Horseshoe Cafe & Friends

One of the benefits of following blogs other than viewing great pictures and different places is to get to know people through their blogs.  In many cases you actually get to meet the blogger and see them in person.  Jerry & Suzy are bloggers who belong to the latter case.  We met them for a short time a couple months ago and had a short chat and agreed to meet for lunch or dinner sometime later.

Today was the later day as we met them in Benson, AZ at the Horseshoe Cafe for a late lunch.  It is much easier to talk between the lunch and dinner hour and not feel like you are taking the table out of circulation.  The Cafe is on the main street of Benson and was very easy to find.  We actually ate there a couple years ago on one of our geocaching expeditions. 

We all got settled in and began a "chin wag" and the conversation flowed easily as if we've know them for a number of years.  In a way we do, since I've followed their blog for the last couple of years.  You learn a lot about a person from their blog and I knew they were our kind of people.   We had a nice meal and then went to their place in the Escapee Park nearby for a short visit.  They have a very nice setup and we got to see the famous grandfather's clock they carried with them in their motorhome for a couple of months.  It's amazing that they had room in the mh for that thing.  I don't feel so bad about carrying all of Gerry's craft "stuff" now.

All too quickly the visit came to an end and we had to get back on the road to Tucson, but I am sure our paths will cross once again before we head back East.  Jerry & Suzy have plans to visit the East Coast in the next couple years and Washington, DC is in their plans.  Our cabin isn't too far from DC and maybe we can show them some sites that tourists don't normally get to see.  Thanks guys for the nice time and visit.

To cap off a great day we had a beautiful sunset to view as we got back to the park.  We did stop by the DQ to take advantage of their March special on Blizzards and that delayed us enough to capture the sunset photo.    

National Firemen Memorial Weekend Oct 14-16

We drive by this house just about every time we head down the mountain from our cabin.  We have admired the house and the beautiful setting and snapped this picture today.  Since there has been so much rain lately, we couldn't get the trees at their peak time but you can still see how nice the setting is.


I went to my doctor's appointment today with the expectation that he would say one more visit and then be on my way.  Well, it didn't go quite that way since he said two more visits and if all goes well, then I could be on my way.  If that schedule works out, then we will leave here around October 29 and head south to visit with the Duffs and then on to visit with Barb & Family along with Larry Jr. & Family.  Keep your fingers crossed that I can be cleared by then.

We made a Costco run after the appointment and picked up some specials of items that we needed.  The store was as busy as you would expect on a Christmas shopping weekend.  As a matter of fact, they have Christmas items on the shelves already.  It gets earlier and earlier every year.  We took advantage of buying our gas at $3.31/gallon at the Costco gas station.  It went up .02 from yesterday.

After that we went geocaching for a while and picked up 6 caches along the way home.  Some were interesting and others were downright easy to find.  We prefer a little bit of challenge but it doesn't always work out that way.  The most challenging part of the cache hunting was getting across two lanes of traffic on US 15 which is a very busy 4 lane highway.  

Our destination in that area was the Ott House Bar & Restaurant in Emmitsburg, MD.  The place was mobbed with people two deep at the bar and every table filled.  We had to wait a while for a table for two and finally got seated.  It seemed that 95% of the people in there were firemen or families of firemen.  I asked what was the occasion and found out the the National Fireman Memorial Weekend is this weekend with lots of ceremony and such.  We bought a nice shirt from a fireman from Nebraska who was financing his and another fireman's trip to the Memorial by selling shirts.  

Firemen Memorial Weekend

After enjoying a great meal there we were forced to drive to a local Dairy Queen so Gerry could redeem her free Blizzard coupon.  We are two stuffed people now, but contented.

Who says we don't live an interesting exciting life?  

All in all it was a great day.  See ya!