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…

Lake Mojave

Monday we took a drive down to Lake Mojave to check out a place we might want to stay during the holidays.  On the way down we stopped at a Wal-Mart to pick up a new Food Saver.  The Food Saver is our vacuum sealer that we used for just about all the food in our freezer.  We’ve had the same one for quite awhile and it finally quit sealing.  This Wal-Mart wasn’t a SUPER Wal-Mart and they weren’t as well stocked so they didn’t have any.  We continued on our way down to Lake Mojave.  The RV park we were looking for was off the main highway outside of Searchlight called Cottonwood Cove.  It was right on the lake and had a beautiful marina FULL of houseboats.  The RV park was really bad though.  The sites were SO close to each other that it would have been really tough opening the slides.  Some of the sites were set up so that you were end to end so if two 5th wheels were backed up to each other your view out the back window would be the living room of the rig behind you.  Uggghhhh.  I don’t think so.  It’s really too bad because it would have been a beautiful place to stay right on the lake.

The Marina

On the way home we stopped at a Super Wal-Mart in Henderson which is suburb of Las Vegas and found the Food Saver we were looking for.  If you’ve ever owned one of these you know what I mean when I say I couldn’t have gone very long without one.  I also found a new one they have come out with that is handheld and can be a lot more convenient than having to get the big one out all the time.

After that we headed for Sam’s Club for a few things and then to Trader Joe’s for a pre-brined turkey for Thanksgiving and then home.   It’s a great shopping day when you can find everything you’re looking for!

The other day Rod wrote a “Status Update” on Facebook that was totally tongue in cheek.  Some people actually thought he was serious.  For those of you who either don’t have Facebook or just missed it he asked me to post it here.

Rod’s Post

RETIREMENT!!!!!!! It's definitely not what it's cracked up to be. An example: the other day I got up at 9:30 and went for a walk. After that I got some projects done on the rig and truck. After that, Deb and I sat out by the fence and looked at Lake Mead and the hills across the way as the sun set behind us.While sitting out there in shorts and t-shirts, we watched quail scurry around, hummingbirds fluttering around us and listened to the coyotes barking and howling. I also had a cigar and glass of red wine (heart medicine) while doing this. After that had dinner, Salad, fresh corn on the cob and salmon. After that I went back outside and started a fire. Still in shorts and t-shirt. Had another cigar and wine while enjoying the quietness. If days like this don't make you wish you were back working, I don't know what will…

Ahhhh, life is good….