Starting our COVID quarantine

 Our dear friends, Connie and Steven made the drive to the New Mexico mountains to spend time with us this past summer. Now they invited us to visit them at their house on our next available weekend. We have just one free weekend before we start our quarantine. Since we had a new grandbaby due in three weeks, we will be starting our isolation after this weekend to be sure we are COVID-free to be around the new baby.

Our friends live just three miles from a state park, and we spent one morning hiking along the rocky hills of Quartz Mountain State Park.

We walked along the park road, all the way to the lodge that is undergoing remodeling. After spending time in less picturesque places since we left the mountains, it was good for our souls to wander God's wonders this morning.

As we made our five-mile loop, we came upon many members of the park's deer herd. If you look carefully, you can see a couple walking down the road toward us.

We'll zoom in a bit to show the deer inside the park are used to state park visitors like us.

We walked all the way to the end of the trail, crossing the pedestrian bridge close to the lodge. Can you read the warning on the bridge?

We didn't even consider swimming or diving from the bridge today.

That's because there is no water anywhere close to that very long bridge this summer. 

It's late in the season, so it's fun to find wildflowers still blooming. 

It's a good walk when you get good exercise with good friends, and get good views shared with wildlife and wildflowers!

It was a foggy morning, and we looked out from their front porch to see an odd spectacle. We saw hundreds of large birds, sitting on the ground and on the available fence posts.

With the fog and the poor lighting it was hard to get a good picture of these big birds. Why would so many be congregating here in this pasture?

We did a little research, and found a much better picture of a Swainson's Hawk on the internet. We believe they are migrating south, taking advantage of the big crop of grasshoppers and small rodents in the field.

On this last weekend before quarantining, we didn't do anything in crowded places. Quite the opposite, we spent the weekend in their home. We did take one drive around the area, inspecting the cotton crop. Many of the fields in their neighborhood have opened up to show the fluffy bolls of cotton. This field still has its leaves, so it's not yet ready to harvest.

Steven was raised on this cotton farm, so he knows all about the process of watching those tight bolls crack open . . .

to free that big fluffy handful of cotton.

We drove by fields that had been sprayed to defoliate the leaves. They look like fields of snow, almost ready for harvest.

For part of this weekend, we were joined by their daughter and son-in-law. We were glad to meet this newest addition to their family, since we missed their wedding just six weeks before. They weren't there long, as they headed home on Sunday at noon. We stayed until Monday morning.

After a delightful weekend of good fellowship, we headed towards our old home town on Monday, where we had dentist appointments scheduled. We had just filled out the dentist's pre-visit questionnaire where we had just confirmed that we didn't have any fever, and hadn't been in contact with anyone that tested positive for COVID. THEN WE GOT THE PHONE CALL! Their son-in-law was feeling bad when he got home, and took the fast test for COVID this morning. It was positive! That news turned our plans upside down! We had to cancel our dentist appointment and our lunch plan with a friend, and immediately started our quarantine. We had planned to quarantine starting this week to get ready for a new baby, but this is now a quarantine to prevent the spread of COVID. After being so careful, how could this be happening to us?