Both Jackie and I are fighting colds at the moment, so once we got set up at the resort we vegged out on the couches for the rest of the day. We took some meds, and just relaxed with the TV all the way through until bedtime.
Sunday, February 3rd, Super Bowl Sunday! We are both still working to get rid of our colds, so we decided that this would be a good day to just stay at home and rest. I went out in the morning and got a Sunday paper, some cold medicine and the makings for a big pot of chicken noodle soup. Other than that, we didn’t go anywhere. We watched the game starting at 4:30 and it was a pretty decent game. Since neither of us are huge football fans - Super Bowl is the only game we watch all year - we just randomly picked sides just for rooting purposes. I ended up with Baltimore and had a great time for the first half. Jackie was happy for most of the second half, up to the last two minutes. Oh well. Good Job Ravens. After the bowl game we had a nice dinner of chicken soup and went to bed early hoping that the colds will be on their way out soon.
Monday, February 4th, we both woke up feeling a little bit better. Still well below a hundred percent, but heading in the right direction. We had to get up and out early because Jackie had a doctor’s appointment at 9:00 for a redo of her echo cardiogram. The tech wouldn’t say what the issue was, only that the doctor who reviewed the pictures wanted the test redone. This time I went in with her so I could see the sonogram of her heart. Pretty neat, although I didn’t fully understand everything I was seeing.
The test took about a half hour, after which we stopped at a coin laundry to wash clothes. We were a little over two weeks without doing laundry, which is no big deal for anything except undies. I have enough shirts and pants to go six months, but the underwear supply is more limited. The original plan was to do laundry in town, near where Jackie’s physical therapist’s office is, because she had an early afternoon appointment there as well. However, Jackie decided she just wasn’t up to the exertion with her cold and cough, so she called and canceled.
After we got our laundry done we just headed back to the coach, had lunch, took our meds, and vegged the rest of the day, working on getting better. We stayed around the house, watched TV and relaxed until bedtime. We did have a nice dinner of hamburgers cooked on the BBQ, so I was feeling well enough to get that done.
Tuesday, February 5th, Happy Birthday to Me! Yea, I made the double six! I woke up feeling much better, I am at least 99 percent over the cold. Jackie, not so much. She had a rough night and slept on the couch for a lot of the night because of her coughing. That is the worst symptom she has at this point.
Since Jackie was still feeling poorly, we stayed in for the day. I got a few outside chores done, maintenance checks and so forth. The temperature actually went all the way to 79 by late afternoon, a beautiful desert day. I requested corn beef hash and eggs for dinner and that’s what my baby fixed me. Yum. Not a bad birthday for an old guy.Wednesday, February 6th, Jackie had a little better night, but still woke up feeling a little down. Nonetheless, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching. We needed a cache for today for our days of the year challenge and Jackie felt good enough to go out for a while. Being out in the nice warm weather actually made her feel a little better and we ended up getting ten new caches for the day. We now only have two days left on our challenge.
After caching we went to the nearby Walmart for some supplies and then headed back to the coach. We BBQed some chicken for dinner and spent the rest of the evening watching TV.
Thursday, February 7th, our ninth wedding anniversary. We were married in Indio, at the Elks Lodge, nine years ago and it has been a wonderful nine years. The majority of it has been in the motor home, on the road and enjoying life. We have had a very happy nine years.
As far as our current health state, it is much of the same. I am pretty much over my cold, with only a few nose drips and the occasional cough, and Jackie is still coughing up a storm, with a headache and stuffed up head. She is better than she was a few days ago, but still not over it. After lunch we decided that we needed to get out of the house for a while, so we went out and did some geocaching. We did manage to get six new finds for the day.
We had intended to go see what the Yuma Lakes RV Resort looks like. It is a membership resort which has invited us for a three day stay after our time here at Caravan Oasis. We wanted to take a look at what it was like, but we didn't bring the paper and neither of us could remember exactly where it was, or how to get to it. It is close to Yuma, but kind of off the beaten track. We decided to put that off for another day.
After our caching we stopped at the local Fry's store for some groceries and picked up some KFC for dinner. Jackie didn't feel like going out for an anniversary dinner, so we did the next best thing and brought in takeout. We had dinner and relaxed in front of the TV the rest of the night.
Friday, February 8th, another of our several anniversaries. This one celebrates the date in 1998 that I first got back together with Jackie. I am pretty much cured of the cold, but Jackie is still miserable. Finally, about 3:00 we decided to take her to the urgent care center down the road. She was in there for quite a while and the final determination was that her cold had gone down into her chest and was now bronchitis. The docs gave her a couple of shots and an antibiotic prescription. Hopefully, within a couple of days the worst of the symptoms will begin to fade.
Our friends Ray and Suzie Babcock arrived at the park late this morning as well. We had been with them for a week at Pilot Knob and they stayed for another week before moving over to here. They will only be here for a week before heading back home to Temecula. Ray wanted to spend a week in Arizona so he could get an Arizona ID card. All his guns were stolen last summer in a burglary of their house, and he wants to buy a couple more guns. Arizona will only sell to those with an Arizona ID.
He went down to the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division this afternoon, showed his receipt for the RV park, and got an Arizona ID card. Not a drivers license, just an ID card, but it is enough to be able to buy a handgun here in Arizona. He spent the rest of the afternoon running errands. They were gone to dinner by the time we got back from the doctor's so we didn't even get together for cocktails. Jackie went to the couch and spent the rest of the night there trying to get better.
Saturday, February 9th, we woke to wet streets for the first time since coming to Yuma this year. We didn't have much rain overnight, about ten minutes of light rain, but enough to get everything damp and dirty. At least it wasn't enough to activate the leak in our front slide. No water inside this morning.
Jackie is still working on getting better. We left the coach, with the Babcocks aboard, about 2:00 to go to a geocaching event. Tomorrow is the first ever Mega Geocaching event to take place in the State of Arizona, and this afternoon we were going to a “pre-event” meet & greet at a local restaurant. A Mega Event is classified by Geocacing.com, the gurus of the sport, as any caching event which has at least 500 participants register online that they will be attending. Most of the caching events we have been to have been less than 100 people. The Yuma event in 2011, which we came to had about 300 attending. Last year's was a little bigger, but still not “Mega.”
On the way to the pre-event we stopped and picked up one geocache because we needed a cache on this date for our days of the year challenge. Signing into the event also counts as a “find” for stats, but we wanted a real cache too, just to be completely fair. We arrived at the event just after the starting time and there were a couple of hundred people there. There were a number of caching teams which we knew, either meeting them at other events, or running into them out in the field. There were many more caching teams with names that we recognized, either from caches of theirs we have found, or caches we found where we saw their names on the logs.
The event was held at a place called the Fun Factory, which is an entertainment venue with a water park, go carts, mini golf, arcade, and that sort of thing. They also had a restaurant with basic stuff like burgers and fries. Unfortunately, because they were expecting a pretty big crowd, they set the event up outside, near the water park. The water park was closed for the season, but the big patio next to it would have been ideal had it not been cold and windy. Most of the people came, walked around and visited for a while, and then left. We stayed about 90 minutes before deciding to leave. We didn't even want to eat there because the food was fast food quality but restaurant priced.
We drove back to the RV park so that the Babcocks could take their dog for a walk, and then about 5:00 the four of us drove into central Yuma and went to the Outback Steakhouse for a nice dinner. We were celebrating my birthday and our two anniversaries all on the same day. This was the first day in a while that Jackie even felt like going out to eat. As is usual with restaurants in Yuma during snowbird season, the place was packed, so the service was a little slow and spotty. The food, however, was very good. Jackie had lamb and I had a big “slab o' cow” steak. After dinner we drove back to the RV park and got together with the Babcocks for a night cap, after which we went back to our coach and relaxed the rest of the night.
Sunday, February 10th, we were up and out of the coach early, actually by 8:00 a.m., which is quite a feat for us. We were headed for downtown Yuma for the Yuma Mega Geocaching Event. The four of us went in Ray's car so that we could take advantage of his handicap parking tags and arrived at the city park along the Colorado River right at 8:30. We got our chairs set up on the lawn and then the four of us participated in the event's poker run. The organizers set out five ammo boxes at different locations, all inside of the park, and provided a piece of paper with the coordinates to the participants. The finding was supposed to be just like finding a geocache. Inside each of the five caches were several hundred small playing cards sealed in envelopes.
The idea is to load the coordinates for the five caches into your GPS unit, and then go out and find them. Each caching team, in our case Jackie and I, would then take one of the envelopes out of each of the five boxes. Once you had your five cards you turned them into the desk, they opened the envelopes and you found out what your poker hand was. It took us about a 45 minutes to get the five caches, but all we got for our trouble was an ace high crap hand. The Babcocks managed to get a pair of jacks, but even that probably wouldn't win anything. As it turns out, the winning hand was four of a kind and they won $100.
We spent the rest of the morning visiting with people, gathering travel bugs, buying caching stuff, including the event tee shirts, and participating in some other caching related games. It was clear that they had reached the Mega Event status as there were clearly over 1,000 people there. Keep in mind that most caching teams are two people, so 500 team names is close to 1,000 people. We never did get a final count, but the last word on RSVPs was that they had about 600 teams registered to come, some from as far away as Europe and the East coast.
About 12:30 they served lunch, which was a very nice tri-tip BBQ dinner, and managed to serve the over 1,000 guests in about 15 minutes. They had this event very well coordinated. It was even recognized by the City of Yuma, which issued a proclamation citing today as Geocaching Day in Yuma. After dinner they had the drawings for some door prizes and a 50/50 drawing, but neither us nor the Babcocks won anything. About 2:30 we finally packed up our gear and headed back home. The weather had cooperated, keeping the winds down and temps in the mid-60's with a nice warm sun. By the time we got home we were all beat, so we just went to our respective coaches and crashed for the night. A very fun day and a great event.By the way, in addition to getting the event on our cache find count, we found one other geocache in the park because today was another of the days we needed to find a cache for our days of the year challenge. The big difference, today was the LAST day we needed. Our stats page now shows that we have found at least one geocache on every one of the 366 possible days of the year! Now we have to develop a new personal challenge to tackle. Yea Us!
Monday, February 11th, another cool but mostly clear day. Jackie slept a little better last night, but still woke up with a very congested chest. She didn't want to go anywhere today, so we just stayed at the coach and did busy work and played on our computers for the entire day.
Tuesday, February 12th, another great desert day. A little on the cool side, but no wind or clouds. Jackie woke up feeling a little better and said she had a pretty decent nights sleep. She decided that she needed to get out and about today, at least a little, because just staying on the couch all day didn't seem to be helping her get better.
We left the coach after lunch, about 1:00 or so, and drove to downtown Yuma for the street fair that is held there every Tuesday. They close off Main Street in old town Yuma and the vendors set up booths for a variety of merchandise. The first thing we noticed when we arrived is that the fair is only a block long, about half the size it was in past years we have gone. It used to stretch the whole two long block distance of old Main Street. It actually only took us about 45 minutes to walk up one side and down the other. We visited one shop, a little trinket shop that Jackie likes, and then got in the car and left. We didn't buy anything and were less than impressed with what the street fair has become.
After leaving downtown Yuma we drove to an RV resort called Yuma Lakes, located about ten miles northeast of the main part of town. Yuma Lakes is a membership resort, run by a company called Colorado River Adventures. They have another resort on the California side of the Colorado River, across from Parker, Arizona, called Emerald Cove. We visited Emerald Cove ten years ago or so with our friends Barry and Colleen Cohen. They are members of the company and took us as guests. We were not especially impressed with that property, however, we were recently offered a free three night stay at Yuma Lakes if we would sit through their ninety minute sales presentation. They do have six other “resorts” in the Western U.S., as well as one in Mexico that we are pretty unlikely to ever use.
They claim that we will get a notebook computer and a $200 gas rebate card, whatever that means, if we come and visit the property. We will be going there at the end of our stay here in Yuma, before moving on to Casa Grande, and we wanted to at least get a look at what the property was. It is not as junky looking as Emerald Cove, but not a real nice property. In fairness, it is about the same quality as most of the Western Horizon properties, a membership company to which we already belong, so certainly not anything we aren't used to. There is no guard gate, so we drove around for a little while before we decided it wasn't bad enough for us to cancel our free visit over.
After checking out Yuma Lakes we drove back towards home, stopping along the way to do some geocaching. We got ten new finds in about 90 minutes, most of the caches being out in the desert on sand roads. It's nice having a four wheel drive so we can do caching in these areas where you might not want to take the family sedan. Once we got our ten finds it was about 3:30 and we needed to make a Walmart run, so we packed up the caching gear and went to the local Walmart.After we got home we had the Babcocks over for cocktails at 5:30 and then served dinner for the four of us about 7:00. I made spaghetti with a nice meat sauce and some meat balls, and garlic toast. Because Jackie has been feeling bad, this was the first time in a week we had dinner with the Babcocks at the coach. We have been out with them a couple of times, but we try to do dinner in at least a couple times a week when we are traveling with friends, and we just haven't been up to it lately. The Babcocks left about 8:00 or so and we watched the rest of the President's State of the Union speech and then some of our regular TV shows before heading off to bed.
Wednesday, February 13th, we left the coach with Ray and Suzie about 10:30 to spend some time outdoors. We stopped at an RV supply and hardware store not too far from the RV park and did some shopping, then drove a little further down the block to the offices of a company that does RV renovations. We are currently planning to have some remodeling done to the inside of the coach this summer up in Oregon. Ray had told us about a company that he has used for a number of repair and remodel jobs on his coach and we have already gotten a ballpark estimate from them for the work we want done.
Among the things we want done are replacing all the carpeting in the front of the coach with a wood or tile laminate material, removing the road side couch and building some cabinets in that space, rebuilding the front cabinets to enable installation of a larger TV, and some repairs to the bed and a slide. All of the work we want to do is about $10K, way cheaper than a new motor home. We figured as long as we were in Yuma we would get a second opinion and cost estimate from a local remodel firm. We talked to the guy for a while, looked at some work being done in their shop, and made an appointment for him to come out to the coach in a few days to give as an estimate.
After our stops at the RV places we drove to the Yuma Marine Corps Air Station, located in the middle of town adjacent to the Yuma airport. We wanted to get passes to allow us to go onto the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range, which is a huge section of land between the Mexican border and I-8. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of geocaches on the range and it is open to the public so long as they obtain a permit from the base. The permit is free, and it is basically a medium for the military to let you know the rules and that it is a barren area where you could get lost, stuck or even blown up, and if you do and get injured or die, not their problem. We have been caching on the range several times, but Ray and Suzie have not and we wanted to go out caching on the range with them before they leave Yuma in a week or so.
After we filled out the paperwork and got our permits, we drove onto the base to explore a little. We had driven with Ray in his car and being retired military he has stickers that allow access to the base. Our first stop was the base Exchange to do a little window shopping. After that we drove around the base for a while and I found one of the air squadrons that I had been associated with back in the 60's when I was in the Marine Corps. It was VMA-214, the legendary Blacksheep squadron of WW-II fame. They are now headquartered at Yuma. In the late 60's they were at El Toro in Southern California and I fixed the radar systems on their aircraft. I also wanted to see if I could spot any of the new F-35B planes that are just coming into service with the Marines. It is a new vertical take off and landing fighter intended to be the replacement for the old A-8 Harrier jets. The way the base is laid out I couldn't see out on the flight line, so I didn't see any of the three new planes they now have based there.
After we were done on the base we drove to the IHOP restaurant for lunch. Once lunch was done the four of us went out for a couple hours of geocaching. We finally quit about 3:30 with seven new finds and one DNF. One of the finds was number 400 for the Babcocks. Yea, a milestone! We went back to the RV park and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. Ray came over for a few minutes at cocktail hour, but he didn't stay long. We didn't even have dinner because of the late lunch and just spent the night with the TV.Thursday, February 14th, Happy Valentine's Day and Happy 24th Birthday to my Granddaughter Courtney, who's middle name just happens to be Valentine. Jackie update is that she is still fighting the cough and congested chest. She is pretty much OK during the day, but by evening she is starting to drag and get tired, but she still has trouble sleeping because of the frequent coughing jags. Hopefully she will continue to get better.
We had a nice day, supposed to be in the low 70's today, so we decided to do some more geocaching with Ray and Suzie. They are getting close to passing Gary and Ramona Wilson in number of finds. Unfortunately, Gary and Ramona have been dealing with some illness in the family and haven't been able to cache, giving Ray and Suzie an opportunity to go past them in total finds.
We were fortunate today to be able to get to a power cache series out in the desert just a couple of miles south of the RV park. We had our car, which is four wheel drive, so we weren't too worried about the sand roads and trails. A power series is a group of caches hidden by the same cacher, usually in close proximity to each other, sometimes as close as the minimum 528 feet. This one happened to be 16 caches hidden along a power line road in the desert and the caches were less than 1,000 feet apart. We managed to get all 16 in less than an hour, which is a pretty good find rate. We then did several other caches in the desert and some in nearby neighborhoods, for a total find count for the day of 36, all in about three hours of caching. This was a new single best day total for the Babcocks, and also put them ahead of the Wilsons in total finds by two. Yea Ray and Suzie. Another milestone! Our best day is still 55 finds, a feat we accomplished last November in Pahrump.
After caching we went back to the RV park and Jackie and I waited for the guy from the RV renovations company to come over to look at the coach. He came a little late, about ten to six, and spent about a half hour with us, looking at the floor plan and listening to what we wanted done. The bottom line was that he was at least sixty percent more expensive for the stuff we wanted done than the company in Oregon that we have already talked to. I guess he is out of the running. One advantage in Oregon is no sales tax, but I think the Oregon company has a labor advantage too in that the owners of the company are also the guys doing most of the work.
After talking to the renovations buy we went with Ray and Suzie to a restaurant just around the corner from the RV park called Daybreakers. It has a great reputation and Ray and Suzie have eaten there and recommended it as well. It is basically a truck stop, being located right next to the Flying J service center. The food is typical comfort stuff, but it was pretty good and reasonably priced. I had a prime rib french dip that was excellent. Jackie had chicken fried steak and eggs that she said was pretty good too, and you got lots of food. We will probably go there again sometime while we are here.
After we ate we went into the bar for a while because they had karaoke on Thursdays. There were a lot of people in there and you could tell from the way they talked and acted that it was a regular crowd for the Sunday and Thursday karaoke sessions. Most of the people also had their own karaoke disks, which is another giveaway to a regular crowd. I put my name in for a song, but only got one in because it was a very long rotation, almost an hour before I came up. After I sang we left and went back to the coaches, where we watched TV until bed.
Friday, February 15th, the end of our second full week here at Caravan Oasis. With our not feeling well, colds, allergies, bronchitis, etc., we haven't been able to do all the things we wanted to do while we are here. Time is going by too fast! We left the park with the Babcocks about 11:00 and drove to the Arizona Market Place outdoor market to walk around. We were here a couple of weeks ago, but it is a fun place to visit for a couple of hours, get some exercise and do some light shopping. I bought a few odds and ends and some parts for the motor home, but Jackie didn't get anything.
After our shopping time the four of us stopped and picked up one geocache, then went to a restaurant not too far from the RV park. The place was called Parrish's, and we had seen it a couple of times while driving around the area. The decor and look of the place made it seem to be a Mexican restaurant, so we decided to try it. To our surprise, it was a sports bar and grill with a deli menu. Oh well, we ate there anyway, and the food was quite good. Three of us had the fish and chips and was very good. We would probably go back there again sometime. I can recommend it if you find yourself in the Foothills area of Yuma hungering for a sandwich or other pub fare.
After our late lunch we took a drive to the house of some friends of ours, John and Rita Ham, who have an RV lot in the Foothills with a very nice casita. They are Monaco owners and we met them through FMCA and Monaco International Chapter. They are avid geocachers, with over 10,000 finds. We had been telling Ray and Suzie how nice their property was and we wanted to show them. The Ham's weren't home, so we just looked at the outside of the property, let Ray and Suzie find the geocache that John has hidden in the front of his lot, and then we went back home. Jackie wasn't feeling well again, so we just spent the rest of the evening in.
The end of our first two weeks here marks a good place to publish this episode. We will publish again at the end of our stay here. Until the next time, remember that happiness is 90 percent attitude. Focus on the positive as much as possible and make every effort to enjoy this far too short life we are given. See ya next time.
