On Monday we took the coach over to the service center and, of course, were met by one of the sales guys who wanted to show us new coaches. We looked at a couple but mentioned that we really weren't in the market for a new coach unless there was something that just "wowed" us - and we mentioned a model that we had seen in Redmond at the FMCA rally. This was a Monaco Diplomat special edition called the "Tommy Bahama" model. We remembered that the coach was very pretty and had a lot of features that we really liked, including the decor. The salesman said that he thought they had only made a couple of them and that they weren't selling well because most people didn't like the colors. We told him that we thought it was great and that it was a good example of what "wowed" us. We then went out exploring Tucson and doing some shopping. The repairs on the coach were completed that day and we parked fully expecting to get an early start on Tuesday morning heading for California.
When we woke up Tuesday morning I was amazed to find a motorhome parked in the middle of the street, right in front of our coach. And even more amazed to find that it was the Tommy
Bahama model Diplomat that we had talked to the salesman about. Here it was, sitting with the slides out completely blocking our path out. When the salesman came by about 8:00 he told us that after he had talked to us on Monday he checked and found that Beaudry had the coach at their facility in San Diego and he arranged for it to be driven overnight to Tucson so he could show it to us. We were shocked! We actually found ourselves tentatively talking to the salesman about trading up. Unfortunately, I started checking the more practical aspects of changing coaches and found that the cargo carrying capacity - very important to full-timers like us - in the new coach was just over half what we had in our current coach. We would go from well over 4,000 pounds capacity to about 2,700 pounds. This was a deal breaker for us and we had to tell the salesman so - he was quite disappointed. In a way, so were we, although we have no plans to change coaches, this was about as close as we have come in the last two years to actually considering a trade. Whew! Close call!After a one night stop in Ehrenberg, Arizona, on the Colorado river, we arrived at Indian Waters RV resort in Indio on December 19th. Since this was our home town prior to our beginning our
travel adventures, we had many people to see and places to go. The six days before Christmas found us going to numerous parties and get together's with our friends. One of the first parties was put on by Lynette and Bill at their home. All of our friends from the Indio Elks Lodge were there and we had a wonderful time.On Christmas eve we went to Travis and Gails for another wonderful party. Travis showed his German heritage by cooking a tradional German holiday feast. The food was great.
We spent Christmas day at Jackie's Godson's house with his family and had a great time. Then, sometime between Christmas and New Years,
I managed to catch the "Cold From Hell." Of course, Jackie caught it a couple days later. We did manage to get out for New Years Eve to spend it with our good friends Barry and Colleen, however, we only managed to stay up until 9:00, celebrating the New York new years party on the East coast TV channel.On January 2nd we had to move from Indian Waters over to the Outdoor Resorts, however, all of our grand plans for visiting friends and doing things went out the window since both of us were too sick with the colds to leave the motorhome. We spent the entire five days at Outdoor Resorts on the couches feeling miserable. Our three weeks in the desert did not work out quite like we wanted.
On Monday, January 7th we packed up and headed for our next destination, San Diego, California. Fortunately, I had started feeling well enough that the trip went OK. We got settled into the Santa Fe RV park located in Pacific Beach, near Mission Bay. Its a small urban park, situated between the I-5 freeway and the railroad tracks, but its really not too bad. It is certainly close to all of the things we want to see and do in San Diego once we start to feeling better. As of today I am back to about 90 percent and finally sleeping well. Jackie, being a few days behind me, is still not feeling good and has not been sleeping well at all. Hopefully, we will be well enough by the weekend to start going out and doing fun things again. We'll keep you posted.
Until next time.
