MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM ARIZONA

Currently in Tonopah AZ (Low 41 Clouds and Sun High 65) 

Merry Christmas!!

What follows is the note we sent with our Christmas cards. It gives a good summary of our lives since last Christmas.

It certainly was an interesting year! We have spent almost the entire year in Goodyear Arizona trying to find some relief for Jo’s neck and back pain. We have blogged (http://bobandjotravelblog.blogspot.com/) throughout the year and following our blog is the best way to keep up on us. Our photos of all the places we have visited since we began fulltiming is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobandjotravel/sets/. Here is a brief summary of what has happened in our lives over the last year. 

We spent last Christmas in our winter spot in Goodyear Arizona just west of Phoenix. We had started Jo out at a pain center in December thinking that was enough time to allow us to leave in April. Everything pain management related happens one after the other and since the pain center is incredibly busy scheduling appointments became a nightmare. We would finish one and the earliest we could get the next one was a month away. That snowballed into spending the summer and ‘enjoying’ more 110 degree days than we thought were possible. 

The hottest we saw was 117 which in a house would not be nice but in an RV was challenging. To tell you how bad it was while watching the weather at 9:20 p.m. the current temperature was usually in the lower 100s. The hottest we saw was 107, at 9p for crying out loud.

We were able to escape the heat a few times traveling to higher elevations in Pinetop and Flagstaff, both in Arizona for about a month total.  It was nice to be in an area where the daytime high was cooler than the overnight low. Coming back though and try to setup in 100 degree weather was not fun. We celebrated our 6th year of living fulltime in an RV while in Goodyear. 

Jo had the nerves in her neck cauterized to block the pain there and they are now working on a plan for her lower back. Cauterization probably won’t work so they are proposing implanting a nerve stimulator.

In other news we took delivery of our new 2015 Lifestyle LS38RS in February in Tucson. We have mixed emotions about our new home. We are glad that we have it and the newer air conditioners did a good job during the heat and are better than the air conditioners in our Cameo but we wish that the manufacturing process would have gone better. There were so many obvious errors that first were made and then not caught until our walkthrough.  

Except for this year, every year we jam a lifetime of vacations into one year but there is still so much more to see and do. Next year we plan on heading to the Midwest for family and friends. Then we will head to Michigan for summer. On the way back to Arizona we will attend the International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque.

We hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! 

See you on the road sometime!!

We leave you with our entry in the Christmas decorating contest at our park in Tonopah, we call it the Charlie Brown Saguaro :-)

Surprisingly we did not win the contest. What is neat about the photo is that the great sunset reflection is seen on the side of our fifth wheel. We will be sharing some great sunset photos in a future blog.

Till next time,

Bob & Jo