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. 

Happy New Year!

Christmas was quite different for us this year in a couple of significant ways; since we're not around our kids like we used to be, we had no idea what they wanted or needed.  So, Jane embraced the technology and told them to make lists and put them on our Amazon account.  Since we were scheduled to fly from Tucson to Dallas, we wouldn't be able to take presents with us, so she did almost all of our Christmas shopping on Amazon and had the presents shipped to Brian's house.  When we arrived at Brian's, we had only one small problem, we had a pile of Amazon boxes all addressed to Brian and we didn't know whose presents were in which boxes.  It all worked out in the end and everyone got the right gifts! 





  And the other was having Christmas at Brian's house instead of them coming to our house.
It gets pretty crowded in the RV with 7 people so it was nice to have our family together in an actual house with a kitchen big enough for cooking Christmas dinner.  It was a new experience for Brian but he was a great host.




When we got back to Arizona, we discovered that our neighbors had covered Jane's plants to protect them from the freezing temperatures.  Did we mention when we started this whole RV thing that one of our goals was to never be cold again?  People who come here from Canada think this is great, but 28 degrees is not our idea of warm.  It's a good thing we didn't get rid of the sweatshirts and other winter clothes.  At 4:00 in the afternoon, people gather at various spots in the park to sit outside and have "happy hour".  Although we have been invited to several of these gatherings, we have had to explain that we are not snobs.....we just don't sit outside when it is SO COLD.  "Just sit in the sunshine" they say.  Yeah, right. 

But, we jumped back into the swing of things with a New Year's Eve dance where we won a plastic champagne bottle full of candy for "best dance moves".

I'm back to pickleball and golf and Jane has her line dancing.  We go to dances on Friday nights, they have Karaoke on Sunday nights and I've been recruited to play on one of the park's two softball teams.

We really like the park here and people say this has been an unusually cold winter.  Where have we heard that before?  Maybe last year in Harlingen where they hadn't seen snow in 13 years....until we arrived.   

We haven't decided yet where we're going to spend April and May, but we'll figure it out some time in Feb and start making reservations.

Taking Care of Business

In order to maintain domicile in Texas, we have to continue professional relationships there... doctors, accountants, lawyers, register our vehicles, etc.   We spent Sept/Oct in the D/FW area getting the truck and trailer inspected, seeing our primary doctors for our annual physicals, going back to our specialists, having tests run and making sure our medications are doing their jobs.  Not exactly exciting stuff which is why there hasn't been a blog in a while.  I don't think my Urologist would let me take a selfie with him to include with this narrative, but maybe he will when I go see him at Christmas.  I'll get to that later.

Jim found a pickleball tournament in Rowlett while we were parked in Mansfield and entered.  He entered the men's doubles, over 65, skill level 3.5 (yes, pickleball is complicated) so he needed a partner.  Another entrant (Tom) also needed a partner and so they teamed up to win the gold medal in their division.  A couple of the games were nail biters, but they prevailed in the end.  They said they were just keeping it interesting. Yeah, right.
(I wrote this part... :)  Jane)







A week before we were due to leave Mansfield, Brian was out of town and I filled in for him at shortstop on his softball team.  I was throwing a ball to first base when I felt something pop in my shoulder.  At this point, it's looking like it may be a career-ending injury.  I'm doing PT to strengthen my shoulder, but I may have played my last softball game.  We'll see.  The good news is, I can still play pickleball and golf.

November 1st it got better because we moved the "rolling estate" down to the Houston area to be near Chris, Angie and the grandkids for a month.  We had fun taking Caleb and Hannah to the movies, Chuck E. Cheese, Jumping World, the park and just playing with them at their house or having them visit us.





Here is Hannah at Jumping World.




Hannah had a birthday in Nov and turned 6.
Caleb will be 9 in Jan.

Brian drove down to the Lynches place and we were all together for Thanksgiving.




We left Houston on Nov 29, spent the night in Ft. Stockton, TX and drove to Lordsburg, NM the next day.  I hope I don't offend anyone who may have grown up there, but the best thing I can say about Lordsburg is that I was able to buy diesel for $3.11 a gallon when all the truck stops along the highway were selling it for $3.39 - $3.59.

We gave thanks when we arrived in Casa Grande on time, Dec 1.  No wheels fell off the trailer and the truck hummed along like a sewing machine, even in the 30+ mph cross-winds in AZ.

The first day here we finished getting set up, made a trip to Wal-Mart to re-stock our fridge and pantry and then we decided we'd just jump in and start getting involved.  I started playing pickleball and Jane has been line dancing.  They have dances here every Friday night and we go to a couples dance class on Wed.  She's been dancing 5 days a week when you count the classes and dances.

They have 4 different groups of people who play golf every week at various courses around here and I've gotten involved in that as well. While we still haven't found the very elusive warmth for which we search, the people are great. Again, hope not to offend, but the many Canadians here are much nicer than the French Canadians we met last year in the Rio Grande Valley.

This may very well be the friendliest park we've been to.  At 3 pm you'll see groups of people in various places sitting in large groups just talking and visiting.  Our neighbors told us it was happy hour every day at 3 and we could join them any time.  I've met some really nice people playing pickleball and golf and Jane has met friendly folks at the dance classes.  It's the total immersion RV park experience.  In addition to all the activities, one of Jane's new friends suggested a local church which we attended last week.  It was our first time to visit a cowboy church and the pastor was really good.  Another line dance friend invited us to her church for their Christmas choir program and we went to that too.

We'll be flying to Dallas on Dec 20 to have Christmas at Brian's house.  The Lynches will be driving up from Houston and we'll all be together again.  Then, we'll be back here the 29th for the rest of the winter, that is, "if the Lord wills and we live."

At this point, we have no idea what we're doing in April. Up until this point, we have always had plans made about a year in advance.  But after four years, we have become a bit lax.    We'll just have to figure that out between now and then. Maybe the east coast.  Jim still hasn't been to Fenway and we would like to see the baseball hall of fame to make our baseball travels complete.

We wish everyone out there a very merry Christmas, and a wonderful 2019!

Time Flies When . . .

We can't believe we've already been in Arkansas over a month and our time is almost over. It's been everything we wanted it to be. I found two locations in Mountain Home that have indoor pickleball courts, so I've been able to play twice a week.  We've been to the Elks Club with Kathy (Jim's sister) and Bob for dancing and karaoke.  And of course, plenty of time on the boat.



We are staying at the RV park where we stayed last year before it was officially open.  This year it is finished - 22 sites are ready.  We didn't choose a shady spot because we wanted the Dish to work and on the really hot days, we have been especially glad for two air conditioners.




The first couple of weeks were so hot we could only stand to go out on the lake in the evenings, but then a cool front came through bringing rain (3 inches in an hour one day) and cooler temperatures.








A beautiful sunset on Lake Norfork.







At the end of July, family members came from Texas and Illinois to meet up with our resident Arkansas family for our big annual summer week-long get together.  Scott and Amy's "garage/barn/equipment shed/party venue" has become THE place to have our once-a-year family food fest.

Left to right; John, Adrienne, Brian, Jake, Angie and Scott, the 6 cousins who spent 1 week each summer together when we all camped in tents years ago.

Jake and Jaime brought steaks and Jake cooked them on the grill and everyone brought side dishes.  We played ping pong and bean bag toss, listened to music, played cards and caught up with everyone as well as sharing a few classic memories.

Jake & Jaime's daughter Milli, playing ping pong.





Brian hadn't seen some of his cousins in 20+ years, so he had a lot of catching up to do.  Then, we spent the next few days meeting up in various places on the lake, tying the boats together and just hanging out.





Caleb and Gram on Grampa's boat.

                           Hannah and Milli on the tube...with an oar....going in circles

Grampa and Caleb snorkeling....yes, you can see their legs under the water.....the water in Lake Norfork is really clear.

Hannah and Uncle Brian on the boat.














Chris just chillin'








There was plenty of tubing and skiing and wakeboarding and the guys played golf one day.

A rainy day was spent having lunch at Sonic, seeing a movie, and getting ice cream at Baskin Robbins.

Hannah seems to enjoy the lake a little more each year.  Caleb has always loved it....tubing, skiing, snorkeling, swimming, cannonball dives....and the two days we went to the "sandy beach" he also loved playing in the sand.

Jim played in a pickleball tournament in Heber Springs, AR. Lost in the bronze medal round.  This was his first time to play singles in a tournament.  There weren't enough entrants to divide them by age group and skill level so they just used skill levels and Jim had to play against a man 30 years younger. A very agile 37 year old.  That did not go very well.  But he gained experience and knowledge.  The knowledge to make sure there are age level divisions in the next singles tournament he enters.
We had a visit from Texas friends Vicki & Dale (43 years is a long time to be friends and we still love 'em) and from Jimmie and Ed from Florida.

Vicki & Dale shared a session of karaoke in our neighbor, Bob's garage.



We played cards, went for boat rides and they enjoyed the respite from the Texas heat.



At the very end of their visit our boat, which has been as good as gold for 11 summers, went belly up.  Nephew Scott came out and towed us in and Kathy and Bob told us about a local repairman.  It should be ready before we leave Arkansas....then it can rest for several months before we hit the lake again.

Leaving here around the 7th of September and going to Texas to a park where we have never stayed before in Mansfield.

The Wild Wild West

Our plans were to leave Denton, TX,  on Memorial Day, but our whole trip was jeopardized when 10 days prior to that, the tailgate was stolen off of our truck while we were in downtown Dallas at the 6th Floor Museum.  And there were only 5 work days until we were scheduled to leave.

The first place I checked said it would be at least two weeks, but the second place did the job in 4 and a half days and on Memorial Day, we left Denton and arrived in Amarillo, where the wind blows constantly and hard, like it did all winter in Harlingen.

The next day we arrived in Denver where we did some "touristy" things; like take a tour of the Coors Brewery.  Jane and I both like to watch the show "How It's Made" especially when they show manufacturing businesses with lots of automation.  The Coors Co. did not disappoint.

We also toured the train museum

and the Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Also toured the Denver mint, but they don't allow pictures.  Two armed guards followed along as we took the guided tour to make sure no one lagged behind to try to nab some "samples".

We had a lovely dinner with our nephew Zach and his wife Katie at their home and then moved on to Cheyenne where we had reservations for 6 nights.







They gave us the "boot", so we moved on after 4 nights because we had done everything there is to do in Cheyenne in one day.

We spent one night in Green River, WY, where I stopped to say hi to a guy who runs a towing company there.  I had met him at a trade show back in the early 90s and had seen him every year since.  He would attend at least two and sometimes 3 trade shows a year.

The next day we arrived in Irwin, ID, about an hour's drive from Jackson, WY.  Even though the name, Buck's Gas and RV didn't sound like it would be a great RV park, it turned out to be very nice.

License plates in Idaho have the inscription "Scenic Idaho" across the top and it is really beautiful.

And we had a very nice couple camped next to us.  Sonny and I had some nice conversations and enjoyed talking to each other.  He and his wife, Kay, had a new motorhome and were having some problems with it (no surprise there) which led to more conversations but Sonny was keeping a good attitude which is crucial when dealing with all the things that go wrong with new RVs.




We spent a day in Jackson

Each corner of the square, had an arch built from antlers

Each year the elk shed their antlers (and grow new ones in the spring) and there are so many, the boys scouts gather them up and sell them as a fund raiser.  Some of them are sold to people who believe the antlers have medicinal value.




We were about 40 miles east of Idaho Falls, so we took a day and went there to see the falls and because they have the closest Walmart.

I think Jane was getting a little too comfortable with the local park bear.










We read that there aren't many bears left at Yellowstone, but they have a place outside Idaho Falls called Bear World where they have many animals living in the "wild" and you can drive through the park.  So we did

And we did see lots of bears.  All of them had either been rescued or had been born there at the preserve.





And moose

And buffalo...it was June but he was still shedding his winter coat.  Kinda scruffy looking.

And dancing baby bears

When we realized how far we were from Yellowstone and how long we would be driving every day just to get there and back, we decided to get a hotel room for two nights in West Yellowstone.  We were glad we did, because we would not have seen half the park had we stayed in Idaho every night.

We saw buffalo grazing, sometimes as many as 20 or 30.

We saw the snake river up close from several different vantage points.

The upper falls make so much spray there is a constant rainbow on sunny days.

There were many hot springs with water ranging from 160 to 180 degrees. The Sulphur smell was not pleasant and many people viewed the springs while holding their noses.









My most frequent comment was, "Oh wow, look at that!"







We saw this grey wolf running along about 50 feet from the road.  For awhile there were no wolfs at Yellowstone and it reeked havoc with the ecosystem ranging from too many elk to not enough beavers in a trickle down effect.  Several years ago ten mating pairs were introduced to the park and things are now getting back to normal.

And of course, no trip to Yellowstone would be complete without seeing Old Faithful.  We spent three days seeing Yellowstone.  This was the third day and our last stop in the park.








We passed by the Teton Range on the way to Yellowstone.

On the way back, we stopped to see Lake Jackson.

That boat in the foreground has wakeboards on it.  I hope they have wetsuits.

We made it to Rapid City, SD where we saw a pretty sunset and . . .











. . . some president heads.

Then, we went to Badlands National Park where rolling grassland suddenly turns into rock formations that seem to spring up for no apparent reason.

This is also in Badlands where a lone buffalo was grazing at sunset.  There was a herd on the other side of the road, but this guy seemed to like the solitude and having all this grass for himself.










After a month of traveling and sight-seeing we settled down at our camp site in Arkansas to spend two months of quality lake time.

We'll be here until after Labor Day and then back to Texas in Sept.