More Trip Highlights!

Did you catch the pun in the title? Here Diane and Joyce are celebrating the successful highlighting of Joyce's hair. Although there was quite a temptation on Diane's part to get even with Joyce for all those younger years when Joyce resentfully had to help Diane with her hair before going to school, she resisted the devil sitting on her shoulder. Maybe it is because she remembered that Joyce would be helping her with her hair sometime in the near future. Tim and Jim got out of Dodge City and headed for the nearest golf course while the girls got to spend some sisterly bonding time.

Another highlight of this trip though, was when Tim and Diane got to go to a Las Vegas style show starring Terry Fator. For those of you who aren't fans of reality shows, Terry Fator was the 2007 winner of the "America's Got Talent" tv show. He is a singing ventriloquist that does amazing impersonations of many singers using his puppets, of which there are many. How he can achieve the song volumes that he does without opening his mouth is beyond us.

He was turned down three times by Las Vegas show clubs that told him his act wasn't good enough. Now he recently signed a 5 year, $100 million contract and has his own showroom at The Mirage. We had planned to go to Las Vegas to see him, but were pleasantly surprised to find out he was doing a show at a local casino before heading to his new gig in LV. The show was phenomenal and we spent the whole 90 minutes laughing uproariously. If you ever get the chance to go and see him, it would be well worth the price of admission.

Tim's brother, John, and his wife, Bear, came for a visit on Super Bowl Sunday. Regrettably, we forgot to get a picture of them on John's Honda Gold Wing motorcycle. It had almost more gadgets than our home on wheels. For comfort it looks like it isn't missing much. I think if you push the right button, it will probably make a sandwich for you.

We enjoyed watching the Super Bowl game with Joyce and Jim and were rooting for the underdog Arizona Cardinals all the way to the bitter end.

The morning after the Super Bowl, we were awakened at 5:00 a.m. by a kind person that was out walking their dog. Once we roused from our sleepiness, Tim answered the door to be told that water was pouring out from under our coach. Dutifully he got clothes on and went out and turned off the water. The morning light finally showed that the plastic plug at the bottom of our water heater had partially disintegrated and let loose. Of course all the water in the heater had run out and the fresh water was simply running through and out on the ground. We have no idea how long it had been running, but there was a lot of water around the coach.

Fortunately, good neighbor Mike came to the rescue once again, and he had the remains of the old plug dug out in minutes. A quick trip to the Home Depot next door to the park for a replacement plug resulted in the entire repair being completed in less than an hour. Tim sure wishes there was some way to miniaturize Mike and keep him in his toolbox.

We're Pro Shufflers Now!

Golden Village Palms here in Hemet, CA is the home for the California Shuffleboard Association Hall of Fame and is the site of many tournaments for the Southern California teams and chapters. On a recent evening, they welcomed all comers to an introductory session and taught us how to play.

This is NOT the shuffleboard that we used to play on the sidewalks or aboard cruise ships where you pushed the disk as hard as you could and hoped it would stop on a pointer. These shuffleboard "boards" are finely tuned. Before you are allowed to begin play, you must sweep the board, then put down a thin coat of wax. There is actually practice wax or tournament wax. We were using practice wax so the boards wouldn't be too slick. There is a great deal of finesse required when it is your turn to "shoot" your disk.

You barely push the disk with your stick and release it when you think it will clear the "dead zone" and stop without being on a line. It goes flying down the board. The professional players were incredible, being able to stop their disk right where they wanted. Some were able to put English on the disk and have it come in from a side angle. The real professionals have their own sticks adjusted for their height and the amount of pressure they want to exert.

The competition was pretty fierce, even among the beginners. Tim was the only one that was able to finish in the money. It turned out that last place paid $4.00. We had a wonderful, fun time learning and, if it starts to rain here, we will probably try it again.

Diane played today in the 2009 GVP Can-Am Volleyball tournament. She was first scheduled to play on the Canadian team, but, was later recruited by the American team when not enough Americans showed up. The weather was perfect and everyone had a great time and played a lot of volleyball. The Canadians won by a score of 16-6. There is now a move afoot to close the border at Vancouver, BC in the future.

This will give you a small idea of the things there are to do here to stay busy. We found we were missing out on some activities so we had to put the calendar of events on the fridge and highlight the ones in which we wanted to participate. As it turns out, there is a dance here every Saturday night in February. That should keep us busy.

You probably can't read the fine print, but, at the top they list all the things that happen every week. Then, down below are events that are out of the ordinary.

Diane has her collage of all the children and grandchildren on the freezer in the kitchen area, so that we can see them often. The only bad part of being down here for three months, is not seeing the family.

Diane is getting all excited about playing in the CanAm volleyball tournament here at the park. This is the Canadian players versus the American players. This situation does create a dilemna for Diane, since she was born in Manitoba, Canada, but is a US citizen. So she told the organizers that she would play on whatever team needed another player. So, tomorrow (Friday, 1/30) she will be a Canadian volleyball player. There is a total of six teams and only five women on those six teams.

College of the Desert

In previous trips to this area, we have been told that we missed something by not attending the College of the Desert. As it turns out, we weren't supposed to attend for the academics, but for the weekly street fair that takes place on the college campus each weekend. It is best described as a market venue that stretches for three to four square blocks. Tim was amazed to find that he could (if he wanted to) buy a brand-new tuxedo for next to nothing, purchase virtually every golf gadget known to mankind, rent vacation hideaways, or enjoy a different type of hot dog every day for a month and never have the same one twice.





We travelled about an hour to Palm Springs to attend the fair with Joyce and Jim and friend, Judy Dougherty. Mike opted to stay at the park and take care of the animals. His decision may also have had something to do with the fact that the NFL playoffs were on television.




The girls enjoyed doing all of the looking and very little buying although we did come home with a few things. We also found the tile holders we have been looking for to go with our Mexican Train domino set.

We have still been playing golf and volleyball and the weather has been great. However, we did hear the first sounds of raindrops on our roof just before bedtime. It sprinkled on and off throughout this a.m., but nothing serious. Our forecast shows several days of showers over the next few days so we may get several inside projects completed.

Happy Birthday Twinkie Cake!

As Tim officially reached social security age on the day we arrived at Golden Village Palms, Joyce and Jim surprised him with a birthday cake. Instead of a cake, Joyce whipped up a concoction made entirely of 100 calorie packages of Twinkies with a single candle sticking up in the middle. Do you think she is trying to tell him something? We all had a good laugh as the birthday singers (Diane, Joyce, Jim, and Samson)performed their serenade.

Here Joyce and Jim are standing in front of their fifth wheel trailer demonstrating their patriotism and getting ready for next week's inauguration. If you can make it out in the background, Joyce is displaying her Canadian pedigree, eh! We think she is just trying to get on the good side of all the other Canadians here in the park. We are not sure, but we think they outnumber the Americans here. I guess we will find out how many there actually are at the Canada Day celebration here in February.

Welcome Visitors!

We always tell everyone that we love to have visitors. Well, we were pleasantly surprised to hear from friends Steve and Jackie Zapp from Portland. They had been scheduled to go to Palm Springs but we apparently talked them into coming to Hemet instead. They came over to view the park and we got together on Tuesday for 18 holes of golf on a beautiful day. It is always fun to catch up with old friends.

We related earlier about the problem with what were our less than automatic stairs. As you can see from the photo, we were less than attractive from a cosmetic standpoint.

While we were out enjoying ourselves on the golf course with Steve and Jackie, our incredible neighbor, Mike Dougherty, came and completely fixed our stairs, including lubing the motor and tightening all the bolts, while his equally incredible wife, Judy, babysat Samson for the afternoon. Mike is one of those people that can probably repair anything and has already planned to fix the display on our microwave which hasn't worked properly for about two years. Mike and Judy live in Federal Way, WA, but have been coming to this park for about eight years. We met them here last year and we have become good friends. Judy is an accomplished seamstress and creates some awesome quilts.

This is Mike and Judy with their constant companion, Sophie. Even though Sophie looks grumpy in this photo, she is a real sweetheart and she and Samson have become good friends.

Tim and Jim went on Wednesday with the men's golf group. It was highly touted to them as being "a great group of guys that just like to get together to play golf". HA! T & J both felt like fish out of water. The fellows that Tim was playing with were pretty much par golfers and expressed great frustration if they got a bogey on a hole. Tim felt like an anchor on the cart as they were always waiting for him to make his next three shots so they could make their second shot. Although Jim is a better golfer than Tim, he also had the worst round of his life. We think we are just going to play golf on our own from now on.

Today we were visited by some of our Clackamas neighbors, Don and Bev Munro. They live down the street from us at home. When we were preparing to leave town to come to Hemet, Don walked by and asked where we were going. When we told him, he said he and Bev were going to Palm Springs, so we invited them to make the drive to Hemet. They have never been in this part of the country before. We showed them around the park and went to lunch. It seemed funny to think that we never seem to see much of each other at home, but get together to visit all the way down here.

Daytime temps are still in the 80's while nighttime brings incredibly clear skies for viewing the stars with temps going down to the 40's. Great for cool weather sleeping.

California - Here We Come!

A scene like this one from our garage door made the decision to head south a very easy one. After close to fifteen inches of snow and ice, we were glad to see the thaw. Christmas was delayed at our house due to the storm which left us with a reduced amount of time to get ready to go south.

The other picture shows what makes the decision to leave town for three months a difficult one, particularly in grandma's view. The grandkids seem to grow up so quickly.

After an unexpected two inch snowfall on Sunday

night before we left, we were wondering if we
would get started out of town on time. However, by morning all the snow had melted and we departed in our motorhome with Diane's sister, Joyce, and her husband, Jim with their fifth wheel trailer.

We were eager to escape the snow and rain and drove to the Seven Feathers RV Resort in Canyonville for our first night. If you ever get there, don't forget to ask for the "billboard special" in the restaurant. It is an excellent value and a great ribeye steak dinner. It would only cost $7.95 if you could stay out of the casino. It cost us a little more than that.

We suffered our first equipment breakdown when we stopped for gas in Canyonville. As Tim went to exit the coach, the stairs gave a noisy snap when he stepped down and the stairs hit the ground. Needless to say, the automatic steps are no longer automatic. It took several bungee cords to get them into place for travel. Our RV is beginning to look like "cousin Eddie's". Sam is pretty upset as the jump into and out of the coach is too much for him to handle and he has to be lifted in and out.

The trip over Siskiyou Summit was a walk in the park this year. There was snow beside the road from the base of Mt. Ashland to the town of Yreka, but the pavement was dry and the drive was uneventful. We enjoyed a pleasant stay at the Mountain Gate RV Park in Redding, CA, but headed out early the next day.

We continue to follow our policy of just going 200 miles per day, and drove on to the Kit Fox RV Resort in Patterson, CA. This was a nice park (close to a Starbucks for Tim), but it lost a lot of its appeal when we discovered they didn't have cable TV or wi-fi. Bummer! We certainly won't be back there until they fix those situations.

Our next stop was at one of our favorite places - the Orange Grove RV Park in Bakersfield, CA. The oranges were ripe and Diane picked our normal dozen to take with us. This is always a fun place to stop, as they encourage you to pick the oranges and even provide the fruit picking pole with basket.

It seems strange this time to head straight down the highway at a 200 miles per day clip with no side trips or things to see. We already said that, on the way home, we are going to take a little more time.

We did arrive at Golden Village Palms at mid-afternoon on Friday to temperatures in the high 70's with more warm weather expected. It feels as though we never left here. Diane went for two hours of sand volleyball first thing Saturday morning while Tim opted for pool volleyball. When tomorrow comes we'll determine who was in the worst physical shape as we try to get out of bed. Samson opted for a good old-fashioned nap in the warm sun. It's good to be back.

Home again, home again.....jiggedy jig!

Sorry that we haven't updated this blog for several weeks now. We are actually writing from home as we arrived last Saturday, 4/5/08.



What a fun way to end our three month excursion. The cruise with our children and spouses


went extremely well and everyone had a great time. No one got seasick and Tim suffered the only injury when he tripped over another passenger while trying to exercise off some of the cruise food. No serious damage however, just a skinned knee and lots of tenderness. It kept him from exercising for the rest of the week though.



Note the photo of the three West boys waiting for the girls to finish shopping at Senor Frog's in Puerto Vallarta. This pose actually matches a similar shot taken several years ago so it has historical meaning. Tim and Andy took the opportunity in PV to go para-sailing. Good thing the boat had an especially powerful motor.



While aboard the Dawn Princess we celebrated Kristen's 27th birthday. We treated her to a special dinner in the dining room and the cruise line gave her a very yummy chocolate cake.



Please note the two medals around Tim and Diane's necks. They managed to place First and Second in a golf chipping contest aboard ship. Not too much skill involved when you are using a putter to chip into a hula hoop floating in a pool.




Upon our return to San Diego, Tim connected with an old Navy buddy, Don Spees. Tim had worked for Don during his service in Nha Be, Vietnam. Neither one of them seemed to be quite as thin as they appeared in photographs from forty years ago. It was good to catch up with Don and relive some of the old times. Don and his wife, Barb, just returned from Italy where they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.


The following Monday we sprang Samson from his week-long stay in doggie jail (while we were on our cruise), and began our northern trek home. Our intent was to take our time heading back as we did on our way down, but the urge to get home was stronger than the pull of the scenery and we made it home in six days.



It is hard to believe that we have now spent 291 nights in the motorhome. It will be amazing to us to hit the 365 night mark.



Thanks for riding along with us on this journey. We'll try to keep you better informed of any future trips. We do know that we will be returning to the Golden Village Palms in Hemet, CA for next snowbird season. Maybe you should come along with us.