Friday, April 9, 2010

Today wasn’t real sunny but not totally overcast either, a good driving day. Today’s drive was pretty boring, the south west end of Texas is pretty sparse with no scenery to speak of, the only saving grace today was that the landscape was all so green, usually when we have made this drive it is brown and dull but not today.

Fredericksburg was a real zoo when we drove through town, it looks like it will be a good place to stay away from this weekend!! The wildflowers are beautiful but I didn’t take any pictures as they don’t seem to turn out well when taking them while in motion.

We arrived at Miller Creek RV Resort shortly after 3 p.m. and my how it has changed; Paul, the owner, has done a lot of work in the last couple of years and the park looks really good and is very busy. The gal who checked us in told us he has opened up some sites across the creek and turned the silo there into a washroom, she said it is the largest RV washroom in Texas so we will have to drive in there and check out that new part. The park was given a 5 Star Ratings in 2009 by Woodalls, needless to say they are very proud of that.

Next weekend is Wildflower Weekend so it will be really busy here and I guess that is why Fredericksburg was so busy, although I recall that it is always a busy little place. The gal in the office said she had been told the best place to see the Wildflowers was the Willow loop out of Fredericksburg so we will do that early next week. She also said that the wildflowers here are the nicest in memory because of the terrible winter they had, guess something good always come out of something bad!

I think tomorrow and Sunday we will stick close to home then do our touring starting Monday, tomorrow I have to do laundry so that will take some of the day to get it done.

And so ends two more great gifts of days and we look forward to another great day tomorrow.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

We woke up this morning in Deming to a temperature of 38F (4C), that sure isn’t something we have been used to lately!! Needless to say the furnace came on real fast and we were toasty warm in no time.

Our Site at Deming


We were on the road shortly after 9 a.m. and stopped for diesel in Deming – it was $3.199/gallon – GULP!! We stopped at a rest area just west of Las Cruces and I took a few pictures of Las Cruces in the valley below and one of the Roadrunner at the rest area and a sign there (just for you Margie!).







El Paso TX was the usual horrid drive with heavy traffic for the 20 miles through the city, man, I hate going through there and heaved a sigh of relief when we had cleared it. From there to Fort Stockton was a long, boring drive with little traffic, the long and boring gets to you after a while but I sure do like the little traffic bit. We stopped just east of Van Horn for fuel and it was $3.019/gallon, much better than this morning, and I hope it gets cheaper as we head east.

South West Texas


We lost another hour today, yesterday we lost the hour because Arizona is one of the few states that doesn’t do DST so when we crossed into New Mexico we were on DST and then today, about 135 miles east of El Paso, we crossed into the Central Time Zone, hence another hour lost. I think it will take a few days to get our bodies used to this!

Tonight we are at Fort Stockton RV Park and have just come back from having a delicious rib dinner at the Roadrunner CafĂ© here in the park. We found this gem a few years ago and always make a point of stopping here if we are in the area as the dinner is delicious and the cost, including desert, a bottle of wine and the tip was $30 – a great deal. Right now I can’t get the internet, hopefully I will be able to get on later but if not I will have to wait until tomorrow to post this. I was on for a few minutes and downloaded my e-mail and even sent one but since then I can’t get a thing – oh well, I have a good book to pass the evening with since we can’t pick up any TV channels either. Guess this is what you get when stopping in the middle of nowhere Texas!!

Our Site at Fort Stockton RV Park


And so ends another great gift of a day and we look forward to another great day tomorrow.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Well, we’re on the road again and so far the drive has been good with not a lot of traffic.

Yesterday we got away from Yuma around 10 a.m. and had a good trip to Casa Grande. When we got to Sundance 1 RV Park in Casa Grande we discovered we would have to unhook as we were too long to fit into their pull thrus – grrrr!!

Our Site at Sundance 1 RV Park, Casa Grande AZ


We were just getting ready to head into town, we figured we might as well take a quick tour around if we had to unhook, when Bob and Denise came by. We chatted for a few minutes and said we would see them shortly. We headed for the Palms Resort to see if we could say hello to a couple from our home park in Kincardine, we found their RV but they weren’t home so we left them a note saying we had stopped by and would see them at Green Acres. We made a quick stop at Fry’s to get some wine to take for dinner and get diesel then it was back to the park to Bob & Denise’s.
They have a beautiful park model that they just bought a couple of weeks ago, It is a really nice layout and has a nice living room, something that a lot of the park models don’t have. We sat outside and visited until it was time for dinner then moved inside and enjoyed a wonderful roast beef dinner – thanks so much Denise & Bob for a great meal and a super visit! We hope we see you in Kincardine this summer.

We got away from Casa Grande about 9 this morning, on the way out of town we had to wait for a train at a level crossing, it had 143 cars with 3 engines on the front and one on the back – talk about a LONNNNNNG train! We had a good drive to Deming, NM and the drive through Tucson was great and there wasn’t a lot of traffic. We stopped in Wilcox at Subway for lunch, gotta love those $5 footlongs that we split, and arrived in Deming around 4:30, that was the time after losing an hour when we crossed into New Mexico. We will lose another hour tomorrow when we get to Texas – wow, 2 hours in 2 days takes a bit of getting used to.

It was cool today with a high of about 17C and tonight we have the furnace running – hopefully it will warm up again in Texas.

Picacho Peaks ( You can see these from miles away)



We were really surprised at all the snow covered mountain tops we saw today from Tucson east, we have never seen so many snow covered peaks at this time of year. On the other hand there was a lot of wildflowers in the desert today, something else we have never seen before, so even though the drive was long and pretty boring there were some things to brighten the day.

Snow Covered Mountain Peaks




Wildflowers



And so ends a two more great gifts of days and we look forward to another great day tomorrow.

Monday, April 5, 2010

I just wanted to do a short update as we are returning our internet modem this afternoon in preparation for our departure tomorrow morning.

Saturday morning John headed out early to see if he could find a fabricating shop to straighten the hitch bar and after much searching, and finding everything closed on Saturday, he found a place that was open and a guy who said he would give it a try. Thankfully, he got it straightened so we are now good to go tomorrow and we will probably order a new part when we get to the park in Texas where we are going to spend a week. Our new brake controller was delivered Saturday afternoon so John now has that installed and just has to calibrate it tomorrow once he gets the trailer hooked up and on a flat surface.

Late Saturday afternoon we made a quick grocery run to Fry’s and Wal Mart but I think I will still have to make a quick stop when we are out today.

Yesterday was a pretty quiet day, I did a lot of reading and started getting packed up for the road but there was a lot of stuff I didn’t want to do until after we had dinner last night.

We were sitting outside about 4 yesterday afternoon, I had been reading and John had just sat down when the ground started to rock and roll – real scary when you literally see the truck bouncing up and down and the trailer awning going nuts! We realized real fast that there was an earthquake some place close and we sure were feeling it and it lasted about 45 seconds – seemed like forever. We heard something crash inside so I came in, which wasn’t easy with everything bouncing around, and found the pepper mill had been shaken off the table. I turned on the TV and the earth quake was south of El Centro in Mexico, at first they said it registered at 6.9 but by last night they had upgraded it to 7.6, a pretty good earth quake! We heard last night that one person had been killed but they were still waiting to get to the scene to determine what all damage had been done. We felt a few earth quakes here a couple of years ago but nothing as bad or as long as this one, I can’t imagine what it would have been like in places like Haiti!

This afternoon we will return the internet modem, get fuel and propane, do some last minute shopping and then we are going to go out for dinner tonight - I’m looking forward to that.

And so ends a few more great gifts of days here in Yuma and we look forward to getting on the road again and our trek home.