Come Sail Away

That's exactly what we did today. We drove up to Santa Clarita and picked up our friend Sharon and drove to Ventura where she and her husband Terry have their boat. We arrived at Ventura Harbor around 8:30 and it was promising to be a beautiful day.

This is Sharon and I up on the bridge while we just leaving the harbor. You can see a little of it in the background.


It took us about 2 hours to get the one of the Channel Islands. The seas were starting to get a little rough just before we got to the island but on the back side it was calm and the guys started fishing.



Here is a picture of part of the island.



We were out there fishing for a couple of hours and started back around 3:00pm, not knowing that Terry had heard a small craft warning. Well, we came around from behind that island and it was really rough. I mean the swells were tipping us from side to side. I spent the next 2 hours sitting in a chair on the back of the boat hanging on for dear life and trying not to get sick by eating pretzles. But I made it!!

All in all it was a good day spent with friends. I believe we are going back in a couple of weeks for the Harbor Lights parade. More on that later.

Happy Thanksgiving

After our night in Victorville, we finally arrived in Van Nuys. We are staying at Birmingham RV Park. It's right on Balboa Blvd, just south of Roscoe. According to the owners this park has been here since the 1930's but used to be a regular trailer park. Guess they changed it to a RV only park about 25 years ago!

When we first arrived we were not happy with the park. They had given us a short, 30 amp site.
We went back up to the office and really complained. We were moved (all of a sudden they had a different place) to a longer site with 50 amp. So even though it is costing us more that we orginally thought, we are now happy with our site. We are going to be here for a month. Its is almost halfway between where Ed's daughter Tina lives and where my son Terry and his wife Sarah lives. So the location is really good. It's also close to where Ed likes to play golf!

Of course, Tuesday night when we arrived our good friend Sharon was doing her Karaoke show just down from Tina's house so, it was like time stood still, Tina and Terry joined us for an evening of singing and fun.

Today is Thanksgiving and we will be going to Tina's for a family gathering. This is the first time she has hosted the family for Thanksgiving and she is very excited. I'm sure everything will go fine.

Happy Thanksgiving to the rest of our friends and families who are not with us today. Be well, be happy and we send our love and good wishes to you all.

Never set your plans in stone

For they may not work out.

Today we were supposed to be in Van Nuys, California getting ready for Thanksgiving with Ed's family. Tina has been calling daily. (I think she's a little nervous about having Thanksgiving for her first time) Well, we did not make it to Van Nuys, instead we are sitting at a Walmart in Victorville, California.

Here is what happened...First let me ask you a question. Why would anyone want to try to park a big RV at night?

Last night, around 10:00 at night, we heard and saw the headlights of an RV coming into the park. The road between the RV's is very narrow most of the rigs have been backing up the road.

This guy did not do that, he tried to drive onto the road and then shift around to back into his spot. Well, as you might have guessed, he hit us. He broke our driver's side mirror. We got very little sleep last night wondering how we were going to get this fixed. We got very lucky.
There is a shop in Lake Havasu City called 3T's Rv Center. They happened to have the mirror we needed. So drove the car to pick it up and had it installed a little after noon.

We left Needles at 1:00 and arrived here in Victorville a little after 4:00. We will continue on to Van Nuys tomorrow morning. Should be there and set up by noon.

Meeting new people

Well, you never know when an opportunity is going to fall in your lap. As I said in the post before, we went again to Avi Casino to play bingo. Well it seems that our winning yesterday was beginners luck. No winners today.

However, we shared our table with 3 ladies who never played bingo at Avi before, so we struck up a conversation regarding the game. They were also RVer's from Lake Havasu. One of the ladies is the owner of a campground in Idaho. The campground is called Wagonhammer and it is right on the Salmon River. Seems they use workcampers every season. They have spots for 2 rigs behind the office set for them. I know that we can not do this next summer but we will certainly keep this is mind for the next. We have their card so this time next year we may be in touch with them.

In some ways, we have been busy since we started this lifestyle and other times we seem to be getting bored. We have certain things we still want to do the first part of next year, but after July of next year, we will probably be looking for the work camp positions. Perhaps a state park in Florida for the winter. Or we may go back to Livingston Texas to volunteer at the CARE facility at Rainbow's End park. Even this campground where we are staying has a volunteer couple that just runs the activities in the evenings in the clubhouse. Thats all they do! So many choices. But for now we will continue on with our plans. Tommorow we are on the move again going to Birmingham RV park in Van Nuys, California for the holidays.

Stay tuned for more pictures!

BINGO!!

Well, today was our day to play Bingo. Avi Casino has 3 sessions of free bingo every day. We went to the session at 11 am. Then we each bought another page for $7.00. The free set you play pays $20.00 each game and the set you buy pays $50.00. I won one game today but had to split the money so I won $17.50!! That paid for our play!! The buffet at Avi Casino also has 'buy one get one free' on Thursdays so we ate our lunch there. They really had a great selection of things to eat.

Tonight, they played bingo in the clubhouse. Here its $2.50 to play. So we paid $5.00 and won 3 games!! We came away tonight with $12.00!!!!

Looks like we might have found our game....or maybe it was beginners luck. We are going back to Avi tomorrow. Stay tuned to see what happens!!

Laughlin and Lake Havasu

Sunday we took the afternoon and went into Laughlin. When we lived in California, we would go to Laughlin at least twice a year sometimes more. We really enjoyed the casinos and would go around to all the slot machines with a bucket of quarters. We would play 3 times and move on if we did not win. Sounds silly but we did hit some times. Ed also used to enjoy playing in the poker rooms and would always play 7 card stud. Now with Texas Hold Em so popular that seems to be all that they play and the slot machines no longer give coins. Everything is script. You can take the script from one machine to the next but it just isn't the same. So we will not be going back to Laughlin.

Today we took a ride down to Lake Havasu. We had been there several years ago but I wanted to go back and get some pictures of London Bridge.



It's really remarkable that this bridge was taken apart and numbered and put back together over this manmade lake. There wasn't even water there before!!

There wasn't anyone there today but in the summer this place is packed with boats.



We just got back from the clubhouse. Card Bingo. Did not win tonight. Oh well, there's always tomorrow!

Until then.....

Oatman, Arizona

Today we took a ride out Route 66 to a town called Oatman. Gold was discovered here in 1902 and soon became a boom town. The hotel in Oatman was where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard honeymooned. The burros that roam the streets are decendents of the burros used to work the mines. It was an interesting trip to see these burros walking all around the street. You don't need stop lights, you can't travel very fast the burros are all in the middle of the road.

Once interstate 40 was finish, Oatman became almost a ghost town. I think the only thing keeping the town alive is the burros that everyone comes to see.

Back in California

We arrived in Needles on Monday and have settled in to our site here for the next two weeks.
We are just relaxing. Last night I went up to the clubhouse and played "card bingo". You play with a group of 4 with a deck of cards. Each player gets 13 cards. The caller has a deck and he calls a card at a time. If you have the card it goes into the center. Once you get rid of all of your cards you win bingo! It was different but fun.

This is the clubhouse.


This is a view of the Colorado River that flows right in front of the park.

This is our site



There are a few things we want to do while we are here. We want to go to Lake Havasu to see London Bridge and there is an old town called Oatman that is also on Route 66. And of course, one day we will go to Laughlin!

We moved again

Before we left Lakewood we did go to Carlsbad Caverns. This was the whole purpose of our stay here. We chose to take the natural route down instead of the elevator.


Here we are at the entrance of the cave. We walked down 750 feet and it was 1 1/2 miles to the bottom because it kind of zig zags all the way down.



My calves still hurt. You wouldn't think that going downhill would be so strenuous!!
I wanted to do the bat flight (where you sit outside the entrance at dusk to watch all the bats leave the cave for the night) but the ranger said that most of the bats have already move south to Mexico for the winter so we did not get to see this.



















These are a few pictures from The Ranch.













Yesterday we moved from Lakewood, New Mexico to Deming, New Mexico. We are finally back on the Verizon network so I have a strong signal to post some pictures. The drive yesterday was very slow and stressful. We were battling winds of 25 to 30 miles per hours and some gusts. Most of the time we were driving into the wind so our gas milage was not the best to say the least. We climbed to an elevation of 8,900 feet. The higher we got the colder it got but the winds were not so bad. Coming down in elevation to 4,500 was Alamogordo New Mexico. We drove on to Las Cruces, NM and then on to Deming.

Some good news.....we paid 2.87 for diesel!!!!

There really isn't much to see here in this area. We are mainly here for our mail to catch up to us. Should be here tomorrow. Ed will play his golf in Mew Mexico and I will do some laundry.
The good thing about being in an Escapee park is that you can wash your rigs and cars. So Saturday before we start to California, we will give this rig a good cleaning. The chores never go away!!!

On the move again

Yesterday we left San Antonio and drove to Lakewood New Mexico to an Escapee Park..The Ranch.
It was a long drive, over 450 miles but we gained an hour going into Mountain Time so we decided to push on. Glad we did. We arrived here around 4:00pm just in time for happy hour. (At all Escapee parks, 4:00 is always happy hour, where annoucements are made. Its a social hour.) We were greeted by escapee hugs. This is a very friendly park. We found out that we arrived here at the end of their 'roundup'.
Last night we were welcomed for a night of horse racing! We have never laughed so hard!!
There were 6 horses (5 fillies and 1 stallion). There were squares on the floor made with masking tape and 6 set of dice told the horses how many spots they could move. You could bet a quarter on your horse. Like I said, we never laughed so hard.

Before we left San Antonio, we did go to see one of the missions there. We visited Mission San Jose.


The objective of the Franciscan friars was to convert the indian hunters and gatherers into Catholic tax paying citizens of New Spain. (This was well before it became Texas) Everything changed for the indians, they lost their culture, religion and where required to learn Latin and Spanish. They lived in 2 room quarters that were all along the outside walls of the compound.


They worked as masons, weavers, and builders. Some worked the livestock (cattle, sheep and goats) that were kept 25 miles south of the mission. (These were the first cowboys). It was a very intersting tour.

Our connection is not very good here, its taken me just about all day to get this update. We will take lots of pictures around here and try to post later.