles

Average Miles Per Gallon Achieved in a fully-loaded Prius:   51.3 MPG

States Travelled Through:  8 (Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona)

Thunderstorms encountered while driving:  1 (in the Texas Panhandle)

McDonald's Drive-Thru stops:  3 (Plus one KFC in Albuquerque, New Mexico and one Sonic Drive-In outside of Winslow, Arizona.)

Most interesting town name passed by:  Bumble Bee, Arizona (Somewhere between Flagstaff and Phoenix off of I-17.)

So I have spent the last six days trying to unpack and get my apartment set up...  But I wanted to share some of the photos I took of the scenes from my journey.  They can be viewed on my flickr album by clicking on THIS LINK.  

Taking a Plunge...

Hmm... So I was checking the local newspaper for Phoenix and came across this article that concerns the apartment complex I will be moving to in Glendale...  go figure!  Click on the post title above to read the article.

Loading up the car...

Well I have been busy over the last week with packing and trying to figure out how to fit my entire life into a Toyota Prius...   It is like playing a life-size version of Tetris in which the colorful little blocks have been replaced by boxes and Space-Saver vacuum bags...  This is what my car looked like a few days ago as I reached the halfway point in packing up my car:

Success!

Believe it or not, I finally managed to acquire the elusive Wii...  I was at Meijer at 5:30 AM and stood in the long line in the toy department for over a half hour to get the second-to-last Wii in the store.  Persistence has finally paid off.  Yet now that I have a Wii I have yet to take it out of the box... I figure If I do that I will just have to try to repack it when I move so why bother... It will be a new toy for when I move into my beautiful new apartment in Arizona.

Wii Quest

Ok, So my stepmother Hallie called me today to tell me that the Meijer Ads for this week featured the Nintendo Wii... yes, the almighty and mysterious entertainment device that has managed to elude my shopping and purchasing prowess since December 27th, 2007 when I first experienced the unimaginable joy of Wii-ness at my brother's house in Kentucky... Six long months later the Wii is nearly within my grasp.... so Im going to be at Meijer right at 6AM and get one of those 30 Wii Consoles at the Bowling Green Meijer store...  If I can't get one today my life will become completely meaningless... other than the whole packing and moving to Arizona and starting a new job and new life in a new city thing that is...  Now there is only two and one-half hours till 6AM...  I wonder how many more episodes of Family Guy there are to watch on TBS On Demand at 3:30 in the morning?

The countdown has begun!

Well this is my first attempt at a 'blog' post...  I am down to 28 days until I leave Bowling Green for the last time ever.  Then it is on to Glendale, Arizona to begin my teaching career.  As I have begun the packing process I am truly amazed at how much stuff I have... even after throwing 70% of my junk away 10 months ago when I moved from my old apartment downtown to my current apartment on the north end of B.G.  

But now I have to consolidate everything that I am taking with me on my 2000 mile drive to Phoenix to fit inside of my Toyota Prius... While the Prius is much roomier than the VW Beetle I used to drive, it is still way too small to fit my entire life into and I am baffled as to how I will manage to fit everything I plan to take with me in it... So much junk, so little space!