Crazy May 2022 (06-10-22)

 We started the month of May in Fresno,  CA hanging out with Paul’s fraternity brothers. 

From Fresno we were headed to San Diego to meet up with Paul’s brother and his wife for the Zydeco festival, Gator by the Bay.  We had a couple of days to kill on the way there, so we stopped north of L.A. and invited our daughter Jess to join us at 6 flags for the day.

I am glad Paul is willing to go on all the crazy rides with her, because I can only handle  a few roller coaster rides in a day.

Down in San Diego, the Zydeco Festival was in full swing when we got there.  We stayed at the same RV resort as Paul’s brother and were able to do dinners together, and Uber to the festival. 

We met up with Sue’s son Shad, his wife Amy, and their son William.  William had never had crawdads, but once he tried them, he was immediately hooked.

The festival has 7 stages, all with live music happening all day long.  There are tons of food vendors, and every day at 2 pm there is a parade through the festival grounds.

From there we headed home for a couple of days- just long enough to enjoy one day on the lake. 

 Then we took off again to meet up with Paul’s brother and Sue again, this time in Laughlin NV , where their RV club was staying, and we all enjoyed a river boat cruise.

Las Vegas is the nearest Costco to us, and I needed new glasses, so we headed there by way of Boulder City, NV.  Boulder City is near the Hoover Dam, and we had never taken a tour, so we thought it was about time. Actually, Boulder City was built to house the thousands of workers who built the Boulder (now called Hoover) dam.

In 1905, much of the Imperial Valley was destroyed by the flooding of the Colorado River. Part of the solution to keep that from happening again, was the building of Hoover Dam. Between 1930 and 1934, the dam was created, and it’s creation in turn, created Lake Mead.

Glasses ordered, we headed home to get ready for Memorial Day weekend. Since we’ve had the house, every Memorial Day Weekend, my cousin Linda from Phoenix brings her friends to party in Havasu.  This was our first year back since Covid, but my cousin couldn’t make it.  No worries, her friends came anyway!

They are a wild bunch, and always fun. 

They party hard and yet two mornings the women convinced me to get up at 5:30 to go hiking.

 

I took them to one of my favorite hikes- SARA'S Crack-a nearby slot canyon. The guys were off mountain biking by 6 am as well.

Back from our outings, we  packed up for the day and took off

 on the boat....

...one day taking it up river to a restaurant...

 

and another day just lazing around on the lake.

If you had asked us that weekend when we would be leaving Havasu, we wouldn’t have had any idea- but the minute the group left for home, we started cleaning and packing.

At the last minute, we decided to drain the pool again, so it would have softer water for the summer. We had to do as much of it at night as we could because the high temperature can crack the plaster.

One more, momentous thing happened in May.  Paul sold his jet boat. 

It was no easy decision, let me tell you- he helped build the boat just after graduating college, and has a million happy memories of using it.

As soon as they heard the news, his fraternity brothers started sharing memories and pictures (yes, that's my husband leaning on the boat).

 

 

We haven’t used it in a very long time however, and it was time to sell it to someone who would.

California, Here We Come (08-14-21)

 

Having spent our last week in Texas helping Paul’s mom, we were ready to head to California. Before we left, we were treated to one hellacious storm, with winds apparently clocked at 60 mph- based on the damage we saw in the RV park-I can believe it.

Along the way we decided to make a short stop at home. We dropped off some stuff and fixed the irrigation system at the house.

Our original plans for California were thwarted by the lack of available RV spaces in southern California. We were going to start south and then head to northern CA, but ended up heading north first. We called our friends in Fresno and gave them the heads up that we would be arriving in a day or so. 

We haven't seen our CA friends in over 2 years, due to Covid, so it was awesome to be able to catch up on all the happenings. The week was full of group meals, including the night that Nancy and Bill came down from their farm to meet us all for dinner.

They brought with them boxes of fresh peaches and tomatoes. Wow. Peaches that taste like peaches, and tomatoes that taste like tomatoes. It’s one of the things I will miss about California- no where else in the country have I had fruits and vegetables that taste so good.

We were invited to a “zoom wine tasting” at Karen’s friend’s house. The winery shipped boxes that contain 5 small wine samples per person, and at 5 pm, the zoom meeting started, and the tasting began. We had technical difficulties with the TV we were using so our zoom ended up being a call on speaker phone. It was still fun.

As the night wore on, we made the switch to tequila, and more silliness ensued.

Once the weekend arrived, we headed up the mountain to Kirk and Karen’s cabin. We knew the 2020 Creek Fire came close to their cabin, and caused significant damage to the area, but it was awful to see the devastation and loss of property  first hand.

 

We heard that the fire moved so fast at times that the firefighters couldn’t save all the homes, so they made their decision based in part on who had maintained a “defensible space”. The structures that had all the debris and deadwood removed from around them, were prioritized. I guess it makes sense to do it that way, since not everything could be saved.

We had our usual fun time at the cabin, with the guys finding enough projects to keep them busy.

  And again, most of the fun seemed to revolve around food and drink. With the temperatures in the city reaching over 100 degrees, it was nice to be in the mountains and be able to eat outside.

After a little over a week, we said goodbye to everyone and headed southwest to Santa Barbara. We had discovered that our daughter had a week off, so she drove up to meet us and we spent a couple of days exploring.

Our day in Santa Barbara started at the wharf. 

From there we did a couple of wine tastings as we walked around town, and ended up back at the wharf, where we had dinner reservations. 

There were so many wine rooms it was hard to choose which ones to try, but we narrowed it down to two. It was a huge perk to us that we had Jess’s car, so we didn’t have to park the dually, and a huge perk for her that dad doesn't drink wine, and didn't mind being DD.

The following day we walked around Solvang, “the Danish capital of America”.  We had been here once before, but Jess never had been, so we made sure she tried Aebleskivers, a Danish dessert that is similar to doughnuts.

She seemed to enjoy them, just as she enjoyed meandering through all the stores.

Leaving Jess, we braved the L.A. traffic to make our way south towards Oceanside.  It was a bonus that because our visit was delayed, Paul’s brother was back in town, so we got to see them, as well as Paul’s niece and nephew. I didn’t manage to take a single picture!

This summer did not at all go as we had originally planned, and we had to be flexible and quick on our feet so to speak to keep up with the changes.

Now, instead of heading north, we needed to  head back to El Paso to handle some things for Paul’s mom.  Even that plan changed a bit.  We once again stopped at the house, this time so that Paul could replace the brakes on the trailer- doing it at the house was more comfortable than trying to do it in an RV park.

While we were in California, Paul's mom celebrated her 91st birthday.

October in Havasu (11-18-19)

October in Havasu is a busy time, but then again, Havasu has something going on almost all the time. Not everything is of interest to us, but there is still plenty to keep us busy. After a thorough cleaning of the house and camper, after our summer adventures, we were ready to venture out.







Events in the first week or so of October included boat races in the channel, the World Finals Jet Ski competition, concerts in the park and of course the usual car shows.

We also found out about a Meet Up on the lake of owners of Avalon boats, the brand that we own. Unlike last October, the weather this year was perfect for boating so we were happy to be on the lake as much as possible.

We spent a fun few hours chatting with other owners. We were all surprised at how much we have in common.  In addition to boating, most of us have RVs and desert exploration toys, and most of us are Elk members.

As happy as we were to be home, after a long and busy summer, you’d think that we would hunker down and stay put.  But we didn’t. Paul needed his yearly dermatologist appointment, which is in Fresno CA,  so we packed up the mustang and went on a road trip to see our friends in central California.

I think I apologized 4 times to our friends for making this a last minute trip, thereby torpedoing any plans they already had for that weekend. 

They claimed they didn’t mind, and we sure did have fun relaxing at Kirk’s cabin, helping with various projects,  and hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

On the way back to the city, I was all done with the fun Paul was having driving on the curvy mountain roads, so I rode with Karen and let Kirk be his co-pilot.












Note to self for next time- the drive to Fresno is almost 7 hours.  It would be better if we had more than 3 days to spend there.  But this time around we were expecting company back home the following weekend, so we hightailed it out of CA back to Havasu.

We were finally going to get to see our daughter Jess, who lives in L.A.  She took the weekend off to come out to see us.

Our other guests, Sharon and John, were due to arrive the day after Jess got here, but with the weatherman calling for perfect boating weather, we convinced them to come a day early, so we could all go out on the water, with both the boat and the jet ski.

As always, all too soon Jess left (at least she is coming back for Thanksgiving!) and we had one more day with John and Sharon before they took off for their next destination.
Wanting to give them a well rounded idea of activities at the PPP, we took them for a ride into the desert.

With the house quiet again, we went back to working on our projects. The water in Havasu is very hard, so every once in a while we have to drain the pool and put in fresh water. This time we decided it was also time to clean the tile of the calcium build up.  

It was a lot of work, but the end result was worth it.

The end of October brings London Bridge Days, when everyone celebrates the attraction that helped grow Lake Havasu into a town- the London Bridge.

The highlight of the festivities is a parade down Main St. This year’s theme was “life in the desert. With numerous floats, bands, and performers,  it was a lot of fun.