CHRISTMAS in our RV

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
This is as much decorating as we do while RVing.

Our wreath does light up at night for a more festive look.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving

We enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving get-together & dinner in the club house at the RV Park.
All the camp hosts helped prepare the dinner. We had everything - from turkey & ham, to potato & bread filling, to jellied cranberry sauce, to pumpkin cheesecake & pies galore- Everything I like! There were well over 30 people that attended the festivities. A great time was had by all.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Back to Amarillo-Different Route, Different Scenery

We took a different route through Arizona, down through Prescott into North Phoenix where we stopped for the night at Dessert Sands RV Park.

The next morning we pulled into Agave Gulch RV Park at Davis-Monthan AFB; it's one of our favorite parks. They just added an enclosed (fenced- in) dog park with an agility course that Tazzy just loves. Look at this adorable Airstream amongst the dessert landscape. We stopped the Soldier Horse Museum - mostly a tourist trap. While walking the dogs we came across these Ellipigo bikes - definitely something I've never seen before. They work just like the Elliptic Exercise Machine. One thing though, is that they don't have a bike seat; you can only stand while cycling.



We decided to take a different route back to Texas. We drove through Billy the Kid & Jicarilla Apache country in the mountains & rugged mesa's of New Mexico.
Check out this gorgeous view.

Those Ponderosa pine trees smelled like Christmas.

Further down the road near Alamongordo, we stopped by the White Sands Monument. This time we drove into the national park - it's "Like no place else on earth."

Here a father & son are preparing to sled down the dunes. We were told that earlier this year, during spring break, the parks gift shop sold over 900 saucer sleds in one day to college students. That must have been a blast!

As I climbed to the top of a dune, I saw this group of people in the far distance. It looks like snow!

White Sands National Monument is the largest pure gypsum field in the world covering 275 square miles. Unlike dunes made of quartz based sand crystals, gypsum does not convert the sun's energy into heat, so you can walk on the sand in your bare feet even during the hottest summer months.

There are 4 types of dunes that exist at White Sands, Dome (low mounds), Barchan (crescent-shaped), Transverse (long ridges of sand), and Parabolic (plants anchor the arms of barchan dunes & invert their shape).

Here's Liam on top of the world.

He climbed to the top, but immediately turned around to go back down to the RV - Okay, so now he can say "Been there, done that!"

When we finally got back to Amarillo, we heard there was a snowstorm earlier in the week. Glad we missed that. Until next time...

Evan

Evan invited us up to Las Vegas - As he put it, you're not that far away from here, why not come up to visit me; so we did. We had some unexpected engine issues on our way to Vegas that turned out to be nothing more than resetting the dashboard computer. Thank goodness. We stayed at the Nellis AFB Desert Eagle FamCamp.

We had a great time with Evan; he is so funny. We met him after work for dinner, then Joe & I went to The Mirage Casino to see "LOVE." It celebrates the musical legacy of the Beatles song lyrics through interpretive dance performed by Cirque du Soleil. His friend scored the tickets for us. Thank you Fabrice. The next day we brought the dogs over to see Evan. It was a short visit; Evan was leaving for Utah & we were leaving for Arizona, and, OOPS! I forgot my camera.



Evan told us that the Hoover Dam Bypass they were constructing the last time we were here was now completed, so we decided to drive across it on our trip down to Tucson. As we approached the Dam we saw this spectacular view of Lake Mead.




The new Colorado River Bridge spans the Black Canyon connecting Nevada & Arizona. The bridge is over 2,000 feet long & over 900 feet above the Colorado River. The new bridge is said to save significant travel time, and it does - We didn't have to navigate the narrow, windy road congested with tourists snapping pictures of the Hoover Dam & not paying any attention to what is going on around them (we should know, we've been one of those tourists). It easily saved us 20 to 30 minutes from the last time we were here.

Alfateers... Not Mouseketeers

Our next trip to California got delayed a couple of days, but we finally got on our way October 25th. We have an appointment with Alfateers Service Center in Fontana, California to get some work done on our Alfa Motor Coach.

The first leg of our trip was a bit boring - Been there, done that! We stayed at Enchanted Trails RV Park, north of Albuquerque where you can rent one of these antique cars w/a trailer. How fun!





The second night we stayed in Williams, AZ - The Gateway to the Grand Canyon. When we arrived at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park it was sunny & warm. When we woke up the next morning it was about 27 degrees outside & very windy; we were dodging tumbleweeds all the way into California.



We arrived in California on the 26th & spent the night at March AFB in Riverside. The next morning we went to the Alfateers Service Center. There were 7 other Alfa motor coaches lined up to get serviced. We needed new seals on our slide-outs & roof, door lock replaced, new hose reel, Co2 detector replaced, a ceiling fan in the bedroom & a lot of other small stuff. We also upgraded 2 of our TVs to LCD flat-screens. WOW! The picture is great! We ended up spending 6 days in the beautiful San Bernardino Valley (pictured here) .





With 2 dogs & a lot of time on our hands, we walked around dog parks & malls, went to the movies & ate at some of our favorite restaurants. My favorite place was Victoria Gardens, an outdoor mall in Rancho Cucamonga. This picture is a shot of a residential area near the mall - Gorgeous! We had perfect weather every day... can't complain about that.










BTW, look who we saw at the Victoria Gardens Mall... "Paul Blart, Mall Cop" : )

Wall Drugs

On our way back to Amarillo, we took a different route - We decided to head west through SD, then turn south into Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma & back to Texas. We planned to drive through the badlands, but it was pretty far out of our way & Joe wasn't feeling too well; he caught the cold that I had on the way up.

We did stop by the "World Famous" Wall Drug Store. It was huge & filled with all kinds of little shops - basically a shopping mall in the middle of nowhere.

Most of the scenery consisted of wheat fields & bails of hay, cotton fields & sunflower fields. At least it wasn't totally flat like Texas, it was somewhat hilly.

We stayed at this very nice RV Park in Kansas.

We enjoyed dinner with Bob & Claudia, our new Amarillo Ranch workamping couple. They spent the summer working at Custer State Park in South Dakota.

We had a earlier brief encounter of the weird kind when we went to the park & Bob greeted us at the entrance. Joe saw his name tag & said Bob... Bob said Joe... they obviously recognized each others voices from previous phone conversations. I was totally out of the loop.

We made it back to Amarillo Ranch RV Park the next evening.

Model T to Go Please

BTW - Here's a couple of pics I took before we left on our trip. This is one of the Model T's that stopped by The Ranch on it's way to an antique car show.

Crazy Horse & Custer State Park

The uncompleted & probably never-to-be completed carving of Crazy Horse is about 17 miles from Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills of SD.
Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear commissioned the memorial to be sculpted by Korzcak Ziolowski in 1948. The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain , considered scared ground to some Native Americans. It does not come without much controversy - It is a not-for profit undertaking & even though the federal government offered Ziolowski $10 million, not just once, but twice, he refused to take it. Ziolowski died in 1982. His wife & their 10 children remain closely involved in the project.

This is a scale model of the completed momemorial carving.

To learn more about the Crazy Horse Memorial click on this link www.crazyhorsememorial.org/

Later that same day we went to Custer State Park & wildlife reserve. The park is South Dakota's first & largest state park, named after Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer. The park is over 71,000 acres of hilly terrain & is home to many wild animals including a herd of 1500 free roaming American Biscon.

As we drove through the park we saw pronghorn antelope & bison.

This lone buffalo was trapped, so-to-speak, outside the fence, unable to get to rest of the herd. He was making a moaning noise, kinda like crying... so sad. Liam just stared at him. I think he wanted to help him.

Further down the road we saw several prairie dog towns and ferro burros roaming the streets begging for food. These two stuck their heads in the back window & scared Liam half-to-death.




This poor couple was surrounded by burros, unable to escape.

We weren't going to let that happen to us - No way Jose!

Scout dog Tazzy spotted a couple of domestic Wheaten Terriers and a elk crossing!

On our way back to Rapid City I got this shot of Mt Rushmore through a break in the trees.

Don't forget, click on photos to enlarge.

Until next time...

Rush No More & Mt. Rushmore

Left my driver's license expire - OMG! So without a current license we can't get our new coach registered. And, OH Yeah!, our car registration is also due by the end of this month. Guess that means we're heading up to South Dakota where we have our mail forwarding address service. But first I have to get a new Social Security card - I left mine in Asheville. Nothing is ever easy.

We left Amarillo on the morning of September 26th, so we have only 2-days to get to Rapid City so we can get our SD driver's licenses... since mine has expired, I will probably have to take a written exam - Yuck! Better get studying.

We decided to go up through Colorado, into Wyoming & across to SD. We stayed in Fort Collins, CO, then pushed our way to Ellsworth AFB FamCamp in Box Elder on the evening of the 28th. That's just west of Rapid City.

State law requires that you must show proof of residency (a receipt to prove that you spent at least one night in SD). Got that now. Next, we stopped by America's Mailbox to make sure we had all our paper work completed. We only have one day left to get everything accomplished.

The next morning, the 29th, we went to the DMV. Surprise! Surprise! Some things are easy... I didn't have to take the written exam. I had my new SD license in less then 5 minutes. Joe , on the other hand, forgot to check if he had his SS card, which he didn't, so we had to go to the SS Administration to get an affidavit stating that he indeed has a SS #. Now we are both official residents of Rapid City, SD.

We rushed back to the America's Mailbox office before they closed - they needed copies of our driver's licenses & a check to cover the fees for both vehicle registrations. Thank goodness they will go to Pennington County office tomorrow morning to get our new plates. Now we can relax & do a little site seeing.

We went to the 9 o'clock history & light show at Mount Rushmore. It was great, but we knew we needed to come back during daylight to really take in the Majesty of the carvings.



The weather was mild & sunny, not at all what we expected at this time of the year. So we took full advantage of it & went back to Mount Rushmore. WOW! It is indeed spectacular.
Click on photos to enlarge.








Until next time...

Smooth Sailing

We did get to do a bit of site-seeing on our trip from Tucson back to Amarillo. This is the Agave Gulch RV Park where we spent our last night in Tucson. It's beautiful here.

We drove past the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. As you can see, the sand is indeed pure white.

Tazzy was taking in the view & doing some critter watching. We both love the wider, softer passenger seat. I call it the "One and a Quarter Seat". Perfect for the two of us to sit side by side.

Look Taz!

Some prairie dogs!

They're so cute!

I know, I know -you would love to chase them, catch them & eat them.

Passing through Roswell was fun.

This town really likes playing up the whole alien thing.

Until next time...

Pick-up Trip

We left for Tucson on the 26th to pick up our new 40' RV, a 2005 Alfa Gold (site unseen). Joe drove the 750 miles in 2-day - Trust me that's a lot for him. Our plan was to take one day to move all of our belongings from the Tiffin into the the Alfa and take two more days to get back to Amarillo. Well, you guessed it, those best-laid plans didn't quite work out the way we wanted them to. After we did our initial walk-through of the Alfa, Joe found 16 items that needed to be fixed before he would sign the papers. We ended up staying 3 extra days waiting for everything to be replaced or corrected to Joe's satisfaction. And, because we didn't tow our car, we didn't have any transportation - We were stuck, all day long, every day, from 8am to 8pm, with the dogs in a tiny office. It was like torture - no food, no where to go, nothing to do, but sit & wait. And the weather was the hottest it had been in Tucson for over a decade. The asphalt temperature was 200 degrees. The dogs didn't want to walk on it & I didn't blame them. I have to say, they behaved incredible well under the circumstances. Joe, on the other hand, festered into a raging bull. He wanted to speak to the owner of Padata RV Sales, Mr. Padata himself. He had enough of watching the grease-monkeys (and I do mean grease-monkeys) traipsing through the Alfa covered from head to foot in a black oily filth. touching everything, standing on the beige leather chairs, & walking on the carpet without covering their shoes or putting down some sort of protection. We watched the carpet change from light gray to charcoal gray. Joe told them that we took pride in our Tiffin & presented it to them in great condition & he expected the same from them in regard to the Alfa. Needless to say, they were glad to see us leave when everything was finally taken care of. It has now been a month since we got back to Amarillo. The drive back was so quite & smooth -rather pleasurable. Now, after a thorough interior cleaning on my part, we are happy with our new motorcoach. By the way, they sold our Tiffin in under a week!

Toot'n Totum

We are all familiar with the gas station convenience store concept... depending on where you live there's Turkey Hill, Wawa, 7-Eleven, Circle K & Am-Pm. In Amarillo, the convenience stores are called Toot'n Totum. I've been told that in the beginning of there existence, you would drive your car into the parking lot, toot your horn and a clerk would come out to take your order. He would go back inside, gather your items and tote them out to your car, hence the name Toot'n Totum.

Also, as we all know, in Seattle there is a Starbucks on every corner. Here in Amarillo there is a Donut Stop on every corner & most of them have a drive-through window.

Tornado Alley

Well... little did we know that we set up camp in the notorious Tornado Alley.

We knew a storm was headed our way, but had no idea what to expect. The wind picked up a bit before we hit the sack at 11pm. An hour later, I woke up to sirens blaring nonstop. I looked out the window to see a lot of campers heading into the clubhouse. By this time the wind was blowing even harder & it started to rain... sideways. Liam was having one of his a panic attacks, so Joe stayed in the RV with the dogs while I ran across the street to find shelter. The sirens were still blaring. About 30 people were huddled inside watching the weather channel for storm updates. A tornado was headed in our direction. It started to hail... grape-sized hail! Shortly thereafter, the sirens stopped, the hail stopped, and the rain stopped, but the wind kept blowing. The tornado veered off to the east. We never did see it, except on TV. Just the way I like it.














Some pictures of the dramatic evening skies in Amarillo.

What's Up with that Black Bird

I've had several people visiting the RV Park ask me about the peculiar black birds with the tail that looks like a fan. What do I know? Turns out these noisy birds are called Great-Tailed Grackles. You see, their tails are as long as their bodies and they are indeed "'V" shaped so they do look like a fan. They have bright yellow eyes and they whistle... loudly!