February trip to Arizona!

In February I went to Gilbert AZ, partly to escape the winter cold, and partly to visit Mary (and Taffy) and also to go to the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show.

I have a friend in Lac La Biche who teaches a combined grades 3 and 4 class, and they are sending Flat Stanley to different places around the world. I offered to take him with me to Arizona. We took him last summer to the Grand Canyon, but I forgot to take him riding! (If you want to know about Flat Stanley, look him up on Wikipedia!)

As everyone knows, the chores have to be done first, before we play with the horses. Mary's grand-daughter, Maddie helped Stanley muck out the stalls.

What's this? Sitting down on the job? I didn't realize Maddie was sitting on the rail when I took this picture because the light reflected on the screen on my camera and I couldn't see exactly what I was photographing. It was a cute surprise when I saw this picture!

Maddie is taking Stanley for a ride on Taffy.

In these two pictures, you can see Stanley on Maddie's shirt! You can also see that Maddie wears a helmet when she rides. Usually she uses a child's saddle which fits her better than this one does. I saddled Taffy, though, and didn't realize that Mary has a child-sized saddle for her grand-kids.

The temperatures were in the low 70's most of the time I was there, and it only rained one morning, just before we woke up.

These two pictures show the warm up and practice rings as well as some of the barns at the Scottsdale show. I was standing on the bridge over the in-gate of the Equidome, with the Equidome behind me, as well as both of the huge commercial tents. There are more barns off to the left and right of both pictures, to say nothing of the barns behind the Equidome! There were about 2400 Arabian and Half/part Arabians exhibited this year.

This is the front of a barn. Inside, the stalls look like the ones to the left. Mary is holding Stanley to show that he was at the show. Other barn fronts are very elaborate and are put up and taken down at each show. Some look like living rooms, and encourage you to drop in and visit the owners and the horses.

Here the horses are lined up for the final judging and announcing of the winners of the Park Horse class. You can see that Stanley was having a good time!

After visiting the barns, shopping and watching the classes, a guy needs a snooze. Actually, this was taken before we did all that... Mary and I caught Paul stretched out in the sun, so he posed with Stanley for me!

Here is Emma, Mary's new horse, that she bought last year.

Mary is posing in her new hair-do with Daisy.

I wasn't sure that taking a picture from the plane window would work with a digital camera, but it did! This is flying over the mountains in northern Arizona. I should have taken a picture flying over the Grand Canyon, but I thought about it for too long, and the chance was gone. Next time, maybe!



Quite a difference! Here we are approaching Calgary. I flew directly from Phoenix to Calgary, then changed planes to come to Edmonton. My trip was too short... only 5 days actually in Arizona. We were just getting going when it was time for me to come home! I plan to spend more time, next visit.