Hello again, welcome back to our story.
Our last chapter ended on Friday, April 15th, when we left Casa
Grande, Arizona, after a two week stay and headed a little bit north
to Apache Junction, Arizona. We will be in Apache Junction for a
week and then move to the other side of the Phoenix metro area to
Goodyear, Arizona, for another week. After we arrived in Apache
Junction, at the Sunrise RV Resort, we got settled in and relaxed for
the rest of the day. We had cocktails with Peggy and Vernon, who are
parked right behind us, at 5:00, and then Peggy served a great dinner
of penne pasta. This is one of my favorite Peggy Bullock dishes. We
talked until about 8:00 and then went to our coach for the rest of
the evening.
Saturday, April 16th, we left the park
about 10:00 with the Bullock's and did some geocaching. We were able
to get ten new finds, along with four DNFs, in a few hours. That is
the most DNFs we have had in one session in quite a while. We
stopped for lunch at a little Greek cafe, just a block from the RV
park, for lunch. It was called Chicago's #1 Gyro. The food was
quite good, but the place had one cook, the owner, who was a grumpy
old fart who was rude to both his employees and his customers. If I
lived in the area I would not go back just for that reason.
After lunch we got two more geocaches,
for a total of 12 new finds for the day. We did a little bit of
exploring Apache Junction before heading back to the RV park. We
relaxed the rest of the afternoon, then had cocktails with the
Bullock's at happy hour. Dinner was the leftovers from last night,
and they were just as good now as they were then. By 8:00 we were
back at our place and watched TV until bedtime.
Sunday we had a nice relaxing morning
with the newspaper and Sunday TV shows. We left the RV park about
1:00 with Peggy and Vernon and went to lunch in Mesa at one of my
favorite, old Phoenix based Mexican chain restaurants, Garcia's.
Garcia's got it's start in Phoenix back in the 50's, just like
Macayo's did. Macayo's chose to go with more modern, updated and
fancy selections, while Garcia's has stuck to the old, traditional
Sonoran cooking style. We had a great lunch with great food. The
service was a little slow, but the place was packed on an early
Sunday afternoon.
After lunch we went out and did some
exploring around the west Mesa and Tempe areas, looking at places
from my earliest days in the Phoenix area. When my folks moved the
family from Wisconsin to Arizona in 1960 our first stop was Tucson,
but after a couple of months my dad couldn't find work, so we moved
up to Tempe, Arizona. We rented a house there, actually moving once
but on the same property, just to a different house. I did my
freshman and sophomore years of high school at Tempe High. We found
the vacant lot where the old houses we had lived in used to be. It
appears to have been recently cleared, but no trace of the houses
remained. We drove by the high school and also through the Arizona
State University campus, another of my Alma Mater's. Along the way
we picked up two new geocaches, and then headed back to the RV park.
We had happy hour at 6:00, but no dinner together as we were all
still full from the late lunch. By 7:30 we were in our coach
watching TV for the rest of the evening.
Monday, April 18th, official tax day
for 2016! We had our taxes in early and already spent our refund on
tires. We went out after lunch to do some shopping. We hit the mall
a few miles away in Mesa so Jackie could find some stuff she needed.
We then did a Walmart run before heading back to the RV park. We did
happy hour with the Bullock's and then had some baby back ribs for
dinner that Vernon did on their BBQ. Jackie made some beans and
Peggy some Macaroni salad, and we had a great dinner. By 7:30 or so
we were back in our coach and watched TV until bedtime.
Tuesday we went out after lunch with
Peggy and Vernon to do some exploring. We visited the Superstition
Mountain Museum here in Apache Junction. They had a lot of nice
exhibits, a lot of which dealt with the legend of the Lost Dutchman's
Gold. The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine is, according to legend, a rich
gold mine generally believed to be hidden in the Superstition
Mountains. There have been many stories about how to find the mine,
and each year people search for the mine. Some have died on the
search. The mine is named after German immigrant Jacob Waltz, who
purportedly discovered it in the 19th century and kept its location a
secret. The Lost Dutchman's is perhaps the most famous lost mine in
American history. Arizona place-name expert Byrd Granger wrote that
the Lost Dutchman's story had been printed or cited at least six
times more often than two other fairly well-known tales, the story of
Captain Kidd's lost treasure, and the story of the Lost Pegleg mine
in California. People have been seeking the Lost Dutchman's mine
since at least 1892, while according to one estimate, 8,000 people
annually made some effort to locate the Lost Dutchman's mine. Former
Arizona Attorney General Bob Corbin is among those who have looked
for the mine. Some argue that there is little or no evidence for the
mine's existence, but others say that the main components of the
story have at least some basis in fact.
I grew up hearing about the Lost
Dutchman's Mine. My mom and stepfather moved the family out to
Arizona from Wisconsin in 1960, but we were preceded by my
stepfather's dad, Elmer Disch, and his wife. They moved out here
from Wisconsin a year earlier and bought a piece of land at the foot
of the Superstition Mountains. They built one of the first houses in
the area, which is now covered with scores of very nice custom homes.
My grandad raised horses and I spent many hours riding around in the
foothills of the Superstitions. After the museum visit we rode
around the area and I showed everyone the lot on which my
grandparent's place once stood. The “old” house has been torn
down and there is a new, big two story place there now. After
driving around the foothills for a bit, and getting three geocaches
in the process, we ran a couple quick errands and then went back to
the coach.
We relaxed for a while and then I spent
some time cooking dinner for the four of us. I made stuffed green
peppers, which is one of my specialties, and Jackie made a salad. We
had a great dinner, eating outside in the very nice weather. After
dinner we went back into our coach and watched TV until bedtime.
Wednesday, April 20th, we
went out about 11:00 with Peggy and Vernon in tow and headed for
lunch at a Thai restaurant, Thai House, near the Superstition Springs
Mall in Gilbert. The food was OK, with some of it really good, some
not so much. I had the orange chicken and it was very tasty, but the
egg drop soup had zero flavor. The egg rolls were just OK, a little
on the small side. Jackie had pad Thai and said it was pretty good
too. If we lived in the area I might go back, but then again there
are so many choices in this huge metropolitan area I might not waste
another trip on a place that was just so-so.
After lunch we went to the mall where
Peggy went into Macy's for something she needed, and Jackie went to
Bath and Body Works for some things. We were in the mall for a half
hour or so before leaving and heading over to the Winco for some
groceries. After that we headed back to the RV park for the rest of
the afternoon. We had cocktails at Peggy and Vernon's and then Peggy
served a great jambalaya for dinner. We ate and talked until almost
8:30 when we went back to our place for the rest of the evening.
Thursday was forecast to be a very hot
day, upper 90's, so we decided to take in a movie. We left the coach
about 1:00 with Peggy and Vernon, and headed back to the mall to see
the movie, The Boss. This film stars Melissa McCarthy, one of our
favorite comedy actresses, and is about an orphan girl with an
attitude that grows up to be a huge business success. She is a total
jerk to everyone around her, so no surprise when she goes to prison
for five months for insider trading and everyone ignores her when she
gets out. All her assets have been seized and she ends up teaming up
with her former assistant and forms a new company selling brownies in
competition with a group similar to the Girl Scouts. It was not the
best McCarthy movie by a long shot, but we still enjoyed it and
laughed a lot.
After the movie we went back to the RV
park and relaxed until happy hour. We had cocktails with the
Bullock's at our place and then Jackie served some chili relleno
casserole for dinner. This is our last day with the Bullock's after
nearly four months of traveling together. We miss being with them,
but will see them again in July. After Peggy and Vernon left we
watched some TV and went to bed.
Friday, April 22nd, another
moving day. We were up and out of the RV park about 10:30, heading
to Goodyear, Arizona. The trip was about 58 miles, but it was
freeway all the way, right through the middle of Phoenix. We are
basically going from the far east side of the Phoenix metro area to
the far west side. Traffic wasn't too bad and I only had one dicey
experience with a car that decided to cut across in front of me to
catch an exit. We arrived at the Cotton Lane RV park a little after
noon and quickly got checked into the mostly empty park. It was
really hot today, a hundred degrees at one point on our thermometer,
so we did the minimal setup for our one week stay. We spent the rest
of the day in the coach. Our first time in four months that we
weren't parked with friends, so it was kind of quiet.
Saturday, we went out about 11:00 or so
to get lunch and do some geocaching. We first stopped at my brother
Ken's new house here in Goodyear because they had told us they were
doing a garage sale. Ken was working but Susan and her mother
Helena, who now lives with them, were working the garage sale. We
chatted for a few minutes but didn't stay long because we were coming
back for dinner later in the day. We stopped at one restaurant in
Goodyear, but there was a long wait, so we went down into Avondale to
a place we have been before, Raul and Teresa’s Mexican. This is an
old place, nearly 50 years in Avondale, and we have always been happy
with the food. We both had machaca and eggs, the breakfast plate,
and enjoyed it a lot. After a nice lunch we did some geocaching and
were able to get ten new finds, with no DNFs, in a couple of hours.
About 3:00 we went back to the coach and relaxed for a while.
About 5:00 we left again and went back
over to Ken and Susan's for dinner. This was the first time we have
been in their new house. When we were here last April we went
through the model of the home they are in, and watched as they poured
the slab for their place. They moved into the house in late summer.
Susan's mom sold her house and Ken and Susan sold their place and
they moved into this very nice multi-generational house together.
Helena has a suite downstairs, with her own entrance, garage access,
bathroom, and mini-kitchen. The rest of the downstairs is a
kitchen-family room open area that is their common area. Ken and
Susan have a three bedroom suite upstairs with their own living room
and full bath, as well as laundry facilities. The only thing they
don't have upstairs is a kitchen. It seems to be working out very
well for all parties. Susan made pork chops and mashed potatoes for
dinner and Helena joined the four of us. We had a great meal, a tour
of the house, and a very pleasant couple of hours visiting with
family. We also picked up one more geocache, one that Ken and Susan
had hidden in their front yard. About 7:30 we left and headed back
to the RV park where we enjoyed the rest of the evening.
Sunday, April 24th, was a
relaxing day. We had our morning paper and coffee and stayed in for
the whole day. Monday we went out after lunch to do some geocaching
and got five new finds in a fairly short period of time. One of the caches was just outside the fence of the Phoenix-Goodyear Airport, which used to be the Goodyear Naval Air Station when I was a kid. There are dozens of commercial aircraft stored out there now, awaiting renovation or scrapping. We then
went to Walmart for some supplies and Jackie got a pedi. After that
we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the day.
Tuesday, April 26th, we left
the coach about 10:30 and drove north to Prescott Valley, Arizona to
meet the Bullock's for lunch. When we left Casa Grande last Friday
the Bullock's went to Cottonwood for a week. We decided to meet for
lunch somewhere in the middle, and Prescott Valley was about the
closest we could get. It was about a hundred miles for us and fifty
for them. However, it was a nice day and a nice, pretty drive up, so
we enjoyed it. We met them at the Canton Dragon, a Chinese place we
have eaten at before. We had a great lunch and then after lunch did
four geocaches in the area. We then said goodbye again and we drove
back down to Goodyear, arriving just in time for happy hour.
About 6:30 I left the coach and drove
into Goodyear to attend a meeting of the local Fraternal Order of
Police lodge, Lodge 5, which was the lodge I belonged to when I was
with the Sheriff's Office here in Phoenix. I have not been to a
lodge meeting in over 25 years, but I am a life time member by virtue
of my retirement from the Sheriff's Office. I hoped to see a few
people I knew and wasn't disappointed. There were about a half dozen
people there with whom I had worked with, or around, during my tenure
as a deputy. There were none that I was really close friends with,
but all were acquaintances at one level or another. I had a good
time catching up, as best you can cover 25 years in ten minutes, with
some of these old acquaintances and I was glad I went. After the
meeting I went back to the coach and we watched TV until bedtime.
Wednesday, April 27th, I
went out about 9:30 and took the Jeep to the local dealer for a
routine service. I was finally done around noon and I went back to
the coach, picked up Jackie, and we went out and did our laundry in
Avondale. Once the laundry was done we did a few caches, getting
five new finds, before heading back to the coach for the rest of the
evening. Thursday we went out after lunch to do some geocaching. We
were able to get eleven new finds, along with three DNFs, in a few
hours. After caching we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest
of the afternoon and evening.
Friday, April 29th, we left
the coach about 11:00 and went out for some more geocaching. In a
few hours we had racked up fifteen new finds, and two DNFs. The last
find of the day was number 8,000 for us, another major milestone.
Yea us! It is fairly normal in the course of caching to sustain what
we call “caching wounds,” minor scrapes and scratches from
bushes, trees and the occasional sharp edge. However today I got
some really big wounds on my leg. One of the caches was at a
location that had been a Prisoner of War camp back in WW-II. It 
held
German and Italian POWs who were then put to work in the fields
around the western part of the county. At that time this location
was twenty miles outside of Phoenix. The only thing left on the site
is a crumbling block building that used to be a bath house for the
camp. I was checking around on the rubble and a piece of concrete I
was holding on to for balance broke and I stumbled a bit, dragging my
lower legs across some blocks and concrete. The worst was my right
lower leg which go some ugly looking road rash on the front. I did
find the cache though. Yea! I cleaned it up as best I could with
some water and a towel and while it bled for a few minutes it pretty
quickly scabbed over and quit bleeding. We continued caching and
when we hit our milestone we quit and headed into Goodyear for a late
lunch.
We went to a new seafood place called
the Angry Crab Shack in Goodyear. This is a fairly new Arizona chain
of Cajun seafood shops and the store in Goodyear has only been open a
couple months. It is reminiscent of a Joe's Crab Shack in appearance
and menu. Very informal setting, in fact the walls are covered with
customer graffiti. The menu is primarily southern style bag-boiled
seafood or fried seafood baskets. I splurged and had the king crab
boil, a pound of crab boiled in a big plastic bag with spices.
Jackie had grilled salmon, one of the two grilled items on the menu.
We also had some calamari and onion rings. Everything was very good
and tasty, but, as you might expect, very messy too. I felt like I
needed a shower after I was done eating. I enjoyed the food and the
ambiance and the service was excellent too. Of course, I also had to
buy the tee shirt.
After lunch we went to Walmart for some
supplies and then headed back to the coach. I took a quick shower so
I could wash my caching wounds with soap and water and then put some
antibiotic cream on them. They look nasty, but don't hurt too much,
just sort of a burn. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing
around the coach.
Saturday, April 30th, we had
a stay at home day. We hung around the coach, did some cleaning and
got a few things done. About 5:00 my brother Ken and his wife Susan,
along with Susan's mom Helena, came over for dinner. We sat and
talked for a while and then Jackie served a nice dinner of pork
country ribs that had been cooking in the crock pot all day. We had
a great time and after dinner sat around and talked some more. They
left about 9:00 and we watched a little TV before bedtime.
Sunday, May 1st, Mayday!
Today was another travel day. We were packed up and ready to go
about 11:00. Just before we left Ken and Susan came by to say
goodbye, as we are leaving the area and will probably not see them
again this year. We got on the I-10 and headed west to Ehrenberg and
the Arizona Oasis RV Resort. This is a place that used to be one of
our Western Horizon's resorts, but has now been sold to a private
party. We still get good discount rates though. We are only going
to be here for two days before moving on to Indio for a while.
After we got parked and the utilities
hooked up we drove across the river to Blythe and one of our favorite
Mexican restaurant's, Garcia's, for lunch. We had a great lunch, ate
way too much but it was good. After lunch we went back to the coach
and finished getting set up. We then just relaxed in the coach the
rest of the day and evening.
Monday was a stay at home and relax
day. It was pretty hot outside and there were no caches in the area
that we have not already found. We are only staying here today
because we wanted to give the RV park in Indio some time to recover
from three weeks of chaos. Over the last three weekends there have
been massive music festivals in Indio, the first two being Coachella,
a Rock and Alternative festival that has become “the” place for
the rich and famous to go, and this last weekend being Stagecoach, a
Country music festival. During these festival weeks all of the
hotels, motels and RV parks in the Coachella Valley swell to
overflowing. The last festival day was Sunday, so figured by the end
of Monday they should be cleared out.
Tuesday, May 3rd, we packed
up and left Ehrenberg about 11:00 and continued west on I-10 towards
Indio, California. We arrived at the Indian Waters RV resort about
12:45 and quickly got settled into our site. As we hoped, the park
was nearly empty. There were still a number of rental RVs parked on
sites around the park, but very few people and occupied rigs. Since
it was really hot, in the high 90's, we got set up and then just
stayed in and stayed cool for the rest of the day.
It has now been a bit over two weeks
since we last published, and we have now concluded our nearly four
month tour of Arizona, it is a good time to close this chapter and
get it published. We will be about two weeks here in Indio and then
on to Silent Valley, our resort in the mountains south of Banning,
California. Until the next time, remember that no matter how smart
you are, you can never convince someone stupid that they are stupid.
Have fun, see ya soon.
