Green2GoRV - Our Travel Journal

The Funeral

Thursday, January 27, 2011

From Lufkin, Texas

As most of you may know from my Facebook post, my Mother passed away Tuesday morning.  We are at this time preparing to go to the funeral services.

After settling a few affairs on Friday, we will return to Yuma late Saturday, arriving in Yuma (and our motorhome) about 10:20pm.  We are really looking forward to spending some time with our RV friends already in Yuma.

A great big Thank You to Mac and Lynette for taking us to the airport Monday afternoon and watching our motorhome in our absence.  You guys are great!!

More later....

Way Far Behind Again

Saturday, January 22, 2011

From The Desert, 5 miles south of Quartzsite

As usual I have let time get away from me, and been very lax on posting a blog.  In fact our son and daughter-in-law in Houston just called and chastised me for being so lax.  They enjoy traveling with us vicariously.

So where was I...  On Monday, Donna and I drove out to where the Boomers are located to try and find our friends Cindy and Ken.  Only about 20 rigs there, we found their rig, but they were gone.  Boomers are an Escapee Chapter for folks born 1946 to 1964.  We saw them at the Tent Show today, and they said over 80 rigs are there now.

Tuesday morning, Donna and I were up early and about 8:30 I started cooking my famous Migas for everyone in our group.  Donna took a picture of me slaving over a hot 'plow disk wok' as Molly and Jerry Lea are discussing whether they think I really know what I am doing.

 

That afternoon we rode with Bob and Molly to visit a couple of other chapters that are boondocking north of Quartzsite.  The first was Chapter 34, where we we just in time to hear the Mayor of Quartzsite make a presentation to the large group.

 

We didn't know but the Chapter was having a pot luck dinner and insisted we join in.  I think Bob and Molly were quite pleased since they totally cleaned their plates.

 

We also stopped by to see Art Fennel at another group, and visited a bit.  Art is in charge of Security at the Escapades and was with us at Betty's in Abbyville recently.

Wednesday was the first of two days that our group will be hosting an Escapee Happy Hour for all Escapees in the area.  And as expected about 300-400 showed up.  Donna actually climbed up on our motorhome to take this picture. 

 
 

Several other friends also showed up.

 
On either side of Bob are Brenda and J.B. who are from British Columbia.  We met them a couple years ago in Fredericksburg.  To Molly's left is Mike and Jana from Montana, whom we just met for the first time, but have followed their blog for some time.

Several couples that we will be visiting in Yuma next week also drove over for the day.

 
Kevin and Arlene

I failed to get pictures of Mac & Lynette and Donnie and Karen.

We were rewared Wednesday night with a beautiful moon rising over our campfire.   Bob and Donna with the moon behind them and the fire in front.

 

Thursday was another Happy Hour for the Escapees, but much smaller group of maybe 100 - 150.

Friday most of us broke camp and moved to an area about 5 miles south of the main area, and about a mile off the pavement.  Only 5 rigs here so far, but more are expected later.

Saturday morning we headed to the Main Tent for the first day of the RV Show.  Although lots of temporary lots around town are selling RV's, the Big Tent is for vendors with RV related products, or maybe just something to sell to whatever 'suckas' might show up.

I didn't want to lug my big camera around so I took the little Sony Cyber Shot.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures.  We were really lucky to snag a spot to park where a pick-up and small trailer had just pulled out of two spaces.  We grabbed them both, called Bob and Molly who were only 100 yds away, and saved the second for them.  You guys owe us, you know that.. -:)

We are back at camp, its about 5pm and guess we will see what gets cooked up for tonight.

More Later...  (but not too much later, I hope) 

(A couple of hours later) ---  Actually J.B. and Brenda are from Alberta... sorry for my mistake.

  

Boondocking in the Arizona Desert

Sunday, January 16, 2011

From Quartzsite, AZ

We left Benson SKP Park about 8:45 Saturday morning for the 315 mile drive to Quartzsite following Bob & Molly.  We will be parking in the desert with a group of Escapees that will be hosting a huge Happy Hour on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. 

As we got to the west side of Phoenix, Bob  & Molly peeled off at a Wal-Mart for a little re-stocking of their pantry, so we continued about 50 miles on down I-10 to a rest area to wait on them.

We arrived in Quartzsite shortly after 3pm, found the location that we will be parking while we are here.  About 10 rigs are already here, and about 10 more are expected, to help with the Happy Hour.

Everyone gathered up about 4 to visit a while, then someone suggested we order a bunch of the $1.00 Taco's from one of the Vendor Stands.  So someone took orders from everybody, and a couple of the guys took off to pick them up.  Great Tacos, too.

Bit first a quick explanation of Boondocking for our non-rv-ing readers.  Boondocking is spending time in your coach or other type RV in area with no hook-ups.. no electricity, no water, no sewer, no WiFi, no nothing..

In order to sustain a boondocking experience for very long, you must be prepared.  Now Donna and I have spent 1 night occassionally in a Rest Area or even a Wal-Mart parking lot. But we are about to spend about 10 days here in Quartzsite boondocking.

We have fresh water storage of over 100 gallons and two waste water tanks  for the gray and black water.  We have 3 large batteries to store power and  an inverter to convert the battery power to electricity for the appliances.  We have a generator to also generate electricity and at the same time charge the batteries.  Some of the other folks here also have solar panels to help charge the batteries.

We met some folks nearby, but not with our group, from College Station, Tx and they invited us to join them at their campfire.  Since they also have a Foretravel indentical to ours we had a lot to talk about.

Sunday

I was up early this morning to try and catch the first rays of sunlight coming over the mountains behind us.  I even got a few pictures of the sunrise.

 
The sunrise at Quartzsite

Later we drove over to some of the vendor areas, and checked out a few of the hundreds of vendors.

 
One of the larger vendors.

Before returning to our coaches, we drove a few miles south of town, and off into the desert, where we found Howie and Nora, two good friends that we last saw in Rockport last March. It is always so great to re-new our friendships.

I will end today's blog with picture a our view late this afternoon as the sun set over the mountains to our west. 

 

 

The Breakfast Club

Thursday, January 13, 2011

From Benson, AZ

A group of us left Benson this morning about 9:30 for the hour drive to Bisbee, down near the Mexican Border.  Our primary destination was a cafe in old Bensen called the Breakfast Club, located in a couple of old merchantile stores.

After a brief wait, all 12 of us were seated in the second dining room.

 

The group waiting on food.

After breakfast, Bob & Molly and Donna & I drove over to the newer part of Bisbee to walk the streets and see a few sights.

We toured Bisbee Mining Museum. 

 

Bisbee is home to a former massive Tin Mine.  There were several diorama such as the following.

 

After visiting the museum, we strolled up and down the main street and browsed a few shops, where we also ran into the rest of our group, also doing a little shopping, as shown below.

 

The Bag Girls..

We will spend Friday getting groceries, doing laundry, and just general duties preparing for our trip to Quartzite on Saturday morning.  There is also a grilled chicken dinner tomorrow at 5:30, which we all will attend.

 More from Quartzite on Saturday... 

Tragedy in Tucson

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

From Benson, AZ

Donna & I decided to drive over to Tucson today for lunch and to just see a few sights there.  We had a brochure about the 4th Ave area and decided to check out the area of shops and restaurants.

The area is a conglomeration of shops and unique restaurants, most of them hippies / gypsy / rainbow type.  We had picked an Italian restaurant as our destination and found it quite easily thanks to our GPS.

The restaurant was very nice, had been in business since the 30's in the same location, was family owned and operated.  We both had their lunch portion of lasagna, which was more than enough. 

After the great lunch we decided to check out the downtown area, which is very modern and quite busy.  Remembering the shooting that had occured a few days earlier we decided to see if we could find the hospital where the memorials were on the lawn.

Again with the help of the GPS, we located it quite easily, and luckily, in spite of the crowds, we found a parking space very close to the area.  Of course there were a lot of TV satellite trucks and lots of sophisticated equipment and lots of TV personnel there.

 
One of many satellite transmission trucks. 

 

 
Being interviewed by TV personality

 
Thousands of memorials

 
A moment of reflection 

The scene was quite moving with all the folks reflecting on the incident.  I know the politics surrounding this event have been totally off the scale in terms of accusations. 

But, without comment on my part, I will just leave it to my readers to reach their own conclusions....

More later.....

Land Of Standing Up Rocks

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

From Benson, AZ

Some time around mid-morning we picked up Bob and Molly to go do a little exploring.  After consulting the area map, we decided to travel east of Benson, headed for the Chiricahua National Monument.  This entailed a drive back east on I-10, where we first stopped at the rest area in Texas Canyon.

This is an unusual rock formation formed by a volcanic eruption many years ago, I think.

 
The rocks as seen right from the Rest Area. 

From there we turned south at Willcox for the 40 mile or so drive to Chiricahua National Monument.  I am not sure just what we were expecting, since we only knew it was a National Monument from seeing it on the map.

We drove basically through what is called high mountain desert, with nothing but sage brush and a few signs for ranches, though we saw very few cattle.

We first stopped at the Visitors Center to get a feeling for what we were about to see.  The center is quite small compared to others, but was very nice, well staffed, and had an abundance of information.

From the Visitors Center we took the Massai Point road, heading to the top of the mountain.

 

The awesome beauty of these rock formations were quite inspiring.

 

Bob took my camera to take mine and Donna's picture, only to realize that Donna was about to start a snowball fight. 

 

Of course, retaliation was in order.

 
 

By the time we finished visting the park, it was way past lunch time, so we continued the loop circling back to the RV Park, expected to find a place to eat in one the little settlements we would pass through.

Finally, we located a little cafe, that was closing in 5 minutes, but the nice folks were willing to serve these 4 starving souls.

We made it back to the RV Park, met up later for our card game, which the guys won 2-1.

More later...

 

 

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Arrived at Saguaro SKP Park

Monday, January 10, 2011  

From Saguaro SKP Park, Benson, AZ

After our over-night stay at the Arizona Welcome Center, we took our time in getting on the move this morning, since we only had about 80 miles to drive to our destination.

Hitting the Super Slab a little after 8, we expected to arrive at the park about 10.  On the way we passed through Texas Canyon, an area of very beautiful and unusual rock formation.  There is a rest area there where we had spent the night in back in 2007, when we took Austin to California for a couple of weeks.

We arrived at Saguaro just as planned.  Bob & Molly, who have been here a few days, called as we pulled in, saying they had a few errands and would be back soon.

After checking in, we were guided to our site by one of the resident volunteers.  This park is an 'Escapee Associated' park with the sites being owned by individual members.  Some lots are offered for rent in the owner's absence.

After getting set up and starting a quick tour of the park, Bob and Molly called that they were back and headed our way.  So great to see these great friends again.

 

Our site at the park.

After about an hour of visiting, we decided we would get back together at 2pm for a trip to Tombstone, located about 20 miles south of here. 

Arriving in Tombstone we had a couple of hours to browse some of the shops before meeting some other friends of Bob and Molly, Gene & Cheri for an early dinner at Big Nose Kate's Saloon.

 
We even had time for a very informative tour of Tombstone in this stage coach.

The food at Kate's was really good with a couple of shared appetizers and every one getting one of their famous pizza's.

One of the waitresses even visited with us, posing for pictures while sitting on my and Bob's lap.  Mary was a great sport.

 
Bob and Mary

 
Myself and Mary

After saying goodnight to Gene and Cheri (sorry, I forgot to get their picture), we headed back to the park and dropped Bob & Molly off at their rig.

No big plans for tomorrow, but I expect there may be a game of Hand and Foot somewhere in the future.

More later...  

Just a Hop, Skip, and a Jump

Sunday, January 9, 2011

From Arizona Welcome Center on I-10

We left the Whip-In RV park in Big Spring this morning about 8 am.  Being that far west in Central Time Zone, it was barely daylight when we left.  Traffic was fairly light on I-20, but picked up once we joined up with I-10, which we will be on for a while.

Tonight we are at the Arizona Welcome Center about 90 miles from Benson, AZ where we plan to stay a few days or more at the Escapee Co-op Park there.  The Escapee organizaion is related to several type RV Parks, with this one being a Co-op park where lots are owned by individuals, and available for rent when the owner is absent.

More later...

Boogie Down the Super Slab

Saturday, January 8, 2011

From Near Big Spring, Tx

Okay, so we left home this morning about 8am, fueled up at the nearby Love's, and headed west.  No traffic problems at all, even as we went around Dallas and Fort Worth on I-20.

We stopped west of Fort Worth about 12:30 for a little over an hour, had lunch, ran  up the satellite dish, and checked Facebook and emails.

We have stopped overnight at the "Whip-In RV Park in Big Spring.  It is located at MM 184 on I-20, and is a good little park for an overnighter.  Spaces are pretty tight, but adequate.  We ttaveled 455 miles today, and Donna actually did most of the driving.  She says she likes to drive.. it keeps her from getting bored.

As I write this its about 55* and dropping.  Hope not too cold overnight, but no problem, we can handle it.

I know I am way behind of up-dated this blog, but as we travel I hope to include some information about what our life has been like since the last time I posted.

Enough for tonight... more tomorrow..