Annual Snowbird Migration (part two)

Leaving Pahrump on Monday April 7th we headed for St. George, Utah. The Dingmans and the Mays had made reservations there at a Western Horizons park.


Western Horizons is a members only organization with several parks scattered around mostly in the western states and operated similar to timeshare condos, etc. Members park free, however as non-members we could get in for two days as guests of the Dingmans for $25.00.night
Panoramic view from our site.

The park, called St. George RV was located about 15 miles north of St. George. We arrived mid afternoon, paid $50.00 for two nights, got set-up and Teddy at once, set out to hike & explore the surrounding areas. I, as is my wont, spent my time chatting with other campers. The Dingmans & the Mays both planned on staying about three days before heading on to their respective homes in WY & WA. We were to leave Wed. morning after using up our two day guest pass. However, Tue morning a member approached me with a coupon for 5 free nights on the condition that we sit through a sales presentation. I took the coupon to the office and asked I could use it to extend our stay to Saturday. The said yes and also refunded my $50.00.
All was right with the world...and then...
**BOOM** Larry falls down!!
Tue afternoon about 5 pm we were rerturning to our trailer after playing Pegs & Jokers in the clubhouse with the Dingmans & the Mays. I was riding my Segway and had stopped to chat with some folks while the others continued on. They were curious about the Segway and I began showing off a bit and made the startling discovery that I am not quite as agile as I was in my twenties. In short I got pitched off, landing squarely in the gravel on my left elbow.
OUCH
Benny May took Teddy & I to Emergency at the St. George hospital and you do not have to be a radiologist to see that my arm was broken just above the elbow where it enters the joint.
The hospital bought in an Orthopedic surgeon and he wanted to do emergency surgery that evening...until...wait..oh oh! Larry is on the blood thinner, Cumiden. So they splinted me up, sent me home and scheduled surgery for three days later on Friday.
I spent the next three days in a drug induced haze, during which we had to endure a one-on-one session with a very rude Western Horizions salesman who seemed very pissed that we wouldn't fork over $12,000 to fatten their coffers. Another reality that now became apparent was that with 2000 miles to go, Teddy was going to have to take over the driving. She had driven the rig before but only in rural areas and never in cities nor on & off into fuel stations.etc. She was stressed to the max and nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof but bore up through it all. Benny and Sandy delayed their departure to help Teddy cope and to prepare her for the drive back.
Friday afternoon came and into surgery I went. Spent one night in the hospital and was released Saturday noon.As you can see from these post-op picts, they managed to get a whole lot of metal into my poor little arm. :-(

Benny got Teddy all hooked up, Sandy made me some tuna salad sandwitches and we headed north toward Salt Lake City and then east toward Wisconsin. Although I was wierded out on Codene I was still able to help Teddy through the cities and into
and out of Wal-Mart parking lots. To tell the truth I don't remember a whole lot of the trip back but nontheless we arrived here in Appleton on Friday the 18th.
Since we have been here, we have seen our dentist, been to the doctor twice about my arm, went out for fish with Greg & Sue Madson, had dinner at Tom & Carol Sykes with the martini group, had the tires rotated on the truck, and got all of our maintenance problems fixed at Appleton Camping. Tonight we are going out to dinner with Mike & Toni, Monday we are going to martinis at Dick & Jenny Orrs, and Tuesday we plan on completing the last leg of our journey to Traverse City & Cedar, Michigan.
Have an appointment May 8th with my Ortho doc. (Dr. Peters, the one that did my knee last summer) and a perscription for rehab from the doc. in St. George.
See you Kal. :-)
On the bright side...things are bound to get better! Right!!

Annual Snowbird Migration (part one)

Today is Tuesday April 22nd and we are currently parked in a motel parking lot in Appleton, Wisconsin.
On April second we joined the annual snowbird migration to the northern climes. As we didn’t plan on arriving at our summer digs in Leelanau County, Michigan until around May first, we thought we would take our time and explore some of the areas of the country that we hadn’t yet seen.
Alas it was not to be.
Our first stop was in the small Nevada town of Pahrump on the southern edge of Death Valley. We were to meet up with two other couples, Don & Carol Dingman from Wheatland, WY and Benny & Sandy May from Turnwater. WA. From there we planned on a day trip to visit the usual Death Valley tourist sites. Lady luck, however had other plans. We were going to drive our truck as it was the only one of the three that could comfortably accomidate all three couples.
We had all made reservations at different RV parks in Pahrump and were to get together after we arrived. Teddy and I stayed at




Terribles Lakeside Casino & RV Resort which turned out to be the best of three. It was a beautiful park with the RV sites surrounding a huge man made lake fed by underground springs.
The lake is stocked with fish and guests are invited to fish, paddleboat or kahyak on the lake. The lake is also home for a great number of ducks, coots, and other birds.









Unfortunately when we unhitched we discovered a problem with the front jacks on the Cardinal. Fearing that we would not be able to hitch up again once unhitched, we decided to not take a chance on unhitching. Therefore our Death Valley plans were cancelled.
However, we stayed there for five very enjoyable days, taking photographs and getting together with our friends for dinner and visiting a winery.


Up Next … Bad luck continues as distaster strikes @ St. George Utah.

Southern California’s Golf Ball Orchards

Last weekend we took a day trip to visit Southern California’s famous golf ball growing region. Few people know of this small valley south of LA. Over 90 percent of the worlds golf ball crop come from this region where growing conditions are perfect for the golf ball groves of golf ball giants such as Bridgestone, Callaway, Hogan, Ladies, Maxfli, Nike, Pinnacle, Precept, Slazenger, Taylor Made, Titleist & Top Flight. It is hard to imagine as you see them setting out the tiny seedlings that in just three years that seedling will grow into a tree capable of producing over 1000 balls in a single growing season. As the balls reach maturity they begin to whiten and develop their characteristic “dimple” patterns. When the time is right they look like this and are hand plucked from the trees by nimble fingered pickers. They are then sun dried, aged for 30 days and then sorted, packed and shipped to golf courses throughout the world.
Incidentally, scientists in the labs have altered the DNA of individual varieties so that the actual Logo of the owning grove forms on the balls during the aging process. In the late 50s the dreaded “red stripe” disease invaded the valley but it was quickly brought under control and now those with red stripes simply become the now familiar range balls.

Road Trip (part 2)

...After returning to Chloride we decided that we still had time to drive on up to the Hoover (aka Boulder) Dam about 50-60 miles NW of Chloride. It took us much longer time to get there than we originally thought as traffic across the Dam was bumper to bumper...stop and go... beginning about two to three miles from the dam. However it was a nice day and we didn't mind; we just munched on dry roasted peanuts and inched along with the other tourists.
On reaching the dam we drove on across to the Nevada side; set our clocks back one hour to Nevada time and then turned around and drove back across to the Arizona side and set our clocks ahead to Arizona time. ;-)
There are several parking areas for dam visitors on the Arizona side so we then pulled into the closest one to the dam and crossed the dam once more...this time on foot. The only thing that I didn't like was having to set my watch two more times again. If I had to do over I just don't think I'd bother...come to think of it I don't think Teddy did it at all; it was just me.
At any rate I snapped this picture of the dam on all its glory. It is actually six photos cleverly stitched togather into a long panaroma. (click on the picture for a full size version) If you look closely you can see the high water line on both the dam and on the rock face across Lake Mead. I didn't actually measure it myself but was told that the lake level is about 100 feet below that line.
On the way back to Havasu City along I-40 we pulled off onto the shoulder and took a pict. of this strange "golfball" home which we had spotted on the way up that morning.

Road Trip (part 1)

A couple of weeks ago Teddy & I took a "day trip" to visit the old mining town of Chloride, AZ. John Antonetti, a friend and fellow snowbird here in the park, had visited there reciently with his Jeep and told us about the Chloride Murals and we wanted to see for ourselves.

At the far edge of the town a dirt road leads out into the desert toward the mountainous regions to the east. at first the road is not too bad...



...but it soon degenerates to the point that it would be an insult to real roads to call it a road.




Undaunted, we drop the truck into 4W drive and push on. Since we were only able to travel at about 5 mph, Teddy decided to walk following the truck.


We decided to pass up the opportunity to acquire this piece of prime Arizona real estate. (click on pict(s) for full size image)





And, sure enough, encouraged by ocassional lettering painted on large rocks we finally arrived at the area of the mural paintings



Here and there, scattered all around were huge boulders and various smaller rocks painted with whimsical bright colored designs. Why someone would lug paint and equipment out here to paint rocks is anybody's guess but there are strange things in Arizona which may be related to the summer heat. ;-)





















At any rate, even though the "road" continued on, this is as far as we were willing to go as the trail ahead looked too foreboding.

...To be continued...

Nite Lites

Teddy bought two of these solar powered LED flowers at Wal-Mart and set them out by our trailer.


This is what they look like at night.

The Parker Dam

While on a day trip, a couple of weeks ago, Teddy & I visited the Parker Dam.The Parker Dam is what creates Lake Havasu.




The road across the dam is quite narrow and commercial trucks, RVs etc. are prohibited from crossing it. They have barriers set up on the approach and our PU barely fit between them. I don't think a dually could make it without scraping. We didn't know this before but the Parker Dam is the world's deepest dam, with most of its 320 feet height extending 235 feet below the riverbed.

Here you can see four of the five spillways that control the lake level.








Looking upstream at the beginning of Lake Havasu.





Downstream the Colorado River continues on carrying water to the big aquducts that feed Southern California to the West and Phoenix to the East.


Adjacent to the Dam is the Power station which houses four turbine driven generators producing 30,000 KiloVolt Amps each.

This big yellow crane travels on tracks to control these lift gates that feed the turbines.


Notice how the crane dwarfs our truck parked next to it.

New Satellite Dish

On Monday February 25, we pulled the Cardinal up to Camping World in Henderson, Nevada to have a new Winegard® TRAV’LER™ Slimline Ka/Ku Multi-Satellite dish installed on the roof. We have always had our DirecTV satellite service since we began full-timing but had to use a portable dish because we are also HD. There were rooftop units available but none were able to receive multi-satellites at once which is necessary for HD.
This is our old three satellite dish set up here in Arizona. It was always a hassle to set up and aim and then take down and store whenever we traveled. When traveling we never set it up if we were just stopping for a short time as it wasn't worth the effort.

But now I just hit a button and it rises from it's stowed position and automatically finds and locks onto up to five satellites at once. So now we will have satellite service even when stopping overnight at a Wal-Mart parking lot.

It has been rock steady and working well. Teddy and I are "Happy Campers".

RC Airplanes

One of the guys here in the park (Jerry Brown from Bronson, Michigan) is a RC airplane hobbyist. The local RC club have built a mini airport complete with paved runways etc. They can be out there flying almost any day when there isn’t too much wind. The other day they had an air show and I went out to watch them fly. The planes are built to various scale ratios to the real plane that they are patterned after. Jerry’s is scaled to 35% and has an 8 1/2 foot wingspan and has a 10 hp motor.
Jerry's Plane

It is not a hobby for the faint of heart as they can cost up to $40,000 so a crash can be quite costly. In addition to the prop driven models there were some jet engine models. Jerry said that this jet was probably worth about $10,000. It uses regular “JP4” fuel, develops about 35 lbs of thrust and can go up to 200 mph.

The guy with the jets was from out of town and must have deep pockets indeed, as this is the trailer that he hauls his planes around with. He was an excellent flyer and put on quite a show.




The flyers can do amazing acrobatics with them.




Because you have no reference of distance against the sky, you could easily mistake them for real planes; especially the jets which were almost impossible to photograph as they go so fast.

There were some of these less expensive battery powered "electrics". The strange thing about them is that they make no sound and seem to just float in the air.

44 Years

Today, February 22, 2008 we have been married for 44 years. Looking ahead then it seemed as though we had a long life ahead to do and see everything. Now 44 years later we look back and wonder where the time went. We still have so much to do and see.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

On the way back to Lake Havasu we stopped overnight at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It is a beautiful park and we definitely want to revisit when we have more time to spend.
The Organ Pipe Cactus has several shoots that grow from the center like fingers.











There were also hundreds of the magnficent Saguaro Cacti, the symbol of the Desert Southwest.












Many birds like the ubiquitous House Finch



And a new bird on my life list, the Gila Woodpecker. They bore nesting holes in the saguaros.


Teddy took this photo of a Desert Poppy which were in bloom because of the recent rains.








If you should ever get a chance to visit southern Arizona, a visit to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument should be high on your "bucket list".