Sea level

On April 7 we left Yuma and headed toward San Diego.  We plan to spend about 2 weeks in San Diego.  Our time there will of course include a Padres baseball game.  As we were driving west across the desert, we saw a sign that said "Sea Level".  Then we headed down a bit more before beginning to climb.  In about 45 minutes we saw a sign that said "4,100 FT".  The landscape had changed from flat and rolling terrain with sparse vegetation to rounded boulders piled high and very little vegetation.  It had become very stark.

Then we drove for about 30 minutes at around 4,000 feet with ups and downs and lots of turns.  Finally, we began our decent.  A 6% grade for 13 miles!  As we came down the vegetation returned and became more lush with taller trees and shrubs and even some grassy areas.  As I write this we are parked just east of San Diego and my altimeter show us at 403 feet.  We'll be at sea level at a different park next week.

The RV worked hard going up  and coming back down with the engine running at high RPMs.  There was a sign to turn off your air conditioning to reduce strain in the engine.  So we did.  But an advantage to being in an RV is the we started the generator and were able to run the house AC keeping the entire place cool with no additional stress on the motor.  This was very nice since it was 92 degrees outside.

Rally

We attended our first rally in Yuma, AZ.  In the RV world we have rallies where folks of a common interest get together to trade information, stories and socialize.  We had heard of this rally while we were in Mesa and since we were coming to Yuma anyway we decided to attend.  This rally was offered by Fleetwood Motor home Association(FMA).  Fleetwood is the manufacturer of our RV and we are members of FMA.

Fleetwood had service techs on sight and all service was done for free.  You just pay for parts unless they were under warranty.  This is a great service since most places that service RVs charge a least $120 and hour.  A local RV dealer also brought the full line of Fleetwood RVs to the rally so everyone could go thorough them and see what's new.  We walk through all of them and like ours best.

This was a small to medium rally and there were about 85 Fleetwood motor homes parked in the RV resort.  We attended lots of seminars and learned a ton.  Each night we'd walk back to the RV, dump all our paper from the seminars and crash.  During the social times we met some great people and gained even more information.  We had such a great time we will be attending next year's rally.

We had already planned to attend a Full Timers rally in Oregon in August.  This one will be very small...probably less than 20 RVs.  But we also added a large rally later in August.  It is also in Oregon but should have well over a thousand RVs.  Once we have attended these we will see if and how rallies fit into our plans.

Mesa

What a great 7 weeks at the Apache Wells park in Mesa, AZ!  We met some great folks and plan to stay in touch with them.  We spent time with our nephew, Ken.  Diana's brother Dale and his wife Christy stopped by on their way to Green Valley, AZ.  We took several days and drove the Jeep to Las Vegas to see our friends Ben and Carol.  Plus we achieved our goal of seeing a lot of spring training baseball.( see previous post)

We had such a great time we plan to go back for at least part of next winter.  We will still be in the western part of the US and plan to be swinging south in the late fall.  We are not sure of the exact timing but we'll definitely be in Mesa.  We'll winter in Mesa then head toward Texas as the weather warms.

10, 15, 10

Well we did it!  While in Mesa for spring training we saw all 10 training sites, we saw all 15 teams that train in the area and we did it in 10 games. Planning was key.  So we have now seen all 30 teams and all spring training sites in Florida and in Arizona.  Even better news is the Oakland A's are getting a new site beginning in 2015.  So while we are back in Mesa next winter we need to go see that facility.

 

 Our next ball game will be in San Diego.  We have 8 stadiums to see before we will have seen all 30 big league parks.  Plan to get the west coast this summer.  But in 2017 the Atlanta Braves get a new stadium.  What about the Richmond Flying Squirrels?  How is that stadium coming along Richmond???

Road Trip!!

Yeah, yeah, I know every body thinks we are on a full time road trip.  I really can't argue with that...But sometimes we leave the RV and take the Jeep on trips.  This time we went to;

The main reason we went was to visit our friends Ben and Carol D'Arrigo from Midlothian.  They were in Las Vegas for a vacation.  We made arrangements and drove the 5.5 hours to see them.  First of all the drive was beautiful.  If you look on a map we basically took 93 from Mesa to Las Vegas.  This is all desert driving.  The land scape, while all desert, changed from flat to rolling hills to up and down thru mountain passes and to rocky boulders and sharp buttes and rock formation.  The flora changed from shrubs and low growing cacti to  Suguoia cactus.  The changes happened slowly but noticeably.  It was beautiful.

While the visit with Ben and Carol was definitely the highlight, the 2 shows we saw were amazing.  We saw Menopause the Musical.  It was absolutely hilarious.  We also saw cirque du soleil; Love.  It is an amazing performance based around the Beatles music.  Awesome.

This is why we like to know if any of you are taking trips.  We may be able to get together.

Bicycles

We have been debating about buying bicycles for awhile.  There were 2 main questions; could Diana's knees handle biking, and where would we put them while we are on the move from campground to campground?  To address the first question we decided to rent bikes while we were in Mesa.  Sounds simple enough!  As we checked into it it was going to cost $100 a week to rent each bike.  So then we thought we could buy 2 cheap bikes at Walmart or Target.  But then we looked on Craig's list.  We each found a bike we liked and together they were less than renting.  Naturally we have upgraded a few things so the bikes have now become money pits!  Who would have thought that?!

We have been on a few rides and the knee issue seems to be OK.  Of course we are in Mesa, AZ and it is pretty flat here.  We'll continue to ride regularly and build up some leg strength.

The bikes do fit in the back of the Jeep so that is where they will be as we travel.  We are hoping that as we get to state and national parks we can ride

Abandon the plan

After we left Llano State Park we moved on to Balmorhea State Park, also in Texas.  We were going to be there for one night then move on to Carlsbad, NM then to Roswell, Albuquerque, then toward the Mesa, AZ area.  We had planned to be in Mesa for 5 weeks to see spring training baseball but we had 2 more weeks before we got to Mesa.

It had been cold for several days and it was cold when we got in to Balmorhea.  Because of the cold and wind we just stayed in.  The next morning we woke up and the outside temperature was 15.  We looked at the forecast for Carlsbad and points along out route and the 10 day forecast remained cold, windy with a good chance of snow for the entire time.  We were tired of cold!  We also had been checking weather in Mesa and saw warm temps and sun.  So we called the campground in Mesa and asked if we could come in 2 weeks early.  Sure, they had space, come on in.  We called and cancelled our other stops and made tracks to Mesa.  It took two longer days and we saw some beautiful scenery.  We also had some difficult stretches thru mountain passes.  But when we got here it was 75!  NICE!!

While checking in we were invited to the weekly happy hour in the club house.  Very nice.

So far temps have been in the upper 70s or low 80s with full sun.  It is a wonderful gift to be able to just abandon a plan and make a complete change.