September, October, and November

We spent Sept 3-11 in Yakutat, AK fishing this year.  The weather was horrid, but we caught a lot of fish.  It was raining when we landed and it was raining when we left.  There was only one day we saw blue skies.  The rest of the time was wind and lots of rain….in fact the back of the lodge had standing water most of the time we were there.  The weather was so bad that a barge heading for Yakutat had to be turned around because of rough seas.  However, we were out every day (thank goodness we have great rain gear) and caught a lot of fish.  The fish were smaller this year, but more abundant.  We came home with four full boxes of Salmon Filets (about 175 pounds).  Still had great fun, and yes, we are already booked for next year.

One week after we got home from Alaska, we took our coach in for its annual service and maintenance check (Sept 19) then we spent the next four days (19-23) camping at South Beach State Park in Newport, Oregon.  Our friends Rod & Lynda joined us for a fun weekend.  The weather was fairly decent, and we had one nice day where we walked from our campsite to the beach and back.  We even found a geocache during that walk.  It was wonderful to spend a lot of our time sitting around the campfire and visiting.  Of course, we had to have dinner in town several times and even drove up to Lincoln City to do some shopping at the Outlet Stores.

Once we got back to Salem, we spent many days getting the coach cleaned out and repacked with what we would need in Arizona.  Our plans were to head to Arizona on Oct 11, but we still had too much to do, so put it off till Oct 13.  Good thing we did because the refrigerator in the coach suddenly quit working.  We have a neighbor that is a Norcold Rep, so we called him and he discovered the cooling unit died.  There was coolant everywhere (ugly).  Thankfully, it happened while we were home and not on the road somewhere.  Once again we were fortunate to find a place that we could take it in and get it fixed.  The coach was taken in on Oct 15 and was scheduled to be finished on Oct 17 late afternoon.  Needless-to-say, everything we took out of coach had to be put back in, so the plan to leave Salem for Arizona was delayed until Oct 19.

Saturday, Oct 19, we left Salem and drove south to highway 58 where we had a colorful drive across the Willamette Pass into Central Oregon.  It was so nice to have no rain or snow!  We crossed into California and made our way through Alturas and ended our drive at a little town called Likely on highway 395.  There we stayed the night in a large open parking lot next to the volunteer fire department’s building.

The next morning (Sunday) we had an uneventful drive through Reno, Fernley, and Fallon to a rest area just north of Tonopah, Nevada.  This is a nice place to stop and spend the night because they don’t allow any large trucks to pull in there.  We arrived early enough to spend some time out in the sun having a nice glass of wine.  Up to this point, we had no problems and all was going well.

Monday, we were up early and prepared for the drive to Laughlin, Nevada.  We made it through Las Vegas with no problems and ended our day at the Avi Casino and RV Park just south of Laughlin.  Since we got there early enough, we got cleaned up and walked over to the casino for a wonderful dinner and drinks.   Again, this was another wonderful day with an easy drive.

Tuesday, Oct 22, we were up early and headed into Arizona.  Our drive south was getting warmer as we got closer to our destination.  We pulled into Queen Valley RV Resort about 2 pm and quickly got set up and turned on the AC because the temperature was in the 90s.  Not long after we got set up, Ken noticed a propane smell and discovered the regulator was leaking a little (not good).  He quickly turned off the gas and decided we would have to have the regulator replaced again (this has happened before). 

The next day (Wednesday the 23rd) Ken noticed the inside of the refrigerator was in the 50s.  It was another hot day (90-95) and the sun was beating on that side of the coach, so we pulled the slider awning out to shade it, but the temperature didn’t go down.  Ken then opened up the outside panels and noticed the fans weren’t working….. That really wasn’t good because we just spent $2,300 to have the whole cooling unit replaced.  Thankfully, we have an extra freezer in our shed, so we pulled stuff out of the coach freezer and put it in the shed’s freezer.  We weren’t worried about stuff in the fridge because there really wasn’t much in there that would spoil.  The temperature did go down after the sun set, but not to where it should be.  The next morning (Thurs), we called Norcold and they gave us a name of someone in Apache Junction who could work on our fridge.  We then called Apache Junction RV Sales & Service and were told they could come out, but to run a couple tests first.  We ran the tests, which took 4 hours, then called them back with the results.  They then said they could come out the next day (Friday), but we would have to pay the travel cost ($50) and the diagnosis cost ($94 an hour) because Norcold would only pay the warranty on the cooling unit IF it was bad.  We had no problem with that because it would be more trouble to pull up stakes and drive the coach all the way into Apache Junction (24 miles one way).

Friday was another hot day (88) and with the fans not working on the fridge, the inside temp never got below 50.  Freezer was barely freezing, but that was not acceptable.  We were thrilled when Tom of AJ RV Service showed up and took one look at the unit and said Roberson RV Service wired the fans wrong.  Tom had the fan wires fixed and working in less than five minutes (whew).  Tom also noticed that with our fridge on the slider we have two outside vents.  Well, the fans are at the lower portion of the unit and the upper part of the unit should have a baffle to move the air into the cooling unit (it didn’t)……SO, he quickly got one made and installed (yay).  Tom then looked at our propane regulator and replaced that ($23).  He had everything back to normal in just a bit over an hour.  We were thrilled to not have anything more serious wrong.  Total cost of the repair was $178.  What a relief!!!

We have now been in Queen Valley almost 3 weeks and have seen many residents coming back.  We had our first official coffee social on Nov 4 and enjoyed seeing so many of our friends.  The weather has been fantastic with only a few days in the 90s with the rest in the 70s & 80s.  The evenings have been wonderfully cool.  Yes, we did have one night of rain, but it passed through quickly and didn’t leave too much of a mess behind.  There wasn’t much dust in the air, so didn’t have the mud residue we normally get after a rain (yay).

Soon, it will be time for us to fly home to Oregon and spend the Christmas Season with our family.  We fly on December 9 and will be driving our Grand Cherokee back to Arizona around December 27.  We have a couple stops while driving back to Arizona, so don’t plan on being back till after the first of the New Year.  Until then, hope all have a wonderful Thanks giving, Christmas, and New Year.

Alaska Fun

We finally had the chance to visit parts of Alaska that we hadn’t visited before!

On July 21, we boarded Alaska Air in Portland, OR and flew to Vancouver BC, Canada to begin our experience on water and land.  Our trip was for 7 days on water, sailing through the Inlet Passage of AK on Holland America’s "ms Zaandam" and 7 days on land (via bus and rail) ending in Fairbanks.

This is our boarding picture.  Note, this is after we were up from 4:30 am, had a two plus hours flight from Portland toVancouver B.C., then a 45 minute bus ride (via Holland America Lines Shuttle) to where the ship was docked.  We were pretty tired and quite disheveled when we boarded the ship at Noon. (sigh)

We set sail from Vancouver the evening of July 21 and spent that night plus the next day at sea before docking in Ketchikan at 6 am on July 23. The pictures below are our ship and our docking site.

  

It was overcast with misty showers that turned to a hard rain later in the day, but we had fun exploring Ketchikan and even going out on the “Misty Fjords Cruise & Floatplane Adventure” excursion.  The excursion was to take us to the Fjords then take a float plane back to Ketchikan, but it was way too overcast for the float plane to fly, so we just did the catamaran portion of the trip.  Scenery was shrouded in fog and very pretty!  This picture is just one view of the many waterfalls we saw in a secluded cove of Misty Fjords.

We left Ketchikan’s port at 2:30 pm and sailed through the night docking in Juneau on the 24th at 8 am. Again, we had a very foggy, overcast morning as we walked around town checking out all the souvenier shops and even finding a geocache on top of a parking garage...Yes, we brought our GPS along, but didn't get that many chances to look for caches.  This is a picture of our ship docked near where all the passengers catch buses for local tours.

We had time before our afternoon excursion, so we stopped at the famous Red Dog Saloon for lunch and a beer.  It was extremely crowded, but we had lots of fun there.

  

After lunch, we were back at the dock to catch one of the many buses that would take us out on a Whale Quest and Mendenhall Glacier tour.  What fun!!  The weather had cleared up by the time we were back out to sea on a jet powered catamaran where we were rewarded with Orcas, Humpbacks, Seals, Sea Lions, and hundreds of birds.  What a sight it was to watch the Orcas play, but watching the Humpbacks "Bubble Feeding" was an extra treat.  Taking pictures of these events was tough, but Ken did get the following picture of a Humpback "breaching."  We were watching these Whales for nearly an hour, and Ken got lots more pictures, but this is really the best one!

Once we were back ashore from the water portion of our excursion, we were taken by bus to the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center.  There, we could take a walk down to Nugget Falls and get some up close and personal pictures of the glacier.  All I can say about that experience was it was just awesome!  The picture I am posting is from the viewing platform at the visitor center, but Ken & I took many, many more.

Back at the ship, we pulled away from dock at 9:30 pm and again spent the night at sea and ended up docking in Skagway at 5:30 am on the 25th.  Skagway was a beautiful 64 degrees and sunny.

We walked around town and found a geocache at the information center in town then later in the morning, we rode the White Pass Railroad up to the White Pass Summit.  It was beautiful with lots of great scenes of the mountains.  We even saw parts of the old trail the “stampeders” used to get through the pass in the dead of winter.  I cannot imagine how horrid that must have been.  Below is a picture of the town and our train heading up the pass.

  

From Skagway, we were once again at sea and spent the night sailing, then all day the 26th was spent in Glacier Bay National Park where we picked up some “rangers” who spent the day talking about and showing us neat sights in the bay.  Incredible!!  After dropping off the rangers about 5 pm, we were once again off to sea.  This shot of Margerie Glacier (near the upper point of Glacier Bay) is from our Lido Deck on the ship.  It was such an awesome sight that we took a lot of pictures of this glacier.

On July 28, we docked in Seward at 6 am.  This was where we left the ship (about 10 am) and set off on a Kenai Fjords tour.  Again, we were out on another jet powered boat and saw many glaciers and more whales.  After the tour, we were taken by bus to our hotel for the night.  I must say at this point we were very impressed with the promptness and professional service we had from every Holland America Representative.  We were at this point done with the "water" portion of our cruise, so we weren't too sure how things were going to go on our land portion.  We were NOT disappointed.

We had the morning of the 29th at leisure, then in the afternoon, we were picked up and bussed to Anchorage where we were to spend the night.  We made it to Anchorage and our hotel (Westmark) about 5:30 pm.  It was still early, so had a quick dinner at a local pub and walked a bit in a park near our hotel before calling it an early evening.

The next morning (early) we were picked up and shuttled to the Alaska Rail Road Depot where we got on a wonderful domed Holland America Line Rail Car for Denali National Park.  Traveling with us was a Holland America Lines (HAL) Rep who took wonderful care of us.  He (Scott) had all our room keys, tour info, etc. all arranged prior to our arriving our destinations.  I forgot to say that we didn't have to worry about our bags either.  After we got off the ship, our bags were picked up at each point along the way and transfered separately to our next destination.  All we needed to worry about was our small carry on's, cameras, meds, and small personal stuff.  We were never in want for anything!!  This is our rail car.  Very nice!!

It was an 8 hour ride to Denali, but we were served breakfast and lunch on board (lower section of car) and of course, there was a bartender on board to take care of all our "liquid" needs.  As you can see in the picture above, the rail car has an open platform in the back where people could ride and get some great pictures.  After we made it to Denali, we were picked up and taken to the McKinnley Chalets where we spent two nights.

In Denali, we had time to take a bus tour back into the Tundra Wilderness and see the wildlife and "The Mountain."  Yes, it was clear and we did see Denali (Mt McKinnley).  We also saw 6 Grizzly Bears, 2 Moose, a herd of Caribou, and many different birds.  We were on a Blue Bird Bus, but we had lots of stops along the way and plenty of time to enjoy the surroundings.

After Denali, we again got on the Alaska Rail Road in a HAL car and headed for Fairbanks.  In Fairbanks, we were signed up for a Gold Dredge Tour and a Stern Wheeler trip up the Chena River.  This portion of the rail trip was 4 hours, so we had a nice afternoon to enjoy before calling it a day.  Speaking of day, it was still daylight out at 11:30 at night.  Thank goodness, the hotel had darkening shades or we never would have gotten any sleep.  This is our train arriving at the station in Denali.

The morning of Aug 2, we were off to see Gold Dredge #8 and get some experience on panning for gold. Ken and I got a few flakes ($21 worth), but the couple that was traveling with us ended up with $45 worth of flakes....(they were the big winners).  Yes, here is Ken panning for his $13 worth of flakes (I got $8).

While at Gold Dredge #8, we got to see the pipe line and hear a long story about it and how it works (impressive).

After the gold and pipe line experience, we were then bussed to the Discovery Stern Wheeler II where we floated up and down the Chena River.  This river flows through Fairbanks and in the winter is frozen solid, so they use "Ice" bridges to cross it.  Today, it was a very hot 87 degree day, so no ice in sight.  We got to see an Athabaskan Village and even got to see a dog sled demonstration while on the river.  The picture below is Ken and I waiting for the stern wheeler.  Of course, there was a huge souvenier complex there.

After all the tours were over, we said good bye to our tour guide and all of Holland America staff.  We extended our stay at the Fairbanks Westmark Hotel by one night, so the morning of Aug 3, we took a shuttle to the Fairbanks Airport and rented a car.  I neglected to say that our grandson Justin, who is in the Air Force, was transferred to Fairbanks Eielson AFB, and he and his family arrived late in July to set up residence for the next three years.  It was our plan all along to take another day here and spend the weekend seeing them.  We did get to see them Saturday afternoon, but the highlight was when we picked them up Sunday at Noon and headed an hour out of Fairbanks to the Chena Hot Springs Resort and Aurora Ice Museum.  We didn't have a lot of time to see everything there, but we did have a wonderful late lunch/early dinner in the restaurant and then had a tour of the Aurora Ice Museum.  What a neat place.  It is always at a constant 20 degrees, and they supply you with very heavy parkas for you to stay warm while enjoying the ice carvings.  We had a wonderful time and our grandkids vowed to go back to spend a weekend.

  

The above first picture is of me and my granddaughter-in-law (Holly) having an Appletini (yummy) in an ice glass.  The second picture is of me, my grandkids Justin & Holly with baby Tristen leaving the ice museum. We had a great time and couldn't believe all they can sculpt out of ice.

After the ice museum, we had a very long drive back to Fairbanks and did have a Moose cross the road just ahead of us.  She was far enough away that there was no worry of us hitting her.  Anyway, as we took them back to where we picked them up, we just had to stop at The North Pole.  There was a visitor center there that we enjoyed, but the Santa Clause House was awesome!!  I never saw soooooo many Christmas decorations....EVER!!  Thank goodness we don't have that much time to decorate our home anymore or otherwise, Ken would have had a hey day picking up more decorations.

These pictures are taken in the town of North Pole.  In the first picture is Holly, Me, Justin (holding Tristen). The second picture is Ken and Me in front of the Santa Clause House.

  

We had a wonderful time with our grandkids, but sadly had to say goodbye as we were due to catch the red eye out of Fairbanks that night and fly back to Portland, Oregon.  We earlier had checked our bags at the hotel where they had an Alaska Airlines Desk, so all we had to do was turn the rental car (a Rav 4) back into Hertz, then make our way to the gate (there were only 6 gates-a very small airport).  We got there at 9:30 pm and were the only ones going through security, so had no problem.  After a bit, more people showed up, but when we boarded at 11:30 pm, there were not that many getting on our plane.  We ended up having a row of three seats each to ourselves (yay).....  We landed at PDX at 4:30 am on the morning of August 5 and our daughter and son-in-law picked us up.  Needless-to-say, we were exhausted and needed some long down time.

After being home for two weeks, we are now in the process of packing and getting ready for our September Salmon fishing trip in Yakutat, Alaska.  For many years, Ken has gone to "Yak", but I have only gone since 1999, so getting a chance to view other parts of Alaska was a dream come true.  Seeing our grandkids while there, was priceless!!!

This is a picture of Ken and Me while at our "Formal Dinner" the second night of our cruise on Holland America.  The next cruise we take will most likely be to another dream spot via Holland America Lines: Australia and New Zealand in 2014!

Dry Camping

We just spent the last two weeks in Prineville camping along the Crooked River and had a great time!

June 21, we drove the coach (towing the Grand Cherokee Jeep) to Prineville, Oregon to spend a couple nights at the Crook Country RV Park.  Rain was in the forecast, but at least it was nice on the 21st and 22nd.

Early the morning of June 22, we drove Jeep down to the BLM Camp Grounds and found a site where we could park the Motorhome for the next two weeks.  After we secured the site, we headed out to a geocache run along the Millican Highway.  There are 200 caches along the highway, but at Noon, we started in the middle at cache number 92 and completed number 200 later that afternoon.  We could see some really dark clouds heading our way, so we headed into town and stopped at the Tastee Treat for dinner.  Just after we got inside the diner, the rain came pouring down, then lightning and thunder hit at the same time.  Very bright flash with a LOUD BANG!!  It continued to rain heavy all that night and into the next morning.

At 9 am on the 23rd, Ken went over to the fairgrounds and went through a local gem & rock show (it was raining off and on, but not very hard).  He did come back to the coach with some nice stuff….  That afternoon, we drove Jeep to Highway 20 (east of Bend) where the Milican Highway geocache run started.  We then completed geocaches number 1 through 89 before it started raining hard.  We had to quit for the rest of that day leaving only 23 to finish another day.

June 24, we drove the motorhome 15 miles south and got ourselves parked in our campsite along the Crooked River.   It was raining when we got in our site and continued while we got set up.  Thank goodness we didn’t have much to do because we already had the gazebo and tent set up….we do that to secure our site prior to bringing in the motorhome.  There really aren’t many places along that river where we can park a 40 foot rig.  It quit raining about 1 pm, so we took that opportunity to drive back over to the Millican Highway and complete the last 23 caches.  It only took us a half hour to complete, and we did it before it started to rain again.

On Tuesday, the 25th, our friend Rod pulled his trailer in.  We had his site secured, so he was able to pull right in and set up.  All morning the rain had held off, but just before he arrived, we had some huge down pours.  His wife, Lynda, still had to work the week, so she would join him on Friday.

The 26th was a gray & cloudy day with some sun breaks.  The temperature was in the high 60s, but come Thursday it began to get hot.  The Temps jumped from mid to high 60s to very high 80s (very humid) and into triple digits by the 30th of June.

On Thursday the 27th, Rod went golfing and Ken & I took off for Redmond and found 23 more geocaches.  Since we didn’t have Internet or cell service where we were camping, I was unable to log any of those until we got back to Salem on July 6.

Friday was another extremely hot & humid day.  Lynda (Rod’s wife) joined us later that evening.  We literally sweltered June 29 through July 2 while temperatures jumped high 90s and even into triple digits.  In the canyon, we do get a breeze, but it was a hot humid breeze (we spent a lot of time in the shade).   Sunday, June 30, Ken’s brother Dick and his wife Pam arrived and we had a wonderful one night visit with them.  They were headed from Boise, Idaho to Newport, Oregon to spend a couple weeks and took the time to stop and enjoy a night of camping and the next morning with us.  They left about 10 am on July 1 and headed for Newport.

Finally on July 3, the temps started cooling down.  We had the next few days with wonderfully cooler temps and cooler breezes.  We rafted, played cards, drank, ate, and just had a lot of fun.  Rod’s daughter and her family joined our group on July 3 to spend the weekend.

Since we had already been there two weeks on July 6, we packed up and headed home in hopes to beat the weekend traffic….  Yeah, right….  There was a lot of traffic and just after we crossed over the pass and heading towards the town of Detroit, we had a Doe jump in front of us.  We had one very quick slam on the brakes and thankfully missed her.   Happily, no one was hurt or injured and only had some small things fall off the counters.  I was sooooo glad I had my coffee maker (keurig) packed away.  That would have been devastating to lose.  Both Ken & I always travel with our seat belts on, so no one was thrown.  The rest of the drive into Salem was uneventful, just busy traffic.

We are now getting our bags ready for our two week cruise & land tour up into and through Alaska

BACK HOME IN OREGON

As you can see, I did not hold true to my word about keeping up with this blog.  It seems that I have let another winter season in Queen Valley, AZ go by without any new updates…….Oh well, I’m back and hope to be able to relate all we did this past winter.

On December 7, 2012, we boarded Allegiant Air out of Mesa Gateway Airport to Eugene, Oregon.  The flight was only a bit over 2 hours and we were met by our son-in-law, Tim, and great grandson, Noah.  They drove us home and we spent the next three weeks in Salem having fun with our kids, grandkids, and great grandkids.  Ken managed to get his outside lights up, but nothing like he has done in years past.  Still the house looked festive and we all had a wonderful Christmas filled with lots of love.

After Christmas, it was a rush to get the lights down/put away, load up the Grand Cherokee, and head back to Arizona.  We left on December 27^th and knowing there was snow in the Willamette Pass, I kept watching the road cams to see which way it would be best to travel.  As it was, there was blowing snow and almost zero visibility across Willamette pass on Highway 58, so we decided to go south over the Siskiyou’s and on to the small town of Corning, CA where we spent the night.   Of course while there, we had to visit the renowned Olive Pit for some olives and snacks (great place).

The next day, we were on the road early heading for Sacramento and Highway 80 into Reno, Nevada.  Yes, there was snow on the road side, but the pavement was bare all the way across the pass into Reno.  It was cold, but the sun was out and it was beautiful.  We reached Reno just after Noon and secured a room, then headed out to visit with our Aunt.  She was in good spirits and looked well.  It started snowing later that afternoon and was about 3 inches deep after we had dinner with our cousin later that night.  So nice to have a Jeep!

December 29 we woke to a lot of snow.  It was time to leave Reno, so we hit the freeway and had snow all the way to Tonopah, NV.  We got a room at the Best Western just after Noon, then headed out to what we call the ET Hwy (Extra Terrestrial Highway) to do some geocaching.  Even though there was a dusting of snow on the roads, we had no problems and found lots of caches.  Of course all that we looked for were at a lower elevation than what we planned for the next day.

The morning of Dec. 30, we were up very early to head for some mountainous geocaching.  Out of Tonopah, we took Highway 6 east for 35 miles to a gravel road called Little Fish Lake Road that would take us another 20 plus miles north to an elevation of 6500 feet.   The gravel/dirt roads all had snow on them, but what the heck, we were in a Jeep.  Well, the higher we got, the deeper the snow got.   We did manage to find many caches, but when those caches were knee deep in the frozen snow we gave up.  Just try to find a film canister with coordinates that aren’t always spot on in that deep of snow.

The first picture is the gravel road going north to Little Fish Lake.  The second picture is Ken searching for a cache.  The third picture is another road going into the trees.  The last picture is where we decided to turn around.

We knew the Jeep could go further, but finding the caches that deep was quite impossible.  It was nearing 11:30am, when we headed back down the road and back to the main highway (highway 6) toward the towns of Rachel (on highway 375) and Ash Springs (on highway 95).  It was still early when we passed through those towns, so decided to head on into Kingman, Arizona where we spent the night.

New Year’s Eve we woke to a cold mid 30 degrees and left Kingman around 7:30am.  It wasn’t a long trip, but it was somewhat cloudy and cool all the way back to Queen Valley.  We arrived at our coach around Noon and it was only 50 degrees.  It was great being back, and we spent the afternoon getting cleaned up and resettled.  It actually got up to a sunny 54 degrees that afternoon.  After dinner, we got a call that our second oldest great grandson suffered a seizure that morning, but had come out of it and was doing well.  The doctors did many tests, but couldn’t find anything wrong.  They wanted to do more tests in a few weeks, but he was able to go home that night with instructions for everyone to just keep an eye on him.   Note to this date (May 26) there have been no other problems.

From January to May 15, it was back to the normal routine in Queen Valley.  Monday mornings were our coffee socials and events updates.  Our week went like this:  Monday afternoon, all day Wednesday, and all day Thursday were Ken’s time in the “Rock Shop.”  Then on Friday was our time to have fun with our off road group, The Rough Riders.  We had a lot of fun on many old and very rutted and off camber roads going back to old mines and some very old historic sites.  This is Ken driving the Wrangler up a rough area.  The second picture is of us by our Wrangler.

Again, we had superb entertainment and dinners at the park, plus all of our outings with friends to many different restaurants.  There were potlucks, happy hours, tag alongs, shopping trips, plus much more for everyone to enjoy.  We did our best to take part in it all!!

Temperature wise, this was a cooler winter than in previous times.  January had temps as high as 67 to as low as 21.  As far as I can recall, there were about 4 days of rain during January.  February got as high as 79 and as low as 32, and we even had snow on the 20th.  Snow was quite a surprise because the forecast was for snow higher up, but hitting at our 2,000ft elevation wasn’t predicted.  We did take the Wrangler out to get pictures of the snow on the cactus and hills.  Needless-to-say, the snow didn’t stick around long, so we had to get the pictures quickly.  The following pictures are all from aound our area.  The first two are on the Queen Valley Golf Course.  The next four are out on a desert road near town.

Temperature in March got as high as 90, but was mostly in the 80s.  The lows went as far down as 42 but most of it was in the 50s & 60s.  This was one gorgeous month!

April was mostly in the high 80s, but did hit 100 on the 29th.  Again, the lows were in the 40s & 60s.

Then came May…..what can I say, it got very warm….some high 80s, but mostly mid to high 90s up to May 14 when it hit 100.  We left May 15 and headed for Laughlin where it was 101 (whew).  We only stayed one night at the Avi RV Park and Casino in Laughlin.

On May 16, we drove to Tonopah, NV where we found an RV site at The Tonopah Station.  While there, we managed to get back out on the Little Fish Lake Road to finish up the 250 caches that we couldn’t get in January because of all the snow.  Happily, we were able to get them all plus more in the small town of Goldfield.  We totaled over 300 finds while there.

May 19 was time for us to head for Reno/Sparks where we parked the motorhome for four nights at Sparks Marina.   Again, it was wonderful to visit with our aunt and cousins.

On May 23, we left Reno/Sparks at 7:30am and made it all the way to our home in Salem at 5:20pm.  It was a long tiring drive with only a couple short stops, but it was so very nice to be home!!

We are now in the process of cleaning out the coach and getting settled back in the house for the summer.  Right now, our summer is totally booked up with three huge events.  Later in June there is a 12 day camping trip, in July-Aug, there is a 14 day Alaskan Inlet Passage cruise and land tour, then our yearly 10 day Salmon Fish trip is in September.   Also at this time, we are predicting that we will be back in Queen Valley mid-October because we have said we will be at a Geocoin Event in Las Vegas on Oct 13, so will head to AZ after that.  So much for the plans we had on finishing the remodel job on our house this summer.  There will not be much time left over to do much.  I guess that will leave us a lot to do during the summer of 2014….