bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday– It was Bob’s second day of Camp Freightliner. He is really enjoying the seminar and says that he is learning a lot.

I worked on an article and did laundry until lunch. After lunch MaryAnne picked me up in her cute little rented golf cart and we went looking at park models.

We cruised around but only found one open. All the rest had furniture in them, so we stopped in at the sales office and Nancy, the sales manager, took us around to visit various models. One was a Casita, which is basically a big laundry room. It is a little building next to an RV, which has a bathroom, a kitchen area, and a large open room. They cannot put in a stove or refrigerator, as that makes it a house, but all the wiring is there!  The park is putting in much larger homes  in  new area, which of course are also much more expensive. But it was fun wandering through. Neither of us like the heavy Mission type furniture or the cabinets. The floor plans are interesting. Now if I could just take one of these with me to Indiana for the summer….

I have been looking for various places to stay. We had an apartment picked out, but PJ told us not to move there as it is not in a good area of Elkhart. Okay, so I have been trying to find a sublet. The extended stays are outrageously expensive. What we did not think about was college graduation. Notre Dame is in South Bend and graduation is May 16 and 17. it is really hard to find housing before then. In addition, we have the two dogs. I found two possible apartments on Craig’s List so I contacted those folks.

I met up with Bob again at happy hour. We had a great time talking with friends. At 6:20, we picked up MaryAnne and Ray and drove to Cracker Barrel for dinner with Paula and Charlie, and friends of theirs, Christy and Steve. Steve used to work with Charlie at Honeywell.We returned home and went to bed. 

Sunday- Bob went to another Freightliner seminar, put on by Mike Cody, for folks who did not attend the Camp Freightliner. He returned about 12:00, so we had our Cracker Barrel leftovers for lunch. Neither of the two apartments we had looked at on Craig’s List will accept dogs. Oh well, more searching!

At 1PM I played Mahjongg with Dorothy, Marian and MaryAnne at Dorothy’s motor home, parked right behind us. We had a fun couple of hours.

We, of course, attended happy hour at 4:30. From there, we went to the Sheriffs dinner, where I was fined for playing Mahjongg and we were fined for having two dogs. All in jest of course. The money this time goes to the local Casa Grande fire department. Dinner was fried chicken, mash potatoes with gravy, carrots, salad, and cherry tarts for dessert.

We had the first group picture of the Roadrunners. I have to wait until the picture is sent out via email to put it up on the blog.

Monday- After my bike ride, we went over for doughnuts at the morning gathering. From there we went to Susan and Dale’s motor home to look at their residential refrigerator. We spent some time with them going over sizing and requirements. We then walked next door to MaryAnne and Ray’s and did the same thing. Ray had found that we need to measure the lights on the ceiling to make sure that the refrigerator doors can open, so Bob made those measurements also.

New neighbors moved in and had not been here before, so they followed us over to the  main building, to registration, for the National Rally. We registered and went around the room to sign up for activities. The only one we signed up for was the pet parade. We went to visit the vendors and bought two books at the book sale.

As we were walking back to the car, we ran into Barbara and Raymond. The last time we had seen them was in Tok Alaska as we were passing through. We quickly caught up and will see them later.

We went to Lowes and I showed Bob my carpet choice for the bedroom. We brought home a sample so we can see it in the motor home. We then looked at the flooring. We are going with wood laminate, and I would like to go with the commercial grade. Still have to decide on color.

We looked at refrigerators at Lowes, but their selection is poor, with lots that were either too big or too small. So we went to lunch at the same little café we ate at last year. The food was okay, but the place was really noisy. After lunch, we went to Home Depot. The two refrigerators that I had found on Friday were actually smaller than what will fit, so our next trip is to Best Buy.

We returned and took a nap. At 4, we went over to the welcome happy hour. It was a lot of fun. We sat with MaryAnne, Paula, Charlie, Joe and Bettty. Joe is a really social guy! They had these crazy clowns

to entertain us during the happy hour. We were only to bring our drinks, they served hot pretzels with cheese in the middle, a mix of pretzels and nuts, and popcorn. Everywhere they serve Arnold Palmers ( lemonade mixed with iced tea, which is awfully sweet!).

At 6, we went to the welcome dinner. We had assigned seats. Bob and I were at table 17, with people from the other clubs. This turned out to be a nice mixer, as we met some very nice folks.  We won a magic cloth head towel. Nice to win something. We are now out of the drawings until Saturday night, when they put all the winners back in for the baskets.

Tuesday- We did a few items around the motor home, then drove north to Gilbert to Best Buy, to look at refrigerators. We saw a Kneaders  and stopped in for one of their terrific chocolate croissants. Like we need anything extra to eat this week! Anyway,we found a refrigerator that is the right size at the Best Buy, and it is on sale, saving us a lot of money. By right size I mean, just barely. It will fit into the hole, while taking out our top cabinet. That is okay, we don’t use that cabinet for much anyway, so no loss.  Bob measured and re-measured, then measured again when we arrived home.

After Best Buy, we stopped in at another Lowes, and this time there was actually someone to answer our questions about the floor. The guy, Dick, talked our ears off. We now know we need interlocking laminate floor. I still cannot decide  what color I want.

We also checked on the same refrigerator, which was not on sale and cost a lot more than at Best Buy. It was also a little bit larger, and would not fit into the space. We found an In-N- Out burger and ate lunch. We retuned to the motor home and took a nap. Bob re-measured again to make sure that the refrigerator would fit. Then he looked the price up everywhere he could on the net. The Best Buy price is good so we are going to return to Gilbert and purchase the refrigerator.

At 5PM, we went to Happy Hour and at 6 we had the Prime Rib dinner. Tonight was ‘black and white’ night, so we changed in to black and white. I had no issue, I just put on my white capris and a black top. Bob already had on his black shorts, he just added his ‘car theme’ shirt, which was the closest we could find to black and white. 

After dinner, which we ate half of and took the rest home, they had entertainment. The guys name was Brad Zinn  and he did impressions of comedians. He was very good. He imitated people like Jack Benny, George Burns, Harpo Marx, WC Fields and Red Skelton. His wife Pre, did a skit with sand art to music. She designed pictures with various color sand. She did three, the first was of the beach, the second of the desert and the final one was of a flag with the twin towers. They were impressive! 

We returned to the motor home, watched a little TV and went to bed.

Wednesday- Today was our 26th wedding anniversary. Wow, time sure flies!

We spent the morning working on finding a place to stay in Indiana and other assorted tasks. At noon, we both had luncheons. Bob went to the men’s lunch, which was held outside near the pool. The guys had a choice of brats, hamburgers, baked beans, chips and a brownie. Their speaker was Philip Rakoci, and the title was “What’s in your pocket?”. He is the guy who leads trips out into the desert to see the wildlife. Bob said he was watching Philip’s bulging pockets. Philip then pulled snakes, tarantulas and other assorted wildlife out of his pockets. UGH!

We ladies had a nice lunch of Pear and Grilled Chicken salad with rolls and a choice of lemon or carrot cake for dessert.

Our speaker was Theresa Weeding who’s talk was “ Laughter is Medicine”. She is a Laughter Yoga instructor. It was a lot of fun doing the laughing exercises. One of the exercises was to howl. That was interesting. More on that later….  I won a $10 gift certificate to one of the jewelry vendors who will be here on Saturday.

We returned to the motor home. We had the air conditioner on because the temp went up to 98 degrees. Not a lot of humidity, but it was still hot! The Alfateers were having a seminar at 3 PM. I was so sleepy I laid down and missed the seminar. Bob went but did not find out anything new.

At 4:30 we went to happy hour. Then dinner at 6. Tonight was Italian night, with rolls, lasagna, Caesar salad, and chocolate éclairs for desert. They seem to be feeding us less food this year. The facility was purchased by Sun Resorts and we think they reined in the cook. Last year we had daily leftovers, this year, only one meal so far.

Right after dinner, the Wagon Master, Lorraine Lynch, gave the signal and all of us ladies jumped to our feet and howled. We then did a little post exercise shout. They guys of course thought we were nuts, especially since they could not figure out what the heck we were doing.

We were supposed to play LRC, which we did last year, but there is a bug going around. It has been named Montazuma’s Revenge, and about 1/3 of the attendees have the bug. We took a quick vote, and decided to cancel, as no one wants to be that close to anyone. One gentleman was taken by ambulance to the hospital for dehydration this morning. People are pretty miserable. The EMT’s and ER staff have told folks it is a virus which is going around. Nick and Terry Russell from the Gypsy Journal have the bug and they are in another part of the state.

We were seated at a table with some folks, the Allen’s,  who have put in a new floor,  so we ran over to look at their rig. We spent about 1/2 hour looking at the floor and other modifications that they have done, before returning home to watch TV before bed.

Thursday- We cleaned out the cabinet above the refrigerator. We are going to lose that cabinet when we put in the residential refrigerator, so we had to find a place for the stuff we have stored up there. Not hard to do, as we have plenty of room.

At 11 we went  to the Microwave/Convection oven seminar. It was the same instructor as last year, We both enjoyed the seminar. We ran to Lowes to return the carpet sample and retrieve our $25 deposit, stopped at Jimmy Johns for subs and returned to the motor home. We ate a quick lunch, then went to the Ice Cream social and wandered through the model homes.

We returned and took a short nap. At 4:30, there was a combined social, which means that all of the clubs were there. It was held out on the patio near the swimming pool. After awhile, Mike ( the Wagon Master) made an announcement for all of us to move inside to the building. 

Tonight’s dinner was sponsored by Alfateers. In case you don’t remember, when Alfa went out of business in 2008, two of the employees, John and Richard , John was the Quality Manager and Richard was the Production Manager, with the assistance of Johnny Crean, the owner of Alfa, bought everything they could buy at the bankruptcy sale and started Alfateers. Alfateers specializes in repairing Alfa’s, although they also fix SOB’s, (some other brands).

Last July, Richard Olivos dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 62. So John was having a memorial for Richard. Two of the employees ( they are mostly family) put together a nice video presentation. We watched his kids grow up in the video. Mid video, the computer froze due to the Windows download which came out yesterday, but fortunately where John rebooted the computer, we started back up at the same place.

It was sad, especially since you could see his dog following him everywhere in the video. In the end, there is a memorial wall at Alfateers and some one is holding the dog up to see Richards picture. Not a dry eye in the place, because what followed was Richard and the dog competing for an Dorito. It was funny, yet so sad.

The dinner was cooked and served by the company and their employees. John said that when Mike and Lorraine Lynch ( the Wagon Masters) were visiting Alfateers, that  they discussed the dinner with Richard. Richard had said that they were not going to serve hamburgers and hot dogs ( what we had last year), they were going to have a Mexican dinner. John disagreed, but with Richard dying, they served the Mexican dinner in his honor. They were all wearing either blue or red t-shirts with remembrance on the back.

After dinner there was dancing to the “Music of Les”, the same guy as last year, who sang great songs from the 60;s and 70’s. We returned to the motor home and went to bed.

Friday- We had nothing in the morning so we ran up to Gilbert.  WE stopped on the way at a Target to look for a new basket for my bike. I had one from Target, which is collapsible. The bike fell over in the wind and bent the cheap metal. So I need a new basket. They did not have one. But I bought a new seat for my bike.

We ran to Best Buy and went to purchase the refrigerator. We walked up to it and I immediately noticed that the price was $500 more than on Tuesday. We had been told that the sale was until Saturday. A sales person walked up and I whipped out my cell phone to show him the Tuesday price. He said he would honor it. From the price everywhere else, what we paid was $1000 less.

We left there and went to Petsmart and purchased some ear wipes for Karlie’s ears. I clean her ears weekly.  We also picked up two new toys. We arrived home and gave the dogs one and Roxie squeaked the squeaker for hours!

Bob ran to Dale’s tech talk and I went shopping at Dillards, Penny’s and Kohls. I bought a pair of capris at Kohls.

I returned in time for the Rig walk and Yard sale. We had cleaned out some items and put them on the table outside. Bob stayed with the sale and I ran around looking at rigs. I was looking for floors. I returned and Bob went looking. Meanwhile, Joe arrived to re-do one of our windows which had failed. He says in the Alfa’s that the window in the back of the slide is the one that he has the most problems with. While he fixed it a gust of wind came through, out of nowhere, and blew everything off the table. Bob was back and we were chasing after everything.

At 5:00 we had social hour. Then at 6:30 we had dinner. Tonight was flank steak, roasted red potatoes, asparagus, salad the cheesecake. It was also our chapter dinner and yearly meeting.

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