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 27th 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….
