Retirement Travels

Happy New Year!! May the new year bring you much love, happiness and laughter, good health and many adventures.. New Years Eve day we drove from Fort Stockton Texas to Fredricksburg Texas. We stayed at a Harvest Host. We got in early enough to enjoy a glass of wine and some live music. Looking back on 2022, we left Arizona after selling our house in March. We didn't make it to the east coast this year but we traveled to many cool places. We stayed/slept in 53 different places in 17 states and put on almost 12,000 miles. We put Illinois on our map this year From Fredricksburg, we are heading to Livingston Texas. We are staying 2 nights to pick up our mail on the 3rd and to get weighed now that we have new tires. This will tell us if we need to distribute any weight to keep the axles balanced.

Las Cruces had it's good and bad this visit. First the good, we took a drive to White Sands National Park.  White Sands National Park preserves and protects a large portion of the Tularosa Basin. This area includes the white sand dunes which are made of gypsum crystals.  Over the last 12,000 years, rainwater dissolved the gypsum in the surrounding mountains and deposited the gypsum in the Tularosa Basin, forming these sand dunes. Now the bad... We have stayed at Hacienda RV Park three times and we like its location for on and off the I-10. But....Sandy's bike is lonely on the back of the jeep, someone decided to walk into our site while we were inside and take Ernie's bike. We reported it to the resort and to the local police but don't feel good about recovering it. We have never had an issue with leaving things outside our RV in any park but this definitely is a wake-up call .  It's hard to believe that another RV'er in the part would do something like that and...

  Our time in Arizona flew... TO DO LIST IN ARIZONA Haircut Sandy (2) Echo wellness visit at Banfield Blood draw for wellness Sandy Wellness primary doctor Sandy Echo bath and nails Service on RV, all fluids changed Dentist Ernie & Sandy Blood draw for wellness Ernie Six new tires on the RV Wellness OB/GYN Sandy Dentist follow up Sandy Flu shot Ernie & Sandy BRCA consult and blood draw Sandy Eye exam Sandy Echo teeth cleaning and blood draw for Valley Fever levels Wellness primary doctor Ernie Skin test Ernie Alignment of RV with new tires Mammogram We accomplished a lot in the 2 months in the West Valley. We were fortunate to get a 30 day stay in the FamCamp on Luke AFB. They have this huge brand new dog park, unfortunately we couldn't use is because it was full of goat-heads. Poor Echo had them in his paws and we had them stuck in our shoes.   The second month we stayed in a really nice resort in El Mirage, AZ. The only pictures I got were of the guy installing our n...

After leaving Chelan Washington, we made our way to Coeur 'd Alene, Idaho. We visited my Uncle Phil (my mom's twin brother) and Aunt Sharon and I got to spend a little time visiting with my cousins Andrea and Phillip. We had a really great evening and I am so happy we added that time to our trip. Our drive to Mountain Home was uneventful. We stayed at our favorite Harvest Host Echo Ridge and got some cute pictures of Echo. We arrived in Mountain Home in time to see Casen play the National Anthem and the half time show at the Mountain Home Tigers football game. I made Casen and his fellow trombone player these t-shirts. The trombone squad.   We also got to celebrate our grandsons (Clay) 12th birthday. We went to Big Al's and played a bunch of games and then went to eat at a Mexican Restaurant. We also saw an RV Furniture store on our way to Mountain Home in Meridian ID. We decided to take a look and found theatre seating. We didn't love our sofa sleeper couch and we were...