The Coldest Winter Since . . .

We arrived in Casa Grande, AZ on schedule (Dec 1) and with no detours, breakdowns or traffic issues, praise the Lord.  We spent the next day getting set up and then buying groceries and supplies we needed.

   

Before we even got out of the park to buy groceries, we were invited to “Happy Hour”, which we were told took place every day at 4 pm.  This turned out to be something that happened at various sites around the park every day.  Groups of people just gathered and spent an hour to 90 minutes visiting.

 Once the food was all put away and we rested from our 2 ½ days of travel, we decided we would jump in and get involved, so the following morning, I went to pickleball and Jane went to a Line Dance class.

Jane met a lady at line dancing whose husband played golf every Monday morning with a group from the park.   The following Monday morning, he picked me up and I met about a dozen guys from the park, one of whom was big into softball.

Fiesta Grande fielded two softball teams and he said they were always looking for players.  I told him I didn’t know if I could throw as I had a partially torn rotator cuff.  He asked, “Can you run?”  I said, “Yes.” He said, “Can you catch?”  I said, “Yes”.  He said, “Can you hit?”  I said, “Yes”.  He said, “Three out of four is great, in fact, half the guys on our team can’t throw either.”  So, I ended up playing 20 softball games with a bad shoulder, but had a lot of fun doing it.

Jane got into the line dancing and we did couples dancing once a week.  The park also had a dance every Friday night with a different band coming in to provide the music.  When she added it all up, she was dancing about 7-10 hours a week.  For someone who “hates” exercise, she was getting a lot of it.

I ended up cutting back on the pickleball due to golf and softball, but that was ok, because we seemed to be keeping plenty busy.  We also played cards on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.  Sunday evening was Karaoke night.  Another lady Jane met at line dancing, Laura, said her partner ran the Karaoke every other Sunday.  So, we got together and when Lee heard I liked to sing, he invited me to his place to pick out some songs.  I sang that Sunday night and on Tuesday Lee asked me if we would want to go to a local place (honky-tonk) and sing.  I said sure. 

Bill was the other guy who alternated doing the Karaoke and after I sang a couple of Sunday nights, he asked me if I would like a copy of his database of karaoke music, 337,000 files and I accepted.  It filled up a 2 terabyte hard drive, but now I can sing songs at home any time.

We flew back to Texas for Christmas and stayed with Brian in his home that he bought last year.  Chris, Angie and the kids came up from Houston so we were able to have the whole family together for Christmas.

From January until the end of March we settled into a routine of line dancing, dances, cards, Karaoke, golf, softball and pickleball with the occasional pot luck dinner or party of some sort.  

BUT, the one thing that was not planned was the weather.  Everyone who had been coming there for 10-20 years kept telling us, “Oh, this is not normal.  This is the coldest, wettest winter we’ve ever had.”  It was consistently 15-20 degrees below average for that time of year.  We told the happy hour folks, “We’re not anti-social, we just don’t like to sit out in the cold.”  We figure it can’t be like this two years in a row, so we’re going back next winter to hopefully experience a normal winter.

The law of averages catches up eventually and we’ve never considered ourselves lucky, well, because we never seem to win anything, but that all changed at the New Year’s Eve dance.  One of the band members announced that during the next song, they would have a dance contest and we won.

The prize was a plastic champagne bottle filled with Hershey’s kisses, whoo hoo!   That was just the beginning.   Actually, it started the first time we went to play card bingo and we each won one of the hands.

At the dances each week, they would draw for door prizes which consisted of a ticket to the next dance.  They drew our ticket 3 different weeks.  In addition to that there was a drawing for $10 cash which we won.  Then, at the park-wide end-of-the-year going away street dance, they drew our ticket for $25.  It almost got embarrassing, but it didn’t keep me from accepting our winnings.

We had a going away party for a couple who had been coming to the park for years, but were going to be staying in Washington State and not coming back.  Roger’s career had been in computers and he was THE go to guy for computer issues.  On top of that, he managed the park’s web site, was the videographer for all the park events and on and on in addition to answering everyone’s computer questions and was never too busy to come to your site and fix whatever problem you had.  As you can imagine, in a park with over 600 sites, it kept him busy and he always did it with a smile.  Before leaving, he divided up all the various functions he performed and trained 3 people to fill his shoes.  He still found time to write his own lyrics to songs and made his own karaoke versions.  His partner Joan was fun as well with a dry, witty sense of humor.  As a gag, I wrote new lyrics to Ghostbusters and we performed a little karaoke version titled Call Roger because that’s what everyone did when they had a computer problem.

We left Casa Grande on April 1 and headed for Las Cruces, NM.  Thirty miles from our destination I heard a small explosion that sounded like it came from the engine.  I looked at the gauges, no overheating, but I pulled over to the shoulder anyway.  Got out, popped the hood and started looking.  Finally, I saw an O-ring laying there that had come off a plastic hose fitting that had apparently broken (“blowed up” as R. D. Mercer would say).   If it had been a radiator hose, we would have been dead in the water right there.  But it wasn’t.  I didn’t know if I could keep driving or not, so I took a picture of it, called the Ford dealer in Las Cruces and texted the pic to the service writer.  After showing the pic to his diesel tech he said it was an air duct hose fitting that directed air into the flux capacitor or some such nonsense.  He said if I could limp in and get the truck to them, they had the part on the shelf as this was a common occurrence.  So, I drove the last 30 miles at 40 mph, got to our campground and set up the RV.  The next morning the truck would go no faster than 10 mph, but the dealer was only two miles away.  Got the truck fixed and pulled out of Las Cruces around 3:30 pm.  Fortunately our drive that day was only 60 miles to Alamogrodo, NM.  Wow!  Another case where God took care of us and met a need that we didn’t even know we were going to have.  If it had happened two hours earlier, we’d probably still be poking along out there on the interstate at 10 mph.  Or a different part might have taken days to get.

 As it turned out, we were able to visit White Sands National Monument on the day we planned.  It was another amazing display of God’s creation that baffles the mind.  Pure white sand piled in 30 foot high dunes, and 275 square miles of it.  There’s nothing like it anywhere.

Oddly enough, this picture looks similar to the one I took two years ago of Jane standing in front of 12 feet of snow at Crater Lake but this one is sand.













The next day we drove to Carlsbad, NM.  Jane had been to Carlsbad Caverns as a youngster, but I had never been.  I was so awestruck that I just walked around with my jaw hanging and my mouth open.  The bats could have roosted in my mouth, but it is just so amazing I couldn’t help it. 

I must have taken a hundred pics inside Carlsbad Caverns.  There were so many incredible sights and of course the pictures don't do it justice.

It said the Big Room is 600,000 square feet of space and is more than 750 feet underground.

We didn't stay for the evening show of bats flying out because the ranger said most of the bats haven't arrived yet from Mexico.  Only about 100 or so are there now.

On my birthday, we drove all day and arrived at Big Bend National Park in far southwest Texas.  It's the 2nd largest, but least visited of the national parks, because you have to want to come here.  It is not on the way to anything.  It is 150 miles from the nearest interstate highway.  Remote does not come close, but after one day, oh my!  Getting to the places we wanted to see involved a lot of hiking, a lot of it uphill.  We are not hikers, but we made it.  There was hiking, climbing, huffing and puffing.

Another hundred pics at Big Bend, but here are a few of my favorites.

 This is called The Window.

                                       Here we are at Balanced Rock

This is Santa Elena Canyon where the Rio Grande forms part of the border between Mexico and the U.S.









The next two months we'll be in Friendswood near Chris, Angie & the grandkids.  Then, two weeks in Mansfield and then two months in Arkansas.