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!

It's Warm and Dry!

On Monday, we had had enough of Rockport Texas. It was usually cloudy, high 70's with 98% humidity and windy. We always felt wet and sticky, nothing would dry for days and all of our cabinet doors swelled so bad they would not close. Then, we were under live oak trees that hatched little fuzzy worms and they invaded us on Saturday. What a mess our roof was and still is even after scrubbing it for hours! We made it to the beach once when the wind wasn't to bad. That was a fun time with friends Jim and Sue. We watched a newly born dolphin trying to learning how to swim and follow his "mommy". Lots of dolphins playing and a couple of sea turtles swimming among the rocks.

Monday we drove to north of San Antonio, Tuesday to Las Cruces, New Mexico and Wednesday to Casa Grande AZ. Unfortunately when we were hooking up to leave Rockport our leveling system decided to take a vacation, so we had to stay hooked up for the trip and when we arrived here. We started at the Western Horizons Park since they had sites long enough for us. When the techs could not even look at it for a week, the engineer in Elkhart Indiana that designed and built the system spent many hours on the phone and we managed to get it working enough to be able to unhook. So we have moved to our lot at Sunscape. We had never seen it and it is even nicer than we thought, but it is a "bear" to get into. All the neighbors have welcomed us and we are really happy to be here and look forward to many winters here.

After almost 11,000 miles this trip across the north, down the east coast, several months in Florida and then west, we have decided we do not like humidity. It has been humid and cool at most places and even Florida was humid, cool and windy - not the 75-80 sunny days when we spent 3 winters there!

We have found our paradise here in Casa Grande! It is 98 today which will set records, but we are loving the sunny blue skies and dry air. Brown is beautiful and we are becoming desert rats!

We will be here a couple of weeks - it is supposed to cool to 80 on Monday! When we leave here, we will be stopping at the repair facility to see if they can fix our leveling system and then we will be heading north for the summer.

Last Stop in Louisiana

We spent a few days in Lafayette area learning about the Acadian people. We visited The Vermilionville Living History Museum and Folklife Park. It was created to preserve and represent the Acadian, Creole and Native American culture. You see a lifestyle as it may have occurred during the time period of 1765-1890. There are many restored buildings and craftsmen. We learned how you can turn Spanish Moss hanging in the trees into a very strong rope. We watched a man create small ducks from many types of wood. After learning about the making, we bought one of these beautiful ducks. There is also a restaurant that serves a typical Acadian (Cajun) lunch. The day we were there it was a buffet and it was delicious. The bread pudding was the best we have ever had!



In nearby Iberia there was an antebellum plantation home named Shadow on the Bayou Tech. Four generations of the same family lived here and then the home and all contents were donated to be a museum. All of the furnishings and most importantly all the paperwork for the plantation and home are preserved. Paintings were done of the home and plantation just after it was built and they are on display also. To go from room to room, you had to go outside on covered porches - none of the rooms were connected inside. They could then open all the doors and use the breeze to stay cooler. When the Union soldiers took over the first floor during the Civil War, the wife stayed on the second floor. The soldiers liked her, so when they left they did not burn the home, as they did so many others. There are beautiful gardens around the home and a cemetery where many of the family members are buried. Especially beautiful on our visit were the camellia trees in bloom.




Also in Iberia, built in the early 1900's and75 feet above sea level, which was very unusual, was the home of Joseph Jefferson. It is steamboat gothic style and was near a very large lake. They also mined salt from this property. He was an actor that portrayed Rip Van Winkle, thus the gardens that were created in the 1950's around the home have that name. It has quite a history. He apparently donated the home and furnishings for a museum and built another home closer to the lake to live in. One of the salt mine holes opened up, created a vortex that sucked all the water from this very large lake and with it his new home and some other buildings in just 2 hours. The lake was refilled and is much higher now, but the chimney and a pile of rubble along the lake shore is still visible. The original home was not damaged. A few years ago the home and gardens were purchased out of bankruptcy by the nursery owner next door. The gardens wind along the lake with sculptures and a Japanese Tea Garden. The magnolia trees were beautiful. Lots of peacocks, but they were camera shy!





We are now in Texas for March. It has been very warm since we arrived on Tuesday. That changed this morning when a storm with high winds, buckets of rain and thunder came through and dropped the temperature from 70 to 54 in a matter of minutes. The sun is out again, but still very windy. It should warm up again and then hopefully we can go to the beach!

The Big Easy

New Orleans, as someone there said, has character. They were gearing up for Mardi Gras, although it doesn't appear that they need a reason to party. We walked the French Quarter after a parade the night before - what a mess! It definitely is a "party place" all day and all night.

We did our first cruise on the "Big Muddy" on a steam powered sternwheeler. What a great time we had complete with delicious creole lunch!

Of course a visit must include cafe au lait and beignets at Cafe de Monde, so we enjoyed that treat one morning. Also visited the French Market which turned out to be a flea market of the usual "stuff". Walked lots of streets in the French Quarter.
We were not expecting it to be quite so dirty, even after a clean up from the parade. Many of the buildings are in disrepair and oh my goodness, watch where you walk on the sidewalks that are full of holes and loose slate pieces. They clean the interiors of the bars and restaurants by washing them out with hoses and lots of water mid-morning, ready for another day.

New Orleans is known for its street entertainers and they are everywhere doing many different things. Of course they all want a tip and one could spend a lot of money tipping all of them!
We saw many versions of this man, jazz players, magicians, street dancers, guitar players, and artists to name a few. It was fun to watch them.

Ralph went to the WW II Museum, while Pam walked in the French Quarter and found a street called Pirates Alley that was her favorite place in the French Quarter.

For a change, it was very warm, more like HOT, and humidity to match - they broke records! Usually we are breaking the "cold" records, so a pleasant change.

We stayed in a park on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain and drove the 24 mile causeway over the lake - worlds longest bridge! It is quite the bridge with its own police force.

We enjoyed our visit here, but time to move on down the road!

Moving West

After a cold and sometimes wet winter in Florida, we are on the move. This winter was certainly not like the past years we spent in Florida and has made us decide that Arizona is our place to be in the winter.

Our first stop was Pass Christian Mississippi. This is the area from Waveland through Biloxi that was ground zero for Katrina. It is now 5 1/2 years since this hurricane and you can still see the devastation. Many buildings are still just piles of rubble probably waiting for insurance companies to decide what to do. Highway 90 runs next to the water. This is the highway so often shown in pictures that was piled with rubble. On one side is The Strand, a man made beach that has the sand back in place and they are trying to regrow the sea oats to keep down the erosion.

The other side of this highway had homes, some large mansions, and businesses. There is the occasional home that has been rebuilt and some in the process of rebuilding. A few businesses have rebuilt, mostly Waffle Houses, McDonalds and a few casinos in Biloxi. However, there are miles and miles of driveways to nothing, streets to nowhere, steps to nowhere and parking lots with no buildings and For Sale signs everywhere. There are RVs parked on some of the vacant lots as if that is where the owners are living. Apparently many insurance claims were denied because the companies claimed that the damage was from water and with no flood insurance they will not pay. There was a 24' wall of water driven by the wind that hit this area.

The home of Jefferson Davis, Beauvoir, was spared but heavily damaged. Of the 7 buildings on the property, only 2 survived and one of those had to be torn down when FEMA declared it was in a flood plain and had to be moved 150' feet west to rebuild. The first picture is 3 days after Katrina and just a few days after this picture, much of the roof collapsed. Then a picture of what it looks like today. They were not able to get any artifacts out before the storm, but were able to find many of them and restore them. Others they have replaced with period pieces.


The RV park we stayed in was probably at least 3 miles inland and it was devastated. The owners at the time just left it. New owners purchased it a year ago, but they have a lot of work to do as it is still a mess. This whole area may never be what it was pre-Katrina.

Some Fun Things in the Wauchula Florida Area

We found some fun things to do here. The first was to visit Solomans Castle, built by a world renowned sculpturer named Howard Soloman. This castle is his residence where he lives with his wife and son. Many of the rooms are filled with his quirky sculptures. Everything including the castle is made from what most people call junk or garbage. His brain is definitely wired differently than most of us. The grounds include a Boat in a Moat, a lighthouse and several other buildings.




We also visited the farm where Herrmanns Lipizzaner Stallions live, breed and do their winter training. Three days a week the public can come and watch them as they do a "training show". These are magnificent horses and an hour and half sure went fast watching them. These pictures are but a small part of what these horses do.



We are enjoying our time here in Florida. Several people from our caravans live here and we have been welcomed to their homes and treated to lunches, boat rides and great visits. It is truly wonderful to have friends all over the country.

It was the coldest December on record here - that says it all for weather. January so far is a bit warmer but still below normal. Compared to previous years we spent here, it is much cooler and wetter with more humidity and lots more wind. However, it is much better than the rest of the southeast.