On the last blog post where we were at the beach, I have to give credit to Jeannie, for those were her pictures I posted. The group pics were also taken by other Boomers. I know someone took a picture of Ron's brother, Jim, who came to visit us, but, can't think who, so no picture of him. If I find out who, I will post it later...we also got a picture of the fire ring, all cleaned up and painted by Jim, he did a great job, but, again, where did the picture get to? I took it, but, can't find it...

Right before we left town, our neighbors next

The old one, as it sat on their property

door were finally able to move back into their new mobile.

Out with the old....

They were so happy to get into their new place and a few days later, we went over to see what it looked

In with the new....

like with furniture inside. It was beautiful, a big

All ready to move back in...

difference to what they had been living in for the past 16 years..

Just one more thing, I have to post a couple of pics of our friend, Patsy's car.

Patsy's car, she calls it her little red wagon

It is so unique and she gets positive comments on it

One side of the car is petunias, the other side, sunflowers

wherever she goes.

We finally left Yuma on May 1st and drove all the way to Gila Bend, which is about 105 miles away....

At the Luke AFB Annex Fam Camp in Gila Bend

to visit friends. You may remember me telling you we stopped there on our way to Yuma, back in October.

Taking it easy in the heat

He is working at the paper plant there. As it happened, the two days we were there, he just happened to have them off, so it worked out real fine.

Looking for the restroom, I was greeted by this cute skirt, pretty clever

Being in Gila Bend, there isn't

men's restroom, anyone?

much to see or do, so we took another trip down to Ajo to look through the shops and have lunch at the same place

we did when we were down there in October.

After leaving there on the 3rd, we drove to Benson to stay at the SKP park for the weekend. We got to park on the same street that Jack & Jeanne lives on, just a few sites away. While there, we got together with Dave & Linda, too and we even all went out to dinner at Pinnacle Peak in Tucson, an awesome steak place where all the meat is cooked over mesquite wood.

Dave's very colorful tie

Since Linda & Dave had never eaten there, (but, obviously, had heard about it from someone)....he wore a tie for the occasion, something he picked up from the thrift store for a few

measly dollars. It was a tie with the M&M characters on it and we thought he should have gotten an uglier one for the occasion. You see, for those who have never eaten there, it is a cowboy atmosphere and traditional ties are extremely frowned upon. Why, they will send out a gal, or in this case, a guy, with a big cow

Uh oh, you're in trouble now, Dave!

bell and even bigger scissors and make a big production out of cutting of the offensive tie! We thought the tie was entirely too pretty for that kind of treatment, but, at least the wall it was

That's what you get for wearing that tie

pinned to, looks a lot better now!

Finally, it was time to leave again. We usually stop at some friends who live in Las Cruces, to break up the trip to Texas to visit more friends, but, they were gone this trip, so we just drove right on by. We took the bypass around El Paso, and as we headed east, we took the highway that heads towards the Guadalupe Mountains. It's kind of the desert foothills, so to speak. As we were driving down the

What in the heck is that????

roadway, Ron asked me what were those two spiral white things in the sky in the distance....I'll tell ya, the sight of them scared me, because they looked a lot like mini

OH NO, THERE ARE TWO OF THEM!!!!

tornadoes...at first, I thought they might be
large dust devils, but, they don't have a white spiral going up into the air like that. They were quite a long distance away, thank goodness

Oh, whew! Looks like it's disappearing...

and eventually, they just dissolved away.

Then, a little while later, further up in the mountains, we caught the leading edge of a storm passing by. At the time, we were driving separately, because the mountain grade was just too steep for the bus to pull the Jeep. We both got a couple of good thunks on the top of the vehicles. I had seen these white things breaking apart on the pavement earlier and was wondering what they were, I finally realized they were very big chunks of hail. Thankfully, as I said, we only got a few, and then drove out of it and fortunately, the storm was moving north, we were moving northeast, or we would have had some real damage.

We were going to stop for the night in Carlsbad, but, it was still pretty light, so Ron decided to drive on a little further. We finally stopped in Hobbs, NM, right before going over the Texas state line. When we added up the miles, we had driven a 500 mile day, but, it just didn't seem like we'd driven that far.

We found a nice vacant lot to set up for the night and since it was kinda late, we just had crackers and kipper snacks for dinner. Just a few minutes after we had eaten, we got hammered by another hail storm, but, this one was going right over us. The noise was unbelievably LOUD!!!! Like being in a tin can being pelted by lots of rocks. I couldn't even think & finally had to get up and walk over to the door to look out. You know, I didn't even think about going outside after it was all over to take pictures of the hail, but, I'd say the size was like large marbles. It seemed like it lasted forever, but, probably more like 10 or 15 minutes. We have never been in a hailstorm that lasted more than a few minutes, so this was a first for us. All I was thinking was, "please don't get big enough to smash through the upper windows!". Don't know what we would have done if that had happened.

Since it was pitch dark outside, we could only imagine what the top of the bus and Jeep looked like. Just a few minutes after the hail storm, the local streets were flooding like mad. Fortunately, where we were in the vacant lot, it didn't flood, which was good.

The next morning, we were on our way again. I looked out of the upper eyebrow windows and it really didn't look like the hail had done much damage to the lower half of the rig, but further examination would have to wait until we got to our friend's house, which was later in the morning. We pulled in, got settled and didn't even take the cover off the car until the next day.

We had to clean the cover first, because apparently, we have another leak of some sort and I didn't want to put the cover away dirty. Finally, after it being cleaned & dried right where it sat, we took it off....

Hail damage, if you look closely at these few pics, maybe you can see a little of what happened

I'm not sure if it was because the cover was on and the hail wasn't able to bounce freely off or whether it would have been like that normally, but, it looked like the hood had gotten the worst of it. Thankfully, the windshield didn't even have a crack in it. WHEW!! We looked at the top of the car and it didn't look as bad as the hood, but, according to the insurance agent who came out, he said both the roof & hood will have to be replaced. We also had dents on the passenger side of the car, as well, the wind

You can definitely see a few hard dents, there may be more, hard to see in the lens of a camera

must have been coming from that direction.

Believe it or not, Ron got up on a ladder to look at the top of the bus and pronounced the solar panels and vent covers crack free, can you believe it??? But, there are several cracks in the upper eyebrow windows, so those will eventually have to be replaced. We didn't even put a claim in on those, because the glass shouldn't be that expensive to replace. What's amazing is that the windshield is at a lot more of a slant, it stand to reason it should have had cracks in it, but, maybe the cover prevented that from happening, who knows...

Well, we are coming up on our second week here and we are kind of stuck at the moment. Ron & Troyce discovered our wheel bearings in the front wheels were going out and Ron ordered them last week. They should have been here by now, but, nothing yet, so hopefully, tomorrow, they can track them down.

We've been doing some things around here, the other day we visited Thurber, which is probably about an hour from here. My paternal grandmother was born there back in the late 1890's. It is now a ghost town, but, there is a nice museum telling of the history of the area. It first started out as coal mining town, then, they started making bricks and after all that died out, it was an oil town. I'm guessing that my great grandfather was an itinerant worker, going from place to place, staying a little while to earn some money, then, going on. Didn't think of taking any pictures of the "town", if you want to call it that, they have one restaurant and the stack for the brick making is still there. The museum is across the freeway, along with another restaurant called New York Hill, named after where the wealthy residents of the town lived.

The other day, Ron & Troyce went to fix the tongue on a covered wagon.

Covered wagon heading west

It seems this old guy is traveling the country in a covered wagon and two mules. He's already gone across the country to the east coast, now, he's on his way back west.

The man sitting was the owner of the wagon

The wagon is covered over with wood, with canvas covering that. He's by himself with his dog and his mules. Instead of old wooden wheels, though, he's got regular car tires and while they were over

Fixing the tongue

there, they repacked his wheel bearings for him. I, for one, would have been interested in his stories riding

Replacing and repacking the wheel bearings

in that and how many curious residents came out to see him at each of his

Alright, bucket seats!

stops for the night. Now, that is really roughing it!!!!

His two mules

The wheel bearings finally made their appearance Tuesday and the guys wasted no time about putting them back together. Meanwhile, Ron is trying to figure out where the oil leak is coming from. When we had it in for the repower, (after we first bought it back in 2004), he thinks the guy who did the work, didn't replace the entire transmission oil line, more like he cut the bad piece out and spliced in a new one....so now, Ron has to go hunting to see where it is leaking. He can tell it's been leaking, but, the problem is where is it leaking from. Hopefully, he can find it before we leave here or maybe over at Gere's, where we are headed next. These old buses always have something going on with them, it seems...kinda like a house....


I know it's a little late, but, I told you I was going to post this picture when I got it. It's from last summer when we were working at the Grand Canyon KOA. One of the young men who worked in the cookhouse in the mornings was very artistic and would make waffles shaped like any animal we, (the employees), wanted, the days he worked. I wanted an elephant and he did a really good job, don't you think?

My elephant waffle