Heading south from Apache Junction/Mesa area was a short distance but wise decision.  Weather was beautiful and our first stay in the Tucson area was at Catalina State Park in the Coronado National Forest.  This desert state park was beautifully sitting in the foothills.   There were wonderful hiking trails that we explored and we were able to ride our bikes to a trailhead, take a great hike through Mesquite trees, cactus and up and down hills before a bike ride back to the campground.   Joe took many great pictures but he got some great bird pictures either right through our windows or just sitting outside our door.  We had several birds that were nesting in the Mesquite trees around us.  We enjoyed watching a Gila Woodpecker going in and out…

Our trip from California into Arizona was a nice drive although some of California’s roads needed a little work. We thought Minnesota was the state with the potholes.  California has their share.  Besides the drought they are broke so the much needed road repairs have to wait.  Our drive took us through the center valleys where the produce farmers have their fields.  We drove past acres and acres of almond trees that were blooming.  Beautiful!  We saw many fields that had nothing in them because of the drought.  We stayed at The Club Royal Oak RV Resort in Kingsburg, CA (much fancier name than the actual “campground”) that sat on the Kings River.  We looked at pictures on their website before going and thought we could park right on the…

January brought us back to the beautiful weather of California.  They are in a severe drought so we haven’t seen any rain and the weather has been sunshine and beautiful every day.  It has been nice for us but not the people who need the rain.    We were missing a few items in our new coach so we needed to go back to Sacramento when they came in.  So it was nice spending extra time with family in CA especially my dad.  He spent a couple nights with us so he and Joe could go for breakfast at the horseman’s café in the fairgrounds.  We spent some great days with my sister Nancy’s family but my January highlight was spending two hours in my niece Ali’s kindergarten classroom as a…

2013 Holidays are over but the memory is there to stay.  We had a fabulous time in the rather cold Minnesota.  My dad, Joe and I flew in on Christmas day and after a quick run to my sister’s house to drop my dad off we surprised Amanda and Ron with a phone call to invite ourselves to their house for Christmas dinner.  Wasn’t very nice of us to do but the food was delicious and the company great.  Then off we went to see our grandkids and of course Cassie and Aaron.  Cate was so excited to see us and Alex had changed in just those few months since we left.  Alex loves to jabber and screech when you talk to him and his eyes are so full of…

 Before we headed to family in the San Fran area we took a side trip to Jackson, CA.  This cute little town in the foothills of the Sierras was a booming gold mining town in the 1800s.  Argonaut Mine was opened in the 1850’s as one of the deepest mines in the world at a depth of 6300 ft and produced over $17,000,000 during it’s time.  In 1922, 47 men were trapped below the surface by fire.  Rescue operations lasted for three weeks but all died.  The town was like a lot of other gold mining towns we have visited except for the unique cemetery.  We spent over an hour wondering through this huge cemetery with so many grave sites from the 1800s.  We have never seen a cemetery like…

We decided to travel Hwy 80 from Iowa to California.  Because of the time of the year we wanted to get as far south as we could before we ran into bad weather.  We stayed one night in Iowa and hit the road to Nebraska.   There we stayed two nights at a lovely State Park, Mormon Island, in Doniphan, NE, right off Hwy 80.  It was very quiet even being relatively close to the highway and very few campers in the park.  We stayed one night at a Cabela’s RV Park in Sidney, NE.  The park was okay.  This is where Cabela’s started and where they have their headquarters.   The thing about staying in a park like this is that there is no security and it sits close to the…

Oh how time flies!  I can’t believe we’ve been to Ohio and back and now are on our way south.  We always think we have so much time to do this or that or see friends/family and soon the time has passed and we haven’t done what we wanted to.  It just reminds us not to put things off. Ohio was great as always.  This time was a little different because our nephew got married to his beautiful bride on Sept 14th.  They had a perfect day at a perfect location.  The day couldn’t have been better. We spent about two weeks with Zach and Lauren doing some fun things and Joe and Zach got a new storm door hung on the front of his house.  The kitchen is done…

We are presently on our way to California and have stopped for a few nights at a state park in Utah on a reservoir.  It is in the foot hills of the mountains and we are presently the only ones in the campground sitting on a bluff overlooking a lake.   This morning when we got up it was very windy with winds at 30 to 40 mph so there were white caps on the lake.  As we were taking Lily for her morning walk we noticed a canoe on the lake with two people in it.  We thought they were crazy because of the wind.  We noticed they were struggling a little so we watched for a little but it was so windy we went inside and started breakfast.  As…

As I look back at the summer months we spent in Minnesota I wonder where they went.  We didn’t get to spend enough time with friends and didn’t even get to see some of our old friends.  Hopefully we can catch up with a few of them in October when we are back in MN for a few weeks. Family time was great with the addition of our new grandson, Alex.  He is growing like a weed as most new babies do.  His mom can’t wait until he sleeps through the night.  We have had a few opportunities to watch him while mom and dad got out of the house but haven’t had him overnight yet.  We need to do that before we head south.  Granddaughter, Cate, has spent a…