Traveling-U.S.A

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Escapees 57th Escapade

We left Apache Junction on the 18th to arrive at Tucson, AZ for the 57th Escapade at the fairgrounds. We parked with the Boomers in the boondocking area for the event. The Escapees have an Escapade every year. This year's was in the west. Next year it will be in the eastern U.S. in Sedalia, Missouri. This year there was over 900 rigs at the event.

Travis Carr the president

Kay Peterson founder of Escapees

This was Kay's 90th birthday. She is quite the story teller. Every night we had a social gathering and a drawing for door prizes. And we also had entertainment.

Native American Hoop Dancing

Our Master of ceremonies

We went out to eat a couple nights. One time at the Hot Rod restaurant where they work on building cars for people. Here there working on a Duce coupe.

We went to several seminars and we had several photo gatherings. Here we are at one for Lifetime Members.

Donna and I are first row right side.

Two years ago the Escapees started a new Chapter called Xscapers for the younger RV community

They now have over 3000 members here we see a photo of a few of the children.

They had a Chile cook off and I brewed my chile. I didn't win but had a great time.

The final event was Kay's birthday bash. Cake and drinks .

Friday, March 17, 2017

FMCA Rally Chandler, AZ

We left Quartzsite, AZ and headed to the Phoenix area. We stayed at the Avondale Moose Lodge for a few days. Getting ready to go to the FMCA Rally a four day event at the Wild Horse Pass Casino at Chandler,AZ. The parking crew was at a loss as where to park us so we ended up in a huge parking lot three miles from the main event. But they suppled buses to transport us to the Main event.

Frustrated Maestros were playing every day for coffee and donuts

The event was held at the Rawhide town part of the Casinos grounds There were lots of vendors and several RV dealers. If you needed a new rig this was the place to get one. I bought Silver Leaf engine diagnostic system for the 330 Cat power plant. Then I had to buy a PC tablet to be able to see the read outs. Then I had to find a way to mount it to the dash so I could see it going down the road. Works good for now. Several years ago I bought a chip for the engine but have never had a way to set the chip for better fuel mileage. In just two drives of several miles I have got it set and brought the mileage up by over 2.5 gal per mile. Wow.

We left the rally and moved to Apache Junction, where we met up with Esther and Bill from Salem,Ohio I worked with Bill at GM and know him all the way back to high school. They were there to pick up Jan from Salem she was going to travel with them for several weeks.

They had several plans for her and one of them was to see the Desert Bar so I talked them in to making a long day trip to Parker, AZ and make the loop back to the Elks. What a day they made of it left at 7:00 am and got back at 9:00pm but she loved the sites and to top it off they stopped at Silly Al's for pizza.

We had a great view out our window. The Superstitions Mountains with the sun set falling over them

and then the Moon rising life can't get much better.

While there we had to get our Arizona drivers license and plates. We needed to become Arizona residents for several reasons, we vote there and own a lot in Yuma.

One day I notice a guy painting a car as he was leaving I ask him if he could paint the doors on the Jeep. I have had several quotes in Yuma all were over $500.00 just for the doors He quoted $200.00 so the next day he came back and did the doors.

Before

After

Looks a lot better one color. We were talking to Phil the RV repair guy and he was talking to Donna about a hand doctor in Scottsdale, AZ that fixed his wives thumb so Donna made a appointment. This is a clinic just for hands we went and the doctor look at her fingers with a very cool x-ray and told her she was too far gone for simple treatment her only option was joint replacement a very long procedure.

Friday, March 03, 2017

Back to Quartzsite

We left the blast and headed back to Quartzsite and stayed at High Jolly BLM land. At this time of the year it is not crowded so we found a good site. Bill and Esther are still traveling with us. We're having a great time. We're doing geocaching and eating out and just resting for a while.
Bill had some work to do on his camper. While I played with my drone. We had some bad news here Judy is having some medical issues and were in Texas to be close to family and good medical care.

flying the drone.

We went to the Yacht Club and Somewhere Arizona bar to listen to the band and listen to Millie sing.

Donna and I did some more geocaching and found some wild flowers The desert is blooming.

A Saguaro with a different top.

Bill and I went out and did some target practice one day.

Bill and Esther took off and went to Apache Junction Elk's.

A friend of theirs is flying in to Phoenix, AZ

She will be traveling with them for a few weeks.We stayed on and spent more time resting.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

The BLAST

We left Parker and went about 20 miles to "The Steps" south of Lake Havasu for the Blast a pyrotechnic gathering for the display of fire works. It is President's day weekend every year and worth the trip to see 4 days of fireworks hours on end. We had a pot luck dinner and several trips to town to the Elks and other restaurants.

One day we went to see the blast with the boomers and had a potluck dinner.
We froze our butts off. We left early and went to the Moose club and warmed up.

This is the rodeo grounds where they have the Blast. We sat up close but we got moved back to the bleachers for the show and it was great. The show the night before was canceled so we had two nights of fire works. Wow.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Parker, AZ February 11, 2017

We went to the Desert Bar to show Bill and Esther another great day the weather was perfect

The Church several weddings here

Lots of Solar here.

More rusty stuff

Lots of seating

Then off to the Floating bar.

After lunch we took the road trip over the Parker Dam then in to California and found wild burrows.

Feed me

Thursday, February 09, 2017

Quartsite for Boomerville/Geocache Rallies

We arrived at Boomerville the 14th of January. Bill and Esther joined us to learn how we boondock.

They were with us for several weeks before going to California.

There were several events going on at Boomerville plus going to the big tent shopping and checking out the many venders. We didn't buy too much.

I replaced the sensors for our tire tracker system that I bought in 2005 for the fifthwheel camper.

The big event is the auction for Care every year. Boomers open their wallets and buy all they don't need and spend lots for good stuff like this cheesecake. Bidding went to $150 for CARE!!!!!.

They had a chili cook off and I made chili for it but the weather was so cold and windy I withdrew and had a rig full of friends to eat my chili and I got a first place vote here.

Esther wanted to learn how to geocache so Donna took her out and showed her many caches. Bill and I went shopping at the vendors while Donna and Esther took the truck and geocached.

We went out to eat several times and the pizza at Silly Al's is the best. They call this their Goliath and it is BIG.

Donna and I went to the Wins's ice cream social. We had the pleasure of listening to

Bag Pipe Bob and seeing many other friends

We left the Boomers and went to the Escapees Geocaching event at mile marker 99. We helped this year I ran the 50/50 drawing .

Donna and I took off on a geo run by ourselves. We came across this old stone cabin.

We found several caches and added to our numbers.

We stayed at MM99 for several days to take in the Parker 425 desert race and Millie's hanger party.

We missed getting to Parker for the street display of the high performance off road vehicles. So these are photos of last years display. Then it was off to Bouse, AZ to see the race.