Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Hobo stew night on first day of rally, not too many members there yet.

Looking down towards the GM buses on the left

Looking down towards the Eagle buses on the right

A VL-100, a Flexliner and two clippers on the end

Two VL-100's, (like ours), and one city transit bus

The main area with our bus in the background

We finally left Mittry on the 12th to head up to Quartzsite and the Flxible bus rally. We were the hosts for this year, so wanted to see where we were going to park. We were part of a larger bus rally with the GM and Eagle bus clubs. The pictures I took were just of the people that showed up before the rally even started and that was just a sampling. By the time the rally was in full swing there were buses EVERYWHERE you looked!

Jack took this great picture of all of us

Steaks for everyone and boy were they good!

We played lots of card games with Jack & Jeanne

Ron is helping Bruce install his new water heater, Jack is supervising...

Our spot next to the canal

The next day, we decided to find another place to park, so called around at some of the local Elks lodges. We ended up at Fullerton Elks, which is on a hill, so we had a fantastic view of the town and surrounding area. We ended up staying there for two nights with our friends. Then, we parted ways and drove on down to the Thousand Trails, (Pio Pico), for a week, which visiting my dad, other family members and friends. There was no cell reception out there, so no cell phone or computer, unless I went over to the one building where they had wifi. I only did that once, but, we had a nice relaxing week of unwinding from our busy holiday season.

We finally left there on January 5th and headed out to Mittry Lake near Yuma where there were a few die hard Boomers left. We have some pictures of what we did while there.

We parked on a dead end street near their marina where they usually park their bus.

We parked on a dead end street near their marina where they usually park their bus.

We finally got back on the road around 4:30. Ron was bound and determined to get to Seal Beach that night. Bruce & Kathy stopped in Santa Barbara to visit a friend, so we just kept driving. We finally got to the base at around 8:30 and found that the famcamp was booked for the weekend. Our friends, Dan & Marge, who have a bus just like ours came and told us we could park with them for the night. So, that's what we did and the following picture shows our two buses together that night.

The pier...up close and personal

The view looking south towards the dunes

The pier at Pismo Beach

The pier at Pismo Beach

Here we are looking north

Our view of the town while eating our clam chowder

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Hi everyone! Well, it's been a month since I last updated this, sorry it's taken me so long to get myself together. On my last post, we were tearing down the Christmas tree lot a little bit each day. We finally got all cleaned up on Christmas Eve day and went out to dinner that night. On Christmas Day we finally left the lot for the last time to head south for warmer weather.

When we left Blythe, CA in September, we drove all the way to Walnut Creek on one tank of gas! We thought that was great, but, also figured we must be on fumes, so the first thing we did was get diesel in the bus. It turns out that we still had 20 gallons in the tank! Well, as I said, we headed to Morgan Hill with fellow lot managers & Boomers, Bruce & Kathy Johnston, where we stayed overnight at a Thousand Trails park. It was great not having to think about work anymore and just sit around and relax. We had a ham dinner with all the fixings and just sat around and visited the rest of the day.

The next day, the 26th, we decided we were going to drive all the way down to Seal Beach to stay at the famcamp at the Navy base there. I did manage to take some pictures of our trip along Hwy 101, where we stopped in Pismo Beach for clam chowder with our friends.