Our last chapter concluded on Sunday,
January 26th, when we left Ehrenberg, Arizona and headed
south a hundred miles to Yuma, Arizona. We settled into the Caravan
Oasis RV Resort in the Foothills area of Yuma, at the east edge of
town, for a month long stay. Our friends the Babcocks and the
Bullocks area also here and the three of us are all parked in a row
at the resort.
Monday, January 27th, Jackie
was up early with Suzie and Peggy and they all drove off for a girl's
day in Mexico. We are very close to the border here in Yuma and
there is a town called Algodones just across the border that is
mostly a medical community, dentists, eye doctors, doctors, and
pharmacies. They also have a couple of good restaurants and some
shopping, but it is very much oriented towards the thousands of
seniors that come to Yuma over the winter, so it is one of the few
places in Mexico where we feel fairly safe. The three of our wives
stopped at the casino in Winterhaven, California and picked up one
more friend of ours, Sharon Minard, who is staying in Pilot Knob, an
RV park near there, and the four of them went into Algodones for the
day.
While they were gone I spent some time
finishing up the decorations outside of our coach. We set up a
“party central” area between our coach and the Bullocks' coach
with some ground pads, lots of lights and some propane fire pits, so
we would have one place to gather for happy hours and any outside
meals or other activities. The girls had a good time, did some
shopping and had lunch, and everyone was back at the RV park by about
3:00. During the afternoon Clark and Judy McKay also arrived at the
park and joined our little group. They will only be here for a week
or so though. We had cocktails with group at happy hour, but
everyone went back to their own coaches for dinner.
On Tuesday I left the coach about 9:30
and drove into central Yuma to the Sam's Club to try and get the flat
tire on the Jeep fixed. I discovered a flat on the car yesterday,
just as we were getting ready to leave for Yuma. I had a good spare,
so I changed the tire, but now I wanted to get it fixed. I hate
driving without a good spare tire. As it turned out, the tire had a
small tear close to the sidewall, likely something I drove over on
our last day caching in Quartzsite. The tire guy was telling me that
it was not repairable. I gave it some thought and decided to order
new tires for the car. The ones on it now have about 57,000 miles on
them if you combine driving miles plus towing miles, and a couple of
them, including the one that went flat, are getting a little thin. I
didn't want to just get one or two new tires, so I ordered four new
ones, for a cost of just under $800. Yikes. They had to order them
in, so it will be towards the end of the week or early next week
before I get them.
With that chore done I headed back to
the coach and got things set up for the big party we are having
tonight. Our friends the Minards, Ray and Curt and their wives
Sharon and Del, are leaving Pilot Knob on Wednesday, so we wanted to
have one last get together with everyone before they went off on
their own schedules. Peggy and Vernon also invited some friends of
theirs that had a winter place out here in the Foothills area, so we
were figuring on having at least 16 people. Besides me there were a
couple of singers in the group, Sharon and Peggy's friend Barbara, so
I set up the karaoke equipment on the patio too. The park said we
could do it so long as we shut down by 10:00.
Around 5:00 everyone started showing up
and I think we ended up with 18 people. We all had cocktails for an
hour or so and I played some music in the background. The dinner was
a potluck, so there was plenty of food when we started eating around
6:00. Just before 7:00 I started doing karaoke and we sang until
about 9:00. There were only the three singers, but everyone seemed
to enjoy the music and had a good time. By 9:30 we had everything
cleaned up and we were in the coach watching TV. A really fun night
with old friends and new.
Wednesday, January 29th, we
left the coach about 8:30 with Peggy and Vernon, headed back north to
Quartzsite again. We were in their Jeep this time because I didn't
want to drive the 150 mile round trip without a spare tire. We were
headed back up there to attend a geocaching event, an annual
gathering put on by the Escapee's RV Club geocaching group. We had
gone to the event last year too. Last year Ray and Suzie Babcock
went with us, the Bullocks were in Florida. Suzie had a toothache
and they were headed down to Algodones today so they wouldn't be
going to Quartzsite. It took a little over an hour to drive to the
event site, which was out in the desert on the BLM land where many
RVers boondock in the winter. We met a few people that we know,
listened some presentations, and swapped some travel bugs. We were
at the event probably two and a half hours, but we had fun.
After the event we stopped at a nice
cafe in town for lunch. We ate at the Mountain Quail Cafe in
Quartzsite. We had tried to eat here one afternoon when we were
staying up in the area, but during the RV show there are so many
people in town that the wait times are horrible. This time we were
able to get right in and get a table. We just had sandwiches, which
were pretty good, although the service was a little iffy, even when
the place wasn't busy. After lunch we started back towards Yuma,
stopping along the way to pick up some geocaches. We ended up
getting eight new finds, one of which represented the 2,000th
find for the Bullocks. Yea Peggy and Vernon! We are always proud of
the accomplishments of the Bullocks and the Babcocks in caching
because they are both our caching “children,” people that we got
interested in the sport and sort of trained.
We got back to the RV park about 4:00
and by 5:00 we were back out for cocktails. We decided to have some
hamburgers on the BBQ for the eight of us, plus Peggy's grandson
Troy, the new Marine stationed here in Yuma. So we, the Babcocks,
Bullocks, and McKays all had hamburgers, salad and some of Ray's
leftover baked beans from yesterday, and ate outside. We had a great
time again. We finally all went back into our own coaches around
8:00 and we watched TV the rest of the night.
Thursday, January 30th, was
laundry day for most of our group. We and the Bullocks went out
after lunch to a coin laundry across the freeway from the RV park and
got our laundry done. Ray did his laundry at the RV park. Later in
the afternoon we got together for cocktails,but everyone had dinner
on their own. We had a light dinner and then watched TV the rest of
the evening.
Friday we all left the park about
10:00, all headed for the same place but everyone in their own cars
because we wanted to be able to keep our own schedules. We all first
drove to the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma so we could get our
range passes. The southern part of the military's Barry Goldwater
Weapons Range is located just east of the city limits and runs from
the Mexican border north about thirty miles, to the Foothills area of
Yuma, where we are staying. There are hundreds of caches hidden on
the range, with the military's permission, but in order to go on the
range you need to get a pass. The pass is free and I always tell
everyone the only reason they require you to get one is so you can
sign all the waivers that hold the government harmless if you get
killed. Some parts of the range are “hot” and still being used,
but most of it is open to the public, with passes, and we always like
to go out there and cache.
Once we, the Bullocks and the Babcocks
had our passes we all drove to the nearby Arizona Marketplace, a big
swap meet on the east side of Yuma. We love to shop the Marketplace
at least a couple of times when we stay in Yuma. I bought a couple
of flags and Jackie bought some visors, but other than that we just
walked around and looked at stuff. We got about halfway through the
market, which is pretty big, and decided we were hungry and could
come back and finish the place next weekend. We and the Bullocks
drove to a Chinese restaurant that we have eaten at before, called
Yuma Palace, and had lunch. This is a large, very nice menu
restaurant, no buffet, and the food has been very good in the past.
This time the food was still quite good, but the service was a little
iffy, mostly because the kitchen seemed to be overwhelmed. It was
slow and the orders came out mixed up. I waited ten minutes after
everyone else got their food before mine came. Despite the service
the food was still among the best Chinese I have eaten, so we still
enjoyed lunch.
After lunch we headed back to the coach
for the rest of the afternoon. We got together with the group at
happy hour, but didn't stay out too long after sunset as the last
couple days it has been cooler. After the sun goes down it gets
uncomfortable outside. Everyone decided to do dinner on their own
again, so we went back into the coach and watched TV the rest of the
night.
Saturday, February 1st, we
were up and out of the house by 9:30 to do some geocaching. We went
in our car and Peggy and Vernon took their Jeep because their
grandson Troy was going along and it was too crowded for five in our
car alone. Ray and Suzie had planned on going out with us too, but
Ray said Suzie wasn't feeling well and they were going to pass. With
the five of us we headed out to do some caches in the general area of
the Foothills and by about 12:30 we had managed to get 20 new finds
with no DNFs.
With a good productive few hours of
caching we stopped at a fish and chips place in the Foothills for
lunch. We had eaten at Mr. Fish before and it was good again. It is
good fish, not the best I've ever had, but certainly worth the stop.
We had a great lunch and when we were done we did one more geocache
before heading back to the RV park. We stopped at a new “travel
bug hotel” that had been put out recently. It was a very big metal
cabinet that had several dozen travel bugs in it. We traded out a
half dozen bugs and Peggy did the same.
We then went back to the RV park and
relaxed until cocktail hour. Our whole group gathered again outside,
but as with yesterday, didn't stay out much after sundown as it was
pretty chilly. We had dinner with Peggy and Vernon and Troy in their
coach. We made some rice and beans and Peggy made some taco meat and
we had a big taco dinner. Very good food, great company, and a nice
evening. About 8:30 we were back in our coach for the rest of the
evening.
Sunday, February 2nd, Super
Bowl Sunday. The big game day. We decided not to go anywhere today
and our whole group was going to get together outside of Ray's coach
for the big game because he was the only one of the group who had an
outside TV. We all started gathering about 3:00 or so for pre-game
snacks and cocktails. We had a little twenty-five cent a square pool
going among our group, but one of the neighbors came over and they
had a hundred square pool for a dollar a square and needed some
additional participants. Most of our group bought five squares.
This pool was going to pay at halftime and final score.
The game started at 4:30 and most of
our group were Bronco's fans. Nobody was a big time, die hard
football fan, but we all were sort of rooting for Payton Manning to
win. I won't go into a lot of detail, because EVERYONE knows what
happened. We all just sat there in a deepening state of shock and
dismay. Suffice to say, I have never seen a worse football game, let
alone a Super Bowl game. It was like the Seahawks were playing a Pop
Warner team. There were a lot of Canadians in groups around us and
they all seemed to be Washington fans. They were pretty happy. We
had a lot of snacks and good food, Judi McKay won the halftime pool
on the big pool for $30 and Jackie won our little pool for $6.25. We
had a great time with friends, but watched a lousy football game. We
finally all broke up and went back to our own coaches around 8:30.
Monday, January 3rd, I left
the coach around 10:00 and drove to Sam's Club to get the new tires
installed on the Jeep. I feel much better now that I have four new
tires on the road and a good spare. After I got back to the coach we
went out again to do some geocaching. Peggy came along with us, but
Vernon wanted to stay home and get some things ready for their trip
back to Redding in a few days. Their grandson Troy, the young Marine
stationed here in Yuma, is going back later this week to get married.
Peggy and Vernon are going to leave their coach here in Yuma and
drive him back for the wedding.
The three of us were able to get a
dozen new finds in just a couple of hours. After caching we went
back to the coach and relaxed until cocktail hour. We had cocktails
with most of the group at 5:00. Clark and Judi McKay had left this
morning to drive back to their home in Southern California for some
doctor appointments. They too left there coach parked here at the
park and will be returning this weekend to stay the rest of the month
with the rest of us. After cocktails we gathered in Ray's coach for
a dinner of leftovers from the last couple of get togethers. We were
back in our coach about 7:30 and watched TV the rest of the night.
Tuesday, February 4th, we
left the coach about 12:30 or so, after lunch, to go out and do some
caching. Ray and Suzie went with us and we went out to try and get
some special caches that had been put out for the big geocaching
event coming up this next weekend. We had already gotten one of the
special caches a couple days ago, and today we were able to get eight
more of the ten caches. We only have to get the one more between now
and the weekend. After caching we stopped at the store for a couple
things and then went on home.
We and the Babcocks got together for
cocktails about 5:00. Peggy and Vernon were still at the park, but
they didn't drink because they were getting ready to leave to drive
back to Redding, California as soon as their grandson Troy got off
work at the Marine base. Troy got there about 5:30 and all of us
waved goodbye as they headed off for Troy's wedding on Saturday.
Like the McKays, they left their coach here at the park and just
drove home in the car. A little later we got together with Ray and
Suzie for dinner. We BBQd some burgers and had some more leftovers
from Super Bowl Sunday. We went back to our place about 8:00 and
watched TV the rest of the evening.
Wednesday, February 5th,
happy birthday to me! The big 67 and I am still kicking pretty well.
We decided to have a stay at home day, and for the most part we did.
About 5:30 or so we left the RV park with Ray and Suzie and drove
into town to the Outback steakhouse for a birthday dinner
celebration. I had a nice big porterhouse steak, Jackie and Ray and
lamb and Suzie had fish. All of our meals were excellent and the
service was very good as well, plus I got a free ice cream sundae for
desert. Yea! After dinner we drove back to the park and had another
cocktail with Ray and Suzie before heading to our coach for the rest
of the night.
Thursday we left the coach with Ray and
Suzie for some geocaching. We got ten new finds in a few hours,
mostly around the airport area. We spent a few minutes parked at the
edge of the Marine Corps Base, which shares it's runways with the
Yuma International Airport, and watched the Marines flying touch and
goes with two of it's new FA-35B aircraft. The F-35 is the latest
U.S. Military jet and is the first real multi-service aircraft
manufactured since WW-II. It is known officially as the Joint Strike
Fighter (JSF) and is being built by Lockheed Martin Corporation, and
is called the Lightning II. There are three variations of the same
basic aircraft, the “A” model for the Air Force, the “B”
model for the Marine Corps and the “C” model for the Navy. They
are also planning on selling all three variants to friendly foreign
nations.
All of the variants have stealth
characteristics with the “A” being a basic supersonic air
superiority fighter, intended to replace both the F-16 fighter and
the A-10 attack aircraft of the Air Force. The “B” model has
special engine nozzles and thrust deflectors to make
it a vertical
take off and landing aircraft, intended to replace the A-8 Harrier
currently in service with the Marine Corps. The “C” model has
larger wings and fuselage modifications to accommodate the stress of
a tail hook and catapult launch hook for use by the Navy on air craft
carriers. This model will replace the older FA-18 aircraft. I have
seen a lot of pictures of the plane, but this is the first time that
I have seen one flying and we got some really good views of it from
only a couple hundred feet away.
There is one squadron here at Yuma
Marine Corps Air Station that is flying the new plane and I think
they only have three or four them right now. They are still in the
process of introducing the new plane and training pilots and ground
support crews. The Navy and Air Force variants haven't been started
in line service yet, although they are flying in test squadrons
around the country.
After our caching we stopped at the
same Chinese restaurant that we and the Bullocks went to last weekend
and the food was just as good. Thankfully, the service was excellent
this time too. After lunch we went back to the coach briefly before
going to Walmart with Ray and Suzie for some supplies. After we got
back we had cocktails with them before finally settling in for the
night.
Friday, February 7th, our
tenth wedding anniversary! Ten years ago today we got married at the
Indio Elks Lodge and these have been ten wonderful years with my best
friend, my lover, my wife. About noon we left the park and went to a
nearby restaurant called Daybreakers to meet with our friends Charles
and Jan Alphonso. Regular readers may recall that we knew Jan and
Charles from the Indio Elks Lodge and that they sold their place in
Indio a few years back and moved to a nice home in northern
Mississippi, actually just a couple miles south of Memphis,
Tennessee. They have been in Indio for the past few weeks because
Jan had some dental work being done that she wanted done by her old
dentist. They had stopped to visit with us for a few hours when we
were in Ehrenberg, Arizona a couple weeks back.
It turns out that they needed to have
some work done on their coach and were using a shop here in Yuma.
When Jan found out we were staying just around the corner from where
they were having the work done, she called and suggested we do lunch.
We had a nice lunch and chatted with them for a couple of hours.
When they left to go back and tend to their coach, we went out and
did a little shopping nearby and then went back to the RV park.
Around 5:00 we got together with Ray and Suzie, as well as Clark and
Judi McKay, who had returned from their visit back to their house in
Southern California. They had gotten in late last night, just before
we went to bed, so we hadn't had a chance to see them yet. We had
cocktails and then Ray served us all a nice dinner of shrimp curry
and garlic bread. The meal was great, as was the company. We stayed
and talked until a little after 8:00 when we went back to our coach
and watched TV until bedtime. It was a very nice day and a nice way
to celebrate our wedding anniversary with friends.
Saturday, February 8th,
another anniversary of sorts for us. It was on this day in 1998 that
I first reconnected with Jackie after not having seen her for more
than 20 years. It was that connect that started the journey we
continue today. We had a fairly relaxing day, after lunch we went
out and ran some errands locally, and then hung around the coach
until about 3:30 when we left to drive to downtown Yuma for a
geocaching event. There is a big annual caching event scheduled for
tomorrow in Yuma, which we will be going to and will talk more about
in tomorrows entry. The group putting on the big event always
schedules smaller “warm up” events for the Friday and Saturday
prior to the big event. We skipped yesterday's “flash mob” event
downtown, it seemed too much trouble to drive fifteen miles to an
event that would last about fifteen minutes, however tonight's event
was a “meet and greet” to be held at a restaurant on Main Street
in downtown and they were expecting about 800 cachers to be in
attendance. In our six years of caching we have met a lot of
cachers, most of whom we only see at caching events, so we wanted to
go to this one tonight to see some old friends.
The event, which was to start at 4:30,
was being held in a new restaurant in Old Town, called The Standard
Bar and Grill. It looks like an old department store that has been
converted and the place is very large. The caching group made
arrangements for the place to open early so we essentially had the
place to ourselves until about 7:00. We got there about 20 minutes
before the official start time and there were already a hundred
people there. By about 5:00 it looked like they were well over 500,
pretty much packing the restaurant. We met a dozen or so caching
teams that we knew and had fun seeing them again.
We sat at a table with Russ and Nellie
Reichert, who are cachers from Oregon that we met at a geocache in
Quartzsite about five years ago. Since that time we have visited
with them at there home in Grants Pass, Oregon, and seen them at a
couple of events. We last saw them about three years ago, although
we keep up with them online. We had a great time catching up with
old friends and talking to new ones. The thing about these events is
that you are constantly meeting new caching friends. You wear a name
tag with your caching name, so someone will see our tag
“TravelingHolts” and tell us, “oh, I see your name all the time
on caches.” We do the same thing with other cachers.
The food at the restaurant was OK. We
had a calamari appetizer that wasn't very good at all, and the
waitress actually took that off our bill. My cheeseburger, however,
was very good, as was Jackie's Caesar salad. The waitress was very
good, despite the huge crowd, and she maintained a good sense of
humor through the night. We finally left the restaurant about 7:00
and drove back to the coach. We had a cocktail with Ray and Suzie,
and Judi and Clark, but were back in our coach in front of the TV by
about 8:30.
Sunday, February 9th, we
were up and in the car with Ray and Suzie by 8:30, heading to a city
park near downtown Yuma for the 11th Annual Yuma
Geocaching Event. This event is sponsored by a group known as SWAG,
Southwest Arizona Geocachers, and is usually the second weekend in
February. Today will be the third one we have attended. Last year
the event was officially sanctioned by Groundspeak, the company that
runs geocaching.com and is kind of the Headquarters of the sport, as
a Mega Event. To be a Mega Event you have to have over 500
participants. Last year there were over 1,200 and they expected
about the same turnout this year. The first event in 2003 they said
they had 53 participants.
We got to the event, which was in a
very nice park just west of downtown and right on the Colorado River,
right at 9:00, the official starting time. We set up our lawn chairs
in a nice spot in the shade and spent some time walking around,
talking to friends, and making new ones. There were also a couple of
vender booths set up that we visited. We participated in the poker
run, which had you navigate to five locations in the park to pick up
a sealed envelope with a playing card in it. After you had found the
five caches and collected the cards, you took them back to the booth
where they opened the envelopes to see what kind of poker hand you
created. We had one pair, nines, pretty much the same as what we had
last year, nothing. The event was eventually won with a hand of four
aces.
We had packed a lunch this year since
the free food provided at previous year's events was not part of this
year's event. They had a couple of food trucks in the parking lot,
but we packed some chips and sandwiches for ourselves and some
friends of ours from Palm Desert, Roy and Darcie. They had driven
down and were staying
in a motel, so we told them we would fix
sandwiches for them too. The event was over at 2:00, so after all
the drawings, of which we won none, we packed everything back in the
car and headed back to the RV park.
About 5:00 we went outside to have
cocktails with Ray and Suzie and noted that there was an impromptu
jam session going on just one coach down from the Babcocks. We took
our chairs and went down there were a number of people were playing
guitars, singing and having a good time. They asked me if I wanted
to sing, so I did about three numbers along with the “band” as
backup. We had so much fun we told the group that we would host the
event next Saturday and throw in some karaoke too. About 7:30 we
called it a night and went back to our coach for the rest of the
evening.
Monday, February 10th, I was
out of the house about 7:00 to take Benji, our younger cat, to the
vet for some shots and to have his front claws removed. We had tried
to avoid doing this with him, but we have been unable to control his
clawing and in the limited area of the coach, and with his level of
activity, he was starting to really tear things up. He will be
staying overnight after the surgery and we can pick him up tomorrow
morning.
After lunch Jackie and I went to the
Yuma mall to do some shopping and just get some exercise walking
around. We went to three or four different department stores, but
ended up not buying anything at all. After our shopping trip we went
back to the coach and relaxed for a little while before joining the
Babcocks and McKays for cocktails. Around 6:30 the six of us went to
the Daybreakers, the truck stop restaurant right next door to the RV
park, for dinner. The food was excellent as was the service. With a
discount coupon we had from one of the local guidebooks, our bill was
right at $20 for both Jackie and I for a nice dinner, including a
beer for me. I had a hamburger steak dinner and Jackie had an
omelet. After dinner we went back to the coach and watched TV the
rest of the evening.
Tuesday I went down in the morning and
picked up Benji and brought him home. We decided to do a stay at
home day because we wanted to be sure that he was going to be OK
before leaving him alone in the coach. He seemed to be in pretty
good spirits, but he is being very careful when he walks and limps
sometimes. I checked his paws a couple times during the day and
there was no bleeding and he didn't appear to have a lot of swelling,
so I think he will be OK.
Early in the afternoon Peggy and Vernon
arrived back at the RV park from their trip to Redding, California
for their grandson Troy's wedding. Troy and his new wife Makayla had
visited briefly earlier in the day because they had made it back on
Monday. They wanted a little extra time to get moved into their new
base housing before Troy had to go back to work on Wednesday. We had
cocktails with Peggy and Vernon and the rest of the group around
five, and then everyone went off to their own coaches about 7:00.
Wednesday, February 12th,
Benji seemed to be recovering well, so we left the coach about 10:00
or so and headed down to Algodones, Mexico for the first time on this
visit to Yuma. We had an appointment at our dentist there to get our
teeth cleaned and checked and then we were going to meet friends for
lunch and some shopping. Our teeth cleaning went well and the exams
showed no problems. We went to one of the restaurants in Algodones
that we have been to in the past, a place called La Parisio, for
lunch. Ray and Suzie were already there holding a table for us.
They have been coming down every other day for a couple of weeks now
getting some medical procedures done. Shortly after we got there we
were joined by Clark and Judi McKay. We had a great two hour lunch,
listened to some pretty good entertainment, and then did some
shopping. We finally got in line to cross back into the U.S. A
little before 4:00 and we were back in the RV park just a couple
minutes after five.
We had our little happy hour group with
all eight of us and were also joined by Troy and Makayla. We looked
at a few of the wedding pictures and heard stories about the wedding
and Makayla's family and life. Peggy and Vernon were going to make
dinner for Troy and Makayla and the rest of us were still pretty full
from the late lunch, so about 7:30 we were back in our coach watching
TV.
Thursday, February 13th, we
left the coach about noon with Peggy and Vernon and drove to the Yuma
Mall area to have lunch with some friends, Linda and Ernie Ellis. We
met Linda and Ernie on our Alaska trip back in 2009, the same trip on
which we first met Peggy and Vernon. All of us were on the same 49
day caravan touring Alaska. Linda and Ernie have a home in Folsom,
California, near Sacramento, but are on the road most of the year.
They have two passions, square dancing and singing with the FMCA
Frustrated Maestros Chapter. So they travel around the country,
following the square dance competition circuit for part of the year
and the FMCA rally circuit at other times. We run across them a
couple times a year, but Peggy and Vernon haven't seen them in
several years.
We went to Mimi's Restaurant for lunch
and had a very nice lunch, spending a couple hours chatting and
catching up on our travels. Linda has always been interested in our
hobby of geocaching, although I doubt that they would ever take it up
because of the amount of time they spend on their other hobbies, she
really likes to hear about our caching adventures. So, after lunch,
we went out and found two caches that were hidden near the mall so
that Linda and Ernie could see us “in action” if you will. After
that we drove back to the RV park, pretty much just in time for our
cocktail hour with our group. It was a very nice night after a warm
day, so we ended up staying outside and talking until about 7:30 or
so, after which we went in and watched TV until bed. With our late
lunch we didn't do any dinner.
Friday, February 14th, Happy
Valentine's Day and Happy Birthday to my granddaughter Courtney on
her 25th birthday. Not surprisingly, her middle name is
Valentine. We left the coach after lunch with Ray and Suzie and
drove to the Arizona Marketplace, the outdoor sales area on the edge
of town. We were there a couple weeks ago, but didn't get to finish
the entire place. We went just to finish up the entire marketplace.
Peggy and Vernon also went there and we met them there. After we
finished the marketplace we went to the Yuma Indoor Swap meet, closer
in town. We hadn't been to this particular swap meet in a couple of
years. The six of us walked around for an hour and a half or so
before we decided we had enough.
We went back to the coaches to relax
for a while. We took our own car and drove to Fry's to get some
groceries. Ray and Suzie went with Clark and Judi to one of the
local gun stores to look at guns and shoot a few on the indoor range.
They are all from California, so they like to come to Arizona where
the attitude towards guns is a lot less harsh. We picked up some
steaks and had a nice BBQ with the Bullocks. We had some really nice
steaks, some sweet potatoes and Jackie made a salad with her homemade
Green Goddess dressing. We had a very nice dinner with friends.
About 8:00 Peggy and Vernon went back to their coach and we relaxed
with the TV the rest of the night.
A nice holiday like Valentine's seems
to be a good place to close this chapter and get it published. We
still have a couple weeks here in Yuma before we move on to Casa
Grande, Arizona. Until the next time, remember that love makes the
world go around. I love everyone! I love to be around some people,
I love to stay away from others, and some I'd just love to punch
right in the face! See ya soon.