Arizona

Today we are at Arizona Oasis RV Park on the Colorado River poised to go into California. We are stopped here because of the cable television which is necessary in order to watch all NCAA Basketball Tournament games. This is a beautiful green valley in the midst of the desert so calling it an oasis is apt. Yesterday we took a foray into California with our car so that we could check out the “California Welcome Center”, pick up a road map and learn a little about the state. Turns out the “welcome center” is a check point to make sure that we don’t take any unwanted bugs on our produce. I’m worried about Kelsey’s jade plant as I think it is infested with a pest. What if they confiscate that? How will I tell Kelsey? I will treat it with Mark’s recommended Dawn dish soap spray and hope that they don’t actually inspect my camper. (See FB conversation on this subject.)

It is getting hot here in the desert. Every day in the foreseeable future is forecast in the 90’s or more. Yesterday I found out just how cold the 90’s can feel when I stepped out of the swimming pool with the wind blowing on me at 18% humidity. Goosebumps! The Yuma TV meteorologists debated whether this is warm spring or if it is really starting to get hot. They finally agreed that it is just a “warm spring”.

Turns out there are no rest areas in California and a local tourist information office in Blythe was closed for a 3 hour lunch when we stopped there. Apparently, we will be dependent on our Google to find out about this state. After all, it is California. The Flying J on this side of the river is always backed up both in diesel and regular gasoline as no one wants to enter California without a full tank. The price jumps by 80 cents as soon as you cross over.

Enough about California… we aren’t even there yet. Arizona is a pretty amazing state. We’ve spent the better part of the last month here. Kelly arrived in Phoenix on our anniversary, March 18. It was really thoughtful of her to plan her trip so she could help us celebrate 43 years together. We had spent the night in an “inner city” RV park (Green Acres) in Phoenix so that we could be near the airport. After we picked her up, had breakfast and stocked up on groceries at Whole Foods, we headed up north and stayed at the County Fairgrounds in Prescott Valley.. Beautiful country… We are learning at much higher elevations that we have to adjust the settings on our Sleep Number bed. It gets rock hard at 5000 feet and turns into mush at 200 feet. Once we got set up in Prescott Valley we helped Kelly make her bracket picks. She has apparently done well with this in the past. I don’t think she is doing so well this year with our help. We fried up some of the red snapper from our freezer and enjoyed a gourmet meal with the addition of the veggies we picked up in Phoenix.

On Thursday we took a car trip to Grand Canyon National Park where we walked the rim for about 4 miles, took pictures and enjoyed a beautiful sunny cool day. I will include a picture here of us on the rim. Also a picture of an elk in the park. It was a fine day. 

Then on Friday we drove to Sedona where we went for a short walk and ate a most interesting meal at a vegan restaurant ChocolaTree Organic Oasis. We have pictures of us walking and we have pictures of red rocks but not of us with the red rocks. There are lots of pictures out there of the red rock that are much better than my pictures but I will try to post one anyway. After lunch we went back to Prescott Valley, picked up the camper and returned to Phoenix so that we could drop Kelly off on Saturday morning. We were at the Cotton Lane RV Park in Goodyear where Kelly took the picture of us enjoying the basketball game with palm trees in the background. We were not actually watching Wisconsin as she said on FB though we would have if we had cable. That was a fine few days.

After Kelly left, we contacted friends Marv and Elaine who moved here from the Chicago area for the winter. Marv is an old friend of Don’s with whom he worked at Impact Sales. They have had some bad luck and Marv is still recovering from a car accident. It was good to see him in good spirits and get to know Elaine a little better. We enjoyed some more red snapper with them in the shade of the camper. On Sunday, we took a day to watch some basketball and take it easy. On Monday, we had breakfast with Marv and Elaine before heading west.

We spent 2 nights at Park Place RV Park in Quartzsite. We had heard a lot about Quartzsite when we were at the Escapade in Tucson and were curious. Turns out that Quartzsite is pretty deserted by now but in January and February there are probably about 100,000 (my estimate) RV’s that converge there. Not much interesting there at this time of year. We did laundry and fixed a few things before coming here. There was only karaoke on Friday night and since everyone else was gone I didn’t care to listen to Don sing.

Escapade and beyond

We found our way to Tucson to the 2015 Escapade – The annual rally of the Escapees RV Club. We came because we still have a lot to learn about this way of life and also because we thought we would find others who also live this way. We found what we were looking for.

The opening ceremony on Sunday afternoon was a little off-putting. We began with the pledge of allegiance followed by both the US and Canadian national anthems. I don’t have a problem with all of that… what was bothersome was the loud “UNDER GOD” inserted by some folks behind me and ending the pledge with AMEN. That didn’t turn out to be the theme of the event, thankfully. I don’t mind religion and I don’t mind patriotism but when they get all mixed up like that it’s kind of creepy.

After we got through that it seemed like we were in RV college… going from one seminar to another to learn about things like using cloud storage and using various software to make it look like we are good photographers, keeping the black tank from stinking too much, towing safely, driving safety, cleaning a bus in one hour and traveling to Alaska (now put off until 2016). Every time I went to a seminar I ended up wanting to buy the microfiber or some services. We met and talked to a lot of people who shared their experiences and wisdom. I cut out of classes early so that I could join the line dancers every morning. On Wednesday, the entertainment was provided by attendees…. The Ham-o-rama showcased some pretty good talent. Line dancers, including me in the middle of the 2^nd row managed to complete a simple number without the stage collapsing which was my main concern so it was a success.

We were “boondocking” at the Escapade. That means no hookups. We began with empty waste-water tanks and a full fresh water tank and ran the generator for electricity while the refrigerator ran on propane. That was a good learning experience for us as we hope to do more boondocking in the future.

We left Tucson on Friday afternoon and came to Wild West RV Resort which is downwind from a massively huge dairy operation with several thousand cows. We chose it because it was near the Sonoran Desert National Monument. We thought we would check out the monument and maybe do some hiking in the mountains. Turns out the monument is 486,

000 acres of desert with lots of organ pipe cactus. Roads going back to the mountains and hiking trails are closed to car traffic so we didn’t get much hiking in.

Today, Sunday we moved down the road and are now boondocking in the parking lot of Harras Ak-Chin Casino near Maricopa, AZ. We’re still downwind from the cows. Here we were able to take a mile hike around the parking lot, view wild life and win enough money to pay for the buffet. Camping is free. A pair of burrowing Owls are nesting in an area between the road and the parking lot. The owlets were not visible but the adults were very concerned when I approached their nest with my camera.

When we leave here, we’ll move up to the Phoenix area, visit a friend and spend some time with Kelly who is flying in on Wednesday morning.

Traveling with Brothers

We left Palmdale last Sunday, March 1 and have made our way to Arizona. We spent 2 nights in Fredericksburg, TX at the Lady Bird Johnson RV Resort. Tuesday we toured the LBJ ranch, did some wine tasting and had dinner at a microbrewery. Ludwig and Dick have been traveling along with us. Wednesday we spent the night in Van Horn, and finally made it out of Texas yesterday. We are now at the Lifestyle RV Resort in Wilcox, AZ. Tomorrow, Tucson for 5 days at the Escapade… Escapees RV Club’s annual RV rally. There we will go to seminars on subjects interesting to people who live like we do. We managed to miss most of the miserable winter weather though it did get down to 22 degrees in Van Horn. Had to disconnect water and all that. It is windy and cool though sunny and dry here in the desert. Dick now has over 3000 miles on his brand new car and he is a very long way from home.

Ludwig and Dick came expecting warm weather for walking on the beach and having beers on the patio in front of the camper. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. It hasn’t been warm enough yet for Dick to shed his long johns. We had one sunny day in Texas in which we did our deep sea fishing.

It wasn’t a really warm day as you can tell from the picture. But it was a great trip. Friends Lee, Max, Ray and Cindy joined us for a fish fry on Saturday before we left. Fortunately, there was nothing planned in the rec room that day so we were able to move the fish fry in there as it was cold and rainy outside. We ate some of that red snapper and some trout that Ray and Lee caught off the jetty the same day that we were out. We ended the evening with a rousing game of Apples to Apples.

Palmdale friends showed up to give us a great send off on Sunday. Amazing how quickly friendships form in a setting like that. We have our own cards now and exchanged cards and hugs with several friends and talked about coming back next year. I miss the ease and familiarity of that place. Time kind of stopped while we were there. But now we are back to the adventure of discovering new places and going where we haven’t been before. We’ll be in Arizona for at least the next 3 weeks… Kelly will be joining us in Phoenix on March 18.

Now, I’m sitting here watching as new RV’s pull into this campground wondering if they are on their way to Tucson, too. Don and “the boys” (I’ve caught myself referring to Ludwig and Dick as the boys) went out to see a monument of some sort. I chose to stay here and get some things done. Writing this blog constitutes getting something done.

Traveling with Ludwig and Dick has been thoroughly enjoyable. I’ve switched out with them riding in Dick’s car giving them each a chance to ride “shot-gun” in the camper. Family gatherings never really give the opportunity to spend time together like this kind of travel does. Tomorrow they will start to head north again.  It will be good to have the camper to ourselves again but I would not trade this time that we’ve shared for anything in the world.