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Day 33: Sat Aug 23, 1997

 Went to church in the morning. We went to this one when we lived here so we knew a lot of people. There was a potluck after so we stayed for that and visited with friends. After that some were going up to the mountains, the raspberries were ripe and they wanted to eat them. We went along, it was cloudy but didn't rain. This time of year the mountain has afternoon storms. We got back down just before dark and stopped by to visit Mary Olive and Miles. We used to hike with Mary Olive almost every week. Her mother was half American Indian and was a good friend of Annie Oakley's and even took her place once in her Wild West Show when Annie needed a break. Mary Olive was a rock collector and used to take us to her favorite hunting grounds. She had even collected a piece of Trinitite a long time ago. Two visits ago she showed it to Sharleen, I remember that but wasn't paying attention at the time so didn't see it. Sharleen didn't know the significance at the time and didn't really remember it. Last visit I had planned to buy it from her, but she had Alzheimer's and couldn't remember where it was. I searched the yard for a long time but couldn't find it. It's harder when you don't know what it looks like. All I knew was what I had read. In case you don't know, Trinitite is a glassy greenish rock created when the first atomic bomb test melted the desert sand. It is supposedly slightly radioactive. It was never exactly legal to collect but she had grabbed a piece back before they bulldozed it up at the test site. After reading some atomic bomb books I thought it would be interesting to have and planned to buy it. She may have even given it to me; I was going to make her take something for it. This visit she was even worse, in a wheel chair and she couldn't speak at all, mostly slept but sometimes she would look around. Not sure if she recognized us or not. It was sad not to be able to visit with her, and it is hard on Miles. Miles builds wooden toys in his workshop, cars and trucks mostly. They are pretty good and we had some from when we lived there. We also found out that another good friend of ours there had lost her fight with cancer the month before; we were probably on the road. The number of people we knew when living there dwindles with every visit. After visiting we ate at Margo's.

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