We haven't been keeping up with the blog for no reason other than laziness. Since the last posting we have done a number of things. The most interesting is we road on the Verde Canyon Railroad on Thursday afternoon. It is a forty mile round trip that takes about 4 hours and it travels through some very remote and scenic terrain. Plus they have a full service bar - after a glass of complimentary champagne Sharon started off the trip with a prickly pear margarita (and Rick had a beer - the train has it's own label of both beer and wine).

Sorry the picture is fuzzy. Rick finally discovered he had a blob of gunk on the lens of his smart phone camera.

The train has both interior seats and exterior platforms for passengers to enjoy so we moved from indoors to outdoors and back in.

The train is surprisingly long but it needs to be because they sell out every day (six days a week). The following looks toward the engines:

And looking back toward the caboose:

After being outside for a while (and getting a little sunburned) we returned to our table and shared a bottle of Verde Valley Railroad Chardonnay.

Verde, of course, is Spanish for "green" and green it is around the river. The cottonwoods are a fresh green and the sycamores add a lush element (sycamores on the left and cottonwoods from center to right - the dark branches that have not yest budded are mesquite trees).

While we enjoyed the train ride and the scenery Abby was being pampered at the Canine Country Club back in Cottonwood. She got a bath, a nail trimming, and a grooming. She looked very pretty when we "rescued" her and got her back to her familiar territory.

Yesterday (Friday) we took a hike in the morning. We walked north (away from the river) from our RV park through the desert following a well used trail (the building in the center of the photo below is a casino on Indian land).

However, after a mile or two we ran into this:

The sign says "State Trust Land - No Trespassing" although the sign doesn't appear to have stopped a bunch of other folks. But being the good citizens that we are we turned back and bushwhacked off the trail up to a low hill where we could get a good view of the valley.

The hill in the foreground to the left of center in the photo above is the Sinagua ruin just above our trailer (located on the other side of the hill). We didn't photograph it but on top of the hill (where this picture is taken) at a fence line all the fence posts had a shoe stuck on top. Back in Pocatello this would mean that the location was a drug distribution place - and trails came to the spot from both sides of the fence. Down below the hill we saw a couple of camp sites with tons of junk including mattresses and clothes. Our Pinehaven neighbor and Arizona resident, Bill Hurst, told us that 10 years ago Cottonwood was known as the meth center of northern Arizona - but most of that now seems to have moved elsewhere.

Today (Saturday) we went to Old Town Cottonwood just to walk around and check out the shops. The place keeps getting nicer and nicer each year we return (and busier and busier). Around lunch time we dropped by a winery we hadn't visited before - Burning Tree Cellars. We shared a wine tasting of both whites and reds - some were really nice and were reasonably priced so we bought a few bottles to share with folks back in Pinehaven.

We don't know what we'll do tomorrow but we still have a long list of places to go and things to do. The weather continues to be nice - highs in the high 70s to low 80s, and lows in the 40s to low 50s.