Here we are, on the road: We’re in Chula Vista, California

March 23, 2014 Lorraine’s Report

Hello everyone, thanks for stopping by. Yes, we left Yuma, AZ after spending 53 days there. We want to say “Thank You” to Sharon & TJ for letting us stay on their nice lot. We thoroughly enjoyed our quite time there. We just loved sitting out, reading and just doing nothing.

So on Tuesday last week, we pulled up stakes and moved on. And what a windy day that was. Gusts blowing up to 30 to 35 miles per hour. I was not used to being pushed around by the wind in the rig, and that evening, I was happy to just sit and rest. Coming out of Yuma is always an experience!! Strong headwinds are not fun to drive into.

So we are now in San Diego, and the climate has changed. First thing I did was put on jeans and a warmer t-shirt. We have humidity here, and we’ve had to turn on the heat a couple of day. It is cold to me!! I’m not sure how I’m going to do when we go to Alaska, and it will be in the 60’s or so. Time will tell.

I guess getting used to the warmer, dryer air was not as hard to get used to while the damper air takes some getting used to. I love the desert, the dry air, the shadows across the Yuma mountains. I will miss the Indian Chief you see in the Yuma mountains heading out of town, towards the east. He was so majestic! The shadows that play across the mountains throughout the day are wondrous.

It was so nice to meet up with Joe & Alice. We had such a fine time with you folks, we look forward to seeing you when we get back to Bellingham, and Safe travels to you as you journey home this week.

Saturday we took off and went and caught the Trolley that took us up to where Old San Diego started. What an experience that was. I think I was a bit disappointed with how it came across to me. We rode with all the other passengers who knew where they were going. There was no one at any of the stands to help us get to where we needed to go. It was all chance that we did it right.

This week is spring break here in the San Diego area, so everything will be busy to try and go and do things. It will be interesting. Hope everyone is okay back home.

Hugs to all,

Lorraine

3/23/14 Chuck’s report

Yes, we are out of Yuma after being there since late January. Chula Vista is just a few miles North of Tijuana, Mexico but we don’t have any intention of going there. And already we miss the warm temperatures we were enjoying, it’s long pants and shoes weather here, at least for us.

Last Monday we headed back to the Chevy dealer and got the last of our paperwork we needed to fax to our mail forwarding place and they will calculate how much our tax/license will be. After we get that figure, we’ll snail mail the paperwork to them, along with a money order, and they’ll get our license and registration for us. It’s nice that we can do this without being in South Dakota, especially this time of the year.

And with it being St. Patrick's day we felt we had to find a place to eat corn beef and cabbage. Lorraine suggested the casino and we ended up getting two-for-one dinner. I’m not real big on corn beef but once a year is ok and this was better than some I’ve eaten and the price was certainly right. And Lorraine was a winner there too, yea.

Tuesday we packed up and headed out of Yuma. Once again, thanks to TJ and Sharon for allowing us to stay on your lot there, it’s nice. As we were leaving a couple stopped by and were interested in going inside, they had checked it out last year and were surprised to see it for sale again. I told them I could call you and see if you could let them in but they just took a flyer and said they would call the agent. Hope something comes out of it for you.

We had most of the outside stuff already put away for traveling and some of the inside stuff too. But it’s been awhile since we’ve moved so it took some “thought”, everything wasn’t fresh in our mind, ha. But everything worked out fine, no problems what-so-ever. And backing out of TJ’s lot was simply, I directed Lorraine from outside and she did a fabulous job getting us out and on the street.

Hooking up the car for the first time went very smooth, sure glad everything worked there as we really didn’t want to spend any more time at the shop. One thing I forgot to check was the height of the car, I think I may need to get a drop hitch but will have to check that next time we hook up. We could barely tell we were towing with the Saturn and this car is smaller so it was no problem. Only problem with the trip was we had some heavy winds for the first 75 miles or so, not real bad but enough that I slowed down some.

The sites here at the Elk’s lodge are sure close together, the neighbor on our side has slide outs and with our slides out, I can’t walk between the two coaches without turning sideways. We could easily pass stuff from coach to coach through the windows if we wanted. I backed in, had to pull out twice to readjust so our slides were within the yellow lines.

When we stay at an Elk’s lodge, we try to support it by attending dinners so later had hamburgers there. One of the members stopped by to greet us and gave us some “tourist” advice. That’s always nice to have when we start out exploring.

We have been here before, back in March of ‘09 but Lorraine spent most of time in the hospital or in the coach just recovering. This was the time she had bronchitis, a urinary track infection, and either a bladder infection, or passing kidney stones we thought. She got the infection treated but ended up with her liver shutting down. We spent a couple weeks going from doctor to doctor before one figured out she had to stop taking Celebrex, ended up she was allergic to some of the ingredients and it was killing her liver. Luckily, once she stopped taking this medicine things started getting better but it was scary for awhile there. She still has pains from her liver once in awhile but nothing like that time.

So this time we plan on doing more exploring while we are here. Wednesday we headed to Costco, sure miss that in Yuma. We got some meat, our freezer section is pretty full once again. We also do some exploring of the surrounding area, just checking things out. We did stop by a Kinko store, had to fax some info to our place in SD for licenses.

Thursday was a day we’ve been looking forward too for awhile. We headed North about an hour and met our friends Joe and Alice at Pala Casino. This is the place that has the great buffet, one of the best Indian Casino buffets we’ve found. We got there a bit early and played the slots while we waited for Joe and Alice. Can you believe they didn’t pay for our losses that far, ha? But we were not disappointed in the buffet and the big plus was we had a great visit with good friends while we ate. We hung around the table after we were finished eating just visiting but finally decided to go out to the slots for 1/2 hour or so before we headed back to check on Misty. The only downside to the day was we both lost on the slots, winning would have made the day so much better. Thanks for coming by and see you two up in Washington when we get there.

Friday we took off on a drive, just to explore the area. We ended up at the beach and had a good day. After we got back to the coach, we went over to the Lodge for dinner again. This time I had roast pork and Lorraine had salmon, both were good dinners for a good price. It’s been quite awhile since Lorraine has had salmon so she especially enjoyed it.

Saturday we headed out once again to explore, this time we wanted to try the rail system to get around. They have three different lines so we got on the blue, transferred to the green and got off at Old Town San Diego. This is where San Diego actually started so they have all these old buildings and such. Of course, everything is filled with tourist trap stuff but we managed to avoid most of that. We did, however, find a good Mexican place for dinner, one of the best we’ve been too, it rivals the one in Ferndale. We did find it easy to get around on the rail system and the one day tickets we bought allowed us to ride the transit buses too but we didn’t need to use them. All in all, a good system and I would think even nicer when the traffic was heavier.

Like I said earlier, it’s long pants weather for us. Not to rub it in or anything but the day time temps are ONLY getting to the mid 70s with the nighttime lows getting to the high 40s. But more than the temperature is we are back in higher humidity and clouds until noon or so, something we haven’t be exposed to since late December. Since that time, we pretty much been in the desert and haven’t had much humidity in the air. It was different to see dew running off the roof our first morning here, no rain however.

Since talking to to a few folks around here, we have decided to leave here on Tuesday and head to Oceanside, a town on the North side of San Diego. We will probably stay there for most of a week exploring that area of California before we continue our trip North. We WILL be in our daughter’s area for Katie’s birthday in April I’m told.

I know we have taken a few pictures this week so I’ll go through them an pick out some to add here.

On the road from Yuma, notice the green fields, that’s part of the nation’s vegetable supply.