trip to the Southwest

Two weeks ago, we left the kids with the grands for a few days and Jer and I flew down south to try to find housing for our next adventure.  Our year-plus of travel is about to come to an end, and we needed to find a place to settle into our new life in the Southwest.  The short story is that we found a little house to rent in a good neighborhood near what is reputed to be a good school.  But that's the boring part.  I took photos of some of the more entertaining parts of our visit and hopefully it is a taste of more good and fascinating cultural experiences to come (once we move there later in July).   

there are summer evening performances by the local People in the main square.
(and others are sometimes invited to join in)

the Jr. High Rodeo was taking place and we went to take a look.
these girls were sharing a set of earphones while riding along.

(the backyard and view of one house we looked at but didn't end up buying)

(look, trees!  at least five, anyway...)

another [collapsing] house we didn't buy

standing on the roof of said house

it was hard to walk away from this one.  it had trees growing out from it! 
then again...it was collapsing.

 blue and stormy skies

red rocks everywhere

and these are some clips of awesome stunts the kids were doing at the rodeo (the next contestant in line didn't struggle so much with the calf and set a record for 9 seconds):