Hello again, welcome back to our story.
Our last chapter concluded on Tuesday, March 5th, when we moved from
Yuma Lakes RV park to the Casa Grande RV Resort, 180 miles east of
Yuma. We didn't get into Casa Grande until mid afternoon, so after
we got settled in and setup, we just hung around the coach for the
remainder of the day.
Wednesday, March 6th, we elected to
have a stay at home day to try and get some chores done. I spent
most of the day in the office working on administrative stuff, bills,
correspondence and publishing the blog, and doing some minor repairs
around the coach. Jackie was busy in the front, mostly working on
making new fabric covers for our driving seats in the front of the
coach. The seats are synthetic leather and get pretty dirty from the
cats being on them all the time. They are also hot in the summer
months, so we decided a while back to make fabric covers. The first
set, which have been on about six months, were charcoal gray and
Jackie decided that they were too dark in color. We bought some new,
lighter color fabric the other day and she worked on getting them
fitted to the seats. She got the drivers seat done and started on
the passenger. The new color is beige and is almost the same shade
as the dashboard of the coach, so they look very nice. Other than me
making a run to Home Depot for parts, we didn't leave the coach all
day.
Thursday, March 7th, we left the coach
after lunch to go out and do some geocaching and then chores. We did
a group of caches that were recently put out in the area of the Casa
Grande airport. The airport is only about a mile north of the RV
park. We were able to get nine finds in less than two hours. After
that bit of caching we stopped at a couple of grocery stores to stock
up. We also stopped at the Elks Lodge for a few minutes. We wanted
to pick up a schedule of activities for the month and thought about
having a cocktail there, but the place was packed and there was no
room at the bar.
After we left the lodge we stopped at
one more geocache which was just a block or so from the lodge. We
were a little apprehensive about tackling this one because the
difficulty rating was 4.5. Caches are rated by the owner for
difficulty, which is how hard it is to find, and terrain, which is
how hard is it to get to the cache. The ratings are from 1 to 5 at
half increments. The terrain ratting on this one was only a 1 as the
cache was in the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant. The GPS took
us to the area of the cache and while looking around I saw a green
irrigation control box set in the ground. This is sometimes used as
a hiding place, so I took the top off of the box and saw the main
water line for the restaurant and a shut off valve. There was a very
serious looking box attached to the valve which appeared to be an
automatic shut off device, similar to what you might find if someone
wants protection from flooding do to a broken pipe. It all looked
very official, so I put the top back on and continued looking.
We looked around some more, but we
couldn't find anywhere the cache might be, just an empty parking lot.
I went back to the box and looked inside again at the stuff. When I
reached in and started touching stuff I discovered that the bolts
that held the shutoff device in place were not connected to the
concrete base, they were phony. A little more moving around stuff
and I finally figured out that you had to disassemble the shutoff
device, which was not real, and the cache log was inside. Had it not
been for the fact that we had found a similarly devious hide in Casa
Grande last year, I would not have attempted to move this thing
around as much. Very sneaky hide, but we did get it, bringing our
count for the day to ten. After that victory we went back to the
coach.
After a quick dinner we left again at
6:30 or so and went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold'em. We had
a fun table, only six of us, but everyone had a good sense of humor
and it was fun playing. I was the big winner on the table for the
night, ending up with about five dollars above my initial five dollar
buy-in. Jackie didn't do so well, but still only lost three dollars.
We had a good night.
Friday, March 8th, the rains came to
town. It started raining sometime in the middle of the night and it
pretty much didn't quit all day. We just stayed in the coach, doing
projects and chores and playing games. In the early afternoon the
main part of the storm front moved over us and we had really high
winds, 40 mph with 60 mph gusts, and thunderstorms. We didn't have
any thunderstorms directly over us, but we could see and hear them
off to the west. Kind of a nasty day, but other than a little bit of
leakage in one slide, we got by with nothing more than a day in the
coach.
Saturday, March 9th, we woke up with
the skies still cloudy, but no rain. The rains had quit overnight
and the weather gurus were claiming that by this evening the skies
would be clear. It was pretty cold today, the high was only supposed
to be 59. About noon my brother Ken and his wife Susan arrived with
their RV. A while back, when they found out we were going to be in
Casa Grande, they made arrangements to take a couple days off work
and come down for a long weekend with us. They live in Goodyear,
Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, and it is less than a 50 mile drive for
them to come down to Casa Grande.
We have had them visit with us on
various occasions over the years, but they always had to stay with us
and sleep on the couch. This time they bought their own RV. Last
year they bought their first RV, a 30 foot camp trailer, small enough
for them to pull with their Honda truck, but big enough to make a
nice weekend RV. Ken said this was only the second time they have
been out with the trailer, and it is the first time he has ever
backed it into an RV space. We had saved the space right next to us
and it wasn't a pull through. He was anxious about parking, but
actually did a very nice job of getting it in pretty quickly and
easily. Susan helped with directions, as Jackie does with me, and I
just stayed out of it, only watching to help if he got into trouble.
We had lunch and let them get their
trailer set up and then about 2:00 or so we went out to do a little
geocaching in the area. They are our caching “children” in that
we were the one's who introduced them to the hobby. They immediately
became fans and now have almost 2,500 finds and eleven hides in just
four years. We first went to two caches we had already found here in
Casa Grande that were very interesting and challenging finds. We let
them look for them on their own and only gave a hint when they seemed
to get stuck. Eventually they figured both of them out and got
themselves two new finds. We then went out and went after some other
caches in the area that were new to us as well. In just a couple of
hours we had eight new finds, along with a new DNF. It came out even
though because one of our finds today was a cache that we had DNFed
last year when we were here.
After caching we went back to the RV
park and they came over for cocktails and dinner. Jackie made some
chicken enchiladas and we had a very nice dinner and sat and talked
until almost 10:00. They left and went back to their trailer for the
night. We were almost ready to go to bed when Ken knocked on the
door and said that he was concerned because the carbon monoxide alarm
in his trailer was going off. I went over to help and figured out
that there couldn't be a problem with CO because he had turned off
the propane completely, so there was no combustion going on, and the
front door, which was only a couple feet from the detector was open.
There was no way there was a sufficient amount of CO in the trailer
to activate an alarm. We read the manual but didn't learn much. I
finally had them pull the fuse for the alarm, let it set for a minute
and then put the fuse back in. The alarm went back to normal and
seemed to be reset. I think it is just a bug with the alarm. The
trailer is new and still under warranty, so they will have the dealer
look at it when they go back home. With them taken care of I went
back to our coach and we went to bed.
Sunday, March 10th, we left the coach
at noon with Ken and Susan in our car and drove east to the town of
Florence, Arizona to do some geocaching. Florence is a fairly small
town, about 25,000 population, and is the county seat of Pinal
county, the same county in which the much larger Casa Grande is
located. However, it is the presence of the Arizona State Prison
which makes Florence notable. The prison complex near downtown
Florence was the first state prison in Arizona, having been opened in
1908, four years before statehood. Prior to that the territorial
prison for Arizona was in Yuma.
The prison in Florence is still in use
today and is the site of the original execution chambers for the
state. Until 1933 hanging was the method of execution used in
Arizona, however in 1930 a woman named Eva Duggan was hung for the
crime of murder and when she dropped the noose popped her head off,
much to the horror of the 70 witnesses. After that incident the
legislature changed the method of execution to the gas chamber, which
was built at the Florence prison with inmate labor and first used in
1933.
I remember from my days with the
Maricopa County Sheriff's Office transporting prisoners from our jail
in Phoenix down to the prison in Florence. At that time it was the
only State prison. The woman's unit was right across the street.
There are now 13 prison complexes scattered around Arizona, but
Florence still claims the original as well as the State's “supermax”
high security prison, located about three miles down the road from
the old prison unit.
We came to the Florence area to cache
because there was a series of caches placed on a road running east
out of Florence into Gila County on which someone has placed 300
caches, all located about a tenth of a mile apart. We knew we would
not be able to get all 300, but we started down the series and
started finding caches. The caches were all fairly simple, small
container under a pile of rocks just off the road, and the road is
not heavily traveled, so there wasn't much traffic to contend with.
We actually started caching about 12:45 and finished cache number 100
at about 5:30. We had also picked up five other caches along the
road which were not part of the series, giving as a total of 105
finds in less than five hours. This was a new “best day” for us.
Ken and Susan had a 250 find day a year or so ago, so they didn't
break that record. However, we also hit our 5,000 finds milestone
today, and Ken and Susan hit their 2,500 find milestone. So it was a
record breaking day in many ways. One of the caches we found was located near a rare, crested saguaro cactus. Experts claim that only one in 10,000 saguaros develops the unique crested top.
We were exhausted after jumping in and
out of the car 105 times in five hours, so we drove back to the RV
park, took a quick break and then the four of us drove into town to
Mimi's restaurant for dinner. We had a nice dinner, and some nice
conversation, before going back to the park and crashing for the
night.
Monday, March 11th, we spent part of
the morning relaxing and reading the Sunday papers from Phoenix and
Casa Grande. About 10:30 we packed up Ken and Susan again and we
drove back to Florence for some more caching. The reason we are
driving to Florence, which is about 30 miles from Casa Grande, is
that we have pretty much found all of the geocaches in Casa Grande.
We come here for a couple of weeks every year, so it doesn't take
long for us to get the few new ones that are placed between our
visits. We had not cached much around Florence, so it was a
cache-rich environment for us. We didn't want to do the same kind of
“power-caching” we did yesterday, so today we stuck to finding
the various regular geocaches hidden in and around Florence. We
found a few caches, stopped for lunch, and then cached until 4:00.
Even without a power trail we still got a total of 37 new finds for
the day, a pretty nice afternoon of caching.
Several of the caches were located
around the Casa Grande Airport and were interesting because a couple
of them were located in and among the ruins of the old WW-II vintage
Casa Grande Army Airfield. One was next to the old base swimming
pool and another was in the foundation of the toilet and shower hut
near the remains of the old barracks buildings.
After caching we drove back to the RV
park, arriving just in time to celebrate happy hour with our friends
Peggy and Vernon Bullock. Peggy and Vernon had arrived in the park
around noon today and were parked just a few coaches down from us.
We had been expecting them to arrive because both they and us are
going to Tucson this weekend for the FMCA INTO area rally being held
there next week. We last saw Peggy and Vernon in Indiana in August
at the FMCA rallies. They headed east out of Indiana and spent the
rest of the summer and the entire fall and winter on the east coast
and in Florida. It was great seeing them, and their little dog
Belle, we really missed them. We enjoy traveling with the Bullocks
and have spent many weeks traveling together since we first met them
in 2009 on our trip to Alaska.
The Bullocks already had dinner on, so
about 6:30 we left with Ken and Susan and went to Eva's Mexican
restaurant, located near the RV park. We have been to Eva's before
and enjoyed the food, but tonight the service was terrible and the
food only OK. I don't think I can recommend it anymore like I used
to. We probably won't be going back again. After dinner we went
back to our coach and watched TV the rest of the night, as did Ken
and Susan.
Tuesday, March 12th, I got up early and
left about 8:30 to take our Jeep to the nearby dealership to, once
again, get the air conditioning fixed. On Sunday, while we were
doing the power trail I noticed that the A/C had stopped blowing cold
air. This will make the fifth time the A/C on that car had broken
since we bought it in 2008. We complained to Jeep, but the only
thing they did for us was give us a “good will” gift of two years
of free routine service, oil changes and the like. They would not
take responsibility for what has to be a design flaw which causes the
A/C condenser to always break.
After the dealer shuttle dropped me off
back at the RV park we drove with Ken and Susan, with Peggy and
Vernon following in their car, to the Palm Creek RV Resort on the
other end of Casa Grande, for their monthly craft show. Palm Creek
is a very upscale RV resort, but we had stayed there for a month a
couple years ago because we won a month for $199 at an FMCA rally.
The normal rate is four times that. Each month during the season
they have their craft show and get a hundred or so vendors to come in
and set up booths. It is mostly clothing, jewelry and craft type
items. We spent about two hours there before driving back to the RV
park.
After we got back to the park Ken and
Susan finished packing up their trailer and left for home about 1:00.
It was great having my brother come down to spend some time with us.
We had a great time. We spent the rest of the day in the coach
doing chores. The dealership had called me and told me that the A/C
condenser had a couple of holes in it, but that they didn't appear to
be from something hitting it. They were in an area where the
condenser would be protected from rocks and so forth. He wasn't sure
what had caused the problem, which is the same issue as the last four
times, condenser failure, but that it would have to be replaced and
he had ordered the part. They would keep the car overnight and fix
it tomorrow when the part came in.
About 5:00 Vernon came over for
cocktails. Peggy was at a nail appointment and came over when she
was done. We talked and had dinner, pork in green chili. We talked
after dinner until about 8:30 when the Bullocks went back to their
coach and we watched TV until bedtime.
Wednesday, March 13th, my son Roy Jr's
birthday. Hard to believe my youngest is now 39 years old. Where
does the time go? I asked Vernon to take me down to the Jeep dealer
about 9:00 so I could take him the receipt for the last repair of the
A/C condenser, which was only seven months ago at the Jeep dealer in
Springfield, Ohio. The service writer here in Casa Grande thought
that he might be able to get the part covered since Jeep warranties
all their parts for one year or 12,000 miles, and we had not exceeded
either limit.
Surprisingly, I got a call about noon
from the service writer that they had finished fixing the car and it
was ready to pick up. The best news was that there was no charge at
all. He not only covered the part under the warranty, he covered the
labor and incidental charges as well. He said, “you already paid
for the installation once” and he didn't think it was fair to
charge me again to reinstall the same part. Yea! I had fully
expected to pay for the labor and was delighted with this
dealership's attitude towards customer service. Happy to have A/C
again too, as the temps are going to climb into the 90's this
weekend.
I had Vernon make another trip to drop
me off at the dealer, it was only a mile from the RV park, and I
picked up the car. Shortly after I got back Jackie and Peggy took
off to go do some grocery shopping. I stayed at the coach and did a
few chores. About 5:00 we went down to Peggy and Vernon's for happy
hour and then later BBQed some steaks on the grill. We ate at their
coach and had a delightful evening with old friends. About 9:00 we
finally packed up and went back to our coach for a little TV before
bed.
Thursday, March 14th, a great desert
morning that was forecast to turn into hot by afternoon. The area is
supposed to have it's first 90 degree day of the year today, and the
next couple days are forecast to be the same. We didn't do anything
until after lunch when we and the Bullocks took a drive to the
shopping center. We didn't want to go caching because of the heat
and the fact that Vernon does not do well in hot weather.
We made a couple of stops, Petsmart,
Penny's, and Walmart, before heading home after a couple hours of
shopping. About 5:00 we went over to Peggy and Vernon's for
cocktails and Peggy asked me to take a look at her new computer and
try to show her how to do some things that she couldn't figure out.
Her old computer was Windows Vista and her new one was the new
Windows 8. Well I found out pretty quickly that I couldn't figure
out anything about Windows 8 either without spending a lot more than
an hour or so looking at it. The program is completely changed from
prior versions and very confusing and user unfriendly. I tried
installing some programs that you would think would work, like Google
Earth, and got very confusing and unhelpful error messages. I spent
a very frustrating hour with the computer before finally telling her
I couldn't help her, at least not right now. I needed to do some
reading about Windows 8 first.
The four of us then went back over to
our coach for dinner. We did some cheeseburgers on the BBQ, and some
fries and beans and just had a simple, but fun, dinner. About 8:30
the Bullocks went back to their coach and we relaxed with the TV the
rest of the night.
Friday, March 15th, I went out in the
morning, before the heat came, and put away most of the outside
decorations and stuff. We are leaving here in the morning and want
to get an early start, so I tried to do as much as possible to get
ready. After lunch Jackie and I went to the laundromat and did our
laundry. We ran a couple of other errands after laundry, but didn't
do any geocaching. It was a little to warm in the afternoon and any
caches we haven't found are way out of town.
After we got back to the RV park we
noticed that some other friends of ours, Bev and Jerry King, had
arrived at the park for an overnight stay. We are all, us, the
Bullocks and the Kings, going down to Tucson tomorrow for an FMCA
rally. About 6:00 the six of us went out to dinner to Macayo's
Mexican restaurant in Casa Grande. Macayo's is a big Arizona chain
of Mexican places and the food is pretty good. When I was a kid
there was one of the original Macayo's not too far from our house and
we used to eat there quite a bit. We had a nice meal and good
conversation. We last saw the King's in Indio in January at the FMCA
rally there. After dinner we went back to our house and sat with the
Bullocks for a night cap. About 9:00 they went to their coach and we
watched TV until bed.
Saturday, March 16th, we had the coach
packed up and ready for travel early and were on the road by 9:30 or
so. We, the Kings and the Bullocks, are all traveling to Tucson,
about 80 miles south on I-10, to attend the FMCA International Area
Rally. The Bullocks left about 90 minutes before us and the Kings
left the same time, but had to stop for fuel, so we weren't traveling
in caravan. We got into the Lazy Days RV Resort just before 11:00
and were assigned our spot. We were able to get parked and get
completely set up before 12:30, which was good because the weather
said it was going to be close to 90 today. We are parked right next
to the Bullocks, but the Kings are in handicap parking down closer to
the park office.
After lunch we left the park to do some
shopping. We stopped at Camping World, which is actually on the same
lot as the RV park, and bought a couple of things we needed. We then
made a trip to the nearby Costco to stock up on some things. We
hadn't been close to a Costco since January, so we bought quite a bit
of stuff before heading back to the coach. Later in the afternoon we
went over to the Bullocks for happy hour. The Kings came up to visit
as well and we had a nice get together. We were kind of tired from
the travel day and shopping, so we just had dinner in our coach and
watched TV the rest of the night.
Sunday, March 17th, Happy St. Patrick's
Day! We dressed in green for the holiday and left the coach around
noon with the Bullocks to go for lunch and do some geocaching. Our
first stop was the My Big Fat Greek restaurant for lunch. MBFG is
“must do” restaurant for us for whenever we come to Tucson. I am
not a big fan of Greek food in general because I don't care for lamb,
but they have other Greek oriented food that is not lamb that is
great for me. I have had the stuffed peppers before, as well as a
couple of different Greek dishes made from beef, and they are all
wonderful. Since we went for lunch today I had the steak and cheese
pita, a sort of Greek Philly cheesesteak. The steak was tender and
cooked perfectly. Jackie, Peggy and Vernon all had the traditional
Gyro and they also loved their meals.
After lunch we did some geocaching in
the area around where the restaurant was located. We cached for a
couple of hours and ended up with 13 new finds, as well as one DNF.
After caching we went back to the RV park and found that our other
friends, Ray and Suzie Babcock, had arrived at the rally and were
parked right across the street from us. We went over there for happy
hour, and were shortly joined by the Bullocks, the Kings, and Clark
and Judy McKay, some close friends of the Babcocks whom we have met a
couple of times. We managed to get all ten of us in the Babcock's
coach for happy hour. After cocktails some of the folks went out to
eat while we went back to our coach for a light dinner on our own.
We were still full from lunch, so we didn't have much. We spent the
rest of the night relaxing in the coach.
Monday, March 18th, we left the coach
about noon, this time with Ray and Suzie Babcock in our car, to do
lunch and some geocaching. Peggy and Vernon had to hang around the
RV park because they are having some problems with their coach and
needed to wait on a service tech. The four of us went to the Jason's
Deli for lunch. Jackie and I had first discovered the Jason's Deli
chain when we went to the one in Moreno Valley, California. We went
there because I had discovered through the Internet that they were
known for their muffalettas, A muffaletta is a New Orleans specialty
that I first tasted last summer when we were in Louisiana. It is
ham, salami and cheese, and an olive salad spread, served on a
special, large, twelve inch round bun. It is toasted and served hot
and, because it is so big, is usually available in a half or quarter.
We were traveling with the Babcocks in Louisiana and both Ray and I
fell in love with the dish.
The one I got in Moreno Valley was very
authentic, and very good, and I knew that they had a couple of
locations in Tucson, so when I knew that the Babcocks were going to
be at this rally with us, I made sure that we made time to get to
Jason's. I had a half muffaletta, Ray ordered a full. He ate half
and took the other half home for a lunch on a later day. Jackie had
a very nice looking beef and cheese dip, and Suzie had a ham sandwich
that was huge. Jason's has great food and big portions, so come
hungry.
After lunch the four of us went out for
some geocaching in the area. We cached about two and a half hours
and got a total of ten new finds, along with a couple of DNFs. The
weather has changed to partly cloudy with temps in the low 80's,
which is perfect caching weather. After caching we went back to the
RV park and then over to the King's coach for cocktail hour. We sat
around and talked until about 7:00 when everyone went off to their
own coaches. Since we had such a big lunch we didn't even have
dinner. We just watched TV until bedtime.
Tuesday, March 19th, Jackie and I were
up, showered, dressed and out of the coach by 8:45 this morning. We
went down to the sales center for Lazy Days RV to attend a free RV
driver's training course. The RV park in which this rally is being
held is owned and operated by Lazy Days RV as an open, public RV
park. They offer this free course three times a week during the
winter season to anyone staying in their park, or buying an RV from
the company.
The instructor was a retired Pima
County Sheriff's Office Commander. Although I knew a few Pima County
guys during my career, I had never met him. We chatted a little
during one of the breaks, but learned we had apparently never crossed
paths. He was a very good instructor for the classroom part of the
training, although the large class size, due to the rally being in
the park, threw his timing off and he ran about an hour and a half
over the normal time.
The course also includes some driving
time within the RV park in one of the dealership's RVs, but we had
probably 40 people in the class and he couldn't do all of them in one
day. Most of the people who are already fairly experienced drivers,
like myself with over 60,000 miles behind the RV wheel now, bowed out
of the driving. I did encourage Jackie to do the behind the wheel
part and she did. She got about fifteen minutes of time behind the
wheel, mostly doing sharps turns and curves around the RV park. This
was good for her because she doesn't have much experience with the
coach in a confined environment. She has driven on the freeway, but
never in traffic or a tight area like an RV park.
About 5:00 we went over to the McKay's
coach, which is right across the street from us, for a potluck out on
the patio. There were five couples, us, the McKays, the Babcocks,
the Bullocks and the Kings, in the party. We had happy hour until
6:00 when everyone brought out the food. Jackie made her taquito
casserole, Peggy made enchiladas, Ray made taco salad, and we had all
kinds of side dishes to go along with everything. The meal was great
and I ate way too much. We partied and talked until about 8:00 when
everyone packed up and went back to their own coaches for the night.
A great time with good friends.
Wednesday, March 20th, we left the
coach about 11:30 or so with Peggy and Vernon in our car to do some
sightseeing and caching in the old, historic part of downtown. Our
first stop was a little patio cafe called La Cocina which was in the
Presidio neighborhood of Tucson. A Presidio was basically a Spanish
frontier fort and was usually built as soon as the Spanish explorers
came into a new area. Tucson was founded in 1775 with the
construction of Presideo San Agustin del Tucson. During the Spanish
period of the presidio, attacks were repeatedly mounted by the local
Apache Indians. Eventually the town came to just be called Tucson
and became a part of Mexico after Mexico gained independence from
Spain in 1821. Tucson was not included as part of the Mexican
Cession of 1848. It was with the later 1853 Gadsden Purchase that
Tucson became a part of the United States of America.
Today Tucson is the second largest city
in Arizona, after Phoenix, with a population of over 525,000. The
city covers an area of over 225 square miles and is 60 miles north of
the Mexican border. Tucson is home to the University of Arizona,
which was a land grant university founded in 1885 when Arizona was
still a territory,
After lunch we looked through some of
the shops near the cafe and then did a little driving and geocaching
in the historic area. We ended up with six new finds, along with one
DNF. It was a little difficult getting around near downtown as
Tucson has a lot of renovation and construction going on in and
around the downtown area. We also visited the train station, which
is home to a transportation museum and has an old Southern Pacific
steam locomotive on display.
After caching we drove back to the RV
park for a little rest before happy hour. About 5:00 we went down to
the King's coach for happy hour. We stayed there until about 7:30
when we went back to our coach and sat outside with our little group
until almost 9:00. The weather was very nice and it seemed a shame
to be cooped up in the coach when it was so pleasant outside. After
everyone left we went in and watched TV until bedtime.
Thursday, March 21st, we
witnessed a miracle. Jackie walked out of the coach at 8:05 a.m. to
go to breakfast. The breakfasts are included in the rally fee, so we
decided since we paid for them we might as well eat them. We walked
down with the rest of our gang, the Babcocks, Bullocks and McKays, to
the big tent where we had a nice buffet breakfast of scrambled eggs,
bacon, potatoes, and pancakes. We had a nice breakfast and chatted
with several friends.
After breakfast we went back to the
coach and Jackie showered and got ready to go out into the full
world. We kind of hung around the coach and relaxed for the rest of
the morning and early afternoon. We did spend some time decorating
the front of the coach for a contest. The theme of this rally is
“Fiesta” and we had bought some paper flowers when we were in
Algadones last month along with a cheap looking flower arrangement.
We had also bought some very festive looking cloth with chili peppers
on it at a fabric store. We set up a table with the flowers and
table cloth and then brought out two pink plastic flamingos we had
bought the other day. We put bandanas on the flamingos and put the
whole package on display in front of the coach. Turned out kind of
neat.
About 2:30 we went back down to the big
tent where all the activities are and helped with the Chapter Fair.
I helped with the booth for the Full Timers Chapter, of which I am
the vice president. Jackie helped out at the Military Veterans
booth. The fair lasted for an hour, after which we helped take down
the booths and get everything packed up. We went back to the coach
and had happy hour with our group out in front about 5:00. We stayed
out there until after dark when everyone went back to their own
coaches for the rest of the night.
Friday, March 22nd, I went
down for breakfast about 8:00 but Jackie decided to stay in the coach
this morning. While I was eating she was getting ready so we could
go out and do some geocaching as soon as breakfast was over. After I
got back we took the Bullocks and went out to do some local
geocaching. We cached mostly around the edges of nearby
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Davis-Monthan was established in 1924
and has been an active Army Air Corps and U.S. Air Force base, with a
variety of various commands and missions, ever since. It is probably
most well known as the home of the Air Force Materiel Command's 309th
Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, the command which is
responsible for the storage and recycling of old military aircraft
from all branches of the service. This activity is better known as
the “Aircraft Boneyard” with thousands of old military aircraft
stored on hundreds of acres of flat desert within the boundaries of
the base. Surrounding the base are dozens of private recycling
companies which purchase surplus aircraft and parts and recycle the
metals and parts.
We only cached for a couple of hours
and ended up with six new finds and two DNFs. We got back to the RV
park just before noon and met with the other four couples of our
little core group at the RV park's restaurant for lunch. Ray Babcock
had managed to get his hands on some free lunch coupons which
provided free lunch for our entire group. We had to pay for
beverages and any extras, but the main entree was free. Yea! We had
a very nice lunch which was only marred by the fact that Ray told us
he had been having “weird” feelings in his chest for the last
couple days and had decided he needed to go to the ER to get checked.
He has had a lot of heart problems in the past, including several
surgeries, so he didn't want to take any chances. He is also a
retired EMT, so he knows the signs to watch for.
After lunch Jackie and I went back to
the coach and relaxed for few minutes before hosting a social hour at
3:00 for the Full Timers Chapter of FMCA outside our coach. We had
about twenty people at the height of the social hour, including one
older couple that we hadn't seen in five years. They gave up
traveling and now live in Tucson, but they drove over for a visit
with old friends.
At 4:00 we left the Full Timers social
gathering, which was still going on, and drove over to the King's
coach for the Military Veteran's social hour. There were probably a
hundred people at that one. We stayed there for about 90 minutes,
visiting with friends and enjoying the group, before heading back to
our coach. We sat outside with Peggy and Vernon for a little while,
but we were pretty tired and soon went into the coach for the rest of
the night. We talked to Suzie later in the evening and she told us
that Ray was in the ER, seemed to be stable, but they wanted to keep
him at least overnight for observation.
Saturday, March 23rd, the
last full day of the rally. Jackie and I were both up, showered,
dressed and out of the coach by 8:15 so we could go to breakfast.
The breakfast was OK, although, like most buffet lines, the food was
not very hot and Jackie likes her food hot. After breakfast we went
back to the coach, picked up our caching supplies and the Bullocks
and went out to try some more geocaching. Peggy and Vernon had been
out exploring the desert west of Tucson a couple days ago and had
noticed that there were a couple of geocaching series, or power
trails, along some of the roads out there. I had downloaded some of
the caches and we thought we would go out and try to do the series.
Usually a series, where one cacher hides a number of caches in close
proximity, usually about a tenth of mile apart, is fairly easy. They
are usually put out there so cachers can get high numbers of finds.
This series, however, was different.
We tried six caches of one of the series and found only three and had
to DNF three. The caches were hidden in the desert, amid the bushes
and rocks, and the three that we found were hidden inside of trash,
old cups, bags, that kind of thing. This part of the desert, because
it is at the edge of the city, is full of trash. We finally got
tired of digging through trash and being frustrated at not being able
to find the caches. We tried one from one of the other series in the
area, but we had to DNF that one too. Turns out it was by the same
guy who did the first series, and the caches were of the same type.
We then started doing more conventional caches in the area with
better success. We ended up nine new finds for the day, along with
the four DNFs, which we didn't like. At least one of our finds was a
cache that we had DNFed a couple days ago. The owner had emailed a
hint to us, so we went back out and grabbed it. Yea!
After caching we went back to the RV
park where I spent some time getting the outside stuff put away in
preparation for our leaving tomorrow. Jackie did the same for the
inside. We want to get an early start because we have over 250 miles
to travel. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around the
coach. At 5:00 we drove down to the events area for dinner. They
had two dinners at the rally, both of which were an extra cost. We
had only bought tickets for the one on Saturday. We sat at a table
with our group, the Kings, the Bullocks, and the McKays. The
Babcocks would have been there, but Ray was still in the hospital and
Suzie didn't want to come to dinner without Ray.
The meal was pretty tasty, with roast
beef, potatoes, veggies, and chicken. After the meal we stayed for
the entertainment, which was a trio that played light jazz and
Broadway music. The gal who was the keyboard player and lead singer
had an excellent voice, although the music was a little slow for me.
It was very reminiscent of what you used to hear in the sixties in
nice bars and nightclubs that had entertainers. We stayed mostly
because they were drawing door prizes and a fifty-fifty raffle after
the entertainment. I did win a door prize, which was a copy of the
very first FMCA magazine, printed in 1964. It looks like it will be
an interesting read. We didn't win the raffle. After all the
drawings we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Sunday, March 24th, we got
up early, got the coach packed up and were on the road by 8:30. We
were heading west, back to the Yuma area. The trip was 254 miles, so
we wanted to start early to make sure we got into the park by early
afternoon. We made one lunch stop, and stopped for fuel on the
outskirts of Yuma to fill the coach. Diesel is about seventy cents
or more cheaper in Arizona than California, and after Yuma we are
headed to San Diego. We wanted to make sure we started with a tank
full of cheap Arizona fuel.
We arrived at the Pilot Knob RV park
about 2:00 and got registered and parked. Pilot Knob is one of our
membership resorts and we had been here about two months ago. The
Bullocks also came to this park and we ended up with spaces right
next to each other. After we got parked I spent a couple hours
getting settled in and set up and then we just relaxed. It is about
ten degrees warmer here than Tucson, about 87 degrees today, so we
didn't spend a lot of time outdoors. We did go out for cocktails in
the shade about 5:00. It was not too bad out of the sun, and we sat
and chatted with Peggy and Vernon for an hour or so before going back
into our coach for the night.
The start of another stay in the Yuma
area marks a great place to close out this chapter and get it
published. We will be here for two weeks before moving on to San
Diego. Until the next time, remember what the great Lawrence Welk
once said. “There are good days and there are bad days, and this
is one of them.” See ya next time.
