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.