My apologies to those who have checked out blog only to see Tucumcari again. That’s kinda how we felt in September/October, seeing Tucumcari again. We can now say we have REALLY done Tucumcari AND got the shirts.
But we did get rolling to Albuquerque only no Balloon Fiesta, the balloons had moved on to happier skies. Cool Judy and Luke Rinehimer had not moved on as they were waiting for an important mail delivery of their tire monitors. Lucky for us though so we joined them at FamCamp for several days. We even got to meet up with our CokeCacher friends Wendy and Mike Lawrence for a yummy dinner.
We finally started to move slowly west stopping often to see SKP friends. For our readers who are not RV’ers, that’s Escapee friends. Our first stop was in Holbrook. We met Bob and Pat DeSpain, friends of the Rinehimers, and stayed the night at their beautiful ranch just outside of town. What a fun time we had going to their favorite Mexican restaurant, playing with their very energetic ball (and rock) retrieving dog, touring the ranch, and admiring the amazing petrified logs that Bob’s father found many years ago in the quarry he owned. Super couple who are now Facebook friends.
We moved our caravan down the road the next morning stopping to rest, have lunch and get a geocache on our way toward the Elks Lodge in Clarkdale. I cut the bottom of the picture of Cool Judy off so there is no ‘spoiler’ (a giveaway of the location of the cache) shown.
We stayed a couple of days in Verde Valley visiting our favorite sites like Jerome, built on the side of a mountain, and the museum in Cottonwood that houses an amazing model railroad.
When we visited Jerome we had lunch at the Mile High café. I love the grilled cheese sandwich which is like no other. This time I had the fried spinach as the side. It is hard to describe this other than to say the spinach just melted on my tongue. Amazing!
We then drove to Prescott to visit more SKP friends, Greg & Sally Schindel. They had just gotten back from their trip to the northeast and their RV was still being unpacked in their spacious driveway. We enjoyed their hospitality and especially their beautiful view of Prescott. The Schindel’s took us to one of their favorite historic Prescott eatery, The Palace Saloon. This is the oldest Frontier Saloon in Arizona. Greg told us the interesting story about this saloon. On July 14, 1900, the town of Prescott was burning and when the fire reached the Palace the drinkers just moved the enormous bar out of the saloon to a safe place across the street and the beautiful bar was saved.
As you can see we were SLOWLY moving toward California, but we were not done visiting SKP friends. Our next stop was the Avondale Moose, dry camping and visiting Robert and Barbara Moore. Dinner was a blast as Betty and Duane joined us. The restaurant almost had to kick us out as we talked and laughed long after our dinner was done. We sure have a great time on the road, traveling with friends and meeting old and new friends as we travel this USA.
We finally arrived back in California landing in Indio after 10 months on the road. We checked into the Indio Elks to rest for a couple of days. We even had the rig and toad washed by the mobile RV washers that regularly visit the Elks drumming up business. They were recommended by others staying at the Elks and we felt they did a good job getting 12,000 miles of road dirt off DA PAD and DA TOAD.
We met MerrieAnn and Jeff Martin for dinner in Desert Hot Springs. I think this blog should be titled “Eating our way to California adding friends along the way”.
Our next stop on our way home was without Cool Judy and Luke. We were so sad to leave such fun traveling companions, but they had to get home to Cool and we were on our way to Fresno with one very special stop along the way. We found the West Covina Elks was pretty close to Arcadia where Kay and Tom Tierney live. They have been friends, very dear friends, since we met them just weeks after we were married over 50 years ago. We lived next door to each other for several years and visited them almost weekly after we moved to Redondo Beach and they to the San Gabriel Valley. (If it were not for Kay typing my homework, I probably would not have a college degree 
Daughter, Karen, joined us for dinner and we talked about Sherrie & Kevin. 
We finally arrived back in Fresno just in time to see the grandboys, Logan and Ryan, dressed up for Halloween.
Until next time we will be On the Road Again Caching Places that we’ve Never Been. Thanks for patiently waiting for our blog. Next one will not be so late… I promise.
Great update. My blog is further behind than yours, so maybe I will just post a link to yours and call ours up-to-date. It was great having you as traveling partners. When we parted, we went to Disneyland, but we did stop at the Fresno Elks where you got to give us a personal tour of your stomping grounds. We will join you again in January for a couple of more months of shared destinations.
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting trip! Thanks for sharing all the great pics of you and friends eating together! Glad you're back 'home' again.
ReplyDeleteHi, Nice post thanks for sharing. Would you please consider adding a link to my website on your page. Please email me back.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Joel
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