#23 Coveys Great Adventure - April 2016 - Florida, Hilton Head Island and Savannah

April 2016 – Florida, Hilton Head Island and Savannah

We had some time to fill before heading to St. Petersburg, so our next stop was the other Escapee park in Florida, The Resort SKP Park in Wauchula. The contrast between it and Sumter Oaks in Bushnell couldn’t have been greater. The Resort is aptly named: spacious manicured lots, a large pool, many activities to pick from and very friendly residents who went out of their way to be sure we felt welcome. We had a great time!

Distinctly Frank Lloyd Wright

The Resort is not far from Lakeland, a lovely city named for its many scenic lakes, and home to Florida Southern College, the largest single collection of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings in the country. We were so taken with Frank Lloyd Wright architecture when we visited Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona that we joined the FLW Society and plan to visit as many sites as we can during our travels this year.

The Florida Southern College campus is a real gem. Each structure is unique while being clearly related to the other buildings in on the campus. The buildings fit seamlessly into the gently sloping site with great views of one of the city’s many picturesque lakes from every one. We didn’t take one of the guided tours but will if we return.

Site 41 at Clearwater RV Resort: the dogs loved it, too.

Finding an affordable RV park near St. Petersburg turned out to be a challenge. A number of “RV resorts” in the area charge $60-100 a night, way beyond our budget. Our coach is too big for many of the smaller parks with more reasonable rate. We were kind of stuck when we happened to read the small print on the Clearwater RV Resort website: they offered discounts to Passport America members beginning April 1. PA discounts vary widely from park to park, but Clearwater’s are pretty generous: 50% off and you can stay as long as you wish! Perfect, and just 24 miles from St. Petersburg. The first site we were given was easy to get into but had no shade at all and was clearly going to be a mud bog when it rained. Luckily one of the best sites in the park opened up a couple of days later and we were able to move. Site 41 is large, private, completely shaded and it backed up to a large pond that was a perfect dog walking area.

Grant and scribe at The Vinoy Terrace Bar

Seeing Kayeanne’s brother Grant was one of the reasons we headed east this year. We spent several days with him visiting St. Pete, touring the local neighborhoods, the beaches and meeting some of his many gracious friends.

Downtown St. Pete. The Vinoy is on the left

Downtown St. Pete is really nice. Many shops, great restaurants and pubs line the streets. High-rises haven’t taken over yet, making for easy views of the bay. The Vinoy is a classic 1920’s era grand hotel that has been painstakingly restored to its original lavish glory. Be sure to have a drink at the terrace bar and tour the public areas. Two other must-see downtown sites are the Dali Museum and the Chihuly Collection.  

Distincly Dali

The Dali Museum is world renown. The museum building itself is designed as a work of art and the collection is really fascinating. There was a special exhibition featuring his relationship with Walt Disney. We had no idea that Dali and Disney were friends, influenced each other and collaborated on a couple of projects.

Dale Chihuly is widely acknowledged as the foremost living glass sculptor in the world, clearly one of the best of all time. We have been fans for many years and couldn’t pass up a chance to see this collection. The sheer scale and artistry of his work really affects me. We spent hours in what was actually a fairly small space just soaking in the colors and forms and the composition of his works. Pictures simply don’t do it justice. Amazing.

Don't miss any chance to see Chihuly's work

 A minor medical hassle required us to extend our stay in Clearwater an extra week. We had a date to meet our friends Charlie and Mollie Kendrick in Hilton Head, South Carolina, so rather than change plans we decided to speed up. By trimming a day or two from each stop we figured we could still see everything we had planned if we didn’t doddle.  We set out to visit Marco Island, the Keys, the Kennedy Space Center and St. Augustine in eight days. We had our doubts, but it worked out just fine.

Not your everyday sign

Kayeanne hadn’t seen her cousin Tracy in over 20 years, so a visit was somewhat overdue! Tracy has lived in Marco2 Island for many years and manages a large, diverse marina operation. We had a really nice time visiting with Tracy and his lovely companion, Shelley. Tracy really knows Marco Island and acted as our guide for a short tour of the town followed by a great dinner at one of the many “locals” places. I hope it won’t be quite so long before we see them again.

As we headed across the width of Florida to the Keys the next morning, it finally hit me just how flat the state really is. I thought west Texas was flat; it is mountainous compared to southern Florida. Driving US 41, the aptly named Alligator Alley is like driving through a featureless green tunnel. Almost nothing rises above the tree line except cell towers for mile after mile. The Arizona desert is more interesting to look at  than southern Florida.

 

Speaking of alligators, we finally saw what everyone was excited about. We pulled into the Big Cypress National Preserve visitors center to stretch our legs and give the dogs a break. Seeing a number of people lining an elevated boardwalk piqued our curiosity and we wandered over to see what was so interesting. Yup, we found the alligators, dozens of them just hanging out in the slough next to the road, soaking up the sun. The park ranger said that the numbers were actually way down. When it rains they will see over a hundred gators in the area where we saw roughly forty. One gator is interesting, but seeing forty of them a few feet away gives me a slightly creepy feeling.

Fiesta Key RV Resort occupies its own small peninsula along US 1, the famous Overseas Highway that connects the Florida Keys to the mainland. It is roughly half way between the mainland and Key West, on the northern end of Long Key. As an RV park it left something to be desired, but as a location it was hard to beat, with unobstructed 180° views of the Gulf of Mexico and the Keys sweeping way on both sides. The peak visitor season had passed and we were able to use our Passport America membership to get a reasonable rate.

The Keys are quite beautiful, with sweeping vistas of the Gulf and the Atlantic from almost everywhere. The sunsets were simply spectacular. We drove up to Marathon, the largest island, which has much of the infrastructure that serves several keys. We had a great lunch right on the water at Lazy Days South in the Marathon Marina, poked around some of the neighborhoods and generally tried to get a feel for the place. I am glad we were here midweek and after the peak season, because with only the one road connecting everything the traffic is just nuts. The resort staff had cautioned us about traffic concerns, so we decided to save visiting Key West for another visit.

The drive from Fiesta Key to the Kennedy Space Center looked harder than it turned out to be. Not wanting to fool with Miami congestion, we decided to pay the toll on the Florida Turnpike. We still ended up in a lot of stop-and-go traffic but finally managed to break free after passing Fort Lauderdale. We pulled into Seasons of the Sun RV Resort in Mims, Florida, around 3 pm, leaving plenty of time to set up, walk the dogs and explore a really nice RV park. We were assigned site 28 in a recently renovated section that had all the right stuff: fully  paved, flat, very large and easy to back in with intelligently placed utility connection points. It even had cable TV! About the only drawback was the lack of any shade. If we return, I’d ask for one of the “forest” sites. They are a little smaller but most are completely shaded.

I am a life-long space junky. I’ve been reading sci-fi since I was 10 and we just saw The Martian twice. I think NASA is one of the greatest achievements of mankind and am dumbfounded that is has been over 40 years since the last moon landing, With that background, you can imagine how I felt finally getting to visit KSC. I was braced to be disappointed, but it turned out to be fantastic. Walking under a Saturn V rocket like those that took men to the moon kind of choked me up. There were even retired NASA folks everywhere who were delighted to answer questions.

Unfortunately tours are not allowed into the Vehicle Assembly Building, the iconic structure that towers above the complex where the rocket stages are assembled and where all of the Shuttles were joined to their boosters. It is still an active facility, so no visitors, but just to be able to drive by it was great. We also drove right next to one of the enormous crawlers that move assembled rockets from the VAB to the launch pad at a breathtaking ½ mile per hour. It really is much, much bigger than any image can portray.

And then the screen opened......

The Atlantis Shuttle exhibit was another highlight. You pass under a full scale replica of the mammoth, iconic fuel tank and solid rocket boosters that every shuttle rode into space and into a darkened theater. A short film reviews the history of the shuttle program and the triumphs and tragedies spanning 135 flights, then the screen opens and you are facing the nose of Atlantis about 10 feet away! That’s something I’ll remember for a long time. I wish I’d been here for just one of the launches. The video was terrific, the real thing must be mind-boggling.

KSC would be a tough act to follow for any place, so with that in mind we headed out for the short trip to St. Augustine. Compass RV Park recently changed hands and the new owner has been working hard to overhaul and revitalize a park the had been getting such bad reviews that we would never have considered it. As it is, we’d gladly return, if only to see what more they have accomplished. It is nice to see the enthusiasm and commitment that the new owners clearly have for the park.

A pretty tourist

St. Augustine was high on Kayeanne’s list of places to see, and I was also interested. As we all learned in History class many years ago, it is the oldest city on the country, predating both the Massachusetts and Virginia colonies. While certainly “touristy”, it has enough real history and relevance to avoid being just a tourist trap. On the advice of the camp ground managers we left the car at the park and took a shuttle to one of the tour tram terminals. For $25 you can ride the tram all over town for three days, getting on and off at any of over twenty stops.

Contemporary St. Augustine, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Key West were essentially the creations of Henry Flagler. Flagler confounded Standard Oil in the late 1800’s with John D. Rockefeller and built the Florida East Coast Railway linking

Flagler College dorms and dining room

eastern Florida to the rest of the country. He also built the Overseas Railway, the first land connection to Key West. Flagler’s vision was to entice his rich friends from the Northeast and Europe to Florida during the winter, the same way they did the New England coast in the summer. Clearly, he succeeded.

A few of the Tiffany windows in the dining room 

Primarily a ruthless robber baron, Flagler had enough vision and community spirit to insure that the commercial enterprises that he created also served a wider purpose. St. Augustine is certainly an example of his vision. High on the list of Flagler’s legacy is Flagler College, a small liberal arts school located in the heart of the city. Built by Flagler as the Ponce de León Hotel in 1888, it became Flagler College in 1968. The central campus building is the original hotel and features many spectacular Tiffany stained glass windows.

The tram tickets turned out to be a good investment because the driver really knew the city’s history and reeled off one anecdote after another as we wended our way through the very interesting streets and alleys. We found another Cuban restaurant for lunch, too. While not up to Smokin’ Cuban standards it was good. We kind of ran out of gas after a pretty full day and came back the next day to visit the St. Augustine distillery and the chocolate factory. Despite the free samples and an interesting tour, we weren’t impressed with the booze, but the chocolate was quite good.  

We could have spent another day or two touring the areas around St. Augustine, in particular visiting the World Golf Hall of Fame, but we needed to move on. The drive to Hilton Head Island didn’t look hard, but we decided to get an early start, anyway. I’m glad we did because when we got to Jacksonville traffic came to a complete stop. We creeped ahead for almost an hour before deciding that any route, even local roads with stop lights, was better than waiting it out in that mess. Adroit navigating by Kayeanne found a way around the problem and we were finally clear of the mess and back on track to Hilton Head Island Motorcoach Resort where Charlie and Mollie Kendrick have owned a lot for several years.

We weren’t quite prepared for HHIMR. We have never stayed in an RV park that was anything like this one. As you pull in the sign says, “Welcome to Paradise,” and it’s pretty close. All of the 400 lots are privately owned, many are lavishly landscaped. The entire park is carefully carved into an oak forest. Facilities include tennis courts, a heated pool and spa, a large clubhouse and a fulltime staff to keep everything spotless. As the name says, this is a motorcoach resort, so no towed trailers, no matter how elaborate are allowed. We were escorted and carefully guided into lot 160, just in time for the Kendricks to come calling.

It's their fault

I met Charlie and Mollie in 1966 and we have been friends ever since. They have owned their lot for about 10 years, and Charlie just retired as President of the Board of Directors of the park. Our first exposure to the RV life occurred when they visited us in California in 2009. We’ll get even one of these days.

Along Savannah's river front 

The Kendricks only had a few days to spend with us before they had to leave for family commitments, so we packed quite a lot into a short time, especially a trip to Savannah. We looked forward to visiting Savannah and they know the city very well. It is a charming, diverse and active place. We enjoyed cruising the diverse squares that make up most of the downtown area. Each one has its own distinct style and charm, with many houses built long before the Civil War. Unlike most southern cities, Savannah was not burned when Union forces captured it late in the war. We also strolled the length of the river front, enjoying views, the shops and the historic buildings.

Yes, we are having fun now

We both liked Savannah and look forward to spending more time on another visit.

When Charlie and Mollie pulled out for New Hampshire they graciously offered us their lot to use for the rest of our stay. We quickly decided to make the most of their generosity and added another week to our stay. Hey, it’s the South, y’all, and the place is beautiful. Plus the cable and the WIFI are the best we’ve had in two years. We’d be fools not to.

Ripley at home on the Kendrick's lovely site at HHIMR

We had been running around the island for a couple of days, running errands, doing a little shopping and generally catching up with life. One the spur of the moment we decided to stop for lunch at Signe’s Heaven Bound Bakery and Café, a local’s place just down the street from the resort. It turned out to be another great find. Besides being both charming and friendly, the food was outstanding. I had shrimp and grits which included homemade andouille turkey sausage and Kayeanne had the tomato tart. Both were outstanding. On the way out I spotted a sign for the daily desert special, Key Lime Bread Pudding. Wow, that was great: tart, sweet, golden brown on the top and firm enough to eat with a fork. If you visit HHI you have to stop at Signe’s.

More soon from Paradise.

#22 - Coveys Great Adventure - March 2016 - Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida

Eastward Ho! – March 2016

Even by our standards, March was a whirlwind. We pulled out of Mesa Arizona on February 29 headed for Florida to visit Kayeanne’s brother Grant. The first move set the pattern for the rest of the month: drive 200 – 300 miles and set up housekeeping in a new place for two or three nights. We also decided to stay at as many Escapee parks as we could, so the first stop was Dream Catcher SKP Park in Deming New Mexico.

Dream Catcher RV Park

The park turned out to be a spacious gravel parking lot within sight (and sound) of I10, but it offered full hookups (water, power and sewer) and easy in/out for a reasonable price. Deming isn’t the most interesting place we have been by a long shot, but we discoverer a great family Mexican restaurant and a very interesting museum.

The restaurant is called Taco Mirasol, true family enterprise where grandma and daughter turn out really good food at very reasonable prices.  The refried beans were as good as any we can remember. They even make fresh squeezed lemonade.

Volunteers created the whole museum

As you may have gathered, we both like museums and the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum was an unexpected find. Housed in a vintage National Guard armory that is itself worth a visit, the museum is the only one in the country that is operated solely and completely by volunteers. Over many years they have assembled a fascinating, eclectic collection of photos, artifacts, vehicles and art that covers the history of the region from the pre-Spanish Indian cultures through the early 1960’s. Rather than just laying out material for viewing, the volunteers designed and built displays, period settings and dioramas that put many of the objects in historical context. All of them were interesting, but the one that really caught my eye was the recreation of a hardware store from the turn of the century that sold everything from thread to bullets. We had no expectations when we walked in and ended up spending over 3 hours.

Tethered Aerostat Radar System used for drug and
immigration  enforcement near Alpine, TX

The next stop was Alpine Texas. We picked Alpine because it was not on I10, was roughly 300 miles from Deming on the back way to San Antonio, and had a few RV parks to pick from. BC Ranch RV Park didn’t quite live up to its website pictures or description, but it was reasonably priced and quiet so we decided to stay for a couple of days. Alpine is a pretty neat small town, big enough to have one of most everything and small enough to see in a couple of hours at most.

Fantastic food from this little trailer

We are always on the lookout for local places to eat and the bright yellow trailer parked on a lot near the center of town caught our eye. The Smokin’ Cajun served up the best Cuban sandwich I have ever had. The woman on the grill is Cuban and learned to cook in Miami from her mother and grandmother. I don’t remember how they found their way to Alpine, but I’d return just to get another one of those sandwiches.

We both looked forward to visiting San Antonio, primarily to see the Riverwalk and, of course, the Alamo. After Deming and Alpine, we decided to treat ourselves a little and pulled into the Green Lake RV Resort in south San Antonio about 20 minutes from downtown. Green Lakes is just a few years old and has all the things people look for in a modern RV park: wide streets for easy access, large paved pads and patios, intelligently positioned utility connections, cable TV, usable WIFI, a pool, a spacious laundry and a great staff.  About all it needs is a better dog park.

We liked San Antonio. The Riverwalk lived up to expectations. The river itself is a couple of stories below street level. It meanders through the city center and is lined with restaurants and bars of every kind. Large trees and the shadows of the downtown building provide plenty of cool shade to stroll some of the 13 miles of walkways that border the river. We visited the Mexican Market one afternoon. Think mini-Faneuil Hall: lots of shops to browse, a food court and a local band that could really rock and roll made for a very pleasant visit.

I have to say that I was underwhelmed with the Alamo. Admission to the mission building itself is “free”, but everyone is forced to stand in long lines while obligatory pictures are taken that are then “offered” on exit. I refused to play that game, so we focused on the museum and the grounds, both quite interesting. Based on some comments that I overheard from people who had gone inside, I don’t think we missed much.

When we unhooked the car tow dolly at Green Lake I discovered that both fender/tail light brackets had broken. The fenders were holding the brackets and lights on, the reverse of what was supposed to be the case. Closer examination revealed that the steel bars had fractured, probably from vibration. The staff at Green Lake quickly contacted a local welder and the next morning I met Joe Luna at his house. An hour later Joe, a retired oil field maintenance supervisor, had fabricated and installed much more robust replacements. After some hemming and hawing, he asked me if $30 sounded fair; I thought that was a bargain, quickly paid him and headed home.

The neighbors at Rainbow's End

The Escapees RV Club is headquartered at Rainbow's End in Livingston Texas, sort of on the way between San Antonio and New Orleans. We had been hearing stories about “the mothership” since we      we joined the club and couldn’t let the chance to visit slip by. Site 134 is located in the “new” section of the park. As you would expect from an organization started by and committed to full time RV’ers, access was easy, the site was large and it took little time to settle in for a week.

One of the first things we did was go over to the mail service building to pick up a month’s accumulation of mail. We had no idea how large an operation the mail service is, but got a strong hint when the US Mail tractor trailer truck passed us to deliver the incoming mail to the service center. The mail service handles about 13 tons of mail a day, so much mail that it has its own Zip code.

Livingston is the Polk County seat and our domicile address for taxes, vehicle registrations and insurance, health care and voter registration. We registered to vote so we are now official Texans, ya’all.

The French Quarter

Visiting New Orleans was one of the must-do’s on this trip, but the downtown RV park is really expensive. Bayou Segnette State Park turned out to be a great place to stay to visit New Orleans. While it is across the Mississippi River from the city, it is just 20 minutes from the French Quarter. Big spaces, lots of trees, good facilities including free laundry, and great dog walking for $18 a night; we even had great OTA TV reception.

Two beauties

We both liked New Orleans. Over three days walked all over the French Quarter in the rain and stuck our noses in every shop in the French Market. We roamed around a very old cemetery in the Garden District, which is much more interesting than it sounds, and took a cruise down the mighty Mississippi River on a real steam paddle wheeler.

Oak Alley Plantation

One day we set off down the River Road, following the river past farms and plantations to Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana. I’m not sure you can get bad food in this part of the country, but the

B&C Seafood Market and Cajun Restaurant was a real treat. A true locals place, we drove by and decided on the spur of the moment to make a u-turn and have lunch. The alligator burger was quite good (tasted like turkey) and the stuffed gator had a big grin. Seriously, stop here if you are in the area.

Pushing on to the East, our next stop was the Escapees Rainbow Plantation RV Park in Summerdale, Alabama. Neither of us had been to Alabama (or Louisiana, now that I think about it), and had no idea what to expect. Southern Alabama is quite beautiful. The coastline around Mobile is some of the prettiest we have seen. Summerdale is just east of Fairhope, a strikingly lovely town with a long commercial fishery and coastal trading history on Mobile Bay.

Rainbow Plantation is a very attractive, spacious park. We stayed a couple of nights and really enjoyed the site, the park itself and especially the people who lived there. Every SKP park seems to have happy hour around 4 pm and this one was no exception. We met several very nice people and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The park has only developed about a third of the land that they own, making dozens of acres open to walk the dogs, and they loved it.

Real waterfront camping

When we started planning this trip I was looking forward to visiting the northwest coast of Florida, the so-called “lost coast”. Looking on the Internet for RV parks in the area popped up Ho-Him RV Park in Carrabelle. With a name like that, we had to go there. Ho-Hum is anything but. Several of the sites are so close to the Gulf that there is no beach at high tide: the water comes right to the low seawall that the RVs are parked on. The view through the windshield is ocean to the horizon. We weren’t able to get one of those sites, but we still had ocean views from our coach. The site itself could have been a little wider and it could certainly have used more gravel because it got pretty muddy when it rained, but being able to walk down the beach a half a mile or so at low tide made up for any it.

Carrabelle is a pretty little town with limited services and one small market. It does have a couple of stores selling locally caught, fresh seafood. One day we bought and cooked shrimp that were swimming that morning. They were the best I’ve ever eaten.

Deeelicious!

The next day we drove up the coast to Apalachicola, a much larger town with many neat stores, several good restaurants and a small maritime museum and boat building school. We spent some enjoyable time wandering through the museum, looking at many vintage photos and pouring over a couple of the boats that the school had made. A couple of the shops were a cut above the usual tourist traps and we made a small contribution to the local economy.

Apalachicola is famous for oysters and we went to Papa Joe’s for lunch. Between us we made short work of a dozen and a half, a pile of fries and beers. We agreed that the local oysters lived up to their billing; boy, that was really good.

The last stop this month was another SKP park, Sumter Oaks in Bushnell. The park is in a very rural area about 5 miles out of town. Our site was large and partially shaded, but could have used some landscaping and fresh gravel. In fact, the whole park was in need of some attention. The trees needed trimming and the roads needed re-grading and fresh gravel. The dog park fence had been damaged and never repaired. Several signs were just hand lettered on cardboard, giving the place a slightly seedy appearance. It was also the quietest SKP park we have been to. There was no happy hour or any scheduled activities. The pool hadn’t seen water in years.

Glass bottomed boats 

On the plus side was the donkey herd on the adjacent farm that was just as interested in Lucy and Schroeder as they were in them. Every time we walked by the donkeys came right to the fence to exchange sniffs. We didn’t see the resident alligator in the swamp behind the park, but we certainly heard him at night, and a couple of times I think I caught his eyes way back through the trees with my flashlight on our late evening walks.

Algae is destroying the springs

Bushnell is not far from Ocala and I had been looking forward to revisiting Silver Springs State Park. In 1958 we stopped at the park and took a glass bottomed boat tour of the extensive artesian springs that deliver over 500 million gallons of fresh water a day. I distinctly remember looking down through 80’ of crystal clear water and shoals of fish in every shape and size to a white sand bottom so brilliant it was dazzling. Today’s experience couldn’t be further from that memory. Algae caused by agricultural runoff coats everything in a dull green slime. Eel grass has invaded almost the entire spring. The fish population looks like maybe 1 or 2% of what I remember. I can’t imagine how people let this happen, it felt like sacrilege.

A small fraction of Garlit's fascinating collection

As we approached Ocala a sign on the side of the highway declared that the Don Garlits Drag Racing Museum was just ahead. I couldn't pass that up! Big Daddy is arguably the founder of modern drag racing. He is responsible for many of the inventions still in use today, most notably the first rear engined dragster. He held innumerable records over his long career. The museum is housed in two large buildings and is packed with cars, motorcycles, dragsters, engines, vintage cars and a host of memorabilia. It is a fascinating place that I could easily revisit. Kayeanne was a good sport about it, too. 

We are looking forward to arriving in St. Petersburg next month to see Grant, Kayeanne’s brother. More soon.

Bob

#21 - Coveys Great Adventure - February 2016 - Benson, Bisbee and Mesa AZ

Benson, Bisbee and Mesa Arizona - February, 2016 

February was really busy. The Saguaro Co-op is no place for lazy, anti-social people. What with dinners on Monday nights, bingo every Tuesday, movies on Wednesday, happy hour every afternoon, yoga, flexercise, beading, making cookies for bake sales, board meetings, dancing on Saturday nights, Bunco, and hours every day in the desert with the dogs we were on the go all month.

We also became friends with Cosmo and Ellen Baraona, who vastly increased our knowledge of the Co-op and patiently taught us a new game, Pegs and Jokers. It is sort of like Cribbage, Mexican Train and Monopoly all mashed together. Serious thought and concentration is required.

We h avebeen looking forward to visiting Bisbee, Arizona since we first heard about it last

March. When Ed and Christine Woznicki had to delay their arrival we decide to take a day and see what everyone was talking about.

The latest hardrock fashion

The train is over 50 years old.
I'm not worried....

Bisbee is the home of one of the largest and richest copper, gold and silver mines in the world. It started out as a hard rock mine in the 1880’s and transitioned to open pit mining in the 1950’s. Mining operations ceased in 1975 when the cost of extraction exceeded the value of the metals. Bisbee was headed for economic oblivion when a group of strong minded citizens put together a plan to make the town a tourist destination centered on an underground tour of the Queen Copper Mine. They succeeded.

The mine tour was very interesting. It is conducted by old guys (like me) who actually worked in the mine before it closed. It was a fascinating window into a world unlike any I have ever experienced. I am certainly glad that I never had to do that for a living.

Many of the original buildings survive

Like Jerome, Arizona, Bisbee started to attract artists and hippies beginning in the 1960’s because the economic downturn in mining made houses really cheap, or even free for the taking. Bisbee today is an attractive, interesting blend of counter culture folks, artists, cowboys, tourists and entrepreneurs. We enjoyed walking around looking at the buildings and visiting the various shops. We found a great restaurant for lunch, Ana’s Seasonal Kitchen on Main Street. I had a chicken confit sandwich on fresh baked ciabatta with local greens and chipotle mayo. My mouth is watering as I write this! 

Redefining "eclectic" shopping. I have
idea what the store old

A couple of weeks later, Ed and Christine arrived and we all headed back to Bisbee. This time we visited the museum and covered the rest of the town that Kayeanne and I hadn’t seen on our first trip. Again, we found a great place for lunch. Thuy’s Noodle Shop has maybe 6 tables, but what it lacks in size it more than makes up with great food.

It was good to see the Woznickis, again. Kayeanne drove to Las Vegas to spend a weekend with Liesa and Luis, so Ed and Christine and I revisited Mi Casa for another excellent Mexican dinner. Ed and I puttered on our coach projects and spent one afternoon shooting at targets in a local wash. We hit the same spot so often the sand bank collapsed, burying the targets.

Tim Trask and his latest project

Traveling to and from Bisbee and Tombstone we always passed a bright blue building in St. David called A Gallery of Dreams. One afternoon the four of us hopped into the car to go see just what was inside. We were surprised and delighted to find a very eclectic collection of bronze and stone sculptures, various kinds of art and ceramics. We started talking to a tall, weathered cowboy who turned out to be the owner and world known sculptor Tim Trask. He gave us a tour of the workshop where he is preparing a 10’ tall statue and described a little of the exhaustive process that goes into bronze castings. He also showed us a 210# meteorite and a 120# piece of jade that he was planning to begin work on. If you are going to Bisbee or Tombstone, budget an hour to stop. We had a great time.

We had planned to stay in Benson through the end of the month, but Judy Powell invited us to join her and her friend Chris to tour Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and school in Scottsdale. Wright is a fascinating character as well as one of the most influential figures in modern architecture and design. At Taliesin, he and his students/employees transformed several hundred acres of desert into a visually stunning residence, office and school over a long period beginning in the 1920’s, right up to his death in 1959. Everyone is required to take a tour and I can see why. The guide talked non-stop for 90 minutes and just hit the high points of the history of the man and the place. Eccentric doesn’t begin to describe him.

Don't move the vase or the table, cut the window to fit.
Frank Lloyd Wright personified.

Packed in as closely as possible

Mesa Regal RV Resort was our first experience with the mega snowbird parks that have transformed Mesa, Surprise, Apache Junction, Scottsdale and several other great Phoenix suburbs. The picture doesn’t show the scale and the density of the place. It has over 2,200 sites, pools, spas, ballrooms, bars, tennis courts, shuffleboard, card rooms, a 2,000 seat theater (Donnie Osmond headlines the 

weekend we left) and its own entrance to a shopping center. People seem to love it because most of the spaces are rented year round but only occupied 4-6 months. We really hated it, and so did the dogs. If that was RV’ing, we’d stay home.

February 29^th was the first day of the next phase of our adventure. We pulled out of Mesa headed east. The plan is to cross Texas, stop for a few days in New Orleans, wander down the west coast of Florida and end up in St. Petersburg to see Kayeanne’s brother Grant. Then we are off to Hilton Head, South Carolina to join Charlie and Molly Kendrick and travel together to New England. We can’t wait to hit the road.

More soon.

Bob

#20 - Coveys Great Adventure - January 2016 - Yuma and Benson AZ

Yuma and Benson - January, 2016

We’ve been traveling long enough now to be returning to places that we have already visited. A couple of days after Christmas we retraced our steps to the Cocopah RV Resort in Yuma, AZ. It was time for our annual dental checkup in Los Algodones, Mexico.

Cocopah dog park. Schroeder and Lucy reading "the mail"

Cocopah is a little more expensive than most places that we stay, but it has a lot going for it, including the best dog park we’ve seen anywhere. Almost any time of day, a dozen or more dogs are hanging out at the park, just waiting for a new butt to sniff. It is quite a site to see a pack of dogs ranging from a Bull Mastiff to a Chihuahua running around together having a great time. I’ve yet to see any aggressive behavior.

We felt like old hands as we casually pulled into the Indian parking lot and strolled across the border into Los Algodones and right to the Alamo Dental clinic. An hour later we had clean teeth, checkups (one filling, me) and were back on the street looking for lunch. The bill for everything was $120. We celebrated with a margarita and beer!

Unlike last year, we felt like we had seen most of what there is to see in Yuma, so we spent a few days just hanging out. January is certainly colder than March, so swimming was out. I took a golf lesson, more to see if I still could hit the ball than to learn anything. I actually surprised myself, but I certainly felt it the next day. One night we went to see the new movie “The Martian”. I rarely like movies but this one really lived up to its billing. Go see it if you can. Surprisingly, the old folks made it to midnight on New Years Eve, despite killing a bottle of champaign. I think we kept the dogs awake past their bedtimes, too.

On January 4, 2016 (yikes!) we headed out to Benson to try to get a site in our favorite park for the next two months. Saguaro SKP Co-op doesn’t take reservations, so we’d been a little anxious about whether there would be space available. We didn’t really have a Plan B if there wasn’t any. It turned out to be no trouble at all, and we soon settled into site 288.

View from the coach

Hundreds of thousands of people move to sunny, warm Arizona in the winter, to escape the bitter cold and freezing snow of more northern climes. Three days after we moved in, we woke up to… bitter cold and freezing snow. Ok, it was only 4 inches, but this is the DESERT, it is supposed to be WARM. Not this year. Daytime temps rarely hit 65° and hover right around 30° at night. As I write this on February 1^st, we just had a little hail, the wind is howling, and I just disconnected the hoses because it is supposed to get down close to 20° tonight. El Niǹo certainly is making itself felt.

A desert princess and her court

Weather aside, the Saguaro Co-op is every bit as nice as we remembered it to be. Happy hour every evening, dinner at the clubhouse on Monday nights (chili relleno tonight), flexercise on MWF mornings and beading MWF afternoon keep us both busy. We danced to a pretty decent rock ‘n roll band on Saturday night and movie night last week featured The Martian. I’ve got a full wood shop and a pretty well equipped metal shop to play in, too. We are all taking advantage of the extensive series of trails and washes to hike every day. We also have decent cable TV and they are installing what sounds like a state-of-the-art free WIFI system that may be running before we pull out. It seems like I’m raving about this place, but it really is pretty special.

We are really looking forward to another visit with Ed and Christine Woznicki next week. Kayeanne is headed to Tucson in the morning for the Gem and Mineral show to buy yet more beads. I’ve got a visit scheduled with a welder on Wednesday to finish an upgrade to the tow dolly. Who knew retirement was so busy?

More soon,

Bob

#19 - Coveys Great Adventure - December 2015 - Simi Valley and Aguanga, California

December, 2015

As faithful readers may recall we spent last December parked in Perris, California. This year has been a little more hectic; we’ve moved four times.

We pulled out of St. George on November 30^th to go to Simi Valley to catch up with our many friends in SoCal. To avoid arriving n the LA area during rush hour we stopped that night at Shady Lane RV Camp near Barstow. We had called ahead to be sure that they could accommodate our coach. I’m glad we did, because the first thing we saw when we pulled in was a sign saying that the maximum length allowed was 35’, but hey had one site that we could squeeze into with a little creative piloting.

Shady Lane is an older park in a fairly sketchy area that could really use a facelift. It’s far enough from I15 to be quiet at night, a nice change from the park in St. George. Everything worked, the manager was friendly and competent, but the roads and the parking areas are dirt and have not seen any gravel in years. Don’t go there if it is raining, the place will be a sea of mud. All-in-all, a good place to stop for the night, but we wouldn’t stay any longer.

We pulled out fairly early and made great time getting to Simi. I really don’t like driving the Cajon Pass and the 210, so we turned off of I15 in Victorville and cut across to CA14 in Palmdale via CA18 and 138. It’s a short, easy drive from there on CA14 to connect with the 118 to Simi Valley. We pulled into Tapo Canyon County Park, got settled into site 11, and headed right over to Judy Powell’s house in Thousand Oaks, the first of several visits with good friends. The dogs were really disappointed not to be invited along.

The next ten days passed very quickly. We drove over 1,000 miles and never got beyond Pasadena or Ventura. One day we made four round trips to Thousand Oaks. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken”, certainly rang true. We danced at the American Legion hall in Woodland Hills, enjoyed a slide show about Japan in Pasadena, ate Nepalese food in Ventura, Italian food in Simi, and Chinese, fabulous beef and sushi in TO. I think I gained 10 pounds, but we had a really great time.

On the 10^th we headed to Temecula, actually Aguanga, to Jojoba Hills RV Resort, another of the Escapees Coop parks. On the way, we stopped in San Pedro (Peedro, not Paydro) to see Mary Lucik, our neighbor and close friend. We had lunch down at the harbor at Utro’s, one of the real locals’ places that make San Pedro such an interesting place to live.

It has been about 15 years since we left San Pedro and the transformation that has taken place is striking. West Channel and Watchorn Basin have been completely gentrified. All of the commercial docks, the Navy fueling terminal and the “cannery row” marinas like Holiday Harbor where we kept our boats have been replaced by shiny new county run slips and charmless buildings. I’m sure the power now works and the docks don’t sink occasionally, but I’d rather see the character and weathered friendliness of the old facilities. I wonder where all the characters and their very colorful and eclectic vessels ended up? I do miss that place.

A small part of the Jojoba Hills Resort

Jojoba Hills RV Resort is a very impressive place. It’s located on 140 acres in Aguanga, about 12 miles east of Temecula, CA. Like Saguaro in AZ, Pair-a-Dice in NV and Evergreen in WA, Jojoba is an SKP coop park. Unlike the others, it has a heated pool, two spas, an air rifle range, four pickle ball courts, two dog parks and over 400 planned activities a month. Everyone can find something to do, or they are welcome to start their own activity. The night we arrived we went dancing to a live band in the meeting hall. I’ll bet there were close to 300 people there.  

Everyone volunteers

Jojoba Hills takes the cooperative park concept about as far as it can go. Everyone volunteers to do something. Even major projects like storm drain cleaning and repair, utilities maintenance, propane delivery, and landscaping and building maintenance are handled by the members. Jojoba owns tractors, backhoes, chippers and all the other gear needed to handle everything themselves short of paving the streets. The skill set among the residents includes pilots, engineers, bankers, lawyers, farmers, mechanics, welders, teachers and about anything else you can think of, so they handle virtually everything themselves.

Speaking of paving, we arrived at Jojoba to find the gate closed and paving trucks and equipment everywhere. One of the contractors directing traffic routed us to an alternative

Pool (86 degrees year 'round) with a view

entrance, carefully giving us directions that lead right into a dead end. I suspected that we were in trouble when I noticed the slightly bemused expressions on the folks we passed by. Finally one of them flagged us down just as we arrived at the road block where the new pavement was being rolled out. That job was being “supervised” by 30 or 40 folks, so we had an instant audience. We felt a little like the circus arriving in town. We couldn’t drive on the fresh road and we can’t back up with the car and dolly attached, so while two people  got on the phone to the office to see what to do with us, Kayeanne and I made short work of unloading the car and switching the dolly from the coach to it. We were then able to back the coach up the road a ways to a spot to get turned around. I think we disappointed a few folks by how quickly and easily we extracted ourselves.

Sites average 50x70'

We were lucky to arrive just in time to get an unoccupied leased site in the main park. After walking around for an hour and meeting so many friendly people we decided to cancel our reservation in Perris for Christmas week and stay through the holidays in Jojoba Hills. We had a great time, and are considering getting on the waiting list for a site.

Kayeanne left the dogs and me on our own for a couple of days and headed up to Long Beach to go cocktail cruising in the harbor with Judy Powell and friends, and then to spend the night with Mary Lucik in San Pedro. I know she had a good time, and so did we. Lucy got to sleep on the coach all night, a rare treat

Zack and Ed focused on hitting target 500 yards away

Aguanga is “only” 70 miles or so from San Juan Capistrano where Christine and Ed Woznicki live. Ed discovered a pretty unique shooting range near Lake Ellsinore, about half way between us and we spent a couple of afternoons turning vast quantities of ammo into noise and empty brass.  We even managed to hit a few things, too. On the second visit his son Zackary joined us. I hadn’t seen Zack in almost a year, so that was an added treat. One day Ed brought his industrial strength cable crimping tools to the coach and helped me replace the main power cable to the house battery bank that had become badly corroded. We spent Christmas Eve at their lovely home and ended the evening sitting in front of the fireplace after a terrific dinner. Really, really great time. I hope we can hook up in Arizona in February before we head east in March.

Paul and Brenda hosted the Xmas day festivities at their place in Hemet. Lucy and

Christmas at Paul and Brenda's house

Schroeder got to go, too. They were very happy. P & B have three good sized dogs, so a couple more just blended in. Liesa and Luis met us there, and Ed Wiklund, Kayeanne’s third nephew also arrived. Paul cooked a perfectly done beef roast and everyone contributed delicious side dishes. By popular request, I made popovers for breakfast the next day.

Ripley's holiday trimmings

On the 28^th we packed up and pulled out, bound for Yuma to return to Los Algodones, Mexico for our annual dental work. I’ll pick it up there next month.

Bob