Southern CA and our friends

We are having a great time here in SoCal. We are visiting with our friends, Joe is playing golf a lot and we have been pretty lucky to be able to stay at March ARB FamCamp and at Thousand Trails in Menifee (about 25 miles away from the base). It has been 2 years since we left here, so it is nice to be back.  We have even driven past our old house in Ontario and it looks real good.  The neighborhood looks about the same too.

Our friends Tim and Marcia invited us over to their house for Christmas, that was great. They had a lot of good food and great desserts, we had a lot of fun. It was so nice not to spend Christmas day alone in our coach, like last year.

Tim and Joe play golf almost every Monday when the weather is nice, but, we are getting a lot of rain here. One night soon after we arrived here, A group of us got together for dinner at Joe's Italian Restaurant, a favorite place near the base here. It was the two of us, Tim and Marcia, Ron and Bev, Tom and Sue, it was so good to see everyone.

We have seen Charles (Joe's son) and his boy Jacob a few times and have enjoyed being with Jacob. He is 5 years old now and we have not seen him in 3 years, so he is growing up and is so cute. We will get to see them a lot more while we are here.

We went down to our friends Chuck and Cruz in Oceanside for New Years Eve, we stayed there at their house for a couple of nights and had a lot of fun every day. We always enjoy ourselves with them. We are sure busy here, and having a great time too.

Kevin and boys in Vegas

When we arrived in Vegas and got parked at Thousand Trails and all set up. We will be spending a few days here and visiting with my Son Kevin and our 2 Grandsons who live here in Henderson.

We went over to Kevin's and both Christian and Kevin were working, so we took Cory out to dinner. Most of the time everyone is talking and laughing, and since Cory is the quiet one, he does not get to say much, so it was very nice to get to spend some time with just him alone.

Everyone is working all different shifts, so it was hard to get everyone together, but did manage to meet up for breakfast one day, Sam's Town always advertises their buffet's so I decided to take them there for the Breakfast Buffet. It was not very good at all, but we all talked and laughed and had fun anyhow, so not all was lost.

The next day was a football game on TV, so since the guys all wanted to watch football, I decided to cook my homemade chili. It was very good and I fixed rice and macaroni, and we had cheese, crackers and chopped onions too. Everyone ate a lot and watched football, it was a lot of fun. We took them home later, but everyone was full and happy. We even had leftovers to send home with them for lunch the next day.

Since everyone was working the next day, we decided to head out to Nellis AFB and check out the BX and of course the golf course. So, spent most of the day shopping at the BX (Joe was at the golf course) and then we went over to the commissary and did some grocery shopping too.

We only had one more day in Vegas, so we went over are picked up Kevin and the boys, lucky for us, nobody had to work until later that day. We took them over to Harrah's for Brunch, we know the food there is the best, so wanted to go to a good place after the other breakfast we had. We spent about two hours talking and laughing and eating, had a great time too.

That was the end of our visit in Las Vegas, we loved our visit here, we actually got to spend more time with Kevin than we usually do and that was so nice. We will be leaving the tomorrow to Southern California for the winter. On the way to CA, we stopped at state line to fill both vehicles up with fuel. The prices in California are always much higher, so we wanted to start out with full tanks.

Phoenix AZ and then Laughlin NV

We stopped at Cummins in Phoenix Arizona and got the oil pan leak repaired. They found that the oil pan, which was installed at Springfield MO in October of 2009 and then reinstalled in November 2009 (only 2 weeks and 300 miles later) at Memphis TN, needed to be replaced again. Due to bad workmanship at both of the other locations, this was all paid for under warranty by Cummins. The Phoenix Cummins dealer was outstanding, very good and conscientious too, they called us two times after the service to check on how things were going. We are very impressed.

We called Gina Minkin, the wife of our Air Force friend, Kyle Minkin, who passed away a few years back. We decided to meet with her for lunch while they were working on our coach. We had a good time catching up with everything going on with her and her family. She updated us on how Kyle's girls, Falen and Kayleen, and their children are doing. We picked up the motor home later that afternoon, and took it to a truck wash nearby to get it all cleaned up and the oil residue on the back cap all washed off. It looked great, then we settled in for the night at the Flying J just up the road. We stayed there for the night and Gina came over the next morning and met us for breakfast before we headed out.

Our next stop is Laughlin Nevada, we have decided to make reservations at Harrahs for the 5 nights that we are staying in town. We arrived late that afternoon, and got checked into the hotel for the night. The next morning we called our friends Frank and Regina Parker, to let them know we were in town and anxious to see them. We met up with them and went over to Avi Casino to play for a little while and have dinner. Had a great time, and of course Joe and Frank made arrangements to play golf the next day. They played a couple of times while we were there, and of course had a great time.

Harrah's has a nice and secure parking lot up on the hill from the hotel, to park the coach while we are staying at the hotel, so that was very convenient for us. It was pretty nice to stay at the hotel and take long showers in that great big bathroom. They gave us a wonderful suite, so we were very comfortable during our stay there.

We are heading for Las Vegas to see Kevin (Carol's son) and his two boys, Cory and Christain, they live in Henderson Nevada. We will be staying at the Thousand Trails RV Park on Boulder Highway in Las Vegas. Of course we have not been there for a couple of years, so it will be nice to see them again.

Gary and Shannon's in Tucson

When we arrived in Tucson, we had to go to Freightliner to have a steering column cover replaced on the coach. We had a faulty turn signal in Illinois and they replaced the turn signal, but the cover was broken, so we asked them to order a new one and we arranged to have it replaced in Tucson.

As soon as we were done there, we called Gary and he gave us directions to their home. We finely arrived at their home and Shannon had prepared us a great dinner, we visited for a while, made some plans for the next day, and then called it a night.

It was so beautiful up at Mount Lemmon, we loved it there. It was my Birthday so we stopped at a little place for drink. At the "Cookie Cabin" we split a great big cookie and enjoyed some hot chocolate, and of course a birthday song !!! We had a great day up at Mount Lemmon and decided to head down to Tombstone the next day.

Tombstone is about an hour and a half drive from their home, but the time went by fast, we were talking and laughing all the way. As soon as we arrived in Tombstone, we stopped at the Boothill Graveyard on the edge of town and checked it out. Then on into town.

Wow, that was another fun day. We loved it there, and had so much fun with Gary and Shannon. We were all tired by the time we finely got back home.

They have a great home, and they even have a great place for us to park our coach right outside their door.

We had a wonderful time in Tucson, we had a great time with Gary and Shannon, as you can see they have a beautiful home there, and we are looking forward to coming back for another visit.

Now we are headed toward Phoenix and will be going to Cummins there to have our engine checked out, it seems to have an oil leak coming from the bottom of the engine somewhere (maybe the oil pan we had replaced last year), it throws oil all over the back of the coach and the car too when we are towing it. We plan to call our friend Gina Minkin and see if we can get together for dinner while we are there.

Spicewood Airport Texas

When we first arrived in Spicewood Texas, Tom and Lynn drove out to the highway to meet us and guide us in to his Brother Bill's hanger at the airport. He had made arrangements for us to park the coach in front of Bill's hanger there at Spicewood Airport.

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner with Tom, Lynn, Bill and Sara and more family and friends. They moved the airplane out of the hanger and set up tables for everyone to sit and eat. They have a big kitchen there in the hanger, so that was a perfect place for a large group of family and friends to enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner together.

This was a beautiful airport, one of the most memorable places that we have parked our motor home. Small planes taking off and landing all day, Wow, what an exciting place to be. Bill even took Joe up in the Helicopter for about an hour ride over the Austin area. Joe had a wonderful time and has talked about it ever since that day. Tom would like to have gone, but, was still sick with a cold, however he came out to see Joe and Bill off.

We went down to have biscuits and gravy with Tom, Lynn and her Mom one morning and had a chance to catch Santa filling up his motorcycle at the gas station. I guess that is what he drives before Christmas.

We had a great time during our stay in Spicewood Texas, this is a beautiful area, and close to Austin. We drove down to San Antonio for the day one day and had fun, we also stopped at Fredricksburg Texas on our way of Texas toward New Mexico.

Pat and Terry at Altus AFB, Oklahoma

We have been trying to get to Altus Oklahoma for a couple of years, and something always gets in the way. This time we finely made it !! We have friends here, Pat and Terry Krause. We both worked with them several years ago at Norton AFB and at March ARB in California.

We sure did have a good time here too. I have always thought of Oklahoma as being a flat state, with tornadoes and wind storms. Pat and Terry showed us a different side of this great state and the area where they live. They took us up on a mountain, yes, a mountain in Oklahoma. Who Knew !!!

Beautiful place, then we went to a Wildlife Preserve nearby where we saw Long Horn Steer. They are so beautiful and amazing. They also have buffalo, we could see them, but the buffalo were not close enough to the road for us to get any pictures of them.

In addition to the Long Horn Steer, we also saw several deer and prairie dogs. I had no idea that Cotton grew in Oklahoma too.

Oh, I forgot to mention that while we were parked at Altus FamCamp, our car was parked behind our motor home in a parking lot. The first morning it was very cold and raining, with wind gusts. When we went outside, we saw that the pontoon boat that had been parked a little further up the parking lot had come to rest against our car. It was not secured when it was parked and the winds had blown it loose. I guess we will get the repairs done while we are in California this winter.

We are on our way to Spicewood Texas to visit with our friends Tom and Lynn, we are planning to stay there and have Thanksgiving dinner with Tom and Lynn and their family this year.

Oklahoma City

Once we got settled in at the famcamp at Tinker AFB, we went to the Bass Pro Shop and took a Tram down to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum at the site of the Federal building that was bombed on April 19th 1995.

This was a wonderful memorial, each of the empty chairs in the following pictures is a monument to a person who lost their life on that day. The small ones identify the 19 children and the large ones the 149 adults. The museum was great too, and we spent several hours going through it. I highly recommend for this to be a stop for everyone passing through Oklahoma. They have done a great job putting this memorial together and it makes you realize how vulnerable we all are, and how precious every day is to us.

We found out while we were here that there is a recall on our Norcold Refrigerator, so we called and found a place locally to get the repairs done. We were told be the mfg that we needed to turn off and unplug it now, so had to go over to Outdoor Recreation and rent a large cooler to put everything out of the freezer and fridge in. Had to wait two days for the part to come in then, we will go in to get the work done.

The famcamp at Tinker AFB, is a very clean nice campground. It is a little crowded to get parked for those of us with large motor homes, but very nice and roomy once you get into your site. We enjoyed our stay here, and are looking forward to coming back again.

We Finely got our refrigerator recall done and after we had to throw away a lot of frozen food, we were on the road again, and heading for our friends at Altus AFB, Oklahoma.