It took two days for the repair to happen, but, now we are happy campers, we can use our levelers again! The rear of these levelers had not been operable since they got tweaked back in June. We could use the fronts with no problem, but, not the back ones. I wrote the owner of Big Foot and told him what happened and where his guys had located them and that we hadn't been happy, but, decided to try them anyway. He wrote and told me of the guy in Yuma where we could get them fixed and relocated. So, fortunately, we didn't have to pay for any of the repair at all. We got back to the lake on the morning of the 31st and were surprised at all the rigs that had come in during our absence. Fortunately, we had our spot saved, so still had the great view of the canal. Since we were pretty level when we parked, we didn't need the levelers. We'll use them when we really need them.

I think we had about 16 or so rigs all together. For New Years Eve, we had our annual Z-Circle. It was originally thought up by fellow Boomer, Chuck Zyetz, who has since died. A great idea that not only gets people together to get to know each other better, but, also helps us all stay awake and warm until midnight, by getting together in each other's rigs. About a half an hour before midnight, we all pile out of the rigs and to the fire to stay warm until we ring in the new year. In the "old days", when we first started meeting at Mittry, we'd devise all sorts of things to stay awake, but, most of it was done outside where it's COLD!! Thank you, Chuck, for thinking up this grand idea which we have been doing for at the last 10 years! I just looked it up, if I'd known about it before, we could have done something special.

On New Year's Day, some of us had a potluck dinner at camp, complete with trashcan turkey, ham and all the trimmings and some of us went out to eat at Golden Corral. I was with the latter group, because even though the sun was shining, it was still colder than I wanted to be outside. We all had great dinners.

I always forget my camera on days like these, so even though pictures were taken, they weren't mine, so no pics to look at of our celebrations.

The stay limit at the lake is 10 days per calendar year. When we first started coming to the lake, we could stay 10 days in December and 10 days in January and the rangers didn't mind. Now, they are a little bit more stickier on the rules. Not sure why that is, I'm sure if we ever wanted to challenge it, we might win, only because of the wording of the signs on how long you can stay. 10 days per calendar year, doesn't that mean exactly what it says?

The ranger came around on the 1st to tell us our time was up and we told him we'd be leaving in the morning. He seemed okay with that, so come Monday morning, most of us had left, except the latecomers. We are now back at Gene & Kathy's, sitting in their driveway.

Gene always seems to have a garden of some sort going, this time it's tomatoes. I'm hoping he gets some red tomatoes before it gets too hot, because last summer it was just too hot for them.