November, 2002
A new
month and a new adventure! On Friday, November 1 we drove from Verde
Valley south to Casa Grande. We made a stop in Cottonwood to have an oil
change on the Bounder at an accommodating GM dealer who had ordered a Ford oil
filter for us earlier in the week, and at a Flying J in Phoenix where we filled
up on gas and added stabilizer to the tank in preparation for a few months of
sitting. We arrived at Palm Creek Golf and RV Resort (click here to see photos
of the resort) in mid afternoon. It took us about an hour to
check in, pay all the deposits and get hooked up to utilities at our site.
The park was about 1/4 full when we arrived (about 2000 spaces total) but we
expect it will fill up soon. There were only 3 vacancies when we made our
reservation last June. Two new buildings are under construction in
the central activities area and are expected to be finished around Dec.
15. That will make a total of 5 large activity buildings with many rooms
of various special equipment. Over our first weekend here we spent time
getting the rig set up for a long stay-doing a few things that we don't usually
do for a week or so stay. We took bike rides around the resort to get our
bearings and learn where things are. We even found some residents in a
Bounder from near Marysville. We made several trips "into town" and
located various stores and restaurants. In the evenings we played cards at
the activity center meeting a few of our neighbors. We shared "happy hour"
with some neighbors on Fairy Duster (Tom wants to know why we didn't get a space
on "Eagle" or "Sandy Desert") who are here from British Columbia. In
looking over the schedule of activities it looks as though we'll have plenty to
do in the next several months.
As I
write this paragraph, we have been at Palm Creek for a week. Some
reflections at this point.........there aren't enough hours in the
day! There are so many things that we can do here that we can't do
them all. The weather here is great! Even the days of "bad weather"
were warm and somewhat sunny, although I'm sure we'll have some definitely bad
weather sometime before April! There is little humidity (25% maybe) and we
have not had the A/C on at all! It has been around 80* each day.
People are very friendly and active. There is a constant parade of
walkers, bikers and even some roller-bladers past our site from sun-up to
sunset. The golf course, tennis courts, shuffleboard, etc. are always
busy. We have attended some card nights and Mary has gone to quilting
meetings and bingo night. Tom has played duplicate bridge several
times. We have shared "happy hour" some fun neighbors from Canada
and Kansas but we still have a lot of vacant spaces around us. But, the
line-up at the registration building is constant. Mary had gone to "social
tennis" on our first Monday and found the group to be extremely friendly and a
comfortable group of men and women to play with. So, on Wednesday Tom went
along to play. Unfortunately, he found his upper body moving faster than
the lower part, and fell hard on his left side, cracking some ribs. By the
end of the week he was feeling a little better, but in no way ready to resume a
lot of physical activity. Great way to start the
winter!!!! We were glad when election day
was approaching. In our travels we had listened to two solid weeks
of election advertising in Colorado, two weeks in New Mexico and then two weeks
in Arizona. We knew a lot about candidates in those states, but had
trouble punching our "chads" on the Ohio absentee ballots. Wouldn't you
know ---- Arizona's election for governor was too close to call, so we continue
to hear news reports from each candidate's point of view until they decide they
can declare a winner. On Friday, Nov. 8, good friends
from Ohio, Nancy and Rex Wilsen came for a visit. They have a winter home
in Sun Lakes, AZ, about 45 minutes from us. We had a nice visit and a
chance to show them around our park. We hope to get together with them
again soon. On Saturday we drove up to Mesa and spent quite a bit of
time looking at new Dutch Star and Bounder Diesel RVs. No purchases were
made!!! On Sunday we visited a nearby housing development that was having
an open house....just checking out all the options! Our second week
promises to be as busy as the first.
The end of the month has come.....................and we're into a pretty regular routine. Tom's ribs are feeling a lot better. He has been doing a lot of swimming, some walking and biking and a little bit of chipping and putting at the practice green. He also now has a regular partner with whom he plays duplicate bridge about three times a week and he's been to several poker nights. Mary has a scheduled ladies tennis group on Mondays and other days participates in "social tennis" with a great group of people who just show up at the appointed hour. Her other project has been golf lessons. She's still not ready to play a round on a course, but is picking up pointers from two different instructors and doing a lot of practicing. In the evenings we both have been to card nights and dominoes and attended a Mexican Fiesta night.
We've
enjoyed the company of our Canadian neighbors. One day we drove together
to the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument and learned a little about the
history of this part of the desert. There's not much left of the ruins,
which were built somewhere around 1350, but the Park Service is working to
protect what there is. The protective roof over the ruins was built so long
ago it is now "protected property" as well. On other trips we
searched out the Harrah's casino on the Ak-Chin Indian Reservation and toured
the mobile Elvis' Graceland museum. Another trip took us to Coolidge where
we found a Super Wal-Mart. :-) We had to make a return trip to the new
housing development we visited our first week here when we were notified that
we'd won the first place door prize. They probably just wanted to try once
again to sell us a house, but we resisted and thanked them for the nice jacket
and cap we won!
The
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument; Coolidge, AZ
Thanksgiving dinner in the Bounder at Palm Creek Golf and RV Resort
Bev
and Don from Kelowna, British Columbia joined us for Thanksgiving dinner in the
Bounder. Mary managed to cook plenty of food in the small kitchen space,
and we had so much leftovers, we repeated the whole dinner again Friday
night. Don had a career with military helicopter units and Bev worked in a
hospital operating room before their retirement....lots of tales to
share.
Thanksgiving weekend is supposed to be the Christmas shopping season
kickoff. With sunshine and palm trees it didn't seem much like
Christmas. But, when we got into traffic at the mall, in the 6th largest
city in the US, it suddenly seemed like Christmas shopping traffic. On
Saturday the 30th of November, we drove into the Phoenix area and did a little
shopping...skipping the stores that had really long lines. That evening we
attended a surprise birthday party for our former Toledoan friend Rex
Wilsen. Nancy did a good job of planning and keeping it a surprise and
when he came home from playing golf, there was a group of 20 or so people
greeting him with a rousing rendition of the Beatle's song "When I'm 64."
It was a fun evening with some more "snowbirds."
Over
the last week of November we had some more "wintry weather." There were
high winds for several days and after playing tennis and golf lessons we felt
rather "gritty" from the sand in the air. Several nights we had some much
needed rain and the golf course had to be pumped out in a few places. The
days have cooled a bit, with highs in the high 60's and low 70's. Back in
Ohio our grandchildren were enjoying the snow and sent us photos to let us know
what we were missing. We responded...
Surprise!
