Here we are, on the road: We’re in Yuma, Arizona

January 26, 2014 Lorraine’s report

Howdy folks, glad you stopped by. Well, we are back in civilization! Yep, I really did miss being out of civilization and camping in the desert. Our rig has on it’s side, “Roughing it smoothly”, so when we are out like that, being out in the boon docks, without water, power and the hook up to electricity, I’m very happy to return to our normal way of life. I know some people really like it, but not me. I prefer everything you get with the civilized world.

So Quartzsite, AZ was fun, but I was ill most of the time. The last few days or so, one of the new people we met, Mary, took pity on me and gave me two sets of boxes of pills that really helped me recover. Thanks again, Mary, It was so nice of you to care about how I looked and sounded.

We didn’t get out that much, but, we’ve been there before, so when I did go, I would come back after a couple of hours and I would take my pills from Mary, and have to take a long nap. This cold/whatever has been the pits. So glad I’m starting to feel a bit better.

Then the dirt from all being in the desert is pretty incredible. We were there a total of 8 days, and I keep wiping everything down, the corian counters and such turned black the first time I wiped up, pretty incredible..

Chuck has a Mexican coming to wash and wax the rig. It is SO dirty. And I know everyone there wanted to do the same thing when they leave Q.

It was fun to visit with the groups we went with, but I hated to infect them with my cold. It was an experience!

Happy Birthday to my niece, Ashley, and my nephew, Carl… Hope they enjoy their birthdays

Hugs, to all…

Lorraine

1/26/14 Chuck’s report

Ok, we are back to having hookups again, after dry camping in Quartzsite for 8 days. We’ve been there before and usually don’t have any issues, we arrive with full fresh water tank and empty holding tanks and when we leave they are reversed. We have 4 batteries for the coach and usually that keeps everything we need running all day and night by starting the generator a couple of times a day to charge them. This time, however, our batteries wouldn’t hold a charge very long and our generator would start a couple times an hour and run for 5 minutes or so. I know this wasn’t pleasant for our neighbors, sorry about that but I’m getting our batteries checked and hopefully next time we will only be running the generator during daylight hours next time.

Lorraine has been fighting a cold the whole time we were in Quartzsite, that limited our visiting and touring of the vendors. She didn’t want to spend too much time with other folks and give then her cold and really didn’t feel like walking the displays either. So we spent lots of time in our coach together, we didn’t even go to other folk’s rig to play cards or dice like we normally do. And we didn’t get to contact two of our friends we knew were in the area, didn’t want to spread her cold to them so Dale, hope to see you two if you come down this way.

Last Sunday we had the breakfast in a bag, it was as good as advertised. We put ham, cheese and onions in the bag, they added eggs then we put the bags in boiling water for 13 minutes. What came out was very similar to an omelet from a frying pan.

Later there was a talk and display from Mac the Fire Guy. He talks about safety in and around coaches, fires, emergency egress and other issues. He also has a display he puts up where he lights fires and has folks put them out using fire extinguishers he provides. All in all, this is a very good seminar and well worth it if you ever get a chance to see him put it on. He also sells fire extinguisher and systems, he is well known because he goes to lots of rallies and such where he puts on his seminars and has his vendor booth.

He finished in time for us to go back to our coach where we watched the AFC and NFC championship games. We were please to have Seattle win their game over the 49ers so the Super Bowl game next week with be Seattle vs Denver. We are hoping to see Seattle’s defense stop the Denver offense, at least that’s what I think will be key to the game. Go Seahawks.

We had ordered a set of tires for the back of our coach from one of the companies that came out to our camping spot and gave a seminar. We also wanted to put on new shocks and have them check the alignment. Our appointment was for Monday morning but when Mark went over on Sunday they told him they didn’t have our size tires but would get them, possibly by the time we got there on Monday. However, when we checked in, they didn’t have our size and tried to sell us a different tire, we didn’t want that so left there with the understanding they would get our tires shipped in, call us and we would return to have all the work done. We didn’t have the shocks installed or the alignment checked, figured we would do all the work on our next trip.

So after leaving the shop area, we headed over to our second group we stay with when in Quartzsite. This is the group we’ve stayed with every year we’ve been there, RV America. This year there were 11 rigs, I think, and two of them were newbies, all the others had been there before. It was good to see all the folks we knew and meet the new ones too.

This group is parked close enough to the big tent that we can walk over and not have to deal with all the traffic hassles. But we only went to the tent area twice and to Tyson once, Lorraine just didn’t feel like doing more. That was fine, we’ve been there, done that before. And this time there were more vendors that had pain relief salves, tee shirts and other “non-RV related” stuff than in prior years. We knew we were coming to Yuma and a lot of the vendors that are normally in Quartzsite will be at the Yuma swap meet too so we can go there to see what’s available and different this year.

Tuesday morning I walked over to tour one of the vendor areas but just as I got there, I got a phone call from Rob and Norma letting me know they were in town. I told them I would meet them at the ranger’s station and direct them to our site. It was good to see these friends from Canada, we hadn’t seen them since last year down here because we didn’t go “home” last year.

We did drive over to the “main event” area to see the vendors there. There are probably 20 rows of tents set up and usually it takes a few hours to “do” the main event. This time we only went through about 4 or five of the rows and called it a day. Lots of stuff there but we never did find the jacks you wanted us to get for you, Joe, sorry about that.

I got a call from the tire dealer and he said they were unable to get our tires for us. He was very short and to the point, I think he had enough business that he didn’t need to be nice to us, ha. So we will probably wait until we get back in Oregon to get our tires and shocks, there is no sales tax in Oregon so that should save us a couple bucks too.

On Wednesday morning I had a service tech scheduled to come by the rig and service our Aqua Hot. This is a system that we use to keep our rig warm when it’s cold and it also heats our domestic water, it’s unlimited hot water when we have water and sewer hookups. We are supposed to have it serviced once a year, change the burner tip, clean the plenum and change the fuel filter. We have also been having an issue where the burner didn’t come on soon enough at times and I wanted him to troubleshoot that for us too. It ended up being an over temperature sensor/thermometer was bad so he changed that out for us. It now seems to be working with no issues, yea.

We were planning on leaving Quartzsite on Thursday but decided to stay one more day so we could visit more with the folks in our group. We didn’t even leave the area all day, just set around and visited with different groups of folks, a good day.

This group has a get together every afternoon at 5:00, each coach brings something to share and we all have great time eating, telling jokes, kidding each other and just visiting. On Wednesday night it was pot luck. This was a full meal with lots of different entreats, from chili and spaghetti, salads and plenty of deserts too. We usually call this get together our evening meal, this night is was more like a buffet there were so many different selections, all great.

Friday morning we got everything ready for travel, met with everyone one more time then headed out. It is only about 1 1/2 hour drive to get here, we had no problem. We called TJ and Sharon, our friends who offered us the use of their lot for our stay her and they met us at their lot. This lot has two RV hookups and we stayed here with them a few years ago for a month and really liked the area. Since then, they have built a Studio type home on it so there is only one RV hookup available. They decided to make this area their permanent home so they have bought and moved to a house across the highway so the RV site is open although it is for sale if anyone is interested.

With TJ’s help we pulling into our parking spot and hooked up the power then we visited a bit with TJ and Sharon. It was nice to see them again, it’s been a year and we were trying to get up to speed on each other’s activities over the past year. They do spend the winter here now and their children come down and visit them here too. They still intend to go to the NW for the summertime, you just can’t beat the weather up there from mid July through early September, usually that is.

After TJ and Sharon left, we continued with our setup chores, I even unloaded the stuff we carry in our car into the shed here on their lot. For over the past week, our dinners have been pot luck or finger food so we both wanted to go out to eat. We asked TJ and Sharon if they wanted to go along so we made a date to go to Mexican later. They introduced us to this place a couple of years ago and it was just as good this time.

Saturday we sort of took it easy for awhile then decided to head out for some errands and shopping. Later we went over to visit with Larry and Kathy, the neighbors here. Larry was raised in Bellingham and graduated from high school there too. Before we knew it, the sun had set and we were still trying to solve all the political woos of this country, if only they would listen.

This morning I started the blog then we headed out to the Yuma swap meet, now called the Yuma Market Place. We found a couple of items we were looking for and checked out some we may get on a later visit. We then headed over to Quechan casino for dinner. They closed the buffet and now it’s a nice restaurant. We ordered the everyday special, prime rib with the fixings for $10 each. We had to get our player’s club card to get the special price and they gave me $10 and Lorraine $20 free play. We also had enough comp points built up on our cards to get the meal free, good deal. But both of us went through the free play money although that was about the extent of our slot play so it wasn’t an expensive trip. On the way home, we stopped by and I ran into Wal-Mart to get some dog food for Misty, that was the most expensive thing we did today, ha.

So here we are, back at the coach and finishing the blog.

Boy the weather has really been great this week, it’s been getting into or just at the 80s most days. The night time temps drop to the low 50s, a couple of nights it got down to the high 30s but it warms up quickly after the sun comes up. Speaking of sunrise, that happens a bit after 7 and we’ve had a few colorful ones this week too. We are used to seeing colorful sunsets here but I was impressed with a couple of the sunrises too.

Our travel plans are to sit here for awhile, not sure how long just yet. There is a lot to do and see around here, Mark/Sue and Rob/Norma will be coming down from Quartzsite tomorrow so I’m sure we will be getting together with them some too, along with other friends in the area. Jag and Bev, I’ll be contacting you two this week to find out your schedule, maybe we can come over and see the park you are staying in too.

Ok, now to add some pictures here and get this posted.

Sunset over the coaches in Quartzsite.