We are on the move again, heading back to Campbell for a couple of months.  First stop is Yuma AZ to visit my parents and take care of some business.  the weather has been amazing in AZ since the beginning of March.  Our first two days in Yuma were beautiful and then Mother Nature decided things were getting boring!  Monday morning the temps were down about 10 degrees to the high 70’s and about noon the wind started.  They said we had gusts up to 50 miles per hour but it felt like the constant wind was 50 with crazy gusts!  Being in the desert with wind comes blowing sand!  By about 4 pm you couldn’t see much further than across the street!  Everything is covered in a nice thick layer of desert dirt!  It is going to be awhile before we get it all cleaned out, oh well!

Life has been pretty normal the past week or so, if you call a major flu bug for me and Duke normal!!!  I got it first and then Duke had the same symptoms as me so Paul is sure he got it from me!  He is my best friend so maybe it was sympathy?  There is nothing worse that a sick dog because he has no way of communicating except for those eyes!  And the fact that he wasn’t even excited about the ball for over 2 days!

We are all better now and back to loving springtime in Mesa.  We went to a Giants baseball game at Salt River Fields and had a great day in the sun!  We had great seats, the food was decent and because our friends, Mike and Claudia invited us we got to ride their park bus and no one had to drive!

Go GIANTS!!!

The wind up!

And the Giants won big!  I think this might be another good year for the San Francisco Bay Area!

The days are just fabulous right now, daytime temps are in the mid 80’s, the sun is shining, the cactus are blooming and the city is coming alive.  I have been walking early most mornings and I love the sounds of the city; horns honking, tires squealing, sirens blaring, owls howling and the cows mooing!  Yep, we have cows right in the city of Mesa, infact they are living right next door to our RV park!  This week I went out to take a picture of the cows in the orchard and discovered that we also have a new baby in the neighborhood!

Awe…

He is too cute

Mom was very protective the first couple of days but now she comes right up to the fence because she is looking for her treats!

Spring has arrived in the desert!  We are enjoying one fabulous month of golf, sunshine, lounging around the pool, seeing friends and of course eating wayyyy!  to much.  Mesa, AZ is a spectacular place to be in March.  We are back at our favorite resort, Val Vista Village until April 4 and loving every minute.  Paul goes to the pickle ball courts each morning while I take a walk around the neighborhood.  I tried to play pickle ball one day and just can’t play easy and fell so no pickle ball for me this year!  I can still manage to golf and played pretty well on our first outing.  Things are going excellent and before you know it we will be back on the road and heading north into California!

Being full time RV’ers allows us to follow the good weather;  Sunshine and 70 degrees is what I am looking for when we travel to the desert in January.  So far we have only had two days in the past 30 days that I can truly say the weather has met my expectations!  That isn’t very good in my view!  The good news is we can wait until the weather improves as we are not on our two weeks per year vacation schedule.  We just stay inside our RV and enjoy the dry, warm comforts of home while I gaze out my kitchen window looking at this beautiful lake in Lake Havasu City, AZ.

We have gotten out a couple of times to see the area.  The London Bridge seems to be the attraction that got this city started.  The bridge itself is not spectacular but the story is!  Imagine buying a bridge in London, moving it to the USA and transporting it to the middle of nowhere and rebuilding it over land!  This wasn’t even  an island until after the bridge was built and they dredged out the canal!  The land developer who did it made a fortune selling properties on the island after paying to have the bridge moved and now Lake Havasu has another Arizona tourist attraction which seems to be doing the city of Lake Havasu really well!

The lake is beautiful but with waves large enough to surf such as the ones at Santa Cruz we won’t be renting jet skies and taking a cruise down the river.  We did get to take a ride on the ferry across the lake to Havasu Landing Casino in California.

Casino? Looks more like a home on the lake!

Comfortable ride across the lake

Looking back on the London Bridge from the ferry

We really are not big gamblers, actually we don’t gamble at all unless you count quitting your job at 52 and moving into a 36′ home on wheels permanently with your spouse gambling!  The boat ride was really nice, the casino not!  except the view from the bar was amazing.  The problem is I have the same view inside my home on the other side of the lake and the martini’s are made with Absolut Vodka!  Indian Casino’s are really low on my choice of places to visit.  I need to remember that!  We did have lunch and the boat ride was free, thanks to our neighbors who cut coupons for us.  We meet the nicest people wherever we go.

We met another couple, Barry & Cindy who have been full time RV’ers for 18 years here in Lake Havasu.  We have enjoyed their company twice for breakfast at the Golden Corral – Paul’s favorite place!  We met about 10:30 (early for Full time retired people) and stay through lunch!  The good news is I don’t cook that day because all  the pyramid food groups have been maxed out for the day!

Paul calls this day, the Hallmark get rich day!  Valentines Day is also about celebrating Heart Health and so my day began with a trip to the local clinic to donate a vial of blood so that my doctor can verify that my heart and blood are in good condition, a task that I have to repeat most months so no big deal.  I did treat myself to a nice Grande, non-fat Latte afterwards at the local Starbucks.  Paul did splurge on the traditional  heart shaped box of chocolates from Walgreen’s.  He thought a box of 7 chocolates would be great because it would say “I Love You” for 7 days!  Right!  They will be gone by this evening!!!

We have come to Lake Havasu City for more than the bridge, sunshine and the Golden Corral!  This weekend is Winter Blast which is the Western Pyrotechnic Associations get together to blow up lots of fireworks in the desert!  On Thursday evening (Valentine’s Day) we spent 4 hours watching lots of fireworks being let off by this group in an event they call Open Shooting!  These guys come here and have an area where anyone that is certified can fire off their stuff!  4th of July on steroids!  We will go back Friday night for more of the same and then on Saturday and Sunday evenings there will be a big show of really spectacular fireworks.

Paul loves this stuff.  He use to crew on different firework events many years ago and if he had done his research we would have been attending this event as members so he could blow up something or be really close to someone who was!  We found out last night that membership is $80 and the event is $135 and you get to learn how to build the bombs and fire them off!  I see Lake Havasu in February in our future!

Just kidding!  We moved out of the desert and into a very comfortable park in Lake Havasu, home of the London Bridge!  Our site is beautiful and costly!  We will still be “Green” as we only get sewer service twice a week but we have an amazing view of the lake and our own little beach.

Sunset from our patio!

This is a new area for us so in the car and out and about we go!  First stop was to see the London Bridge which we crossed coming onto the island where our resort is located.

I’m looking at this beautiful bridge which was nothing like what we expected and Paul hears loud engines!  They are having an RC boat competition this weekend and we were just in time to watch some practice!  Yeah!!  We will be returning tomorrow with a picnic and spend the afternoon watching grown men race 3 ft. boats around the pylons – Paul can’t wait.

As recommended by friends we took the short trip to Oatman, AZ, an old mining town where a herd of Burro’s roam the streets amusing the tourists.  Oatman is along part of Route 66.  Once leaving I40 it is 20 miles on a very slight roadway with lots of turns, curves, bumps and roller coaster waves.

Don’t feed the baby, he will choke!

Apparently Duke was smart to be afraid!

The burro’s were very brave and we did not get the memo that says “the burro’s don’t like dogs and think they are furry soccer balls!  We are walking away from a couple of them and I turn to see one of them backing up to Duke and trying to kick!  Poor Duke didn’t know what to do – he is on a leash and can’t get away because Paul is trying to pull him away from the burro!  Finally, Paul picks him up and the burro goes on to torment another tourist.  We didn’t stay long as the town has only a few gift shops with the usual fare and these burro’s that want to eat my dog!

Back down the very windy Route 66 where we located another Geocache!  We are up to 4 now.  Just outside of town locals or maybe tourists have take to decorating some of the large bushes with Christmas decorations!  There were several but my favorite is:

Lets have a Party!

The weather has turned cold so I won’t be sitting out enjoying my wonderful view for a few days!  What happened to summer in Arizona??

As we begin our 5th year living on wheels we arrived in Quartzsite, AZ Wednesday evening and will be spending the next 2 weeks testing our skills in water  and electricity conservation, flea market finds and relaxing in the sun.  Quartzsite was our first destination in January of 2009 when we began this journey.

This is what the desert is all about! Amazing sunsets and very cool skies.

As RVer’s we are a symbol of “Green” that no one usually thinks of when they are thinking conservation.  We spent 14 days in the desert without the amenities most people take for granted.  We parked in the desert on BLM Land that costs $40 for 14 days with hundreds if not thousands of other RVer’s on lots of acres of nothingness!  In 14 days Paul and I used less than 100 gallons of water, ran our generator about 2 hours a day on 1 gallon of fuel per day (have to watch American Idol!) and about 5 gallons of propane (it was cold!).   In our past life we averaged about 100 gallons of water per day and who knows how much electricity!!! OUCH!!  The RV never moved so we didn’t burn any fuel and there is no where to go so we spent about a 1/2 tank of fuel in the car just trying to find new stuff – more about that in a minute!  We did read at least 3 books each, played cards for hours and caught up with friends that we only see occasionally.  One day, near the end of our stay I did get a bit “bored” and we had to go for a drive into the mountains.  And,  even though we were in the desert without all the conveniences of home we did watch the Super Bowl and cheered loudly when it seemed that the home team was going to pull it out – next year!

The desert can be beautiful. Note to self: look up more!

The desert is not my favorite landscape but it can be very interesting.  We have met many friends along the way and a lot of them come to Quartzsite this time of year.  We met up with Lonnie and Becky from Idaho one afternoon to learn about Geocaching which we have been hearing about since before we moved into the RV.  This is a worldwide phenomena that has perfectly intelligent adults (and kids) running all over the world hunting for cache (a buried treasure) that a fellow Geocacher has hidden with the only path to finding it is GPS coordinates.  There are 1,989,883 active geocaches and over 5 million geocachers worldwide.  Lonnie and Becky have been doing this for a couple of years and have found about 1000 (I think!)  The afternoon we spent with them we found 14.  It was a trail that had been set up for a Geocaching Rally they were attending in Quartzsite.  I happened to mention another couple, Robert and Diana that we met while doing Spring Training and since this is such a small world,  Robert and Dianna were parked right next to Lonnie and Becky at their rally of 40 rigs!

Paul and Becky following the compass to get to the cache.

Found it! Open it and lets see what we have found!

Sometimes they are very small!

Paul texts Robert and we got together with them a few days later!  Robert and Diana have found over 2700 caches in only a few years!  Paul and I are not sure if we love this new sport (I am not sure what else to call it!)  but it is another way to get out and explore this world we are living in.  Plus we get a little more exercise.

Paul and I did a little exploring on our own one afternoon and discovered we can find these things on our own with the help of the GPS and the compass!  We found 3 one afternoon within a couple of miles from our home in the desert.