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.