July 23, 2007

Sierra Vista, Arizona
The past week at Sierra Vista, AZ has been filled with recuperating from the trip and helping organize some of the boxes still in the garage since Scott and Alisa moved into their house last year. The high temperatures kind of slowed down the activity, but progress was made. One evening we went to Target for some shopping and got into the store just as a thunder storm arrived. Luckily we were in the store long enough for the storm to have moved on, but the good news is that there was finally some rain for Sierra Vista. It rains nearly every evening in the Huachuca Mountains to the west, on Ft. Huachuca, but little down in Sierra Vista. Scott returned from Army training in San Antonio, Texas, and Heather returned from her mother's in El Paso, Texas.

The nearby town of Willcox, Arizona is having their Peach Mania at Apple Annie's Orchard. We traveled about an hour and a half to the Orchard where we went on a tractor pulled wagon to find the rows of peach trees that were ready for people to pick their own peaches. I haven't eaten such good peaches since I was a teenager near my grandparents farm in Los Molinos, Calif. I picked some off the ground that had a little blemish from birds, etc. They were sweet and juicy and delicious. We all sampled the peaches and ended up picking about 18 pounds of them. Then we went to the apple orchard and picked another bucket of early Jonathan apples that were tart, but also delicious. After all that hot work in the orchards we bought hamburger lunches and topped it out with delicious homemade fresh peach pie ice cream. It was made with an ice cream maker in a wooden bucket with ice all around it. Ah, memories of the good ol' days! After that, we traveled a few miles to Apple Annie's produce farm and picked tomatoes, peppers, green beans, and cucumbers. Also bought higher priced corn and watermelon because the "pick your own" was already all picked. We drove back to Sierra Vista through Benson and Tombstone. Emily and Heather are in picture with the peaches/apples in kitchen, and Braden joins them for peeling.