Why, why, why did we stay in Fresno for 2 months?

Well, the answer to that question is complicated. We wondered ourselves when the thermometer topped 110 degrees on June 8th. There were many reasons: granddaughter, Julie’s, graduation from Fresno State, granddaughter, Jamie’s, graduation from Clovis East High School, Mother’s Day, Mom’s 92nd birthday and knee replacement surgery, daughter, Jenny’s, Julie’s and Jamie’s birthdays, and fireworks.  That’s just a lot of family celebrations and we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Right now we are in Winslow Arizona on our way to SkillsUSA in Kansas City.  This is my first blog in a long time so I will try to catch up on our news a little at a time in the next couple of blogs.  I wanted to start with the good news first… our special family events.

Forgive me if I brag a little, Julie graduated Cum Laude, had the most original mortar board, and is now employed as a Design Specialist for the newspaper, The Fresno Bee.

We celebrated Julie’s graduation in the most amazing way; in the Club at Grizzlies Stadium where our son, Jason, is the Executive Chef, and daughter, Jenny shoots the fireworks.

		Celebrating Julie’s graduation at Grizzlies. VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Jamie is also an amazing young lady; in addition to riding her motorcycle (crotch rocket), training horses, has a summer job welding for ProSigns, she is also enrolled at Fresno State College for the fall. In her spare time she shoots fireworks shows with Jennifer. We just don’t know what she will end up doing with her life; maybe an Astronaut?

And speaking of amazing, that’s my Mom who at 92 had her second knee replacement surgery. The Physical Therapists all said they had never seen a patient at that age do so well. The day of the surgery she could bend her knee at 90 degrees, straighten her leg to just short of straight, walked over 30 feet, and never had any pain medication stronger than Tylenol, and now just one month later, Mom is again driving.

We had the chance to spend time with the 2 grand boys, Logan and Ryan. Ryan graduated from Pre-School, Logan was Student of the Month, and both played baseball. So we went to lots of games.

Our last big event of our stay was our Clayton Family Reunion last Saturday. Tom's Mom was one of 11 living children and the family reunion is held in Fresno each year.  Sometimes there are over 100 in attendance. This year because of the heat there were only about 45; small but still a great time to get all the cousins together.

		Clayton Family Reunion VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

So what with birthdays, graduations, a family reunion and other family get togethers, we really enjoyed that part of our time in Fresno.  Next time we will go into the details of our stay in Camp Central Valley RV in Fresno.

To borrow an ending picture from one of our favorite blogs, Travels with Emma, by Judy Bell, this is the end of this blog.

The Saga of Vehicle Repairs

We are still in Fresno. Lots of family time since arriving.  We have attended the grandson’s baseball games. Logan is quite the player and his team almost wins sometimes. Logan plays catcher. Tom says it is the most interesting and also the key player on the team. Think Yogi Berra, Johnny Bench, and Roy Campanella. Maybe some day .

Logan is in 5th grade and is 11. Ryan is just 5 and also plays baseball. Watching Ryan’s game is like watching a bunch of cute puppies. The coach thinks it’s like herding cats.

We were in Fresno to get the RV fixed after the tire blowouts.  The piece that Tom picked up off Hwy-15 was replaced, reinforced, somewhat reconstructed and repainted. Central Valley RV have done a superb job on this complicated repair.


The airbag was slightly damaged and the air leaked when the engine was not running, keeping it pumped up. There was some frame straightening that was done, the ‘whiskers’ behind the wheel was replaced and new lights were installed in the retrieved side panel.  We are completing the repairs that were started in December/January before we had to leave for Indio and Quartzsite. The refrigerator is the most complicated. It works on propane just fine; that is how we were able to use it in January through March. It will not work on electric. We have thawed the ice cream twice thinking it was finally fixed.  We switch back to propane and all is well. I think our repairman, Daniel, has ruled out all possible failures and will be back on the line with Dometic tomorrow morning and I think we can proceed with the final fix. We only now have one last fix… the toilet. It is electric and makes the most unusual loud clicking sound when flushed. The part for that has been ordered and should be fixed soon, but then we are all familiar with Thetford/Dometic.
The other repair saga we are dealing with is DA TOAD.  Our trusty Jeep has a dying problem. It died on Tom when he was south of Fresno. It started after sitting for about 30 minutes. Two days later after visiting old friends DA TOAD died 3 times within 10 minutes. After the third time it refused to start again. We had it towed to Sunnyside Auto Repair.  The bad news was it was a computer. $800 later we had a warrantied rebuilt computer. We drove it about 30 miles and it died. It was after business hours so we had it towed back to the tow company’s garage to be locked up for the night. The next day the Jeep did not die so we picked it up and drove it about 25 miles and it died again… after business hours. Towed again.

Currently the shop has our tow bar setup so if it should die while testing it their own truck can tow it. The shop owner thinks they have found the cause of the failures, but they want to test drive it for a couple of days to make sure.
So what else have we been doing?  Easter was a fun weekend. Saturday was the Eggstravaganza at church, an egg hunt and games. We had a kissing booth. Tom bought candy kisses and we brought Panda. She was a great kisser.

The next day after church we gathered at Perko’s for lunch. Mom, Jenny and Greg, Julie and fiancé, Claudio, Claudio’s sister, Francie, Tom’s sister, NanCy, and Tom and I.

After lunch we all headed to Exeter to see the murals again. This time we were prepared with maps, descriptions, and information about the ‘hidden’ images in each picture.

Claudio found the Mickey Mouse VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Sometimes it took all of us to figure it out.

Last Thursday was opening day at the AAA Giants’ farm team, The Grizzlies. Jennifer was helping with the fireworks and Jason is the Executive Chef for the Stadium. We were pretty proud to have both our kids working at the same venue, almost together.

On Friday night the Clovis Little League attended and walked the bases. Logan was sick and stayed home, but Ryan was excited to attend.

I, of course,took pictures of fireworks.

Grizzlies Fireworks VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We have been staying at Camp Central Valley RV, doing some caching, fixing and replacing caches, and even placing a cache, called “Home Away From Home #2”.  This has been our life for the last 3 weeks, but soon we will be On the Road Again, Caching Places that we’ve never Been AND attending the Escapee WARE Rally in Lodi.

Friends, Family, Fireworks, & Flat Tires

That’s about all I can say about the month of February.  I finished the last blog with the tire damage sustained on Hwy 95 traveling from Quartzsite to Yuma.  We did a lot of caching (for us) in Yuma very near the border and went to our first Mega Geocaching Event, S*W*A*G.  We had a wonderful time with our SKP Geocaching friends and even ran into a geocacher, Ron Smith, that we met several years ago at Cattail Cove SP at an event and helped introduce to the hobby of Geocaching.

We stayed in Yuma for about 5 days then traveled back up Hwy 95 stopping in ‘Q’ for propane and Parker for diesel and checked into Cattail Cove SP for the 4th year in a row to see the 24th Annual Winterblast 3 nights of shows.

Family and Fireworks

Our daughter, Jennifer, is a member of the Western Pyrotechnical Assoc, WPA, that puts on the shows.  Not only do we love having Jennifer and my Mom drive from Fresno to join us, but those who know me know I LOVE FIREWORKS!  I will share a couple of my favorite pictures; I took close to 500 pictures, but I’m not going to include them all .

Winterblast 2013 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Friends:

We went to “Ed’s Birthday Party again at “The Steps”, part of the BLM land south of Cattail Cove S.P.. It was a delicious potluck with 2 big birthday cakes.  This celebration started a number of years ago when Betty Anderson wanted to buy a birthday cake for Duane and the only cake available was one that was inscribed Happy Birthday Ed. Ed’s wife did not want to pick it up as Ed had passed to the Great Beyond. Betty got it half price and the tradition of celebrating Ed’s Birthday began. This year the cake was inscribed, “Here’s to our favorite Mr Ed. Even though you are quite dead, we celebrate your special day. Sorry that in the ground you lay. But Thanks for the Cake!”  We sang the theme song from the old TV series, Mr Ed, took the picture with the whole group, and sat and talked to friends.  Even our very old friends, Dennis and Jill Curtin (Dennis was one of Tom’s groomsmen in our wedding 50 years ago), came by as they were staying at the Fairgrounds to see the fireworks.

More Friends

The Cool RV’ers, Judy and Luke, moved into Cattail Cove and we were once again neighbors. .  There must be some kind of vortex or something at Cattail because we once again ran into Ron Smith and who should we spot walking by but 2 of my high school buddies, Larry Meacham and Ron Schreiner and their lovely wives.  Ron and Teri Schreiner and Larry have a singing group and were performing at the Park Amphitheater two evenings that week.

We did have a little problem, well it was a big problem, with our King Dome Satellite Dish. It would not find the signal. We got on Amazon and found a Winegard at a good price and had a terrific local installer, John Pacifico, to the installation. It was the most careful, neat, and thorough installation I have seen.  We would highly recommend John for any electronic installation work. We now have a two feed satellite DVR so we can watch one station and record on another.

Friends and Family

We traveled to Boulder City thinking we would continue to Carson City, drive over I-80 or I-50 into Sacramento for a meeting for Tom. We stayed at the very nice Boulder City Elks Lodge. We wanted to take a disc with the Golden Spike Newsletter, Telegraph, to Anne Slavicek. She is the new Editor and we see her first edition is gorgeous.  We then met my cousin, Pam and hubby, Ed, for dinner. We talked, talked, talked all about our families (I think that might be called gossip in other circles) and it was super. We really need to see our extended families more often.

While in Boulder City we rode the Nevada Southern RR as guests of CEO, Peg, because our Golden Spike Chapter donated a Sustaining Membership a couple of years ago. We did continue our support by purchasing a couple of shirts and a pin.

 

We also did the Zappos,com tour in Henderson. What an amazing business philosophy. Customers first, Open communication, Embrace change.

Zappos.com VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We had to shake the “travel Jell-O” and change our direction to Sacramento from I-80 or 50 to I-15. There was a blizzard forecast for Donner, CA, and our home does not travel in a blizzard.

Flat Tires

We were just passing Cactus Jack’s Casino at the Nevada/California border when we AGAIN heard a very loud bang, flap flap flap, and the tire monitor started screaming.  Tom pulled over and inspected the damage and determined we needed to pull way off the road into a gully next to the road.  The Big Rigs were whizzing by at 70+ MPH only a couple of feet from DA PAD. I thought DA PAD may just go over as he pulled down the slope to the gully. I prayed, God answered and he made it down safely. Pictures say it all.

Tire Blows VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Family

After a couple of hours waiting for the tire service to bring out another tire and change it we were on our way to Bakersfield. We parked at Wal-Mart after a very long day. The next day we met cousins, Ellen, her boyfriend, Dennis, and cousin Susan for another long lunch. Were we gossiping? I’ll deny it if you ask.  Boy did we have fun though.

Family & Friends

Finishing this long blog… Fresno – Sushi with Jennifer, Greg and Julie, Sacramento – EPT dinner with Dept. of Education colleagues, Ceres – lunch with neighbors who lived near us 30 years ago Gale and Phyllis, and finally back to Fresno where we sit now waiting to get DA PAD in for needed repairs at Central Valley RV next Monday.

EPT Dinner VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

While we wait we took Tom’s sister, NanCy, on the Blossom Trail ending up at Exeter to see the Murals.

 

Blossom Trail VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Exeter Murals VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Saw Logan play baseball this evening. He is a good catcher (and also a good cacher).

 

We will be caching (5 yesterday) while we wait to be On the Road Again, caching places that we’ve never been.