Monday, May 6, 2013

We left Yuma on April 17th, going first to San Diego to stay at our membership park for a week to visit with friends and family, then it was up to Riverside area to visit more friends and family. We were going to stay a week, but, needed some maintenance done to the bus up in Oak Hills, (near Victorville), at Charlie & Lynn's house, they are members of our bus club. Good thing we went up there, because Charlie found some more stuff that needed to be fixed. We had a good four days up there, visiting, four wheeling, eating together and another friend of ours, Margie came up on Monday afternoon to spend one night. So now our brakes are adjusted, we got new oil and filters, as well as fan belts and new bearings to run the fan pulley.

We are now in Las Vegas, got here last Wednesday and will be pulling out this Wednesday for an overnight stop at the Cedar City KOA. As KOA workampers, we can get vouchers to stay at KOA's on the way up to our jobs, so we picked Cedar City because we want to look it over in case we might want to work there next summer. It is near Bryce & Zion Nat'l Parks. Don't know how hot it gets there, don't want to be too hot, that summer in Blythe was enough HOT for us!


Taking the glass out
We FINALLY got new eyebrow windows for our bus a few days ago. If you'll remember, they were damaged in that hail storm we were in last May while enroute to our visit our friends in Texas. Ron spent
Inside looking out, no window!
one morning calling all around and it seems no one cuts their own glass anymore. Finally, he found one, they came right out, looked at it, measured them and told us they would be back in an hour, take our windows out, using them as their pattern and cut them out on the spot, which they did.
Cleaning out the tracks prior to installing the new glass
They did a great job! Now, all we need is to get them tinted, but, that may have to wait until we get back to Yuma in Nov/Dec. No matter, we'll probably want all the bright light we can get into our coach in the cold north.

We met our good friends, Dan & Jenny, (they live a few blocks away from us in Yuma), we both got up here on the same day. Had a few nights of cards, eating out at one of the casinos and a dip in the pool. They left a couple days ago to have some maintenance done on their rig up in Utah. We may get together with them when we get to Salt Lake City on Thursday.


 When we leave here, I'll be taking pics, as we've only been north on I-15 once before, back in '09. Once we leave I-15 at Idaho Falls and start heading north on Hwy 20, that will be all new territory for us.
We spent about a week visiting with Ron & Carol, then, moseyed on down the road, headed towards San Diego, with overnight stops in Visalia, just for one night, a week stop in Menifee at the Thousand Trails to visit friends and relatives and a couple weeks at the Thousand Trails in the San Diego area, spending Thanksgiving with family. We finally made it home to Yuma before the end of November.

Over Christmas we decided to go out to Lake Mittry, which is about 20 miles away, with fellow Boomer travelers. Before we left the house, we had Boomer friends, Chuck & Jan, staying in our driveway, they were on their way to the Rose Parade in Pasadena, CA, to help with the floats. They were staying until the day after Christmas to attend the dinner out at the lake.

Christmas morning, Chuck was watering our trees when he heard the hot water heater running and thought it was a bit odd, since we weren't home. He called Ron and told him, "I think you have a problem." So, Ron left the lake and came home to check it out. As he walked around the front windows of the mobile, he saw condensation dripping down, thinking, "uh oh, this doesn't look good!". Sure enough, there was standing water in the bathroom, hallway and into the bedroom
carpet. The pipe going into the shower burst and water was flowing out of the bottom of the cabinet and onto the floor. Ron turned the water off, kind of wiped
How it looks under our floors
up a bit, not realizing we could have called the insurance 24 hours a day to report the problem. Instead, he came back out to the lake to tell me what happened. The next morning we both went
Water damage in pantry and half of kitchen
back to check out the damage. Of course, by the time we got there, all the water had disappeared into the floor, down the heater ducts & into the flooring under the carpeting. Another friend,
A whole different view of our bathroom
Gene, came over with his extractor and got as much water out of the carpet as possible, then, we pulled up the carpeting and put the fan on it to blow to dry out the floor. Ron called the insurance companyand they gave
Putting the cement board down
Ron the number to call a local restoration company to come out.

We decided when we got back out to the lake,
we would just come home the next day and take care of getting the flooring fixed, which is what we did. Ron decided instead getting someone else to re-do the plumbing, he would do it himself and save a ton of money. So, while the
Friends, Troyce & Lisa visiting with us
restoration guys were doing their thing, Ron was doing his thing. The whole project to get our house back to the way it was before the flood was about a month and a half.

We are very pleased with how everything came out. We decided to upgrade the flooring and installed
tile throughout the whole mobile and now it looks bigger inside and it's very easy to keep clean, that's for sure.

We did make it up to Quartzsite for our annual bus rally, it was very small this year, smaller than normal, the weather probably had something to do with it, as it was colder than normal. Both Ron & I were sick, so we didn't go out much and socialize except at the dinners. We should have stayed home, but, Ron was determined to go...I felt so awful that I didn't even visit any of the vendors and this is probably the first time I haven't gone to Hardies bead shop in years.

We usually join the Boomer rally during the second week, but, as we still had workers coming over to the house doing things, we felt we needed to go back home. Wouldn't you know, this particular year, since the weather was too cold to do much of anything outside, most of the activities at the Boomers was the second week, so we missed it all, drat!!!

Here in Yuma, we've been having our normal get togethers at each other's houses, Wed movies & dinner afterwards, card games, etc. We're starting to wind down the winter

Roadrunner on our back wall
season, getting excited about leaving for our next workamping adventure in West Yellowstone. Our departure date has been pushed to the middle of April, as we plan on taking our time getting up there, staying at some of our Thousand Trails parks on the way. Sitting here in mid March, dealing with 90 degree temps, I just can't wrap my head around having snow on the ground! We'll probably have our heater on more than anything else, doubt if we'll even need our air conditioning there, as we'll be up at 6600 ft. But, being around that beautiful area for the entire summer is going to be wonderful.