Day 1, Dec 27
Brrr....cold start
Today was to be a short travel day. Left at 9:15 and the plan was to stop in Woodburn, Or., about 5 hours from home. Traffic was light. The roads were dry and we were making really good time. Decided to drive all the way to 7 Feathers RV Park in Canyonville, Or. Glad we called ahead because we got there right at the edge of dark and the park was packed. We were lucky to get in.
Today was to be a short travel day. Left at 9:15 and the plan was to stop in Woodburn, Or., about 5 hours from home. Traffic was light. The roads were dry and we were making really good time. Decided to drive all the way to 7 Feathers RV Park in Canyonville, Or. Glad we called ahead because we got there right at the edge of dark and the park was packed. We were lucky to get in.
Day 2, Dec 28
An uneventful drive over Siskiyou Pass found the road dry
and no snow in sight. Yahoo! We kind of messed up our schedule by
bypassing Woodburn, plus we left a day earlier than originally planned. Now we were a one day drive from Lodi, where
we had had 2 nights booked, but not until 12/30. With no reservations anywhere in between, we
called Flag City in Lodi to see if we could come in 2 days early. They offered a space that was less than
desirable, so we continued checking.
After finding 3 other parks full, we contacted Rolling Hills RV Resort
at the casino in Corning. Got in, no
problem. We’ve stayed here before and
it’s a pleasant park, nothing fancy, but sizable spaces with full hookups,
adjacent golf course and casino. First priority was to get our horribly dirty car washed. Finding no car washes close by, we waited over an hour in line at
Blue Beacon Truck Wash with all the long haul truckers. The wash is done by 6-8 guys with high pressure
washers and brushes. Gypsy will visit
this place on departure day. Dinner at
Marco’s Pizza. This was our 2nd
visit to Marco’s. Corning isn’t exactly
a “destination” and most of the food places are fast food or you fight the smoke at
the casino. Marco’s has really good
pizza so we keep going there. Dave says
Yelp shows the #1 restaurant in Corning as A&W. What does that tell you?
Day 3, Dec 29
Spent the day exploring the Chico area. We walked around the grounds at Bidwell Mansion State Park. The mansion and visitor's center were closed, so we peaked in windows and wandered around the perimeter of the park. It's a shame the mansion wasn't open for tours because it is a lovely 3-story, 26 room Victorian Mansion that was the home of pioneer family, John and Annie Bidwell. Bidwell purchased 30,000 acres and created and named the town of Chico. Adjacent to the state park was the campus of Cal State University at Chico. The campus was closed for holiday break, so we easily wandered around the campus without crowds. It was a small, intimate feeling campus with a slow meandering creek that divided the campus and multiple small wood foot bridges connecting the two sides of the creek.
Stopped in downtown Chico for a beer. Pretty nice sun.
Day 4, December 30
Moving day .. but not before Gypsy got a bath at Blue Beacon. Not near the line on a Saturday morning as we experienced before. All our rigs were nice and shiny clean, so headed south.
Arrived Lodi, Flag City RV Park mid-afternoon. Got all set up, getting ready for an evening BBQ. Dave's looking in the bay for the BBQ and all he sees is the propane fire pit (the one he was leaving at home because it takes up too much room). Guess who took the BBQ out and put it in the garage and left the fire pit in the coach? After a few choice words and laughs, we decided we'd have to use the George Foreman for our BBQ. Looks like we'll be doing some shopping.
Day 5, Dec 31
New Year's Day Eve. and Dave wanted to try out his golf swing. A pinched nerve in my back wasn't giving me much sleep, so decided I'd just walk along. We played a 9-hole, Par-3 Stockton city course. Dave did really good, considering he hasn't been doing much more than pitching, chipping and putting. The complex also includes a foot golf course (photo).
After golf we went wine tasting. Our first stop was at Lucas Winery, a small family owned operation. We were served wine and given a personal tour of the vineyard and barrel room by the owner's daughter. This is a small production winery producing organically farmed, hand harvested, unblended pure varietal wines. Because it's small production, the wine prices were expensive and it's the first winery I've been to that didn't credit the wine tasting fee toward the purchase of wine (ouch!). Many of the wineries were closed due to New Years eve. Dave had heard about Berghold Winery so decided to see if they were open. What a fantastic place! A family owned vineyard was established in 1986 to sell grapes to other wineries. In 1999, the Berghold's decided to bottle and sell their own wines..all being estate vintages of Syrah, Viognier, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Zinfandel from their 85 acres of grapes. The building that housed the tasting room was warehouse size and full of antiques, including 3 huge hand-carved bars. We were fortunate to meet the owner, Kay Berghold while we were at the winery (wish I'd thought to take her picture because she was just a darling little lady in antique clothes). She told us that she and her husband are art collectors and for two decades had purchased and stored away antiques from the American Victorian period (1860-1900). When they built the tasting room, it was designed around all of their collected antique pieces and each one was considered in the design. The bonus for us was that all the Christmas decorations were still displayed!! They also had a custom made music machine(s) that Kay turned on for us, that played Christmas tunes (assume it is programmed for different tunes at different times of the year). All of the instruments actually played just as if a human was playing and were somehow wired together to create an orchestra. Kay told us that someone comes to work on the orchestra frequently..probably the same person that created it. We spent a great amount of time with one glass of wine and camera in hand, wandering through the antiques. Only after we left did I discover that Kay Berghold made all of the antique Santas in their collection. Darn!
Day 6, Jan 1
Travelling today to Buellton (Solvang) to visit my sister, Carol. Thought today would be a good light traffic travel day...not. Everyone must have been heading home after the holidays because the traffic was very heavy. Cars passed us loaded to the gills...stuffed packed up to and obscuring the back windows. Every rest stop was packed. Not quite as relaxing a trip as we'd planned. Pulled into Flying Flags RV Park in Buellton late in the afternoon. The place was full of screaming kids and smoking campfires!! What's with that? Shouldn't they be heading to school tomorrow?
Day 7, Jan 2
Met Carol for lunch at Firestone Walker Brewery in Buellton and then headed up to Fess Parker Winery. Dave confessed that Fess Parker was his childhood hero (for those too young to remember...Fess Parker was Davey Crockett on TV in the mid '50s). The gift shop even offered coonskin cap bottle toppers. We didn't buy one, but they were cute. We did buy a bottle of wine and went out on the covered patio to visit and enjoy the nice warm afternoon. The grounds at the winery were large and very nicely landscaped. A nice wedding venue.
Day 8, Jan 3
Today we needed to do a Walmart run in Santa Maria, so
planned to meet Carol for drunch in Los Alamos (1/2 way between Buellton and
Santa Maria). We decided to take the
scenic route along through the vineyards again and stopped at Firestone Winery. This was once owned by the very wealthy Firestone family (as in tires). In 2007, Firestone was purchased by the Bill Foley family of wineries. The tasting room had a wonderful museum with photographs of Harvey Firestone (Firestone Tire and Rubber Co) and all of the famous people he socialized with (Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Herbert Hoover, John Burroughs, Warren Harding). Photos also featured son Leonard (former United States Ambassador to Belgium), the winery's originator, also alongside famous dignitaries and celebrities. These folks were well known in high society! The experimental vineyards planted in the 1970s were some of the first in Santa Barbara County and the intent was to supply grapes to the North Coast wineries. Soon thereafter their own winery was born and became the first estate winery in Santa Barbara County. Very nice wines.
At least we were able to drive it. I immediately got on the phone to our insurance company. They told us they'd be happy to handle it for us, but it's often faster to work directly with the trucking company. I tried that. I got nothing but phone trees, disconnects and never a person. By the time we got to Indio, I called our insurance company back and told them to handle it. We had 3 calls back from them in a matter of an hour. We explained what happened, the damage we were aware of (including the broken generator exhaust pipe that we didn't know was broken until we parked) and the documentation we'd done. We sent them photos and they said they'd have an estimator come to our site while we were in Indio (wow...we were impressed with Progressive). We explained that we were on the road, with a fairly tight schedule and needed repairs done as quickly as possible. They told us to get fixed what we could get fixed to get us back the road. With the help of duck tape on the doors, the only thing we really needed repaired to drive the coach was the exhaust pipe. This was definitely a 2 beer kind of day!
Day 11, Jan 6
Day 12, Jan 7
Today we toured a gorgeous estate called Sunnylands. Sunnylands was the 200-acre winter retreat of wealthy businessman, politician and philanthropist Walter Annenberg and his wife Leonore. The property included the main house, guest quarters, 3 guest cottages, a private 9-hole golf course, and 13 man-made lakes. Added to the grounds in 2009 was 15 acres and a 17,000 sq. ft. visitors center. 9 acres of desert gardens surround the center and are open for the public to view, free of charge. The gardens are planted with more than 70,000 arid-resistant plants and trees, designed by inspiration from the Annenberg's collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. A tram tour was available for purchase to tour the residence grounds, but we didn't take it. We watched a video about the home that included interviews by dignitaries and celebrities who had stayed at the "Camp David of the West". The Annenberg's frequently hosted both political leaders and famous entertainers at Sunnylands. Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Clinton, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Obama all visited Sunnylands (some multiple times), many holding cabinet or summit meetings during their visits. The walls of the visitor's center contained hundreds of pictures of the Annenberg's with world political leaders and famous entertainers. Waking along the paths at the visitor's center was just beautiful. An absolutely gorgeous place!
When we got to White Sands
National Monument, we toured the visitor’s center, watched a movie and picked
up a sandwich to take out into the dunes for a picnic (inside the car picnic
because, though sunny, the wind was howling and the temp was in the 40s). This area was absolutely spectacular. It was like driving through a snowy mountain
pass….only it was the world’s largest gypsum dunefields. We walked out onto the dunes and it was not
like walking on beach dunes.
This was
firmer and extremely packed fine powder.
There were trails through the dunes, but it seemed pretty risky to
us. Looked like it would be very easy to
lose your way with the drifting sand(?).
We didn’t wander any farther than the sight of the car. Way cool place!! Highly recommended. Stopped on our way home at High Desert Brewing Company for a
light dinner…and beer, of course. The
brewery was housed in an old building covered in vines and hidden by
trees. We drove by it a couple times
wondering if we’d found the right place and should we go elsewhere. We decided to take a chance, and it was a
good one. Kinda funky, but good food and
beer. Another cold night in the low 20s.
Departure today was to Fort Stockton RV Park in Fort
Stockton, TX. After a nerve-wracking
drive through construction in El Paso, we headed out for a pretty drive through
the desert and mountains of southern New Mexico. Fort Stockton is a berg in the middle of oil
production country. Not much around it,
but the oil companies were keeping the place alive. The RV park was quite nice, with a large number of construction workers living there.
Pickup truck after pickup truck would come in/out the driveway at
commute hours. The park even had a small
café that was open for breakfast and dinner.
When I checked in, the fellow at the counter said I shouldn’t have to
cook or do dishes while staying at their park, so we went to the café for
dinner. They didn’t serve alcohol, but
you could bring your own (obviously this place isn’t in Washington State). There was a limited menu, but everything
sounded good. We each ordered their
grilled chicken dinner. Not accustomed
to being given a choice, we both stumbled and stammered when asked if we wanted
white or brown gravy on our potatoes.
The food was really good and it even came with a small portion of ice
cream with chocolate sauce for dessert.
Such a deal. Kept the slides in
again as the temps were warming, but still about 30 at night.
The weather was cloudy, but we decided to spend the day
visiting the missions in San Antonio.
Our first stop was Mission San Jose, a historic Catholic mission founded
in 1720. We took a guided walk with a
docent, but it started raining as soon as we stepped outside the visitor’s
center. Much of the structure was
original, but some reconstructed to give visitors a sense of how the compound
looked and functioned during it’s time.
Good tour, but not so good for pictures.
We took a lunch break and then headed to Mission Concepcion, built in
1731. Of the 5 missions, Concepcion is
the best preserved of the Texas missions. Like Mission San Jose, the church is still an active Catholic church
with Sunday services. Still raining, we
decided to continue our sightseeing on Saturday or Sunday with sunnier
weather. Used the balance of the day to
run errands.
Day 25, Jan 20
The Alamo!! Today’s
itinerary took us downtown to visit the Alamo and Riverwalk. We got there just in time to sign up for the
next docent-led tour. He was an
excellent speaker and very knowledgeable about Texas history and, in
particular, the Alamo. The tour was
about an hour and ended in the mission (the building termed the Alamo). We learned about the people who settled the
area, the wars between countries wanting to occupy the Texas territory, and the
battle and people lost at the Alamo. The
weather was overcast and cool, but sun was expected. After the tour, we wandered down the
Riverwalk to find a restaurant for lunch.
The San Antonio River Walk (Paseo del Rio) is a city park
and network of waterways along the banks of the San Antonio River, one story
beneath the streets of San Antonio. A
disastrous flood along the San Antonio River in 1921 spurred the need for a
means of flood control of the river.
Bypass channels and flood gates were designed to slow the flow of the
river. Today, Riverwalk is lined by
bars, shops and restaurants, nature, public artwork, and five historic missions
and stretches 15 miles throughout the city. There were lots of restaurants to choose from. We finally wandered into a Mex
restaurant. Both lunches were excellent,
but way too hot for me.
We continued
down Riverwalk then across a few blocks to San Fernando Cathedral on the main
square. San Fernando Cathedral is on the
National Register of Historic Places and is one of the oldest cathedrals in the
United States. Located in the entry of
the cathedral is a marble sarcophagus allegedly holding the remains of the
Alamo defenders. We worked our way back
to the Riverwalk and completed our loop back to the Alamo. The sun was now out and better for pictures,
but the crowds were larger too. We were
glad we’d done our tour earlier in the day.
Arrived Lodi, Flag City RV Park mid-afternoon. Got all set up, getting ready for an evening BBQ. Dave's looking in the bay for the BBQ and all he sees is the propane fire pit (the one he was leaving at home because it takes up too much room). Guess who took the BBQ out and put it in the garage and left the fire pit in the coach? After a few choice words and laughs, we decided we'd have to use the George Foreman for our BBQ. Looks like we'll be doing some shopping.Day 5, Dec 31
 |
| I know he can make this one. |
After golf we went wine tasting. Our first stop was at Lucas Winery, a small family owned operation. We were served wine and given a personal tour of the vineyard and barrel room by the owner's daughter. This is a small production winery producing organically farmed, hand harvested, unblended pure varietal wines. Because it's small production, the wine prices were expensive and it's the first winery I've been to that didn't credit the wine tasting fee toward the purchase of wine (ouch!). Many of the wineries were closed due to New Years eve. Dave had heard about Berghold Winery so decided to see if they were open. What a fantastic place! A family owned vineyard was established in 1986 to sell grapes to other wineries. In 1999, the Berghold's decided to bottle and sell their own wines..all being estate vintages of Syrah, Viognier, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Zinfandel from their 85 acres of grapes. The building that housed the tasting room was warehouse size and full of antiques, including 3 huge hand-carved bars. We were fortunate to meet the owner, Kay Berghold while we were at the winery (wish I'd thought to take her picture because she was just a darling little lady in antique clothes). She told us that she and her husband are art collectors and for two decades had purchased and stored away antiques from the American Victorian period (1860-1900). When they built the tasting room, it was designed around all of their collected antique pieces and each one was considered in the design. The bonus for us was that all the Christmas decorations were still displayed!! They also had a custom made music machine(s) that Kay turned on for us, that played Christmas tunes (assume it is programmed for different tunes at different times of the year). All of the instruments actually played just as if a human was playing and were somehow wired together to create an orchestra. Kay told us that someone comes to work on the orchestra frequently..probably the same person that created it. We spent a great amount of time with one glass of wine and camera in hand, wandering through the antiques. Only after we left did I discover that Kay Berghold made all of the antique Santas in their collection. Darn!
 |
| Kay Berghold with Santa 2012 |
Day 6, Jan 1
Travelling today to Buellton (Solvang) to visit my sister, Carol. Thought today would be a good light traffic travel day...not. Everyone must have been heading home after the holidays because the traffic was very heavy. Cars passed us loaded to the gills...stuffed packed up to and obscuring the back windows. Every rest stop was packed. Not quite as relaxing a trip as we'd planned. Pulled into Flying Flags RV Park in Buellton late in the afternoon. The place was full of screaming kids and smoking campfires!! What's with that? Shouldn't they be heading to school tomorrow?
Day 7, Jan 2
Met Carol for lunch at Firestone Walker Brewery in Buellton and then headed up to Fess Parker Winery. Dave confessed that Fess Parker was his childhood hero (for those too young to remember...Fess Parker was Davey Crockett on TV in the mid '50s). The gift shop even offered coonskin cap bottle toppers. We didn't buy one, but they were cute. We did buy a bottle of wine and went out on the covered patio to visit and enjoy the nice warm afternoon. The grounds at the winery were large and very nicely landscaped. A nice wedding venue.
Day 8, Jan 3
Dave was itching to play golf, so he went to Zaca Creek, a 9
hole Par-3 course just across the road from the RV Park. He said when he checked in, the lady said
“Welcome to my golf course”. I was
really tired, so stayed behind to get some rest. In the afternoon, we went into Solvang for
lunch and walked around town, stopping at one of the fabled bakeries for some
breakfast pastries. Back at the RV Park, those kids were still there! My sister said that many of the schools, especially in the agricultural areas, are closed for close to month at Christmas because so many of the families go back to Mexico. Ah hah!
Day 9, Jan 4
Today we needed to do a Walmart run in Santa Maria, so
planned to meet Carol for drunch in Los Alamos (1/2 way between Buellton and
Santa Maria). We decided to take the
scenic route along through the vineyards again and stopped at Firestone Winery. This was once owned by the very wealthy Firestone family (as in tires). In 2007, Firestone was purchased by the Bill Foley family of wineries. The tasting room had a wonderful museum with photographs of Harvey Firestone (Firestone Tire and Rubber Co) and all of the famous people he socialized with (Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Herbert Hoover, John Burroughs, Warren Harding). Photos also featured son Leonard (former United States Ambassador to Belgium), the winery's originator, also alongside famous dignitaries and celebrities. These folks were well known in high society! The experimental vineyards planted in the 1970s were some of the first in Santa Barbara County and the intent was to supply grapes to the North Coast wineries. Soon thereafter their own winery was born and became the first estate winery in Santa Barbara County. Very nice wines.
Had a good late lunch with Carol at a fun place called Bell Street Farm in Los Alamos. The food was fabulous and the owner was just a crack-up. He told Dave that the sandwich he ordered was "life-changing", but he wasn't sure Dave was ready for that yet.
 |
| Jamie Gluck, owner |
Day 10, Jan 5
Leaving Buellton enroute to Palm Springs (Indio), our route took us south on 101 through Ventura and Santa Barbara. Too much fog to see very far off the highway. Thought we'd be able to see the charred hillsides, but the only sign of fire we were able to see was around Mussel Shoals where the fire burned right down to 101. Those firefighters must have worked miracles to save the houses in that area. Rather than travel through downtown LA, we decided to take Hwy 23 to Simi Valley from Thousand Oaks and then catch 210 all the way into Palm Springs. Little did we know that this would not be a good route for us. We were right about Pasadena on 210, travelling in the slow lane as we usually do, when a construction truck passing us on our left blew a tire. Scared the xxxx out of us!!! We thought we'd run into something. Rubber flew up over the windshield. We heard debris hitting our side. We moved to the shoulder as soon as we could. The truck pulled off ahead of us a few yards. The shoulder was narrow and we pulled off as far as we could, but the traffic was moving to fast and close to us to get a look at the side of the coach. Dave went up and talked to the truck driver. She was pretty shook up and on the phone to her dispatcher. She said a report would be filed with the CHP and we might hear from them. He got all the vitals from the truck and driver and took a picture of the blown tire. We pulled back out onto the freeway and headed for the nearest exit so we could get a good look at the damage. When we did stop, the damage wasn't as bad as it could have been. We had tire tracks all down the side of the coach. The back 2 bay doors were damaged...one to the point that we had to tape it shut with Duck Tape. We took photos.
At least we were able to drive it. I immediately got on the phone to our insurance company. They told us they'd be happy to handle it for us, but it's often faster to work directly with the trucking company. I tried that. I got nothing but phone trees, disconnects and never a person. By the time we got to Indio, I called our insurance company back and told them to handle it. We had 3 calls back from them in a matter of an hour. We explained what happened, the damage we were aware of (including the broken generator exhaust pipe that we didn't know was broken until we parked) and the documentation we'd done. We sent them photos and they said they'd have an estimator come to our site while we were in Indio (wow...we were impressed with Progressive). We explained that we were on the road, with a fairly tight schedule and needed repairs done as quickly as possible. They told us to get fixed what we could get fixed to get us back the road. With the help of duck tape on the doors, the only thing we really needed repaired to drive the coach was the exhaust pipe. This was definitely a 2 beer kind of day!
Day 11, Jan 6
Because it was Saturday, we couldn't find any repair centers open until Monday. We talked over scenarios if we would have to stay longer in Palm Springs...if we would need to have repairs done in Phoenix or Tucson and would have to stay there for a week +. None of the options sounded good to us. It would totally foul up our travel schedule to Florida as we had planned it. We considered going directly back to Red Bay, AL (Tiffin headquarters) for repairs and try to alter all of the balance of our itinerary. That sounded like the best option only because they'd have all the right parts, pieces, paint, and experienced technicians. Decided not to dwell on it any more because we couldn't make any decisions until we found someone local to fix the exhaust pipe and we talked to the insurance estimator. Drowned our sorrows with lunch at the adjacent Del Webb Shadow Hills. Shopping and errands followed. In the evening, Dave played golf at a Par-3 course that was lit for night golf. Unusual, and big fun.
Day 12, Jan 7
Today we toured a gorgeous estate called Sunnylands. Sunnylands was the 200-acre winter retreat of wealthy businessman, politician and philanthropist Walter Annenberg and his wife Leonore. The property included the main house, guest quarters, 3 guest cottages, a private 9-hole golf course, and 13 man-made lakes. Added to the grounds in 2009 was 15 acres and a 17,000 sq. ft. visitors center. 9 acres of desert gardens surround the center and are open for the public to view, free of charge. The gardens are planted with more than 70,000 arid-resistant plants and trees, designed by inspiration from the Annenberg's collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. A tram tour was available for purchase to tour the residence grounds, but we didn't take it. We watched a video about the home that included interviews by dignitaries and celebrities who had stayed at the "Camp David of the West". The Annenberg's frequently hosted both political leaders and famous entertainers at Sunnylands. Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Clinton, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Obama all visited Sunnylands (some multiple times), many holding cabinet or summit meetings during their visits. The walls of the visitor's center contained hundreds of pictures of the Annenberg's with world political leaders and famous entertainers. Waking along the paths at the visitor's center was just beautiful. An absolutely gorgeous place!
Day 13, Jan 8
This morning we got ahold of a mobile RV repair company that said they would come by and take a look at our exhaust pipe. Yeah! While we waited for them to come by, we went for a long walk across the road at Del Webb's Shadow Hills. It was a very nice development with a golf course winding through the center, so many of the houses faced the course. Late in the afternoon, All RV Service came by and took the exhaust pipe off. They said they were going to have a shop make a new one and they'd probably be able to have it reinstalled Wednesday. Sure hope so because the plan was to leave for Tucson on Friday.
Day 14, Jan 9
This morning was devoted to errands. Did I mention that we had this brilliant idea to take the electric blanket off our bed at home and install it in the RV for the cold days we anticipated? Well we never got to use it. Somehow we fried it after we put it on the bed...never to work again. An electric blanket is really heavy, so pitched the controls and took the balance to Goodwill. After I got home from shopping, Dave went to the driving range. Late afternoon, we met Dave's Uncle Loyd and Aunt Kay for happy hour at a Mexican restaurant in Palm Desert. What a fun time telling family stories and getting caught up on the latest news.
Day 15, Jan 10
Drove 2 hours southwest to Lake Elsinore to meet Dave’s
brother Rick for breakfast before going to visit their mother. When we got to her house, we were informed by
their sister that the aid car was coming.
She is 90, on oxygen, fighting a cold, having trouble breathing, so the
aid car took her to the hospital. When
we got to the hospital, everyone was wearing masks (scary). We sat on the peripheral of the waiting room,
trying to stay as far away from all the coughing and wheezing as we could. Looked like a bad flu in this area. We worried that if we weren’t sick when we
got there, we would be when we left.
After what seemed like an hour, they got her in a room and we were
finally allowed to go see her. She’s
quite frail and it’s really hard to see her on a gurney and hooked up to
machines. We’d made plans to stop and
visit Dave’s brother’s RV condo site on our way back to Palm Springs, so left
the hospital as Dave’s sister was coming right behind us. We found out later that they gave her meds
and sent her home.
Back at the coach, no exhaust pipe yet, but signs they'd been there.
Day 16, Jan 11
Today was the visit from the insurance claims adjuster. He took more photos and found some other
possible damage that we hadn’t seen.
Damage estimate to follow. It was a nice warm sunny afternoon, so went golfing at Del
Web’s Shadow Hills North Course. It was
a 18-hole, Par 3 course. Big fun, but
neither one of us could finish. My back
gave out at 13 holes and Dave’s shoulder gave out at 15 holes (geez…getting old
is the pits). When we got back to the
coach we were proud owners of a new exhaust pipe (nothing like cutting it down
to the wire). Departure for Tucson
Friday.
Day 17, Jan 12
The drive from Palm Springs to Tucson is one we’ve done a number
of times, so nothing very exciting.
Pulled into Catalina State Park in Oro Valley, late afternoon. What a great place. Nice private site. Beautiful scenery.
Day 18, Jan 13
No Wi-Fi at the park and we still had travel/repair
arrangements to make, so headed to McDonalds for breakfast and internet. We decided to alter our travel plans by
reducing our stay at Catalina State Park and KOA in Las Cruces by one day each
and adding those 2 days to our stay in San Antonio. Called all RV parks involved and had no
problem making the changes. Because we
still hadn’t heard back from the RV repair shop in Red Bay, we made the
decision to just Duck Tape the damaged doors shut and hit Red Bay on our
westbound journey. Won’t look great, but
we won’t need to change our itinerary.
My girlfriend Linda and her husband Jerry just moved to
Phoenix in December, so we’d made plans to meet them for lunch halfway between
Phoenix and Tucson. The restaurant
wasn’t busy and they let us extend our lunch for over two hours to visit. Great time (darn..forgot to take pictures).
Day 19, Jan 14
Met our friends Jim and Kathy Parks for an early afternoon
movie at the shopping plaza across from our park. Saw “The Post” with Tom Hanks and Meryl
Streep. Excellent movie!! Couldn’t believe senior rates were only $6.90
each. John and Jamie Calhoun joined us at the Parks' for dinner, so we had a great visit and meal with our former neighbors at
Trilogy.
Day 20, Jan 15
Today’s travel was all new territory. The Arctic air from the north had swept into
the south and temperatures were in the teens to twenties in many of the areas
we were heading. We were a little
concerned about heading south into New Mexico and Texas and hoped the temps
would rise some. Our destination today
was the KOA in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Nice park...far enough off the interstate and rail lines to not be too
noisy. The only negative was the
nighttime temperature and heavy wind.
Once we got setup, we headed to Walmart to see if we could find a small
low watt heater to put in our wet bay at night.
Luckily, we found one that fit the bill and it worked perfectly. We left all the slides pulled in to make it
easier to heat inside as well. The night
temperature was down into the mid 20s and nothing froze.
Day 21, Jan 16
After touring downtown Las Cruces and finding a Mexican
bakery (Dave’s request), we headed out to White Sands National Monument east of
town about an hour. The drive took us
through the Army’s White Sands Missile Range, the largest military installation
in the United States (3,200 miles). Test
missiles are launched here twice a week and the road through the installation
is closed for 1-2 hours without notice.
Luckily for us it wasn’t one of those days. There was a missile museum, but we didn’t
stop.
When we got to White Sands
National Monument, we toured the visitor’s center, watched a movie and picked
up a sandwich to take out into the dunes for a picnic (inside the car picnic
because, though sunny, the wind was howling and the temp was in the 40s). This area was absolutely spectacular. It was like driving through a snowy mountain
pass….only it was the world’s largest gypsum dunefields. We walked out onto the dunes and it was not
like walking on beach dunes.
Day 22, Jan 17
Departure today was to Fort Stockton RV Park in Fort
Stockton, TX. After a nerve-wracking
drive through construction in El Paso, we headed out for a pretty drive through
the desert and mountains of southern New Mexico. Fort Stockton is a berg in the middle of oil
production country. Not much around it,
but the oil companies were keeping the place alive. The RV park was quite nice, with a large number of construction workers living there.
Pickup truck after pickup truck would come in/out the driveway at
commute hours. The park even had a small
café that was open for breakfast and dinner.
When I checked in, the fellow at the counter said I shouldn’t have to
cook or do dishes while staying at their park, so we went to the café for
dinner. They didn’t serve alcohol, but
you could bring your own (obviously this place isn’t in Washington State). There was a limited menu, but everything
sounded good. We each ordered their
grilled chicken dinner. Not accustomed
to being given a choice, we both stumbled and stammered when asked if we wanted
white or brown gravy on our potatoes.
The food was really good and it even came with a small portion of ice
cream with chocolate sauce for dessert.
Such a deal. Kept the slides in
again as the temps were warming, but still about 30 at night.
Day 23, Jan 18
Long day today enroute to the KOA in San Antonio. We drove through miles and miles and miles of
nothing. Not a particularly exciting
drive, but different scenery. One
curious thing we kept noticing was road markers at the exits that would say FM
2005 or RM 1002. I looked it up: In the United States, a farm-to-market road
or ranch-to-market road is a state road or county road that connects rural or
agricultural area to the market towns.
Ah hah! Can’t say as we’d ever
seen these before. As we got closer to
San Antonio, there was more water, so more agriculture and ranching and things
greened up. The KOA was on the east side
of town, so we had a little crazy driving through the interchanges through
downtown. San Antonio, like many large
towns had multiple beltlines around the city, as well as I-10 right through the
center. The KOA was in an industrial
area of town just off I-10. Huge
park! Large spaces! Very nice!
The temperatures had warmed up and we were finally able to put out all
our slides, retire the bay heater to storage and let the solar warm up the
coach. It still wasn’t shorts weather,
but not bad: high mid 40s, low mid 30s.
Day 24, Jan 19
 |
| Mission San Jose |
We took a lunch break and then headed to Mission Concepcion, built in
1731. Of the 5 missions, Concepcion is
the best preserved of the Texas missions. Like Mission San Jose, the church is still an active Catholic church
with Sunday services. Still raining, we
decided to continue our sightseeing on Saturday or Sunday with sunnier
weather. Used the balance of the day to
run errands.
The Alamo!! Today’s
itinerary took us downtown to visit the Alamo and Riverwalk. We got there just in time to sign up for the
next docent-led tour. He was an
excellent speaker and very knowledgeable about Texas history and, in
particular, the Alamo. The tour was
about an hour and ended in the mission (the building termed the Alamo). We learned about the people who settled the
area, the wars between countries wanting to occupy the Texas territory, and the
battle and people lost at the Alamo. The
weather was overcast and cool, but sun was expected. After the tour, we wandered down the
Riverwalk to find a restaurant for lunch.
 |
| San Fernando Cathedral |
We continued
down Riverwalk then across a few blocks to San Fernando Cathedral on the main
square. San Fernando Cathedral is on the
National Register of Historic Places and is one of the oldest cathedrals in the
United States. Located in the entry of
the cathedral is a marble sarcophagus allegedly holding the remains of the
Alamo defenders. We worked our way back
to the Riverwalk and completed our loop back to the Alamo. The sun was now out and better for pictures,
but the crowds were larger too. We were
glad we’d done our tour earlier in the day.
Day 26, Jan 21
We drove out to Hill Country on a gray overcast day. Yes, there were lots of rolling hills, but
guess we weren’t in the right area because we didn’t see large fenced estates
and horse ranches like we’d thought. We
did see real estate signs advertising lots from 1 to 410 acres, but you
couldn’t see them from the road.
The
highlight of our day was a stop at the old Pearl Brewing Company site….now a
tourist area with residences, hotel, restaurants, shops and home to The
Culinary Institute of America. The sun
had come out and there were lots of people in the courtyard enjoying the
day. We grabbed a sandwich, beer/wine
and found a table outside (they gave us plastic cups and told us we could take
our drinks anywhere on the grounds….now I know for sure we weren't in Washington).
This site had a wonderful upscale hotel called the Emma, located in the original brewhouse. It was named for Emma Koehler, wife of the president of Pearl Brewing. She ran the brewery after her husband died and kept it going during Prohibition by converting operations to dry cleaning, auto repair, making near beer, ice cream and soda. She kept her entire workforce employed. I think she deserves to have a hotel named for her.
This site had a wonderful upscale hotel called the Emma, located in the original brewhouse. It was named for Emma Koehler, wife of the president of Pearl Brewing. She ran the brewery after her husband died and kept it going during Prohibition by converting operations to dry cleaning, auto repair, making near beer, ice cream and soda. She kept her entire workforce employed. I think she deserves to have a hotel named for her.
