Last Day of '09! 12-31

I’ve written this blog in my head at least five different times today and all have been different. I thought about doing a little photo retrospective until I skimmed through the last year’s pictures and decided you’ll have to go back through the year’s entries if you want a retrospective! Well over 3,000 pictures for the year in my photo files and those are just the ones I kept! It is nice to have all that to go back through to remind us of all the places we’ve been and what we have accomplished.

First I’d better do today’s events…the wind woke us up around 6:30…it was strong, but as the trailer wasn’t shuddering it wasn’t bad enough to worry about and I went back to sleep. We’ve been in winds so bad that I’ve wondered how we stay on the landing gear!

We had another day of exploring our options for a winter home down here and yet again we had no success. We did learn more yet again. All of these pictures were taken during our explorations today, Sierra Blanca is the snowy white mountain.

Today we were exploring finding maybe a nice property but with an old mobile or tear down with the utilities etc. on the land and removing the old stuff and putting something new on, but on every piece we looked at the septic would have to be redone, the power would have to be redone…most are 100 amps or less and we would want 200 and the property would get torn up with removal and rebuilding etc. anyways, so we are thinking starting from scratch would suit us better.

In two weeks we have looked at all the possibilities and explored all the different areas and at least we have narrowed down our choices to a couple of areas. There were two that we might have settled on, but one was at the top of what we wanted to spend, it’s a 12 year old beautiful manufactured home and when Larry called the power company and learned that the place cost over $300 in electricity in the winter…we decided it would need insulation upgrades and more. It also has water egress issues under the stucco in places, has no garage or workshop for Larry and the beautiful from a distance large carport has a leaky roof and wood damage…and it has an above ground pool we aren’t interested in. The home inside and property are gorgeous though.

We found a site built home way at the other end of the terrain spectrum (the first was up in a canyon with great views), this was on 5 acres (oh, the other was 3) of level land, but had a lot of weeds and was on a main road, had no garage or outbuildings and was about 20 years old. It needed all of the windows replaced and a ton of cosmetic stuff done inside…kitchen, bathrooms, flooring, walls retextured etc….it’s biggest drawback though was it had about the teeniest master bedroom/bathroom we have ever seen…outside of a home from way back in the 40’s. The other issue with this particular area is there is no zoning and so the empty lots on either side of us could have anything from a business to apartments, to a cattle feed lot and you would have no control over it

We also have to consider security/safety of the area because for the next couple of years at least we will be gone at least 6 months of the year and wouldn’t want to come back to all our stuff gone or squatters in residence. So we have had a lot to consider. We also have to consider our time frame…it would be weird to find something, fix it up, move all of our stuff in only to hit the road right away. So we are considering that if we find something this winter/spring that we’ll just take our time with fixing it up, if it’s needed, while living in the trailer and move our stuff down next fall when we are back down for the winter.

Anyway, after our look-de-looing of three properties today with our ever patient real estate agent we headed back home. Then we decided to go to Casa de Suenos to try their lunch buffet…it was pretty good. After we left there we drove up highway 70 to see how much snow was still sticking around up there and then we did the same and drove up into Laborcita Canyon…we’ll also hunted down a piece of property that was for sale and it was way too remote with a scary road. In a little aside here, someone needs to invent a pee shield for us women who pee out in the wild so our shoes or pants don’t get splashed on…the wind makes for a big problem too…laugh!!!

My cousin Pat called from YUMA today to wish us a Happy New Year and to tell me how much she enjoyed reading my blog and how my Aunt Millie and Uncle Marty read it religiously every morning. It still amazes me that anyone finds what I talk about entertaining enough to read every day….smile. A few months ago I entertained the idea of retiring the blog, but you all were saved from that when we sold the house in Fallon and hit the road again! When we are home doing everyday things I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to hear that I did laundry, or went to town, or crafted something! AND, you all are probably about 10 people, but for you I keep writing….laugh!!!!

This past year we started in Yuma for the first three months enjoying sunshine and friends, we made a trip to beautiful Palm Desert from there to visit some other special friends. We spent time in California and Oregon visiting our kids and other family and friends. We shoveled tons of rock ourselves and re-landscaped the front and backyards of the house if Fallon in less than a month. We went back to Oregon to visit Larry’s aunt and uncle and saw an amazing hail storm. Then we took a trip up to Washington from Nevada and passed through Oregon and Idaho and had a peaceful time camping out in the middle of nowhere. We had both of the grandsons for a visit for about a week each. I spent time home alone while Larry was off working and found that while doable, we didn’t like being weeks and weeks away from each other…I don’t envy our Armed Service families! Larry got in a little trip to Utah too. I spent the summer learning a new craft…mosaic tiling and how could I forget…I turned 50.

In September we decided to sell the house and in a week’s time of being listed we received an offer so the month of October we spent packing and moving to storage and then we were on the road again. Up to Oregon to see Michelle’s family and had truck trouble on the way up, but was fixed and then down to meet our third grandson Connor and hang with Andrea’s family for a few weeks. A week before Christmas we headed south for the winter to escape freezing and snow….but NOoooOOOooo, it has snowed twice since we’ve been here (we have heard repeatedly that it never snows here!) and frozen at night for about a week. Our past year condensed into two paragraphs…wow I didn’t think I could do it!

We are grateful every day for our time together, for our healthy family and friends and that we are able to live our dream and even though sometimes we are frustrated with ourselves because we can’t seem to figure out what we want to be when we grow up we still love that we are doing IT! Whatever IT is. I just feel our lives (mine and Larry’s) are about learning and exploring and maybe in the future if all that we’ve discovered will help even one person we have done okay.

Hard to believe that an entire decade of the 21st century is gone already…and what a decade of change it has been…can’t wait to see what this next one brings! I hope we all can find the good in all of our experiences this next year…even those that make us unhappy. My love and hugs to all of you!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Smiling Connor

Andrea took this with her phone but it is just so danged cute I wanted to post it here. Connor smiling with his little chubby cheeks, our third and youngest grandson...almost 2 months old.

Just Another Day 12-30

Today was warmer. I finished Ian's scarf and got it in the mail. We just cruised around again scoping out different areas and we did some shopping at Super Walmart. The sunset was a stunning glow of scarlets.

SNOW!?! 12-29

Happy 7th birthday to our oldest grandson Ian, he is growing up so fast and is quite the jokester.

We awoke to a blanket of white snow covering everything and it was snowing away. It made us think we may have been transported back to Chester…laugh.

It quit around 12:30 and melted off pretty quickly. The beauty I guess of being somewhere that “it NEVER snows”.

I baked some cookies and started on Ian’s red scarf that he put in a request for a week or so ago.

I finally finished James Rollins book “The Last Oracle”…it was very suspenseful but good, though it took me over a week to read being so busy with our scouting around the area here. I hate taking that long to read a book because I lose the thread sometimes and forget who was doing what. Larry reads Rollins and others like him and thought I might like it and I did though it lacked the sexy romance of the books I normally read for entertainment.

A Day at Las Cruces 12-28

Today we went to Las Cruces, trekking across the Tularosa Basin with the White Sands to the north and the missile testing range to the south. We have to climb the divide …to the south are the Organ Mountains and to the north are the San Agustin-San Andres Mountains and we pass through on the San Agustin pass.

Then we start down and can see Jornanda del Muerto (journey of the dead) spread out before us and the city of Las Cruces sprawling at our feet. It is currently the fastest growing city in New Mexico and 11th in the country. It took us about an hour and a half to get there from our place near Tularosa.

We found the AAA office for maps, found a Starbucks for a latte fix, ran into Hobby Lobby for yarn for my grandsons scarves then we checked out a few manufactured home lots, had lunch at a BBQ place (food was pricey, good but served cool to lukewarm…a disappointment) found and ran into the Joannes for a bit more yarn and then back over the mountains.

It was a long day, but we accomplished much and then spent the evening doing more research on the computers…we have a hard time stopping.

This last picture was from Las Cruces of the Organ Mountains.

Snoozer of a Day 12-27

Today I am not feeling inspired...can't come up with any way to make today sound exciting...

We took our walk, we went to the store in Tularosa, drove around up there a bit, and then hung out at home all day. No shopping the after Christmas sales for us...where would we put anything?

Quiet Post Christmas Day 12-26

Today was sunny and cold again. We took a walk before it got too breezy, but still needed winter coat , knit cap, gloves and trusty alpaca scarf. It was really cold but at least we didn’t have to walk like a penguin. When living in the mountains with snow and ice, taking a walk was slow and treacherous.

We are incubating our new home search…we hunted and explored all avenues gathering information and pushing on doors and now we are just going to wait, be patient and know that what we are looking for is out there…close. We have only been here a week and a half, so there is no hurry, though of course we want a favorable outcome…soon. Patience has been harder for me then learning
relaxation…I just have to keep reminding myself…laugh.

Today I was thinking about a Christmas many years ago when two little girls, after having a great Christmas and with lots of new things to play with, were up early the next morning and thought chasing their new Step-Father’s tropical fish with a net all around the ten gallon fish tank was WAY more fun and entertaining then playing with any of their new toys. Oooh weee, they got into big trouble and grounded to their room without the new toys. Beyond that my memory is thin, but we have never forgotten it and had quite a few laughs over it over the years…our parents liked to tell the story on us. I’m thinking we may have even gotten a spanking over that one. Silly girls, who knows what possessed us…we were just fascinated by the thing.

Larry and I took a little walk during the afternoon along an arroyo behind the campground, but didn’t linger very long…the wind was cutting!

I caught up with two of my friends on the phone today, which I always enjoy and that was about it for our day.

Photos added.....

I figured out how to pull a frame from the video of the luminarias on Christmas Eve in Tularosa...I still had the video in the camera, which is how I was able to do it, a feature of the camera. So go back to Dec. 24ths entry to check them out.

Christmas Day 12-25

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas Day. We had a nice day together...as always, talked to all the family on the phone and watched silly Christmas movies all afternoon and evening. It got down to 25 here in the morning and our water faucet outside was frozen until almost 11 a.m., Larry disconnects the hose to the trailer overnight and we use our water tank.

Love and Hugs to all!

Merry Christmas to All! 12-24

Merry Christmas everyone...I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday and that you can be happy with however it turns out!

Today was sunny with clouds scooting across the sky, it was cold and at some points windy. We did more exploring today and surprised ourselves once again by deciding to look at something that we had written off sight unseen....and we should know better, if one stays open to the possibilities you never know what will work for you and this still may not, but time and contemplation will tell.

Crazily we decided to go to Super Walmart...ON CHRISTMAS EVE!!! It was very busy, but everyone is so nice here. We had to laugh because it was like watching buzzards circling their target...people rimmed the jewelry counters and the electronic center making their choices. The lines were long at the checkouts but not as bad as I've seen on the news in big cities. Quite a few of the shelves looked picked over. You heard many people telling each other Merry Christmas...it was a nice experience.

This evening the owners of the RV park had an open house with wonderful home cooked tamales, posole, beans and rice, hot beverages, sodas and desserts. All very nice people, many here in the park have been here many times before and there were friends from the area...so good food and an opportunity to meet more people.

Afterward we left to drive through Tularosa to experience their luminaria display. It was phenomenal....thousands of sand filled paper bags lit from within by glowing candles lining over a mile of the four lane highway on both sides and ringing the median strips and on top of buildings and fountains and walls....we were all allowed to drive through without our headlights on to better enjoy the spectacle. I wish I had high speed internet so I could post the video I took, my slow satellite won't do it I'm afraid. I can't imagine how many people it took to pull that off and they do it every year. If I figure out how to snag a frame from the video I'll at least try and get a picture posted...(I did it, though they are blurry)

Another long yet productive day doing things we enjoy...can't ask for more!

Snow and Cold 12-23

We awoke to snow blowing around this morning. It rained off and on all night, we didn't get the wind here that they predicted which was nice, though it was very cold. When the clouds quit snowing and the clouds lifted we could see the snow on all the hills and mountains around us...very pretty.

I made a lovely butternut squash soup in the crockpot today, and we viewed a few more properties.

The sunset was tonights, the sky and seperate rain bursts we could see off in the distance were really pretty to watch, but I didn't attempt any photos...it was getting dark and I think I left my tripod in storage...

Brain Box Overload 12-22

We are in research mode and my brain feels like it is going to explode, so please excuse any errors in this entry...:-)

We took our walk this morning but with the heater behind the clouds it was a chilly walk.

We looked at more homes today and one is close to what we want, but isn't everything and has maintenance issues...so we will research and ruminate on it. Our agent Bernard showed us a home with very interesting architecture, two circular wings and another beautiful, large home that is on a two lane road that is about to become four lanes...too bad.

In the meantime just to know that we have explored all avenues Larry is scoping out bare property, online for now...this just helps us figure out what is available on the market and to help us figure out if something is priced fairly or not and exploring maybe getting what we want from scratch. Buying anything that you haven't built yourself from the ground up is never going to have everything (at least not in our experience...with our budget...laugh) that we want, but we also have to be sure we aren't buying a money pit.

I had put on a pot of beans in the crockpot and we had them for dinner....wonderful. Oh, and we ran up to Tularosa to find the library, which we did and it seems very new and for a small library had quite a good selection of mostly newer stuff and was really busy with a lot of people using the computers...they had a nice children's room too. And unlike the Alamogordo library there was no charge for a card and we could check out 6 items instead of the limit of 3 that Alamogordo has for visitors.

I did laundry this afternoon too and for awhile the wind was whipping up pretty good, but then it died down and we had a bit of rain pelting us but for only about 30 seconds.

So this is all I can get out with my tired, twisted brain and as it is about my bedtime...I quit.

On the Hunt 12-21

Happy Winter Solstice! I love this wintry day because in spite of the winter season being officially upon us, it means that the days start getting longer again.

It clouded up a bit here today, a storm is heading this direction by Wednesday they say.

Today we looked at five different properties and none made our short list...they are in the discard pile, but by starting the process we start to figure out what may or may not be important and we are constantly adjusting that and refining what we want. It will be mostly a winter home the first couple of years at least, which factors into what it is we need...so time will tell. The beauty of right now for us is we can take our time, we aren't HAVING to find a home, because we have a home right now that we are comfortable in, it just has wheels on it.

After we had dinner we drove up highway 82 today to check out High Rolls area and as we suspected the elevation there is too high, which means snow and too cold, but the drive through the canyons and up the mountain is really pretty...rocky ledges dotted with yuccas and cactus and the occasional juniper...stunning. The light was fading so no good pictures...

Enjoying the Sunshine 12-20

We stayed home today and just relaxed...mostly.

We took our walk, I washed sheets, gave Larry a haircut and slaved over my crockpot for about 10 minutes. Larry did his usual research and tinkering on his computer and scanner and sat out in the sunshine for a couple hours. I brought him out a little snack...I thought he needed sustenance while baking in the sun...didn't want him to get so weak he couldn't get up out of the chair...laugh...damn Portugue blood, he's got his tan back already. I chatted on Facebook off and on all day to a friend of ours and that was about it for our day.

I decided that as I couldn't start any new projects, that I should finish the big unfinished project I did bring along...I started it last winter I think...knitting an afghan with smaller needles...it is close to being finished...now is as good a time as any.

This last picture is of 10th street in Alamogordo yesterday...nice isn't it?

P.S. Larry just read online that there is a Hobby Lobby in Las Cruces...a mere hour away. Hallelujah! We had never heard of them until we saw one in South Dakota...the crafters mecca, but overwhelming the first time!!! All is right with my world again...yahoo!

Catching up 12-19

Started our day with a walk again. Today was the first day I didn't limp through most of it since we got here. It takes me a few days after traveling to get the muscles around my hip stretched out again...they do not like sitting for hours and days.

I spent about an hour on the phone catching up with Michelle, my youngest...which is an unusual amount of time...she is usually so busy. I figure the only reason she spent so much time talking to me today was because her husband Darel was at work and she had no one else besides 5 year old Seth to talk to and she sees him every day...laugh. I talked to my sister Lori for a bit and caught up with Andrea later in the day....free minutes on the weekends!!!

I don't know what the heck I did for most of the day...oh, I did a load of laundry and messed around on the computer. Larry sat in the sun reading for over an hour...so now his tan is refreshed...that is all it takes for him.

We decided to run into Alamogordo and scope out how busy the mall was the weekend before Christmas. Now mind you it isn't much of a mall...the smallest JC Penney we have ever seen (and we have seen small ones in Ukiah and Susanville) on one end and K-Mart on the other, with a Beall's in the middle, a few food stands, a Maurice's, a Hallmark and some small little shops that look like they are occupied right now just for the holidays.

While most people would avoid the mall's unless they had shopping to do this time of the year, we enjoy going and people watching and looking at the decorations. We are done with our shopping so we don't have to fight the crowds. Alamogordo is a quiet, lowkey town and the people are all so pleasant, no one was rushing around and it wasn't as busy as we expected.

We checked out the library and discovered it is a city library, not part of a county system. As visitors we would have to pay $15 for a card and could only check out 3 books...jeez, we would be back there every other day. We've had library cards in Yuma, Washington, Fallon and California and some are very generous and some very stingy to visitors. One county in Oregon wanted $50...wow. I guess they have people not returning books. We enjoyed the Yuma library a lot because they had an extensive paperback section. There are some people that believe libraries are extinct, but they haven't been to one in twenty or so years, because every library we have been in has been remarkably busy.

We stopped in at a real estate office and met a very nice man who is a very helpful agent and didn't want all your information before talking to you...a nice change.

Apparently I will have to find yarn during our travels and internet shopping. I miss my piles of yarn that I put in storage, but I figured food and clothing would be more useful in the long run. No craft shops here in town and the Walmart's yarn selection is small and basic, a check in the con column for Alamogordo! You can find lots of chili pepper wreaths and swags though!

I guess that was our day...funny how by the end of a day I can't remember what I did, its just that most of it I don't think is fascinating enough to talk about.

Great, but Crappy Day! 12-18

Our walk was a little brisk this morning…a slight breeze.

We spent the morning doing research on interesting properties in the area. We think we might like to have a winter home here…time will tell, but we like researching and then viewing the different homes.

We got to take a break from all that when I discovered the toilet wasn’t draining properly, so that took about an hour to get working again. We had quite the block in the pipe from the toilet and then once that broke loose Larry was concerned that it would then block the pipe out of the holding tank…they are the same sized pipes. I assisted by turning water on and off in various places and telling him how the flow looked…we have one of those clear pipes coming from the holding tank…it was a shitty job, but we are all full of it, so no big deal…laugh. Larry lay under the trailer and carefully pressed the tank up and down to keep things moving and out and not resting on the bottom. We are pretty sure we got it all flowing as it should.

Now why after almost 6 years would this happen you ask…well we had guests the last week or so before we hit the road and people don’t realize that they have to keep the pedal depressed to let plenty of water go down with the toilet paper etc. We usually go behind and run more water but we both forgot, so we think things just got built up until it just about completely blocked. Larry had some old hose that he shoved down there and eventually got it, with lots of water, to break loose.

Just as we were finishing, a man two sites over offered us the use of his “snake”…he had just got done doing the same thing in his trailer…funny how things happen to people at the same time. See no matter what “crap” in life you are dealing with there is always someone out there going through the same thing!!!

After that little project we finished our research and then headed out look-de-looing to see which homes had promise. We have certain criteria…we want natural shrubbery and not a lot of weeds and we don’t want the property all scraped clear, because then it is just a big dust bowl or mud hole depending on which way the weather is. We don’t want to live next to people who collect massive quantities of stuff…if you know what I mean…etc, etc. We want natural and peaceful and that is all before we even look at the house…

We saw everything on our list and ended up with a very short…of interest list. We decided to eat out and tried a New Mexican cuisine restaurant that seems very popular. We eat at odd hours, so it wasn’t crowded…3 p.m….after lunch and before dinner. It was beautiful inside, the people were great and the food was excellent. The chips and salsa were both good…lately everywhere we have tried, the chips or the salsa or both just haven’t been that good. We couldn’t decide what to try so we went for the appetizer tray so we could sample and see what we liked. Wow…very good and the first time I have ever had beer-battered fried avocado….YUM! The three dips were perfect…spicy without being over the top. Needless to say we were very pleased. The sopapillas were really yummy too…they brought us each a large fluffy hot puffy one which we drizzled with the honey that they have on every table. We will be going back there!

Another great day! At the last minute I remembered to snap a picture of where we’ll be the next month…we are the Nash, the one in the middle…the Montana snuck in today while we were out. An older couple are in the place to the left of us…I can’t imagine two people living together in that small of a space, but we have seen some in even smaller…amazing.

Staving Off Starvation 12-17

It is wonderfully quiet out here...I forgot to take pictures of where we are...it isn't gorgeous to most people, but it is by far not the worst place we have ever stayed. There is a nice new RV park right along the highway, but we'll take basic and quiet. Plus we can walk all over out here...can't do that along the highway...well you could but we don't like it...too noisy and smelly.

It was in the 30's this morning, but with the sun and no wind it warms up pretty quickly. We were toasty on our walk and didn't need coats and hats. The high today was 58 and the low was 33.

Our big excursion for today was into Alamogordo to the Super Walmart...it is a huge store, and not crowded and has everything. Except it has the smallest yarn section I have seen at a Walmart...apparently people aren't into yarn art down here...internet here I come. On our way back home I took a picture of this giant Pistachio nut in front of one of the local "nut" houses. It is new since we were here a year and a half ago. We are amazed when we get the many bags of groceries home that it all manages to get put away...our trailer has great storage.

About an hour before dark we took a drive up the canyon to look at a few properties we had our eye on...and crossed most of them off our list.

Michelle's Birthday & We've Arrived 12-16

Happy Birthday Michelle! Lucky for you we have been on the road so I haven’t had time to dig in the archives for torturous pictures from your past! I might look for one….tee hee. (this was 1985, she was 2...I decided not to post the naked picture....laugh!)

We left Benson, AZ this morning just after 9. It was a lovely sunny day. Just another day of driving east on I-10, we have seen more truckers pulled over by Troopers than ever before and consequently we have not seen trucks pushing other motorists off onto the shoulder this trip…so far. They haven’t been flying past us either…nice.

At Las Cruces we picked up 70 north to Alamorgordo then 54 to Tularosa/La Luz. We thought we were seeing things at first as we crossed the White Sands missile testing grounds…there was a small group of some kind of large African antelope grazing out in the grasslands. We saw a few more a little later and an ambulance crew had stopped to get photos….we were going too fast to stop and I never would have gotten my camera on and ready in time, now we just have to figure out what they were. They were unexpected, but we had gotten used to seeing that when we were in the hill country of west Texas…there are a lot of hunting clubs with “exotics” from all over the world, so I guess I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been.

We have stayed at this RV park before and we like it because it is about a mile as the crow flies from the highway and is relatively quiet…nice after staying on the highways while traveling. We arrived here after 4 sometime, had traveled 311 miles and got set up by the time the sun set in its blaze of oranges and reds.

Tomorrow will be a run to the grocery store for supplies and then just resting after four days of traveling, we also have to figure out where to have our mail sent…we forgot to ask the park host…oh well, tomorrow. There is always more setup when we stay a long period of time versus just a night or two so we’ll be putsing around with that too.

Traveling Days 12-15

Sunday morning we got up early so we could get moving on down the road. We left at 8:17 from Ukiah, it hadn’t rained all night so the slides weren’t dripping wet, it was warmer, but this wet cold makes it just as miserable. Breaking down or setting up in the rain and cold is NOT fun.

Being Sunday there wasn’t a ton of traffic or big trucks, so going along highway 20 was nice and we could enjoy the changes that have been happening along the north shore of Clearlake. It has been interesting watching them slowly give the area a well needed facelift; new parks, better roads, new motels and just cleaning up some really dumpy looking places…it has been a slow process, but the differences make going through there more enjoyable.

Getting through Sacramento wasn’t bad, we took 5 to 99, it is just more interesting and there are more RV parks along the way. YEARS ago it was slower going, but now most of the towns are bypassed and in many areas there are 3 lanes (in one direction) versus 2 on I-5 AND I-5’s condition is so bad because of all the trucks that 99 is a smoother ride. 99 also has a lot of truck traffic, but currently it seems to be better maintained.

We hit some rain here and there but it wasn’t horrible and we didn’t hit any fog. We got to Tulare around 4:10 and stayed at Sun and Fun RV south of Tulare…nothing fancy, but it is paved and a pull through. We can hear the highway of course, smell cows and a train went by that rattled us pretty good, but so far it has gone by only once. OOPs, it came by a couple times during the night and the whistle sounded like it was being blown right outside our window. When we left the next morning we could see why….it practically was right outside our window!!! We traveled 364 miles and we stopped and fueled up once in Rincon.

Monday we got out even earlier at 7:50. We were concerned that we might hit nasty ground fog on the way to Bakersfield after all the previous days of rain, but we lucked out…we hit a couple of stretches of fog, but it stayed just above the traffic…mostly.

Another annoying thing about traveling in Southern California is they don’t put signs before the exits telling you what gas stations, etc. are down there. We were hoping to get fuel before we got into the “hub of it” as we call the populated areas, but we would wonder…should we try this exit, nah, doesn’t look like anything is down there, don’t see any signs and as we go flying by we see that, yeah, there was a place that we could have gotten diesel and pretty easily. We aren’t adventurous enough to just take any exit and take our chances…the few times we have done that we have wasted a lot of time and caused ourselves a lot of stress by being in places that you don’t want to be when towing your home. Yes, big semi delivery trucks run through some of these places, but they have amazingly tight turning radiuses, which we are sorely lacking. We ended up getting fuel in Pasadena, which was definitely not truck stop easy, but the station we finally found had pretty easy access in and out, we just had to make a big circle getting to it and getting back on the freeway.

Once we got over the mountains and dropping into the foothills and headed east on interstate 210 it was warm…low 70’s….soooo nice! Oh, we chose to take 210 east off of 5 to avoid any snowy mountain passes. From 210 we took highway 57 from San Dimas to Pomona where we picked up Interstate 10 heading east which we stayed on the rest of the day.

We pushed on into Arizona until almost dark and decided to dry camp along the highway somewhere. There are a lot of places to do that between the border and Quartzite and this time of year they aren’t crowded. We landed about 5 p.m. Pacific time and it was dark but we got set up pretty easily. We lost an hour when we went over the border and we were tired, but the night sky out there was beautiful and it was 65 degrees. The lights from Blythe were really pretty in the distance and the highway was noisy, but we were happy where we were. We had traveled 413 miles.

I had been knitting most of the day both Sunday and Monday and I stayed up and finished this blanket. I get a lot accomplished in the truck…no distractions…laugh…no Facebook, no e-mail…

We went to bed early but even with the time change we didn’t get up as early as we wanted. We were up before sunrise, but as the sun didn’t rise until after 8 it wasn’t really early.

This morning we were on the road by 9:09…a beautiful sunny, clear day. Almost immediately we were seeing Saguaro cactus…we love them!!! They are all so unique and some are really tall, I think it would be fun to do a pictorial some day of them. We saw one on a rise right next to the highway that had two arms that were in a hugging position…it was really big, I wish I could have gotten its picture, but it was on Larry’s side…dang it.

Arizona has closed many of its rest areas due to budget cuts…they claim…as always the public gets the shaft. One article I had read claimed they were closing the ones that were near “services”, which doesn’t help those of us that tow and big rigs that are self contained and just need an easy place to pull off the road and park.

Anyway our day was pretty uneventful, we had a major detour out through the countryside of Wintersburg (50 miles west of Phoenix) and down near the Palo Verde nuclear power plant due to the highway being closed to a traffic accident. Once we got back on 10 it wasn’t too far to state highway 85 which we took to I-8 so we could bypass Phoenix. We hate towing through Phoenix and it is probably quicker, we come out on 8 at Gila Bend. We stopped there for a break and then on we went. Highway 8 runs into 10, which we continued on until we stopped here in Benson, Arizona for the night.

We landed at 3:20, which was kind of early, but we had traveled 314 miles and we’ll have about that to travel tomorrow, so it seemed like it would be nice to stop, rest and being “hooked up”, I could get caught up on my blog and other stuff.

So any of you traveling to south east Arizona and the Benson area from Ukiah, California will travel 1091 miles…which is how far we have gone so far. LOVE this sunshine and warmth in December!

This place we are staying is right below the highway, but isn’t horrible because we aren’t near on/off ramps where the trucks make tons of noise slowing down or speeding up and though there is a train nearby it doesn’t sound like it will be running through our bedroom. The traveling life is by no means perfect my friends…laugh! If you look through the trees you can see the truck whizzing by on the highway under the bill board!

teeny Part 2 to Ian's BD 12-12

After the birthday party we went home for awhile and I did my blog and got some stuff put away in preparation for hitting the road tomorrow.

Then we stopped at KFC, bought dinner and took it down to Andrea's for a final visit. Ian was enjoying all his birthday loot and Carol, Larry's Mom came over too for a last computer lesson.

First picture is me and Larry, second is Great-Grandma Carol and Connor, and the last is Ian and Grandpa Reindeer with CC the cat posing too!

Ian's 7th Birthday Party 12-12

This will be a quick one. I am tired and it is only 4 p.m. and we will be heading down to Andrea’s here in a bit for a last visit and after we get home, will be turning in so we can get rested up for tomorrow.

Ian spent the night with us last night, and he got to sleep late, but at least he sleeps in.

The temperature when we went to bed last night was the day’s high, 46, so it is warmer, but now we are being drowned. It has been pouring rain all day, like someone has lifted the ocean up over the hills and is dumping it here. There are raging little rivers running through parking lots all racing for the low places…we saw a car turn a corner and the water was more than halfway up its tires.

Ian was ansty to get to his birthday party and we managed to get some lunch into him before we left for the skating rink. He does a pretty good job on skates…Larry and I opted out.

Michelle, he really LOVED the guitar!

Now the wind is really picking up and we can’t hardly hear ourselves think with the noise of the rain dumping on the roof. We hope the weather lets up so we can hit the road tomorrow. You may not hear from me for a few days…in bad weather we don’t bother to set up the satellite dish, but we tried to look out ahead and we should be okay.