Hi Everyone,
I didn't expect to be writing again today, but Jim took some pictures after I finished yesterday that I just had to share with all of you. Around 5 pm it got very cloudy, really dark clouds. Then we got some thunder and lightning too. Some of our neighbors thought it was a false alarm, but Jim stowed our outdoor chairs under the RV, just in case...............here's what followed.
You can see how dark the sky got for this early in the evening.
This is looking back towards the east section of the RV Park.
This is our picnic table......we didn't use it yesterday. Probably won't use it today either. LOL Did you notice the big puddle behind Janice's RV?
This shows how wet it got over in the office/rec room area. Not much activity there. The rain initially let up after about 15 or 20 minutes. Then we got more thunder and lightning and steady rain for a few hours more. I'm sure the local farmers were delighted, but our dogs....not so much. But the nice part was that it cooled off quite a bit. More good news: since Manny De La Pena (of Ferndelp's RV Service) did such an amazing job sealing the roof and all around our RV.....we were warm and dry. Not one single spot leaked!!!! Yay!
If any RVers out there are in New Mexico, and need to get their RVs re-sealed, you should call Manny. I can give you his number if you need it. His price may seem high, but it is well worth it to protect your investment, especially if it is your home.
At the pot luck on Saturday, our neighbor Verne showed us his Yeti drink holder. It holds a 12 ounce can of soda, etc and keeps it cold for at least 3 hours. He said that you can get a less expensive one from Wal-Mart. The brand name is Ozark Trails. We purchased two of them. I got the black one, and Jim chose the all metal (silver colored) one. We found that that metal one cross threaded when we tried to put the top rim on it. We took it back and got a second one in black, and we are very happy with them. The Yeti, which I think is made by Thermos brand was almost $30, but the Ozark Trails ones in black were under $8.00, which we thought was a great deal.
In order to tell them apart, I used pink nail polish to put a heart on the side of mine. As you can see behind them, Millie had to check them out. LOL.
That's all I wanted to add today.
We hope to drive over to the Heart of the Desert in Alamogordo if it doesn't rain too much on Friday. If we do, there will be an entry, and pictures on Saturday. We will be leaving here, albeit reluctantly, on June 8th. That night we will be staying at the KOA in Lordsburg, NM. We will stay June 9th and 10th in Benson, AZ, then two nights at the Elks in Casa Grande, and two nights in Quartzsite, AZ before we get to our beloved campground at Silent Valley, 9 miles above Banning, CA. We will enjoy a delightful stay there, as long as there are no brush fires! Happy trails to my traveling friends, and we wish you all will enjoy the beauty of America, and see as much of it as you can. Stay well.
There is so much to tell you about that I hardly know where to begin. Saturday I baked our yummy white walnut dream cake for the pot luck dinner that celebrated our anniversary and Memorial Day. Jerry did the BBQ ribs, Jim did the hot dogs, and I made corn on the cob and green salad. Janice had already hard boiled a lot of eggs, so she asked me to make deviled eggs from them. Others brought cole slaw, potato salad, soft drinks, and an assortment of other sides, and home made ice cream. Ric arrived, and of course, he teased me terribly! Janice's mom and her son both came. It was a wonderful party, and I think everybody had enough to eat. They presented us with an anniversary card signed by everybody in the park! It was a really nice surprise! By the time we came back home....we were exhausted, and stuffed!
Here we are at the pot luck!
I was happy to see that this picture shows some gray in my hair......finally!
Below is a picture of Ric and a picture of Janice's mom Myrtle.
I don't know why this silly computer won't let me bring her picture up higher, sometimes it does, but not today.
On my last blog I included a picture of Guy Lewis, the nearsighted photographer, but now I want to include a picture of the travel trailer he MADE from a small cargo trailer.
We have not seen the inside yet, but I am hoping he will show it to us. Guy is a Navy veteran, and has two small dogs that he cares for......so he is a good Guy! One of his dogs lost a leg when he was attacked by a pit bull, so Guy is trying to get a cart made to make the little fella mobile. Kudos to Guy for his generosity!
Back to our travel plans and preparations. Yesterday we went to TorC and did some grocery shopping. I also ordered curtains online for the living room window, so we picked up curtain rods for that. Today we drove to the MVD in Hatch to turn in our South Dakota license plates, and took a small thank you gift to Becky for all of her help, and patience with us, to get the RV title, and register it here. She was delightfully surprised! Here's a few things we saw today in Hatch.
Then we went back to TorC to get Jim some new casual shoes, as the pair he had was falling apart. On the way into town, Jim took this picture. He calls it the saddest looking mountain around.
Can you see the sad face? It amazes me sometimes the things Jim sees, but I guess he sees things others of us miss because of his artistic nature.
We took the dogs with us because we also went to see Jeff Dukatt. He has made Millie a really cute tie dyed shirt, so I needed her to try it on. He is going to add dancing chili peppers to it, pictures to follow, of course. He was going to do one for Willie, but the doggy shirt that was labeled extra large was only a tiny bit bigger than the one for Millie. He's going to try to order one in 2XL or even 3XL for Willie, and he's making one to match for me too. I already have one he did for me that says "New Mexico, not really new, not really Mexico", and another one that says
"We're all here because we're not all there". Too true I think. LOL. After that, we drove to a little place called Sumthin.
We really, really love the ice cream there, and so do the furry kids! Besides the delish ice cream, it's a cute place.
They still had their Memorial Day decorations outside. I took this picture of Jim, just because he let me do it.
I'll never hear the end of it if I don't include the one he took of me there. Silly isn't it?
Last but not least, I want to include a couple pictures of a very treasured item we have in our home. We have to pack it away to travel, and sometimes I forget to bring it out, but we really do love seeing it.
We bought this eagle at a Good Sam Samboree in Lancaster, CA many years ago. This is how he looks during the day time. At night, we turn the electric on to light the fiber optics and make his wings move back and forth, as seen in the picture below. We think he is quite beautiful, and we love to see him lit up this way. He is a reminder of the price of freedom. Memorial Day is over, but the message, Freedom is NOT Free, must never be forgotten. It is not the politicians that have given us the freedoms we all enjoy. We must never forget that the men and women of the military fought, and many died, so we could be free. The pastor at the First Baptist Church in TorC gave a very moving sermon on Sunday, about the importance of never forgetting the sacrifice of our military personnel who protect our freedoms. The 1st amendment gives you freedom of speech, a freedom people in many countries do NOT have. You are free to say what you want, worship where you want and gather wherever you want. But this IS America, and if you don't like it, and our flag, and our national motto "In God We Trust," as Pastor Dudley pointed out, you also have the freedom to leave America and go live somewhere else. I'm always amused during election years, by celebrities who say "If X gets elected president, I'm, leaving this country." And yet, if X gets elected, I don't think any of them ever actually leave. Whether they want to admit it or not, despite it's faults, America is a wonderful place to live, and we sure are glad we live here. As a popular song says, "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free and I won't forget the men who died that gave that right to me." I hope the people reading this are as proud to be an American as we are. GOD BLESS THE USA.
Good Morning Dear Friends and Family,
We like to say there are no strangers, only friends we have yet to meet. If somebody famous said that, I don't know who it was so I can't give credit, but I'm sure I didn't think it up all by myself. LOL
First, I want to show you a couple pictures to compare. The picture on the left is from the Weather Puppy app. on my tablet, and of course the one on the right is Millie. I just can hardly believe they look so much alike.
Next I have to comment on a pet peeve of mine. Is anyone else annoyed with the recent over use of the word "super"? It seems like everything is "super something" like, "he was super late" or "we were super busy" or "they had to work super hard." The other day someone on TV said that something was "super perfect"! Although I feel that only God and His creations are PERFECT, if one was to say something is perfect.......how can there be degrees of perfection so that something could possibly be SUPER perfect? Wouldn't it be better to say "he was really late" or "we were very busy"? Sometimes I want to just scream because they make me super frustrated!!!!
Now to update on our progress here. Monday I spent time on the phone trying to track down the title to our RV so we could get it registered here. Becky at the Hatch MVD finally found out it had been sent to her office on May 10th, so she searched for quite a while before finding it locked in a cupboard. It had arrived on May 16th! She called me back about 3:45pm. I told her we would be there when they opened on Tuesday morning. We had to take the RV there (yuck) so we began packing up stuff Monday night. Tuesday we got up at 6:00 am (OMG) and rushed to finish getting ready to move. We left here a little after 7 am. We got finished at the MVD before 9 am, got some gas in the RV (and great news...no leaks) and came back here to the park. We had everything re-set up by 11:45 am.
With now have driver's licenses, voter registration, vehicle registrations all in New Mexico, plus Auto Club and our bank switched to here, we are fully and legally New Mexico residents! But, as Jeff DuKatt says "Not really new, and not really Mexico."
This week Janice hired some people to come clean out the inside of the motorhome she had moved to the site next to us. They did a great job on it.
It's an older Dolphin, but I'd bet it was top of the line in it's day. It is very nice, and the air conditioner worked great. It doesn't have any slides, but it is very spacious and comfy. I think she has spent the last two nights in it.
This little RV came in on our driver's side yesterday. We have not yet met the man inside it. He has cute anchor curtains in the back window, so maybe he is a navy veteran. We'll have to ask him when we see him.
This is Guy Lewis, whose business card says he is a "Nearsighted Photographer", and he's a funny character too.He travels with a couple small dogs, one of which has only three legs, so he is going to get a cart made for him, and is going to build a ramp so the little fella can get in and out of his trailer.
We had another spectacular sunset here last night. I guess that makes up, at least in part, for how hot it was during the day. LOL.
I'm going to include several pictures, as the sunset progressed because it was quite beautiful.
Have you ever seen a more amazing sunset? These were taken looking west. The one directly above on the left was shot through our covered picnic table. As I have noted many times before, God is an awesome artist!
Wednesday morning Manny came back to start the job of re-sealing cracks in our RV, in the sides and slides. He spent all of Wednesday and much of Thursday scraping off the old sealer. Yesterday he began putting on the new sealer. He is a very hard worker!!! The last two days have been in the 90's and he worked 8 hours+ both days. We have given him cold water and offered him a break to come inside and cool off, but he insisted he was OK. Wednesday night he did come in and have dinner with us. He got back here even earlier today in hopes of finishing up the job. He also told Jim on Wednesday that there should be more screws in the back panel of our RV, so Jim had him put in more self-tapping screws so it will be more secure against wind and rain. I have to say, we would heartily recommend Manny de la Pena to anyone who needs their RV body or roof re-sealed to prevent leaks. He is a very conscientious worker, AND unlike a lot of people we have met here in New Mexico, when he says he will be here at a certain time....he shows up at that time! We are not quite as happy with Larry of Larry's Mobile RV Service from Las Cruces. He repaired the latch on the oven door last week, and it has broken again already. Also, we think his rates are higher than they ought to be, but that's our opinion. Anyway, Manny only does RV re-sealing but he is the best at what he does, and that is also our opinion. This is not going to be cheap, but it will be well worth the cost to prevent major water damage and/or mold inside the RV.
Tomorrow night we are having a pot luck dinner with everybody here who wants to join us. We will be celebrating our 34th anniversary, and of course Memorial Day weekend. There will be hot dogs with all the fixins, BBQ ribs and chicken, potato salad, green salad, and corn on the cob. Somebody is bringing home made ice cream and I am baking the same delicious white walnut dream cake with whipped cream frosting that I made for our wedding, and several times for our anniversaries (but not every year). Guy is bringing sodas and a watermelon too. It should be a grand evening and good food for all!
We are starting to work on our travel plans for when we leave here, which I think will be around the 7th or 8th of June. We will be stopping at several places along the way, and we hope to get back to Silent Valley around June 15th. It has been really great staying here, and making such wonderful friends at this park. That will make it hard to leave, but we also want to get back to California to see our friends and family there too. Janice will be forwarding our mail once a month after we leave here. We will keep in touch while we are gone, and look forward to our return home (to this park) after our stay in Quartzsite, AZ next January.
Life is an adventure, and the future is not guaranteed to anyone, so make the most of each day and enjoy the gift that is the present!
As promised, yesterday Ric took us to Pie Town. I do have to say that it was a very long way to go for a piece of pie.......so we each had two pieces! One of the nice things about being old is that we can eat what we want, when we want, and we did.
This is the Pie Town Cafe, but Ric decided we should eat at Pie-O-Neer Pies, which we did.
The picture on the right is what you see when you come in the door. You pick up a tray and select the pie you want. On the first round I just got a piece of yummy, warm banana cream pie, and Jim, of course, got chocolate cream pie. I had wanted to get Boston Cream Pie, but since that is not really a pie, they don't offer it. Alas, I will have to make my own. The next one I got was starry blueberry pie......and Jim had another piece of chocolate cream pie. Both Jim and Ric had to have the same tee shirt, which I will show in a minute. Since I bought myself a tee shirt in Hatch last week, which I was wearing yesterday, I decided I really didn't need another new tee. After we got home, Jim tried his on, and Janice took this picture of us.
As you can see, his shirt says "Peace of Pie" and amusingly, the mirror image would say "Pie fo Peace". I'm wearing my chili pepper tee, and matching necklace and earrings!!!
But now I have gotten a bit ahead of my story. To get to Pie Town, we drove north on I-25 to the town of Socorro, then drove west on Highway 60. It is a very beautiful drive through some really amazing countryside. There is an area where we saw some antelopes, but they were too far away to get a picture of them. There were also warnings of elk crossings, but Ric says one is more likely to see them around dusk. I had seen signs that we were approaching VLA, so I asked Ric what that means. He said it stands for Very Large Array. I was still confused. The area is a huge open area where the government has set up a few dozen items that look like satellite dishes, for the purpose of listening for sounds from outer space!
This is a row of the devices as seen from the road. I asked if they had detected any sounds, and Ric said yes, but mostly like explosions in space......not any little green men chatting.
Although it started out quite chilly, it was a really beautiful day, and the sights were wonderful.
We stopped on the way to read this historic marker. I hope you will click on it so you can read about an amazing lady.
We stopped in a little store/cafe in Datil, which rhymes with Cattle, and used the restrooms before we went the rest of the way to Pie Town. Besides the wonderful pies, there was some neat art work at the Pie-O-Neer restaurant.
I was amused to see the silver, rotary dial phone on display here.
I guess one man's art is another man's trash, but it was interesting.
On the left is a painting of one of the VLAs pointed at the moon. I guess somebody wanted to hear the man in the moon talking.
This sign was outside the door at the Pie-O-Neer. It should also have said that pie makes people very happy and sociable, because the folks there were a very nice group of individuals, both workers and guests. They even had us sign into their guest book!
They also had an interesting collection of windmills outside, and an old car............kinda rusty though.
On the way back, we stopped for lunch at the Eagle Cafe in Datil, the same place we stopped on the way to Pie Town. I am NOT a "heads on the wall" kind of person, but since there is a lot of hunting in this area, I guess the people here are.
The bar area had an interesting way to display their glassware. I got a kick out of the horse shoes! And I guess this must be the first "Million dollar bill" they ever received.
Anyway, after lunch we got back on the road for home.
This is in Datil, and Ric thinks it had been a bed and breakfast place, but looks vacant now. Ric said he'd love to buy it for a summer home......but I think he really just wants to live closer to Pie Town! The next town we came to was Magdelena. It's just a small town, but one with much history.
This is an example of the folk art we saw here. Ric also drove us by the very old and historic Hotel Magdelena which we got some nice pictures of.
Apparently some very influential people have stayed here in the past.
We saw this unusual looking building as we were leaving Magdelena. We were also surprised to see more than half a dozen police cars going west, towards Pie Town as we were traveling east, but I didn't think they would want me to take their pictures!
As I have said often, the landscape is quite amazing wherever we drive in New Mexico. I am always surprised by all the color you see if you just stop to notice it.
I think we saw this when we got back to Socorro, just before we got back on I-25 to come south to our home in Arrey.
Today I also want to share something with you that I had forgotten about for quite some time. Back in February, we went to the Good Sam Super Show in Avon, Arizona. One of the seminars we went to was about a product called Kanberra Gel. It is made in the USA from Australian tea tree oil. Anyone familiar with tea tree oil knows it has a recognizable scent to it, but it is a very clean scent. They gave out small samples of the gel at the seminar. She told us the small sample could kill orders and mold or mildew in a room (like our RV bathroom) for a week. We bought the hand soap which is very nice, and the 4 oz. size jar of the gel which is supposed to work for about a month. Jim came up with a great cost saving idea. He suggested that instead of opening the jar to air (it dries out as it is exposed to air), we should simply put one teaspoon full of it into the sample size jar and use that for a week. You might use any similar small size container, like a tiny spice jar or a tea candle saucer. We have been doing this every week since the beginning of March, and as of now, we have used less than 1/4 of the jar that was supposed to only last one month! I don't know any retailers that sell Kanberra products, but if you are interested, you can Google search it and order it online. I can say that we are very happy with how clean and fresh the bathroom smells, and you do get used to the tea tree oil scent. We do think it is an excellent product and worth the price. I can't tell you the price though, because they gave us special pricing at the Super Show.
Anyway, it is time to close up, but I do want to mention that this week we had our RV and car washed and waxed by Sal's Mobile Service, and they did an amazing job. The car hasn't looked this good in several years. We had Larry's Mobile RV Service here to install the EZ connectors and fix my oven door (the spring came off and we couldn't get it to close tight enough). His prices are not cheap, but his work is also excellent. He is coming back next week to do a mobile oil change and a repair to our refrigerator. We are willing to pay a reasonable price for good service. We feel blessed that we have been able to get good people to come out here, which is about 20 miles from TorC and 50 miles from Las Cruces, to do mobile work for us when we need it done.
I had the wonderful pleasure of talking to our very dear friend Sherrie from Fountain Valley, CA this week. We had not seen her and Ron since last September when we went to see Jerry Benton do his farewell performance at the Elks in Garden Grove before retiring. We have kept in touch by email, but it was simply fantastic to talk to her by phone. She made the observation that she didn't know how I can stay upbeat when several unexpected calamities have befallen us this year. It made me stop and think. Somebody (I don't remember who so I can't give credit) once said life is 10% about what happens to us and 90% about how we react to it. As I see it, it wouldn't do us any good to wail and moan and ask why is all this happening to us. There is always a bright side to things if you look for it. Because of the breakdown in Deming, we decided to spend more time here in Arrey, New Mexico. Because we decided to stay here longer, we have made some wonderful new friends, and have found our "home" park for when the day comes that we can't travel anymore. Everything happens for a reason. I hope our longer stay here has been a comfort to Ric, even if he does pick on me terribly. I know he is just teasing and he loves us. My advice to one and all is, when life doesn't go as you planned, remember that God has a plan for you, and it is ALWAYS a better plan. If circumstances seem impossible, give your problems to Jesus. All things are possible through Him. We may not understand His plan now, but it will be revealed to us when we need to know. Take care and keep a positive outlook, because nothing good will come from being a Gloomy Gus. Life IS amazing, so enjoy everyday of it!
You can see how dark the sky got for this early in the evening.
