Turning the Page

 We went on our first trip in an RV in 1988.  We borrowed John's sister Cindy's popup tent trailer to take our son Eric to a Christian youth gathering--DC88-in Washington, D.C.  That was it for a couple of years, but we had enjoyed it so much that, to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, we bought a Coleman popup tent trailer for ourselves.     

    We used that trailer for getaways on our days off and for traveling during our month-long summer vacation.  One year we went to the Northwest and up into British Columbia.  Then, in 1996 we bought a 1996 Komfort 5th-wheel trailer.  Since then, we have owned two Montana 5thwheels and a Mobile Suites 5th wheel.  Downsizing in 2016, we bought an Airstream travel trailer.  

 Fast forward to this year--we are aging and decided it was time to stop RVing.  The parking area next to our winter home in Arizona no longer has a trailer parked there.

   

On April 18, it pulled out of our driveway without us!  

We have so many wonderful memories of traveling in our trailers.  Over those years, we have slept overnight in our trailer in all 49 of the continental United States. This year, we both turn 79. We have been there, done that.  And decided it was time to change our lifestyle.  To turn the page. 

I began blogging about our life in 2006.   In 2009, we moved out of our home in Centennial, Colorado, and began living in our trailer full-time.  We have traveled; we have volunteered in national parks in Utah and Arkansas; we have volunteered in state parks in Utah and Colorado and in a private RV park in Montana. Then, in 2014, we bought a casita in Gold Canyon, Arizona, where we lived half the year, traveling the rest of the time.  We haven't owned a 5th wheel trailer since 2016. The title "5thWheelWanderings" longer relevant.

Each year I have published my blog posts in a book.  Look at the stack of books I have published!

  

I began blogging about our life in 2006.   In 2009, we moved out of our home in Centennial, Colorado, and began living in our trailer full-time.  We have traveled; we have volunteered in national parks in Utah and Arkansas; we have volunteered in state parks in Utah. Texas and Colorado and in a private RV park in Montana; we have volunteered for US Fish and Wildlife and Oregon Fish and Wildlife. Then, in 2014, we bought a casita in Gold Canyon, Arizona, where we lived half the year, traveling the rest of the time.  We haven't owned a 5th wheel trailer since 2016. The title "5thWheelWanderings" longer relevant.

It is time for a new blog.  From now on, you can read about our life at:  changingourfocus.blogspot.com.

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On the Road Again

As Willie Nelson sings, "On the road again, I just can't wait to get on the road again." That is what we were saying in the hot, very hot, Phoenix valley. And Friday, we did just that.

But just look at this great sunset we had the night before we left.

Here we go, leaving our site in Gold Canyon.

So now we are parked under this great maple tree in much cooler Flagstaff.  We will have four nights here before heading east.

The exercise room in our resort has been closed because of Covid 19.  It opened the day before we left.  Note the shrink wrap that closes off some machines for social distancing.

To mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the end of World War II in Europe, these historic war planes flew over Phoenix on May 8.  We watched them from the upper deck of our neighbors Tom and Jody's house.

John completed this beautiful wooden intarsia door topper for our home in Arizona.

Our plans for the summer are to travel--safely we hope--across northern Arizona and New Mexico, then north up I-25 in Colorado, spending time in areas where our family lives. We will slowly head west again, across Colorado and Utah, then back here to Arizona in the fall.

Food and Wine in California

After leaving Nevada, we drove into California and spent a little over a week driving from the  south end of this huge state to the north end and on into Oregon.  On  the  way, we were impressed with the variety of crops grown in the San Jauquin and central valleys.

From a past visit, we had learned that California provides much of the fresh produce for the rest our country.  In fact, Califoria is the world's 5th largest supplier  of food, cotton fiber and other agricultural comodities.  It is the lrgest producer of food in the US but has less than 4% of the farms in the country.  The climate allows the cultivation of over 450 different crops.

Californis the the 4th largest wine producer in the world and produces over 90% of the wine in the US.

We saw vineyards,

orchards of just-planted trees,

young fruit or nut trees,

corn fields,

and huge haystacks.

Several times we saw large numbers of what we nornally would call grain elevators.  We weren't sure what they held here--seeds? nuts?

I believe this is a field of newly planted trees.

Possibly new grape vines, with stakes.

I had no idea rice was grown here.  These are numerous fields filled with water and rice plants.

I believe this was a newly mown hay field.

There was a massive wildfire in 2018.  This may have been destruction from the Camp fire.  If I remember correctly, that is the fire that was blamed on the electric company and lines that sparked and started a fire.

Sometimes white plastic sheeting covers newly planted seeds or sprouts to keep out weeds.  Here they appear to be spraying something on the plants.

It was a really interesting trip.

Moving West

Thursday we turned our truck to the west, beginning our journey back to Gold Canyon from Houston. First stop was San Antonio. For years we have been staying at Blazing Star when in San Antonio. We had stayed there before going to Houston the week before. But we decided to check out the San Antonio KOA. It is large, with gravel roads and pads. They have children's bikes for rent. The sites are a little wider than at Blazing Star. The KOA isn't as refined but it feels so comfortable, reminding us of the way we traveled the first years of RVing. Actually both campgrounds in San Antonio are good, it just depends on what you are interested in.


Our next stop was Junction, Texas, about 120 miles to the west. We have stayed there several times and enjoyed the Llano South and Llano North campgrounds. We decided to vary our routine and went to a small park, Pecan Valley RV. With only 12 sites and located several miles out of town next to a pecan orchard, it has a very different feel from either of the Llano campgrounds.  The park has pretty good WIFI.  We had discovered before that we can't get Verizon service for phone or internet on our phones in Junction.  The camp hosts at Pecan Valley informed us that Kimball Country, where Junction is located, has no Verizon service at all.  The sites are large and it would be a great place to chill out for a while if we were tired of traveling and not interested in sightseeing. I always try to take a photo of our campsites and we took quite a few pictures at Pecan Valley.

Sunday we moved west again, to Fort Stockton. In case you had never traveled across the center of the country, especially in Texas, you may not realize the distances involved. For travelers like us, we choose to drive about 200 miles, more or less, if at all possible. That means in this state we stay in the same towns on each trip. We were in Fort Stockton for one night in mid-December. The Fort Stockton RV Park is large and old. Many of the sites are occupied long-term by oil drilling employees. But they had a café serving good chicken fried steak and pretty good wifi. It is a little run down but familiar.

Tomorrow we head west again, returning to the El Paso area, and then probably either Benson or Willcox before returning to Gold Canyon.

Our Texas Trip--So Far

We have been to Texas numerous times during our 30 years of traveling by RV.  This trip, so far, we have seen colder weather than usual but just as many interesting sights.  One day we saw a small herd of javelina, some ostriches, an ibex, goats and cattle.  There have also been a few longhorn cattle.

Traveling across West Texas, this sign and the town of Fort Stockton are part of the scenery.

At least 3 former US presidents hailed from Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson, George H.W. Bush and George Bush.  We spent a couple of days in Johnson City and saw the childhood home of LBJ.

There are lots of peaches grown in West Texas and many, many vineyards.  We saw these signs around Johnson City and Fredericksburg.

Of course, the main reason we stopped in Johnson City was to see the Christmas lights.  We happened on them two years ago when we were here and wanted to see them again.

While shopping in Fredericksburg yesterday, we visited the Vereins Kirche (community church) and Christmas pyramid in the center of town.

We also saw this neat old panel truck.

Many of the trees in Texas are large. Some, like the live oak, are evergreen.

Others are bare this time of year but still beautiful. I think this must be a mesquite tree.

The Scenic Route

We left our winter home April 18.  Since last summer John had known he was going to officiate at the wedding of our great niece Sarah and Jay.  The wedding was scheduled for Colorado Springs, a mere 754 miles away.  So why did we drive 6,600 miles and stay in 32 different campgrounds to get there?

We certainly took the scenic route.  We made memorable visits to Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Washington, DC,  and New York City.  We spent time in New Hampshire when Doug graduated from Nashua Community College.  We also completed our bucket list of sleeping in every mainland state in the US, picking up Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island.  Yea!

After going just about as far east in the country as we could (without going to Florida), we turned around and headed for Colorado and the wedding.

Now we have 8 weeks to relax in 4 different Colorado State Parks before heading south to Arizona for the winter.  We are enjoying this slower, more relaxing pace.  John is carving.  I am sanding on a a bowl I turned and a scroll saw project that I need to complete.  And we get to connect with family and friends.

It almost feels like we are on vacation.  We enjoy traveling in our trailer, rather than staying in motels when we getting somewhere.  But RV travel is even more fun when we can do it slowly, spending extended time wherever we park.

Views from the Midwest

I grew up in Denver.  For good views I looked to the Rocky Mountains.  The ocean also provides great views.  But there is a lot to see in the Midwest, where we have been traveling the last couple of months.

I love the patterns in the field.

Campgrounds have grain silos on the horizon.

My dad grew up in the Midwest, in Illinois.  He always said the corn needed to be knee high by the 4th of July.  It isn't even July and this corn is at least waist high. In the second photo that field is only about knee high.

These cattle are huddled together in the shade--at least most of them are.  Cattle really have a go-with-the-heard mentality.

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A farm house and barn surrounded by many acres of field.

The country has been farmed for a couple of centuries.  We often see broken down, abandoned buildings.

Wide open spaces are everywhere.  And straight, straight roads, sometimes with a few hills along the way.

What beautiful scenes as we travel I-80 and I-70 west across the country.

A Great Outing

Our trailer remodel passed muster when we took it to Laughlin, NV, last weekend to attend a BBQ cookoff. We found the new recliners, storage and table meet our needs. We are really glad we had the work done.

There is lots to share about the trip but it has taken me a while to begin blogging. That is because not everything about the trip was great. We get our internet with a Verizon 4LTE Jetpack. We just upgraded the device and I hadn't taken the time to change the name and password on it. Not a good idea. Monday I checked how much data we had used in the first 4 days to the billing cycle. I was shocked to see 12G of data had been used! When I looked at how it was used, I saw it included streaming video and chatting. We don't do that. I called Verizon and all they could suggest is making sure I changed the security and the password. We have to eat the data!! You can bet I changed the jetpack settings. I also sprang for 10 extra gigs of data for the month.

The next day I wasn't able to sign in to that wifi signal on my computer. I could connect with John's iPad and our phones but not the laptop. A call to Geek Squad technicians didn't resolved it so I made an appointment to go into Best Buy on Tuesday. The fix was simple. Thank heavens I could go online later yesterday. So here I am, beginning to blog about our travel last Thursday and Friday.

Lesson of the day (or weekend), change the security on your wifi device as soon as you bring it home.

The scenery between Gold Canyon and Laughlin is beautiful and varied. First we had to deal with the traffic as we drove through Phoenix.

I didn't realize that Joshua Trees grew in Arizona. I thought they were only found in southeastern California. Wrong. There are a lot of them on the Joshua Tree Parkway between Congress, AZ, and Laughlin.

The desert and mountains along the way changed from one section to another but it was all beautiful.

(Barb, doesn't this look like a fist with a thumb up?)

There was a lot more that was interesting about this trip. But we knew right away we will be taking more short trips during our winter in Arizona. There is just so much to see.