Last night's Tarantula!

The Tarantula was probably 6 inches in diameter, so, big enough to impress me!

Show Low, Arizona, My new place.

What chaos a move can be! Who knew you had so much stuff?And what a process getting it from one place to the next! I started loading the truck on July 11th and the next afternoon I drove it and all my stuff out of Maricopa and up to Show Low, AZ. I got to my new place about 7 something, exhausted and not looking forward to the unloading of the next day! I survived it and have been here almost three weeks now! The new place is big enough and the garage or shop is even big enough for my inspirations of what a shop should be! 30 X 30 feet will do nicely! The property has few neighbors and is most peaceful almost all the time. We do get monsoon storms almost every evening so far and the temp's are very pleasant! The critters are a little different here. Ground squirrels and chipmunks mostly, but we see rabbits daily, hummingbirds in quantity and the occasional deer or two. We have seen Elk but not yet at our house. Oh and the other day I caught a baby Horned lizard and a baby Tarantula! The latest critter was last night. On my way over to a friends for dinner I almost ran over a full sized Tarantula crossing the road! I backed up and took a couple of pic's of the very large spider, then went on to dinner with  my new friends! A lovely evening for sure!

2 Haboob's in 2 Days

The top picture is one I took on July 6th and the bottom one I took the day before. So on July 5th this bottom dust storm came in and caught my attention as it moved across the landscape engulfing everything as it moved along. After it arrived it made everything dusty and the wind picked up and all in all it was a little exciting! The next evening started out much the same way as the Haboob approached and came in at almost the same direction and speed, but this second one was different! This Haboob had teeth! You can almost see the dirt and sand in the cloud and it's shape was not soft and fluffy, but edgy and course. I took video and pictures and awaited it's arrival. Well it was a lot different, fierce winds and it was as if darkness had fallen when I knew it was still light outside. And the sound was like a sandblaster doing the house and everything around it. It went on for what seemed like hours and I even went outside in it once to keep the patio furniture from breaking the windows. And when I came in from outside I had sand in every place that was exposed- shower time! The rain came down and mud was plastered on all the windward surfaces, still the next day even. So the next day was a clean up day and it took awhile to sweep up all the sand and dirt left over from the evening before. Cool huh?