THOUGHT WE WOULD HAVE HEARD BY NOW

Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 50 Cloudy High 65) 

We still do not know anything more about our new home. The lack of communication with this dealer is horrendous. We have emailed and made numerous calls and talked to just about everybody there, including the general manager, and yet we still get nothing except a promise to call back no matter what they find out, so many broken promises. We cannot recommend this dealership to anybody, it unfortunately is fairly common that you have to beg, plead and cajole just to get good service.

We thought we would have heard by now and we would have blogged on it along with our visit to Quartzsite so here goes our recent visit to Q. We took a day trip from Goodyear and no matter how often we take the trip it still is amazing to see the vast numbers of RVs as you come over the hill. It was so windy that we didn't want to have sand covered food so we ate at a sit down place called Times 3. The food was real good but the service was real sloooooow. The traffic was bad as usual.

The big tent was packed. We got some shoe inserts, pillows and mustard.

We got some ice cream at Dairy Queen on the way out of town. A great day had by all.

Till next time,

Bob and Jo

THE GAMBLER, HAIL DAMAGE REPAIR

Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 42 Mostly Sunny High 70) 

We recently saw the movie "The Gambler".

We liked this movie but it is not one that we can recommend because it not a great subject matter plus it is kind of dark and moody. The theme of the movie is 'the only way out is all in' and it deals with the character played by Mark Wahlberg and his addiction to gambling.

Sometimes you go to movies and enjoy the performances. Both Wahlberg and John Goodman were really good in it, although in one scene Goodman really needed a large towel. Those who see the movie will understand.

We are getting the damage to our truck due to hail damage fixed this week. We got hit by hail in the Denver area in September and did not realize how bad it was until we had a mobile repair company give us an estimate. There are so many dents that they needed the truck in the shop for a few days. We are now driving a rental car, a Chrysler 200.

It feels like we are riding on a skate board. We are so used to be riding high in the truck and seeing over other vehicles. We are also used to the great mirrors of the truck, these little side mirrors are hard to get used to. It should only be a few days that we are skating along.

We did get a call Monday on our new fifth wheel. It is supposed to ship late this week and be in Tucson next week. They will need some time to do their walkthrough and add the satellite dish and washer/dryer so we are looking at the first of February to get our new home. We'll keep you posted.

Till next time,

Bob and Jo

A GREAT DAY AND DIESEL PRICES

Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 42 Sunny High 74) 

We had a great day in the desert Saturday. We started it off at the Estrella Lakeside Farmers Market. It is held at the Yacht Club on Estrella Lake south of us.

We walked around and bought a few things but mostly enjoyed the great weather, mid 70s and sunny with a light breeze. We then left and shopped at Fry's Grocery. For one day only they were having a 4x fuel points on gift card purchases, $25 gets you 100 fuel points which gets you 10 cents off a gallon. We bought gift cards for places we normally eat at and bought some groceries. With our discount of 50 cents per gallon here is the price we paid.

The discount is limited to 35 gallons so this is what we paid, adding whatever would not fit into the truck tank into our auxiliary fuel tank.

A great day, shopping and diesel like we haven't seen in a long time, even if we had to buy gift cards to get there.

We couldn't take it anymore and called our salesman on our rig. There was a delay at the factory due to snow and he thought somebody else would call me. Monday we are supposed to get a phone call and a list of options to make sure we are getting what we think we are, we will let you know.

Till next time,

Bob and Jo

UNBROKEN

Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 38 Sunny High 68) 

We recently saw the movie 'Unbroken'.

The amazing true story of Louie Zamperini who was an Olympic athlete then a WW II Army Air Corps bombardier captured by the Japanese. The movie details his less than stellar youth and how he turned that around and into an Olympic athlete competing in the 1936 Olympics (he finished 8th in the 5,000 but his last lap was the fastest ever and that record stood for a number of years). 

The movie gets a little gruesome with his capture and treatment by the Japanese and ends with him being set free. For us the movie ended a little too soon. He was unbroken by the Japanese but did not let that situation embitter him. He turned his life around, became a Christian motivational speaker and forgave his captors. He even traveled to Japan to visit the war criminals in prison hugging and forgiving those who acknowledged that they knew him. In 1988 he ran with the Olympic torch in Japan before the Nagano Olympics. To be fair some of this was covered in the film, but nothing about the Christian aspect and only in the credits, there should have been more.

We recommend this movie, even with the brutal treatment depicted.

We surprisingly have no update on when we will be getting our new fifth wheel. We got the call over a week ago that it was on its way but all calls after that requesting an update have not been returned.

Till next time,

Bob and Jo

OUR LAST TRIP TO THE MUSEUM

Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 48 Partly Sunny High 68) 

We recently took our last trip to the Museum. We saw "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb".

The third installment of the Ben Stiller films where he is a night watchman at a museum where the exhibits come to life at night time. During this movie we find out what the secret of the tomb is and how it causes this behavior. The magic was disappearing so the secret had to be learned so they could reverse it. The three movies were certainly not academy award winners but they were good fun.

More than just the last movie in this series it was also the last movie for screen legend Mickey Rooney and for Robin Williams. We will miss all of them.

Till next time,

Bob and Jo

WE ARE GETTING A NEW FIVER, PART 2

Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 37 Sunny High 68) 

We got some news yesterday, our new home is on its way to Arizona so we thought we might show some photos. Here are shots of our new home from the web, first the floorplan

The interior

Lots of storage

Bob's friend from college Mike photoshopped the photo of us at Yosemite and the new Lifestyle, we think we are going to use this for our business cards.

We are anxious for our new home, the likely date is now January 14th to take our Cameo there and move into our new home

Till next time,

Bob and Jo

WINDOWS 8 AND THE YOGA LAPTOP/TABLET

Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 28 Sunny High 58) 

As previously mentioned we have had a lot of changes lately. One of those was a new computer and a new operating system. We have been leery of Windows 8 for awhile but our old laptop was on its last legs so we figured it was time. We got a Yoga laptop/tablet with Windows 8.1. The Yoga is a fold-able device 

that can be a laptop.

A tablet

In stand mode.

For the most part we are impressed with the Yoga. Bob uses it in desktop mode in the morning for blog, email, etc. Then at night while watching TV it is in tablet mode. Windows 8 has not been as bad as we thought although there a few quirks that require a restart but the machine is so fast that doesn't matter much. The virus scanning now takes minutes instead of hours. What we use the Yoga for (Chrome Browser, Quicken, Outlook) it seems like we are in the earlier Windows mode a lot more than Windows 8. The Windows 8 screen has a button to get you into this earlier Windows mode at a click. Plus you can add the above programs to the Windows mode start screen or the Windows mode taskbar. Here is that look and feel on our new Yoga.

With a fully featured browser there is not the need for a lot of apps like you would in an android device. It was one of the easiest transitions from one computer to another that we have had in a long time.

Till next time

Bob and Jo

HAPPY NEW YEAR! - 2014 YEAR IN REVIEW

Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 31 Mostly Sunny High 46)

Happy New Year! What a year we had! It was another year of adventures both planned and unplanned. Here is a brief summary of what has happened in our lives in 2014.

We spent last Christmas in our winter spot in Goodyear Arizona just west of Phoenix leaving in early April for the Lake Havasu Arizona area. Again this year we were able to check off a lot from our bucket list on our trip along the west coast circling back to Goodyear. We celebrated our 5th year of living fulltime in an RV in September. Among the bucket list items were the London Bridge, Da Vinci Exhibit, Reagan Presidential Library, Hearst Castle, saw a grizzly bear, saw bighorn sheep, Buffalo Bill gravesite, Mother Cabrini Shrine, and we saw a crested saguaro.

We also visited a number of National Parks (every National Park is on our bucket list); Joshua Tree, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Yosemite, Lassen Volcanic, Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens and Glacier.

We were along the coast for some great scenery, lighthouses and seafood in Morro Bay California, Moss Landing California, North Bend Oregon, Newport Oregon, and Long Beach Washington. 

We also attended our first RV Rally, the Oregon Cascaders Rally in Westfir Oregon. Another first was lot sitting at Escapees North Ranch where we did ATVng in the desert, target shooting, crested saguaro, etc. We added California, Oregon and Washington to our map of visited states. These were the planned adventures.

What we did not plan on was some maintenance issues that caused some distress and time delays. Our old nemesis the dining room slideout problems reared its ugly head again this year. While staying at the Emigrant Lake Recreation Area near Ashland Oregon we needed a new gear and this time we were able to make the modification that Bob read about on the internet. The slideout worked the rest of the year. We had a new nemesis this year, no trailer brakes. Long story short is that we would replace something and it would work for awhile, then replace something else and so on. Finally in Albuquerque New Mexico we found that the wire that ran along the axle from one set of brakes to the other had worn down to bare wire and was shorting out. We have had trailer brakes since then. Finally we had some hail damage while in Colorado.

Every year we jam a lifetime of vacations into one year but there is still so much more to see and do. This year we plan on heading to Maine for summer then work our way down the east coast to Florida for the winter adding a number of visited states.

We hope everyone has a Happy New Year!

Till next time,

Bob and Jo