January, 2006

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2006!!!    Where does the time go?  We’re into our 6th year of “fulltiming,”  and it has passed by us in a “flash of time.” On January 1st, we said good-by to our good friends, the Dews, in the Toledo area and drove back to Marysville, OH.  We spent another fun day playing with our granddaughters, then on January 3rd, we drove the girls to school, returned our rental car and went to the airport for our flight back to Phoenix.  Palm Creek friends, Cathy and Peter Nichita, met us at Sky Harbor and we caught up on Arizona happenings while waiting for our luggage to arrive on the next flight.  We had been at the Columbus and Dallas airports in time to catch earlier flights, but the bags did not. Back at Palm Creek we were immediately drawn into the activity schedule.  We now have several regularly scheduled bridge, golf and tennis dates each week, with an “odd event” and an evening of games thrown in every once in a while.  The tennis club had a social one evening where we were to each bring a pot of homemade soup.  Amazingly we had only one duplicate flavor in over 20 pots of soup…quite tasty! We had visitors in the park one afternoon…the Budweiser Clydesdales were in the area and made Palm Creek one of their stops.  Three semi-trailers arrived, housing the eight horses and their stalls, the wagon, all the supplies and equipment, and of course the Dalmatian mascot.   It was quite a project to get all the horses groomed and ready and hitched up to the wagon for ride around the park (complete with accompanying music).

The Budweiser Clydesdales paraded tall and proud through our park.

The Arizona State University Women’s Tennis Team came to Palm Creek one day for a demonstration.  It was amazing how fast they move and the strength they put into their shots.  Several weeks later a group of us went to the ASU campus in Tempe and watched their first varsity match.  The ASU team was ranked #26, and they “whomped” the 3rd ranked team from Texas, with about 30 adopted grandparents cheering them from the stands.  After the match, a group of us went to eat at the “Organ Stop Pizza.”   The restaurant is known for its giant Wurlitzer theater organ and pipes that fill the building, along with a lot of other instruments that are controlled by the organist.  It was quite a show

The Mighty Wurlitzer sits in the center of the dining room at Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa, AZ, surrounded by the banks of pipes.

The Palm Creek Fan Club doing "the wave" at the ASU Women's Tennis Match

On  Sunday, January 22 we packed up the motor home and drove the rig to Gila Bend, Arizona where we parked in rows at the Elks Club along with 80 other Newmar rigs.  We enjoyed a catered chicken dinner and meeting up with acquaintances we hadn’t seen in quite a while.  Early on Monday, one row at a time – every 20 minutes – all of us headed south to Ajo and Why, AZ and then into Mexico.  After driving through Sonoyta, it was another 60 miles to Puerto Penasco and the Playa Bonita  Resort and RV Park.  The sites are “tight” but we ended up with a view to the Sea of Cortez from our front window and backed up to several couples that we had become acquainted with through our websites and the Newmar group.  Our week stay at the beach had been “loosely organized” allowing us plenty of free time to enjoy the surroundings and friends.

Our Mexico "buddies"...the Emonds (left), the Paynes (top) and the Harpolds (below)

On Monday night we attended a happy hour and Mexican Sampler dinner at the  Resort’s restaurant where we enjoyed the margaritas and entertainment as well.   We joined one of several small 6-car caravans on Tuesday to tour the town.  The guide used Walkie-Talkies to point out various restaurants, markets and landmarks.  We stopped to visit a “hole-in-the-wall” bakery where they were baking bread in a long narrow brick oven.  A stop in a “shopping district” found us in lots of tiny shops selling the usual pottery, blankets and trinkets.  After the tour, we drove back to the fish markets and bought some fresh shrimp and scallops.  Then in the late afternoon, we gathered with Rich and Diane Emond, Norm and Linda Payne and Jim and Mary Hepold for a “raclette” dinner.  Rich and Diane have a “raclette grill” which has a stone griddle on the top and insertable paddles below the heating element.  We placed raclette cheese in the paddles to melt and cut up pieces of shrimp, scallops, chicken and sirloin along with assorted vegetables on the griddle.  We poured the melted cheese over red potatoes that Linda and Diane had cooked inside.  The grill was fairly small, so we enjoyed a “slow and easy” dinner hour as we visited, cooked and ate with our friends.

Cooking dinner with our "buddies."

The baker checking the brick oven.

A view across the bay from the Casa Del Capitan restaurant to the Playa Bonita RV Park on the beach.

The rest of the week was a pretty leisurely one.  We walked along the beach and although it was cool, we sat in the sunshine.  On a trip to “Old Town” we did some shopping in the native markets, spending most of our money on fresh seafood…yum!  The guys supervised the washing and waxing of the rigs…work done by locals and $66 for a total job on our 40-foot rig.  By the end of the week most of the Newmar coaches were a quite shiny group.  And of course, there were the happy hours on the “Veranda.” Our “rally fee” included some entertainment and several “surf and turf” dinners, the Mexican buffet and a great Sunday brunch in the RV Resort’s restaurant.  The wait staff did a great job with our large group and were quite entertaining themselves.  On Friday night our little group of 8 went out to eat at a restaurant high on the rocks overlooking the bay and the old section of town.  We had a beautiful view and a fantastic dinner.  Our final group dinner included the chance to break the traditional piñata.  On Sunday night we had our final delicious seafood cook-out while watching the sunset on the beach and on Monday morning we gave out our good-by hugs and headed back to Arizona with a week full of great memories.

Our group enjoying dinner at the park cantina.

Mary Harpold and Mary hugging the pinata before its demise.

Happy hour on the veranda.

Sunset at the beach on the Sea of Cortez.

Mary with a "namesake" at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Crossing back into Arizona on January 30 from Mexico was no problem, other than the gates at the Border Patrol were not designed for wide-body RVs.  We passed through ever so slowly -  watching the sides and mirrors carefully.  Just north of the border, we stopped at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.  We took in the informational slide show, viewed the exhibits and attended a ranger program.  We’d had trouble starting our car when we were getting ready to leave the campground earlier in the day, so decided against unhooking it from the rig and taking the scenic drive in the park.  Other than the unique species of fish that live in the park’s ponds, driving north on Highway 85 to connect to I-8 in Gila Bend we could see much of the same plant and animal life. We arrived back in Palm Creek just in time to get all set up in our site before dark. We spent the last day of the month doing chores to get us settled once again for a long stay.