On the road again; Caching Places We've Never Been

Even when I’m busy, I feel lazy

2012-02-25T12:19:00.001-07:00

Boy does the time fly by when we are busy. And it seems that we have been real busy lately, too lazy to blog . First, I find myself doing some computer work on the road. I love it, in fact I’m thinking of hanging out a shingle saying, “Will fix computers for Food”; sort of like the “Will work for food” signs we see at stop signs. I’m thinking of this because I have now fixed dinner 3, did I actually say 3, nights in a row. We’re talking about another new record here folks! What’s up with this? This has got to stop. Oh wait, Nick Russell is in town and we know what that means: weather changes and dinner out. I love it when we meet up with Nick and Terry, Jan and Greg because we find the yummiest places to eat in Yuma. Note: I think we will still have good weather, or so the weatherman is reporting, so maybe the Nick Curse is finally broken.

Back to reporting on our latest adventures since leaving Quartzsite. We made the quick drive up SR 95 to Cattail Cove SP, near Lake Havasu, AZ. We just love this park. The rangers are the best, friendliest, and most accommodating we have met, the views fantastic, and many of our RV friends also camp here: CoolJudy and Luke, Theta and Gerry, and Margie Rogers (Goosygal). This year we camped in Space 60 with a clear view of the Amphitheater and the clear view of Lake Havasu AZ and the hundreds of quail. They match the color of the terrain so you cannot make them out up on the mountain, but I got some pictures of them walking by our front window.

In Lake Havasu City, we ate out – a lot, did laundry – a lot, and cached – not so much. The real reason we come to Lake Havasu is because the Western Pyrotechnics Assn., WPA, holds its ‘Winter Blast’ fireworks celebration here each President’s Day Weekend. It is 3 nights of fantastic fireworks. Even though we thought other years’ displays were better, they are still the best you will ever see. What made this year even more special is my Mom and our daughter, Jennifer, who is a member of WPA and a professional Pyrotechnic, came from Fresno and stayed with us. That’s Mom between Tom & I.

Since this is the highlight of our time in Lake Havasu I’ll bore you with way too many pictures – I just love fireworks.

On the road again; Caching Places We've Never Been

Even when I’m busy, I feel lazy

TMI

Bye bye Boomerville, Hello Plomosa

What can you count on?

Leaving California

Ending where we started–Fresno

full-timers. We also thank all our blogger friends who are so much more faithful than we are in making us feel a part of the RV community. Love your blogs!

Our biggest celebration this year happened in Oregon when all of my sister Janet’s family and all of my family got together for Mom’s 90th birthday party.

So, as in the year 2011, all’s well that ends well, in our life and we hope yours as well. Happy New Year 2012. See you as we will be On the Road Again, Caching Places That We’ve Never Been.

The best made plans sometimes ….

The trip started off pretty good; light traffic on Hwy 99 though as always the road is VERY rough. The first mishap was the fruit bowl bounced it’s way off the counter and broke. Julie and I cleaned that up while Tom continued driving up 99.

I guess third times a charm because from then on we had no problems, no emergency stops and no breakages. We pulled into CalExpo about 3’oclock and got set up in our new home.

We then went shopping at Fry’s. This was Julie’s first trip to the electronics mega store. We looked at a lot of things and only bought a little 4 gig tiny USB drive for $5 and a set of ear buds for Julie for $5. Good after Christmas sales.

We came home and played on the new electronic toys. I continued reading the book recommended by Nick Russell, Redfield Farm, a Kindle e-book set in the 1850’s about a Quaker Family and the Underground Railroad. Excellent read.

It sure is hard to post a reasonable short blog when we pack so much into 2 days. Maybe I should blog more often, but then when can I geocache, work on my genealogy, knit, make the bed, clean the rig and occasionally cook? My oh my, a woman’s work is never done.

A month gone??? Where did it go?

It seems like we just returned from the Coast and it was Christmas.

We did manage to visit Santa. That’s l to r, daughter, Jennifer, Mom, Santa, me, Julie and Sampson down front. That’s 5 generations if you count Sam.

However, this year Christmas was totally different from years past: shopping till we dropped, decorating every room in the house, and of course the extravagant Christmas morning breakfast. This year we celebrated a very simple but meaningful Christmas morning.

Decorating… now that was just hard to do when everything was either packed away or given away. We did add a decorative steering wheel cover and our favorite hand carved Christmas decoration given to us by our niece, Denise.

Breakfast… it was much more simple at mom’s with all of us contributing. You know we enjoyed it just as much, it was just as delicious, and it was so much easier.

We hope to get out of Fresno for a couple of days before the first of the year. Julie has been working her ‘you know what off’ as the manager of the Santa picture event at River Park and she will be traveling again with us if only for a couple of days. Fun, fun, fun.

Then begins 2012 and we will be On The Road Again, Caching Places that we’ve Never Been.

And so in closing, Tom and I hope your Christmas was as meaningful as ours was and your New Year will be healthy, filled with exciting safe travels, and many, many blessings.

Fresno Foggy Days

Learning from my mistakes

And this is the picture Tom got.

The end of another perfect day. We are so blessed.

Back to Fresno–Back to Caching

We checked out Lean on Me #3 and it was indeed missing so we replaced it, but this time across the street because the “Muggle” factor was too great. That means there are just too many non-cachers that are hanging around that could take the cache when they see it being found.

Remember, in our last blog we learned about the Merci Train.

We looked up the California train and placed a cache, “Forty and Eight”, there. It has been found 4 times. We told the story of this interesting piece of history for the cachers in Fresno.

We have been caching and eating and even met for lunch with our Special Quest friend, Deborah. Stay tuned for pictures of our coastal adventures in the next blog.

Home Again, but only for a short visit

Sometimes I write a blog to let everyone know where we are and what we are doing. Other times I write a blog to help me remember what I we did. This is one of the second kinds of blogs so if this is not your cup of tea, check in next time.

A State A Day Heading West

Tuesday we drove west on I-80 into Iowa. We saw a sign that the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum was ahead in West Branch, Iowa. He was the only president from Iowa. We have seen over half of the Presidential Libraries so we just had to stop.

We walked up to the Hoover gravesite, a simple grave with a view of his childhood home and birthplace.

A couple of our favorite pictures were little Dick Nixon in his tie and bare feet (front row – far right) and JFK’s graduation picture (look at those shoes).

Our next stop for the night was in the Wal-Mart in Newton, Iowa, the town that my dad was born in, my grandmother was raised in, my grandfather came to after he arrived at Ellis Island, and my gr-grandfather, the city clerk, was killed while riding in a motorcycle side car.

So now we on On The Road Again, driving down I-25 then on to 39 S to Logan, NM.

Famous Friends and Famously Found Cache

If this engine and the cab that Tom is sitting in looks familiar, it is because you probably saw the movie, Silver Streak. Tom even checked out the ‘dead man’ brake on the floor; yes, it was there.

The other interesting thing we saw outside the museum was this:

Fast Track Travel

Just to think we were in Maine only 4 days ago. We moved to Massachusetts to the very nice Ludlow Elks.

This is the picture on Google maps. We were parked on the grass between the red roofed building and the white roofed building.

Well, we did get turned around and found the right road right by the canal that bypassed the mighty Connecticut River. We found a cache then drove 4 miles down the canal and saw the actual Locks, built in 1829. They are not used any more, in fact haven’t been used in many years.

Just on the other side of the canal was the Connecticut River. There has been so much rain in this area, the river is closed to boating and swimming.

We left the Ludlow Elks and drove 273 difficult miles to the Waterloo Moose. The non-toll roads were so hilly that when we left Waterloo we decided it would be toll roads on the rest of the way to Elkhart, IN.

Down East Maine

We made it to Maine

New Hampshire–Mostly Caching

(Continuing to watch Hurricane Irene in Bangor, Maine. It looks like it is going to pass us to the west and we will get a little more rain and wind, but not real bad.)

Vermont-Food, Forts, Flowers, and lots of Granite

Massena–Where boats sail over cars

We relaxed for a day or two and just explored the area, did some caching, just enjoying this beautiful upstate New York area. Every road we drove on was a classic country scene, barns, green pastures, old farm houses; we love this area.

One of the days we visited the Almanzo Wilder Farm. Remember the Little House on the Prairie book series written by Laura Ingles Wilder? Her husband, Almanzo’s family lived on this large farm.