Not All That Glitters is….. (01-31-14)

….Gold….or crystal, for that matter.

Some of the people in our group enjoy panning for gold and spent a fair amount of time panning through the mud, looking for the stuff that glitters.  Unfortunately, as far as I know, they didn’t find any, but I’m sure they had fun looking and teaching other people how to do it.

Meanwhile, Paul and I made two trips to Crystal Mountain, looking for…crystals.  The first day we went it was pretty cloudy so we decided we needed to go back a second time, in case it was the cloud cover that was causing us to not find anything.

The views from Crystal Hill are pretty nice and the weather was perfect.

Searching for crystals reminds me of searching for sea glass- You are constantly looking down, checking for anything that glints in the sunshine. At Crystal Hill, you’re not allowed to dig for them, you can only take what you can see sitting on the surface.

In the end, we did find a few nice pieces- two that are pretty good size.

In addition to all the fun, of course we have the usual chores to do.

  It was time to move to a new spot when it was time to empty our tanks.  The line can be quite long so we kept an eye on it and timed it so we had a short wait.  Exciting, eh? We did have a little excitement though.

While we were putting fresh water in our tank a woman told us she had just lost her little dog, who had jumped out of her rig.  I got out the binoculars to start searching, and called our friends who were still nearby and they came out to help search.  About 40 minutes later the dog was found and everyone was happy again.

 

The laundry piled up to the point where we made a trip into town to get it done.  It was a large Laundromat, with about 50 dryers, so several women got the brilliant idea of writing down which dryers their clothes were in.  Apparently they had no paper, because they all wrote the numbers on their hands.  Too funny. (Hey, we’re easily entertained)

With not much TV available, Paul was running out of reading material, so we went on the hunt for more books by one of our favorite authors.  We went to several book stores, then ended up at this place.  This is a famous bookstore, but we’ve never been here before, nor did we realize what it was until we got out of the truck.  See, the man who runs this bookstore is a nudist- and he wears only what the town requires of him, which apparently, is a sock.

I say apparently because we happened to show up on a day when the store was closed.  Oh well.

NAS, Pensacola, Florida (12-4-12)

We’re not staying in Florida yet, we’re actually staying in Summerdale Alabama, at an Escapee’s park about a half hour from the beach, but we took a day trip to Pensacola to visit the Naval Aviation Museum.

The Museum has two hangars full of airplanes,memorabilia and historical displays.

The NAS (Naval Air Station) in Pensacola is also home to the world famous Blue Angels.  Although we didn’t get to see them practice, I did watch two of them take off and fly around.

 

Inside the museum there were many Blue Angel displays, and interactive exhibits.  There were several cockpits that we could climb into….

This is me in the cockpit of a vintage Blue angel plane.  There were also several flight simulators, but you had to pay extra- anywhere from $5-$20 depending on what you want to experience.  We decided it wasn’t worth it for us.

I admit that I pretty quickly had information overload.  Paul has more of an interest in military information than I do, but this display, part of a larger Vietnam exhibit,  brought back memories! The case is full of MIA-POW bracelets that were sold back in the 1970s.  Each bracelet is engraved with the name of a Vietnam vet who was either a POW, or Missing In Action.  A bracelet would be bought and worn by someone (lots of teenagers bought them) until the soldier came home.  Over 5 million bracelets were sold.

My favorite part of the day was the trolley tour.  Our driver, Dave, is retired military and had a great sense of humor.  As we drove around looking at planes, he not only told us the history and significance of each aircraft, he told us many anecdotal stories about them.  Of course, he also told us that some of the stories may not be true.

This plane is the SNJ Texan, which was flown during World War II.  The story is that before the U.S. entered the war, Canada asked us to sell them these planes, but we felt that politically we needed to maintain a more neutral stance so we refused.  However, soon thereafter, a small fleet of these planes was flown north, close to the Canadian border.  The pilots then took a lunch break, leaving the planes alone- and when they got back, the planes were gone!! Dave said he wasn’t sure if the story is true, but said years ago he gave a tour to a veteran who said he was there when it happened.

When landing on an aircraft carrier, a plane goes from 150 mph to zero in about 2.5 seconds. Its really more of a controlled crash than a landing.  In 1963 the Navy wanted to find out if a C-130, with its 130 foot wingspan, could land on a carrier. They borrowed a plane from the Marines to use as a test, and, off the coast of Massachusetts, were actually successful landing the C-130 on the carrier 21 times, clearing the on deck control tower by only 15 feet.  The Navy concluded that although do-able, it wasn’t practical, so no other C-130 has ever landed on an aircraft carrier.(This story IS true, and this is the actual plane that did the landing)

When this plane first took to the skies in the 1960s, the government received numerous phone calls that told about a UFO that had picked up an airplane and was flying off with it.

We spent most of the day at the museum and didn’t see everything.

Quartzsite, AZ (01-18-12)

Quartzsite is a town in Arizona….technically.  But  if you ask an RVer what Quartzsite is, you’ll probably get a different answer.  It’s more than a town, its an experience, or a feeling, if you will.  The small town of Quartzsite is invaded during the month of January by hundreds of thousands of RVers.  We all stake a small claim in the desert, and call it home, for a few days or a few weeks.  In our case, it’s our desert home for 10 days.  We are sitting here, in the middle of nowhere, with just the water we have in our tank,  and  our generators, for the next 10 days. Ok, well not exactly.  We are surrounded by our friends- about 25 of them. 

Most of us are Escapees, or full time RVers.  Some we have met before, some we are meeting for the first time.  But we all have something in common.  We are calling this little piece of desert “home” for the next few days.

.  There is a communal  campfire every day/evening.  The people surrounding it vary, but it’s there for whoever wants to sit by it.  Usually Paul and I are out there, since we love campfires, but tonight I decided I HAD to write my blog. I can hear the laughter from inside the trailer and I know everyone is having a great time.

    

The sky is so beautiful, day or night, I can’t resist taking pictures every chance I get. 

 With so many people, there is an incredible  variety of things  to do every day. We start the day with a walk at 9:30 am. for anyone who is interested. Usually I am.  An hour later, we have walked 3 miles, and gotten some cardio in (and some chatting).

Paul and Steve borrowed two ATVs and went for a ride this afternoon. I elected to be safe and not risk further injury to my wrist.

Yesterday Paul and I walked 3 miles and found a geocache.  We got back in time for the potluck supper that our group was having.

Monday we went to “Silly Al’s Pizza” for dinner.  We waited outside for an hour and a half for our table for 19 to be ready, but we were  having so much fun talking, we barely noticed the time (except we could smell the excellent pizza, so we were starving).

Well, the computer battery is dying, so  I guess I’ll have to post more some other time. ..

boondocking in the desert (1-16-2011)



rendezvous in the desert

 We have left the lap of luxury and exchanged it for the sparse desert, and we are having an absolute blast.  We are camped out with about 15-18 other rigs, with a central fire pit set up for all to share.  Because we are literally in the desert,  there are no amenities.  No water, no sewer, no electricity.  Some people have solar panels, some have generators, and some have both.  Some people can generate enough of their own power to watch TV!  We can't, though.  We just have a small generator thats good enough to recharge our batteries and run some of our electrical outlets. We don't "boondock" too often so it isn't worth the investment to get anything more than that.  Most of these people are "Escapees"- members of a club that is comprised mostly of people who live and travel full time in their RVs.  Its not a requirement, in order to be in the club though, so some people here are just on a long term vacation, (or people who happened to already be camping in this part of the desert!). But because we all have a certain lifestyle in common, it gives us plenty to talk about!   As I just said to a friend of mine,being here really feels like an old fashioned neighborhood where you see people sitting out on their porches with a cup of coffee, chatting with the neighbors.  Very hard to describe the sense of camaraderie there is here.





stuck in the sand~

     The day we got here we helped "rescue" a fellow RVer who had taken a wrong turn and ended up stuck in the sand.  We have met an incredible amount of people, and have had the chance to actually get to know them a bit.      The days have a very loose routine, where everyone tends to gather a bit in the morning for coffee, before either taking off for the day to do something, or seeing what anyone else may be interested in doing. Yesterday I went for a bike ride with 3 other women, and tomorrow I am going hiking.




Our class president, Sandie, getting a vote on plans for a Pizza Party.



 Later in the day we tend to meet up again for happy hour.  Yesterday we had food set out and we all nibbled our way through the dinner hour.  Today was the saddest day.  Paul and I took off at lunch time to go find a sports bar so we could watch the Patriots play in the playoffs.  Sadly we saw them lose to the Jets, of all teams. Ugh.  No Superbowl for us this year.

   





Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!

     Well, we brought in the new year in style this year.  We dressed up in our best jeans and headed for the clubhouse for an evening of fun and music.  We sat with a great bunch of people, most of whom we have just met for the first time.  There was a live band, and dancing, which is one of our favorite ways of having fun.  We realized that its actually been quite a long time since we've had the chance to dance!  We all managed to make it till midnight, but not much beyond it.
     You would think that after all that excitement, we would take the next day to relax, but nope!  We headed off to the Pima Air and Space Museum in nearby Tucson.  There are two sections of this museum, but we could only see one, since we found out after we got there that the "Boneyard" is not open on the weekends.  The Boneyard is a "graveyard" of thousands of old military airplanes, out in the Arizona desert.
We did get to see the actual museum, which still had hundreds of planes dating from pre-World War II to the present.  I enjoyed seeing the few planes that I had heard of, like the B-52, the B-17 and a couple of others.  Paul was much more interested in the displays than I was, that's for sure.  We took the bus tour around the facility, which was narrated by the driver.  It turns out that he is retired US Air Force, as are most of the volunteers here.  It was clear that he had a wealth of knowledge about the planes, and in fact, had flown several of them himself.

    I think I might have enjoyed this place a little more if the weather had been a little better, but sad to say, it was barely 40 degrees outside and nothing (except the tour bus and restaurant) was heated.  I was so cold all day, I was happy to get back into the truck at the end of the day.
      I am looking forward to getting some hiking done, but seriously- the other night it got down to 17 degrees, the coldest we've been in since we went on the road, and daytime temperatures have been in the low 40s. It's supposed to warm up tomorrow, so we'll pass today watching the Patriots play, if we can find it on TV.

What the heck? I thought we were in Arizona?!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this picture is the exception.  It's what you can't see that actually tells the story.  You can't see the wind that is howling at about 40 mph.  You can't see the mountains in the distance, that are there, and absolutely beautiful.  You can't see the snow, that has been falling for an hour or so now, and you can't see the temperature, which is in the low 30s and is expected to bottom out at 14°.  Welcome to Arizona.

We left El Paso Tuesday and hit the road for Benson, Arisona.  We are staying at  an Escapees RV Park here for a week.  The Escapees is an RV club that we belong to, a lot of whose members are full time Rvers, like us. My Escapees friends are the ones who usually post comments on my blog (Thank you!).  We arrived yesterday and I was so tired I actually took a nap.  We had gotten up early so we could try and get to Benson before the wind kicked up too much, and we did actually beat it.  

At happy hour, there was a Polar Bear Party at the clubhouse, serving frozen Mudslides.   While we were there we met Loralie and Lee, finally!  We've been pretty much following 2 steps behind them for the last few months, so it was great to be able to finally catch up to them for a bit!  I'm sure we'll be spending some time with them both here, and in Yuma in the coming weeks.  We were also chatting with another couple, discussing our recent adventures, and realized that they had been parked next to us while were were at Guadalupe National Park.  What a small world!  They like to hike quite a bit, so we are hoping to get together with them some day, and go for a hike.  If the snow ever stops.

Yosemite National Park- Day 1

As we drove and walked through Yosemite National Park, I tried to decide what words I would use to sum up the park and what my impressions of it are.  That's very difficult to do when you have a limited vocabulary!   I guess if I had to use one word, it would be "huge".  Not "vast" like Big Bend, because in Big Bend there are no trees to block the "vastness".  Here, there are trees, huge ones, and  huge rocks, and views, huge views, everywhere you look. There really aren't words that convey the feeling I got.  There was a feeling of excitement of course, of feeling insignificant, but also the feeling that there have been  so many people  here exploring this wilderness, and I couldn't wait to be one of them, and how great it is that this place is being preserved so that we can all enjoy it.
    The RV Park we are staying in is about an hour and a half from the visitors center. On the way in, that was no problem,  I was captivated by the views anyway.  On the way home, at 8 pm though,  it got old since I was so tired.  Plus we then had to stop to go food shopping and eat dinner.  It was one long day.
      There were two hikes we were particularly  interested in doing, but we decided to do the shortest of the two on our first day.  We hiked the Mist Trail (appropriately named) up past Vernal Falls to Nevada Falls, then back down Muir Trail, for a total of about 7 miles and 1900 ft elevation gain.  Luckily the views were spectacular and the photo opportunities many, since we had to stop frequently to catch our breath along the way. The plus side to the fact that we can't hike Half Dome, due to snow, is that the waterfalls-and there are lots of them- are positively gushing with water. As we were hiking, whether we could see a waterfall or not, we could always hear one.  It was never quiet in the forest.  There were also lots of people, but not to the point where it felt overcrowded.
All in all it was a great, but tiring, first day in Yosemite.  This morning I am doing laundry, how fun.  This afternoon we are leaving this park for 2 nights, and meeting Kevin, Suzy, Kirk and Karen at a Federal campground to spend the weekend.  We'll come back to this campground on Sunday.

Yosemite National Park

 We have cancelled our reservation for inside Yosemite National Park. It snowed there again a few days ago, which means the cables for Half Dome will probably not be up before we leave the area, and we won't be able to hike it. I am really disappointed, but we'll just have to try again next year.  We'll still be here for a week, and do a lot of hiking, but not Half Dome.