Lost in fields of gold

We returned to our home away from home in Strawberry for a week of hiking.  And the temperature was perfect so we could sit outside in the afternoons.  This is a quaint, little, strange mountain town at almost 6000’ altitude on the edge of the Mogollon Rim, where it is warm but not hot during the summer months in Arizona.  We love it here and so do the elk.  They live in Strawberry and in the surrounding forests.  We saw elk out our back door, walking down the streets, and out in the wild as we hiked.  

We hiked over 27 miles this week.  We saw only a handful of hikers on the Arizona Trail.....but our new friends, the elk, were plentiful.

The area where we are staying and hiking is where the Tonto National Forest, the Coconino National Forest, and the Apache Sitgreave National Forest meet.  The hiking opportunities are diverse and endless.  There are hundreds of miles of old deserted dirt roads, and the Arizona Trail crisscrosses all three of these national forests.  During the hot summer months this is a land of paradise where we can hike to our heart’s content.

The monsoons this summer, with the days on end of high winds, rainfall, thunder, and lightning, have resulted in massive flooding throughout Arizona.  But the weather has not prevented us from continuing our cycling, swimming, and walks while we are in Leisure World.  We just got out between the storms and before mid-morning when the temperatures begin to climb into the high 90’s and up.   

So after less than two weeks at Nuestra Casa, the rim was calling us.  We returned to Strawberry and the Airbnb where we had celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary just a few weeks ago.  

We had to dodge the monsoon rain, lightning, and thunder the first few days, but we got out and hiked most every day. The monsoons brought us some muddy wet roads that we had to maneuver on our hikes, but they also brought us a feast for the eyes—bright green grass and abundant flowers throughout all the forests and meadows where we hiked.

Here is our week in pictures:

 

The elk were up early as we headed out hiking in the morning.

 

As we headed out hiking on our last day, the monsoon rains and clouds were gone.  The skies where so bright and blue that we started singing, “I can see clearly now, the rain has gone….”   Of course we JUST had to start dancing!

The trees thinned out and suddenly before us was a field of gold—an enormous enchanted meadow filled with bright yellow wildflowers.  Acres and acres of a flat meadow. We lost ourselves in the glory that nature had given us on this day.

For the 9th time we ride the STP together!

The STP….the 200-mile Seattle to Portland bicycle ride is one of the most momentous athletic challenges that we have accomplished.  It has been a major event each year in our life together.  And, boy, has it been fun!

For seven consecutive years we had left Seattle on a Saturday in early July along with 10,000 other cyclists (and Jules) and arrived in Portland the next day.  When we crossed the finish line in Portland, cycled onto the grass, and received our cloth “Finisher” badges, we were tired, dirty, and sore.  

STP 2018

But we were also exuberant, and each year we had tears of joy in our eyes as we kissed each other.

Every year before the STP we spent months training.  Late in the winter we would return from our 5+ month long road trips, unpack our Turtle (slide-in camper on the bed of our F350), take our road bikes out of the garage, and start cycling every day. (That is, every day that the weather on Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest didn’t play a nasty trick on us and pour rain.)

During the spring and early summer we put up to 1,500 miles on our bikes and bodies before the first day of the STP.  We rode on all the beautiful country roads of South Whidbey, the Centennial Trail, the Burke-Gilman Trail, in the San Juan Islands, and countless organized bike rides throughout Washington State.   We increased the miles week by week, until we could ride 100 miles in one day and still feel pretty good.  Then we considered ourselves STP ready!   

We did this every spring and summer with Jules for seven years, and seven STP’s.  And we loved every single minute of it!  

Then the inevitable happened.  Somehow we got old.  But as anyone who reaches seventy-years-old knows, we didn’t feel old.  After we crossed the finish line in Portland for the seventh time together, we decided that the STP was just too hard on our bodies.  That was in 2018.

We spent the spring of 2019 doing something even harder than riding the STP--we got our home on Whidbey Island ready to sell, sold our beloved home, and moved to Nuestra Casa, our lovely home in Mesa, Arizona.

We were through riding the STP.  We were sad to say goodbye to this marvelous bike ride.  We have such wonderful memories of it and all our cycling in Washington.  But every day living in Arizona we were having new adventures and making new memories.  We were cycling on our tandem bike, swimming, playing ping pong, and after a few weeks we headed off to camp and hike in our favorite deserts. 

And of course, we were dancing together every week or more.

Then the pandemic hit the world.  And most everything was closed or canceled.  The world came to a standstill.  Luckily, we had each other so we could continue much of our life and activities.  

The iconic Seattle to Portland bike ride after forty continuous years was cancelled!  

Zoom, Google Duo, and FaceTime became all the norm.  And soon after, everything, including hugs and visits with family and grandchildren, became virtual.  

Candice’s business, DestinationTrail, converted a bike ride across the USA and all the 200+ endurance runs into virtual races.  We entered and completed all of her virtual races. (And we didn’t come in last in all of them!)

Suddenly, we discovered  that the Seattle to Portland ride was going virtual.  We had the opportunity to ride another STP!   And we did.  What’s more, we rode the 2020 STP virtually with Emily, Sean, Soren, Sebastian, Bill, Jules, Diane, Ian, and Adam.  This was a dream come true, to ride the STP with so much of our family!

With COVID-19 still raging, this summer, the Cascade Bicycle Club offered another Seattle to Portland virtual bike ride.  Once again we signed up for the STP.  The ride allowed twenty-three days to complete the 200 miles.  

This summer it has not only been extremely hot, but the monsoons have hit Arizona with a vengeance.  So completing it in 23 days was somewhat of a challenge!

We have ridden the STP in the dark around 4 a.m. to avoid the sun and heat.  As we cycled around Leisure World  on our tandem bike, we were often watching the storm clouds to gauge how closely the rain or lightning was approaching our retirement community.  We rode fourteen of the last seventeen days.  We had five days left before the cutoff time.

Today we once again (virtually) crossed the “finish line” of the STP in Portland and earned our cloth “Finisher” badges—our 9th STP!

We are so happy to have had this experience one more time together.

We want to be just like Mom and Dad

 Mom and Dad were featured in the Leisure World News fourteen years ago in June 2007.

IT’S 60 WONDERFUL YEARS FOR FRANKLIN AND JEANNE GRAYBILL

The first day I met Mom and Dad was 10 years ago when we flew to Mesa for our wedding. Dad was to preform the ceremony and Mom had offered to sing at our wedding.  He was 90 and she was 89-years-old.  Dad was on oxygen and needed his wheelchair if he walked more than a few feet.

They had recently celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary.  Every evening in the dining room of their assisted living home, Dad would read poetry to Mom.   (We now have the book that he read from.  It is one of our treasures.)

On the day that I met them, Dad mentioned something about Mom.  As he said her name, “Jeanne," Dad looked at her and reached his hand to her.  There was intense love in his eyes.  Mom slid her hand into his, and I saw the same deep love in her eyes.  I had witnessed a beautiful moment of shared love.  

I was enchanted. I had never seen anything like this before in my life.  And I thought that long lasting true love is really possible.  This is what I had always dreamed of, and I said to myself, “I want to be just like Mom and Dad and years from now I want to have this with my Danny.”  

Eight years later we moved to our home in Leisure World, just like Mom and Dad who had lived in LW for 20 years.  Then, this summer, just like Mom and Dad, we were featured in the Leisure World News!

Dan and Vicky Graybill: A Trailblazing Hiking Duo

We framed the LW News articles of Franklin and Jeanne Graybill and Dan and Vicky Graybill, and hung them facing each other in our hallway where we enjoy them several times each day.

Every time I see Mom and Dad in this picture, I think of that moment of love that I saw pass between them on the eve of our wedding ten years ago.  And I remember how when I saw their love for each other that I wanted this too.

Yes, long lasting true love is really possible.  I have this with my Danny. 

And he will read me poetry from Dad’s book in the evenings as we grow old together.

A place of honor for our Volkswagen Westfalia

This is the most difficult model that so far I have assembled. It is rated a Level 5, whereas most model companies stop at Level 3.  Small part after small part.   Took me a month to assemble it.

The rest of the diorama was built from parts of several other kits and sources--those parts were not in the VW model kit. 

It is a 1960s Volkswagen conversion van.  In that era they were made in Germany.  People would purchase them there, drive them around Europe, and then shipped them home to the USA.    Many of them were purchased by US servicemen. 

Vicky set up a place for it in our activity room---fittingly under our map of our own RV travels on our road trips.  That's why it is a place of honor.

(Photos by Vicky)

Our final hike to celebrate our 10th anniversary

On our final day of our anniversary celebration we did another really nice section of the Arizona Trail.  We got an early start because our hike was at a lower altitude than most of our hikes were this week.  This means that  it would be warmer earlier, and it was.

Overall this week we did a cool 30+ miles of hiking, plus some dancing and some walking around the community of Strawberry.  We talked about our past ten years and all the years in the future that we will spend together.

It was a wonderful anniversary.  We will cherish the memory of it forever.