{"id":144,"date":"2014-12-01T02:57:54","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T02:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/?p=144"},"modified":"2014-12-02T03:05:03","modified_gmt":"2014-12-02T03:05:03","slug":"on-the-road-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/?p=144","title":{"rendered":"On the road again ;-)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn the road again\u201d
\nI\u2019m working on my nickname again \u2013 gypsyjudge.
\nMy mother, Nita Melvin, would have been 100 years old in July of this year. She was a complex, loving person, and full of curiosity. She loved to travel but stayed where she \u201cbelonged\u201d — at home with family. She had a world map as a mural on their bedroom wall and used different colored straight pens to mark where various family and friends traveled. Whenever someone was leaving, she would say, \u201cTake my good-looking eyes with you, and come back to tell me all about it.\u201d
\nSo in her honor, I hope to show you some of my travels, through her \u201cgood-looking eyes.\u201d
\nThis week I flew from Florida to Tucson to help a friend who is to have eye surgery and won\u2019t be able to drive for a while. The weather here is slightly different than that in Florida \u2013 I exchanged soggy and cold for a humidity (8 to 9%) that was a real shocker to my sinuses. The temps in Tucson are in the high 80\u2019s during the day & low 40\u2019s at night.
\nWe visited the Saguaro National Park \u2013 the Saguaro are the cacti of cowboy movies. They grow very, very slowly \u2013 they don\u2019t begin to grow arms their first 75 to 100 years; they can grow 80 feet tall and live 150 years.
\nYesterday we took the car down to Patagonia, AZ. a small town about 60 miles south of Tucson and 20 miles north of the Mexican border. We had burritos for breakfast \u2013 of course \u2013 with salsa that would take the hair off your tongue. We decided to take \u201cthe road less traveled\u201d back to Tucson but chickened out when the pavement ended and the dirt road began to fork, repeatedly. We found a Border Patrol \u2013 not hard to do \u2013 and he reassured us that the roads were going to ultimately return us to civilization. So we rode 40+ miles on rough, dirt roads \u2013 through patches of small oak trees, over dry gullies, and up to Canelo Pass, a high grassland in cowboy country where the cattle have the right-of-way. We made it back to pavement just before the sun went down; then it was only an hour back to Tucson.
\nPart of this trip will include an excursion to Santa Fe. \u00a0We\u2019ll probably find some more back roads along the way.\u00a0 Tuesday, Dec 2, I will work with the Solace Crises Center, a child advocacy center, as they roll-out their big fund raiser, BuY the Book; I\u2019ll donate 25% of the sales of my book, Public Secrets and Justice<\/em>, to Solace. On Wednesday, I do a training session with a group of about 30 professionals from a variety of agencies who work with child abuse.
\nYou can reasonably expect some \u201coperator errors\u201d as I begin, again, to learn the technology required for this blog site.\u00a0 I had a hard time before with pictures – bear with me as I work through it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn the road again\u201d I\u2019m working on my nickname again \u2013 gypsyjudge. My mother, Nita Melvin, would have been 100 years old in July of this year. She was a complex, loving person, and full of curiosity. She loved to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gypsyjudge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}