Spring

The weather is turning warmer each day, but with that comes the spring winds. Soon will be in the 80's and back to the pool!

We have been to Organ Stop Pizza twice. What an experience with a theater organ that is unlike any we have ever seen or heard. And the pizza is pretty darn good too! The building was built for this organ and the acoustics are outstanding. It has 6000 pipes with many instrument attachments and it all can be seen including the air bellows.

Our Tubac trip was cancelled and we were sure disappointed, but maybe next year! Instead we went on a boat trip on Lake Saguaro. It is one in a series of lakes formed by dams. This one is a very narrow 10 mile lake. The boat covers 5 miles. After that is is to narrow for a large boat. Beautiful desert scenery.



Mountains and very deep water right up to the edge of the cliffs.



Some Saguaro cactus grow an unusual top and are very rare. Here is one of those cactus called a Crested Saguaro.


And, yes we have Bald Eagles here!
It was a beautiful sunny day, but with the narrow lake the wind really comes through the canyon so it was a bit cool - alright downright cold! The warm shore and the even warmer car were really appreciated this time.

We spent three Mondays going to Phoenix for minor laser surgery on Pam's eyes. At least we enjoyed great lunches thanks to our daughters Christmas gift of restaurant cards. These are restaurants we would not normally go to, but boy were they good and we might just go back now! We sure love those food gift cards!

There is a 3 day park party with activities, food and a street dance right now. Today we will be watching the golf cart races - yea it is a retired peoples park with lots of golf carts! Tonight we will be selling the pop and ice cream for the street dance. Lots of other games for those that wish to play!

The season is winding down and people are heading north already - mostly Canadians that have to get across the border and those with homes. Our travel schedule is now updated for our summer trip. Things are slowing down and our calendar now has empty days on it! Good thing, cause we are ready for pool time!

Time Flies By

We have had great weather here in the desert - cold, crisp mornings, warm afternoons, spectacular sunsets and stars shining brightly! Enjoying walks and bike rides.

We have become involved with changing the park from an illegal 40+ park to a legal 55+ park. We started just a couple of weeks ago and tomorrow is the community meeting, followed by surveying all the occupants and a lot of other paperwork to comply with the laws. That has kept us busy everyday and looks like it will be that way until March when it will be finalized and we will be done!

We took a day to go with a group to the Mystery House in Phoenix. It was built by an eccentric man in the 1920's from recycled materials. After his death, his daughter came to live there until her death in Nov. 2010. Three employees that had worked for her for 30+ years conduct tours.
The daughters bedroom is not on the tour because her cat still lives there. After the tour you are free to wander about the sprawling home.




It sits on a hill south of Phoenix and what a view from every patio and every window.



It is filled with art work, some of it very unusual. There is "stuff" everywhere. Every room is full! And with all this stuff filling every surface, piece of furniture and the floor, there was no dust or dirt anywhere! And this place is really big- lots of rooms!



There are lots of outdoor patios and fireplaces connecting different parts of the house. The only heat anywhere is fireplaces.





After, we all met at Applebees for a fun time and very good lunch. We can highly recommend the unlimited soup and salad, especially the french onion soup and the shrimp, spinach salad!

Next up is Organ Stop Pizza and Tubac!

Balloon Ride

Wow, the end of 2011 already. We did a park bus tour of Holiday Lights in Phoenix. The lights were fabulous, but the most fun was on the bus and a delicious dinner at a local cafe. On Christmas Day we had dinner with many friends and what a spread it was - no one left hungry !

We have finally turned the corner on weather. It is now sunny and warm like it is supposed to be! We have had enough rain and cold for this winter. On a beautiful calm, sunny day we went on a balloon ride. It was awesome!

The guys all had to help get the balloon ready. It sure looks big on the ground.
Then at sunrise we were up, up and away!

We rose to over 5000' and then the sky divers jumped out of the balloon basket. That was exciting watching them fall so quickly and from above it looked like they would hit the ground for sure before opening their parachutes.

There was absolutely no wind so we just floated without moving much. Lots of fields with a hill here and there. Quite a system of canals from two rivers that converge here. It is easy to see how dust storms start here with so many dirt fields with a few areas of housing. This is where we live from up above.
We then headed just across the street from where we launched at a sky diving airport to land in the open desert. At ground level there was a little wind so we did a few bounces before stopping. Then we all quickly exited and 13 skydivers were there to load up and take off again.

We plan on going to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta next October and we may just have to go on a balloon ride again! It was so much fun and except for the burners, it is so quiet up there just floating along.

Now we are in full swing for January activities and committees. More to come!

Finally Time for Update

We are so enjoying the sunshine and usually warm weather here. Once in a while we get a shower at night, but they sure need rain here and it does clear the dust out, so no complaints. We now have a cart for Cookie that goes behind Ralph's bike, so we all now enjoy bike rides. When Cookie is not using it, the garbage and recycle goes in it to the dump area across the street.

It was very quiet here until November and each day there are more people out and about. Cookie has her favorite buddies that she visits on walks and we are meeting new people and seeing old friends as they arrive.

Having never been here in the fall, we never knew how much cotton is grown in this area. There is field after field all over here. When the plant turns brown it is time to harvest. It has been fun watching how they pick the cotton. It is all done by machine. The first time through the fields the machine looks like a a giant fork lift with lots of "forks"in the front and a vacuum that sucks up the cotton into a bin as it is loosened. That gets about half of it. Then they come through with a giant vacuum and suck up most that is left. The field is then mowed and plowed. They stagger planting so the fields are ready for picking at different times. Trucks are everywhere hauling the cotton bales to processing plants.

We did a tag-a-long with a group from the park to Biosphere 2 near Tuscon. It is now owned by the University of Arizona that runs it as a research lab. The rain forest and ocean are the same as when people were living there. Other parts are being changed for different experiments. It is no longer a closed environment, so the original animals have been removed and they get native ones coming to visit. It was a very interesting tour with lots of stairs and parts that were very hot and humid.










Now for our really big news! We love this park and Casa Grande area and had planned to stay 7 months a year on our lot here in our 5th wheel. When we can no longer travel, this is where we would stay year round. So, with prices down due to the economy, we decided to look for a park model to put on our lot. We just couldn't find anything that we liked. So, we started looking at park models for sale in the park. Just down the street from our lot we found exactly what we wanted and the owner was very anxious to sell to go back to Tennessee with family. So we are now the owners of a park model with attached Arizona room that includes a living area and a computer room. It has a covered and lattice enclosed back porch that includes a finished shed with washer/dryer, water softener, its own hot water tank with utility sink and lots of storage cabinets. The front has a covered porch and carport. It has wood laminate floors throughout, lots of upgrades and was very well maintained. We are keeping our lot for our trailer and we will still be traveling 5 months a year.

So, since we had sold everything, we had to start over. What fun to get to buy everything new! We took possession on November 9 and started a thorough cleaning and then putting everything we had bought away. Our furniture came on November 16 and we officially moved in Nov. 17. We love it more everyday we are here. It is a perfect size, 700 square feet plus 120 square feet in the shed. We love to sit on the front porch and enjoy the sunsets. It is a work in progress, but we have come a long way from the empty place that it was.

If anyone is in this area please call us. We would love to see you and you can see our new home!

Here are a few pictures.
1. Front Porch
2. Living Room
3. TV Room
4. Dining and Kitchen





For Thanksgiving, our dear friends Roger and Barb invited us for turkey dinner. Boy, it was good! Thank you Barb and Roger. Yesterday, we were invited to join a group of Roger and Barb's friends here in Casa Grande. The ladies had facials with hot cocoa and cookies. The guys went to see the movie J. Edgar Hoover, with mixed reviews. Then everyone (16 in all) had turkey noodle soup, stuffing, rolls and pie. We sure enjoyed meeting everyone that we had heard so much about and dinner was delicious.

That's about all for this time. We have lots of activities planned for December, so may have more updates here soon.

Almost Home

We enjoyed a few days near Bend Oregon where we found beautiful sunny warm days, but cool nights. This time we spent two days visiting the Lava Lands nearby. It was very interesting and well worth seeing.

We are finishing our three week stay in Pahrump Nevada. For the first two weeks it was hot and sunny and we spent every afternoon in the pool. Since the afternoons were very hot, we did evening walks mostly. We had a couple of light shows over the mountains that were spectacular. Enjoyed sitting outside and watching the stars that you can actually see twinkling in the desert sky. Lots of planes coming in to land in Las Vegas and even a satellite one night moving through the sky. The past few days have reminded us that winter is coming with 40's at night and 60's during the day and even one whole day of storms and rain. It snowed in the mountains, so time to move further south.

We enjoyed a visit with friends Sue and Ray. They drove over from Las Vegas and we had a great time catching up with them. It has been a few years since we have seen them. Tom and Linda joined us here in Pahrump for a week (we think they brought this cold wet weather from Washington with them). We have enjoyed the delicious and inexpensive buffet at Nugget Casino here many times before and after their arrival. We all went to Death Valley and spent a day there. That is certainly a must see, and do not miss Scotty's Castle as that was the highlight. The castle is at a higher elevation and it was very pleasant walking and having a picnic lunch there. We saw the sand dunes, Badwater Salt Flats that are 282 feet below sea level, lots of colorful mountains and plenty of scrub land. Anyone interested in geology would certainly enjoy Death Valley. We were wishing we had a geologist with us to explain what causes all the colors in those mountains. It was a mere 104, but a good breeze helped when we were out walking.

Next stop is Casa Grande for the winter/spring. We will be there on Sunday and it will be a long, warm day getting set up and and unloaded. But, our dear friends Roger and Barb, are fixing dinner for us since they knew we would be very tired and ready to relax! Thank you!

We are excited to see all of our friends there and they are all trying to get us involved in one activity or another. Looks like we can be as busy as we choose!

Headed South Soon

As the summer that we did not have here in Pacific Northwet WA winds down, we are headed east and south looking for the sun and warmth. We accomplished what we needed to do, cleaning out a basement and visiting with family and friends. We did some babysitting for our granddaughters. The toddler, Zoe, went to her favorite place with us, Costco and is so well behaved! The 2 babies are so good and all 3 are beautiful and precious.

We will be spending the winter/spring on our lot in Casa Grande. We are looking forward to getting involved with the many activities there and seeing friends that live there and others as they pass through the area.

Quick Update

We spent April on our lot in Casa Grande AZ. It was nice and warm! We met many of our neighbors and made new friends. The pool was wonderful every afternoon to visit and cool off. We cleaned what was not needed in our rig and moved it to our storage shed. Also dug up some unwanted plants and cleaned up the junk that was left on the lot. Really looks good now!

Ralph's mom died April 10, so he flew up to Washington to help his dad for 2 weeks while I worked on the lot and relaxed in the sun! When he returned, we headed up to Mesa AZ to get our leveling system looked at, but nothing was really accomplished. We went to Verde Valley AZ for a few days and then headed to Pahrump NV. We ended up staying there longer due to wind and storms everywhere.

We finally found three days of a weather window to get to Washington without wind or snow and this was just past the middle of May! We stopped for a few days to see our daughters and their families. Sure love them all and those granddaughters are just precious!

We have spent 2 weeks in a mud hole at a campground in Mount Vernon WA. To say it has been cold and wet is an understatement! For the next few days it is supposed to be sunny before the rain returns. It will not even dry out in that time!

We have been busy getting his dad's basement cleaned out of junk (many dump runs) and our stuff we had left there. It is mostly done and tomorrow our daughters will be there to take most of it for their houses. Then a few trips to the Goodwill and we will be ready to tackle the garage!

The house is for sale and we have our fingers crossed that it will sell this summer so we can move his dad to an independent senior apartment in Mesa AZ. It is a beautiful place and is all inclusive! We can see ourselves there in the future.

We decided to move to the Mount Vernon Elks before the rains return so we do not have to live in mud holes. Without having to move and more centrally located, it will give us more time to work on cleaning out a house.

Our plan is to leave this area just after Labor Day and get to Casa Grande the end of Sept. Of course what happens with his dad and house may change our plans somewhat. Since we cleaned out the rig before coming we now have lots of room to take everything we need to keep back with us. Our little shed will be full!