8.0 to the Beach

We wanted to get an early start yesterday so we were ready to depart our Campsite at Desert Trails RV Park in Tucson by 8:00 AM. Our target spot today was Del Mar Beach, north of San Diego on Camp Pendleton.

The slides were in, the kids were on the internet and we were about ready to get underway.After a couple of hours Pam wanted to drive, so we switched seats. The kids were comfortable where they were.

As we drove through the Arizona desert I did not expect to have so many mountain passes. Some were over 4,000 feet. (I was too busy watching to take pictures) :( We went from the desert, to mountain passes, back to sea level and drive through sand dunes before we got to California.

I was very glad to see that we averaged 8.0 MPG on our drive and have averaged 7.9 MPG since we got the fuel pump replaced in October. It seems to be working well. We stopped for fuel and dished out $240 to fill it up.

For the most part, the drive was great althought, it is always a little nerve wracking going through busy traffic. We hit I-805/I-5 in San Diego about 3:00 PM a little before rush hour.

We continued on I-5 north of Oceanside and found Camp Pendleton easy enough and went right to our campsite. We are on the beach about 150 yards from the ocean. It was pretty calm most of the evening but is WINDY at the moment.
We are going to have to nail down the mats to keep them from blowing off. We quickly found a guy selling wood and made phone call. It took him about 10 minutes to show up.
Hopefully, there will be some quiet evenings around the campfire.

And more California sunsets:Pretty spectacular, Ay?

We hope you are getting ready for a great holiday week / weekend and we want to wish everyone who reads the Roadrunner Chronicles a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Thanks for viewing today's travels.

From Tucson to Tombstone

Seeing the western town of Tombstone was on the agenda for today. But we were in no hurry. We had a leisurely breakfast of ham and pancakes and took our time getting underway.Kelly and Adam were finishing up on the computer while Pam packed the drinks for the drive.

We took the scenic trip with a short detour to Sierra Vista, which was about 20 miles away from Tombstone. It was a spectacularly scenic route and quite different from the Tucson area. I wish I'd taken a couple of pictures!

We found a nice Mexican (La Casita) restaurant for lunch. We all had chimichangas and beans and rice. It was a nice restaurant which was busy so I think we picked a good one.

On to Tombstone! We could have picked a better time to see the old town. There was not a whole lot going on mid afternoon on Sunday. But it was still interesting.The last Gunfight at the OK Corral was at 2:00 PM. We were 10 minutes late so we will have to do that next time. There were other things in town to see.

We went down to the Wild West Show at Helldorama. It was a small 'rodeo' and show that was run by Texas Jane and Pigeon Pete. It was a fun little $5 excursion we hadn't planned on.
The crowds were sparse but the enthusiasm was high to see Chester, the Wonder Dog do the barrel races.

The show lasted about 3o minutes and we had a good time of it.
They brought out Chester, the Wonder Dog who had a stuffed pet (Kermit) on top for the ride around the barrels. It was cute. Their horses, Bandito and Desperado did some tricks (knelt down and laid on their sides). They noted that all their animals were rescued from abuse and brought back to health. That was impressive.

After the show, we went up the hill to the petting zoo which is also part of the show ticket. The goats and calves, sheep, pigs, ostrich and burros were trained to eat the corn and treats we bought for them.

Next, we walked around town and saw the stagecoach and a number of shops.
This reminded me of Deadwood City in South Dakota. Both were set in the 1880's. But it seemed like Tombstone had less big business in town.

We drove back to Tucson, finished packing up and got set to leave on Monday for our trip to San Diego.

Have a great week! Hope you are planning to have a great week and a Merry Christmas! Thanks for viewing the Roadrunner Chronicles.

Sky Harbor and Tanque Swap Meet

Adam and Kelly flew in on Friday night. It has been a couple of months since we have seen Kelly and almost four months since we have seen Adam. He lives in Michigan and Kelly lives in Dallas.
They got the cheapest flights available and arrived within 20 minutes of each other.

But--- Kelly flew into Phoenix on US Airways and Adam flew into Tucson. Yikes! Fortunately, Bill and Marty (friends here at Desert Trails) offered take Pam to pick up Adam while I drove to Phoenix.

I may have mentioned I went to Arizona State in the early 1970's but I did not recognize Tempe or Phoenix. The signs were easy to follow and I got to Sky Harbor International Airport a couple of hours before Kelly's plane landed. I wasn't sure how long it would take me to get there with the traffic on a Friday night.

I met friends (Art and Winnie) at the airport. We have known each other for years and they live in Maricopa, outside of Phoenix.We had dinner together at the airport and got caught up. Their son Josh is in California and daughter (Tonya) is in South (North?) Carolina.

It was nice to talk with them and to hear all that has happened over the years. We all lived in Albuquerque and attended Grace Church 20 years ago.

Kelly's flight was on time and she spent a little time waiting for her bags and talking with Art and Winnie. It was great to see them. I have said often that one of the best things about this life style as full-timers is that we get to see more friends and family than we have seen in years.

Kelly hadn't eaten dinner so we had to stop by In-N-Out burger. That is always a highlight.

We got back to the campground about 11:15 PM (after a couple of wrong turns). After catching up some, we went to bed.

Yesterday our main event was the Tanque Verde Swap Meet in Tucson. We didn't find much except for some stocking stuffers.

Later, back at the Desert Trails RV Park campground, Adam and I played some ping pong, minature golf and pool while Kelly took a nap and Pam read. After that, we went for a short hike out in the desert on one of the many trails near the campground.

We grilled some chicken for dinner and watched the Cowboys beat the Saints. They had a good run. After that, we called it a night.

Thanks for checking in on the Roadrunner Chronicles. Hope your weekend is going well.

Photos of Desert Trails RV Park

Desert Trails RV Park here in Tucson, AZ has a lot of character. The current owner, Pericles Wyatt, bought it 12 years ago when it was a water park. It is hard to describe the RV park, but "funky" or "a work in progress" comes to mind.

We would love to spend a couple of months here, but we leave in a couple of days for San Diego. And it is booked solid (all 300 spaces) after the new year.

This park is really loaded with lots of things to do. I thought I'd try to show you in pictures why we like it:

The first thing you notice when you check in at the office is Andrea. She is very helpful and went out of her way to help us find a spot we liked.
Near the office is the row of mail boxes when mail is picked up and delivered daily.

Not far from there is the Activities Center where the Monday morning free donuts and coffee are served. Here Pericles, the owner, starts the week off with a recap of the previous week and a rundown of the schedule for the current week. The Activities Center also has a video center, library and is where this weeks Line Dancing, and concerts from the Tucson Accordion Club and the fiddler Arvel Bird were held. A laundry is located at the end of the beginning.

The Oasis is another meeting area. It also has internet direct connect hookups and tables for games and puzzles. Free self serve soda drinks and free coffee are available all day long.
The park has a dog run and dog park with a big yard.

The swimming pool and hot tub are both heated. Despite the 60 and 70 degree weather I only saw a couple of people taking a dip.

The observatory tower is in the center of the park and provides a good vantage point for views of the surrounding countryside.
The miniature golf course has 18 holes and is in good repair. They have a few fish ponds with a some gold fish.The park has an Exercise Room for yoga, Pilates and whatever. It also has two ping pong tables that are new.The pool hall has four pool tables.Twenty yards from our campsite are two horse pits. I learned how to toss in Silver City, NM when I was in fourth grade and love to give it a try now and then.
Our campsite has 50 amp and full hookups. It is a good one, but there are many good ones here.I am sure I missed some things about this RV park, but you can see it has a lot of things to do--and all of them free.

Earlier in the week I showed some of the beautiful walking/hiking/running trails adjcent to the park. We intend to come back.

To all of you that are back East--I hope the snow and bad weather hasn't messed up your travel plans. Be safe and keep warm!

Thanks for viewing the Roadrunner Chronicles today!

Blue Skies and Desert Scenes

Happy Friday! It was a drop dead gorgeous day in Tucson yesterday. The temperature climbed up to 75 degrees and it was beautimous.

Pam laundry and I went over to talk with Bill and to give him a demo of The Solution.
He said he had already ordered a gallon so he was convinced it does a pretty good job. The full body paint design on his coach has a lot of black areas, so he was interested in removing a few water marks. He used another product to take care of those.

Bill also showed me the storage and basement area his new Winnebago Ellipse . The passthrough storage area is big, plus he has two bays that have shelves which increase the usable area. Nice coach with a very wide pull out tray.

He showed me his Weather Pro awnings that have an adjustment with some dip settings and toggles to set the wind speed to automatically retract. I found the fuse box on the Roadrunner and a toggle switch but didn't see any information in the manual of how to adjust the wind speed. It is set to automatically retract at 18 mph but I thought it might be good to decrease it to 12-15 mph. Maybe I'll call the manufacturer.

After lunch we ran some errands but first we wanted to go over to the nearby Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
The Desert Museum is an outdoor series of trails and information which is geared for an all-afternoon type walk. We were not prepared for that--I was thinking it was a hour tour through a building, and we didn't want to cut ourselves short so we decided to come back another time.
But I did take some pictures of the surrounding beauty.

Next we went through Gates Pass to get to the outskirts of Tucson and on to find a Trader Joe's. Tucson has three stores.

Along the way we stopped for some pictures of the valley. Some hikers from a local hiking club had just come off Brown Mountain. They had a four hour hike up the mountain and back and seemed to be enjoying themselves.
I also took some pictures of the valley near Gates Pass with the blue skies and beautiful desert. This is sure beautiful country. It was 'clear and a million' yesterday.

We also had to find a Kinko's to send a fax to our insurance company so we are getting to know our way around Tucson a little bit. The sloping foothills with the mountain back drops remind me a lot of Albuquerque and the backdrop of the Sandia Mountains.

Today we await the arrival of Kelly from Dallas and Adam from Detroit, so it will be a big day.

Hope you are enjoying the week thank you for viewing the Roadrunner Chronicles!

Shopping and Mexican Train

It was warm and sunny yesterday. I think it got up to 7o degrees. That's what we were waiting for! It was clear and georgeous-- a really beautiful day.

I tried all morning to get configure the MacBook to see my HP C4580 printer but that didn't work out. I tried downloading drivers and that didn't work either. My connection timed out-- have to give it another shot today.

Pam wrapped Christmas presents and I finished up the blog. Before we knew it, it was lunch time.

After lunch we went Christmas shopping and looked for a small Christmas tree for the Roadrunner. We got some decorations but no luck on the tree.

When we returned, we cleaned the coach and Pam made a casserole for dinner. Bill and Marty came over for dinner. Marty brought some salad and it worked out well. It was GREAT hearing about their adventures and the workamper jobs they have had in the four plus years as full-timers. We meet them when we worked together with Care-A-Vanners at Habitat de Santa Fe in October. They recommended the Desert Trails RV Park and has been great meeting up with them again.

Before it got too late we went over to their coach for a session of Mexican train. They have a beautiful new (like one week new) Winnebago Ellipse. It has a great dining table that was perfect for spreading out dominos.
We went for three or four rounds and got soundly beaten but we thoroughly enjoyed spending time with them. Those cookies from Trader Joe's were delicious, too.

After that, we came home and went to bed.

Thanks for joining in today on the Roadrunner Chronicles! Hope to hear from you again tomorrow. It is supposed to get to 75 degrees here today. We will see if it makes it. Hope you have a great Wednesday!

Errands and the Concert

We had an early morning appointment in Tucson at the Chapman Honda dealer. REALLY early (the sun wasn't even up) and it was COLD (see the frost on the windshield?)outside.While we drove into town we watched the beautiful sunrise. We arrived on time and Angel took care of us. We read the paper, watched some TV and were done getting our tires rotated in less than two hours.

After that, we found a shoe store that had some Birkenstocks in Pam's size, so we bought her Christmas present. (Boy will she be surprised!)Next we went over to La Mesa RV to have them replace a faulty tail light socket. While that was going on, we walked down the street and had lunch at a gas station sub sandwich shop where Celine prepared 'The Hungry' for us.On our way back I snapped a pictures of a couple other large RV dealers within 200 yards of La Mesa RV Center: Beaudry RV and Pedata RV.
While we were in the planning and preparation mode of our pre-fulltime status, I looked at many RVs at the websites of all three dealers. I like being able to see them and know where they are physically located.

After we finished up at La Mesa RV (they were GREAT), we got directions to a nut and bolt shop (Wheel Equipment) to get a new set of Blue Ox lynch pins.
It took a while to find it but that was the last errand before returning to our campground.

Pam did the wash while I dry-washed the Roadrunner with The Solution. I finished about half of the RV and we had time for a late afternoon hike near the Desert Trails RV Park where we are staying. What a great place to go for an hour hike!

We had dinner and then went to our concert at the Desert Trails RV Park Activities Center. We have heard nothing but good things about the fiddler: Arvel Bird. Some folks who were here two years ago ranted about how good it was.

Now I know why. He was FANTASTIC. I did not know that many American and Canadian Indian tribes had a heritage of playing the fiddle. Many tribes intermarried with the French, English, Scot and others...and left a legacy of fiddle music.Arvel introduced a number stories in his songs that tell of the Indian legacy. He is of Paiute and Scottish heritage.
I wanted to tell him how much we enjoyed his show and was able to get picture with him.This will be a day we won't forget for a while.

Thanks so much for viewing the Roadrunner Chronicles!