Out in the Desert

It's been a long time since we posted but then Facebook seems to have taken over as the social posting site of choice. Anyway, we are down in the Arizona desert 6 miles outside of Quartzsite AZ. We are camped near a bunch of people called the Boomers. We have camped with them out here before and they are a great group of upbeat people. Our friend Pat has traveled down here along with us enjoying catching up with a lot of our old friends. They have nightly happy hours and campfires so we are not lacking from things to do. And then there is always plenty to do in town. There are probably more RVs here at one time than any other place in the world.

We plan on moving closer to town tomorrow and maybe going up to Lake Havasu to see the balloon festival this coming weekend.

Friends Visit

Well, a lot has happened since the last time we blogged. We gave up our lot at Park Sierra, took a job for the summer up in Oregon, have our niece Justine visiting for a month or so, and have hosted a relatively steady stream of visitors at our 'compound' here.

We gave up our Park Sierra lot for a lot of reasons, foremost of which was that we could not see ourselves spending much time at all there over the next five years. Gary's arthritis is really getting worse and our plans are to spend the winters down in southern Arizona. We loved Park Sierra but really could not afford to maintain a place that we would not spend any time at. Who knows what will happen on down the road.

Gary is back working for Portland General Electric up in Estacada Oregon. But this time it is at a day use park...no drunk campers to deal with. We have our own fenced in compound where we can actually host visitors from time to time. Cecile does not have to work here so she has been busy with various craft projects as well as playing Bridge online.

Our niece, Justine, came to visit with us in late June and will be here until early August. The rest of her family is coming up for a visit and Justine will ride back home with them. She and Cecile have been busy working on craft projects as well as our Pegs & Jokers sets.

Our latest visitors are our good friends Mary & Elaine who also brought along their granddaughter Michaela. We have had great wine, wonderful dinners, campfires and of course the great company. They will be here with us for a couple more days then they will start working their way up to Seattle to visit another of their granddaughters.

Ain't Life Grand!?

Stranded in the Desert

OK. It's not as bad as it sounds but it was a three hour blip in our travels. The first blowout that I have had in probably ten years. We had our last dentist appointments this morning at 8am in Algodones. Unfortunately our dentist was on some phantom Mexican time zone that is one hour later than normal time. Cecile finally got in around 9. They called me in around 10 but since I am philosophically opposed to poor customer service, I said no thanks and we left. We went back to the RV park, hooked up and got out around 11am.

Well, apparently the Aztec gods took severe umbrage to this bold act on my part against one of their minions. We were about seventy miles into our days journey, twenty miles from any decent sized town, and one of our tires decided it had had enough. Unfortunately we were on a two lane highway with small shoulders but I was able to barely get off the road. So we called the road service that was connected to our insurance. To make a long story short, three hours later we were back on the road. A combination of being out in the middle of nowhere and the service tech getting lost caused most of the extra time.

We are now just outside of Laughlin at a really nice RV park attached to Avi casino. It also has a movie complex on the grounds so Cecile can go gambling and I can go to the movies. We will chill out here until Thursday morning and then work our way back to Coarsegold for a few weeks.

Ain't life grand!

Done with the Gypsy Journal gathering

The rally was over yesterday, thank goodness, and we moved about ten miles down the road to Pilot Knob RV park in California. We are taking advantage of a promotion they have here. Get three free nights camping in exchange for listening to a sales pitch trying to get us to join a camping club. Free is worth the hassle.

This morning Gary goes to get his new bridge attached at the dentist in Algodones. No more hillbilly gap in his mouth. Hopefully it will fit the first time as I am not looking forward to staying here for a week to get adjustments.

We had a movie date yesterday after we settle in at the RV park here. Saw Battle for LA over in Yuma. The movie was a lot of action and a little acting but it kept us on the edge of our seats for almost two hours. Five bucks for a senior rate is hard to beat so we will probably go back again before we leave.

Ain't life grand!

On Our Way Back South

This is a picture of our grandson W (on the left) and his friend at the last game of the season for the Portland minor league baseball team

I just had to throw the above picture in here! We are currently holed up at Rolling Hills casino on I-5 just outside of Corning, CA. We spent the night in the Coos Bay, OR area and were planning to go down the coast but heard of several festivals along the way and thought that the vacation traffic might be pretty bad...plus having to go through/near the SF Bay Area made us change our minds. We also decided that it might not be a great idea to be on the road on Labor Day so we are charging down I-5 with not too much other traffic to speak of and hope to be at Park Sierra sometime late tomorrow afternoon.

We will be pretty busy during the almost three weeks we will be there. We are back to making Pegs & Jokers sets and have quite a few orders to fill before we start on the pumpkin lot in Burlingame. Both of us also have a few doctors appointments to take care of. And most important is to make a visit or two with my sister's family down in Fresno. Those nieces just get cuter all the time!

On The Tree Farm

2 1/2 year old W dressed in his Buzz Lightyear costume

2 month old M hanging out with Dad

Mt. Hood view from our porch

One portion of our host's farm

We are currently parked at a Christmas tree farm that is owned by our friends and sometime employers John & Lynn. They have a beautiful home on 53 acres south of Oregon City and it just happens to have a convenient RV space to park on. From the front of our fifth wheel we have views of Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens...along with some beautiful countryside.

John has a pretty nice workshop here so I have finally started to work on Pegs & Jokers sets again. It has been pretty slow going since I am doing portions of the process that I am not used to doing. Fortunately I am starting to get the hang of it and just finished cutting, routing and drilling ten sets. Only 90+ more to go. I am also getting a little distracted with other things going on here but then all work and no play makes Gary a dull boy.

Of course we have also been spending time visiting with our grandkids!

Yesterday John and I spent all day with a couple of other people putting price tags on over 2800 trees that we will sell down in the SF Bay Area. Today we are all off to a casino near the coast to interview a potential manager couple for our Christmas tree lot...all work, of course.

Ain't life grand!

It's 108 in Coarsegold today...

...and we're not there!

We finally escaped the heat there, leaving Park Sierra on Monday. The forecast was for continued temps around 100 degrees for the foreseeable future. Luckily, with Cecile's doctor's visits done for now, we escaped California on Monday. We got into Sutherlin, OR today with the temps topping out at 92. I wasn't real happy about the heat and wondered if we shouldn't have headed for the coast...until I saw the Coarsegold temps at my favorite weather site. I don't feel so bad now, as long as I'm pampered by our AC. The temps here are supposed to be down to the high 70's by Sunday when we plan on leaving here. Meanwhile, Coarsegold's forecast is solid 100+ for the next five days. We hope to never spend any summer time there.

More later!

Gary T