Still Eating in The Valley

Yep, we’re still here in the Rio Grande Valley with our RV friends and where we’re going to eat seems to be the theme.  At least we’re only eating one big meal a day.  We mostly get together for a late lunch and then we all go home for the evening and no dinner.  Soooooo, here we go….

Last Sunday we headed out to the Flea Market.  We had just been to the Flea Market in Yuma and found all kinds of stuff so we were really just going to look.  I’m glad we went to the one in Yuma cuz it was WAY better than this one.  We still managed to find “treasures” that we just couldn’t do without.  Rod even found a nasty fried onion to share with Mark & Dortha.  YUCK

Netters had to have some of it too

I preferred the tiny little donuts!!

Tuesday we went to Gonzales’s for their famous burger.  It’s a HUGE burger that everybody was raving about.  Guy Fieri needs to come here for a Diners, Drive ins, and Dives episode.  This place is awesome!!  The owner only grinds 250 lbs of meat each day and when it’s gone it’s gone.  They stop serving for the day.  That’s all they serve too.  Just burgers.

From there we headed down to the river to see the hand drawn ferry.  This ferry just goes back and forth across the river and only holds three vehicles at a time.  Very antiquated but for some reason it’s very interesting to just stand and watch it.  They even charge you 25 cents to watch.  LOL

 

Wednesday we headed out to El Tio Chuy for a Mexican lunch. 

Everybody that had chicken said it was so bland and we were all wishing we had ordered the steak tacos that Rod was enjoying.  His looked REALLY good.

Thursday we went to the town of Pharr for the Taste of the Valley.  What a joke that was.  It was held in the Convention Center but the room was WAY too small for the number of people that bought tickets.  The lines were really long and we all just got tired of waiting in the long lines for a little sample of food.  It was a good idea, just poorly run.

This is the line just to get in the building.  It wrapped completely around the front and down the side.

Once inside there were more long lines

We decided it just wasn’t worth it and headed to Rudy’s Barbecue for WAY better food

Friday Mark and Dortha picked us up and we headed to South Padre Island for some beach time.  The others decided not to go.  It was a gorgeous day finally and a great day for a drive.  We always have a good time no matter where we go with Mark & Dortha and all our other friends.  Of course we were headed there for lunch too.

  The first place we stopped at had yet another huge long line.  Good grief, it seems almost everywhere we’ve been there have been long lines.  We decided we didn’t want to wait so we headed out to another place.

This was the first place we went to and it was highly recommended.  Oh well, maybe some other time.

 

From there we headed on down the street to Blackbeard’s.  Boy, I’m glad we didn’t wait in line at Dirty Al’s because we all had some kind of seafood chef salad that was fantastic!!  Dortha and I had shrimp and scallops on ours and Mark and Rod had mahi mahi on theirs.

 

Here’s Rod’s salad

The causeway going over to South Padre Island

The beach was gorgeous

LOTS of guys fishing in the surf

The Port Isabel lighthouse

That brings us to yesterday and our Rio Grande River cruise.  We headed to the Riverside Club to catch the boat for a little 2 hour cruise on the river.

The Border Patrol presence was everywhere.  By air…

By boat…

And on land

People were doing a lot of fishing on the Mexican side

More pictures of the river

After our cruise you know we just had to eat!!  What we didn’t know was the restaurant was having some kind of German celebration going on.  The lunch special was pork schnitzel with all the trimmings.  AND somebody was having a 60th birthday party.  Well, it was also Arlene’s 60th birthday so we just pretended the decorations were for her.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Arlene!!!

The German dancing

Our table

Today is superbowl Sunday and we’re headed over to Mark & Dortha’s for our potluck.  We’re taking carne asada and pollo asado for tacos.  We bought it while we were staying in Needles and froze it for a special day.  Even though my Chargers aren’t playing I’ll still enjoy the game and our last day with our friends here in the valley.  Tomorrow we’re headed for San Antonio for three weeks for a visit with John & Erica.

Just For You, Mark Hall

My friend, Mark Hall has been giving me a bad time about updating my blog this week.  Well, to be perfectly honest there hasn’t been a whole lot going on except shopping and eating.

The first day we were here we showed up at the potluck Mac & Netters were having.  The next day we set out to do some shopping and have lunch.

Dortha did the salad bar

The next day was appetizer day at Mark & Dortha’s.  Now, when we do appetizers it’s really a meal.

After all that food we decided to bring the leftovers to our “house” the next night to finish it up.

I can’t really remember all the places we’ve been for dinner or lunch.  I know one of those was Sam’s Club for our $1.50 hotdog lunch (which is now $1.70).  We also went to Rudy’s for barbecue but I didn’t take any pictures there.  There was also Dairy Queen for dessert.

That brings us to last night and our baked potato potluck.  I went online to find out how Olive Garden makes their salad because I had bought a bottle of their dressing when we were in Yuma.  I wanted to replicate the exact salad that they serve in the restaurant right down to the type of lettuce.  It ended up tasting exactly the same.

Our hosts, Lynette

 

And Mac

The potato bar

And guess who cleaned up afterwards!!

So that gets you all caught up on what we’ve been doing down here in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.  Today we’re headed out to the Flea Market to find more stuff we absolutely can’t do without.

Sneaky, Sneaky, Sneaky

I’ll explain the title later.  It’s been so long since I’ve updated my blog I have to think about where we’ve been.

We went to one of Phyllis’s friend’s house for their weekly Bloody Mary Sunday.  Everybody brings a breakfast item and their own Bloody Mary fixings.  There was LOTS of vodka at the bar…

Jalapeno poppers for breakfast appetizers

Patty, a friend from high school (who now lives in Yuma) came to visit

We spent our last day in Yuma with Rod’s sister, Sue and her husband, Rich.  I did a few loads of laundry at their place then we headed out to the Yuma Territorial Prison.  I went there as a child but it still pretty much looked exactly the same.

 

 

Did you see Rod in there, Sue??

They wouldn’t keep him though

Rich got tired of waiting for us

We ended the evening with dinner at Mimi’s, then said our good-byes till we see each other again

 

We drove across Arizona to Apache Junction to spend a few days with my mom.  She took us to dinner at the Arizona Opry.  This is a dinner show that is put on by the Barleen Family.  She assured us that it wasn’t ALL country music because she knows we don’t listen to that.

The next night we went to Organ Stop Pizza to watch this guy play a gigantic organ.  The pizza was really good too.

He was even able to activate instruments on the ceiling

The next day look what we found for lunch!!!

We left Mom’s house and headed to Discount Tire to have one of our tires checked for a slow leak.  They found a piece of splintered wood in it so patched it up and sent us on our way.  We sometimes use boards to level one side of our rig if our spot is a little unlevel but we accidentally left them at Phyllis’s place.  I guess she can keep them.  LOL

We headed out across the Arizona desert (which I just love) and were supposed to be going to John’s house in San Antonio.  We had been talking to some friends of ours since we were in Needles and they kept harassing us to come down to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.  There are a lot of our friends there and we decided it would be fun to go see them but we thought it would be even more fun to not let them know we were coming and to just surprise them with a visit.  We had been giving them every lame excuse as to why we couldn’t go and the whole time we KNEW we were.  So, that explains the title of the post.

Driving across the Arizona desert

We went through at least two Border Patrol Inspection Stations every single day

Finally made it to Texas!!!

We left I-10 and headed south on US 83 all the way down to Mission, Texas in the Rio Grande Valley but first had to go through MORE inspections

We got to our RV park where Gregg & Lynette (Mac & Netters) and Donna & Nolan were staying.  As we drove in the gate we saw where Mac & Netter’s 5th wheel was but nobody was outside.  As we pulled up to the office there in big letters was “Kendall #48”.  Amazingly, nobody saw it!!  We drove to our site and got set up.  I had been chatting with everybody the night before in our RV chat room and knew that everybody was getting together at Mac & Netters for happy hour at 4:30 so we were going to just show up and surprise everybody.  Well, after Rod got done with his outside stuff he came inside and said, “I can’t stand it.  Let’s go for a walk”.  I knew he wouldn’t last till 4:30.  Boy were they surprised to see us!!  I wish I had thought to bring my camera to capture the looks on people’s faces.  I think Donnas' was the best!!  She walked in Mac & Netter’s 5th wheel and her jaw dropped to the floor.  Mark & Dortha saw Rod walking down the street as he was coming back from getting something in our rig.  Dortha thought it looked like Rod but her brain wasn’t registering it.  When she finally realized it was indeed Rod she was pleasantly surprised as well.  Chuck and Kathy came later and Rod asked her a question and she answered without realizing she was talking to Rod.  Again, another jaw dropper.  So, we had a nice visit with everybody and even met some new friends, Gale & Anna from the chat room that showed up later.

So now that we’re all together again, it’s time to EAT!!!

Today we’re going back over to Mark & Dortha’s to finish up the food we didn’t yesterday.  Yes, we really left food uneaten.

We’ll be spending a couple of weeks here and then head up to San Antonio to visit John & Erica.  I know John is chomping at the bit and we can’t wait to see them too!!

Yuma, Arizona

Tuesday we finally (and reluctantly) left our cozy little campsite in Needles and headed out to Yuma.  We had heard the weather in Yuma is fantastic in the winter and we were in no hurry to head to Texas yet.  It’s been VERY cold at John & Erica’s house.  We also hadn’t seen Rod’s sister, Sue since we left Port Angeles and she and her husband winter in Yuma.  We weren’t sure where we were going to stay but after talking to our friend Phyllis who also winters in Yuma we decided to head for her place.  She has a friend who owns the double lot right next door to her so that’s where we’re parked now.

Headed out through the desert

Across the Colorado River

And back into Arizona

We even drove through Quartzite which is a HUGE RVer’s paradise.  Some people camp out in the desert here with no hookups called “boondocking”.  Not something we would do for more than a day or two but some of these people do it for weeks or months at a time.  Every winter people come by the thousands to check this place out.

Phyllis and Bob came out to meet us and direct us where to go

We had a nice visit with Bob & Phyllis over Happy Hour at their motorhome and then went and had some dinner.  We made plans for Wednesday to see some of Yuma and run some errands.  Since they don’t get up early either (we like that!) we made plans to go to lunch.  We went to Old Town Yuma to this cute little place that says it’s a Casino but it is no longer.  LOL  It had pictures and antiques ALL over the walls.  There really wasn’t any room for anything else and you could probably sit there for a week and not see all of it.  Lunch was burgers and fries which was just an okay burger but the atmosphere and the company was FANTASTIC!!

From there we headed to where else?  The Casino!!  None of us had a withdrawal, just left a small deposit

From there we went to check out a Miniature Golf place.  We weren’t going to play, Phyllis just wanted us to see the little town they had constructed there.  It was really cute.

We ended the evening with a campfire in Bob & Phyllis’s back yard.  What a great day!!

Yesterday we met up with Rod’s sister, Sue and her husband, Rich at their brand new park model.  They used to tow a 5th wheel down here from Washington state every year.  Then they decided to leave their 5th wheel here and just use their car to come down.  After several years living for 4 months in their 5th wheel they decided to buy a park model.  It’s much bigger than their 5th wheel and they’re very happy with it.  It’s very nice.  We met them for lunch and a trip to the HUGE swap meet.  Oh my gosh, we got LOTS of “treasures” .

We went back to Sue and Rich’s for Happy Hour (see a pattern here?) before going to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse which is one of our favorite places to get a good steak.

Today I am going to lunch with some of Phyllis’s friends.  It’s just a “girls day” so Rod and Bob will have to amuse themselves.  Tonight is “pizza night”.  Every Friday somebody has pizza at their place and tonight it’s at Mike & Betty’s who we met the first night we were here.  Should be another great day.

Happy New Year!!!

We’ve been here in Needles, California for a month now and are deciding when and where we’re going.  Our repairs are all done and it’s SOOOOO nice to finally have everything working again.  We also ended up replacing both faucets because the water pressure was so bad and the bathroom one was broken.  We tried to only replace the knobs but I guess they don’t sell those separately.  I love, love, LOVE the new ones.

We haven’t done any site seeing while here either.  We did our Christmas shopping and grocery shopping in between visits to the RV dealer.  Michele, Todd, Ashton & Reilly were coming to spend Christmas with us this year so I couldn’t do online shopping like I usually do.  I had to actually GO to a store, buy presents, wrap them and put them under the tree.  The shopping part was kinda fun even though I’m NOT a shopper.  The bad part was the wrapping.  I ended up wrapping the presents right before they arrived on the 23rd.  Rod and I did a little bit of last minute shopping that day as they weren’t expected till early evening.  Part of that was to keep Rod occupied so he wasn’t asking me every hour to call them and find out where they were.  LOL

Michele & Todd rented a cabin here because there is no way we could have housed 6 people and their 2 dogs.  The kids stayed with us on the Aero bed and Michele & Todd stayed in the cabin with the dogs.  We had been having really nice weather before they got here (of course) and then it turned cold.  I mean, really cold and windy.  Well, not “east coast or midwest” cold but too cold for the kids to go outside and play so the first few days were spent with all of us inside.  The kids were fine playing and watching videos and the adults spent the time catching up.

Here’s the gingerbread house the kids made with help from their Mommy

Christmas day brought NEW toys!  New toys are the best!!  Kept them occupied ALL day!!

Papa Rod liked Reilly’s presents too

After being cooped up for days we decided to take a little trip to Oatman, Arizona.  Since we are on the border of California, Arizona and Nevada it’s pretty easy to take a day trip to any one of those states.  This is an old wild west town where they stage a gunfight right in the middle of the street several times a day.  There are also a lot of “wild” burros there.  They are very used to the tourists and will walk right up to you for a treat.  Several of the shops in town sell bags of carrots to feed to them.

We saw all the decorated yuccas along the road.  Apparently they do this every year for prizes.  It costs $15 to decorate a bush and they get that back if it’s cleaned up by February 1st.  A lot of them were themed.  One even had coffeemate containers all over it and another had CD’s and still another had oranges.  They were pretty interesting….

All ready to go for a ride to Oatman

The gunfight

Rod wanted everybody to know that HE took this picture.  LOL

The burros were VERY tame.  The babies had stickers on their faces because they were not supposed to be fed

Do we look cold or just me?

Ashton as a burro

We just HAD to go eat here because both Rod and Todd can’t pass up a place that says “Buffalo Burgers”.  This place had one dollar bills stuck all over the walls and our waitress informed us that there is $65,000 in bills on the walls and ceiling.  WOW!!

 

Later Reilly helped me make sugar cookies

Ashton has had a loose tooth for quite some time and wouldn’t let anybody touch it.  It was barely hanging on and then the last morning of their visit as he was drinking his hot cocoa the tooth came out!! 

Christmas 2009

So, now with the holidays officially over we need to decide where we’re heading next.  We need to start heading over to San Antonio to visit with John & Erica and then we have reservations in Rockport, Texas for March so we have two months to play around with where we’re going.

Catching up AGAIN

I’ve been remiss again in my blog posting.  No excuses either.  Sometimes I just have to be in the mood.  I’m sitting here in the back lot of a RV dealer in Ft Mohave, Arizona waiting on a new fresh water tank but I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let me get caught up on what we’ve been doing.

The last post had us still in Laughlin.  We took a day trip down to Lake Havasu looking for a spot to spend Christmas.  We were looking for a park with cabins but didn’t find any.  We did find the London Bridge (click to read) which has a really amazing story.  The bridge was actually built in London in 1824 and finished in 1831.  It was sold to an American by the name of Robert McColloch in 1968 for $2,460,000 who had it taken apart and shipped to Lake Havasu where it was reassembled.  There is a little London style shopping center by the bridge but most of the shops were closed up.  Another example of our economy I guess.

The London Bridge

Driving across it

We even found another In-N-Out Burger for lunch while we were there.

Our stay in Laughlin came to an end and we moved 30 miles south to Needles, CA to a KOA.  We don’t usually like to stay at KOA’s but they do have cabins and the price for a campsite was very reasonable.  Plus, each site has a large oleander bush in between so we really do have some privacy.

Sometime last week I was in my RV chatroom when my friend Dortha was talking about how she and Mark were going to fly to San Diego to visit Jim & Ellie.  I jokingly said she could have flown to see us and she said, “Well, you could drive to San Diego.”  I mentioned it to Rod and he said we should do it.  It was a 5 hour drive from Needles to San Diego through the desert and over the mountains.  Being from San Diego I had made this trip more times than I can remember.  Nothing in the desert or the mountains had changed except for the addition of a casino or two.  We had camped many, many times in the desert in my younger days.  I just think the desert is so beautiful in it’s own way.

We spent a GREAT few days in San Diego with Mark, Dortha, Jim & Ellie catching up.  These are the same people we traveled with in Washington and Oregon.  We had really crappy weather one day while there so we thought it would be a good day to visit the museums in Balboa Park.  Come to find out there are actually eighteen museums there.  We had to pick one and go with that.  We chose the Museum of Natural History where there was a Darwin exhibit.  They didn’t allow photography of any kind so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it was really interesting.  There were a lot of other exhibits as well as the museum is 5 floors.

The Botanical Gardens

After we left the museum we just had to find a Mexican restaurant for some lunch

On Tuesday we made plans to meet up with my niece, Karianne for lunch at another one of my favorite places in San Diego called Rubios.  The story is that he was the one who invented fish tacos and the margarita at Hussongs Cantina in Ensenada and brought them to San Diego.  There are so many legends of the fish taco you don’t know who to believe but all I know is that they are delicious!

Uncle Rod and Karianne at Rubio’s

We left San Diego (reluctantly) on Wednesday and headed back to Needles.  Actually, we were heading back to Fort Mohave where we had left our RV for repairs.  We dropped it off there on our way to San Diego to find out why we were leaking water out of the bottom when we traveled.  They found a large gash on the top of the fresh water tank.  How in the world you get a gash there, I have no idea.

Mark & Dortha heading to the airport for their flight back to Dallas

Back across the desert

When we bought our RV we also bought an extended warranty because we didn’t know how long it would take to sell our house and we wanted to be protected in case it took a long time.  Well, it took 20 months to sell our house so most of our factory warranty was LONG gone.  So, this is being covered by our extended warranty.  Thank goodness.

As I write this I’m sitting inside our rig at the dealer’s lot while they install the new tank.  Our rig is also equipped with what they call the Arctic Package which means LOTS of insulation underneath.  Well, it was ruined when the tank was leaking so that has to be replaced also.  Insulation looks really weird when it gets wet.  It compresses to almost paper thin.

Lovely, isn’t it??

Well, they said it will  be done today so as soon as they’re finished we’ll head out and go back to our campground.  I need to get out all the Christmas stuff and get everything decorated.  We’re only about 15 miles from the campground so again, it won’t be a long drive.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

We took a drive to the north side of the lake because we had seen people over there boondocking (dry camping) and wanted to see how it was.  Not that we were going to do it, we just wanted to see it.  LOL.  Most of the roads coming off the main highway are washboard type roads and there is no way we would take our RV on them.  It’s amazing how low the water level is in the lake.  Most of the boat ramps are closed and unusable.  One of them even said “Use at Your own Risk”.  Here’s one the boat ramps to nowhere.

These were the roads going down to the lake

We hear these guys every single night.  It’s so cool…

We really wanted to spend more time here at this RV park but they told us there is a 2 week limit for lake front sites.  I have no idea why they would make us leave when the park is so empty.  We were willing to pay the extra they charge but they said no.  Here’s a picture of our site

And here’s a picture of the other lake front sites EMPTY

 

This is how we spent most evenings

Sooooo after running a few shopping errands in town and going to my second most favorite fast food stop we left our great spot at Lake Mead and headed out of town.

We drove a whole 83 miles and are now set up in Laughlin, Nevada for a week.  We are being charged extra for being here during Thanksgiving.  I asked the guy who was checking us in what we got extra for the extra price.  “Nothing” was his reply.  Hmmm, this place is half empty also.  I’m sure places will start filling up after Thanksgiving and Christmas though.

Yesterday we drove over to Needles, CA looking for a place to stay during Christmas.  Since we’re having company we needed to find a place that also has cabins.  We found a really nice KOA there.  I was surprised at how nice this place was.  Usually KOA’s are just gravel parking lots and everybody is right on top of each other.  This place actually had tall bushes between each site and the manager gave us a map with available sites and told us we could go look at them.  This may be where we’re headed when we leave here on the 1st of December.  We still want to check out Lake Havasu though.  I think we’ll do that on Friday.  Don’t want to miss the Saturday football games…