San Diego, California (here we come!)

Every time we come to California we sing the theme song from the "The Beverly Hillbillies" since we have been called "the Clampetts" a time or two in the past.  We love to come to Santee Lakes Recreation Area in Santee, California because, well it's lovely, it has 2 pools, lots of birds, and it's very reasonable.  But most of all we love to come here because it signals the beginning of another fabulous visit with our "outlaw" Bill.  No only does this mean our sides will be hurt from laughing, but Les will have a golf buddy, and I get to use Bill's newly renovated kitchen (oh and that's a long funny story too).  He claims he doesn't mind if I take over his space since he doesn't cook that much and I am grateful  for his hospitality.  And so it goes, we over ate brownies, pie, pasta, corned beef, chicken and then we went out to lunch!  Bill took us to the Beach, photos posted below and we enjoyed a surf side lunch.  We love the Ocean (not to swim in however there are "things in there!) but there is nothing more calming than the ocean waves.  One week went by way too quickly and we were reluctant to leave but had a lunch appointment with our friends Peter & Jeanne in Cave Creek Arizona so off we went!  And here's a funny story...on our way to Phoenix somewhere near Yuma AZ Les looked over the westbound side of the road and said "hey there goes Vic and Willy".  Sure enough I wrote to her later and she confirmed they were westbound and we were eastbound, safe travels, small world!

Lake Havasu, Arizona

This is one of our favorite places to stay, our site looks on to the Lake and although we don't pay for "waterfront" we are pretty darn close.  Our friends, Ron, Alison and their baby Oliver camp a few sites away on the waterfront so we are always able to have a direct view from their campsite.  They arrived a day later than we did and this enabled us to spend almost 2 weeks with one another, enjoying meals and outings. Alison is super knowledgeable about birds and flowers so we learn something every day from tapping her brain.  Ron is the go-to guy for car knowledge and also follows IRV2 closely so we can still be up to date on issues without having to glean the information ourselves off the website.  We love their 3-legged baby Oliver and other than Gracie (Tommy & Sheila's little baby) Oliver is the only animal to come inside the coach with our two cats.  They were fine together and when the cats were getting annoyed they just got up and went into the bedroom.

Here is our view from our site.

There are several choices for putting in boats with some new ramps constructed recently with very large parking lots.  Lucky for us Ron & Alison have a beautiful pontoon boat and invited us out a few times.  Les & Ron worked together to get it ready and unloaded while Alison & I made some lunch and snacks so they didn't faint!  Ron expertly maneuvered the boat under the London Bridge and down the River so we could watch a few knuckleheads (spring breakers!) jump off a large tall (maybe 40-50 feet) rock.  Ah to be young and foolish again!  We also went up and down the Colorado, south of our location to the Indian Casino but just looked around that day.  Another time we geared up for a day long trip that was started at the Park and heading north up to Needles CA to where Route 40 crosses the river.  A stop for fuel at the local marina and a trip thought another marina resort found us beaching the boat for lunch break.  We had a blast every single time we "sailed" but I think that Oliver enjoyed it the most, sun, wind in his hair and a comfortable place to sleep! It so happened that the weather was unusually warm, okay it was HOT, most days in the low to mid 90's. Being in the boat with the beautiful breeze was really the best place we could be other than in air conditioning and heck that's no fun!  As we were going up the River we saw a huge rock with a side view of an "Indian in Headdress", photo attached as well as Petroglyph on the rocks in an area that few people can get to.  What a treat for us.  Click on the photo to enlarge to see detail.

So our time came to an end and we were sad to part but we already made our reservations to connect next year! You know the saying, "you meet the nicest people RVing", this we can attest to.

Our trek to Arizona begins...

Here we go!  After our trip up North we headed back to Florida and picked up our new Jeep. Finally we have a 4-door vehicle back behind us and I surely wasn't sorry to see that 2-door Jeep go.  I'll post a couple of photos for you.

Off we went to meet Tommy, Sheila, Randy & Tanya at Belle Terra RV Resort in Foley, Alabama. What a fun time and although it was very cold there we were happy that our site had a gas fireplace that we could all gather around and swap stories.  As always we lined up by year of Entegra Cornerstone's, 15-16-17.  After a week we left with Tommy & Sheila and headed to Arizona, our final destination for a while.  We stopped in Kerrville, Texas (my folks used to live there) and stayed at Buckhorn RV Resort, the place where many a rally is held although we were just a rally of 2 coaches this time.  We had met Chuck and Charlotte at Big Sky in July and since they live in the area we trekked up to their "ponderosa" and had a nice visit with them.

We followed one another until we reached the Casa Grande AZ area, where Tommy & Sheila continued to their RV resort on the west side of Phoenix and we split off to our State Park destination near Apache Junction at Lost Dutchman.  It was a wonderful park (water and electric only) and we stayed there for 2 weeks.  Here is our view from our front windshield.  Unfortunately we didn't get too much time to hike as we were busy with regular maintenance, both of the coach and us!  They were visiting a friend near Phoenix and then planned on continuing onto Indio Motor Coach Resort in Indio, CA while we hung around in the Apache Junction/Gold Canyon area. 

We did meet up with them for a tour of the Penske Museum in Scottsdale and of course lunch!

We met up again in Tucson for a few days before they headed home and we headed to Lake Havasu State Park.  We stayed at the state park (Catalina) in Tucson but we did get to visit Old Tucson and had some laughs.  Here's our goofy, fun photos of our visit to the movie set!