March 26, 27, 2016 Yuma, Arizona

       Saturday:  March 26   We left Palm Springs this morning heading to Yuma, Az. to visit our friends  Cyndi and Howie who live  there. We met them years ago when we first started RVing, and we like the park because we play a lot of cards and games here, that we  teach to our family and friends back home. We usually spend time with our South Dakota friends Don & Velda Zingler,  they like to play our Yuma games also. This year we didn't get together because we were in Yuma at different times, we plan to see them on our way to Iowa when we get the jacks put on the new RV.
     We arrived in Yuma late, just in time to go the Easter Services at 7:00 PM. We drove pretty hard to get here in time for the Easter service. Everyone had a candle that we lit by lighting the candle to the person next to you. The church had very little light to see by, it was almost dark. Very quickly the candles were all lit and it was just beautiful with about 600 candles flickering their light. The story of Jesus was read and then the lights came back on and they proceeded to Baptise about 23 people  and make their first holy communion,  8 or more were confirmed. After all of this we did the Easter Mass with all the readings ,communion , the collection and songs. The church was packed with families with  children  and I never heard one of the little ones make a sound.We finally got out at 9:30 and we were starved not having time to eat before Mass. We were tired , so we went to Dairy Queen and we had ice cream for our dinner. End of a long beautiful day.
     Sunday  March 27    We were invited to dinner with our friends Cyndi & Howie in Yuma at the camp ground we always stay in.There was 3 other people for dinner too. I helped Cyndi make 2 salads for dinner and I did all her dishes and cleaned up her kitchen.We ate the dinner at their friends house and  they made a big ham and dessert. We went to our motor home after dinner and visiting and watched TV before heading to bed. We were pretty tired from all the driving and the late church service. Yesterday when we drove out the  Park where we are staying, Kent thought he made a wrong turn on the country road leading to the Park, there were no orange trees growing on both sides of the road. There has always been nothing but orange groves all over this part of Yuma. There were fields  of alfalfa in the fields where the the orchards wereBy the park entrance was all these bales of alfalfa stacked on the side of the road. We asked where the orange trees were and we were told they took them all out and they planted alfalfa in all the fields because they get 12 cuttings of alfalfa a season and it pays more money that the orange groves and a lot less work. We sure miss the orange trees.

Palm Springs, Ca. March 21, 2016

       Monday   March 21  We drove into Palm Springs To see our friend Bonnie Heckenliable from South Dakota. We enjoyed listening to all the things she and her family did at the Nascar races in Fontana. They went down on Thursday night in  Brenda's motorhome and they parked inside the track;  Her grandson Brandon has gone to several Nascar races and he got a real good spot to park the motor home. They set up chairs on he roof of the motor home and had a real good view of the whole race track. She said there is a full size grocery store in the center of the track where the motorhomes park and the campers have fire pits with real wood burning at night. Brandon had a lot of things he brought along and had his favorite driver Denny Hamlin #11 sign all of it. They really enjoyed being there for 3 days to see all the pre runs, it made me want to go sometime. They were all very tired when they got back to Palm Springs, and there is a lot of late partying and having fun and not much sleep. We didn't visit Bonnie very long, as she was pretty tired and we will be back to see her tomorrow, we are spending a week here.
     Tuesday  March 22    The weather here is 95 degrees, plus!!!  Kent had some running around to do today, so he dropped me off at Bonnies and she and I went swimsuit shopping at some little town where they have all kind of summer clothes and tons of swim suits. We stopped and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant that was very good, I don't think we will need to eat again for a few days. LOL. When we got home, we put our suits on and we went over to the club house and got in the pool and cooled off and then we just sat in the sun and watched the people.
      Wednesday  March 23   Kent is using Bonnies dining room table to sort all our paperwork for our taxes and until he gets that done I don't help him.  Bonnie and I watched our soaps together and spent a lot of time catching up with each others families.  Tonight we went to the Club House for $10 dinner night. They have a lot of different meals on the menu and they have a band that plays for dancing after dinner. We met a lot of new people who are very friendly, Canadians.
      Friday March 25   Another very warm day here in Palm Springs, I can't wait to get home and cool off with some beautiful Oregon rain. Kent finished up most of the taxes and we got ready to  go to the Club again tonight for dinner and Karaoke.  The music shut down at 9PM, so a group of us drove to another place that had karaoke and dancing .We are leaving in the morning for Yuma, I think I am ready to head out for our next stop with some quiet card playing and more friends to visit. We said our goodbyes tonight to Bonnie and everyone. What a lot of fun we had together.

March 18, 19, 2016 Desert Hot Springs, Az.

      March 18, 2016  Friday  We are staying at the Caliente Springs Resort camp ground for a few nights . We stayed here for a month last year, but this year we are staying just a few nights while we wait for my friend Bonnie to get back from the Nascar races in Fontana and we will spend a few days with her. We enjoyed  our quiet time this morning with our morning coffee and no where to rush off to. We had Kents medicine shipped to Bonnies house and our mail sent there also, so we will go into town and pick it up this afternoon.  My sweet husband made me an appointment to have a hair cut by a stylist that I really like here. When you are a stylist yourself, it is really hard to travel and have to get your haircut by a stranger, when you know if they are doing a good job or a bad one, by the way they are doing it. I don't usually tell them I am a retired stylist because they are too nervous then. This lady is great and we have a lot of fun talking about our days of doing hair. I went to the beauty supply shop and bought some hair paste and the prices here are outlandish. The weather has been about 95 degrees everyday. I couldn't live here year round like some people do, just a short visit is enough for me.

President John F Kennedy

      March 19, 2016  Saturday  We drove into town this afternoon for Kent to get his daily frappe and we went to another movie. We saw the movie  "The Young Messiah". It was OK, but I didn't care for the way Mary, Joseph and Jesus were portrayed. We got out of the movie just in time to go to Mass at the Sacred Heart Church. We always go to this one when we visit the Palm Springs area. It is the Church that President Kennedy attended Mass in whenever he spent time in Palm Springs. There is a brass plaque that has the story of him visiting and sitting in this exact spot when he went to Mass here. I like to sit in his spot. The church is very large and it  has a large Cross with Jesus hanging on it and on each side of him are the two thieves that were hung on the  cross on each side of him. After Mass we went for dinner at "Buffalo Wild Wings", We like this place and we like to watch the sports and all the large TV screens. I had a gift card from Pammy and Jeff for my birthday to spend, so that made it  perfect. We have been watching the March Madness college basketball games every day, so that was fun watching them there.

March 16,&17 2016 Bullhead City, Az,

Desert cactus in bloom

      Wednesday March 16, 2016       We had to be at the 3T Shop by 10:00 AM in Lake Havasu to have the radio and the GPS looked at and fixed or a new one installed. We drove down the night before  (51) miles and spent the night on their lot. The new radio and GPS was there and they installed it and it still didn't work.  We drove around and it wouldn't work, like they thought it would if we drove around awhile. We spent another night ton heir lot and Kent got on  the computer and the phone and talked to the people at Winnebago.They were very helpful.We are spending another night on their lot.
      Thursday March 17, 2016   We were up early this morning, with Kent on the phone talking to Winnebago, while waiting for the shop to open up. We found out that the card for the radio and GPS wasn't down loaded on their computer long enough and it had to be redone. Kent told them what he had learned and they redid it and reinstalled it and off we went. The GPS is really great, there are so many things it does and talks to you that  our Garmin GPS doesn't do, Kent thinks it is great. Finally we are done with warranty work and can go visiting our friends and have some fun. We are in Palm Desert tonight and we boon docked at the Casino 29 parking lot, where we ate dinner and played the slots for an hour before calling it a night.  It was a quiet St. Patricks day, we did eat corn beef and cabbage though.

The beautiful mountains in the desert.

Evening Sunset

March 14, 2016 Monday Oatman, Arizona

      Monday  March 14   We were the first appointment of the day for the shop, so we got right in at 8:00 AM  They found the radio and GPS were defective, and the parts had to be ordered second day delivery.  From there we drove to Oatman, Arizona, a little town in the desert where the wild burros roam the desert and come into town and walk the streets eating the carrots and food the tourists buy in the stores to feed them. We walked through the stores and watched an old west shoot-out in the street with 4 cowboys. Those silly burros come into town like clock work, not a single one on the streets when we got there, but after the shootout, they came meandering through town. I guess the guns shooting is their signal there are people there with food. On our way to Oatman, we saw along the road where people have stacked rocks along the sides of the road. It is a form of rock balancing and is neat to see. This is a form of art and some people are real good at it and it is beautiful.  I told Kent we needed to make a couple of them, so we pulled off the road and we gathered some various sized rocks and made two rock formations, our humble contribution to the area. The land there is nothing but rocks, so you could really get carried away doing this if you wanted to! LOL
From here we drove to Bullhead City, Arizona to the AVI Casino camp ground. It is a nice campground and we will be here for two nights while we wait for our parts to come in. We have stayed here before and like it.

     Tuesday  March 15, 2016   Today was a day for doing whatever we wanted,  no driving today. We just relaxed and enjoyed our morning coffee while I read my book and Kent was on his I Pad catching up on all the news. I did some rearranging and cleaning and Kent spent time trying to figure out which way we should go from Havasu when we get done with the shop putting in the new radio. We have friends in several places and we don't want to back track too much to see all of them.We went to a movie here at the AVI casino, it was pretty good. The movie was "London Falls Down".

This is the Mosher creation above!    ^

March 13, 2016 Lake Havasu, Arizona

     March 13, 2016  Sunday  We spent the night at the Ontario, Elks Club last night. There was a Hispanic wedding reception  held there and there were so many people;  they had the dining room decorated so beautiful with so many tables set up for the dinner. We were kind of concerned it might be noisy with all the joy and happiness that goes on with any wedding. They were very quiet and we slept right through all the people leaving. This morning the weather is a little overcast but I think it is going to be warm by noon. We left  the Elks about 11 AM  (day light Savings time) and we filled up with diesel @ $2.03 a gallon. We have been averaging 14 1/2 MPG. Our other Navion always got 15 1/2  and sometimes more. The drive wasn't very pretty, so much desert and we have driven it too many times to get excited over it. I did take some pictures of things I thought were pretty. One is "The Colorado River "  and some of the Needles (pointed rocks in the distance)"  "Old Glory"  in the setting sun!!   We arrived in Lake Havasu, AZ about 5:30 and we picked up some chicken and Jo Jo's at a restaurant we like here, we drove to the shop where they are going to work on our motor home and we spent the night there. We can't believe we have 3400 miles on our motor home already.

March 12, 2016 Ontario, California

     Today we drove from Santa Barbara to Ontario, Calif. 140 miles. It wasn't a very long drive,  but a very slow drive with a lot of traffic on the roads. It was beautiful with the ocean to look at and the huge oil rigs out in the ocean, they are huge, we saw 8 of them in one area, The waves were really  big crashing up on the shore, perfect for surfing. I love watching the surfers ride their boards out and then catch a wave and ride back in. We stopped at Hobson Beach, one of the many roadside parks they have along the ocean and highway and ate lunch and walked over to watch the waves crashing to the beach. California has so many parks along the highway for campers to be right at the ocean. We fit in real good in our new motor home, it is small enough to fit right in those smaller spaces. I told Kent we should come back here again.We stayed here several years ago when we had our beautiful 5th wheel. It was so big it took up too much room and we had trouble finding a space for it. Oregon should do some of that for people to camp at. I took a few pictures of some of the campers and the people so relaxed, kind of beach bums they looked like. LOL We started looking for a church to go to Saturday night Mass early in the day. It is hard to find one that has an English Mass, they are mostly Spanish Masses. I finally found one in San Dimas and we got there right on time. It was a  beautiful, huge church and I think there  must have been 600 people at  this Mass and they have 3 more Masses on Sunday. They have already collected $1,102,414 this year, they are really active and they had all kinds of raffles, dinners and a new car raffle. The priest was real neat and gave a good sermon, we were glad we found this one. After Mass we drove to the Ontario Elks Club where we are spending the night. There is a pizza parlor right across the road, so we walked over and got pizza to go and eat it in our RV.  Tomorrow we  are headed to Lake Havasu, AZ.

March 11, 2016 Santa Barbara, Ca.

 

March 11, 2016   Friday  Today we are taking Anna and her girlfriend out for dinner after she gets off work. We spent the day working on the blog and doing a little rearranging in some cupboards again. Kent walked to Starbucks for his frappe today, he has been doing a little walking. We are killing time waiting for Anna to finish her school work. We will be leaving here tomorrow, so Kent filled the water tanks and dumped the gray and black water. We will be all ready to hit the road when we get up in the morning. We picked up Anna and her friend Savannah at 7:00 PM; We had Anna choose where they wanted to go for dinner and Anna chose the restaurant where she works. She just started working there not to long ago and has never ate there. Kent ordered fish and chips and I chose a pasta dish with all kinds of seafood in and a wonderful red spicy sauce and a lot of cheese. I ate every bite, it was so good, I have never had a dish like that before and it couldn't be any better. Anna had the same as me and Savannah had a nacho plate that was enormous, She and Anna shared their two dinners and had enough left oner for one or two more to eat. There was a guitar player singing and playing his music and a good time was had by all. Anna still had some work to do on her essay that had to be turned in by 11:30 PM, and dinner lasted till 9:30, so we took the girls home to finish it. We came home and watched a little TV and went to bed. Back on the road tomorrow.  I posted a picture of the "Bird Of Paradise" flower that you see growing all over this area. This isn't a very good one, but I really like them, up close they really look like a bird.

March 10, 2016 Santa Barbara, California

     Thursday March 10,2016   We drove 99 miles from San Louis Obispo Elks Club to Santa Barbara's Elks Club. We had one stop and I am sure by now everyone knows where we stopped. Yup! You are right, Starbucks for Kent to get his daily frappe! After we got set up, I worked on the blog and Kent planned our travels for tomorrow. We went to the laundermat and did our laundry while we waited for Anna. We are here in Santa Barbara visiting our granddaughter Anna who goes to college here. She is working today, so we will take her out for ice cream when she gets off. Anna got out of class early today and she called us to let us know. We were already at the college when she called, we followed her to her apartment and met her room mates and we left for the ice cream parlor. We also invited her friend Joe Mack to join us. Parking here in this college town is almost impossible. I can see why the students are seen walking and why Anna doesn't have her car here, there is no place to park it at her apartment. We drove them to the ice cream store in the motor home. They were positive we wouldn't  be able to find a place to park it while we got our ice cream. They were very amazed when Grandpa Kent found a parking spot and parked the motor home right close to the store. The ice cream was the very best I have ever ate. I had a strawberry/waffle cone and it was fantastic. Kent and Joemack had ice cream banana splits and they were huge and very good too. Anna had a cone with two different flavors. The night air was darn chilly tonight to be sitting outside eating ice cream. The weather here hasn't been very warm, it rained pretty hard most of the day. I am ready for some California sun shine. We took them back to their apartments and we went back to the Elks Club where we are staying. Anna has an essay for her biology class to finish and turn in, so we will take her out for dinner tomorrow night. She has a girlfriend from Camas, Wa, coming to see her tomorrow, so we will all go out for dinner and then we will say our goodbyes and give them some time together.

March 7, 8, & 9, 2016 Corning, California

     Monday  March 7, 2016   We drove 372 miles today, stopping at the Rolling Hills Casino for dinner and to spend the night. After we ate, we played the slotThe weather is chilly and we are wearing jeans and warm tops. We love  the bed in our new motor home, it is so nice to slide it out and go to bed early while Kent watches Cops on TV.   It is nice in the morning to get up and move around without having to make the bed up right away to get around. I am still moving things around trying to find the best way to arrange the drawers. We stopped and bought a Keurig coffee pot as ours finally quit working dependable.  After we ate we each had $5 free play on our cards, so we each picked a slot machine to spend it on. Kent loves the slot machine "Shadow Panther". We both sat down and we played it for a while, winning some and then losing it by me stopping the machine whined something good was coming up. ( Kimmy showed me how to do it)  Kent told me it was my turn and it was our last spin,  I saw a lot of black panthers, I hit stop and the screen was all Black panthers! We were so excited as we never get a big win of any size, because only play 30 cents most of the time. We played it for another half hour and we cashed it in at $85.00.  We didn't give it back!
    Tuesday  March 8 ,2016  We slept until 10 AM this morning,  we were really tired. We watched TV late last night after we got home.  We unpacked our coffee pot and decided we didn't like how big it was, so we repacked it and we returned it today for a Remington pot that uses the coffee cups that the Keurig uses. It has a steam force spinner that sprays the water in the cup instead of  the water running straight through a single hole and it covers the grounds better.  We drove to the Santa Clara Elks Club where we spent the night. I fixed Kent his favorite meal, "Hamburger Gravy over mashed Potatoes and delicious salad. We drove 196 miles today.  Rain again
     Wednesday March 9, 2016    We were ready for a break from driving,  so we pulled off on an overpass road where there was a large area to stop. There was a gate going into the Ft. Roberts National Guard Property. There was a sign on the gate of the property with a phone number to call for someone to open the gate when you wanted to come out of that pasture. We parked up there and we put the TV antenna up and we were watching our show when a big National Guard truck out of know where pulled up to the gate. We never dreamt anyone would be using that gate we were parked in front of.  So Kent told them we would be gone as soon as we could get our antenna down. They said no rush, they had to call for the gate to be opened.  Our show was about over anyway , so back on the road we went.  LOL

March 2 3, 4, 5, & 6, 2016 Florence Oregon

     March 2, 2016   Wednesday   We were so tired when we got finished at the dealership,  it was almost dark when we arrived at the casino where we will spend the night and a few more days getting the rest of our motorhome in order.  The food is very good in the lounge at the casino and they have lots of sports on TV to watch and entertainment. Tonight they had karaoke and there was a contest for the best singer. One of the contestants sat at the bar beside us and we said we would vote for him. While we were waiting for the voting to be over, we were surprised by my daughter Kim and Mike showing up at the casino. They have Thursdays off work and they drove down for the night and saw our new rig in the parking lot and came in and surprised us. We had fun playing the slots together and visiting.
     March 3  Thursday   Kim and Mike treated us too breakfast this morning,  and the four of us played a machine together and didn't win anything, but had fun laughing and talking. Kim entered the slot tournament that I played in yesterday and won 2nd place and she won 3rd place. I got $20  and she got $15 in slot play.  The weather is getting a little better, but still pretty cold. They have to be at work on Friday, so they left in the afternoon. We stayed and played one of the machines Mike and Kim play a lot and we won $65. We put it in our pocket and we walked back to our motor home and  watched TV the rest of the night.
     March 4 Friday  We drove back to the dealership and they put a new board in the gas water heater and we bought a new TV antenna as transferring the old one to the new motor home did something to it. Now we should be ready to have fun.March 5th Mass at St. Marys in Florence
     March 6 Sunday   We spent the night at the Maddens house; Mathew was the Chef for dinner and he did a great job fixing tenderloin steaks,sausages, baked potatoes and salad. Kim had just baked some banana muffins and they were good too.This was the best meal and I was sure proud of the job Matt did cooking it.  Their baby chicks have grown so much since we were here a week ago, one of them has learned how to perch on the rim of the tub they keep them in it with an electric heater and food and water.  There are 4 of them and they are real different with their color of feathers.

February 28 & 29, March 1st , 2016 Junction City, Oregon

      Sunday Feb. 28     We drove to Eugene where we parked our motor home on their driveway and we spent the night with Kim, Mike  and Mathew. We ate dinner with them and we spent the evening visiting with them. The guys watched a movie and visited and  us girls spent our evening  drinking tea with Granny Minnie's China that Aunt Jan gave to Kimmy and catching up with each others families. We are going to Junction City in the morning to look at a motor home we have been looking at for some time and see if they are ready to deal with Kent by now. We bought our Navian from them 3 years ago and now we like the new model that has a bed in the back.
     Monday February 29th   We drove to Guarantee in Junction City and we looked at the motor home, they had it all washed and polished up and it looked beautiful!  While Kent made the deal, I sat with Pepsi in our rig waiting to start moving a trailer full of stuff. I don't know why we have so much stuff, it is going to be a real job moving it all, especially with it pouring down rain. They had to move the tv antenna from our rig to the new one. When they got through with that, I started moving all the dishes, pots and pans. Kent was moving all the tools and things in the outside compartments. The cupboards in the new motor home were different in size and shape and I had a terrible time trying to fit things in. We didn't get finished , so we spent the night in the new trailer and we finished up moving everything the next morning. We were both so tired from the long drive from Lake Havasu, Az. and the cold, wet rain didn't help any.
Tuesday  March 1st.   We drove to Salem to leave some of the stuff we don't want, and to pick up the extra set of keys for the motor home we traded in on the new one. We called the kids and told them we were in town for one night and we were leaving in the morning. Tress, Bodie and Blaize, Pam and Jeff,  Lisa and Ray all showed up and looked the motor home over and we visited until 10:00, said our goodbyes and off to bed we went to bed. We left Salem and back to Junction City we went to have them work on a few things and to give them the keys.
Wednesday March 2nd      We drove to Florence, to spend a few days getting everything organized and to just relax. The TV still didn't work and the propane water heater didn't work, so back to Guarantee to get them fixed. So much for relaxing, we spent 6 hours there while they put on a new TV antenna and fixed the propane water heater. Back to Florence we went and it was still pouring down buckets of rain. I love the Oregon rain, but not when we have all these things to get done so we can head South for the winter.