Cloud Mountains and Lemons

If you're thinking of saving a few dollars by taking a milk run plane trip someplace, take my advice and don't do it! It's just not worth it. A direct flight from Edmonton to Phoenix takes three hours - nice and easy and you still have over half a day of enjoyment at your destination. Instead, yesterday we left home at 4:30am and arrived in Phoenix, AZ at 5:30 pm. That is a killer day. We stopped in Seattle for a couple of hours and Portland for even longer. You can only do so much people watching before they all start looking like characters in a Bill Murray movie. Our plane from Seattle to Portland wasn't even a jet - we were squeezed into a small turbo-prop plane. Not a whole lot of fun.

It wasn't all bad though. One of the most interesting sights of the trip was this one of Mt. Rainier poking up through the clouds. Amazing!


One of the first things we did today was to go visit Clyde and check on his fruit trees. He always has something new there. Sure enough, he had just planted a pomengranate bush. I didn't take a picture of it though because it looked spindly and had no blossoms or fruit on it yet.

The lemons were ripe though - actually these lemon trees were at our friend Gordon's new house in Sun City. Gordon was still up north but Clyde took us over to see the house...and to pick few lemons.

That's my hand picking the lemon. They smell heavenly. I'm going to put a slice or two in every glass of Diet Pepsi I drink while we're here - which will be more than a few.

Lloyd learned the hard way that lemon trees have very sharp prickles on them that you will get stabbed with if you're not careful.


Here I am, back at Clyde's place, picking a tangerine off his tangerine tree (you'll remember meeting this little tree Jenn). We each picked a tangerine and stood there peeling and eating them - soooo delicious, sweet and juicy. And fresh as they possibly could be.


It's good to be down here again. Tomorrow we're supposed to have 'torrential rain' so that will be exciting, I think. No swimming of course. The heater quit working so we couldn't swim today either. Bummer.