Sunday, February 10, 2013

We’re in Benson, AZ

 

February 10, 2013                                                                                                                 Lorraine’s report

Hello from Benson, AZ.  We left Yuma and headed East to come to Benson, AZ.  Steve & Sandy belong to The Escapees,  and they could get us into this park.  It was a five hour trip, long, but not too long. 

We said our “good bye’s” to Rob & Norma and Barb & Dennis, and the night before to Mark & Sue, we had fun with all of our friends.  It was enjoyable and we look forward to seeing you down the road.  Many thanks to Lavonne & Ed for the “Super Bowl Party.”  It was fun.

The desert continues to amaze me.  The rocks, the vegetation, and all the animals that live out there in the wild are all amazing to me.  I love the sunsets, the colors through the hills are really beautiful. Some of the prettiest are when the pinks all show up.  Wow!

This week we slowed things down a bit.  I’m finally over the tooth extraction, it’s been slowly healing, with the antibiotics from the dentist, I was taking 750 milligrams, two times a day for that.  I wonder how long the tooth had been infected.  It’s taken a bit for it for it to heal, and I’ve felt the after effects from it, with another infection, a yeast infection going on.  I will certainly be glad this is over! 

That’s it for me, I want to wish Susy North a big “Happy Birthday” on the 16th of this month.  She will be 38 years old.  We love you Honey.  Have a great day, will look forward to when we get back and we go shopping together.  Say “Hi” to Kaitlyn for us..

Until next time.

Lorraine 

2/10/13                                                                                                                                          Chuck’s report

We are in our first Escapee park, called SKP or skip.  Steve/Sandy are members of the Escapee club and got us into here as their guest.  So far, I have to say this is one of the most friendly parks we’ve been to, everyone waves and say Hi.  We have gone to a couple of functions at the lodge and once again, everyone was friendly to us there too.

Let’s see, we were at Ed/Lavonne’s place last Sunday with about 30 other folks there.  It was a pot luck with Ed supplying enough BBQ Chicken for everyone.  We had finger food before the game then ate during half time.  Most of the people there were rooting for San Francisco so I decided to root for Baltimore.  Baltimore ran off to a big halftime lead but in the third quarter there was a 30 minutes power outage when they had to stop play.  After the power outage, San Francisco made a good comeback and made it a tight game.  They also had a pool going on but Lorraine nor I won although at one point someone said we had won the third quarter but they were mistaken, shoot.  Anyway, Baltimore won the game, it turned out to be a good game and we had a good time watching and visiting with everyone who was there.  Thanks to Ed/Lavonne for hosting all of us.

Monday morning we packed up and got ready to leave Yuma, headed for Benson, a little over 4 hours drive.  We parted company with our friends from Canada but did get to see Dennis/Barb and Rob/Norma before we left and figure we will see them later this or next month someplace in Arizona. 

When we were checking in, they told us that they were having a pot roast dinner in the lodge that night.  We decided it would be better than having the gals cook on a traveling day so we bought tickets.  They didn’t have two sites together but we aren’t too far from Steve/Sandy’s rig.  We are situated on a hill overlooking the desert valley with mountains in the distance. 

A bit of info about a SKP co-op, the type of park where we are.  All the sites are owned by individuals and when they aren’t using here it is put into a rental pool for other SKP members to rent for a day, week, month or longer.  If a member wants to purchase a lot, they have to put their name on the list and wait for an opening to come up.  The selling owner can only sell for what they paid for the lot plus any improvements they’ve done.  Some of the lots are still pretty bare lots while others have permanent sheds, casitas and even a couple of park models.  It seems like a good deal as the owners get back what they paid and the new owners don’t have to pay inflated prices. 

The pot roast dinner was ok but they sold too many tickets they said.  But we shared our table with a couple who were very friendly and didn’t treat us like outsiders.  Like I said earlier, that has been my observation for most of the folks we’ve met here. 

Lorraine still had the stiches in her gum after her tooth extraction so I called a few places to see about getting them out.  I started calling a few places to see about getting them out but the doctors I called all said they didn’t want to pull stiches from an extraction and suggested I call local dentist instead.  And the dentist I called said they didn’t want to pull stiches unless it was some they had put in.  I did get one place that said they might but they would have to take a full set of x-rays and do a full exam and they would only charge $135 for that.  Then they MIGHT pull the two stiches.  Guess what my reply was?

Next morning we headed into town, it’s not a very big place but does have a Wal-Mart, Safeway and ACE hardware.  After doing a bit of shopping, we stopped by a dentist’s office that Sandy had spotted.  I walked in to see what they would say about pulling Lorraine’s stiches and the receptionist went to ask the dentist.  She came back and said we could see him right away as he didn’t have a patient right then.  So I went back to the car, got Lorraine and she walked directly into the office and got into the chair.  The dentist came right in, got his gloves on and checked what was going on.  He said it looked fine and he thought it would be ok to pull them now so that’s what he did. 

Lorraine got out of the chair and put her coat back on and I asked the dentist what we owed him.  He said there would be no charge, said maybe someday one of his patients would be on the road and someone would help them out the same as he did us.  That was a very nice gesture, wish I had gotten a business card from him so I could remember and post his name here too.   

After putting our groceries away, we headed over to Steve/Sandy’s rig where he was going to BBQ some chicken.  We bought some chicken at the store, brought over some green beans and visited while Steve was fixing the chicken.  After the good dinner, we played card games with them, I think I won but who was keeping score, we had a good time. 

I think it was the same evening when there was a Texas Hold-em at the lodge the Steve and I attended.  It was a $5 buy-in, that was the most anyone could lose so it was just a fun game.  I think there were 14 people who bought in, enough for two tables.  After folks started losing, the remaining players made it to the “final” table.  I didn’t make it that far but Steve played well enough to make the final.  However, it wasn’t long until he had a second best hand and had to bow out too.  Even though the cards didn’t fall right for us, we both had a good time. 

The gals were at our rig, watching a chick-flick movie when we got back.  I think we interrupted their movie but they wanted to know how we had done at the poker game.  Anyway, we watched the remainder of the movie then called it a night. 

I’ve been writing about too many medical issues over the past few months and have to add one more here.  Our dog, Misty, had gotten into a cactus or something and was kept licking and biting at it.  Steve had a dog collar they had used on their dog and let us borrow it for Misty.  So she has been a very depressed dog ever since but she isn’t limping on it anymore and it has scabbed over and it’s looking better. 

Thursday we loaded up in Steve’s car and headed out to visit a local tourist town, Bisbee.  We found out this was a mining town, at one time it was the biggest town between St. Louis and San Francisco during it’s heyday.  But after the mines flooded and the town burned for the second time, it became just another old mining town.  Today it is mostly artsy-fartsy shops but still an interesting place. 

They have a large open-pit mine just South of town that’s now closed but we could still walk the edge and see in.  I think it closed in the early 70s, don’t know what the price would have to be for them to re-open it but it would take some revamping and a new refinery to be put back in service. 

They also have two underground mines that are closed but are in service for tourist.  You put on a hard hat and rain gear and ride into the mine.  We stopped by the visitor’s center and checked it out but there was no way I was going to go into that mine, my claustrophobia wouldn’t allow it.  Steve and Sandy had toured it before and Lorraine didn’t want to go either so after the visitor’s center we got back in the car and just toured the town.  The town is built on the hillsides and the buildings are now painted with bright colors.  Some of them are unusual to say the least, we took pictures of one with lots of decorations that I’ll show later. 

After our tour of Bisbee, we decided we had enough time to stop by and see Tombstone.  We have all been here before so we figured we could skip some of the touristy things, like the gun fights and such.  We went into some of the shops and Lorraine even found a new pair of cowboy boots.  We asked them to hold them until we returned but after we found a good place to eat, the shop was already closed so we didn’t get her boots.  But we hadn’t paid for them either so it wasn’t to big of a deal.

After we got back to the campground we hurried and got a table at the Outtakes the place was putting on.  This was a variety show the residents put on, I think they said there was 23 acts.  There was comedy and singing, some was petty well done, others would never make it to Broadway or Vegas.  But it was fun to watch, only problem was it was another late evening for us when it was over. 

Friday we decided to plan our schedule and itinerary for the next two months, something we usually roughly plan but this time we were trying to make reservations because most of the places are getting pretty full with all of the snowbirds around here.  Steve/Sandy and us both knew when we wanted to be in Phoenix (early to mid March) so we worked backwards from then to find spots. 

We knew of a couple of places we wanted to stay so we made those reservations first then tried filling the holes.  But even with both of us calling different places, we are still undecided where we will be starting tomorrow.  We can stay here but would like to be closer to Tucson and we have to wait to see if the place we want to stay will have opening.  It’s a first come, first served type of place so we need to be ready to get there early in the morning.

So after a couple of hours of phone calls, we decided to drive into Tucson and check out a couple of places in person before we committed to any of them.  After checking out two places and a local RV show, we decided to find a good place to eat.  The traffic was getting pretty bad so we decided to try one of the local casinos for their buffet.  We got there and had a good dinner at the buffet and the gals even tried their luck on the slots for a short while before we headed back to our rigs. 

Yesterday we decided to head back to Tombstone to finish checking out the remaining shops and get Lorraine a pair of cowboy boots.  We stopped at a few places but couldn’t find too much that we just had to have.  Steve did find a nice cowboy hat and finally found a place that had a good selection of boots.  Lorraine found a different, better pair of boots, Steve and I both tried on some too, Steve even had some he was ready to buy and was walking around waiting for me to find a pair.  But I couldn’t find a pair that fit good and didn’t rub somewhere and by then the pair Steve had on started to rub on him so he decided to not buy them after all.  So Lorraine did find a pair she likes and I stopped by the first place and told them that we had decided to not buy the pair they were holding for us. 

So by now I had all the fun shoe shopping I could take.  We decided to take a different route back to the rigs and went by Kartchner Caverns State Park.  This is a fairly newly discovered underground cavern place.  They have a nice visitor’s center which we toured but once again I was too chicken to attempt to go inside the “hole”.  And besides, it was late and we could have only gotten into one of the two tour areas anyway.  So we decided to continue back to our places. 

The weather was pretty nice here for the first couple of days, high 60s, low 70s during the day and getting down to the mid 30s at night.  We are at about 3500’ in altitude so it does get chilly here.  Yesterday morning it was mostly clear when I got up but within about an hour it clouded up and started to SNOW.  The temperature was just at freezing and it snowed for about two hours.  We didn’t get any accumulation but it was cold and the wind was blowing, too cold to do anything.  But it only took a couple of hours before it started warming up again so that’s when we decided to return to Tombstone. 

There were big, fluffy clouds in the sky all day yesterday but it cleared up just before sunset and the temperature started to drop.  When I woke up at 5 this morning, it was cold in the rig because it was too cold for the heat pumps.  The temperature was down to 44 inside the rig so I turned on the diesel burner for heat and went back to bed!  When I got up at 7 things were better inside but it was down to 25F outside.  Now we didn’t come down to Arizona to get temperatures in the mid 20s and get snowed on.  But at least it’s getting warm in the afternoons.  I think the forecast is for nicer, warmer weather starting tomorrow.  It’s probably in the mid 50s with blue skies now at noon here.

Our plans are to move over to Tucson tomorrow, hopefully at the fairgrounds we checked out the other day.  We will stay there for two weeks before moving on to Casa Grande for a week.  So for the next three weeks we will not be traveling too far and will stop and smell the roses.  Then we will head into the Phoenix area for the remainder of March before heading back to California Bay area. 

Lorraine did take some pictures this week, guess I’ll go through them now and pick out which ones to add then get this posted. 

Pictures from Yuma, Rob/Norma on left, Dennis/Barb and Norma/Rob on right.

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Chuck and Rob

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Drive from Yuma to Benson

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That’s Steve/Sandy’s rig in front of us on the right. 

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Tucson in the distance. 

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Open pit mine in Bisbee.

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One of the underground mine tours in Bisbee.  We didn’t go in.

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Pictures of Bisbee.

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One of the buildings in Bisbee, lots of decorations. 

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Would you believe, we didn’t even go inside to check this place out. 

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We saw a large motor home towing a car driving through here, think he was lost. 

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Can’t quite tell from the picture but that’s a fly on the building. 

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Ok, now in Tombstone. 

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We paid to see the world’s largest rose bush.  HUGE!

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The gallows outside the courthouse. 

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That’s the OK Corral, at least one of them. 

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Snow on our car on Saturday morning.  Nice picture later that day. 

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At Kartchner Caverns visitor center.   

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They had some birds of prey on display.

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That’s a giant sloth, they found remains of them inside the cave.  A rattlesnake on display too. 

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Some of the stalactite and stalagmite formations from the cave.  

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Ok, guess I’ll go ahead and post this now, we’re heading out in a few minutes for more exploring.

 

Thanks   Chuck

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