This has been a long dry spell. I have been doing things, but I just haven’t been posting them. Oops! I think I will provide just a short (hah!) month by month summary.
January\February:
We continued hanging around in Quartzsite through January. We went on a few more side by side rides with the Quartzsite club. We learned a lot, and had a great time. I ended up not going to the quilt group there this year. We just had too much going on. We always meet a group of people from RVForum.net for a rally during the RV show, so that took some time.
We finished up at Quartzsite on Feb 5 when we headed to Death Valley for their Dark Skies Festival. We stopped off at the Needles KOA for a night to store the RZR across the road. Can’t ride them in National Parks, and we were getting ready for a lot of other activities. The festival was great fun, as usual. This one had a big astrophysics theme which I found fascinating. Leaving Death Valley on 13 Feb, we again stayed at the Needles KOA, just because it was a reasonable distance. We were attending an Escapees Hangout in Lake Havasu for the Western Pyrotechnics Association from 14 Feb to 23 Feb. Quite a difference from the very organized FMCA events we had attended, but fun. The fireworks each night were fabulous! If you haven’t ever gone, you should try to make it. It is dry camping in the rodeo ground parking lot. We picked up the RZR in Needles on the way back to Quartzsite.
We stayed at Holiday Palms for 3 nights (full hook ups!) drove the SxS a bit, then headed out to the Diesel RV Club rally in Perry, GA, dropping off the SxS in Needles again along the way. We spent on night in Willcox at the Escapees park there.
March:
1 March found us at the Tired Traveler RV Park, quite nice for the price. We headed through the DFW metroplex on I-20, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was as compared to I-30. We made it the next day to the Ameristar Casino in Vicksburg, MS. If you are there, make sure you visit the National Battlefield! It was very interesting. We had to stay two nights due to a big storm coming through. We then got to Americus, GA and the KOA there. I did a lot of frantic sewing to get ready for donations for the FMCA convention.
The DRVC rally was interesting as usual, and it preceded the big FMCA Convention in nearby Perry, GA. It was great fun, as usual. After all that commotion, I needed some peace and quiet, and we found it on Eufaula Lake on the Chattahoochee River at the White Oak Campground. We stayed on the Alabama side, and we enjoyed a few days of quiet. We then headed to Red Bay, AL again for somemore work on our problematic slide. Sigh. We have an appointment for September to get the mechanism replaced with a Vroom mechanism. We left Red Bay on 27 March to head home, spending the night at Hinton RV Park in Sikeston, MO and Crossroads RV Park in Mt. Pleasant, IA. On 29 March we made it home! We left the rig a few days at a local campground (George Wyth State Park) until we could get it winterized and ready for bed. It was COLD in Iowa.
April:
Now that we are home, it is time for exciting things like choir rehearsal, doctors appointments, and haircuts! Easter season is always big for church musicians, and this was not an exception. We did a Palm Sunday service, Good Friday service, and an Easter service, all of which were very satisfying. I even was part of a trio that sang at the end of the Good Friday service – “Were You There (when they crucified my Lord)”. We had a big family gathering at our place on Sunday evening where the entree was one of the fabulous Amana smoked hams. My, but that is lovely!
We also picked up a new truck that will hold the RZR and tow four-down behind the motorhome. F-150 Ecoboost four door, four wheel drive. We ended up taking it to RV One in Des Moines to get the braking system (an Air Force 1] installed. Ouch, that’s expensive! I finished one big quilt this month that was part of a Mystery Quilt class by Inspired to Sew. They run their Monday evening Mystery Quilt classes on Zoom, and I got most of the blocks done before we left for Arizona. I did a few in AZ, and I finished the remaining few in early April before putting it all together.
May to today:
I went to an RV Quilter’s retreat from 4-7 May. I finished one quilt, and got a few blocks completed on a second.
The exciting part of the trip was the night after the retreat ended when we got blasted by a massive hailstorm. The pretty new pickup on which I have not made even one payment, got a bunch of tiny dents and one big one. The motorhome lost two solar panels with huge broken areas on them, and one fist sized hole punched in the fiberglass. Ouch! There are a few scratches too, but those weren’t significant. Thank goodness for fiberglass! A metal rig would have likely been totaled. It turns out the solar panels protected us a lot, and replacing them is much less expensive than patching holes in an upscale motorhome roof. Much of the last two weeks have been taken up with getting estimates and temporary repairs.
My newest toy is a small bread maker by Zojirushi. I love it so far, and we intend on taking it with us on our trips. I also will post pictures of the other two quilts I finished when I have them completed. I think I am mostly caught up, and I am telling myself I have to keep this more up to date. I do it mostly for myself to keep track of what we have done and where we stay, but I will forget it I don’t post.