Reflection, Happy Hours, Books, Walking and Jigsaws

Monday, Nov. 28

Today I kept busy, the good kind of busy. I was up by 7 as usual and did a bit of blog reading and caught up on my Scrabble with my sister, Donna on Facebook. I had been invited to go to the clubhouse and join in the Exercise/Walk class at 8 am so instead of touring the park alone, I attended. It was nice to have 9 or 10 other campers to walk with and we watched a video for 45 minutes and strutted our stuff with a few variations. It felt good and an easy way to get a couple miles under my belt early.

When I got back, we had a quick breakfast, got cleaned up and drove into Bullhead City, Az
and Laughlin, Nv to get some cards mailed and go into a do-it-yourself car wash and get some of the Alamo Road grit off the truck. It was a pretty sweet deal for $5 you got 20 minutes of suds, rinse and power dry and all the brushes to go with it. Next time we'll take some soft cloths to do an even better job but the King Ranch is smiling now!

crossing the Colorado River into Nevada

Remind you of a movie??

The day was young so we then drove across the Colorado River into Nevada just to get some pictures of the casinos and check out the homes in the area.

Laughlin, Nevada

 It is a thing we like to do, there are some really nice places and some of the opposite. By this time, it was approaching 1 pm and when Bill asked the question “are you getting hungry?” I knew where his tummy was thinking of so we drove back to Bullhead City and stopped at Chili’s for lunch. Getting to be a habit but hey, when you find something you like and the price is right, why not?

Bill had his usual, he can’t pull himself away from the Ultimate Bacon Burger and highly recommends it and I continued my Mexican cuisine experience by ordering a Smothered Beef Burrito with black beans on the side. Man, oh man. It was huge and with a whispered “we won’t need much supper tonight” across the table to Bill, I asked for a takeout box to bring half of it home. Delicious!

When we arrived home, I did a little cleanup in the Suite, emphasis on ‘little’ since it doesn’t take long to dust and sweep in here. Bill and Clemson stretched on the recliner for a wee siesta and I walked up to the clubhouse to see if I could put any pieces in the community jigsaw puzzle. I love working on them and don't have room in the Suite, obviously. I was successful, looking after the underdog pieces of plain white, which usually are left to the end, placing about 20 pcs. in their spots.

By the time, I got back, it was 3:45 and time to grab a drink and join our neighbors’ in Happy Hour at site #59. It was fun, as usual, more stories, laughter and good times which seem to turn into what Bill calls “Happy Two Hours”. Dinner was easy, I opened a can of tomato soup and it was sufficient enough with some Italian bread on the side.

Another great day with the skies finally clearing up around 5:30 so we are all hoping for a sunny day in the neighbourhood tomorrow.

Take care, hope you had an awesome day too! Drop a line if you care to and thank you for reading.

Relaxing at Ridgeview RV Resort

Tuesday, Nov. 22 to Saturday, Nov. 26, 2016

These days are starting to all roll into one and each time I think about ‘today’ I have to go through the same scenario. Is this Thursday? Or Friday?

I’m sure most of you, who have recently retired especially, go through the same thing. But it doesn’t really matter for some reason. This is the good life and it can go on forever as far as I’m concerned!

We are at Ridgeview RV Resort in Bullhead City, Az. 

Arrived here Tuesday and got set up nicely on Site 60.

Entrance to the park

This sign upon entering had us chuckling ????
Was I going to jump out?

Our luck so far has been such that as soon as we arrive in one of our membership parks we are set up really close to the entrance. Almost as if that is where all new arrivals go. So when we pulled in here, I said to Bill, “That is likely where we’ll be”, pointing to a site directly across from their office.

We were both pleasantly surprised that we were down in a middle section of the park with less traffic in and out. 

The really nice thing is that we were set up and because it was Tuesday and we watch 3 of our favorite shows on Tuesdays, Bill was getting the satellite dish connected as a priority. While doing that, our neighbor in Site 59 popped his head around the back end of his rv and started chatting.

Two Ontarians set up beside each other

He saw we were from Ontario and directed us to his license plate at the same time. Right beside and across the road from Ontarians! How nice. Oscar and Judy and their daughter, Lori and Roland are from Dryden, terrific people and the chatting hasn’t stopped since!  

Lori and Rolands set up across the drive

We all know our boundaries and do not over-extend the welcome and so far, have had Happy Hours at each of our places.

On a windy (45mph) Thanksgiving day inside our Suite
for Happy Hour

Beautiful view across the Colorado River to 11 casinos

It is nice.

The stories and experiences shared are priceless and the suggestions and helpful hints back and forth are invaluable. On Thanksgiving Day, I made up a casserole dish to take to the community dinner at the clubhouse 

and the 6 of us plus 2 other couples, Tom and Ann and Rich and Lynn shared a table. It was great food and lots of laughs.

Daytime view across the River

Walkabout view from the top of a hill in the park

Yup, Thanksgiving is over!

Bill and I have lots of recommendations of places to go and things to see and do so we will start venturing out Monday. It has been nice to do some more relaxing and a bit of re-organization inside. I have a couple of cupboards I want to sort through yet. 

Saturday turned out to be 61F instead of the forecast 70F but without the sun it felt cooler. Because I’m a sun sitter, I decided instead to pull out the file box with Mom’s paperwork and start purging. Let’s get rid of some unnecessary weight here. I’m Power of Attorney over her finances so have everything from 2010 with me. After about 45 min. I released a sigh of satisfaction to remove over 2/3 of old files. Yes, other than Income Tax files back for 7 years, the box is a whole lot lighter.

Looking out the entrance road to Bullhead Parkway

I’ve exchanged books with the clubhouse as well as with Judy, next door, and now hard into a James Patterson book called “Private”. Never read a bad one of his and I know there are a few more I’ll need to get my hands on before I leave.

Bill and I are experiencing some pretty neat things here in the southwest and when we feel so content we wanted to touch base with family back home. Sitting down on Saturday afternoon we began calling our 6 children and one of Bill’s sisters. Having a wonderful set up with unlimited calling and texts by Roam Mobility, we are happy to be able to do that. We managed to get through to Bridgette and Jake, Krystal, Yvonne, Liz and Patrick before the day was done. It is so nice to hear their voices. We’ll try the other two tomorrow.

We keep in touch with Bill’s dad a couple of times a week and my Mom at least once a week so we know they are well also.

I hope your days have been good ones as well, I’m hoping for sunshine tomorrow so the temperature feels warmer out there. 

Thank you for reading and feel free to comment!

Service Again and Some Catchup

Thursday, Nov. 24 – Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American friends!

How nice it is to have service for our phones and internet again. Alamo Lake State Park, near Wenden, Az., where we stayed for 3 nights did not have any. It makes you re-evaluate how important these connections are to you. 

The drive into the park was 38 miles off Highway 60 and a great two lane highway. You need to make sure you are not reading low on fuel before you head in because you’d have to travel these 38 miles out to get refilled. A few miles out of the park, we found we had some sporadic reception so would venture out that distance once daily to check for urgent messages from home.

In one way, it was nice, because we didn’t find ourselves carrying the phone around ‘in case’ someone texted us and we weren’t tempted to open the laptops to catch up on news. On the other hand, the reality is that ‘if’ something back home happened, how would anyone reach us? Yes, they could call the Park Office if necessary, like people used to in the days’ past. Bottom line we managed quite nicely without it.

Site B-1

However, our days at Alamo L.S.P. were very enjoyable despite this ‘disconnect’ and even despite the rain and cloudy periods. It is gorgeous there and we will definitely go back. 

closed boat ramp in the park due to drought

We were told there were 400 wild burros in the park alone along with many other ‘critters’ like scorpions, rattlers and tarantulas, but we were hard pressed to find any of the latter three.

Love the conversations of the quail

Handsome fella with no fear of me at all

I wasn’t actively looking for the latter 3 even though I was always keeping an eye open whenever I walked around but we were looking for the burros and managed to spot a few.

Beautiful burro up on the hill

We were especially fond of the 2 dirt roads leading into a small burb called Wayside. 

Woops! Wash across the dirt road to Wayside
This after the rain Sunday night and it dried up within 45 minutes

Huge, let me say, huge saguaro!

Road being graded

Run strictly by generators, the owners have a teensy community with an rv park, a restaurant/bar and available propane for passers-by. We loved this welcoming place enough to go back in for lunch on Monday!

Topping up our bbq propane at Wayside

Wayside bar and grill

RV park way back there for 47 or so rv'ers

Before we left, Bill and I took one last walk to scope out possible sites for our next visit. We have quite a few options to reserve for next year. And if you know anything about Alamo Lake State Park, unfortunately because of cloudy evenings we didn’t get any star gazing done. We did, however, catch the very bright double rainbow on Sunday night.

                                      

Can barely see the second one by the time I snapped it

                                                                                                                                  

So, all packed up we stopped at the office to pick up a few postcards and by 10 am we were on the road. Before we got to the truck, Bill is handing me the keys. “You drive” he said. Well, then my heart starts the pitter patter and I start with all the excuses. But it would be the perfect place to drive, really, straight forward, hardly any traffic so I accepted the challenge. 

The only part where I got nervous was around a few of the winding curves but it was quite easy for the 38 miles to the main highway where we swapped back. I know it is good for me to do this, just in case, I need to get us somewhere so I won’t complain…………. too much when he hands them over again.

Beautiful views in the park

Bill and Clemson up on Bill Williams Lookout
onto Alamo Dam

Gorgeous Arizona sunsets

With a pit stop to make a sandwich at 1:30 pm and following the gps, a few steps into California on CA62 to I-95, we arrived at Bullhead City and our next destination, Ridgeview RV Resort. This is one of our ROD membership parks so we will stay for 2 weeks free.

I hope your past few days have been good ones, I’ll update on things after the American Thanksgiving. 

Thank you for reading and all comments are welcome!