Better late than never, better never late (blog posts, that is)

Me at Bridal Wreath Falls

   So what is it they say about good intentions?  Well my intentions were good, I honestly planned to keep up to date on the blog and nearly two weeks have gone by and now I am way behind.

   When last we visited we had just eased into town, spent a bunch of money to get our hitch lift fixed and had our annual first night dinner at the Voyager Bar & Grill.

   Since then we have been very busy. Not making excuses, just stating a fact.

   Last Saturday (Jan. 4) I participated in my first table and chair set-ups with the Saturday morning coffee and donuts in the ballroom and since then have helped set up and take down for several events including Wednesday night’s concert “Valli Fever,” which was a tribute show for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

   The show was wonderful and the house was packed. More than 600 silver-haired retirees crammed into a small place to hear nostalgic music.  Our friends Bob and Karen also attended and seemed to enjoy the concert.

Bob, Karen, Me, Joan at Meet Me at Maynard's

   I’m getting a little ahead of myself.  On Saturday I went hiking with my friend Alan, more to test my sore knee and altitude readiness. We climbed 1,200 feet over about a 2-mile trail and while I was a little short of breath I was able to keep a good pace and only turned back when Alan injured his foot.

   My knee still aches a little, but I really tested it with a 9-mile hike up to Bridal Wreath Falls and then used the loop back through Three Tanks Trail to make it a very interesting hike. There were 9 of us from the Voyager Hiking group who made the trek and we spent much of the hike catching up on the last nine months (that is talking while gasping for air).

    Back up to Monday, I got up early and took the Tahoe to a local Chevy dealer to get the oil changed and replace the plastic cap to the windshield washer fluid bottle under the hood. In case you were wondering the plastic cap costs $8, which if you went back and put together a Tahoe one piece at a time would end up costing you about $200,000.

Me winning a gift certificate (Jan 6)

   I picked up some groceries for Joan, set up my unlimited car wash deal, and got a spare key made for the trailer. Back at the ranch, I finished organizing my trailer stuff and then we picked up Bob and Karen who joined us downtown Tucson for our first Meet Me at Maynard’s event of the season.

   In just two weeks we will participate in our 50^th MMM and we will get our reward pins for our hats. Stay tuned for photos.

   Joan went to her Zumba class on Monday and of course she joined me and Bob and Karen at MMM.

   My hike was Tuesday, Joan cleaned the trailer, went to the pool and made meatballs for the Tuesday night potluck.

    Market Daze was Wednesday and I bought a new belt (actually two of them). My previous leather belt I bought at Market Daze was $5 and it lasted 5 years. So now I should be good for 10 years or better.

Rare crested Saguaro cactus

    At 1 p.m. I helped the crew take down Market Daze and then set up for the Valli Fever show, which I already discussed.

    Thursday is Bible study day for me as I have Men’s Bible Study in the morning and then I lead a Bible study on Thursday night. Several previous friends who have attended my Thursday night study have returned for another season and we welcomed a couple new folks, including my friend Bob.

    Joan went to her Women’s Bible study in the morning (I had to drive her because she lost track of time and when I said at 9:30 a.m. – “Aren’t you supposed to be at your Bible study.” She jolted awake and remembered.

    In the afternoon she went to her polymer clay class and made a beautiful necklace.

   We had leftovers for dinner and then went to a dance here at the resort. The live music group “Short Notice Band” was making their premiere appearance here and they were very well received.

   The days have been relatively cool (highs in the 60s) but the nights have been pretty cold here in the desert. On Friday night we came home from the dance and during the night it got very cold outside, but the furnace stopped going on about 3 a.m.

Pam, Greg and Joan in Florence, Arizona

    We ran out of propane. So after setting up the ballroom for coffee and donuts this morning I did a quick work out in the fitness center but then returned to off load our two 20-gallon propane tanks into the Tahoe and drove them to a nearby propane filling station.  We are good to go for a couple months now.

   After taking down the coffee and donuts I returned to the trailer, set up the propane tanks and then made eggs, hashbrowns and bacon for Joan and me. One pretty busy morning.

   At noon we met our friend Greg and Pam, who live near us in Michigan in Casa Grande for a tour of the Pinal County Historical Society museum in Florence, Arizona.  It is a small but interesting museum filled with artifacts and gems from this once wild west town. (A sheriff and his deputy had a shootout with each other back in the olden days. The deputy was mortally wounded and the sheriff survived his wounds after a dispute over the deputy backing away from a promise to support the sheriff’s re-election.

Petrroglyphs near Pichacho

   Florence is the home of several prisons and about 17,000 inmates, which is the largest population group in the area. The museum has a section on all the folks who have been executed in the state, complete with their prison photos and in many cases the hunk of rope they were hung with. A very macabre part of the museum. Some of the information included the last meals “enjoyed” by the condemned.

    One last meal (a man executed in 2012) was “eggplant lasagna” and kale salad. Trust me if I’m choosing a last meal it is not going to include anything healthy. They had a collection of stuffed animals made by a female on death row who was known nationally for a crime in which she killed a couple friends and then shipped their remains in a steamer trunk to California.

With still a couple hours to kill, I asked the volunteer at the museum if she knew of an out-of-the-way site where you can view 1,000-year-old petroglyphs near Picacho Peak. While we toured the museum she went to her computer and pulled up the exact address (which is a misnomer because the ancient site is at the end of a long and rough dirt road where there are no exact addresses).

Joan's latest jewelry creation

    It took a while to drive there but we saw great examples of ancient “graffiti.”  The pictures included animals, including snakes, long horn sheep and deer. It is sobering to walk the site and realize that 1,000-years before someone had been there doodling on rocks.

  It is my second time to the area, but because I was following someone there the first time it was a godsend to have the woman at the museum find the directions for me because it is basically down a couple dirt roads and what could only be described as a wash.

   After spending about a half hour looking at the ancient drawings we headed back to Casa Grande for dinner at Mimi’s Café (the same restaurant we always eat at on our way to putting the trailer in storage at the end of the season).

   We parted company and headed back to Tucson and the Titans versus Ravens football game.

  On Sunday our friends Karen and Bob joined us for church here at the Voyager and then they treated us to breakfast at the restaurant at the resort.

Joan and me at MMM Jan. 13

    We went shopping Sunday afternoon to refill our very small kitchen closets and came home and watched part of one and all of another NFL playoff game. The weather has been wonderful here, even if a little chilly at night.

    Monday (Jan. 13) I went on my first Monday hike and we headed up to Hope Camp which is really a moderate hike and a little more aggressive than most of the Monday hikes have been. It was a great hike but it was a bit much for a couple folks who probably misunderstood what Easy/Moderate means in the hiking sense.

   Once home I got cleaned up and Joan and I headed to downtown Tucson for out 49^th Meet Me at Maynard’s. Next week we will get out 50^th milestone pin. After the walk Joan and I went to a nearby sports bar for dinner (also the 20 percent discount for MMM’s folks) and watched the first half of the College Championship Game. We came home in time to watch the second half in our trailer.

  Forgot to mention that I have won 2 $25 gift certificates, one to a retail store and another to a local pizza place in the after drawing at Meet Me at Maynard’s. The odds are not good as there are only about 8-10 prizes and 300-400 people each week. So to win twice in a row, pretty sweet. You may notice that I am wearing the same outfit in both MMM. Just want to point out we did laundry so the clothes were clean both times.

Me with my 2nd win at Meet Me at Maynard's this year

   One of the men I met on the Monday hike wanted to know if I thought he was capable of coming with the Tuesday hike group and after hiking with him Monday it was obvious he was more than able. So he joined me and 16 others for a trip up La Milagrosa Trail. It was supposed to be a loop hike of about 7 miles but the coordinator changed it to a 10.5-mile out and back hike to a beautiful waterfall area.

    I led this hike last year and knew we were in for a grueling trek. The hike starts at about 2,800-feet and climbs to nearly 4,300-feet. That’s a little deceiving because the trailer goes up and down (sometimes severely up and down) so the combined altitude is about 2,000-feet.

    My left knee has been bothering me for several months now, but surprisingly less so when I am walking or hiking. I did make a mistake by not taking enough water and I had a severe groin cramp on the way down which because of the pain took my breath away a couple times. My friend Dave had extra water and I guzzled down the gift and it helped alleviate my cramps.  The hike was long and we didn’t get back down until after 3 p.m.

    I got home, showered and Joan and I went to the Tuesday potluck.

    I’ll try (no promises) to be a little more intentional on getting on the blog.

A snow covered trailer and a warm descent into Tucson

Flagstaff at 10 a.m. and 28 degrees

   Bottom line: We are safe and sound in Tucson, Arizona. But it wasn’t easy.

   First let’s go back to Tuesday in Tucumcari, New Mexico. I’ve already told you when had dinner at the Pow Wow Restaurant and Lizard Lounge. What we didn’t know at the time is that the place is advertised as “historic.”  I guess if you are around long enough you aren’t old, you are historic. So I guess that makes me historic too.

   The trip from Tucumcari to Flagstaff was uneventful, but we did run into some pretty stiff winds along I-40 between our night stop and Albuquerque, but the winds slowed considerably after Albuquerque.

   Also like last year we listened to the Michigan bowl game on the XM radio and unfortunately for the Wolverines the result was the same this year as last.

   The electronic highway message sign repeated last year’s holiday warning. “Drive hammered, get nailed.”

Tucson at 4 p.m. and 68 degrees

   We repeated last year’s stop at Twin Arrows Casino and Hotel so Joan could have a little fun there. Unlike last year, we booked a room and stayed there this year. The cost of the room was less than the hotel we stayed at last year and a much nicer room.

   If you go back and read last year’s blog about our stop at Twin Arrows you will see that she won $358 during our brief visit there. That must be the magic number because again Joan hit for $357 this year on a different machine. No gambling doesn’t pay, but let’s just put it this way, we left home with $500 cash for the trip and we left Twin Arrows in the morning with $830 cash.

    Oh, and we’ve spent some money on food and drinks along the way, so Joan did pretty well with her entertainment and profit this year.

   Last year, the trailer battery died (it served us well for 12 years) and we knew we needed to purchase a new one before picking up the trailer in Flagstaff. I called Camping World, which is right down the street from our storage lot in Bellemont, Arizona (near Flagstaff).

San Francisco peak from Twin Arrows casino

    So I went to the internet to find the phone number for Camping World and learned that the business closed last year after we stored our trailer. I quickly looked for another RV dealer and found one that would be open Thursday morning early.

    We arrived at RV Country in Flagstaff at precisely 8:30 a.m. and as advertised it was open and we made a quick purchase and headed on our way to the storage lot. It was hovering in the high 20s and low 30s and a pretty brisk breeze was blowing making it all the colder.

   We transferred some of our cargo into the trailer as we always do and then I set to work to remove tire covers, assemble hitch equipment and make sure we were safe to go. With the new battery the new electric hitch lift we bought last season before we left Tucson worked well.

    What was different this year was the trailer had about 6-inches of snow on the roof, which added some considerable weight to the trailer which had me a little worried.  The size of our trailer is already at the upper limit of what the Tahoe can pull and the extra weight of the snow probably put us over at least for the time being.

    But after a minor snafu when my cellphone couldn’t open the storage gate because I didn’t have cell service, we obtained another gate code from the owner and we were on our way.

    The speed of the trailer and the high winds cleared about half the snow off the roof before we started down the long hill from Flagstaff on I-17. The increasing temperatures as we descended made quick work of most of the rest of snow and ice. It was all gone by the time we hit Phoenix.

One of the more decorated RV spots at Voyager

   The wind died down considerably as we descended and that made driving much easier for the rest of the trip.

    At our Phoenix gas stop we had a little sticker shock as the gas prices were $2.85 for the cheap unleaded. Usually we find Arizona gas prices less than home, but for some reason Phoenix prices are very high. Tucson gas prices are in the $2.30 range.

    We pulled into the resort in mid-afternoon and lined up behind two other RVs who were also checking in. We noticed right away some new grounds improvements made here at Voyager in our absence.

   After check in we were led to our spot by one of the courtesy patrol who helped me back into our space. It is a very welcome service they provide.

    Once I got the trailer on our spot it came time to lift it off the Tahoe. Except our new hitch lift did not work. My Tahoe was parked half in the street and half on our space and that would not be acceptable for any length of time.

    It appeared that I was suffering from an electrical problem as every time I tried to raise or lower the hitch it would blow an inline fuse on the hitch lifter. We eventually called a mobile RV service who determined that the pipe that extends to lift and lower the hitch had become stuck. He unstuck it, we wrote him a check and we finished setting up our spot.

Joan's newest jewelry creation

    As is our custom we had dinner in the Voyager grill and because of the hitch delay we didn’t have time to grocery shop, so we will do that on Friday.

   On Friday I did a quick workout in the resort fitness center and then finished setting up our camp site. The outdoor mat is in place all the wheels are covered and the Tahoe is all cleaned out.

    We stopped at the activities office to purchase concert tickets for some friends and family who are coming to visit in February and March. Many of the shows are already sold out, but fortunately for us two season ticket holders had just called in to cancel their tickets minutes before we arrived and so we snatched up all the needed tickets.

    Joan set up our banking at the resort branch office, I set up our mail box to receive our forwarded mail and we joined the computer center so we can make copies and use their great Internet.

    Joan went to her polymer clay class and made a necklace and ear rings (see photo).

   Bob and Karen, friends from Michigan, arrived at the Voyager (they have visited us here briefly on previous visits to the area to see family) and have rented a place for the month of January. We are looking forward to spending some great times with them while they are here. With all the added traffic we have brought to the Voyager we should be getting a commission.

   We also went food shopping today and had a Walmart chicken for dinner. The process of putting everything away and getting things organized in the trailer continues but is nearly complete.

Mileage out at Tucumcari: 33878

Time out at Tucumcari: 8:25 a.m.

Mileage in at Flagstaff: 34360

Time out at Flagstaff: 8:09 a.m.

Time in to storage: 9:16 a.m.

Time out at storage: 10:10 a.m.

Mileage in at Tucson:  34630

Time in at Tucson: 2:49 p.m.