Last month after reading Marian's account of locating church facilities on Google-Earth, I decided to learn how to post my photos to the Google-Earth site. I uploaded these two photos of the Colorado River (called River Panorama) NE of Moab and the Sandia Mountains (called Sandia Storm) just north of Bernalillo, on a site called Panoramio and clicked a button to submit them to Google Earth. I had to indicate logitude and latitude of the spots from where the pictures were taken (brought up Google Earth and determined the location). It took about a month for the Google Earth staff to review them, but they are both now marked with a Panoramio logo and "accepted for Google-Earth" on the upload site. See if you can find them on Google Earth.

The tomatoes are going into the ground, though I wasn't sure last week when another spring storm on Friday dressed the mountains in snow again. But it's about time as the gallon containers are pretty root-bound now. A good part of the raspberries on the west side of the house were dug up to make room. Raspberries have done only so-so compared to those in Carma's yard in Salt Lake, so we decided to pretty well give them up down here. Actually, the tomatoes will be planted all around the house, so we'll see which garden area works the best for them. The weather has co-operated also with temperatures rising to near 90 today.

A funeral today and a sad one at that. The Petmeckys were members of our ward until about three years ago when they moved to the west side of Albuquerque. I remember them attending the Gospel Doctrine sunday school class that I taught. The Case family has been in our ward all the time we've lived in Albuquerque. In his family, Alan was the really faithful member of the Church and he served in the Riverside, California mission just after our son Michael completed his mission "next-door" in the San Bernardino mission.

On Saturday, Alan was in the Pecos wilderness in the mountains in back of Santa Fe camping with some friends when they decided to cut down a tree with Alan taking pictures with a video camera. The tree when it was cut fell into another tree and snapped it in two and the upper part hurdled down on Alan killing him instantly. Alan was cheerful and outgoing and had many friends at school and he was also very active in the Montano Branch for single adults. There were 250 people at his service today. This was a shattering event to his family, but we're hoping that it will bring forth positive things in the future.

Thursday turned out nice and sunny, so Jan and I headed for the Oregon coast to check up on some of the places we knew from the earlier days. Pacific City is known for Haystack Rock which is in the picture behind fluffy and me.

The town is considerably built up from how I remember it, but the real-estate slump is more noticeable out at the coast where there were a lot of "For Sale" signs and new places built but empty.

On up the coast from Pacific City is Lookout Point, a finger of mountain that reaches a half-mile outward from the shore.

On the north side of the point is a launching area for paragliders which is the newest offspring of hang-gliding and looks a bit easier to do. The folks doing it said that the conditions were perfect and that they could rise to 1500 feet and glide for hours. Three helpers hold up the parachute; the wind catches it, and the paraglider steps off of a steep hill and suddenly he's in the air. It doesn't take too much wind either.

We traveled to Oceanside, Oregon and out of curiosity went to see the the property in back of the town that Marolynn and I once owned. The trailer that was on the property 35 years ago was still there. I put a layer of fiberglass all over the outside of the trailer to keep it from leaking, and the current owners have sheathed it in plywood. Marolynn and I used to go out to the coast and sleep in the trailer with the thought of eventually building a vacation home, but we moved to the tri-cities in eastern Washington and sold the property on the coast. Everything out front of the trailer in our day was open ground with a couple of 6ft coastal spruce trees. These are now over 30 feet tall with huge limbs hanging down.

I received an invite from Jan Oden, our oldtime friend in Oregon to go look for some petrified rock. That's one of the reasons I made the trip up there. We found a fee-for-rock hunting place up the valley from Sweet Home. Ten thousand years ago, an ice-age flood washed the petrified rock down the valley from the mountains. The owner had quite a collection of petrified wood laying out behind his barn, and had also dug a trench with a backhoe. I picked up a nice section of tree-trunk with annual rings on it. I left it at Carrie's because it was too heavy to get back on the plane. Someday I might get it back to Albuquerque or to whereever we might retire.



Jan, now 77 lives in Albany in a Mennonite housing complex. After a series of cats, her newest pet is Buddy Beaver - named after the Oregon State U. mascot (Bud for short), a very fluffy small dog who can travel all day in a pet crate in the back of her SUV without a whimper. Excepting her recovery from a partial new knee operation, Jan is as active as ever with the same temperament as she had 35 years ago when I first met her. She and her son own a 200 acre farm outside of Albany which was her father's where she grew up.

Compared to New Mexico, Oregon is surely full of blooming flowers. Here is Carrie in front of the pink flowering Dogwood tree in her front yard. She says these last only two or three weeks.

Its been four whole days since I saw Carrie so I decided to fly up to Portland.  Actually I've had a plan to visit Marian and tomorrow to go with Jan to do some rock hunting.  This afternoon we visited the rhodedendron park in Portland as they are about at their peak.  There were plenty of flowers to take pictures of as you can see.

Chris Suski's wedding was on Saturday the 3rd of May and we happened to have the whole family together to attend the occasion. The wedding was held at the UNM Memorial Chapel and the garb was Midieval as you can see on Chris in the center of the group picture. His younger brother Nicholas right behind him performed the ceremony. His sister Tiffany is to the right of Nick, and Allen Suski in a white goatee and mustache, believe it or not, wearing a kilt, is in the rear. In front is Teresa Suski (Allen's wife #1) next to George Suski, Allen's father. George's wife Lee is sort of hidden behind the lady on the right. Lois Suski (wife #2) is in back of them. In front of Chris and his bride is Randall Suski, a child of Chris's in an earlier time who he raised up. Allen's other brother, Robert Suski is in back at the right. I enthusiastically snapped a lot of pictures with the digital camera before reading the small print in the viewfinder "No Memory Card", so these pictures came from my I-phone camera.

Allen and Lois and his folks all live in Idaho Falls and Ammon, Idaho. "Where'd they get that name Ammon," asked George (I told him to get a Book of Mormon and look him up in the index). George and Lee are about the only non-Mormons in their town. A couple of neighbor kids asked them if they could be their granddad and grandma because both of theirs died, and they stepped right in. I'm going to have to make a trip up there to do some visiting this summer.