Here we are, on the road: We’re in Quartzsite, AZ

January 20, 2013 Lorraine’s report

Hello from Quartzsite, AZ. What a nice day we have had. It was nice to see all our other friends from other parts of the country. It has been a while and it’s good to see that we are all aging quite well.

Richard & Patsy were the first ones to get us to come to Quartzsite, AZ. back in 2007. Chuck had put out something on the Forum and he was the first to respond to him. Thanks Richard, your first invite helped us meet some of the really nicest people we have met in our travels. We appreciate all your many kindnesses and help.

We loved seeing Mark and Sue from Louisiana too. We had fun with you in Alaska, has it been since 09? Of course, not having Sandy of Steve & Sandy would be unthinkable. Sandy has so much to offer.

Now it is on to our friends from BC and the rest of RV America. They will be in to Q tomorrow. Sharon and Virgil came in tonight. It will be a lot of fun to visit with everyone.

We want to wish our good friend, Dave & Sandy of MN all the best with his health problems. Please know our thoughts and prayers are with you.

We hope you all have a great week….

See you down the road….

Lorraine

1/20/13 Chuck’s report

Yes, we’re in the warmer weather now! Feel sorry for those who can’t leave and are stuck in the cold. My aunt called from Minnesota yesterday and said it was forecasted to get to –20F tonight, way too cold for this guy.

We had a good week last week, was able to just take it easy for a couple of days too. Last Sunday we watched the Seattle Seahawks come from behind to go ahead with 30 seconds left in the game. We were celebrating a bit too soon, however, as they went into their prevent defense and allowed Atlanta to come back and win the game with a field goal. But considering what our expectations for them was at the beginning of the season, they did great. I’m sitting here now watching San Francisco 49er’s playing at Atlanta and the game is very similar to last weeks’ game in the fact that Atlanta sprinted out to a large lead but let the 49ers come back and they are making a game of it now.

We had been unable to get satellite TV at the 1000 Trails park in Palm Springs, my thinking (hoping) was we might be having trouble getting a good view through the palm trees. So we were watching over the air programing and DVD movies and season one and two of Married with Children, I couldn’t even remember seeing those episodes before.

On Tuesday we drove over to Hemet to see Joe/Alice for the day. Last time we were there they took us to a casino where we enjoyed what may have been our best buffet since we’ve been on the road so guess what was on our plans! We visited with them for awhile then took off to the Pala Casino and its buffet. I must say, the buffet didn’t disappoint us, I still say it’s one of the best. And Lorraine and Joe both left with some of the casino’s money too, what a deal.

We left Palm Springs on Thursday, looking forward to seeing our friends from around the nation who were coming to Quartzsite too. Our biggest disappointment was we didn’t get to meet up with Tom/Dorothy while we were there, sorry about that guys. We’ll probably be back there in early April and hope we can do better then.

We got to where we were going here in Quartzsite shortly after 1, got set up and visited with our friends, Richard/Patsy from Texas, Mark/Sue who are full timers from Louisiana and others who were already there. This group was mostly all Tiffin motor home owners, I think about 25 rigs all together. Shortly after we got set up our friends Steve/Sandy came in from the Phoenix area too. We did miss seeing our friends Manual/Connie from Texas and Dave/Sandy from Minnesota who didn’t make the trip this year. I met a couple on Sunday who were in Tampa, Florida on Saturday, flew to Las Vegas and drove their coach from there, guess you could say they traveled the farthest, especially in one day.

We are all parked in the middle of the desert with way over 100,000 other rigs from across the nation but there is so much area that no one needs to be crowed. Some folks say there are over 1.5 million visitors in this area who are here for the big RV week. And the town is only 2500 full time residents but then, I wouldn’t like to live here in the summer, it gets too hot then.

We are parked without any utilities, we rely on the fresh water we brought with us and our generators for power. There is a place to dump our holding tanks and take on fresh water but only one place for all the folks who are here, sometimes the wait can be over 4 hours to dump because so many folks are waiting.

We had a meet and greet with everyone on Friday, all the folks brought appetizers and such so we set around the circle and did what RVers do best, we visited and ate.

On Saturday the “big tent” opened but we try to stay away on opening day as it is usually way too crowed. Instead we rode with Steve/Sandy into town and went to other parts of the flea market. There are about 5 different areas and we went into parts of three of them before we had enough and returned back to our rigs.

After we got back we had a big pot luck dinner with all the folks who were parked with us. Once again we did our best to be good RVers, you know, visit and eat. Both nights after dinner we went to someone's coach to continue visiting or play card games. Mark/Sue taught us a new card came, 99 and let us win too, thanks!

This morning we had “breakfast in a bag” with the group. Everyone put what they wanted for an omelet into their own quart freezer bag. added two or three eggs to the bag and mixed everything up. The bags were put into a pot of boiling water for 13 minutes and when they were opened it was as good as an omelet cooked on the stove.

After breakfast Lorraine and I decided to pack up and move over to a different area and be with a different group of folks who we’ve met with every year we’ve been down here, since ‘08 in fact. This group is the ones we met the first year we came down and have tried to be with them every year since. Of course, we weren’t not here last winter due to that four letter word, work. We drove over to see if anyone was in the area yesterday but didn’t find anyone we knew but they are on the way, at least that’s what we heard.

We stopped at the dump to empty our holding tanks and fill our fresh water tank. We lucked out, there was only three rigs ahead of us so it was only a 20 minute wait. So here we are, in a new area, waiting for friends to show up but we have a full fresh water and empty holding tanks, good for another few days. Steve/Sandy also brought their rig over and are parked next to us in our new area. We are expecting our friends from Canada to arrive tomorrow, looking forward to that too, hurry on in you guys.

I mentioned earlier about our satellite reception problem, neither TV was getting a signal. Like I said, I thought it might be because of the palm trees but once we got here and set up, with no trees in sight, we still didn’t have any signal. Lucky for me, our friend Mark is a very good “handyman” with electrical, TV, mechanical, woodworking, metalworking and just about any other job around the rig that needs to be done. I didn’t hesitate to ask him to look ours over and see what he thought. Long story short, it ended up being a cable had shaken loose behind the front TV and we never did understand why but he even got the rear TV to work too.

While we had him in the coach, I also had him check an electrical problem we’ve had with two outlets in the bedroom not working. Once again, he jumped right in and tore things apart and found another loose wire, this one inside a connector of some sort. He was able to wire around this connector and everything works good once again.

Now I’m very grateful of Mark’s help, especially since he was able to fix all the problems listed above. I told him I would buy dinner for him and Sue that night, in fact, they could have anything and all they wanted. But they caught on too quick, they remembered we were having pot luck for dinner so now I will be taking them out when we get to Yuma, too quick there too Mark. But seriously, thanks for your help, we both appreciate it very much.

The weather has been pretty nice this past week. When we were in Palm Springs we were still in the last of the cold spell that hit the Southwest over the past month. But by Tuesday the days started getting warmer a bit each day and not quite as cold at night either. Now here in Arizona, the days are full of sunshine, a slight breeze all day with temperatures in the high 60s to low 70s. The nighttime temperatures are still getting cold but that’s due to being in the desert with no clouds. I’ll take this over what others are getting, that’s for sure.

Our plans are not set yet but we know we will be in Yuma before the 28th. We don’t know when we will leave here but it’s only a few hours drive so we could leave next Sunday if we want to stay here that long. We are planning on being in the Yuma area for a week or 10 days before heading on further East. We don’t have any reservations anywhere for the remainder of the winter/early spring, we just have to be back in the Bay area in mid April for our grand daughter’s birthday and we will make doctor visits while we are there.

I don’t think Lorraine took too many pictures this past week but I’ll go through the SD card and see what I can add here.

Part of the drive from Palm Springs, CA. to Quartzsite, AZ/