OUR GREEN VALLEY
DREAMCATCHER
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OUR GREEN VALLEY |
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Spring in the Sonoran Desert |
California Poppy with Insect |
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Night-Blooming Cactus
Torch Cactus
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HAL Grand Australia & New Zealand (January 3 - March 15, 2024)
Israel: The Holy Land and Timeless Cultures (January 21 - February 11, 2023)
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In this section we will try to keep you up-to-date with what's happening with timely comments and links to other areas of the Web page.
The next scheduled trip is a pair of back-to-back Holland America cruises in the Adriatic and Mediterranean: Athens to Rome (7 days) and a Rome to Barcelona (18 days) that takes us to Malta, Ephesus, Rhodes, Naples, Nice, etc. We have been lots of these places but we needed somewhere to go between March and December! Even though it will be hot, we are going into Athens three days early and staying four extra days in Barcelona after the cruise - mostly to see more of the Gaudi stuff.
December and January will find us on another pair of back-to-back Holland America cruises. These will both be round-trip from Singapore (a 17+ hour flight from San Francisco!). The first takes us to Bangkok, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The second is mostly to Indonesia with a detour to Cairns and Darwin in Australia. The second is titled: 28-day Coral Triangle, Volcanos, & Great Barrier Reef, so it wanders around a bit.
Trips on the Web page:
Israel is still in process but eventually it will appear - have faith!
The HAL Australia & New Zealand cruise was interrupted on March 15, in northern New Zealand (Waitangi), when Gale suffered chest pains and we were disembarked from the ship. She was transported by ambulance to Wharangei (about 45 miles south) and Marge followed later, by transit van. After 5 days in the hospital, an angiogram (no stent inserted), and an echocardiogram (normal enough), she was discharged. We made our way to Auckland and flew home on March 21. Subsequent MD visits and tests have declared her to be good-to-go. No damage or lasting concerns. Hooray!
Dreamcatcher
We named our Estes Park house and property Dreamcatcher, not so much because of the Indian legend explained below, as because the house and its location represented a "dream come true" for our retirement. Our move to Arizona represents a dream of a slightly different sort, but just as appropriate, so I believe we will call this new home our Green Valley Dreamcatcher. We hope the Dream Catchers in our home will catch and keep the good dreams.
Indian Dream Catcher Legend
The Plains Indians believe Dream Catchers catch all dreams, good and bad. Good dreams, knowing the way, travel through the hole in the center, rest on the feather like a dew drop, and evaporate to the Great Spirit in the morning sun. Bad dreams, not knowing the way, get entangled in the web. The prayer beads on the Dream Catcher trap all the bad dreams that are left on the web. The prayer beads then burn them up.
