Short Update

Ralph has finished 1/2 of his chemo treatments, so he is on the downhill side with 6 to go! He has very few side effects - fatigue and tingling/numbness in his fingers and nose which gets worse with each treatment but will go away when he is done. His oncology doctor is very happy with his treatment and how well he is doing.

We have had a beautiful January. It will be the warmest on record with very little rain - sent it all south to California. Long range forecast is for more warm and dry days!

New Toy

With all the emissions "junk" on the truck, it is not good to use it for a daily driver which is exactly what we have been doing. In talking to a mechanic it eventually would require thousands in repairs. If we were moving every two weeks the truck would be fine, but since we are stuck here it is not getting "cleaned out" properly. We also should have our lot in Pahrump soon and we would need a car there also. I really wanted a Mazda Miata and we looked but decided it was not very practical to carry much of anything. So then we looked at inexpensive 4 door coupes and just couldn't get excited about them or the price. So we made one last stop at the Mazda dealership and mentioned really wanting a Miata. They showed us this 2004 Tiburon GT that they had taken on a trade. It was a one owner car and they knew the previous owner very well. It looks brand new inside and out and low mileage. It is an automatic which Ralph did not like and it is red which I did not like, but other than that it had everything else we wanted and then some! And it actually has a lot of space since the back seats fold down. They had put new brakes and tires on it. So Ralph gave them a a very low price that we were willing to pay, never thinking they would take it. They did so here is our new toy - it is so much fun to drive!

So with a new toy, of course we had to go somewhere. Up the Skagit River (east), the eagles winter where the salmon spawn. Many years ago when I went up there were eagles everywhere you looked. It was quite a sight. Ralph had never seen this so off we went on a scarce sunny day here. The mountains were beautiful with new snow.
It was a beautiful drive and lots of fun with the "toy". We had a nice picnic lunch and Cookie enjoyed spending time with us and "reading a new newspaper" at each stop. But, you guessed it, not an eagle to be found. There were many disappointed people that had only come up to see the eagles, but we were happy to see blue skies, beautiful mountains and have a fun drive!