My visits to Arizona are to visit my two oldest friends, Eileen and Nelda. For the last few years, I’ve structured every visit to spend the first half in Apache Junction with Eileen, then I take the shuttle up to Prescott and on to Chino Valley, to visit Nelda.
This was an amazing, particularly busy trip that I waited many months to write about. As usual, the trip began in beautiful Apache Junction, where I always stay at a particular AirBnB with the views shown below.
I’ve posted many more such photos in my posts about previous Apache Junction visits.
I love being a useful helper when I visit, which always amused the hell out of Eileen. And she always rose to the challenge. On previous visits we hung new curtains in her house, sorted through her closets and cupboards to bring many bags of stuff to Goodwill, added decorative wrought-iron plants to her front yard, and bought a small fence for her back yard (failing to be able to install it ourselves), and so much more.
This visit was a little less busy.
I saw a messed-up looking notebook on Eileen’s desk and asked if we should toss it. She said no, and explained that after she first got it, she accidentally set her coffee cup on it, leaving a ring. After a moment of deep disappointment, she spent a few minutes wetting her cup and carefully positioning more rings on the notebook to make quite the piece of art. I’m so glad I took a picture of it!
We spent most of our time together cleaning and organizing the little storage unit in Eileen’s yard, making runs to the Goodwill donation center, finally finishing the cleaning of her RV to make it ready to sell, emptying out and closing the account on a rented storage unit, and trimming the cactus in her yard. [Side note: Cactus is full of water and thus is surprisingly heavy!]
On my many visits to Apache Junction to see Eileen, we would usually go to the Hackers restaurant for breakfast or lunch. I always chuckled at the name, as I work in the tech industry and so a hacker is a pretty bad thing to avoid. This is not the most picturesque photo, I know—but it brings up many, many fond memories for me.
One afternoon, just as it threatened to meld into evening, we sat in the now spruced-up back yard to discuss dinner plans and enjoy the cooling air. In the tree just over the fence, two doves joined us in our respite (here’s a completely uneventful 23-second video of the doves.).
With all our work done, on the last day of my visit we got in the car and headed east toward the Tonto National Forest to take a scenic drive. We’d originally intended to bring her husband Charly’s ashes with us to spread somewhere in the desert, but Eileen decided at the last minute to leave them at home.
Off we went on a memorably beautiful, many-hours long drive into the Tonto National Forest. I spent about 13 years of an earlier time in my life in Arizona, but it still amuses me to no end that this desert area full of cactus and nearly no trees could possibly be referred to as a “forest,” and yet, it is. [Here’s its official website.]
I’m not familiar enough with the area to be able to give any of these photos actual names or to say much about them other than to make the excuse that they were taken out the windshield of a car. I will just post them here and let them speak for themselves.
This was a gorgeous, amazing drive that we both really enjoyed—a perfect end to our time together.
Very early the next morning, Eileen came to my AirBnB. We shared some coffee and snacks, then my Uber arrived to take me to the airport where I would catch a shuttle up to Prescott.
We fully expected at the time that I would see her again in December, but that was not to be. After just over five years battling colon cancer, Eileen passed away just a few months after this visit.
Farewell, my friend.
Farewell, Apache Junction.