bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday- Sunday– I worked and it was pretty busy. The weather in Phoenix has been awesome. Sunny and last week it reached the 90’s. We had to turn on the air conditioner. This week it is back into 50’s at night and 70-80 during the day with bright blue skies.

Monday- Yahoo! My last day of work until the fall.  We have the money we need for the re-skinng and paint job this summer and our living expenses.

I still have not been able to get my fingerprints through the system. I have lousy fingerprints. The middle three fingers on both hands, even with the digital prints, kept coming up ‘poor quality’. I was going to work in Indiana, but the people who review the fingerprints have told us it will take 6-8 weeks to process them. I started on this process over a month ago, and I am pretty sure that the prints are going to be rejected for the quality. By the time we would repeat, and have to pay since we are leaving Phoenix, it will be time to leave Indiana. We don’t really need to money, so the heck with It. I will take the summer off!! One more job next fall to refill the saving account and I will be fully retired!

Case Management had a good bye party for me. Wasn’t that so nice. They gave me this scrapbook.

Notice that the last page has a map with an arrow pointing the way back so that I don’t get lost!  This awesome scrapbook was done by Cathy Costa, one of the Case Managers.

The nurses on the floor all signed a card for me and Dr. Jafri, the hospitalist, gave me a big hug and thank you, which I really did not expect. I told Joan, my supervisor, that Dr. Jafir hugged me. She said he really likes you! Wow, that was not expected. Bob thinks it is a cultural thing, since he is from northern Pakistan, although he was born in Texas.

I was late leaving as I had to turn everything in to Joan before I left. They have already told Banner Staffing Services that they want me back in the fall, as long as there is a position available. Wow, three travel assignments, three good-bye parties!

Tuesday- We did our budgeting and bill paying. Around 10:30 we left for Scottsdale. We stopped at the Container Store and bought Bob another ‘drawer’ for his side of the closet. Then we went to downtown Scottsdale. Neither of us have been there before. It is a pretty little area. It weather was in the 70’s and sunny but really windy today.

We ate lunch at a nice Taco and Tequila restaurant. We each has  combination plate. I had the shrimp tacos and Bob had caritas tacos with beef and pork. Delicious!

We wandered around looking at the area and walking off lunch.

On the way home Bob took these pictures of the walls on the side of I-101. In Arizona they really brighten up the scenery with these neat looking designs on the concrete.

We took down the dog fencing and rolled up our rug in anticipation of leaving tomorrow.  I have not taken a lot of pictures of the resort, so I took some of our view, especially, since next years view will be different.

This is where we have been locking up the bike. It is a really pretty bush!

The Park Models sell from 13K to 49K. The land is owned by the resort. Some of the folks are selling the older park models to an outside buyer who is then packing them up and moving them. The resort likes this as they can resell the site or put RV’s into the sites. The cost for the year, if you are an owner, is $5000, for new buyers. We paid a lot less than that to rent our site for the six months!

I went to Mahjongg in the afternoon. Bob took the car to have the oil changed. He had already put the bikes up on the back of the  motor home. At about 2:30, one of the ladies in the room’s phone rang. Her sister was calling her to tell her it was going to rain! So many folks ride scooters around, so the room cleared out quickly. We received about 10 rain drops! We get the biggest kick out of how people deal with rain in Arizona!

I called Bob to pick me up, but he was in the car wash that came free with the oil change. Now we know why it  was raining! Anyway he stopped off on his way back into the park and picked me up. We went grocery shopping before we left. Then we went to dinner at Good China again. That was to have some left overs for lunch.

Thursday- We said good-bye to our neighbors and drove out of the park at around 8:50. We drove east on Union Hill Drive, turned south on I-101, then east on I-10. I-10 takes a right turn on the southern part of Phoenix. Before the south turn, we stopped at Flying J for diesel. We used our new Flying J credit cards. With their card we can pay at the pump and get a nice discount on diesel.

We continued on I-10 to Casa Grande, a little bit less than half way between Phoenix and Tucson.  We drove into Palm Creek RV Resort, stopped in at registration, had our pictures taken for our ID cards, and followed the security golf cart to our site, waving at friends along the way!

We settled into our site, # 963. We are facing north this year! Yeah! Our preference!! Since it was 12:00, we ate lunch, then went to visit MaryAnne and Ray. We had not received a copy of the park schedule or the events. so we looked at theirs.

As soon as we arrived, Bob called PJ and Megan McMiller, from McMiller Custom and Repair. These are the folks who are re-skinning and painting our motor home, in Indiana. They are here at the park talking to folks. So at around 2:30 they arrived at our motor home. I showed them a coach that I really like and we walked around looking at various paint jobs( many of them that they had done). We talked about various services. MCP( Mikes Custom Paints) will actually be doing the paint job, but they work together. There are three companies who specialize in Alfa’s. Any RV body shop can do the job, but we wanted to stick with folks who specialize in our motor home.. The three companies are Alfateers, who are in California. While we would like to support them, they are too expensive and the California paints have potential issues.

The second company is Precision, in Indiana. Bob had competing bids from McMiller and Precision and decided on McMiller’s. He has been dealing with Megan for months. We have a date of May 8 to drop off the motor home, in Nappanee IN. Bob had done a lot of research and we have  talked to a lot of folks  who have had their motor homes re-skinned and re-painted.

At 4:30 we went to happy hour, meeting up with more friends! Since this was the official start of the pre-rally, we had a nice dinner of pasta with brats, salad( blue cheese dressing so I did not eat it) and a beautiful cake.  The cake was really good, yellow and chocolate, with a nice frosting, from Fry’s grocery store bakery.

After dinner we came back to the motor home and collapsed!

Friday- Bob was out the door at 7:45, as he is signed up for Camp Freightliner. Bob has wanted to attend Camp Freightliner since we bought the motor home. It is usually given in Gaffney SC, so we have not really been in the area when they were holding one of the seminars.

Arrangements were made for one of the instructors, Mike Cody, to present one at the Roadrunner Pre-rally. When the email came out in November, I immediately signed Bob up for April 4-5. There was so much interest that this is now the third seminar, MaryAnne and Ray attended on Monday/Tuesday, Marian and Marvin on Wed/ Thurs and Bob is doing Fri and Sat. I had not interest, plus this gives me a play break! !

Camp Freightliner is a two day, all day, seminar!  I would not have thought that there was so much to talk about the chassis, but evidently I would be wrong! Everyone has said that the seminar is really good! The speaker, Mike is quite the character!

Meanwhile, I went looking for carpeting, wood laminate and refrigerators. Since we have to be out of the motor home for 2 month anyway, we decided to have the floors done at the same time. Why pay for a place to stay twice? So I went shopping. I found the flooring pretty easily, but the refrigerator is an issue.

We had replaced the refrigerator in 2012 with an RV refrigerator. There are a lot of fires with the RV refrigerators and the interior is smaller than a regular household refrigerator. Many folks are replacing theirs with household refrigerators. So while talking to PJ, he suggested that we could replace the refrigerator easily. They have to take it out anyway while doing the the re-skinning. It would also make a difference on the way they redesign the outside of the motor home. We should be able to sell the 2012 refrigerator for about the same price we will pay for a household refrigerator, so the transaction would be financially neutral.

I grabbed a sub at Jimmy Johns and returned to the motor home to take a nap. Bob joined me at happy hour at around 5:15, then we went to the seminar room for dinner. I was included in the Freightliner dinner. They served us Caesar salad, ravioli, garlic bread, and brownies for dessert .

We returned to the motor home to happy dogs. While the dogs like meeting the other dogs, at rallies, we are gone so much they miss us!

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