Run for home.

Well, the snow did it! Our plan was to go north see Monument Valley, Four Corners, Durango and other places of elevation and probably SNOW!!!!!. Needless to say we changed course and decided to keep a moderately southern route to avoid the cold and snow. We headed east to the windy Amarillo and then on to Tulsa, Oklahoma to visit with one of our old friends who stood up in our wedding 40 years ago. This is Jeanne whom spoiled us with a great dinner and conversation and memories and my good wife Marge

After our stay in Tulsa which was beautiful with the spring greenup we went on to Missouri and stayed near Fort Leonard Wood just West of St. Louis. Stopped in Indiana and then Home!!! A bit of rush but the bug to get home was strong.

Grand Canyon

After our exciting trip from Oatman we arrrived fairly early at the Grand Canyon Campground. The weather appeared to be turning so we hustled over to the canyon via the transit system which is free and essential if you want to visit the overlooks. The views are unbeliveable and while we took probably 2 or 3 hundred pictures all were fantastic. What we both had problems with is the edge.....no guardrails in most places and foot trails that just wander for miles each way along this edge from the visitor center. Now I'm not real fond of heights. In fact, I wasn't even fond of riding in the buses that took you to the various points along a road that was entirely too close to the edge in my book. Below are just some of the views we saw.

The weather did turn and we stayed the second day thinking it might get better but by early evening SNOW started coming down. We had planned on heading north to Monument Valley after the stay here at Grand Canyon but the cold weather and snow quickly changed our minds and we decided on a more southerly route home. This post was a bit delayed as there were so many pictures and for some reason I had difficulty in posting them each time I tried.

Oatman, Arizona

We left Kathy and her family on Monday and drove to Needles, California which is on the Arizona/California boarder separated by the Colorado river. It was in the high 80's when we arrived at Moabi Regional Park and stayed the night. Lots of TRAINS there but failed to take any pictures. There was even an old Fred Harvey Hotel thats being restored.

We left the next morning and proceeded to take old Route 66 to Oatman, Arizona.
The road was pretty good until we started to climb up the mountain. Now my friend Art had told me about this place and it sounded kinda neat...... Wild Burro's running in the street looking for handouts and some neat old time shops. Well, I apparently misunderstood him, as he drove his car rather than the motorhome to this place....I was driving the motorhome (38 feet) plus towing the car. BIG MISTAKE!!!! First and most important., I need to pay attention to signs that say no trucks over 40' and then we saw no burro's althought we did not stay long enough to see anything more than their droppings. With no room to park or turn around we proceeded to go on to Klingman which turns out to be just over this "hill". I am a reasonably confidant driver, even with the motorhome, as we have had motorhomes for 30 years, but this was white knuckle and hold your breath time.

Marge was taking the pictures while I drove down the middle of the road except when I could hug the side closest to the "hill". She told me later that this allowed her not to view the dropoffs except through the lens and it made her less nervous. There was little or no traffic and what there was pulled off the road for us to get by. I'm pretty sure we did not go over 15 miles per hour until we well down the "hill" on the Klingman side.
This was first great adventure on the trip home may it be the last of this type!!!!

aaghh......Grandchildren!!!

How can anyone resist those smiles!!!!!

As its been a week or so since I've posted anything, you can understand when you see the energy these little ones consume. We have been busy!!!

We've been able to pamper and cuddle and really spend some quality time with these little ones.

Putting puzzles together...

Reading to them, although its sometimes rough reading the same story over and over.

We even went to tumbling class together

We spent a day at the San Diego Animal Park which was phenomenal....although everyone was pretty well worn out by the end of the day.





One of the Primary reasons to go West on our part was to participate in Garretts 3rd birthday. Kathy and Tony threw a party that was fantastic....the theme being dinosaurs...even his cake was a dinosaur.

There was even a dinosaur egg hunt.

The party was very much a success and fun was had by all..... especially the grandparents ....and we hated to leave. But today we left after wishing Garrett another happy birthday and we started our trip back to Royal Oak. This contribution was very hard to put together, we took probably 400 pictures and we were seemingly so so busy with so much happening it is hard to figure out what to put on this blog. Maybe once I figure out how to put a large batch of pictures as in slide show it will be more informative.

Tonight we stopped in Moabi Recreational area near Needles, California....tomorrow we should be at the Grand Canyon.

On to San Diego

We have settled in at an RV park in San Diego called Santee Lakes Preserve. It's as nice a place as we have seen and its as clean and well kept as any park we have been in....We even have a babbling Brook outside our bedroom window.

We have been busy and time seems to fly, but just to bring you up to speed.....
Left City of Rocks and got out on the highway heading West into Arizona. The vista's of that area are certainly something to behold. We are seeing everything that has been shown in the Arizona Highways magazines we have seen over the years. As we were heading West however, the weather turned bad for the first time on our trip with sleet, snow and rain. Yes and cold too. I thought Arizona was the place where all the snowbirds went to avoid this kind of weather.

• 

Stopped for the night in Gila Bend (Sounds kinda neat like something out of the old westerns we watched on TV) There wasn't much there but "Augies Campground" was as neat, clean and friendly with free wireless even and all for the lowest price we've seen for camping at a private campground ($18.00).
We took the southern route (Interstate 8) that follows the Mexican Border quite closely and were stopped a number of times at Border Patrol inspection stops. It is apparent that there is quite a problem with border crossings in the area. At one point we even saw some people being taken into custody

Most of the area between City of Rocks and the California border was pretty wide open without too many surprises except when we reached Yuma, Arizona. With Yuma being right on the border we came across more RV Parks and RV's than we have ever seen in one place. We were told that this area is a major place to stop due to the available cheap Dental and Presciptions available in Mexico. Just east of Yuma, another surprise was the dunes in southern California....almost like the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan although not as big.

From Yuma and the Dunes we quickly hit the mountains and which were a little more that I expected.....13 miles of 6% grades isn't so bad going up, but coming down is very exciting in 17 tons of motorhome and towcar. For some reason, I had thought this southern route was less mountainous. One thing different about these "hills" was the fact that it looked like a big pile of rocks as in some big dump truck dumping huge rocks in a pile and no vegetation. Just different than what we had been seeing.

After driving through the mountains, we arrived at San Diego and the Santee Lakes Preserve, our campground for the next three days. As I said it's quite nice for being in the middle of everything and close to transportation. We have found that taking the public transportation gives us a better perspective of some the places we have seen, and the rapid transit system here is the cleanest we seen....no graffiti. Driving in new cities can be quite exciting and the rail system took us right to "Old Town" San Diego. From there we took the Trolley Tour of the city from Old Town, USS Midway, Coronado, Seaport, San Diego Zoo, El Prado.....a total of 10 stops, all at interesting areas. We stopped at the USS Midway an aircraft carrier from late World War II that was active through the middle 1990's.



We also stopped at Coronado to see the Del Coronado Hotel which is where the movie "Some like it Hot" was filmed with Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis. My Dad was stationed here when his ship was in during World War II and we have pictures of me at this hotel as a child on its beautiful beach.


Last stop for us was Old Town which is nice but a few too many shops for me. The Architecture was interesting though.

Our reason for going to San Diego was to see Marge's cousin Carol and her husband and we had a delightful Italian dinner at a restaurant called Trattoria Di IV an unassuming little place with really good food.

Tomorrow on to see our grandchildren...oh yes and our daughter and her husband too!

City of Rocks State Park - New Mexico

Last year our friends Art and Janey Armstrong visited this State Park and were totally intrigued by it and needless to say recommended it as a must place to visit. We decided to visit for the weekend and it was everything they said, however they did not experience the 40 mph plus wind gusts and cool weather we did. Unfortunately, we stayed inside the motorhome most of the day but did do some walking when the winds died down a little.
This place is really unique, the rock formations are something to behold.

While we were there a group of boyscouts was camped nearby and it was great fun to watch them scurrying about and hiding from one another in all the formations.The vistas of the surrounding area and the sunsets were great also.While the weather wasn’t the best, the place was everything the Armstrong’s had recommended.
However it is isolated enough that a days visit is probably better that a whole weekend.

Fort Davis, Texas

Don't really know where to begin with Fort Davis...everyone thinks Texas is flat and not that interesting, but this area is just beautiful with hills..mountains, prairie and grazing grasslands and a really neat western fort that is one of the most well preserved western forts that the government had during the Indian wars. Its history included a primary role in the control of the Commanche and Apache indians of the area. The fort itself was abandoned in 1891 and not until 1961 was it authorized as national historic site and part of the National Park Service. We spent most of the day wandering the Fort and its buildings that have been and are being restored. I had expected the standard stockade like fort that we saw in the old western movies that were made but this place was built into the entrance of a box canyon. I was surprised to note that there were not any apparent defensive concerns although most of the activity of the day was construction of telegraph lines and roads and general improvement of the area rather than indian battles.
Below are the enlisted mens barracks...long one story buildings while the second picture is of officers row a series of small masonry officers housing.

There was lots of what looked like archeological work with excavations and the begininngs of the restoring of old foundations.Below is one of the officers quarters which was made of adobe material then plastered over after the adobe brick had been laid.
Couldn't resist - a closeup of the adobe brick and mortar

A view of the hospital building from the ridge above

One of the officers quarters buildings that hasn't had much done to it yet.

MACDONALD OBSERVATORY

Another nearby attraction is MacDonald Observatory that has the largest telescope mirror in the world. This facility is part of the University of Texas and is open to the public. There are a number of programs available. Unfortunately, we missed the program the day we visited. One of the interesting things we did see was huge sun dial.

Just us in beautiful Flat Texas