Christmas in Payson, 12/23/08-01/06/09

Well, we left the nice warm weather in Palm Springs to go to Payson, AZ, where our sons, Travis and Ryan, live with seven of our grandkids. It was actually pretty nice weather there, just about 20 degrees colder than Palm Springs.

We parked in Ryan's front yard and plugged into his power and water. We just had to be careful to not blow the breaker because it was only 20 amp. It worked out really well.

We were handy for Ryan's three kids to come and go. I had lots of help making goodies for Christmas. This is Wesley, Ryley, and Chaz busy in my kitchen!

Ryan is the Athletic Trainer for Payson High School. The won the State Championship football game. Here is Wes styl'n in one of the championship hats. I am sure one of the reasons they won is because they have such a good athletic trainer. Ryan was able to pull some strings and get Travis' son, Spencer, as the water boy for the game. It was really exciting because it went into double overtime until Payson finally won. We weren't there to see the game, but everyone was still talking about it.

We got to watch the kids decorate their Christmas tree. They did a good job and we had a fun time.

But, by the end of the day, Chaz pooped out! He is a very busy little boy and you don't catch him like this very often.

Christmas Eve, we all went over to Travis' home and had a great dinner. Sitting around the table is Spencer, Terry, Lori, Ryley, and Ryan.

And here we have, again, Ryley, Ryan, Shannon, a little bit of Travis, and Spencer.

Wesley, Nicholas, and Josh shared the bar.

While Nathan and Chaz ate at the kitchen island.

Christmas morning! The kids were sure that Santa had visited and they couldn't wait to see what he brought!

Light sabers all around, with the kids wearing the pajamas they had opened the night before!

After opening gifts at Ryan's, Terry and I went to Travis' and he fixed us breakfast and we opened a few gifts there!

Santa had made it to their home, also. The kids must have been really good the past year, judging from the loot they got!

The day after Christmas, Ryan took us all to the gym at the high school to run off some energy. Well, I think it was the kids who were supposed to run off the energy, but I think the guys got a little exercise also.

Ryan showed off his training room that he uses at the school. The kids sit at this table while Ryan wraps their ankles and knees and does all of the other things he does for them. It was pretty impressive. He even had a whirlpool bath there. They are a pretty lucky high school to have this kind of facility and a trainer.

Travis shows off his sign that is in the gym along the top of the bleachers. It was also pretty impressive. If I sound a little proud, it is because I am!

After Christmas, we went with Ryan and his family down to the Arizona Temple in Mesa to see the Christmas lights. The last time we were at this temple was when Travis and Shannon got married!

The displays and the lights were really great. They say all of the lights compare to those on Temple Square in Salt Lake city, without the cold weather!

Here is Ryan with his wife Lori and their kids, Ryley, Wesley, and Chaz in front of one of the displays on the Temple grounds.

We went up from Payson to Pinetop where my brother David has a cabin. There was lots of snow and Terry even got to use his 4-wheel drive! He was so excited! We left Chaz with Travis' family and brought Spencer with us, along with the rest of Ryan's family. Spencer and Blake, David's son, are the same age.

David's "cabin" used to be a double wide modular home that he sided with logs and now looks like a log cabin. He did a really good job. In fact, some of his neighbors have since copied him.

He finished the inside of the house and even made some of the furniture. Here is Blake standing on the bed his dad made for him.

David made all of the furniture in their bedroom and Kari decorated, even making the curtains and other things. They both did such a good job.

The boys had lots of fun playing outside in the snow. They ended up walking about a mile away to a great sledding hill. We gave them a while and then we went looking for them. Terry and I followed David and ended up taking the "scenic route" through knee-deep snow!

We are on our way back from the sledding hill. Here is David and Ryan with Wesley and Ryley on Ryan's shoulders. It was a long ways for her to walk home.

Wesley, Ryley, and Chaz had to have a "sleep over" with us before we left. Ryan and Lori had a date night out while we fed the kids dinner, played games, and ended the evening with popcorn and a movie. The kids were really good and even slept in the next morning.

Sunday morning, Chaz had to come over and make sure Grampa Howie was getting ready for Church. He was excited because he got to go to Primary for the first time instead of going into the Nursery. We got reports that he was the very best Sunbeam in his class!

I had promised Ryan a batch of divinity for Christmas, but never made time to make it before Christmas. So, the day before we left, Ryley came over to help me make a batch of divinity.

We had so much fun spending time with Travis and Ryan and their families. We even took a hike around the housing community where Travis hopes to build a home some day. The trail wound around the golf course and past some beautiful homes. We had a great Christmas with all of them and saw the new year in with Lori and Ryan. Thanks to all of you for letting us share the holiday season with you!

Back to Palm Springs, 12/12 - 12/22

We had plans to go to Bullhead City, AZ after leaving Wilderness. We were going to meet up with Terry's Sister and husband there, but they weren't able to leave Idaho until January. So, we decided to go back to Palm Springs, which was 70 miles vs. 270 miles. Some of our RV friends were still there, so we thought it would be fun to be with them a few more days.

We got us a little Christmas tree and some stockings and bows to trim the Condo and try to get Terry in the Christmas spirit. He is sometimes kind of a scrooge until the day or two before Christmas!

We went to the little craft sale at the park (something that most parks have every Saturday morning) and found a set of decals for the windows. I tried to take a picture of our back window, but mostly just a reflection showed. But, it turned out being kind of a nice picture of an RV Christmas in Palm Springs.

We took our tripod, camera, and Santa hats down to the pool to try to get some pictures for our Christmas cards. One of these is the one we chose for our cards and the other two came in second and third choice!

It rained the last couple of days we were in Palm Springs--down in the valley. You can see what it did in the mountains surrounding Palm Springs!! I guess it is very unusual to get snow in the area. It seems that the weather is very unpredictable where ever you are anymore!

After it rained for a couple of days, the streets of Palm Springs and the surrounding communities all flooded and they had a lot of them closed off to the public. There were even a few people who had gotten into the flooded areas and had to be rescued. They showed a man in the middle of the street with a grocery cart who had to have help getting out of the torrent of water he was in! Then, after a day of no rain, the water just kind of disappeared!

Well, we are headed to Payson, AZ on the 22nd to park in our son Ryan's driveway until January 6. Our son, Travis also lives in Payson, and we will have 7 grandkids to share Christmas with. Lots of fun! Merry Christmas to all of you!

Wilderness Lakes, Menifee CA 11/25/09 - 12/12/09

We left Palm Springs to go to Wilderness Lakes Resort, which is about 70 miles to the west of Palm Springs, between Los Angeles and San Diego. We really liked this park. Because we got there the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and most of the California schools got the whole week off, there were lots of people there and lots of kids. It was kind of fun being around families again. Things really got quiet after Thanksgiving weekend was over.

A lot of California people move back and forth from Palm Springs and Wilderness campgrounds--three weeks in each one at a time. They will do that all winter, and sometimes longer. About 80% of the people in the Park have California license plates.

As soon as we started setting up when we got there, we had visitors. I was sitting in a chair taking their pictures and they came right up to me.

Terry decided maybe they would make a mess on our rug, so he came and shooed them away! We thought they may be a nuisance, but they really never came that close after we had been there for a day or two. We just made sure we didn't feed them close to the Condo!

This is the first Thanksgiving we have not had family with us. But, I put a turkey, all stuffed with homemade dressing, in our little oven and it cooked just fine. We kept it for leftovers because we ate dinner in the lodge with about 50 other RVers. We met two very nice couples who ate at our table. But, it wasn't the best Thanksgiving meal we have ever had! Actually, we both agreed that my turkey and dressing was the best!

Wilderness Park is unique in that it has a series of canals that wind through it. They stock the canals with catfish. In fact, the fish truck came while we were there and we got to see them dump several hundred catfish into the canal. We got a spot where we backed right up to one of the canals.

This is pretty much what we saw out our big back window, except there were usually people fishing all along the canal. We even had our own water fountain. They had these fountains all along the canals that were put in to keep the water moving. The only bad thing was that it was kind of noisy right at our back. The water was nice to hear, but the motor was quite loud. We got used to it, though, and hardly noticed it after a while.

There were lots of ducks wherever you went in the Park. The Park is a preserve for ducks and geese who come each winter. Some stay all winter and some just use it as a stopping place on their way further south.

The park has a really nice miniature golf course, but sometimes the ducks use it more than the people. Some of the campers complained at a Managers Meeting that the course needed to be cleaned more often because the geese were camping out on it overnight!

Another uniqueness to this Park are the dairies. There use to be quite a few dairies all around the park, which caused an odor that was a little offensive to a lot of people (Terry just says it smells like $$ to him.) Well, the area is slowly turning into housing developments and there is just one active dairy left. The smell wasn't ever too bad while we were there. I guess that the flies are pretty bad if you come to the Park in the summer months.

A few miles from the Park is a man-made lake called Diamond Lake. It was finished in 2000 and has three dams to hold the water in. There is limited fishing allowed along the bank, but they allow boats. They really want you to rent their boats, but if you use your own, there is an inspection process to go through. There is no "body contact" allowed with the water because this lake was built as a reservoir to hold water piped from the Colorado River and other water that comes from northern California and it supplies water for a lot of southern California.

There is a 21 mile trail that goes all around the lake. The parts that goes over the dams are paved, but the rest is gravel and dirt. It is a great bike trail. We had been riding our bike from 9-12 miles a day so one day we decided we would try out the lake trail. This is the first dam we went over. It is more than a mile long, which was nice because it was paved.

We thought we might see more wildlife, but the only thing we was with this lonely little coyote and some quail.

There were restrooms along the trail and several canopies they had put up that had picnic tables under them. They were nice to stop and rest under and have a little snack.

This was our second stop. We were about halfway around the lake and at the beginning of the second dam. The third dam is just past the pump house you can see in the picture and it was paved trail on the dams and also between them. The only bad thing was the "big" hill between the dams. The trail went up over the mountain between them. I do admit that we had to get off and push the bike the last part of the hill. We decided it just wasn't worth it to hurt that bad!

We have never ridden our bike 21 miles before. In fact, that morning we had taken a 5-mile ride before we decided to ride the lake! So, needless to say, the last five miles or so of the trail was pretty hard. We were glad to see that 3-mile sign.

And then, suddenly, we rounded the bend and there was the parking lot and our little red hippo was sitting in the parking lot! It looked pretty good. Even though the trail was supposed to be 21 miles long, the odometer on our bike said we had ridden 22.5 miles from the time we left the hippo until we got back to it! But, we are ready to do it again, after a few days of rest. Hopefully we can find another trail sometime at one of the next campgrounds we go to.

Palm Springs, Palm Desert CA 11/4 - 11/25

We left Soledad Canyon, headed to Palm Springs. We were looking forward to settling in for three weeks at the same place. We have stayed at nine different campgrounds in the last nine weeks. It has been fun, but it will be nice to not have to move again for three weeks. Just before we got to Palm Springs there were all of these windmills. At first, we saw just a few and they were pretty fascinating. Then, there were hundreds of them. Some were right along side the road so we got a really close-up view of them. They are huge!

Palm Springs, especially the campground, is very aptly named. There are over 800 palm trees in the park. Most of the sites have at least two palm trees, and sometimes you have to really manipulate your RV to make room for the door, the slides, and everything else.

We drove into a couple of different sites before we found one that would work with the Condo. We are the one in the middle with the red truck in front of it. As it was, our door opened into a palm tree, but it was far enough away that it didn't interfere with us getting in and out. These palm trees all produce dates (we didn't know that dates came from palm trees), but there are different varieties and they ripen at different times. The most popular variety is the Medjool dates. The park has 29 trees that grow these. When they are ripe, they pick all of the dates on all of the trees. They grind up all of the dates and use them as compost, except the Medjools. These they sell in the Park Store and use them to make date shakes. Because they do this, the park is classified as a working date farm and they get huge discounts on water, electricity, and taxes. We bought some dates and they are better than candy!

It was finally warm enough to use the pool. They have a really nice one at Palm Springs. I even went to water aerobics class!

There are also orange, tangerine, lemon, and grapefruit trees in the park. They say that we can pick what we will eat that day, and no more. They are just beginning to get ripe enough to pick. I picked and ate some of each, except the lemon.

My favorite was the grapefruit. Because Terry doesn't like grapefruit, I usually ate his each day, also. I thought the fruit would disappear pretty fast, but a lot of "old" people are on medications that don't allow them to eat citrus fruit, especially grapefruit. Of course, that doesn't include us!

We went on about a 10-mile bike ride every day. Our route took us along a proposed housing development that is being started around a golf course, so there was a really nice bike trail we rode on part of the way.

Along the trail there were these three sets of supports, but only one poster. It was a poster of Bob Hope. You can see how big it is by the size of the buildings behind it. I was glad I took a picture of it one of the first days we rode by it, because later it disappeared. We don't know if the owners took it down or if someone stole it.

The reason Bob Hope's picture was posted is because the golf course is where they hold the "Bob Hope Classic" golf tournament each year, in January. Of course, all of the famous golfers have participated in it. There are over 80 golf courses in the Palm Springs area. It is about five miles to the Church that we went to and on the road we took to get there, there were pretty much solid golf courses--some with resort-type accommodations and some with homes all around them. All of the streets are lined with palm trees, along the sides and down the middle.

I looked outside one day and there was Terry, sitting in MY chair. Then when I looked around the corner of the door, I saw MY chair. He was sitting in HIS chair! He gave me such a bad time when I opened mine before Christmas, after he talked me into it. And now he couldn't resist having his to sit in under the palm trees! So, kids, I guess that means that you can all open your gift from us--just kidding! You better not be bad like us! But, we are sure enjoying our chairs.

This is the first park that we have stayed in that encourages washing of the RV's and vehicles and getting as much water on the grass as we can, probably because of the dates allowing them to have a cheap water bill. It is such a busy park that they never get much of a chance to turn on the sprinklers. They even loan us sprinklers to put on our hoses so we can water the grass ourselves. At most of the parks, if they even allow it, it cost a fee, $5-$10, to wash your vehicle or RV. So, we took advantage of it and Terry even got on top and washed our roof!

There was a little roadrunner that hung around the park. (There may have been more than one, but I only saw one at a time, so it always seemed to be the same one.) He was around our trailer and then I saw him at the pool and over at the lodge.

This is a unique palm tree that we always passed on our bike ride. I don't know if you can see something a little peculiar about it.

On a closer look--it is a cell tower! They really disguise them well. Terry didn't quite believe me when I told him what it was. I had to zoom in with the camera and take a picture for him to agree!

This is another neighborhood on our ride. These palm trees are around the fire station. Once the other palm trees grow a little taller, it will be kind of hard to pick out the one that is the cell tower. Too bad cherry trees don't grow taller and we could disguise some of the cell towers in Emmett. There were some people in Emmett who were sure upset when a cell tower ended up in their "back yard."

One Saturday we went to a car show and auction in the parking lot of a casino in Palm Springs. I had a little 1963 Corvair car before Terry and I were married. My dad painted it black and put a red pin stripe along the side of it because it had a red interior. I really liked that car, but Terry didn't. I am not sure why he didn't like it, but we only had it for a few years after we were married. I told him that if we would have kept it, it would be a classic now!

One Tuesday we went to Del Taco's for dinner (it is 3 tacos for $1 on Tuesdays, and seniors get a free drink--okay, so we are old). We ran into two different couples we had met in other parks. We had met Sue and Jim at Verde Valley last March and they taught us a new game back then. We ended up doing some things with them and we will probably catch up with them again. Sue does some great books on her genealogy and Jim is toooo much like Terry.

We did some other fun things while we were at Palm Springs. We went to the Village Fest one evening where they close several blocks of downtown Palm Springs and have booths of crafts, jewelry, paintings, food, and a farmer's market, along with live entertainment. While we were there, a large group of gay rights people marched through protesting California's proposition 8 that was passed recently. It changes California's constitution to state that a marriage is only between a man and a woman. They were pretty intense in their marching.

We also went to the Shields Date Garden where they raise and sell several kinds of dates. They showed a movie called the "Romance and Sex Life of a Date!" It was really interesting. They let you have as many samples of their dates as you like. (I couldn't eat lunch afterwards!)

One Monday for lunch we went with Sue and Jim to one of the casinos. Terry signed up for their club card (I hadn't brought my picture ID so I couldn't sign up). With the card, he got $7 to play with and $5 off of lunch. Sue had told us about their shrimp tacos. They were to die for! After we ate, it only took Terry about 15 minutes to loose his $7 in the penny slot machine! All of this was because Monday is "senior day" at the casino. The place was packed with "old" people!