Saturday, March 20th we headed out of Deming, New Mexico North towards Albuquerque. Our route North took us through the little town of Hatch, New Mexico, which claims to be the chili capitol of the world. I know that I have seen the name “Hatch Chili’s” displayed and we have bought cans of Hatch Chili’s. We arrived at the
Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta grounds about 2:00 p.m. or so and got parked. We had earlier offered to help the Fulltimers Chapter of FMCA serve ice cream at the ice cream social during the rally,
so this made us “volunteers” for the rally. As a result, we got to park with the other volunteers, which turned out to be a really good thing. We had parking on asphalt with 50 amp electric service and a water supply! We have never had this good a parking spot at any other FMCA convention.Just a quick recap for those who have not read previous posts about FMCA rallies. FMCA has two large conventions each year. The locations vary - we have been to conventions in Minot, North Dakota, Charlotte, North Carolina, Pomona, California, and St. Paul, Minnesota. When we started going to rallies in 2005 the conventions were big - there were nearly 7,000 coaches in Minot in 2005. With the economy and fuel prices being what they have been, the rallies have gotten progressively smaller, with the average now about 3,000 - which is still a lot of motorhomes and
people. The Albuquerque rally was going to be a little different because most of the parking for the coaches was at the Balloon Fiesta grounds, on the North end of town. However, most of the meetings, seminars, vendors and displays were at the Albuquerque Fairgrounds, about 12 miles away. They did provide bus service between the two locations, as well as the location for two of the night time entertainment events, which were scheduled for a third location, the Sandia Indian Casino near the Balloon Fiesta grounds. We have not attended an FMCA rally that was this disjointed and spread out. The rally is providing shuttle service between the various venues, but they also have sufficient parking to allow attendees to take their own vehicles. We decided that we would rather “commute” on our own than depend on the bus service.We spent the rest of Saturday just hanging around the coach resting for the remainder of the week. We did do a hamburger cookout with Peggy and Vernon. Unlike the Monaco rallies, the FMCA rallies don’t include any meals. Sunday we didn’t do
too much either. The actual rally activities don’t start until Monday, with Saturday and Sunday being parking days. After lunch we did take a drive over to the fairgrounds so that we would know the route on Monday and wouldn’t get lost.Monday, March 22nd, the first day of rally activities. We had to get up and out of the coach by 8:30 a.m. (yikes!) so that we could get over to the fairgrounds to prepare for the Chapter Fair at 9:30 a.m. All of the FMCA rallies include a Chapter Fair early on the first day of the rally. Any chapter of FMCA can reserve a table
and set up a display to try to attract new members to their chapter. FMCA has over 500 chapters, all of which are focused on some common interest. You have heard me talk about several of the chapters we belong to, including Monaco International Chapter, which is for Monaco Coach owners, Elks International Chapter, which is for members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and the 100%ers Chapter, which is for folks who live 100% of the time in their motorhomes. Right now we belong to eleven different chapters. I am currently the President of the 100%ers Chapter, and Jackie is also an officer of the Chapter. We have set up a couple of other Chapter Fairs at past rallies and, since our Chapter is getting very low in membership, we decided to set up a table at the Albuquerque rally. We set up a very nice table and talked to a lot of people during the hour and a half of the fair. Several people took applications, but we didn’t get any sign-ups out of it.After the Chapter Fair we took down our table display and headed over to a seminar on full-timing put on by the Full Timers Chapter, of which we are also members. Unlike the 100%ers Chapter, the Full Timers Chapter allows members who actually still live in houses part of the time. It is a minor distinction in the focus of the chapters, but the Full Timers have several hundred members, while our 100%ers Chapter has about 16. Peggy and Vernon went to the Full Timers seminar with us and signed up to join the chapter. They still have a house in Northern California that they live in a couple of months a year., but they travel in their coach most of the time. Peggy and Vernon have never been to an FMCA rally before and we are sort of mentoring them at the rally.
After the Full Timers seminar the four of us headed out to do lunch in downtown Albuquerque. Both us and Peggy and Vernon are big fans of a TV show called “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” which is on the Food Network. The series features a well known chef, Guy Fieri, who travels around the country seeking out funky, cool places to eat. The show is a half hour and features three different restaurants on each show. There were two places in Albuquerque that he had featured on his show and we wanted to try at least one of them while we were here. Since all four of us like Mexican Food we decided on a little Mexican restaurant in the middle of downtown called Cecelia’s. We had a little trouble finding it and by the time we got there it was about 2:10 p.m. We walked up to the place (a real dive looking building), started to open the door and were met by a woman who told us they were closed! Apparently they were only open for breakfast and lunch. Well, bummer - the food featured on the show had really looked good.
Not to be deterred, we headed over to the second Albuquerque restaurant which had been featured on the show, the Standard Diner. This was a place that had once been a service station and had been converted into a restaurant. It was also downtown and only a mile or so from Cecelia’s. The four of us met at the Standard Diner and went in for lunch, or actually an early dinner. The restaurant was very nicely decorated and the service was excellent. We all had one of the menu items which had been featured on the show, a bacon wrapped meat loaf with all the fixings. It was delicious! Although the place was not inexpensive, it was not outrageous either considering the size of the portions. I would encourage anyone visiting Albuquerque to at least try the Standard Diner once. It is on Central Avenue, near downtown. I would also encourage anyone who travels a lot to watch “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” (also known as Triple D) on the food channel for great ideas on where to eat all over the country. After lunch we headed back to the balloon fiesta grounds for a happy hour with the members of the Full Timers Chapter that were parked in the area. We had a nice visit and then settled in for the rest of the night.
Tuesday, March 23rd we headed over to the fairgrounds around 10:30 or so to visit the vendor area. The FMCA conventions always have a big turnout of vendors selling all sorts of motorhome and RVing stuff. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the vendors, but not buying much. After five years on the road, we have pretty much everything that we need for the coach and out lifestyle. We go to the vendors to see if there is anything new, and to enter the contests and drawings for give aways. After a quick lunch at one of the overpriced food booths at the fairgrounds Jackie and I went to a seminar on a product that allows you to tap into your coach’s engine computer and monitor all of the engine information on a laptop computer much more accurately than you can with your dash gauges. I have been wanting one of these for a couple of years, but the $400 cost has always been a deterrent. After the seminar Jackie agreed that the program could be useful in helping to achieve good fuel economy and performance and said if I wanted it I should buy it. I still was a little hesitant, and decided to think about it overnight.
After the Silverleaf seminar, the name of the product I was looking at, I went to a seminar and business meeting of a brand new FMCA chapter, the Military Veteran’s Chapter. Surprisingly, with 500 chapters in FMCA and a membership that tends to be over 50, FMCA had never had a chapter just for vets. One of our acquaintances decided to try and start one up and started signing up charter members, of which I was one. This meeting in Albuquerque was the formation meeting and we had over 150 charter members! I suspect this may end up being one of the larger chapters in FMCA when they start to recruit in earnest. While I was at the vet chapter meeting Jackie went back to the vendors.
We had intended to go over to the new coach displays after the vet meeting to look at the display coaches, but the weather had turned cold and windy, and we were tired, so we went back to the coach to rest instead. That night the entertainment was set to start at 7:30 at the Sandia Casino, an Indian casino located about a mile from the balloon fiesta grounds where we were parked. We rested until it was time to head over to the casino. The Sandia Casino was very big and very nice, actually worthy of a Las Vegas Strip venue. The entertainment was supposed to have been in a outdoor concert amphitheater but had been moved inside to a huge ballroom because of the cold weather and the threat of rain. The ballroom was ok, but the seating was flat so the view of the stage was not the greatest. The entertainment for the evening was a local song and dance troupe called the Pink Flamingo Express. They did a lot of older rock and roll music and were pretty good after a somewhat slow start. What made the difference was they started getting the audience involved and bringing people up on the stage to “perform” in different numbers. All in all it turned out to be pretty good entertainment. All FMCA rallies include two or three nights of entertainment, usually one night with a fairly well known performer and less well known groups or individuals on the other nights.
After the concert we decided to stay at the casino and “game” for an hour or so before heading back to the coach. I was just fooling around on a dollar slot machine with $20 and hit a $300 jackpot! I immediately cashed it out and quit for the night. I walked over to Jackie and showed her my $300 ticket and told her that my $400 Silverleaf system was now only going to cost us $100 - yea! Jackie only lost about $40 bucks, so we had a pretty good night. When we went out to get the car it was raining cats and dogs, and kept raining all night long. Good thing we are parked on asphalt.
Wednesday, March 24th we headed over to the fairgrounds about 9:30 a.m. to attend a seminar on advance geocaching. It was being put on by some acquaintances of ours who started a Geocaching Chapter. While we were at the seminar we joined the chapter and added it to our list of member chapters. The seminar didn’t go too well because of problems with the audio visual equipment. Peggy and Vernon had gone to the seminar with us because over the last month or so we have been together they have become very interested in geocaching. We were a little disappointed in the seminar but while we were in the room we noticed that it had started snowing outside - and fairly heavy snow at that. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a camera with us, so we couldn’t get any real good pictures. It snowed for a couple of hours, but it was too warm for it to stick to the ground very long. The grassy areas and shrubs got kind of white, but it didn’t stay long.
After the geocaching seminar we had lunch and then did some more shopping. I did go over a buy my Silverleaf system that was made a lot less expensive by virtue of my casino winnings. At 12:30 we headed over to where the ice cream social was to be held. The Full Timers Chapter has always been the volunteer servers for the FMCA ice cream socials and we had volunteered to help. It was this service that got us our great parking spot! We really only have to stand and hand out ice cream bars
for an hour, but it is always a lot of fun. Peggy and Vernon had also volunteered as brand new members of the Full Timers and were there with us. After the ice cream social we went to a meeting of the International Area, one of the FMCA organizational units, and then headed back to the parking area for a social hour with our new geocaching group.The entertainment this night was again at the casino so Jackie and I headed over there about an hour early to do some more gaming. Neither of us had much luck and ended up losing about $40 or so. We then headed into the ballroom for the evening’s show, country and western star B.J Thomas. Thomas was big back in the 60's and 70's, but has only had a couple of modest hits since then. He is now on the fair and casino circuit. His biggest hit was “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The show was not too bad, but the sound was not great and Thomas did not have a lot of charisma - it was kind of a boring show. After the show we headed back to the coach for the night.
Thursday, March 25th was the last day of the rally and we really didn’t have any seminars or sessions that we wanted to attend until afternoon. One of the things we had wanted to do was go to the Norcold representatives at the rally and complain about our refrigerator problems we had had last month. When we went to the booth in the vendor area they told us to contact the customer service rep at the service center, which was located at the Balloon Fiesta grounds, not too far from where we were parked. Since we had some time we went there only to find that the customer service rep had already headed home. We were talking to a guy who was Norcold’s service manager for the Western area of the country and told him our sad story, including that shortly after the cooling unit was fixed the ice maker went out. The service guy told us he couldn’t do much for us with regard to the cooling unit and our insurance deductible, he would come over and take a look at the ice maker for us. He followed us back to the coach, checked over the refrigerator and made some adjustments for us. Then he looked at the ice maker and told us that, yes it was shot and we needed a new one. He then offered to replace it for free to try to make up some of our unhappiness with Norcold. He then proceeded to put in a new ice maker for us. That would have been about $250 or $300 to get fixed, so we felt a little better about Norcold - or at least this particular representative of the company.
After getting the fridge worked on we headed over to the fairgrounds about 1:00 for the business meeting of the Elks International Chapter. Immediately after the meeting they had a social hour in the same room. Normally there are several hundred members at the Elks International meetings, however, this one was poorly attended, with only about 70 or so. After the Elks social we headed back to the parking area because I had scheduled a business meeting for the 100%ers Chapter at 5:30 in a tent near where our coach was parked. Unfortunately, only three couples showed up for the meeting and I needed four for a quorum, so we couldn’t have an official meeting. That was very disappointing because I had personally contacted at least seven members of the chapter and told them of the meeting and most told me they would be there. Unless we have a meeting our chapter will go into inactive status next year.
The entertainment for this night was being held in a large tent right in the parking area. The group was the Flying J Wranglers and was another local group, this one VERY country. A little too much so - we left after about 10 minutes and headed back to the coach for the night. They also held a “balloon glow” at the parking area, where several hot air balloons set up at night tethered to the ground and light up the bags with their burners. Unfortunately, it was too cold to go out wandering around the balloon field and we couldn’t see it from where we were parked.
Friday, March 26th we had to leave the Balloon Fiesta grounds and the FMCA rally. One of the other FMCA chapters we belong to is called the 3T’s Chapter. The sole purpose of the chapter is to hold a two day rally after each FMCA convention to allow members of the chapter to rest. The three “T’s” stand for “To dump, To launder, and To rest.” The rally is always held the two days immediately after the rally and always at an RV park within an hour’s drive of the FMCA venue that has
full hookup sites. In this case we headed for a KOA about 20 miles from the Balloon Fiesta grounds. We got in around 12:30 or so and immediately headed out for lunch and to a local Laundromat to get our laundry done. That evening we had a nice meal at the park with the rest of the Chapter. There were ten rigs in attendance at this mini rally. Among them were Peggy and Vernon again, who we had encouraged to join the 3T’s.Saturday was the “rest” day so after a relaxing morning we headed out with Peggy and Vernon to do some geocaching, something we had not done in a week or so. We found seven caches within a couple hours. After a stop at the grocery store we went back to the coach where Jackie helped Peggy register to be “real” geocachers. They now have an official geocaching name (Team 2Bs) and seven caches to their credit. Later on that evening we had a happy hour with the group and then the entire chapter went to a Chinese restaurant near the KOA for dinner. The food was very good and it was nice relaxing with our friends over dinner. We then headed back to the coach for the night.
Sunday, March 28th it was time to head out on our own again. We will be heading West from Albuquerque, working our way back through Arizona to Southern California for the remainder of the spring. Peggy and Vernon are headed East, towards Texas and then up to Michigan in the summer months. We have been traveling on and off with Peggy and Vernon for the last two months and we will miss them. Our original plan was to leave Albuquerque on Sunday, spend two nights in Gallup, New Mexico, two nights in Flagstaff, Arizona, and then down to Surprise, Arizona, near Phoenix, on April 1st where we have reservations for a week at a nice RV resort. However, I have been watching the weather and there is a storm coming in at midweek so we changed plans. We left Albuquerque at about 10:00 a.m. after a final breakfast get-together with the 3T’s and headed West towards Gallup, about 150 miles. We got into Gallup but only paid for one night. We didn’t even unhook the car since they parked us in a pull through spot.
Monday, March 29th we awoke in Gallup, New Mexico to 27 degrees! Way too cold - time to head out! We started West on Interstate 40 again, this time headed to Flagstaff, Arizona, about 180 miles away. Since we gained an hour when we went into Arizona, we got to the park about 1:00 p.m. and got settled in. Our cat, Smokey, is no longer traveling in a cage. He is now allowed to stay and, although he still does not care for the moving vehicle much, he does settle down on the floor after a little yelling at us.
We stayed at the Black Bart RV park on the East end of town. Not the nicest park, but far less expensive than the only other park in town, the KOA. We registered here for two nights which will have us leaving on Wednesday morning. The snow is expected to hit Flagstaff on Wednesday night. By that time we should be down in the desert near Phoenix and safe from the snow. After a couple of quick errands we relaxed in the coach for the rest of the day and evening. I forgot to mention that I had been able to get the Silverleaf system hooked up to the coach and the laptop that I use for navigation and was able to use it on both Sunday and Monday as we traveled. It is amazing the information that you can get from the computer. I think it will be very helpful in getting better fuel mileage, and also ensuring that the coach doesn’t have any heating problems in the summer. A very nice system.Tuesday we headed out for lunch at one of the two Triple D recommended restaurants in Flagstaff. This one was called Salsa Brava and was right on old Highway 66 on the East end of town. It is a Mexican restaurant with some slightly unusual things on the menu. I had a chicken chimichanga with a cream sauce that was very good. They also have a salsa “bar” with several varieties of salsa to try. It was a little on the pricey side, but the portions were good, as was the service. Not a bad place to try. After lunch we headed up to the Lowell Observatory which is on a hill overlooking downtown Flagstaff. One of the other couples who were at the 3T’s rally knew we were going to Flagstaff and gave us two free passes for the observatory. They belong to some society that gets them free passes to a variety of venues around the country. The Lowell Observatory was founded in 1894 and has been an active astronomical laboratory ever since. This was the observatory that discovered the planet (now ex-planet) Pluto back in 1930. We got there in time for a tour of the place led by a very knowledgeable docent.
We got to visit one of the original telescope domes and tour the museum. It was a fun and educational tour. After the observatory we did some caching, but were only able to find three. We had tried to get to several others, but ran into access and parking problems. When it started getting late in the afternoon we decided to call it quits at three finds. We are both also starting to get winded from spending the last week and a half at altitudes over 6,000 feet. Neither Jackie nor I do well at altitude. She has been sucking on an inhaler for the last couple days. I find myself waking up in the middle of the night gasping for air. Take me back to the low desert - soon!Wednesday, March 31st. We have been watching the weather and it shows that up here in the high country they are expecting snow Wednesday night and all day Thursday. Our reservation in Surprise, Arizona, in the Northwest Phoenix area, starts on
Thursday. Time to get out of dodge before the snow hits. We pack up the coach under cloudy skies with a pretty stiff wind. About 10:00 a.m. we head out of Flagstaff and head South on Interstate 17 towards Phoenix. It is only about a 115 mile drive to our next destination, the Pioneer RV Resort, We arrive at the park about 12:15 p.m. and get settled in for one night. We are now under 2,000 of elevation, in no danger of snow and with air thick enough to breath! Yea!A little background about Pioneer. There is a small park here with an “old west” town set up. It really is only a theater and a couple of store fronts, but it is a tourist attraction that has been here for many years. When I first started withe the Sheriff’s Office in 1970 our shooting range was here at Pioneer. Sometime in the late 80's the Federal Government, who owned the land our range was on, decided they needed the land to build a Federal prison. The Sheriff’s range was moved out to the far Northwest, halfway to Wickenburg on Highway 60, and the Feds built a minimum/medium prison on the site. We can see the prison from where we are parked.
After getting set up we headed North a couple of miles to the outlet stores located in Anthem, Arizona. Anthem didn’t exist when I left the Phoenix area in 1998. It is now a far reaching bedroom community. While we were wandering around the outlet stores I was wondering if Anthem was part of Phoenix, or an unincorporated area of the county like parts of Sun City. That question was answered when we left the stores to head home. We saw several Phoenix Police vehicles parked near a slope by the freeway. There was also a van from the coroner’s office and a Phoenix PD crime scene van. This tells my cop mind that there is, or was, a dead body somewhere in the immediate area. After we got home we put on the local news on the over-the-air TV, but didn’t catch any mention of a body up in Anthem. I guess in a metro area of 3 million people some dead bodies have to go unmentioned.
Thursday, April 1st we headed out of Pioneer and drove a grueling 25 miles to the Sunflower RV Resort in Surprise, Arizona. We will be here for a week and I am looking forward to seeing some of my family. My kids and most of my grandkids all live in the West Phoenix area, as well as one of my brothers, Ken, who lives in Goodyear. We are looking forward to getting with some or all of them during the next week. After we got settled into the park we did our laundry and relaxed the rest of the day. We have a nice spot near the back of the park looking East over the Aqua Fria River channel and Sun City.
Friday we went out after lunch to do some caching. We have never cached in the far Northwest part of Phoenix and there are a lot of caches out here. In a few hours we had managed to get 12 finds with no DNF’s. After caching we headed over to the Sun City Elks Lodge for a cocktail. We have been to this Lodge before, but it has been a couple of years. This is one of the larger lodges in the order with well over 2,000 members. Tonight was fish fry night and they were lined up out the door to get into the restaurant. We just had a couple of drinks. We also signed up for the Easter Sunday brunch that the Lodge is having. As soon as Jackie saw they were going to be serving leg of lamb she was ready to come. They will also have baked ham for me since I don’t care for lamb. After our cocktails we went down the street to the local Olive Garden for dinner. Had a very nice dinner outside on the patio. It was nice finally being back in nice weather where we could do that. After dinner we headed home for the evening.
Saturday, April 3rd I spent a good part of the day doing work around the coach. I needed to do my maintenance activities, checking fluids, lubricating things, that kind of stuff. I also did some minor fixes like a couple of loose body panels. Late in the afternoon we headed down to Goodyear to meet my oldest daughter Tye for
dinner at the Golden Corral restaurant. Tye had wanted to buy us dinner. We got to the restaurant and met with Tye, her youngest daughter (and my youngest granddaughter) Jordan, Tye’s oldest daughter (and my oldest granddaughter) Crystal, Crystal’s husband Tyrell and their son, Little Tyrell. My son Roy was out of town and my other daughter Tracie was working. Tye’s husband Frank is disabled and was not feeling well, so he didn’t come. We had a very nice dinner at the restaurant, which was a buffet, meaning we ate way too much!After dinner the five of them followed us back up to Surprise to the motorhome where they spent several nice hours visiting with us. It was nice to see at least some of the family again. Tyrell is my second great grandchild and the only one that lives
here in Phoenix. It is fun to see him. He is pretty shy and still doesn’t come to me, but Jackie was able to pick him up and hold him for a little while, which is great progress. He is nearly two, so I figure in another year or so he will feel comfortable enough to let me hold him and interact. He sure is a cute kid.Sunday, April 4th was Easter Sunday. We headed over to the Sun City Elks Lodge about 12:30 for the Easter Brunch. They seated us at a table with two other couples who were friends. They were both from Washington State but spent much of the winter in the Sun City area. They were very friendly and we chatted all through brunch. It was kind of funny because one of the women was convinced that she knew us from somewhere because we looked familiar to her. She kept taking guesses and asking questions trying to figure it out. They didn’t look familiar to us, but it kept the conversation going. The brunch was pretty good. They had lamb and ham along with scalloped potatoes and creamed green beans. They also had a small green salad bar and some breakfast items. The food was tasty, there just wasn’t a lot of variety. Nonetheless, it was still a good brunch and we had good company. After eating we thought we might go to the mall or something just to walk around, but we found everything was closed for Easter. We ended up going home and just playing on the computer for the afternoon.
About 3:40 in the afternoon I was sitting in the back of the coach at my desk and Jackie was up front at her computer on the kitchen table. I felt the coach start to move around, kind of like someone was jumping up and down. This went on for about 30 seconds and both of us, at nearly the same time, asked “are you jumping around?” Jackie said something about an earthquake and I told her, “Arizona doesn’t have earthquakes.” She said that it sure felt like one. I went on the computer and checked the earthquake site and sure enough, there had just been a big (7.2) earthquake in Mexico, just South of the border near El Centro, California. This was over 200 miles away as the crow flies and we felt it pretty strongly. As I always do when I feel a quake, I filled out the survey form on the quake web site for the shake map. I then spent the next hour watching CNN news cover the quake. Pretty interesting. I lived in Phoenix for nearly 40 years and never felt a quake before.
Monday, April 5th we headed out after lunch and went down to Goodyear to visit with my brother Ken and his wife Susan. Shortly after arriving we headed out with them to do some geocaching in the area. Earlier this year we had introduced them to geocaching and they got hooked. They are already up to nearly 400 caches and have hidden a couple of caches of their own. We went out first and found their two caches so we could sign them and get credit. Then we went out and found four others for a total of six caches for the afternoon. Most of them they had already found and signed, but we did find one that was only a couple of days old that was a new find for them too. After caching we headed over to Applebee’s for a nice dinner, then back to their house where I helped Ken with some of the geocaching software. They are getting ready to go on a Caribbean cruise in a week or so and are taking all their caching stuff with them. They want to cache in Florida before they board the ship and they have already identified caches on the various islands they will be visiting. Go Ken and Susan!
Tuesday we did some shopping in the afternoon after lunch. For lunch we did the West Phoenix location of My Big Fat Greek Restaurant. Both Jackie and I had the same menu items that we had at the location in Tucson, and both of us found them to be not nearly as good. As Jackie said while we were eating, “if this was our first time at this restaurant, I wouldn’t come again and wouldn’t tell anyone else about it.” The food in Tucson was very good, the food at this Phoenix store was marginal at best. Jackie said the meat in her gyro was salty and dry, my stuffed peppers were mushy and had way too much cheese. The potatoes on my plate were nearly inedible. All in all, this was not a good restaurant experience. We told the waitress about our concerns, and she didn’t seem to care at all and no one else came out to talk to us. We might go back to the Tucson store, but will not ever go to any of the Phoenix locations again.
Wednesday, April 7th we took a drive down to where my daughter Tye lives in Glendale. When they were at the coach last Saturday we had told her that she could take some Halibut and Salmon with her, but we forgot to get it out. We wanted to take some down to her. Although she was working her husband Frank was there. My son Roy was also there. He had been out of town on Saturday so it was nice to see him for a little while. After visiting Frank and Roy we did some caching up near Sun City and Peoria. We were able to find seven caches with no DNF’s. After caching we headed home for the evening.
Thursday morning we were up and packing the coach for a 10:00 a.m. departure for the Colorado River. We left Surprise and headed West for the 150 mile drive to Ehrenberg, a little town on the Arizona side of the river, just across from Blythe, California. The drive was pretty uneventful, other than a little wind, and we arrived just about 1:00 p.m. After getting set up in a nice spot right on the river we relaxed the rest of the day. We are staying at one of our Western Horizon’s parks, Colorado River Oasis, and will be here ten days. We have been to this park a couple of times before, but only for a day or two at a time. This will be our first extended stay here.
Friday, April 9th we were up and out by 9:00 a.m. heading North in the car towards Lake Havasu City. Lake Havasu is in Arizona about 80 miles North of I-10 along the Colorado River. For those who have lived in a cave all their lives, Lake Havasu is where the original London Bridge was relocated back in the 70's. We are headed up
there to spend the day with our camping group from the Indio Elks Lodge, the Desert Drifters. We had found out that the Drifters were having an outing at Lake Havasu this weekend and that 23 rigs, including our best friends, Barry and Colleen, were going to be there. They had all gone up on Thursday, the day we came to Ehrenberg from Phoenix. It took a little under two hours for us to drive up and we arrived at the RV park where the Drifters were staying around 11:00, just in time to go to lunch with Barry and Colleen. We had to hurry through lunch because the Drifters had rented a pontoon boat for the day and we were going out on it at 12:30 along with Barry and Colleen and several other friends of ours from the Indio area.A van from the boat rental place picked us up at the RV park and took us down to the docks. We had nice inboard party boat, probably about 22 feet long, and headed out for a cruise. We were going to be out about 2 hours or so. We toured around under the London Bridge for a while, then headed South on Lake Havasu towards Parker Dam, the structure that creates the lake. The weather was just perfect, in the middle 70's, and it was very nice out on the water. It was a little too early in the year
for swimming in the lake - the water was still rather chilly, but being on the boat was fun. After our two and a half hours we went back to the dock and took the van back to the RV park. The group was scheduled to go to the American Legion in town at 5:30 for dinner, but since it was only about 4:00 we decided to go to the Lake Havasu City Elks Lodge for a cocktail. Barry and Colleen, who are also Elks, went with us. We had never been to this lodge. We had a couple of drinks and got a lodge pin for our banner and then left to go to dinner. We got out a little late, about 5:40 and then realized we didn’t know where the American Legion was. We finally found it and arrived about 50 minutes late. Although the rest of the group was just getting served their meals, the tables were full and the food didn’t really look all that appetizing, so we left there and headed over to a nice restaurant on the lake for dinner. The four of us had a very nice dinner - a little pricey, but nice. The worst part was the drinks. We each had one drink (doubles) and our drink cost was a third of the total bill. The name of the restaurant was Shugrue’s, and while I can recommend the food, try to avoid drinking there if at all possible. It is very over priced on alcohol. It does have a very nice glassed-in dining area overlooking London Bridge and the water and has a very nice atmosphere. After dinner we went back to Barry and Colleen’s coach and decided to stay the night since it was nearly 9:30 by the time we got done eating. We slept on the couch, which was not too comfortable, but at least we didn’t have to drive home two hours in the dark. Saturday morning we got up, had some coffee and then headed back down South to Ehrenberg and our own coach. Barry and Colleen were playing golf and were leaving at 9:00, so we got out just before then. We got home around lunch time and spent the rest of the day just relaxing around the coach.Sunday, April 11th we left the coach after lunch to do some caching. Surprisingly, there are not a lot of caches in the Blythe area. We did one “run” of caches up U.S. 95 from Blythe along the California side of the Colorado River. We were able to find seven caches before a low fuel warning light forced us back across the river to the Flying J in Arizona. There is about 20 to 25 cent difference in the price of fuel between California and Arizona. After caching we went home and I made a batch of chili for dinner.
Monday was a chores day, we did our laundry at the RV park and then did some shopping in Blythe. We did manage to get in one cache, a puzzle cache. Normally we don’t do puzzle caches, but this one was at a pioneer cemetery right across the street from our park so we couldn’t resist. Usually puzzle caches require you to find certain things, use the information you acquire to solve riddles or puzzles to find the actual coordinates of the cache. In this case we had to find a certain family’s plot in the cemetery, count the number of wooden crosses, find a clue on one of them and then apply all the information in a code to get the coordinates. We did it! Yea us! One more cache for the records.
Wednesday, April 14th we went out after lunch to do some more caching in the Blythe area. We were able to find a total of ten for the afternoon. While we didn’t have any DNF’s for the day, there were two caches that we had started to head for and called them off before we got to the immediate area because it was clear that they were too far out in the desert and too difficult to reach. We drove about four miles out into the desert for one until we came to a steep wash that I decided would just not work with our Jeep. While we have four wheel drive, we do not have the trail package that I thought we would need for this descent. The other one we called off involved having to cross a golf course and there were golfers out playing. We didn’t want to get knocked in the head by a ball just for a cache. Sometimes you have let good sense prevail in this sport. After caching we went back to the coach and had cocktails with some of our neighbors who had invited us out for a chat. An interesting group. One is a single male traveler who has been full time for seven years. Another couple are from Sequim, Washington and travel about 7 months a year. We had a lot to talk about with them since we spent a week in Sequim last Spring. The third neighbor were a couple from Desert Hot Springs, of all places, right in our old backyard. We had a very nice chat before retiring for dinner and the rest of the evening in the coach.
Thursday we went into Blythe in the afternoon to take in a movie. There is only one theater in Blythe, and they only have three movies showing. The only one that was of any interest to us was “Date Night” with Tina Fey and Steve Correl. The theater was pretty shabby and for the first quarter of the film we were the only people in our theater. A couple of young girls came in a little later, but that was it. Pretty close to a private screening. Although the theater was a little junky, the seats were comfy and the equipment worked, so we enjoyed the movie. It was a pretty decent romantic comedy, certainly not Oscar material, but pretty funny. After the movie we went home and had another happy hour with our neighbors and then dinner.
Friday, April 16th, we headed out after lunch for some more caching. We had pretty much exhausted the close caches, so we had to head East to Quartzsite to get near some we hadn’t found yet. We were only able to find four in a couple of hours because most were desert caches that required some hiking. The last one we had to hike about a half mile out into the desert and it was a little rougher than we
expected. We had to go through several washes and with the temperature nearly ninety degrees, we were pretty wore out by the time we got back. We did find the cache we went looking for, but it finished the day for us. After cooling down we did some quick shopping and then headed home. While out at cocktails with the neighbors we became aware that there was going to be karaoke at the clubhouse that evening. We had a quick dinner and headed over about 7:30. There were not too many people in attendance, and even fewer singing, so I got to do about a dozen songs. Had a great time and sang until 10:30 before heading home for bed.Saturday we decided to stick close to home and we just hung around the house and relaxed. We had cocktails with the neighbors in the late afternoon and after dinner went back over to the clubhouse for more karaoke. There were a lot more people at
this session than there were the night before. There is a regular residential mobile home park inside of the RV park and a lot of the residents were there. The crowd was also much younger, more people in their 30's. Because there were so many singers I only got to do about five songs all night, but we still had a good time. We headed back to the coach about ten or so.Sunday, April 18th we packed up the coach and hit the road again. We headed West on I-10 for the 150 mile trip to Silent Valley, our ownership park in the mountains above Banning, California. We got into Silent Valley about 2:00 p.m. and picked out a nice spot near the clubhouse and store. When we arrived we found that our friends Ray and Suzie Babcock were parked right across the road from us. After we got set up we went over and had cocktails with them and chatted. We then had them over for dinner. We had been cooking pork ribs in the crock pot all day and we had plenty for the four of us. We had a very nice dinner and caught them up on what had been going on with us since we last saw them in Tucson at the Monaco rally. They didn’t go to Albuquerque for the FMCA convention.
And that brings us to the end of this episode of our travels. We are going to be here in Silent Valley for a full 30 days, so the next chapter will cover our time here in the mountains. Until the next time, keep the faith, keep the fun!
