Busy, busy November

We started the month of November off with my first mystery shop and then ended the month with another mystery shop. One could never ‘live’ off the income from those mystery shops but they are a nice way to get a meal paid for.

I had my mammo and bone scan with a good report from the mammogram and a not so good report from the dexa scan so I am starting on a regiment of vitamins and minerals to try to reverse my numbers without using big pharma meds.

On Nov 10 the park had a Veteran’s Brunch with veterans getting a free meal so we paid just $3 for my meal. After church on Nov 11 we went to Olive Garden with Vince, Dawn and Bethany for Veteran’s Day and the fellows each had a free meal. We had leftovers which is always good. On Monday Nov 12 we again got together with Vince, Dawn and Bethany and visited Golden Corral for their Veteran’s Day free meal for vets. Golden Corral always seems to have good food and we came away stuffed. On Tues Nov 13 we went to a free Bar-B-Q at a sister park just a few miles from us. It was supposed to be at our park but not enough folks signed up so we joined the other park. It was really good Bar-B-Q! Sat Nov 17 the park had their free Thanksgiving Dinner for residents and we enjoyed that meal too. On Sunday Nov 18 after church we joined the Pot Blessing for the Silver Saints. I took green bean casserole and again, we ate too much!

Larry had a chiro appt. at the VA on Nov 19 and afterwards we stopped at the DAV to have Larry’s rating re-evaluated. It will take two years since there is such a backlog of returning vets ahead of him. That’s OK because by then he will really need it.

Thanksgiving we spent the day at our granddaughter’s home and had a wonderful time. Her new in-laws were there also and it gave us a chance to get to know them since we just met them at the wedding two months ago and didn’t really get a chance to talk with them then. It was great seeing the family again and having everyone there. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any “everyone together” pictures. Reading back over this it sounds like all we did all month was eat!

Cerét and her new mother in law fixing Thanksgiving dinner

Cerét and Adam carving the turkeys

Shane and Adam on Thanksgiving

Todd relaxing on Thanksgiving. Note how 'relaxed' the dog is!

Larry and Vince on Thanksgiving

Dawn, Alex and Cerét

Colby, LaTia, Shane, Ellen, Bethany and Dawn after we had our main course on Thanksgiving

Bethany looking great

Shane, Colby and Katrina (Shane's girlfriend) enjoying a nice fire after we ate on Thanksgiving



Larry kept busy when he wasn’t eating, fixing a generator for Vince that a friend had given him. It is 35 years old and needed some ‘loving attention’ so now it runs like a champ! They don’t make them like that any more. It just won’t quit. He also found the overflow tank on our Aqua-Hot was cracked all the way down the side and a new one was $189. He ‘sleep on it’ and figured out how to replace it for $15 which made me very happy.

The old cracked overflow bottle from the Aqua-Hot

Larry's "fix" for the Aqua-Hot overflow tank









Our front door prop also broke and a new one of those was $139 plus shipping but again, he ‘slept on it’ and figured out how to repair the old one for less than $5. I think I will keep him around!

Larry fixing the door 'prop' on the front door. He is so talented! .........................

We moved the coach for the day to Countryside RV in Apache Junction on Nov 26. We ended up in a different site that we usually get that was quieter but very hard to get into so we have decided we are just too big for Countryside and in the future will take just day trips to rotate the wheel bearings and “exercise” the engine and transmission. We stopped at Camping World in Mesa on the way to AJ and bought new A/C shrouds since our old ones are cracked and brittle. Only trouble was we didn’t open the boxes until we returned to Sunrise Heights and found they are the wrong ones! I ended up calling Camping World and talked to the manager and Nov 30 they sent their parts runner out with the correct ones and picked up the wrong ones. That was a real PTL since it is a 70 mile round time run and the shrouds are too big for the car so we would have had to take the motorhome. God is good all the time!

The November full moon over a neighbor's place all decorated for the holidays in Phoenix




Have a Happy Hanukkah and a very Merry Christmas!

Busy October

We moved 10 miles down the road to TTN Verde Valley on Oct 4 and promptly saw friends we have not seen in a long time. It is such fun to again meet up with friends! After the chapel service on Sunday at the clubhouse we went for Chinese at the Ming House in Cottonwood with Art & Faye and Beau & Becky. It turns out those two couples met this summer in Florence, OR and we have known both of them for many years! It really is a small world! Larry ended up working on both couples’ MH. Art and Faye’s 2007 Monaco turn out to be quite a challenge but Larry figured out how to make it work. The part that broke is no longer made and with Monaco out of business, things did not look too good. It did take several days but they had over a week and Larry finished the job and everything worked perfectly. PTL!

The part that broke on Art and Faye's MH and Larry's "fix"

Our site for three weeks while at TTN Verde Valley, AZ xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx





We went to see the Hired Hands again on Friday night only this time with Art and Faye. We stayed until they closed down. We always enjoy hearing them and they played my request, a song Jesse composed several years ago that I think is awesome.

Oct 15 we rode the bike to Prescott via Jerome and Mingus Mountain to see Larry’s mom. We did several errands for her and ended up bringing her truck back to Cottonwood to try and sell it for her. We returned on Thurs. and a fellow who has helped his Mom in the past stopped to say he wanted to buy the truck. We rode the bike back to Cottonwood and I decided to count the curves on 89A between Prescott National Forest and the city limits of Clarksdale—there are 185 of them! We made arrangements to return Monday morning Oct 22 to first get a new mattress and box springs for his Mom and then take her to the bank to sign the truck title and deposit the check. Since then she has had “seller’s remorse” even though she has not had her driver’s license for 10 months. She will be 90 in January and we don’t think she should be on the road anyway as she does not have good reaction time.

Thursday Oct 25 found us on our way back to our leased lot in Phoenix. We stopped for diesel a few miles from our lot and God was looking out for us as we would not have been able to get into the station if there had been any other cars there. We had to turn right and go around the block to get back on our planned route but were very grateful we were able to get fuel there as it was the cheapest station around. Vince came over and helped us get everything arranged and worked like a real trooper! Since we turned off the water before we left all the plants were dead (Larry was happy because he doesn’t like ‘green’) and Vince took two of them out and put them in the trash. He then took us out for German food in Glendale. How’s that for a good son-in-law?

Saturday night we ate at the clubhouse for the monthly dinner, October fest food again. It was nice being welcomed back to the community.

Sunday Oct 28 Dawn and Vince surprised us by showing up at church and then we all went to the AZ State Fair. Colby and his girlfriend along with Bethany and a girlfriend met us at the fairgrounds. We watched the dog handling competition of many branches of peace officers which was very interesting. I would not want to be on the “receiving end” of a dog’s teeth!! We ate lots of greasy fair food but were disappointed that the Dole Pineapple ice cream stand was not there. Of course I had to have Indian Fry bread! We spent eight hours there and didn’t spend any money for anything except food. Of course the kids bought ride passes and spent much of their time riding the rides. We did catch up with them for food. (Thanks to cell phones—what did we do without them?)

Larry, Vince and Dawn at the AZ State Fair

A new exhibit at the AZ State Fair called "World of Giant Bugs" really quite interesting xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Monday Larry had an appointment at the VA to see if there was something other than age that caused his altitude sickness back in UT in June. He did a test of his lungs and he has the lungs of a 64 year old so that is very good. The doctor did give him some pointers on how to acclimate to higher altitudes in the future.

November will be even busier!

From Oregon to Arizona

September really seemed to fly by as we were busy all month. On Labor Day, our across the street neighbors in Merrill stopped to see us as they had business in Bend and stopped on the way home. What a pleasant surprise! We had a good visit before they went on their way home.

We took the bike to La Pine for our chiro appt. and then brought back 50 lbs of table salt for our water softener. We split the bag in two using black garage bags and put half in each saddle bag. Worked out well—who would have thought we could do that?!

We had supper with the folks in the Prevost in front of us and what a feast it was! They have a garden in Portland and nearly everything was from their garden; fresh corn on the cob, big Brandywine tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, cabbage, onions and pork loin from their butchered pig. Their have a care home and are used to cooking for sixteen people so there was lots left over which they shared with us. What a blessing that was!

Our friends, Rosie and Forrest, came to visit for two days staying in the rental log cabin at Cascade Meadows. We shared our meals and had good visits each day. It is always good to see them especially since Rosie nearly died in Jan. 2011.

Our friends, Forrest and Rosie.>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
On Tues before we left, our friend, Ron, stopped to see us on his way to Gold Beach. We seem to catch up with him often as he winters in Yuma and we have seen him there the last few winters.

We left Cascade Meadows on Thurs Sept 13 and stayed overnight in the old WalMart parking lot in Fallon, NV. There is a new Party Store in part of the building but we parked away from it. We like parking there as Safeway and Bank of America are in the same shopping center and we ‘visited’ both of them. We stayed in Pahrump, NV for six days as we like to visit the Nugget 2-4-1 buffet and Larry gets his years supply of fried bacon! It also gave him time to adjust to the altitude change as the doctor said to take it slowly as we went from 4,100 ft to eventually 1000 ft in Phoenix. While we were in Pahrump we discovered we had a leak in the kitchen sink drain. Actually we discovered it while on the road from CM to Pahrump. Larry poured something down the drain and it all ran on the floor! That kept Larry busy while we were at Preferred RV in Pahrump. The drain pipe broke in half right where the slide goes in and out. After sleeping on it and trying to figure out how to fix the pipe without tearing the coach apart, Larry again did a great job and reinforced the connection with a welded brace to hold the pipe up so we won’t have that problem again hopefully. The brace keeps the pressure off the drain pipe when the slide goes in and out and nine years of use was too much for just a plastic pipe with no support.

Where the drain pipe broke in two.

The fixed drain pipe, better than new! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> We arrived at Camp Verde, AZ around 4 PM on Thursday Sept 20 to find the office closes at 1 PM in the summer season. The night host was very nice and we ended up in a pull thru non-sewer site so we have been using the restrooms behind us and the laundry. We will be leaving here on the 4th to head to TTN Verde Valley (10 miles down the road) and we are doing well with our waste water tanks and won’t have to dump until we get to TTN. Friends, Art and Faye, who we haven’t seen in four years were here when we arrived and are now at TTN so we will get together with them after we move on Thurs. They have a new MH so it is a good thing they recognized us!

Saturday Sept 22 we went to HOT (107º) Phoenix for our granddaughter, Cerét's wedding. She was a lovely bride and it was great seeing the family again. The wedding was outside at the Japanese Friendship Gardens which are lovely but would have been nicer if it had been cooler. There was absolutely no breeze and I really felt bad for the guys in suits! The reception was very nice, again outside, but we managed to stay inside much of the time in A/C. (The Japanese Gardens had no buildings except restrooms and they were not air conditioned.) We arrived back home about midnight and enjoyed watching the temp outside going down as we left the Valley of the Sun. (It went from 90º as we were leaving Phoenix around 10:15 PM to 68º as we arrived at Camp Verde.)

Cerét pumped up coming down the aisle with her Dad, Todd

Cerét's brothers were her attendants and Adam had his brother and a cousin as attendants

Grandma and the new bride

Adam signing the marriage license and the radiant bride posing with her bouquet of yellow roses

Dad and daughter dance at the reception that got to both of them.>

The wedding cake. It was yummy!>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> On Thursday Sept 27 we went to Prescott to see Larry’s mom. We took her a piece of wedding cake and some mints from the wedding. We also showed her all the pictures Larry took with his i-phone. She had wanted to go but realized she just won’t be able to last all day (we left at 2 PM) and she would have ended up in the hospital because of the heat. She has a defibulator/pacemaker combo and the doctor told her to avoid extreme temperatures.

Our campsite at Camp Verde RV Park with the laundry and restroom building in the back.>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Friday night Sept 28 we went to Valley View Restaurant in Camp Verde to see the “Hired Hands” and enjoy the Friday night ‘all you can eat fish fry’. We have followed the Hired Hands for twelve years as they used to perform at TTN Verde Valley and Camp Verde RV Park but with the recent changes in the economy and RV park ownership, they are no longer performing in RV parks. (They would go to UT, OR and WA in the summer and we have seen them in the northwest also.) We learned another one of our friends had died and his funeral was Sat the 29th so we were able to go and encourage his wife. He was diagnosed with liver cancer and three weeks to the day he was diagnosed, he died. Larry said, just don’t get diagnosed and you will be OK!

Something New

We learned our former place in Merrill had a fire the last Sunday in July. Everyone is OK but they are unable to live in it until it is repaired. We took a trip to Bend with a long list of “to do” things and came away feeling pretty good as we were able to get everything done including finding a dress for me to wear to our granddaughter’s wedding in Sept. The next morning the bike shop called to say a bike like Larry wanted was there. We had been there looking at 3 PM the day before and the bike came in at 4:30 PM—bad timing on our part so we went back to Bend and ending up trading and now we have a new to us BMW. It came loaded with lots of extras, some things we probably wouldn’t have added so it is nice they were included. Larry is very happy with the bike and we can now take trips longer than 65 miles. (The Yamaha only had a 1.4 gal tank.)

The new BMW with saddle bags.

A better picture of the saddle bags on the BMW.

BMW without saddle bags. Larry was very busy the next few days reto- fitting the bike rack to fit the new bike as we were going to another RV park for two days and only took the bike (leaving the trailer and car at Cascade Meadows). We enjoyed our two days at Sundance RV, met some very nice folks, rode the bike to Costco (only eight miles away) and took a trail ride thru the BLM lands that adjoin the RV park. We also played two rounds of miniature golf and came out tied which was nice since I usually lose.

Entrance to Sundance miniature golf course.

Miniature golf course at Sundance Meadows.

Our view of the geese in the meadow at Sundance. We took a 100 mile ride on the upper half of the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway and it definitely is the prettier half. We had a great day for a ride as the weather was perfect 75º, clear blue skies, and very little wind. Larry likes the new bike so well he wants to ride it every day!

Cultus Lake along the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway. By far the most popular lake of all the lakes we saw.

Elk Lake along the upper half of the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway.

Lava Lake along the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway.

Devil's Lake, the last lake we saw on our 100 mile ride. Most of the lakes we saw on this ride were very close to the road which made for easy viewing. We have new neighbors from LA and he is a great chef. He made some real Louisiana gumbo and gave us some. Really, really good! They are moving here after a fire burned their business to the ground in July. We didn’t do anything special for our anniversary since we bought the BMW. It also serves as a birthday present for Larry. I baked an applesauce cake for his birthday. It is a recipe I have had since we were first married and that is the first cake I baked him after we were married. Amazingly he still likes applesauce cake as one of his favorites. Here it is Labor Day weekend already and the end of summer. We will be leaving here in less than two weeks to head south. This summer seems to have flown by!

Enjoying Oregon

We left Hatch, UT around 9:30 AM July 2 and stopped in Beaver, UT for one last chiro adjustment which was much needed. There was a fire that started about 25 miles south of Hatch Sunday afternoon and we had a lot of ash fallout because the wind was from the south, so we were more than glad to leave Monday morning.

Smoke from the fire south of Hatch, UT that started at 3 PM on Sunday July 1, 2012. As we headed west on SR21 we could see a fire and discovered it was east of Ely, NV on a pretty bare hill so it was not threatening anything much.

Looking out the windshield at the fire to our west as we headed to Ely, NV.

The fire near Ely, NV that we could see in UT. We spent the night at Garden Pass, NV along the side of NV 278 about 20 miles north of Eureka, NV. This was a new road for us and it was a very good two lane road with little traffic. We took US 95 north of Winnemucca, NV all the way into OR and then took SR 78 towards Burns. It was a much nicer route than SR 140 and a lot less scary! We stayed at a PA park, Crystal Crane Hot Springs and after 9 PM joined other campers in the hot spring. Very relaxing after two days on the road! Crystal Crane Hot Springs where we relaxed the night before. The water is around 104º but comes out at 165º! We arrived at Cascade Meadows early afternoon on the 4th of July and just took it easy for a few days so Larry could re-adjust to the lower altitude. We didn’t even take the car out of the trailer until Sat! Some neighbors here have a pot belly pig for a pet. They have had her for 15 years. I had a hard time understanding why anyone would want a pig in a motorhome. They said she doesn’t bark and only needs to “go outside” just once a day. She did “squeal” though when she went up or down the entrance ramp.

Sofie, the pot bellied pig. We have been to Bend several times, visiting our favorite places, Costco and Fluid Connectors among others and also ridden the bike to La Pine twice. The weather has been great except for a sudden hail storm one Sunday afternoon. Thankfully it didn’t last long and did no damage even though the hail was pretty big.

Larry had another bone chip that needed removing so we visited the same dentist in La Pine as last year plus he broke a tooth on his lower denture so had that taken car of one afternoon when we were in Bend. It really is nice to have folks we know from before to take care of ‘problems’ that arise! Yesterday we took a drive and traveled over the lower half of the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway. We will do the upper half of the loop some time in Aug. I was totally unaware that there are so many lakes so close to us here in La Pine, OR.

North Twin Lake along the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway.

Wickieup Reservoir.

Davis Lake with the aftermath of a fire in 2003--fire forever changes the landscape. Mt Bachelor in the background.

Leaving UT

After our first week of work, we took a trip along Scenic Byway 12 in southern UT and ended up at Bryce Canyon for some great views and then had dinner and a fantastic cowboy show at Ebenezer’s Barn and Grill just outside Bryce. The pastor of the church we attended on Sunday and his brother along with the pastor’s wife and three other fellows make up the Bar G Wranglers. They put on a great show that we liked so much we went back again last week. The work in Hatch is so taxing we have been to the chiro each week. The third time at the chiro' s Larry was telling him how he has been feeling: dizzy, short of breathe, nauseated, unable to sleep and his blood pressure which is usually low was very high. The chiro suggested he may have altitude sickness. After checking all the symptoms on the net, we came to the conclusion the altitude (7,000 ft) was indeed, affecting Larry so we gave a two week notice and yesterday was our last day of work. We will leave tomorrow morning (Mon July 2) for La Pine, OR (4200 ft). We did take another side trip to see Capitol Reef National Park before we left the area. The reds there seem to be much redder than Bryce and the cliffs are slick as opposed to spires. We ate lunch in a nice picnic area and were joined by a deer that was totally unafraid of people. We have met some very interesting folks, many from foreign countries and our month here has been quite a learning experience. We have made a few friends and exchanged contact information with them so we can keep in touch. We have to remember that God is in control and “all things work together for good”. We are looking forward to returning to OR.

Capitol Reef National Park

Our lunch spot at Capitol Reef

Head of the Rocks on Scenic Byway 12, Grand Staircase Escalante, UT

Bryce Canyon National Park

On the way to Kodachrome State Park, UT

Bar G Wranglers at Ebenezer's Barn and Grill, Bryce Canyon

Buffalo outside of Hatch, UT