MAINTENANCE DAYS

Apr 28/10


We moved on from Fort Stockton and are spending our third night in Kerrville which is about 50 miles north of San Antonio, Texas. We’re in a very nice RV park called Buckhorn Lake RV resort about 5 miles north of town. We have a lovely site that overlooks a small creek and pond area complete with turtles, catfish, red-winged blackbirds and other blackbirds that are similar to cowbirds. We’ve seen a totally red bird fly by and it could be a cardinal. Cool. Here’s what our site looks like:

Yesterday, we had the truck serviced at the Dodge dealer in town and that took a couple of hours. We walked down the main street for about 2 miles and went into a Walmart for a rest. The dealer sent a shuttle to give us a ride back which was nice after the long walk.



Today, we washed the outside of the trailer from top to bottom and buffed it up really well. We buffed up the truck after washing it yesterday and we’re all clean and shiny now.
 We’ve met some very unique people here. Texans are friendly but not afraid to admit that they are red necks and think that anyone (like us) from a northern area are automatically Yankees with Yankee standards. We have some Californians in the site next to us and the lady keeps coming over to talk whenever we are outside for any length of time. Maybe her husband is chasing her out for a while!!



We’re heading down the road to Mathis tomorrow for an overnight stay. It is about 25 miles from Corpus Christi and the gulf coast. We’re bypassing San Antonio as it’s a huge city of 1.3 million people. We’ll continue on to Mission in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley and that’s about as far south as you can get in Texas.

CITY OF ROCKS

Apr 25/10

We moved on from Benson, Arizona to Deming, New Mexico on Friday and spent the next day sightseeing in the area.  The main attraction is a state park called the City of Rocks and it was truly an amazing place.  The rocks look like someone BIG dropped them in a few clusters on the landscape and they are continuing to erode over time.  There is a campsite at the rocks and hiking trails through and around them.  Here are some photos:

After the City of Rocks, we drove to Rockhound State park and into Spring Canyon State park.  They were interesting but not as spectacular as City of Rocks.

We left Deming this morning and drove through Las Cruces, New Mexico (looks like a nice place) and El Paso, Texas on I-10.  We decided to push on to Fort Stockton, Texas for the night and had a longer drive of 5 hours and 38 minutes (552 km).  We changed to Mountain time in New Mexico and now we are in the Central time zone.  We don’t find it very hard to adapt to the changes.

It is warm here at 86 F (30 C) with 15% humidity, much nicer than the last few cool days.  Things are certainly different here in Texas and we haven’t see any license plates from Canada for days.  We are definitely a long way from home.

CAVERNS AND TOMBSTONES

Apr 22/10

Benson is a good central location for interesting sightseeing opportunities.  We drove to the Kartchner Caverns which are about 12 miles away and took a tour of the Throne Room section that houses the tallest limestone column in Arizona.  It is called Kubla Khan and stands about 58 ft high.  The caverns are room temperature and extremely humid which felt good on our parched Arizona skin.  No one was allowed to take photographs so here is link to the website: http://azstateparks.com/parks/kaca/

Today we went to Tombstone to get a taste of the old west and see a re-enactment of the gunfight at the OK Corral.  They put on a good show that portrayed the true story without all the Hollywood embellishments.  We also had a chance to shoot a single action 44 calibre hand gun at a target—instead of a lead slug, there was a paintball in the bullets, but we definitely killed the target.

The streets of Tombstone have wooden sidewalks, hitching posts and watering troughs for the horses.  They had a trolley tour as well as a stagecoach ride, but we chose to walk the few blocks of town.  There were the usual souvenir shops with Indian pottery, jewellery, artwork and plenty of hats, T shirts and collectibles. 

We had lunch at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon which is in the original Grand Hotel built in the late 1800’s.  The town of Tombstone had two fires that destroyed many of the downtown buildings but there are still a few originals left.  The lunch crowd filled the place and they had a singer who entertained everyone with country and cowboy songs that sounded like the original artists.  On the way out of town, we stopped at the Boothill Graveyard and found some interesting grave markers.  No green grass in that cemetery!

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE

Apr 19/10

Two nights before we left the Palm Creek RV resort, there was an arson fire in the RV storage area and 4 RV’s were destroyed and a couple others had fire damage.  We heard the sirens in the night and loud popping and booming noises that were tires, gas tanks and propane tanks exploding.  I thought it might be gun fire (active imagination at 3 a.m.) but we heard the true story from other residents the next day.  Here are some photos of the remains:

We drove to Benson as planned and settled in at the Butterfield RV park near the downtown core.  The park has an observatory on site which is free to guests and we had a night sky viewing that was great.  The fellow who did the presentation is a retired military and commercial airline pilot who has been staying in the park since last fall.  We saw Sirius (brightest star in our sky), a nebula (debris from a star that exploded), Betelgeuse and Rigel (two points of the Orion constellation), the sword of Orion, three galaxies outside ours, the moon, Mars and Saturn.  It was amazing to see the rings of Saturn although our view showed the rings in a vertical not horizontal position.  It’s big out there.

BUSY WEEK

Apr 17/10

This week was full of activities and went by very quickly.  We played 3 rounds of golf.  On Monday and Wednesday we played at a great course called Robson Ranch about 8 miles southeast of here.  We played the first day with a couple from Vermont who was at the end of a 2 week vacation in the Tucson area.  They fly here and rent a suite or condo a couple of times a year and are thinking about buying a place around here if they can.  They were nice to golf with and the weather was great.  We played by ourselves on Wednesday and had lots of fun and the scores were better.

Tuesday was a shopping day and we replaced some of our old shorts and T shirts with new ones.  Clothing is cheap down here as long as you stay away from designer labels.  Stuart bought 2 good quality cotton sleeveless T shirts for $3.50 each.

On Thursday we went to the theatre to see Alice in Wonderland.  It was an early afternoon matinee and we were the only ones in the theatre until almost show time.  Then 2 older ladies came in and after studying the almost empty room, one of them came over and started to sit in the seat right beside Stuart.  Duh!!  Her friend went to a seat at the far end of our row so the first lady moved over there.  People can be very strange at times.

We golfed on Friday at the Grande Valley course near Eloy which is about 12 miles from here.  We played with 2 guys, one from Phoenix and one from Tucson who were meeting halfway for their round of golf.  The one guy is originally from Arkansas and he sure had an interesting accent—made us think about having grits and greens.  By the way, we went to a Cracker Barrel Country restaurant for breakfast and had grits, biscuits and gravy and fried apples with our eggs.  Not the same as the selections back home.

Today was chore day and we did spend some time at the swimming pool (the temperature is 88 F).  The number of people around here is decreasing rapidly every day.  Here’s a photo of our section of the RV park:

On Monday, we’ll be moving to a new location a couple of hours down the road on I-10.  New place, new adventures.

SETTLED IN FOR A WHILE

Apr 11/10

It’s been a busy week in Casa Grande as we are settling in to the RV resort and the community.  The city has a population of 41,000 with plenty of shopping, services and activities without being too large with too much traffic.  It is easy to get around town without any hassles.

We’ve played 2 rounds of golf—one at the Dave White Municipal course and one at the Francisco Grande Hotel and Golf resort.  Both were good courses although the one could use more water on the fairways.  The ground gets very hard when it is dry and making some of the finesse shots becomes a lot more difficult.  We were paired up with interesting singles:  one guy from Salt Lake City who owns a park model in the Fiesta Grande RV Park in town and one guy from Wyoming who owns a house here.  They have the flexibility to stay as long as they want in this warm winter location, unlike us Canadians who are restricted to less than 183 days per year. The rule explained- click here

The snowbirds here at Palm Creek are thinning out each day and we have many more empty sites in our corner of the world.  We talked to a neighbour from Fort Collins, Colorado who is heading back to his home today.  It takes him 2 long days of driving and the weather back there is still cool, but at least he is looking forward to going home.  Lots of people just hate the thought of going home—makes you wonder if it’s really so bad back there, or just so nice down here.

We’re heading out to a local church this morning and will do some grocery shopping on the way home.  The rest of the day should be relaxing—reading, going to the pool, BBQ and playing pool after supper.  What’s not to like?

FROM RATTLESNAKES TO EARTHQUAKES

Apr 5/10


We celebrated Stuart’s birthday on Good Friday (we won’t reveal the number but it is not scary yet) by going to a morning matinee in Casa Grande to see Clash of the Titans. It was a good movie in an excellent theatre and was very enjoyable. We went to a Chicago style BBQ place for lunch and did some shopping at “the mall.” They don’t have indoor malls here—they are more like large plazas with single level stores side by side and across the roads. They take up a lot of area and you need to drive from one end of the shopping area to another.


Saturday was our last day at Desert Gardens RV Park and we spent it doing things around the trailer, biking on the desert trail and getting some sun by the pool. There was a rattlesnake that came out of the desert into the RV sites and one of the guys trapped it with a rake. The maintenance man had a snake catcher (a long hollow tube with a wire looped through it) and took the snake back out in the desert to release it. They paint the snakes once they are caught and if they show up again, they are terminated. Similar to what is done to black bears in BC.

ON THE BIKE TRAIL NEAR DESERT GARDENS RV PARK

We relocated to Palm Creek Golf and RV Resort in Casa Grande yesterday (33 miles) and I took my turn towing the trailer. I had more corners and traffic this time but all went well. The main office was closed yesterday so we were put into a site temporarily and we plan to pick a better site for the next 2 weeks. We’re back to “civilization” with paved roads, great facilities and even garbage pick up twice a week at your site.


When we were sitting in our chairs on our concrete patio yesterday afternoon, we felt them moving a bit and wondered what was going on. Then people around us who had been inside their RV’s came out and started talking about an earthquake. Sure enough, there was a 7.2 scale earthquake off the coast of Baja California that affected Los Angeles, San Diego and parts of Arizona including Yuma. Good thing that we moved out of there a while ago.

PALM CREEK GOLF & RV RESORT

Exciting times as always.

WE ARE HERE

IT’S ALL GOOD

Apr 1/10

We decided to stay in Florence until April 4 and have found plenty of things to do.  We went to a Baptist Church on Sunday that was very traditional and had a gathering of about 40 people.  The pastor led the hymn singing and there were no musical instruments at all.  Very different from what we are used to but the people were friendly enough and the message was good.

We’ve golfed at two nearby courses named Oasis Golf Course and Tierra Grande Golf Club.  They were certainly interesting although not as lush as courses where there is plenty of water for irrigation.  Other than golfing in Palm Springs many years ago, we haven’t golfed on courses with palm trees along the fairways.

Yesterday’s round started in fairly calm conditions but a howling wind came up on the back nine that was so strong that some of the flags blew off the flagsticks.  It was warm, though, and wasn’t too much of a hardship and we had a really good time.

On Tuesday, we drove around Casa Grande to look at the town and all the RV parks in the area.  We found a beautiful one called Palm Creek Golf and RV Resort and plan to go there next.  It is a huge park (1888 sites) and the facilities include a par 3 golf course, 2 swimming pools, billiards, library, craft rooms, pickle ball courts, fitness room, etc.  We talked to some people from Alberta who were making their reservations for next winter and they just love the place having stayed there for the past 5 winters.  There were quite a few empty sites in some areas and they told us that the majority of the remaining people would be leaving on April 1.  So we expect to have a wide selection of sites and not too many neighbours when we get there.

Today, we rode our bikes around the desert paths on the RV park perimeter and along a road side trail that was good hard pack with a few soft, sandy spots and some deep ruts that offered a challenge.  We went about 6 miles which is a good ride for an afternoon outing.

We’ve had beautiful sunrises and sunsets here and an amazing number of different cacti just outside our site.