Peggy and Cliff took us out to a great (and inexpensive) breakfast buffet at Santa Fe Station Casino.  After breakfast, we got on the road to St. George, Utah.  This is only a two-hour trip, but we traveled through three states, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah.

Just before leaving Nevada, we stopped in the town of Mesquite, home of three casino resorts.  We stopped to rest, play and eat before crossing the state line.  In just a few minutes, we entered Arizona.  This portion of the trip was short as we were simply crossing a corner of the state.  The scenery was similar to Nevada.

As soon as we entered Utah, the landscape became more colorful and the rock formations more interesting.  We found one of our friend’s homes, Ann.  Ann and Pat are traveling buddies who we met on our first world cruise.  We first encountered them as we waited for our helicopter trip above volcanos in Hilo, Hawaii.  It was great to see and visit with them again.

We took a little scenic tour around St. George and ended up at Cliffside, a wonderful restaurant that overlooks the city of St. George from high atop a hill.  The city scenery was spectacular punctuated by the LDS Temple.

When we got back to Ann’s home, we had a chance to chat and catch up and make plans for Day 3.

Paul has finally finished giving his summer workshops for AP Chemistry teachers and is ready for some relaxation.

Today we’re traveling to Las Vegas to visit our friends Peggy and Cliff.  They used to live in the Oakridge Mobile Home Park but bought a beautiful new house in LV.

On the way be passed a rocket engine test site just outside of Edwards AFB.

When we got to Barstow, we stopped for a quick rest at Peggy Sue’s Dinner (they even had dinosaurs!).

Just before we crossed stateline into Nevada, we saw the solar generating plants along the highway.  Three huge towers with mirrors all pointing at the top to to create the heat necessary to generate the power.

We arrived at Peggy and Cliff’s mid-afternoon and Peggy had fixed a great roast for dinner (who knew she could cook)!

Later they took us to Santa Fe Station casino for a couple of hours.  We went back to the house for a well deserved night of sleep in preparation for our trip to St. George, UT, tomorrow.

During my retirement, my schedule is totally flipped. I work for June and July and relax, travel, and paint the rest of the year. I’m in the middle of my APSI’s, that is, the Advanced Placement Summer Institutes where I work with groups of terrific teachers around California and Indiana. We do labs and I get a chance to share my ideas about teaching advanced chemistry with teachers who are new to AP.

This is a lot of fun, but also exhausting.

I’m here in Salt Lake City for the AP Chemistry Reading. I think there are about 300 chemistry teachers and professors here to score exams. My assignment this year is to work on the International exam, so I am in a separate room with about 30 readers.

I go walking each day because there are so many interesting things to see around this area. The tall glass tower is the Salt Palace where the Reading takes place. I looked in the window of the concert hall around the corner and saw a Chihuly glass installation and the bicycle racks at the concert hall are shaped like key signatures. There was even an astronaut floating above the sidewalk.

Luckily, I have made some great friends and keep meeting new ones. Quite a few here like to go on hikes or walks. The elevation here is 4,239 feet, so even a walk from the hotel to the Salt Palace can get you out of breath. I got invited on an easy mountain hike which I found pretty challenging. The other chemistry teachers were very nice to me and when we got to the top of our trek, we were at 9,462 feet in elevation. You can see that the scenery was worth the effort.

I look kind of goofy because I was trying to use my Apple Watch to control my camera. I guess I need some more practice on that.

We’ve been home for a week now. We had our kitchen floor redone. We also had our first community Potluck Dinner and Ron cooked Pork Saltimbucco (learned from one of the guest chefs on the ship). I made a bacon cheeseburger tator tot casserole.

We’ve have not been to Disneyland since Thanksgiving, so we took a day to visit. It was fun to see the progress made on the Pixar Pier. We rode on the monorail, ate well (not the big turkey leg here), and stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel. It has been updated since our last stay. It is wonderful. The rooms are brighter and lighter and more technologically friendly.

On our way home from our overnight stay at Disneyland, we decided to stop at Descanso Gardens for our daily walking exercise.

Descanso Gardens is a 150-acre botanical garden located just off the 210 freeway in La Canada-Flintridge, CA.

Imagine our surprise when we got there, the place was packed! Today, the Garden had free admittance. Lots of people were there to see the tulips.

Who knew that there were so many varieties of tulips. My favorites were those with the ragged edges.