Soon after the party, Ron started looking in earnest for some property to buy. He looked and looked and looked and finally found a lot that he wanted me to look at. I was the reluctant one, but, this one lot looked promising, as it was bigger and on a corner.

Our new property

Original site of the gate, notice the low wall on the left

The new raised wall

We got a realtor to show us the inside of the mobile, which came fully furnished, and I liked the way it looked inside. The best thing about it was we could see glimpses of the mountains through the trees in all directions. So began our quest of acquiring this property, which started out for us making a ridiculously low offer. The surprising thing was

Notice there is no gate here now

that they came back with an acceptable offer, so we both agreed and it went into escrow. We wanted it to close in two weeks time, as we were paying cash, but, after a week, we hit a snag, as they hadn't done probate yet.....:(

Our new gate opening

What was surprising, though, was they had apparently decided that they didn't want to deal with this property anymore, so got probate done in record time and on Dec 2nd, the property was ours and looking back on it, it really

Large living room with windows all around

only took a little over two weeks past the original date to close.

Looking into dining room & kitchen, (Ron is changing the locks)

We didn't waste anytime after acquiring the keys, Ron had the side property walls all raised up to the 6 ft levels to provide more privacy for us and our neighbors.

Laying bricks for our patio by the bus

He also wanted the side gates more in line with backing in big rigs. The one side had a gate, but, it was moved over about 8 ft and the other side didn't even have a gate, so we added one. We upgraded the electric pedestal and added one more, for friends to come visit. We also had the plumber come out and upgrade the hot water heater and fix all the leaks we could find.

Trimming the trees with a chainsaw

On Dec 13th, we finally moved the bus onto the property. We have the one gate installed in front of the bus, and the other gate should be installed soon.

All cleaned up

Ron wants to remove all the palm trees and plant mesquite and palo verde trees instead, since it would be nice to have shade trees on the property. But, that takes planning, so for now, we'll keep the palms.

Getting ready to pour the cement and add brick wall to expand the patio

Even with all the waiting and work we've been doing, we haven't been idle. I've been going to Zumba gold classes three times a week and clogging class once a week. We have weekly movies to go to with other Boomers, going to dinner with friends and lots of card games with our various friends. Life has been great here, back in Yuma. We've also been going to our annual doctor visits and so far, we are still healthy. Ron takes walks around the neighborhood, getting to know everyone. All our neighbors are real nice and most of them are here year around, which makes it nice, they can keep an eye on our property for us. We even have a local cop as a neighbor, she's with the Wellton Police, which is the next town east of us past the mountains.



Just to let you know, we have plenty of room for visitors. We have an extra RV hookup for our RV'ing friends and extra beds for our non RV'ing friends. We have an add on to the mobile which for right now is an extra bedroom with bath, but, at some point, Ron may convert it into a workshop, which he'd really like to have. We only use the mobile for day use stuff and when people come over at night to play cards. We still sleep and watch TV in the bus. 

I was just looking over our blog to see where I had left off and oh, my gosh! Everything seems to be backwards, not sure how that happened, but, guess you all will figure out how it goes. It is now 2012, so Happy New Year to all of you out there, may this new year be better than last year.

But, it seems our blog is still stuck in last year, so maybe I can help out by updating it so you can all see what we've been up to since we left you last. We have been very busy, so I better get started!

At Gila Bend Family Camp

It was HOT in Glia Bend in late October....

It was finally time to split from Jack & Jeanne, they, on to their own adventures and us, heading towards Yuma for the winter. We did briefly stop for a few days in Gila Bend to reconnect with some Navy friends. They are staying at the famcamp at the Luke AFB annex right outside Gila Bend, he is working at the paper plant nearby. Yes, amazing as it sounds, they make paper towels, napkins and toilet paper from pulp flown in from various sources, a lot of it from South America. We had a lot of catching up to do, because I hadn't seen them since we left Delaware in 1990, Ron had visited with them more recently.

It had been beautiful weather in Deming, but, we were at 4300 ft and heading down to less than 1000, so it was bound to be warmer and it was. I was glad we were in a full hookup so we could run our air conditioner. We had a great time with them, we even headed down to Ajo one of the days to look around and have lunch. All too soon, it was time to leave once again and head west.

We got to Yuma about a week before Halloween and once again, stayed in the driveway of our friends, Gene & Kathy. Jenny, a fellow Boomer, who owns a lot nearby, found out we were back in town, so she decided to go ahead and throw a Halloween birthday party for me & our friend, Debbie. We were both born right on Halloween.

At Dan & Jenny's Halloween Bash

There were quite a few Boomers in Yuma already and it was nice and warm during the days, still. We had all sorts of characters who came to help us celebrate our big day. There was Rhonda, who was a real character, as you'll see, a ghoul showed up, two cute little pumpkins and an angel, a gypsy/belly dancer, a witch, (she didn't really look that scary at all), a couple of tourists, (man, they are everywhere, ya know?, although what there is to see in Yuma, I don't know)....two pirates, (now how did they get here...maybe they came in on the Colorado River, ya think?), and a few other folks who were apparently too shy to dress up. A great time was had by all, after all, when you get a bunch of Boomers together, we can't help but have fun. We even had a birthday cake complete with candles which we got to blow out.

Debbie & me, the birthday girls, we are GOOD witches!

The Dreamcatcher SKP Park

 The next day, we went to lunch with our friends Ray & Diane, to a little place they knew about. As Diane described it, "We decided to take Ron and Sharon to one of our favorite haunts here in Deming. Just a few miles east of here on an old school road off a farm road called the "Adobe Deli" a converted old school house, featuring a large dining room, a full saloon style bar and oxygen bar and a whole covey of stuffed wild animals and memorabilia. It's kind of like a night out designed by Cabella's, The Black Angus Steakhouse and the bar at The Palace Hotel". It was very eclectic to be sure and we had a great time talking about our travels and just generally catching up. They also had a great food! The pictures I have I took off her blog, because she was the one with the camera.

Diane & I at the Adobe Deli

The bar

Ready for the auction to start

The balloon fiesta ran from Sat., Oct 1st through Sun., Oct 9th. On Sunday morning, all of our bus friends left and we drove over to where our Boomer friends were parked and stayed over one more night with them, where we had a Boomer auction and we bought quite a few good things that were being auctioned off. All the money we raised goes to CARE, which is a day care center, that was started by Kay, one of the founding members of our RV club. It is for whoever needs it, whether they need a place to be while they are recovering from strokes, heart attacks, broken bones or just because of old age problems.

Looking over the auction items

 Everyone came out for the auction, plus we brought appetizers to munch on before it began.







                                                               
Lots of food and wine to loosen us all up, so we'd buy more stuff....

Here's Chuck & Jan showing items to be auctioned

Our raffle prizes we won

On Monday, all of us had to leave, so we drove over to the casino where we had stayed the week before. Our good friend, Margie, had left us on Saturday afternoon of that final weekend to take a train to Long Beach, CA to attend a funeral and had left her rig with a fellow bus member in town. She came back on Monday morning, so we parked the bus in the casino parking lot and went to pick her up. She had family that lived in Albuquerque and wanted to get together with them for dinner, before she left town, so they came over after work and we all had dinner in the casino. It was so nice getting to know another of Dan's brothers and his wife. We found out after we got back that other Boomer friends had also stayed at that lot overnight, so we went to say our final goodbyes before leaving on Tues morning.

I have no idea what Ron is looking at

We said goodbye to Margie, she was heading back to Cottonwood to stay for awhile and visit Sedona. She had wanted to take the northern route back, but, when she found out how cold it was getting up there, she decided not to. As it turns out, from what we heard from friends, she probably would have been okay.

We, on the other hand, headed for Columbus, NM, south of Deming, down near the border with Mexico, to meet with our good friends, Jack & Jeanne, who were attending a chapter rally down there. We had been kept so busy at the balloon rally, that it was nice to slow down and take it easy. The weather was great and we visited Old Mexico with rally members for lunch. There was even a raffle and we ended up winning a few good prizes.

Walking around town making friends with the statues

 Here we are enjoying some free margaritas, while we browse through all the unique items for sale in the store. After we bought some stuff, we sat down to lunch with other rally members. An American gal who lives in Deming owns this place and helps keep the Mexicans employed.

Downtown Silver City

One of several interesting murals we saw

 After the rally was over, we all decided to drive up to Deming for the weekend. When we got to the park, we met good friends, Ray & Diane, from the Thousand Trails park in San Diego County. It seems we meet friends all the time at the SKP parks...Every time we've been in Deming, I've always wanted to see Silver City, so this time we went up there. It's a nice little town and we walked all over the place, saw a farmer's market, and saw an impromptu gathering of musicians down by the river that runs through town.

Interesting signs such as this were all over town

Reminds me of a street in Mexico

We enjoyed delicious gelato

I'm the only one that ate a healthful lunch

 When I told Ron to take a picture of this dentist sign, I wanted him to get a close up of the words on the tooth, but, that's not how it came out, so this is what it says....
                       purse extractions
                       x-rated rays
                       London bridges
                       British crowns
                       land fillings
                       sports caps
                       not floss
I think this is a dentist I might want to go to, good sense of humor...

We had seen a sign for the Gila Cliff Dwellings, so we decided last minute to drive up there. The first sign we passed said it was only open from 9 to 4 and at that time, it was 1:30. The next sign we saw said it would take us two hours to get up there...we're thinking, it's only 40 miles, why would it take 2 hours to go 40 miles? Well, we found that the road was an extremely winding road, but, with Jack at the wheel, we got there at 3. Plenty of time to see the cliff dwellings...

On the bridge at the beginning of the trail; me, Jack & Jeanne

We found out that it was only a mile walk round trip, of course, part of that walk was uphill...it was rather warm in the sun, but, starting off on our walk was in the shade and it was nice. We crossed about nine bridges in the shade, before we started up the hill in the sun. It really wasn't a long walk uphill and we saw glimpses of the dwellings all the way up the path. What made this particular site nice was that we were able to walk INTO the cliff dwellings, not like Mesa Verde, where we walk next to them, but, are not allowed inside. It was great, we actually saw where they lived and stored their foodstuffs. Looking outwards, these people had a great view of the surrounding areas. By the time we had walked back to the parking area, it was just a little after four and we were ready to head home, it had been a loooong day.

The first of the bridges

Almost there...

These ruins look just like the ones we saw in Mesa Verde

The great view looking outward

 It was rather warm outside that day and when we went up under the cliff facing, it was very cool in the shade, which would have made it nice in the summer heat.

There were rangers up there to tell us about how the ancient ones lived and it was very interesting.

Taking one last look before heading down the trail