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 After spending too much money in Vegas, we headed to Bullhead City to hopefully slow the pace down a little, save some money and get some exercise. We stayed at Vista Del Sol RV Park, which is a newer park with lots of amenities (two pools, hot tub, billiards, woodshop, and most importantly pickle ball courts). This was probably one of the most difficult sites to get into being a blind side back in and only 60 feet long with a narrow road. As we were getting set up, the manager stopped by to inform us that we had already gotten three complaints (truck too big, RV backed up too far, and something else stupid). Everyone in the park office was great! They arranged for a spot in overflow parking for the truck so the Karens would stop calling.

 We loved this RV park and the wonderful friends we met there. It is on our short list of future winter spots. Here are the highlights of the many things we did. We got together with Fleeta, our friend from the Brownsville Marina. She was a wonderful host and a wealth of information on things to do in the area. We went to the ballon festival in Lake Havasu City; took a day trip to Oatman, AZ complete with burrows and a mock gun fight in the street; saw a Fleetwood Mac tribute band in Laughlin, NV which is right across the river from Bullhead City; David played golf at Laughlin Ranch Golf Course with his work friend Mike, who lives in the area now; We attended the Western Night party that the RV park hosted and got to wear our boots, dance a little and party like we were in our 20’s again; We had to take the truck in for a repair because our APU (Auxiliary Power Unit, generator built into the truck) started leaking fuel (turns out you really do need that o-ring). We took a motorcycle ride to Parker, AZ and visited Fox’s River Bar that floats right on the Colorado river; We spent a day visiting Kingman, AZ where we enjoyed the Route 66 Museum and of course two breweries, a distillery and a winery (I swear, we don’t have a drinking problem); We finally got legs put on the table that Kim’s dad made (it was on the boat) and now we can use it with the RV; We took a wonderful 7 mile ebike ride around the Davis Dam with our new friends Jayme and Chris.

 Vista Del Sol is a great park with some of the friendliest folks we have met. The weather is great except for the occasional wind. We want to give a shout out to our new pickleball friends – Joni/Wade, Carol/Randy, Jayme/Chris, Roger, Jill, Bill, Roxane, Julie, Jerry, Vickie, Greg and our neighbor Jim (hope we didn’t forget anyone). We all attended a couple of street happy hours, complete with a fire pit, liquor tasting, great conversation and traffic cones for safety. We will definitely be back. 

Yay! We finally found some warmer weather. We were tired of freezing, so we decided to head to Phoenix earlier than planned. We stayed at Dessert Shadows RV Park, a nice 55+ park with sites big enough for our RV and right next door to a Costco. Unfortunately, there was a dog in the park that thought our truck tire was a fire hydrant, so we put a sign up and he must be able to read because he stopped peeing on it after that. We had the RV and truck washed and waxed by some mobile detailers while we were there. Three guys spent 8 hours doing it all by hand. It turned out great and definitely needed it. We played a lot of pickleball between the court at the RV park, playing with Kim’s brother, Keith and Kim’s niece, Jada starting a new job at an indoor pickleball place. Kim unfortunately got her first pickleball injury, when David’s shot deflected off her paddle and gave her a nice shiner. We celebrated Keith’s birthday while we were there and of course it was at Chicken and Pickle (he is truly addicted to pickleball). We did do more than just play pickleball. Thanks to Kim’s sister-in-law, Jenn, we went out to some fabulous restaurants and craft cocktail places. BTW, Jenn makes the best popcorn and Kim kept emptying the bowl, every chance she got! We also bought ourselves electric bikes before Christmas. We used them a few times but are really looking forward to getting out on some more rides. David did get his first RV park ticket when he read the sign incorrectly and parked the motorcycle in 2-hour (not 24-hour) parking far too long. Turns out that David’s friend from high school lives in the Phoenix area, so he got a chance to catch up with Brett and Cindy. He and his wife spent some time at the RV and then treated David to a wonderful dinner at their house. Oh! For those of you that followed the canoe saga, it is hanging from the ceiling in my brother’s office. It is truly a work of art!

Christmas… what a wonderful time we had with Kim’s family! Jenn and Keith hosted on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day, we went to Jerry’s (Jenn’s father) house. We had amazing food, played some games, opened presents and spent quality time with family. It was great to catch up with the kids (adults now) and it was great watching the cousins bond. Kim’s Dad and his girlfriend, Bette, were there from Southern California as well and joined in the fun. The highlight was that both of Kim’s daughters made the trip to Phoenix to spend Christmas with us. We really appreciated the long travel days they endured to get there. Although we thought for sure we would get in trouble with the RV park again after Kim and her daughters got a little (or very) loud late at night on Christmas Eve out in Brianna’s van. It is always a great time when the three of them are together. 

New Years… off to Las Vegas we go. Can you think of a better place to spend it? We stayed at Las Vegas RV Resort which is about 6 miles from the strip and not in one of the best neighborhoods, but they did have good security at the park. We went to Margaritaville for their New Years party. What a great venue; open bar, heavy h’ordourves, music, dancing, firework show and all while overlooking the strip. We had a wonderful time and spent the night at the Flamingo Hotel, so we didn’t have to worry about getting back to the RV.

We took in some shows while we were there. Menopause the Musical was a great show, although David laughed a lot more than Kim, ;-). We went to dinner at Sparrow and Wolf and then to The Comedy Cellar for our anniversary. Glad we did not sit in front because those folks always take a beating from the comedians. We got tickets several months ago for the Luke Bryan concert. It was so much fun! Excellent show in a smaller venue than your typical concert and the stage lights and effects were amazing. The last show was Mad Apple by Cirque du Soleil. It was good music and the performers did some amazing tricks. The plan was for the slot machines to cover our expenditures, but alas, they took more than they gave back. We also got a chance to catch up with Beth, one of our friends from Washington, who now lives in Las Vegas. We do want to say that the people watching in Vegas is second to none and not always in a good way. The last thing we did before leaving NV was go to Hoover Dam. We had a damn good tour where we saw the dam powerplant, the dam tunnels, the dam spillways and then flattened a dam penny in the dam gift shop. It was a dam fine day!

Off to Bullhead City next…

We left Texas and headed into New Mexico, where we stayed in Carlsbad. We visited the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens State Park where there were a lot more animals than we expected. It was really sad to see them locked up in small cages. We think most of them were injured, but it still was not a good environment for them. The next day we hiked the Carlsbad Caverns which are totally different than the one in Sonora. The caverns are huge! It took us two and a half hours to walk through them. It was really neat to see all the different rock formations and learn the history of how they were formed. We made a stop at another Elks lodge, where we met a really nice couple. We hit it off with them right away, which makes sense since their names were Kim and Dave. Visiting the Elks lodges has been a good way to learn about the history of the area and the different things to do in each town. We went on a nice long walk along the Pecos River during the day and returned later in the evening to see everything lit up along the river for Christmas. After looking at all the lights and feeling festive, we had to check out two local brewery’s; Milton’s and Guadalupe Mountain. They turned out to be pretty good.

Our next stop in New Mexico was Las Cruces. While in Las Cruces, we went to the Fort Seldon Historic Site. It is an old fort that was built in the late 1800’s out of adobe brick. I’m sure glad we can just go to the local lumber store for our building supplies, haha. It would really stink to make bricks out of mud all day long. The next day we found a great restaurant to get a southwestern breakfast; OMPC The Shed. Then it was time to restock the fridge, so we headed to FARMesilla where you can have a glass of wine or a beer while you shop. We picked up some yummy things there!

We are now headed towards Peoria. We stopped in the town of Wilcox for one night at Fort Wilcox RV Park. We would not recommend it. It is overpriced for what it is. The thing that we have appreciated all along the way are the sunsets. They are incredible! We will be in Peoria near Kim’s brother until after Christmas when we are headed to Las Vegas for New Years! Woo! Hoo!

We had so many people asking us how we got the car on and off the truck that we decided to make an instructional video. Check it out on our vehicles page!

We began our time in Texas by staying at our first Boondockers Welcome in Dennison for a couple of nights. We ran into some generator issues and our hosts were gracious enough to let us plug into their power. They were incredibly nice and have a beautiful piece of property. While we were there, we discovered what happens to your RV furnace when you lose power while it is running. It apparently really needs that cool down period because when that doesn’t happen, it melts the blower cage that is made of plastic. We discovered this issue at 2 am when the furnace starting making a terrible noise. Not the way anyone wants to get woken up! We did do some exploring in the town and discovered that Dwight D. Eisenhower was born there! Who knew! We also visited Landon winery and Ironroot distillery in Dennison. Our next stop was about 20 miles outside of Austin. We ended up in a nice spot that backed up to a lake (it was more of a pond), unfortunately the weather was not that great, so we didn’t get to spend much time enjoying our view. We went out for Thanksgiving at the Old 290 Brewery and Winery. The food was awesome and you could choose a wine or beer pairing, so it worked out perfectly. While we were there, we called a mobile repair person to fix the furnace. Success! We made a couple of trips to Austin. Our visit to the capital was great! What a neat building. We found a speakeasy in downtown called the Red Headed Stepchild. You had to get the secret code from the bar next door and the storefront was a computer store. We then enjoyed some interesting drinks while we sat on swings. We found some other interesting places on/near 6th street. Next…what does one do when in Texas??? Buy cowboy boots of course! We have been practicing our 2-step. We also went on a hike through McKinney Falls State Park, which was stunningly beautiful with all the rock formations and waterfalls. We finally found some decent wine; we were almost ready to call in an emergency shipment from Washington. We visited a total of five different wineries and were able to restock the wine cellar (Duchman, Windmill Farm, Salt Lick Cellars, Wimberly, Winery on the Gruene). Kim made a bunch of money in the kissing booth at one of the wineries. Haha We found some decent BBQ in Texas at Blacks BBQ, it turned out to be the only meal we needed for that day. We wanted to try out those new cowboy boots, so off we went to oldest dance hall in Texas which is in the town of Gruene. After we fueled up on some LoneStar beer, we hit the dance floor. The band was good, but we were the only ones on the dance floor. I guess they no longer dance at the oldest dance hall. BTW, David needs a little more practice with his 2-step. Our next stop in Texas was in Sonora, where we visited the Sonora Caverns. This is a must see, if you are ever in the area. They are truly amazing. On the tour you spend about an hour and a half walking through the caverns. Watch out for the attack squirrel in front of the gift shop, Kim thought for sure it was going jump on her face. Sonora is a small town but has some interesting old buildings in the downtown section.

We are off to New Mexico and then headed towards Arizona. Take a look at our travel plans page, to see where the road is taking us. See you next year Texas.

We finished all the truck work in Kansas, annual maintenance, a new storage box and a solar panel. Our neighbors in Kansas let us use their new truck to relocate our RV, it sure matched the RV nice, but we could not convince them to trade trucks. Off to Oklahoma we went. We spent a couple weeks at an RV park in Claremore that was right next to a Rasino (Oklahoma term for Casino and Horse Racing Track). Lots of wind, dust, and flies at the park, but other than that, it was a nice park. Kim became an expert fly killer with the free fly swatter the RV park gives you. We spent some time watching the horse races and betting on the horses, but turns out, we are not skilled at choosing the right ones to get rich. The park had some very nice storm shelters, fortunately we did not have to use them. There was live music at the casino on the weekends. Kim taught David how to 2-step with a little help from YouTube. We found a place to play pickleball 5 days a week and entered our first pickleball tournament, no medals for Kim and Dave this time. We met some really nice people at pickleball. We are definitely going to track down Keegan and Trelle next time we are in that area, because they are super cool! (Making sure you are actually reading our blog). We took a trip to Muskogee, where David lived when he was in junior high and part of high school. We found his old house, the Arby’s where he worked and stopped for some ice cream at Braums. We tracked down Eddie, who was one of David’s friends from Muskogee. Turns out David’s high school friends, Rick and Terri, from California live in Oologah now, so we had dinner with them one night. We took the motorcycle out for a ride around Lake Oologah and also got a chance to go on a hike around Claremore Lake. There were some interesting birds on the lake that we were not able to identify. We did see the blue whale, which we think must have been better it’s heyday. We found the center of the universe. Who knew it was in Tulsa! We really enjoyed seeing Will Rogers birthplace in Oologah and the Will Rogers Museum in Claremore, which was extremely well done. He sure was an interesting person!

We would like to end this post with a quote…

“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” ~ Will Rogers

We got to experience the last bit of Washington rain as we were packing up and heading out. We are sure not going to miss all the rain. We made a couple night stop in Prosser, WA and enjoyed some time at the local wineries. We then spent some time in the Boise area, seeing some of David’s family. It was nice to catch up with them. We also got a chance to visit the Old Idaho Penitentiary in Boise. David’s mom joined us for a very interesting and sometimes disturbing tour. We got on the road again with a couple of one-night stays in Utah and Wyoming. Two of David’s nephews stopped to visit us in Utah. Above you will see the picture of the very bloated chip bag. Turns out you can’t buy chips at sea level and then take them to almost 9000 feet elevation without wondering if they will explode! They did not, hahaha. We did develop a rotten egg smell on the driver’s side of the truck along the way. Kim did lots of research to figure out what could be causing the smell and after some investigation and Kim’s keen nose, we figured out we had a bad battery. We called in a mobile repair person and had the battery isolated for the rest of the trip to Kansas. Thanks to Kim for pushing the issue to get it fixed, that bulging battery could have led to something a lot worse. Then we were off to Colorado for a couple nights, where we got to see Dave and Linda Streifel for dinner. We had a get time catching up. It has been over 20 years since Kim has seen them. We ended up leaving Colorado a day early to beat some incoming snow headed to the land of Dorthy in Kansas. There were lots and lots of windmills in Colorado, Wyoming and Kansas! We are currently at RVH Lifestyles in Dennis, Kansas getting some maintenance and additional work done on the truck and freezing our butts off, parked next to their shop. It’s fricking cold in Kansas!!! David definitely picked the wrong time of year to get the truck worked on. This was not Kim’s plan to dig out the winter jacket, hat and gloves. Chase the sunshine David said…Shorts year-round David said…. This is bullsh*t, Kim said… We are really looking forward to getting out of Kansas and heading south to find some warm weather. Dennis, Kansas has a population of 152, no wonder there are no pickleball courts here!

WOW! What a wonderful weekend! It began on Friday with David’s retirement. He said it was a very weird feeling to drive away from the place he had been going to every day for over 30 years and knowing he would never be back. We had lots of friends and family show up for the weekend. We went to a Burlesque show on Friday night at the casino where we had the RV parked, then spent the rest of the weekend visiting with everyone that stopped by. We tried to take selfies with everyone, but we know we missed a bunch of people. Please post your photos in the comments if you have any to share. We feel very blessed to have such wonderful children, who took the time to come up to celebrate with us. We also are very fortunate to have the most amazing friends! There were so many people that stopped by to wish us well, before we set out on our adventure. Thanks everyone, we are truly going to miss all of you. Hope to see some of you on the road sometime!

WOW! What a stressful process. It started with a couple from Port Orchard that made us a fair offer on the boat, and they had covered moorage at the Port Orchard Yacht Club. They scheduled a survey and haul out which turned out to be an all-day event with 4 additional people on the boat during the survey. The surveyor found some minor issues but nothing that wasn’t easily fixed. That couple ended up backing out before they even got the final survey report. We believe she wanted a boat, but he did not.

On to the next buyers… another good offer for just the boat and another survey and haul out scheduled for one week later. We spent the week in-between the surveys fixing some of the issues that came up on the first survey. Kim hired an electrician to add a fuse and bigger ground wire on the inverter. David painted the top of the fuel tanks, fixed a small exhaust leak, and cleaned a bunch of connections in the bonding system. The next survey went great and we thought we had the boat sold. Unfortunately, the buyers called us the next day and backed out due to personal issues. We were disappointed because they were great people!

What an emotional roller coaster for Kim because she loved the boat and then to have 2 in a row fall through for reasons not related to issues on the boat was stressful. Luckily the surveys are paid for by potential buyers.

Throughout this process we had a buyer for the boathouse, but they did not want the boat. They already have an 85′ boat and wanted the boathouse for their 26′ fishing boat. They ended up making Kim an offer to buy the boat and boathouse and then they would sell the boat themselves. Due to our time constraints, Kim accepted their offer even though it was not as much as she would have liked to get for the boat and boathouse. They had us go along with them to take the boat to their broker in Lake Washington. This turned out to be another great memory because we got to go through the Ballard Locks.

You always hear people say the two best days in a boaters life is the day they buy it and the day they sell it. This was not the case for us, especially Kim. Kim’s boat was a big part of her. Kim bought this boat all on her own, learned to pilot it and work on it herself. She really enjoyed it for the past 8 years. She was the Captain of El Solteron. Kim’s retirement plan was to live on the boat and she gave it up to follow David’s plan to RV. She is hoping that whoever buys the boat loves it as much as Kim did. There were a lot of tears shed throughout this process, but it just didn’t make sense to let the boat deteriorate while we were traveling. So on to the next chapter!

Kim sold her car today to her daughter Hailey. This was another difficult step in getting us ready to full time in the RV. Kim’s car was the car she had bought as her retirement car and had planned to keep it forever until the RV came along and changed her retirement plans. At one point Kim attempted to pull Hailey out of the car but Hailey overpowered her and got a new car. Hailey did leave her mom her car to drive until we leave in October. We are hoping it lasts until October so Kim can get to pickleball every day.

We set off on an eight-day trip from our home port in Brownsville to Alderbrook Lodge. On the way there we were running against the current, so the boat was averaging around 7 knots. We stopped in Port Ludlow for a couple of nights and then continued on to Alderbrook. It took us a total of 11 and 1/2 hours underway to reach Alderbrook. There was always something to see along the way as we went under the Hood Canal floating bridge and passed by Subase Bangor where Kim used to work (retired) and David is currently working until his retirement in October. We had to stay a little way away from the base, so we didn’t get chased by a security boat.

We started the trip with a great bottle of wine (it was a white label, those that know what means will understand). Enjoyed some great food aboard and at the Alderbrook Lodge. David has recently taken up drinking Bourbon and over the course of the week, tried each one on the list at the restaurant bar. Being on the water in the Puget Sound never disappoints with its awesome views and amazing summer sunsets. Some additional highlights were that we watched Bill Gates and his new girlfriend arrive by float plane and walk right by us to get to one of his houses that is next to Alderbrook. Also, shockingly, Alderbrook had a flat penny machine, so David added another to his collection.

We had the opportunity to go on some hikes while we were moored in Port Ludlow and Alderbrook. It was great to get out and get some exercise while enjoying nature. David did have to lead one morning to clear all the spiderwebs for Kim. He is quite the gentleman.