HAPPY NEW YEAR 2018

When you're born in the 1950's, it seems unbelievable that we are now in the year 2018.  Yet here it is.  Reflecting back on my younger days, I remember simpler days.  Back when if you were bullied in school you didn't go crying to your parents, you simply took a big stick to the knees of your bully and that was the end of the problem.  A time before computers, cell phones, video games, streaming and extreme electronics.  My dream was to be a secretary, before secretaries were called administrative assistants.  I learned to type on a manual typewriter and take shorthand.  I used things like carbon paper, Rolex files and a paper calendar that sat on my desk to write in appointments.  It wasn't sexist to sit in the bosses office, legs crossed in a mini skirt and take dictation, pour coffee and water the plants.  Times sure have changed.

I knew I'd get married, have a house, children and a dog.  I didn't know that I'd be divorced in my 30's without any children and leave the cat and dog with my ex.  I didn't know that I'd remarry the love of my life, adopt two boys, a step daughter and two grand daughters. 

I've learned that in life, stuff happens to you whether you sit still or keep moving, whether you make plans or not and some of that stuff that happens is wonderful while some stuff not so wonderful.  But the stuff that happens has made me who I am today and I wouldn't change a thing.  Well, okay, maybe I'd like to re-do a few things differently but as you know that's not an option.

Well, anyways, enough of that.  I'm excited about 2018 and all its possibilities.  Denis and I are considering some life style changes this year.  More on that later.  We have set some amazing goals for this year and are very excited about the possibilities. 

We're loving our decision to spend the winter here in Yuma.  We're enjoying the amenities and activities at the park and getting to know some of the people.

Just for fun, here are some highlights of 2017. 

Zion National Park - Top of Angels Landing

La Paz, Mexico

On the beaches of Maine with my not so happy granddaughter

Mesa Verde National Park

Mystic, Connecticut with friends

Visiting Hell, Michigan

Voyageurs National Park

Valley of Fire with our traveling buddies, Kurt & Diane

Niagara Falls, NY

I hope you all are as excited about the New Year as we are.  Remember every moment of every day is a gift and needs to be enjoyed to its fullest.  Thank you for stopping in to say hi and God Bless.

CAREFREE VILLAGE RESORT - YUMA

I haven't written in a while because we've been too busy relaxing and settling in at our winter park.  We checked out this park last winter and decided to put down roots here for the winter.  Well, sort of, because we'll still be doing a bit a traveling but at least we now have a home base to come back to without worrying about the 2-weeks in and 1-week out thing.

We put out our finch bird feeders and sometimes have up to 20 birds fighting for a spot on the feeder.  The hummingbird feeder we purchased at The Big E (Eastern States Exposition) hasn't lured in any hummers yet but we still have high hopes for this state-of-the-art feeder.  Either that or we've been scammed.

This park has tons of activities to pick and chose from.  We've been going to the Tuesday and Friday beginner's line dancing lessons and we both are starting to get the knack of it.  Need lots more practice but it's lots of fun and good exercise.  Soon we'll get to the bowling, darts, water sports, bocci ball and shuffleboard games.

Yesterday, we invited Tony & Mieke over for the grand opening of the new pool.   They had live music (a chance for us to practice our line dancing), free hamburgers and raffles.  It was a fun day and I talked everyone in to a game of mini-golf.

Went to the Tamale Festival yesterday and enjoyed the food.  The dancers were fun to watch.

Tamale Festival young dancers

Finches are fighting for a piece of the action

Colorful costumes

The little ones were adorable

Denis making his moves on the dance floor

An hour and one-half of line dancing twice a week

Thanks for stopping in to say hi and God Bless.

QUICK DIP BEFORE SETTLING IN FOR THE WINTER

We stopped at Hotwell Dunes Recreation Area in Safford, Arizona for a natural soak.  The cool thing about this place is it's in the middle of the desert (2,000 acres of sand dunes, on BLM land).  The pools fill and empty by solar panels, so it empties at sunset and fills again at sunrise.  Nice clean water with lots of healthy minerals.

We spent a couple of nights in Bowie, Arizona at Dwayne's Jerkey (behind the gas station/store are full hookup sites). 

After our short stay in Bowie we headed for our winter place in Yuma.  We're all settled in and looking forward to staying in one place for a while.

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Met a nice couple that was boon docking here for two weeks

Beautiful colors 

Loving this area in the foothills

Nice large sites - Denis has made himself very comfortable

Tony & Mieke joined us in the game room today for a game of Mexican Train

The end of another beautiful day

Thanks for stopping in to say hi.  God Bless.

FORT BOWIE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

Left Guadalupe National Park in Texas this morning for a leisurely drive of 350 miles to Bowie, Arizona.  Dwayne's Fresh Jerky has an RV park in the back with full 50 amp hookups.  The campground is less than a half hour to Fort Bowie and Hot Well Dune Recreation Area.  We were all settled in by 3:30 and decided to take the 3-mile hiking trail to Fort Bowie ruins.  Sunset was around 5:30 and we figured we could get back before dark.  On the way to the park we saw free range cattle and longhorns standing in the road.  Not something you see every day.

The moderately difficult trail was well marked and a nice walk.  We snapped some pictures and headed back before dark.  Seeing a family of mule deer made the hike memorable. 

The original route into Fort Bowie was a wagon road built by soldiers.  The hike began at Apache Pass Road and passes historic features including ruins of the Butterfield Stage Station, post cemetery, Apache Spring and the site of the first Fort Bowie. 

Cattle have the right of way

Here we go

Single cloud looks like a UFO

Indian Hut

Many of these markers said killed by indians

Ruins everywhere

I'm glad we decided to take the hike today rather than being lazy and putting it off until tomorrow.
Thanks for stopping in to say hi and God Bless.

GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREATION AREA - ARIZONA

What a beautiful drive along U.S. 89 from Zion NP to Page, AZ.  This is all new territory for us and we're winging it as we go along.  We drove past Glen Canyon Dam and I quickly looked up the area in our National Parks book and found Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.  So we parked at a Walmart nearby, unhitched the car and drove 6 miles back to the Visitors Center.  Glad we did.  We got our park stamp for both the bridge and the recreation area.

Page is southern Utah and the 1.2 million-acre recreation area lies in the midst of the country's most rugged canyon country.  This is the Lake Powell area, the second largest man-made lake in the U.S. with a shoreline of 1,960 miles.

I'm already making plans to come back to visit this area and take the 7-hour boat tour to Rainbow Bridge National Monument to check out one of the world's largest natural bridge.

Rainbow Bridge - A picture of a picture

Beautiful rock formations and hoodoos

Glen Canyon Dam

Walked to the 3-mile round trip to the hanging gardens
in wind gusts of up to 58 miles per hour - intense

That's it for today, thanks for stopping in to say hi.

I'M STILL HERE

Hi my blogger friends and family, you may be wondering what the heck happened to me since I haven't posted since last October.  I'm happy to say that all is well and I've just been plain old lazy about keeping up to date on my blog.  I also have a new computer and haven't been uploading photos on it so I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to go about doing that.  I'll figure something out, I'm sure.

We obviously left Massachusetts before the cold weather set in and headed south.  We spent October and November in Florida and finally made the trip out to Dry Tortugas National Park.  Won't be doing that again due to a severe case of sea sickness on the return ferry trip.

We flew back to Connecticut for our traditional family Thanksgiving at my brothers.  We love going there and it's extra special with having our son, daughter and new grand daughter joining us.  My son is having our second grand daughter this July and we couldn't be more excited.

After our Thanksgiving holiday we flew back to Orlando TT just to pack up and start our travels stopping at Wilderness in Robersdale, AL, Abita Springs in LA, Bayview in Fulton, TX, Red Barn in Benson, AZ, Quartsite and the rest of the winter was spent between Yuma Lakes and Pilot Knob in Yuma, AZ.

For our anniversary we went with friends, Kurt and Diane, on a Mexican cruise.  It was wonderful spending time with them and visiting the ports of La Paz, Cabo San Lucas, Loretto.  Fun!

Right now, we're in the Vegas TT not because it's our favorite park, far from it, but because we wanted to see Kurt and Diane to do a bit of sightseeing.  Red Rock, Valley of Fire, the pedestrian walkway at the Hoover Dam and even an afternoon in downtown Vegas to tour the Mob Museum and the Bellagio flower display.

No pictures to share with you this time.  Does anyone know if I can attach or upload an email?  My husband sends out a weekly email to friends and family with photos and I'd like to just add that to my posts.  Suggestions welcomed.

Thanks for stopping in to say hi.

IMPERIAL NATIONAL WILDLIFE RUFUGE

Drove a half hour to the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge and glad we did.  The refuge protects wildlife habitat along 30 miles of the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California.

We drove through the Sonora desert to the 1.3 mile self-guided trail.  The trail took us through a rainbow of colors left by 20-30 million year-old volcanic activity.  The panoramic view of the Colorado River valley was beautiful.

One of the many overlooks

I'm still amazed finding water in the desert

The weather was perfect for a hike through the desert.  Sun was warm but not too hot.

This natural column of
rock is called a hoodoo and
was created by water
eroding from several directions

We were hungry and thirsty after our hike so the next stop was the Rio Loco Bar & Grill at Fisher's Landing.  I craved a beer and asked the bartender if he had a gluten-free brand.  He thought he did and spent a few minutes looking for it.  The curly fries, beer and beautiful view of the Colorado River was great.

Our view from the patio bar

Found a tasty gluten-free beer

Another view from the patio

The drive out to the refuge took us past the United States Yuma Proving Ground.  Plenty of wide open desert to do whatever they need to do.

Got back home around 5:00 and invited Tony & Mieke over for dinner and after dinner we watched War Room.  

What a wonderful day we had and I hope you did too.  Thank you for stopping in to say hi.

YUMA, ARIZONA FUN FACTS

Where are we? Yuma, Arizona

Did you know Yuma is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the sunniest place on earth with 339 bright days a year and less than 3 inches of rain annually.  (I think we just got our 3 inches).

Yuma is the country's highest producer of winter vegetables, especially lettuce. We are surrounded by crops and see the workers out there all day.

One of the many crops we pass by

Yuma is the site of the first railroad (1877) and highway bridge (1915) across the Colorado.  For your movie lovers, over 65 movies have been filmed in or around Yuma since 1913 including Star Wars, Jarhead and Resident Evil: Extinction.

With the help of the All Trails app, I found a moderate hiking trail called Telegraph Pass Trail.  The sun was warm with very little wind it was a good afternoon for taking a hike.  We were on the trail at 2:00 and back at the car around 4:30.  The trail was out and back with 836 feet elevation.  Easily got our 10,000 steps.  My Garmin clocked 5.6 miles for today. It felt good to put on our hiking boots and start hiking again, it's been a while.

The telecommunications towers
were  at the top and we had
great phone reception

It was a nice day and I hope you had a nice day too.  Thanks for stopping in to say hi.

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR EXCITEMENT, DON'T READ THIS POST

We've been goofing off, relaxing, being lazy, doing nothing and enjoying every minute of it.  I call it recuperating after our Israel tour.  I'm one of those people who feel a need to do something all the time and can feel guilty if I do nothing but I'm beginning to get over it.

I starting doing Tai Chi with Denis every morning and he's been joining me for 15-minutes of yoga stretching in the evening.  We haven't been doing so good with our 10,000 steps a day because my heel and his ankle have been acting up but we're better and have started walking again.

We purchased a new mattress to replace the 9-year old one in the motor home.  We got 60% off a Serta queen pillow-top at Sears and saved enough to buy a nice fluffy down comforter and new pillows.  So that is a nice treat.

Denis took the time to build in our reverse osmosis water system and he did a great job.  He installed a timer on the faucet to automatically turn it on and off so no more overfills because we forgot to turn the water off.

Didn't he do a good job?

Relaxing

They pick, sort, box and ship Foxy lettuce right here in Yuma

Lettuce fields in constant rotation, growing, harvesting, planting, resting

I left my old bathing suit at the Dead Sea and had to buy a new one - this one's from Costco of all places

Hope you enjoyed reading about this exciting adventure.  I'll try to be more entertaining next time.
Thanks for stopping in to say hi.