New year New Rig

01 01 07 A New Beginning. What a start to a New Year and a new life, with a new motor home. We moved Friday the 5th to the SKP park and set up a huge yard sale to lighten the load. A few of the Wins are here also and on Sunday evening we went to the clubhouse and chatted after the ice cream social. It was nice to relax after a very busy 5 days of organizing for our BIG move.

Tuesday Bob took his rig over to the dealers to get the batteries switched to the new coach and we went to Algodones in the afternoon for another liquor run. . When we got back to our rig we had new neighbors Vicky and Terry . Our neighbors from the balloon fiesta in Albuquerque. They volunteered to help us with our move.

Wednesday was the BIG day. We took my motor home in and we had our walk thru. Then someone drove it and us over across the border into CA so we could take out of state delivery. After the paperwork was done, I drove it back to the dealership. What a difference diesel is. No gear shift. Everything is push button. We were finally sent to the Bullpen where all 3 rigs were parked. Vicky and Terry arrived and we started moving. Bob was transferring the stuff to the outside bays. This went on for the rest of Wednesday and all day on Thursday. Friday, we sorted and rearranged. Trying to pack 58 feet of stuff into 35 ft was a real project. We took loads to Goodwill and Salvation Army about 4 times. Gave things away to others in transition and by Saturday morning we only had a load to take to a friends for storage for a week.

We left Yuma around 2:30 and I was driving. Stopped for fuel as they didn’t fill our tank and we just had a little over a quarter tank. Just east of Yuma is a big hill with sharp curves on I 8. Bob managed to talk me thru the retarder break use and when we got to the other side at the first rest area he took over the driving. We went to the Elk’s lodge for the night in Gila Ben. Early Sunday morning I started going thru drawers and cabinets and arranging them. Got the living room and kitchen all done. We headed up the road toward Phoenix and stopped at the Avondale Moose lodge to kill a little time, went to Wal-Mart and got new items for our new home. Things that matched. Here we had all this stuff and still went out and bought more. We then went to the Moose Lodge in Peoria for the night. On arrival I called my cousin Ken and his wife to come to see our new home. They brought a bottle of wine but thank goodness it was to drink and not christen the front end of our new ship. We went to dinner with them and then back at the lodge we went into donate for camping and was surprised to see they had karaoke and dancing. So we stayed a little longer.

Monday morning we arrived at D&R to have our solar system reinstalled. One of the panels was shattered so had to buy a new one. Bob is having them mounted so they tip up for the winter months when the sun is low so we get maximum energy. While they were working on the outside we were working on the inside We then drove to Camping World in Mesa for a few things we needed. 2 other WIN rigs are here having work done also. It took until Wednesday morning to get all the work done including tapping into a propane line for our space heater.

01 17 07 Quartzsite Gathering of WINS

We then headed out to Quartzite and the WINS gathering. We arrived from Phoenix on Wednesday afternoon and setup There are about 60 or so here now. We announced another yard sale and open house and several came.
We immediately set out stuff for a yard sale and after our circle we invited them to the yard sale and to see our new home. We did quite well on the sale and the next day we cleaned out the bays and the car and added more and sold more. There is a light at the end of this tunnel. We even have the bays the way we want and a back seat in the car. We went to Silly Al’s with the gang for pizza and karoke the first night and dancing in Bouse the second night. The 3rd day we had a rainy day. We did go to town but the big tent was just getting their vendors set up. In the afternoon we gathered in our Win tent and had a discussion on courtship and coupling. The men spoke the first half hour, the women the second and combined the 3rd half hour. The hosts of the discussion are going to write an article on the subject. It was a most interesting discussion and it was hard for both genders to remain silent while the other gender spoke.

It seems all we are doing is working on settling in. More organizing. Bob got an internet dish and attempted to install it on our roof in what had to be the coldest day yet. 52 degrees with 40 mph winds but he got it up there and as you can read, it is working.