Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 55 Sunny High 79)
When we started the blog we decided it would only be travel and food and avoid religion and politics. As Linus from the Charlie Brown strip said, "There are three things that I've learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."
In spite of that advice and our earlier feelings we offer this nonpartisan 3 point plan to fix our current political system, because it is broke. We have heard that we need a third party but we believe we already have three parties; Democrat, Republican and Washington. No matter what the great intentions are with the newbies once they get to Washington they only worry about being able to get reelected and not doing what is best for the country. Here is the 3 Point Plan.
1. Term Limits - the Founding Fathers never intended Congress to be a lifetime job.
2. All laws passed should apply to everyone including all elected officials but especially Senators and Representatives. For instance, imagine how they would feel if Social Security was their pension and not the outlandish pension they awarded themselves?
3. Any entity that receives federal funding should not be allowed to donate to political candidates or lobby for funding. Ridiculous that we send them tax dollars so that they can send it back to Senators and Representatives to get more tax dollars for funding and support.
The path forward is a Constitutional Convention since we cannot count on the Senators and Representatives to vote for these changes to the Constitution. This Constitutional Convention should address Term Limits since a previous attempt was deemed unconstitutional, and probably address the applicability of laws to Congress since they would also never do this on their own. Political contributions would probably also need an Amendment since it has some free speech implications. Any other amendments to the Constitution could be considered at that same Convention. Then 2/3rds of the States would have to approve the Amendment(s).
No matter what the politicians say during the election cycles, they are only out for one thing and that is for themselves.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 57 Slight Chance Rain Early Then Sunny High 78)
With the lowering temperatures we have found ourselves to be more active so we went to a couple of movies recently, 'The Intern' and 'Woodlawn'. Today we will talk about 'Woodlawn' and we will cover 'The Intern' later.
'Woodlawn' tells the true story of Tony Nathan, a black running back at a previously all-white school in Birmingham Alabama in the early 70s. This is a story that if you pitched it and it wasn't real it might not have been made because it is kind of unbelievable. Amidst great racial tension at the school and on the football team an outsider from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes asks to speak to the team and is given 10 minutes. One hour later and he is still speaking. He asks the team to give themselves to Jesus Christ and they do. That starts something where the team gets along better which spreads to the school. There is a student led prayer group in the gym where black and white students pray together. It spreads to a rival team whose quarterback is Jeff Rutledge.
The rivals play in the highest attended high school football game in Alabama history. Tony and Jeff go on to play at Alabama and win a National Championship. They both play in the NFL for multiple seasons, Jeff for the Giants and Tony for the Dolphins, and in two Super Bowls each. You can't make this stuff up.
We have to say that Christian movies have come a long way. We used to go to them to support the struggling genre but to be brutally honest that although the stories were good sometime the movies weren't. The acting, by actors you never saw before, wasn't the greatest. The directing suffered a little too. But now you recognize the actors, the writing is top notch, the directing is spot on, these are really good movies that happen to have a Christian theme.
So if you like a good sports story, this is a movie for you. If you like sports and Christian movies, you are in for a real treat.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 65 Sunny High 86)
First of all admiration for the Toronto Blue Jays who are a great team who just ran into a slightly better team this year.
The above is the historic Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri.
It's on to the World Series against the New York Mets beginning Tuesday night.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 65 Rain High 80)
We have wanted to attend for a long time and inspired by blogs that we follow that have attended the last couple years we made reservations to the 2016 International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque. This was the first year the reservations were online and there were some hiccups early in the morning yesterday but we finally got in.
In honor of the next "Star Wars" movie later this year.
We are looking forward to being front row at this event. We are in the 'President's Compound' on a bluff overlooking the launch field. Hopefully we can just sit in our lawn chairs and watch all the activities.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 70 Sun and Clouds High 97)
RV Furniture isn't the highest quality and the recliners in our new Lifestyle more than lived up to that. Bob's was difficult to recline and you needed to know the 'secret handshake' which Jo could never master. She could never get the tongue just right. Jo's developed a lean to the right and neither one had the back support these old backs need. We probably could have gotten replacements since under warranty but then we would still have lower quality furniture.
Friends of ours swear by the Ekornes Stressless Recliners so we visited a showroom. Once we were seated we knew these were what we needed. Turns out they are endorsed by the American Chiropractic Association. This is what we ended up with.
They were delivered this morning, tonight is our first TV watching experience in our new recliners.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 72 Mostly Sunny High 100)
Returning to the heat is an understatement, it is forecasted to be 100 or over for the next couple of days. The overnight lows in Goodyear were hotter than the daytime highs that we had in Flagstaff for our entire stay. We got back yesterday after 2 great weeks in the cooler temps, we even had to run the heat pump overnight a few nights.
The stay was fortuitous as our bedroom air conditioner went on the fritz. The portable air conditioner that we bought until we could get the repair done just did not provide the comfort that we were looking for. We escaped to the higher elevation of Flagstaff and extended our stay to make sure the replacement parts would be delivered. The repairs are planned for later today.
Our laptop was out of commission so we have some blogging to do on our stay in Flagstaff which we will have in the near future now that the laptop has been repaired. We visited a historic church, The Church of the Nativity.
We walked the rim trail of Walnut Canyon.
We took a day trip to Sedona.
More on each of those later.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Flagstaff AZ (Low 42 Partly Cloudy High 61)
It has been a long time since we last blogged. The constant heat in the valley of the sun was oppressing. There were some evenings we were watching the weather at 9:30 p.m. and it was 105 degrees at that time. For the third time we were able to escape the heat, this time we went to back to Flagstaff.
We were surprised to see the trees already changing colors. In the valley even though the calendar says fall the temperatures say summer.
It is nice that at night we have had to run the heat and the fireplace sure has made the evenings watching television and the cold mornings cozy.
We will be able to blog on some of our activities here later, sure is nice to be able to head out when we want instead of having to worry about it being too hot.
We close with one more for our weather bug followers, a cold air tornado was spotted near Goodyear where we stay and we took this photo from the weather broadcast. A cold air tornado is usually short-lived and generally much weaker than the vortices produced by a warm air tornadoes and rarely make ground contact. We had never heard of the previously mentioned gustnado and now a cold air tornado before our stay in the valley of the sun.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low aa Conditions High bb)
On September 10, 2009 we slept the first night in our Carriage Cameo at Peculiar Park Place RV Park in Peculiar MO and started our full-timing adventure. On this, our 6th anniversary we thought we would give a little review of those 6 years.
On the first anniversary after traveling to Texas and then to Arizona we were back at Peculiar Park Place RV Park. On our second anniversary we were at Broken Arrow Campground in Custer SD. On the third we were at Adventureland Campground in Des Moines IA. On the 4th we were at an Extended Stay Hotel in Overland Park KS while our Cameo was getting remodeled with a new refrigerator, dishwasher and flooring. On the 5th we were getting snowed on at the Buffalo KOA in Buffalo WY.
We left Buffalo WY and headed to Denver for Bob's beryllium testing. Our friends Bob and Wilma were able to visit Denver the same time we were there. It was great to see them and spend some time with them. After they left we had a bad storm and had some hail damage. We left Denver and stopped in Colorado Springs, Eagle Nest NM, Albuquerque, Gallup NM, Winslow AZ and spent a couple of weeks in Congress AZ before getting to Goodyear.
Since the almost 1 foot of snow in Buffalo WY we haven't seen much cool temperatures. Or at least it feels that way as we have been in Goodyear Arizona since mid-November. The summers here are something to avoid, it's a fry heat. While in Goodyear we got a new home in February, a Lifestyle LS38RS.
Here are some of our favorite photographs over the last year.
With all the ups and downs we cannot think of a better way to visit the country. If things happen you have to be somewhere and most of the time it has been at our choosing.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 88 Sunny High 109)
For our Destiny RV Park friends, here is some of the damage from the monsoon earlier this week.
We now know more about Arizona weather than we ever planned to.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 87 Sunny High 109)
There have been other monsoon storms in the Phoenix area but we had our first major monsoon in our area yesterday, 60 mph dust storm and rain, made for an interesting afternoon.
There were 5 microbursts in the metro area in this storm. There also was a gustnado in the west valley where we are.
A gustnado is a weak, short lived tornado like vortex. The window facing the rain leaked so we have to get that fixed. There were lightning strikes that caught palm trees on fire across the valley. Here is one in Ahwatukee.
Finally, we are so glad to have our generator because the power went out a little after 4p.
We had air conditioning and TV until the power came back on about 1030p, 5 and 1/2 hours that we used our generator. We are luckier than some that are still without power Friday morning.
Never a dull moment in this lifestyle.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Goodyear AZ (Low 86 Slight Chance of Storms High 106)
Subtitled: It never makes that noise when you take it into the shop!
We drove back from Flagstaff yesterday, back to the furnace they call the valley of the sun. This will be a short entry as we are way behind in reading other blogs and all things electronic since we had some computer problems while in Flagstaff. The keyboard on our laptop started acting up and we took it to Best Buy today in Goodyear to get it fixed. Bob checked it yesterday and it was still having problems but it worked fine when the tech looked at it today, go figure. There still is an issue with the 'Capslock' light but everything else appears to work.
It never makes that noise when you take it into the shop!
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
Currently in Flagstaff AZ (Low 51 Storms Around High 75)
We love the weather in Flagstaff that has allowed us to do something in the middle of the day instead of running from air conditioned space to air conditioned space. We toured Riordan Mansion State Park. Riordan Mansion is the story of the Riordan brothers who were involved in lumber, railroad, banking, cattle, and politics. To make the story even more interesting the two brothers who built this house, Timothy and Michael, married the Metz sisters.
The style of the house is arts and crafts. The architect was Charles Whittlesey whose name is no doubt recognized to those familiar with the hotels built by the railroads out west. Charles Whittlesey was the architect for the El Tovar Hotel at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Some of the similarities between the structures include massive stone arches at porch corners and rustic exterior consisting of log planks (for this home it was pine native to the area), wood shingles, and native stone (for this home it was volcanic rock).
The two sisters wanted to be close to each other so the brothers had almost identical 6000 sq. ft. homes built with a 1000 sq. ft. common room between them. The architect called the room the rendezvous room while the brothers called it the cabin. Here is the mansion from the parking lot.
The visitor center is the original 6 car garage. The 13000 sq. ft. were built in less than one year finishing in 1905. Photos aren't allowed on the first house we toured, the east side residence of Timothy Riordan and his family. Bob got this picture before he was told.
This is the unique ice box configuration just inside the entry of the house at the servants entrance. Ice was brought in and placed in the top area. The deliveries of groceries was placed in the second compartment accessible from the kitchen inside.
Here are photos from the other side of the house, Michael Riordan and his family, where photos are allowed, don't worry Bob didn't get into trouble :-)
Religious art was throughout the house, more on that later.
Although almost identical structurally the homes were decorated differently. The best example of that is the stained glass. On the Timothy side the stained glass windows were tulips, here is a photo from the outside since you couldn't take pictures in that side of the house.
On Michael's side the stained glass was Arizona Poppy.
Here is the outside of the house showing the rugged exterior and arches.
The flowers outside were beautiful.
An incredible family story and a family home. The Riordan's were proud Irish Catholics and contributed to the building of the 'Church of the Nativity' which we will blog about later.
Till next time,
Bob and Jo
