Saturday 6th November 2010…a very sad and significant milestone in my life today!!!!

This morning, after 62 years,  I came to the undeniable conclusion that I am no longer deemed to be attractive and I am not considered to be a hot, buff, Latino picture of masculinity!!!!!!!

How do I know this you may well ask??

Well on a trail this morning it was quite hot and I took my shirt off and as I was walking this Native family approached me and Mum was holding hands with her small daughter and you just had to be here for this…as the young girl was walking by me she looked right at me, hid one part of her face with her hands and said the word,”uugghhhh”.  Mum and I burst out laughing and this is the kid…

Check her face!!!!

I immediately ran to Ramona and took this photo

and this

had a shower and shave and took this photo

Cleaned up I look not bad, well maybe that is a stretch….

So there you have it…this boy is toast, done, washed up, out to pasture…what a way to start my day!!!!!

So back to this morning…..I left by 8am and again caught the rising sun on my way to Page

 See all the hot air balloons more about those later…

I am now in Arizona….

This is a very lovely part of the country and I had my itinerary planned out my first stop…

I saw a photo of this place in a magazine about 7 years ago and it immediately went onto my Bucket List……so here we go..

Not bad but wait…

almost there…

My camera just isn’t good enough to capture the true beauty of this plus the sun is not helping out but really what a view a sheer cliff face about 1000 feet with no railings!!!!

The two little white things in the water are rafts!!!

So glad I managed to see this wonderful place and the mighty Colorado River!!!!

After about a 30 mile drive I came to this piece of magnificent engineering

The view from the bridge..

Another short drive brought me to Lees Ferry and my dip in the cold waters of the Colorado…

Before I get accused of impropriety BIMBO is the name of the Mexican bread company, the largest in the world!!!!!

Getting ready for their 10 day raft down the river!!!!

My next stop was a hike into

According to the booklet a moderate degree of difficulty in this 4 mile round trip…

It was a hike in the canyon bed of the gully where the flash flood waters run….I have seen a flash flood years ago in Vegas and never seen water come raging so fast and furious this would have been neat to see here in this gully but the forecast is good all day.

This is one section that was hard because you had to climb up the cliff face to get by..

of course once you are up coming down is supposed to be easier???  At this point I questioned myself about going on and said to myself “Come on Percy’s(that's my Dad) boy think what you are doing”   but of course if Percy(my Dad) was with me he would be the first one down…..so I kept going and was rewarded a while later with these views and a lunch break…

Just before I left on the hike I heard on the news about the collapse during the night of the Pompey building in Italy and I thought as I looked at all these huge pieces of rock that at some time and come cascading down the rock face..

After a few minutes iI was lucky enough to see the rafters that I had seen earlier loading their boats…

Strangely enough the hike wasn't so bad and I rewarded myself with some down time back at Ramona…

Reading this great novel..

Tonight was the

and the  street was closed and truly amazing to see all these huge balloons on Main Street…

I am now in the parking lot of the local library, with Internet and a quiet place to sleep…..another off the list good night…