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Gulf Shores, AL

We made it to our RV Park on Friday. We are staying at Gulf Breeze RV Resort, and it seems like a nice place. Folks are friendly, the sites are level, and we have at least a small amount of space between sites plus grass and trees. Lily the cat is thrilled! It took a bit of maneuvering to get the coach backed into the site due to the narrow roads, but we made it. Friday we just stayed put and started laundry.

Saturday we went to Ft. Morgan, an Alabama historical park. While the first fort was built for the War of 1812, the big effort began in the 1830s and continued through World War II, with various times of deactivation. The main masonry/earth fort is pretty impressive.

The vaulted rooms were pretty impressive

There was a group of red actors there this weekend

They even had a WWII surveillance plane flying

We also took a long drive along the coast, stopping for lunch at Picnic Cove, a nice restaurant I recommend, at least for their smoked chicken and brisket!

Sunday we just stayed around the coach, doing laundry and relaxing.

Today we took a trip to Mobile Bay to look for dolphins. We had lunch at Lambert’s, a tourist spot that has “throwed rolls”. It was barely so-so. The green beams with my meal were definitely canned, and Kevin’s beans seemed like standard canned pork and beans. The rolls were good though, as were the fried potatoes and the hamburger steaks themselves (loaded with onions, mushrooms, and green peppers). The charter was a bit over two hours, and I enjoyed it immensely! We took a charter from A-Pair-A-Dice at Barber Marina, and saw lots more than dolphins. Eagles, cormorants, ospreys, terns, loons, and brown pelicans were showing off in the area. Note most of these pictures were fromKefin since his camera takes much better zoom pictures than mine does.

One group of dolphins were mating, so they were rolling all over themselves.

It was a long trip, and I am afraid my face is slightly sunburned!

In and out of Red Bay (again)

We drove into the Tiffin Service Center campground in Red Bay, AL on Sunday, 3 March. We got seen by the evaluator on Monday, and we were told it would be the middle of the next week before we could get into a service bay. That gave us some time to wander around, but it was so cold we didn’t enjoy it much. We did get to a small shop in downtown Red Bay and ordered a custom hand towel in the basic colors of the coach.

However we got a call early on Friday morning to head to a bay! We got everything we needed done by Tiffin early, a nice change. However we still had some woodworking to be finished by an outside vendor, and we had an appointment for diesel service and installation of a SafeTPlus steering system on Wednesday. The woodworking was done on Monday, and we got the diesel work done as planned by Bay Diesel. Since the service center work was complete, we moved to a private campground nearby, 1st Class Campground. It is another gravel parking lot, but at least the owner turned the water on a few hours a day. Pretty much all the other campgrounds had water shut off completely due to the freezing temperatures.

The diesel service went well, and I already LOVE the SafeTPlus. It makes driving much, much easier and less tiring.

Today we had the coach detailed, the first time it has been washed in months! We were scheduled for the 4 hour job to begin at 9:30, but just after we left it the water faucet they used broke due to the cold! The detail guy had to spend the first few hours replumbing the water line, so instead of being on the road by 2:00, we didn’t leave until after 4:30.

We had thought about gradually heading back to Iowa, staying at some Corps of Engineers sites for a couple of weeks, but I was so tired of the cold! Even Red Bay was getting down to lows of 20 or so, almost unheard of for March. Kevin found a campground in Gulf Shores, AL near the coast. We will be spending a week there, hopefully warming up. The forecast is for lots of rain though, so it is not an unmixed blessing. We are spending tonight in a Walmart parking lot in Cullman, AL.

Gave up running – just staying put

I made it through DFW, though it was a long tiring day. We arrived at Lale Catherine State Park on Wednesday. The sites are all long, but the one we reserved (number 46] was too unlevel to work for us. Since the campground was pretty empty, we just moved to another site (number 45). We also took a look at the forecast for Hot Springs and for Red Bay, and we decided o just give up on running before the storm! We are staying out until they go away, so we aren’t leaving until tomorrow (Sunday). I was absolutely exhausted on Thursday. All the driving, especially through DFW, added to not sleeping well because I decided to try a Claritin D instead of my normal Claritin, took a huge toll on me. I was tired and sore and DONE with doing 400+ miles a day, three days in a row, in a motorhome.

We had to change sites at the campground because where we were was reserved for the next couple of days. We ended up farther uphill in the trees instead of right at the lake, but the site is roomy, level, and quiet (site 8). It has rained and rained, so we just hung around the motorhome the first day. Yesterday I took a spa day, appropriate since We were in Hot Springs. I had a short Swedish massage, a facial, and a foot scrub at Quapaw Spa on Bathhouse Row at the National Park, and it was lovely. We had a nice dinner at a German restaurant, and I feel rejuenated. Right now it is pouring down rain, but it is supposed to stop by noon or so. It is also warming up to almost 70, so we intend on doing some sightseeing before we leave. Rest does amazing things.

Change in plans – running from the storm

Just in case anyone in the US is unaware, the weather this winter is terrible pretty much anywhere. That is a sarcastic comment BTW, but it is certainly appropriate for our home in Iowa and pretty much everywhere we have been this winter. In Arizona it was a good 10-15 degrees colder than usual, and very wet. We took off Monday from White Tank Mountain Park by Phoenix, heading to Alabama. We spent last night at a lovely campground in the small town of Van Horn, TX, just down I-10 from ElPaso. The Van Horn Campground used to be a KOA, but it is immensely better than the KOA we stayed at in Benson. Plus it was a lot less expensive, a bonus. However it was cold there too with a low of 24. That is awfully low for a town 30 miles from the Mexican border. We took a look at the weather this morning, and left early to run in front of the sleet and snow that was heading our way. We chose a totally different route than we had planned. We decided to take I-10 to US 67 to Abilene and back to I-20. I admit I was not fond of the 150 or more miles of 2 land roads through oil country, and I am exhausted after 420 miles driving. We are spending the night at a Walmart in Eastland, 40 miles east of Abilene. Tomorrow we go through the DFW area to end up on I-30. We have reservations at Lake Catherine State Park for 2 nights.

Bisbee Arizona

We arrived Friday afternoon in Benson Arizona. We are staying at the KOA which is small, crowded, but wonderfully quiet. We immediately started laundry! We had lots and lots because it had been almost 2 weeks since we last did it. Saturday however we had a lovely day in Bisbee, about an hour away. We first took a golf cart tour of the town. Bisbee is a mining town set into the side of a mountain, so there was no way we could have walked through it. Since the older roads were laid out before cars, many of them are barely wide enough for small car (or golf carts!). In addition our guide grew up in the town and knew all kinds of interesting stories. It was cold and windy, so I didn’t get many pictures, but these will give you an idea.

Mountain towns mean retaining walls. Many have been decorated by artists.

Lots of small houses brightly colored are a fixture in Bisbee

After a lost 3 hours on the tour we had a nice beer at a local bar followed by a so-so dinner at another spot. Then we took another tour, this one about Bisbee ghosts! I don’t believe in ghosts, but it was a fun historical tour.

We got back at 10:00 at night, which is late for this girl! It was so worth it.

Today we had a lovely lunch at a local restaurant and did more laundry! Tomorrow we leave for Alabama. The plan is to take I-10 to I-20 to US 277 at Abilene to Wichita Falls to Oklahoma City where we catch I-40 the rest of the way. We’ll see how the plans work! We will basically just be driving until we get to Little Rock. We then plan to take an extra day at Hot Springs National Park to take one of the hot baths. Then back on the road.

Last day in Phoenix area

We are sitting inside on a last, rainy day at White Tank Mountain Park. Outside stuff is mostly packed up since we knew the rain was on its way. Tomorrow we will just pack up power cord, water softener, water hose, and bikes, hopefully after the rain ends. It is always surprising how much “stuff” accumulates inside and out when we are in one place for a while.

We have had some good things happen while we are here. First, the scenery still is spectacular everywhere we look.

Take a look at some of my favorite saguaros.

Many of them have branches clustered along along a horizontal plane.

In this one the side branches are just getting started

Baby saguaros look a lot like basic barrel cactus when they are little.

You can also see lots of cholla varieties in the backgrounds.

There are lots of flowers around too, even though the main bloom isn’t for another couple of months. Yellow seems the dominant color.

These have just started blooming. They also have seed heads on them that almost look like tiny dandelion seeds

Kevin took these two pictures along a trail near the campground.

There are are a few in the blue/purple family

Kevin found this on a cholla, almost blooming

We took a trip to a supposed dirt road west of Wickenburg only to find out it had been paved! The guide book to 4×4 trails is obviously a bit out of date. On that trip (last Saturday) we had a real mess in Wickenburg. They were having a big rodeo and history festival in town – Gold Rush Days. They even close their schools for the entire week, which is amazing to me. Carnival, parade, rodeos, UTVs, trucks, and thousands of people were between where we wanted to be and where we were! It took 30+ minutes to make a detour through town, and we completely gave up on our initial plan of having lunch there. It looked like a nice town though, so Tuesday we went back. We visited the Desert Caballeros Western Museum, and all I can say is WOW! It had some very good historic exhibits, but the art exhibits were astonishing. Caitlin, Remington, and many other famous western artists have originals paintings and bronzes displayed here. It is truly a gem, and worth much more than the $12 admission. They also had a special exhibit of Native American art pieces from a private collector. The items were mostly Navajo and Hopi, with some sprinkles of other groups. Baskets, pottery, and rugs were only a few of the items, and they were amazing.

Tomorrow we head to Benson for three nights at the KOA. It will let us get our tanks flushed well and do laundry. We are also planning on a trip to Bisbee. We visited there 20-25 years ago, and we have always wanted to go back. Then off through NEw Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee to Alabama and one last trip to the Tiffin factory for some small maintenance items.

White Tank Mountain Park and Phoenix

This is a beautiful place! We arrived Monday, and I was amazed at the scenery. Everything is quite green (for the desert) due to the rains. In fact, it rained quite a bit on Wednesday. There was quite a bit of water along the road and in low spots.

The second one is taken through the windshield, but it shows the view I get to see.

Thursday we went to the Desert Botanic Garden on the far side of Phoenix. It was totally worth the drive and the money! Take a look:

Hummingbirds! Do you see him at the edge of the bush?

This one was very cool. They aren’t flowers but seed pods.

Some of the yuccas were just starting to flower.

We also had lunch at the upscale restaurant inside. They also had a wonderful plant store where I forced myself to not buy a thing! It was very hard since the succulents were incredible. I love desert landscaping and succulents, but there is no room in the coach and the cacti won’t be happy at the house with the cold weather.

One of the nice things about being in civilization again is that we can eat regular food. I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they are mostly balanced. It is lovely to have fresh veggies, fruits, fish, and meats. Those were hard to come by in the boondocks. I have enjoyed cooking, and I will definitely keep it up until we leave. We are planning on just heading to Alabama from here, and I want to have some food in the freezer before we leave.

Missing in action

It has been a long time since my last post. I have been trying to find the time and energy to post about our time at KOFA and then Quartzsite, but it seems overwhelming. Instead I am just going to provide a brief summary of the last four weeks, then my next post will be more recent.

We spent a week at KOFA in an great boondock site with friends. I started getting sick there – standard sinus problems I get on a far too frequent basis. On Monday, 14 January, we moved to Quartzsite with some different friends. I kept getting more sick, but treated myself with stam and keeping up with my allergy meds. Finally I acknowledged I felt like crap and was coughing so badly that I needed a doctor. We went to an urgent care facility in Lake Havasu, a bit of a drive, but I wanted a place with good patient reviews. Steroids and antibiotics to get rid of the bronchitis were the Rx. Within 24 hours I was sooooo much better! Steroids do that.

We did do a few things in Quartzsite. Funnel cakes and Indian tacos were a hit (different days). We also bought a couple of new camping chairs plus a little folding table. We had a lovely time with our friends, and ended up staying until Saturday, 2 February. We stayed in the town of Quartzsite at a full hookup site at Quail Run RV Park. Took a bit to get used to being 5’ from my neighbor instead of 100’, but it was nice to have unlimited power and water. I got to do all our laundry in our own unit, a big improvement over laundromats in Quartzsite!

On Monday, 4 February we checked in to White Tank Mountain Regional Park just west of Phoenix. Absolutely gorgeous, but I will pick that up in the next post.

A summary of some RV related information. We were having trouble keeping the batteries up even though we weren’t using that much power. Kevin found a hygrometer to measure their “goodness” only to discover they were not in good shape. Sigh. We drove to Phoenix to buy 6 new ones. Expensive, but needed. The solar worked better than we thought, even on cloudy winter days. We needed up needed the generator only about an hour a day most of the time. Everything else worked really well. We used the satellite when we needed, the refrigerator kept things cold or frozen as needed, and the weather wasn’t too terrible though significantly cooler than normal.

Happily in the desert again

We left Needles on Monday, 7 January, and we are now in a boondock site in the Kofa area off King Road, about half way between Quartzsite and Yuma. This area sits between the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge and the Yuma Proving Range which makes it interesting. We can see transport and bombers go overhead, hear bombs being dropped a long way off, and still be hopeful of seeing mountain sheep. It is classic Sonora desert country. The name is an acronym for King of Arizona, a mine in the area. It stamped its gold with “K of A,” and the name stuck to both the mountain range and the wildlife refuge.

Of course the mountains are lovely too.

We are here with 7 other RVs, both trailers and motorhomes. We are all members of the RVForum spending time here before we camp at Quartzsite for a couple of weeks. No services, but we are all self sufficient with solar and generators. We figure we will leave when we need to dump the tanks, maybe Saturday or Sunday.

We haven’t been doing much, just relaxing and hanging around. I hope drive some of the backroads in the area before we leave. There seem to be some interesting looking places to go.

We are RVing again!

We spent Sunday night in a La Quinta on the north side of Tucson, and it wasn’t very nice. It was more expensive than the others, and we got upgraded when they didn’t have our room cleaned at 5:30 (really?), but it just wasn’t very good. We had a wonderful lunch of green chili chicken enchiladas at Adele’s in Las Cruces on the way in. Definitely will be remembering that spot!

We got into Needles just after noon Pacific time on Monday, New Year’s Eve. I was slightly nervous about the power in the RV, but everything was fine. We had left a penny on top of a frozen container of water to make sure the freezer didn’t get warm, and it was fine. The coach’s batteries were fully charged on the solar, and we happily pulled it out of storage into Desert View RV Park that was only a few blocks away. It is so nice to be in our own space again. The park is nice with mostly long term residents. Our site isn’t very big, but the long term sites are bigger. The park was having a karaoke night for NYE, and Kevin and I joined them. Well, I did some singing, and Kevin was a great audience. Nice folks here, and we have a good rate because we are staying a week at a significant discount.

Tuesday we just relaxed. I had enough driving! We did some organizing, cleaning, and shopping, but mostly we just relaxed. We weren’t too interested in doing much since there was a dreadfully cold wind on both Tuesday and Wednesday. We had planned on going to Oatman, AZ on Wednesday, but we chose to just visit Davis Dam.

There wasn’t a lot of power being generated which matched the low levels of the river. We also drove through the Davis Camp Campground, a public campground just below the dam on the Arizona side of the river. The dry camping sites were gorgeous – right next to the river. The full hookup sites were very crowded though, and I doubt we would want to stay there in the future.

Today we took the belated trip into Oatman. I love the views on the way there.

The drive past Oatman is spectacular too.

And of course, if you go to Oatman you have to take pictures of the “wild” burrows.

Kevin has been doing some organizing in the motorhome. He put together a shoe rack I bought, and luckily it fits perfectly on the closet floor. I was tired of a confused pile of shoes on the floor, and now we can see them all. Even better is the cabinets he has modified for a spice rack. The doors were hinged, but had no pulls. Kevin rearranged the pile of wires and flexible hoses behind the door and added the pull.

He had ordered this spice shelf and bottles while we were home. They fit very well. There are actually two cabinets, so he is going to order another spice cabinet when we get home this spring. It will be awfully handy.

That is enough pictures. I am recovering from a sinus cold, and I am now going to bed!

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