Leaving "HOME"

I have a LOT of catching up to do on this blog - been so busy at the Prescott home this past month...
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We stayed in Prescott long enough to see our flowering plum tree do its beautiful spring thing...

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This is the view off our deck that we like to see just ONCE each year. Prescott had a lot of snowy days this year and we were happy to see just one of them and miss the others while in San Diego or Phoenix. We left yesterday and it's snowing there today - good timing!

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While at home in Prescott I got to some tasks I'd been putting off for years...such as going through boxes and boxes that had come from my parents' home after their deaths. I actually found it quite fascinating uncovering gems such as this 1928 picture of my Mom's one room school class in rural IL. She's the first on the left in the back row - 11 years old.

My IL sister Jeri and I met at sister Betty's home in Deming, NM for a few days of sisterness and helping Betty make arrangements for herself and her ongoing battle with Leukemia. Jeri and I both ran down many tumbleweeds on the windy drive there. She won with the biggest one on her grill, brought from somewhere between El Paso and Deming...
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We three sisters in Betty's newly rearranged living room, plus one of the 2 of her beautiful cats.

Back in Prescott again, I did LOTS of girlfriend things...Linda and I visiting our 100 year old friend and P.E.O. sister, Virginia Williams...

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John and JeanAnne Morrow cooking a fantastic Italian dinner for us in our kitchen...a P.E.O. fundraiser.

Linda with her heartfelt thanks to Gregg for the great dinner...

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Our guests - Norm & Linda Smith and Cheryl & George Payne

Academy Awards party at Smith's...Marie and Jim Love dressed as Rooster Cogburn and a make-up artist, Gregg dressed formally with his Mickey Mouse vest and bow tie, me dressed as the commercial break, the Energizer Bunny.

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Linda surprised me with a going-away brunch including a great group of P.E.O. friends - Kirsten, Cheryl, Cathy, Eleanor, Jackie, Linda, Martha, Bev (picture's missing Jill). Scrumptious and fun.

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Paul and I drew the lucky numbers at the St. Patrick's Day dinner party at Martha and Mike Harris' house - we got to be the entertainment. Required to do a dance, a joke and a song, we didn't demonstrate much talent but we entertained ourselves in thinking up what to do...

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"Remember Katy" night at our house - we had 4 of Mom's good friends, Audrey & Len and Marion & Reed, over for Mom's lasagna. Still a great recipe!

My last harrah with the girls - coffee at Cuppers Coffeehouse.

Linda, Cheryl, Deborah, Mary and Martha. Lotsa laughs!



Our last night in town, a fabulous 75th birthday party for our friend Bob. Sherri planned and carried out the best dinner for about 40 friends at Murphy's restaurant. What a great time. What a fun group of friends.

Makes it a little hard to leave when we have such a good time at "home" but that ROAD just keeps calling us out...!

We'll be in Fountain Hills, AZ at McDowell Mt. Park for a week, then headed east and onward.

Valentines

Gregg & I have been so busy running around and seeing friends that we didn't even get to see each other on Valentine's Day - me in Prescott and he in Fountain Hills. But we are OK with that - we get a LOT of togetherness all year long in our 300 sq ft!

Had a wonderful dinner prepared by Linda and Norm Smith in Prescott.

I had an overnight in Pine with Betsy and Shirley, best friends from high school. We get along so well....

I got to do the Phoenix Willo District Home Tour with friend Cathy and she color coordinated so well in this back yard, I just had to get the picture!

We met new RV friends Laurie and Odel at Q in January and they e-introduced us to Alex and Ellen who are in an RV park near us here in Fountain Hills. Very fun to meet them and we hope to stay in touch and make our paths cross again. The RV family is growing and we are loving it...

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.Managed to get some girlfriend lunches in with friends Sherri and Lynn. Wish I'd thought to take pictures!

Just finished our 2010 photo book which always makes me want to do better at making sure we get pictures of everyone we see...

Here's a link to our 2010 book:

http://www.mypublisher.com/?e=OHm3Q8zJl3TFCSldL124LSZZm2vnBNi1&showForm=true

February = Friends & Family

We're enjoying running around Phoenix area visiting friends and family, in preparation for a March departure on another long RV trip.
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This is Eva-Who-Loves-Marinara-Sauce, daughter of our friends Alex and Theresa. Cute, huh?
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My cousin Bill - always a kick to visit him and hear his stories.





My kids, Sarah and Andy, joined me on a jaunt to Deming, NM to visit my sister Betty. Betty took us to a really great rock shop and bought us all beautiful polished geodes. This was my solo RV trip, leaving Gregg with his brother in AZ. 3 days, 700 miles, no problems. Andy drove 80 miles of the freeway. We let Sarah sit in the driver's seat for pictures only!

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New Escapee Boomer friends Laurie and Odel that we met in Quartzsite are spending some time in Phoenix and came out for a look and a hike at our favorite park here, McDowell Mountain Regional.

Gregg and I gathered together 22 of the advisors and staff from our former days as financial advisors for a Happy Hour. Great to see faces from the past and to relive some of our fun times.

Two of my former leaders, Scott and Mike. Both were highly inspiring and changed my life. Hey, if they hadn't kept me sane while starting my business in the '90's, I wouldn't have met Gregg and wouldn't be here in McDowell Mountain Park today in our little home on wheels!

Out for lunch with Gregg's former clients and now good friends, Roy and Audrey.

Great dinner and night out at Lee and Bob's with Judy and Gary. Lee & Bob RV with us sometimes and we can't wait for them to retire and get out here with us more often!

More McDowell Mountain Park

We'll be calling this home for a couple of weeks, one of our most favorite parks anywhere. We were married here in 2003. The views are expansive and peaceful. The wind is rocking us tonight and it's chilly outside but my sister in IL and brother & sister-in-law in CO are being buried in snow and frozen in below zero temps so I'm not complaining! We just hole up with books and computers...

Outside our windows, in what I claim as our "yard", the migrating cardinals are here every day - gorgeous. Sometimes 3 bright red males at a time in a tree.

The horses appeared one day in the temporary corral right next to us. The Ranger explained that the corral was for trapping horses that ranchers let loose to browse in the desert. But these two showed up with saddles and no riders. Sheriff did a search and rescue and didn't find anyone the first day but on the second day a man and trailer showed up to take them home. Apparently horses and riders had somehow become separated somehow though we never heard the entire story of it. Was nice to have 2 horses as neighbors for two days!

Q Boomerville

This is a site I like to see...our rig right next to our last rig, our beloved Bounder. That means we're camping with our good friends Dean and Judy.

Reflections in Luke's RV - great time of day for a photo.

A trek across the desert one Friday took us to Bouse for a great all-you-can-eat fish fry.

A first for me RVing - I met another member of PEO, my women's organization. Small world, Beth happens to know my sister Jeri in IL who is in her mother's chapter in IL!
I taught necklace making with yarns one day. Each made a $5 donation to CARE, the RVer's assisted living facility in TX that we all support. Over the course of Boomerville's life this year, I think the group raised over $2,500 for CARE from things like pancake breakfasts, a magic show and auctions.


Me and my girlfriends - Beth, Judy, Dee and Jan. They make GREAT neighbors!






An Escapee tradition is a skit put on by newcomers to Boomerville, written and joyfully produced by Deb and Mark. We all had little parts to play, costumes to design, had a ball doing it and ended up with a crazy little ditty running through our heads for days.

I played the part of an Opera singer and Gregg the part of a TSA Agent. He loved getting to grope me and prod me in public...

AZ desert

So we are now in our 2nd state this 2011 year - Arizona. Thoroughly enjoyed CA but it's time to be on the move again.

We are in Quartzsite, AZ or alternately known as Q when you tire of typing out the entire long name. Vast areas of desert and BLM lands with small mountain backdrops, just across the CA border from Blythe on I-10. Q is a town with a population of about 3300 folks if you do not count the itinerants like us. Count us and the population reaches something like 100,000. Over 1 million people visit Q in the months of January and February for RV, vacation, gem, mineral shows and flea markets. Hotels and motels do NOT abound for this. RV's do. It is said to be the largest gathering of RV's anywhere in the world. This aerial photo above was taken by a member of our group, the Escapees Boomers. He flies a power parachute each morning here. What you see, we call Boomerville. Our first trip here, but some of our friends here have done this for years. Days are full of activities, campfires, happy hours, pot lucks, seminars, hikes, 4-wheel drive trips, night-time outdoor slide shows of members' trips, bike rides and trips into town for the incredible RV show and flea market.

Boomerville has had about 100 rigs this past week, some coming and going, but a pretty big core group of us making up our little town. You can see in the picture that there are other little towns of RV's throughout the desert. Rallys of all kinds of clubs and groups and lots of tiny groups. They spread for miles and miles and into other little AZ towns like Bouse and Brenda. Fine place to spend a winter or a part of it, lots of snowbirds here, lots of Canadians.

Still in the desert...

First time we've ever been parked right next to a Joshua Tree. Nice campground in Joshua Tree National Park. Absolutely beautiful clear day. We took a drive in the park that took us nearly a mile high and we could see across the Salton Sea all the way to the mountains on the Mexico border.

This is a beautiful park where the Sonoran and Mohave deserts meet, where you can see Pinon pines, Joshua trees and Yuccas together among huge granite boulders.

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Find Waldo in this picture to get a feel for the vastness.

We also hiked in Palm Canyon just outside of Palm Springs. Gorgeous, enormous Washingtonian Fan Palms. This was incredibly beautiful and very humid and rainforest-like. (Thanks Cousin Jeff for pointing us in this direction.)

Oh yes, my Cousin Jeff... Actually my first cousin once removed. His dad Dan is my cousin. Jeff renovates houses and showed us some of his work in Palm Springs...what a trip! We had the best time with Jeff, Dan, Jim and Nancy at their house with the Chandelier That Ate the Living Room. Here's a look at a current project - I'll just leave that caption-less for you to wonder why he has those huge rocks in this room...