Today is our wedding anniversary! It’s also the day we said goodbye to Galilee and our Magdala Hotel and headed to Jerusalem, with some stops along the way.
Read MoreWe started our day with Mass in the Duc in Altum Church at our hotel for the Feast of the Holy Trinity. Then we headed north to Tel Dan Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights. The Dan Stream, which is a headwater of the Jordan River, runs through here. This is the site of many events in the Old Testament. If you’re interested in more details, see here. Abraham’s Gate is the entrance to the ancient city, and is 4,000 years old. Kevin taught from Genesis 12:1-9. This is an ‘A’ site.
Read MoreThe third day of our trip to the Holy Land started in Nazareth, Jesus’ home town, at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation. This is one of several different churches of the annunciation in Nazareth. In Jesus’ time there was a spring there, and Mary’s Well is where the eastern orthodox believe that Mary was drawing water when she was visited by the angel Gabriel. The current site of Mary’s Well is a nonfunctioning re-creation that was dedicated in the year 2000. It’s a beautiful church, and I included quite a few pictures of the religious art displayed there. There is a ‘lower church’, which is below the ‘upper church’.
Read MoreI changed my mind from what I wrote in the previous post, and decided to write about our Israel trip. It’s been a couple of months now, but it was such a memorable trip. Mary Ann and I keep talking about it, and trying to remember things, and going back to the photos to refresh our memories. We did so much and went to so many places that it was overwhelming to keep track of them all. So, we decided that since we had all the cell phone photos, we would like to use them to document our trip, to help retain our memory of it. It wasn’t a photography trip, so the photos in the post are cell phone photos, quickly snapped, just to record the event or place.
Read MoreUPDATE: I changed my mind about not posting about the trip, and have written a post for each day of the trip. I also updated the maps to reflect our actual itinerary (which is different from what the original plan was). See here for the updated maps, and for a list of posts for our Holy Land trip.
Mary Ann and I will be making a trip to the Holy Land this summer. We will leave on Wednesday, May 31, and return on Saturday, June 10. In order for us to get a better idea of exactly where we’re going, in preparation for the trip, I mapped it out in google maps, and copied the information from the travel brochure at each spot. I decided to put the maps on the website so we could easily access them, and in case anybody else is interested in more details. This won’t be a photography trip, so I don’t plan on bringing my camera (except a cell phone), and I don’t plan on doing any posts about the trip, except for this one.
Read MoreThis post is for the last stop on our trip to SE Arizona: the town of Portal. Portal is a small town in the Chiricahua Mountains that is popular for its birding, among other things. It was about a 1.5 hour drive from our motel in Safford. We got there at 9:30am, and stopped in the visitors center. They told us that the Elegant Trogon hadn’t arrived yet, and that it typically arrives in mid April. We saw it last year when we were there in May.
Read MoreThis post is for the second day of our trip to SE Arizona: Aravaipa Canyon. We go to the canyon almost every year. They allow 30 permits for entry on the west side, and 20 on the east side. We went to the east side. You can get permits up to 90 days in advance, and when we checked there was only one day and three permits available in the 90 day window. So you can see it is in demand. The west side is even more in demand because it’s closer to the city (Phoenix or Tucson). When we were there we didn’t see anybody else, except for one campsite, but no campers. Where were the 18 other hikers and their cars?
Read MoreMary Ann and I made our annual trip to Aravaipa Canyon. As we have been doing in recent years, we bookend the Aravaipa hike with visits to some other spots in the area. This year’s trip we hit the same spots as last year. On April 10th (Monday morning) we drove to Roper Lake State Park and Dankworth Pond State Park. On Tuesday we hiked Aravaipa. On Wednesday we went to the town of Portal. This post is for the first day. We stayed at the Motel 6 this year. The price of motels has gone up a lot since last year, and the Motel 6 was cheaper. It was a good room, and met all of our requirements.
Read MoreMary Ann and I went to the Salt River last week, and I’m just getting around to doing a post. We had three things in mind: see what wildlife we would run into, check out the wildflowers (specifically fields of California Poppy), and see if there was still snow in the mountains.
Read MoreOur first grandchild, Jude Hezekiah Lester, was born on January 16, 2023, and baptized on Feb 11, 2023, which is also the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. This post has some pictures from his baptism. It was a beautiful ceremony. Baby Jude slept through the whole thing!
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