OUR NEWELL ADVENTURE

Dometic Classic Absorption Refer

2012-02-12T06:14:00.002-08:00

When we arrived in Mesa, AZ last Monday to visit our good Newell friends, Tom and Darlene McCloud, and to "let" Tom help me with some nagging issues with the coach, I suggested that we wait until the following Saturday to remove and replace our old Dometic absorption refrigerator, so we we have an entire day of daylight to get it done. During the week, as I have posted, we accomplished a number of tasks on my list, but that involved a lot of night work as Tom has a real job that he must be present for M-F, but it worked out well. So, Saturday morning comes and it is time to really remove the old "refer" and install the new one. One of my life long mottos (although, from time to time I fail to follow it) is if it is not broke, don't try to fix it. Our old "refer" is 30 years old in 2 weeks, and, therefore, it could be considered by a reasonable person to be a ticking time bomb. Nothing worse than waking up on the road, far from home, and find that the refer has passed on during the night whilst you slept. Then comes the scramble to locate a replacement, and have it installed. Very inconvenient, and usually very expensive. Fortunately for us Tom had removed his Dometic Classic Automatic (a much, much newer version of our old Dometic) in order to install a regular household 110 volt refer in his 1990 Newell. I asked Tom what his plans were for the perfectly good refer he had just removed and he said he was going to dispose of it. I said I was interested, and he agreed to give it to me if I would come to Mesa, AZ. WOW! What a great offer.

Well, we installed that new refer yesterday, and it did take most of the daylight hours to get it done, but it works great. Now I don't have to remember to open the refer door and change it from electric (when we unplug) to gas, or visa versa....it does that automatically for me....one LESS thing to remember.....yeah!

After we got cleaned up, and presentable again Tom took us out to Texas Roadhouse for a steak dinner, and what a great dinner and conversation! Thanks Tom and Darlene!

We have a couple of other minor issues to troubleshoot in the next couple of days, but we expect that we will be pulling anchor by Wednesday at the latest. We will hate leaving our friends, as we have had a great time spending time with them.

Thanks for stopping by and reading!

Leak No More!!!

2012-02-09T23:02:00.000-08:00

FORE PICTURE

AFTER PICTURE

11:01PM - Thursday, February 9th

The end of a very long day, but you should see the smile on my face.....I purchased the

additional solenoid leveling valves for the suspension/leveling system....there are six in all for

can be detected by human ears. We lowered and raised the coach several times and all is good!

Before Tom got home from work I converted the rear of the coach. Tom McCloud and I sat on his garage floor for several hours disassembling and reassembling the 6 valves. Tom took a picture of everything before we

removed it and began "fixing it", and printed a blowup of it so we would be able see what it

used to look like, where all the hoses went, and where all the wires connected. We started

around 6pm, and finished just shy of 11pm......BUT....now there are no air leaks....at least that2 more fluorescent light fixtures to LED's....3 to go. Also did some more rearranging of things in the trailer.....slowly but surely getting the

storage figured out. The early part of the day was spent driving up to north Phoenix to get the

additional solenoid valves to fix the rear suspension, and rid our lives of air leaks! Tomorrow

several small projects, and then Saturday we will swap out refrigerators. Life is good!

Mesa, AZ

2012-02-08T08:31:00.001-08:00

Courtesy parked in Mesa, AZ

T'Bird in the driveway of our friends and coach/trailer on the street

9:30am - Thursday, February 8th

With the help of my friend Tom McCloud we were able to troubleshoot, and solve a number of electrical issues involving the trailer lights, and coach brake lights. About 90% solved. We also worked on a couple of leaking "ride height" valves, and have found a source for replacements locally at a good price, so we'll get on that later today, or tomorrow. Later in the evening Tom spent a couple of hours showing me how to convert my fluorescent ceiling fixtures to LED's. Got one done last night and will begin tackling the others over the next few days. We are becoming so energy efficient!

Heading out to Home Depot in a few minutes to pick up some materials to complete the fluorescent light conversion. I have 13 more fixtures to go!

We are so grateful for the numerous new friends we have made through the NewellClassic.com users website. Tom and Darlene are two of the new friends, and have just rolled out the red carpet for us. We first met them when they were traveling through SoCal and stopped in Newport Beach to visit our other good Newell friends, Michael and George Day, who were spending the summer at Newport Dunes. We then got to know Tom and Darlene better at a Newell rally in Austin, TX and actually spent a few days traveling back home with them. Not only do we have a wonderfully made coach, but the new friendships are an unexpected blessing!

Will write more later today!

11:40pm - Thursday, February 8th

Made a run to Hei Tek in north Phoenix to buy suspension solenoids for the rear air suspension today, along with numerous other stops at AutoZone (replacement bulbs for running lights that had burned out), Home Depot to get things needed to replace our fluorescent light fixtures with LED lights, Radio Shak for 18 gauge stranded wire for the LED installation, Parker Hose Supply for air fittings. We left around 11am, and got back home around 3pm. I was able to replace the cove lights in the bedroom (totalling 8 fluorescent fixtures, each with 2 18" bulbs) with LED's in about an hour's time. About the time I finished up that project Tom, our host, arrived home from work and we promptly began working on replacing the two ride height solenoids. Took a couple of hours, and then we turned the coach back on and it aired up in about 2 minutes....used to take 8-10 minutes! Then we lowered the coach down again to raise it again and 3 and the 4 remaining original solenoids started leaking air....guess they didn't like being jostled and banged around while we replaced the others, so it's back to HeiTek tomorrow morning for 4 more....not going to wait for the 4th to go!

We didn't eat dinner until about 9:30pm, and sat talking and laughing with Tom and Darlene until almost 11pm. Well, it's time to hit the sack....a lot to do tomorrow, and Friday, and Saturday.

Thanks for stopping by!

2012-02-06T07:03:00.000-08:00

Our dry camp spot....on solar baby!

7am - Monday, February 6th - Last morning in Indio

Nothing like sunrises in the desert! In a few hours we will pull up anchor again and merge on to I-10 going southeast into Arizona. It has been a week since we departed Rancho Jurupa, and somehow we have not managed to escape the vortex of Southern California, but today, barring an act of God, we should breach the Arizona border before Noon.

We had a wonderful 18 mile trike ride yesterday over to Palm Desert to a small Mexican restaurant for breakfast. The weather was perfect.....light breeze and 74 degrees. Was really great to get out on the trikes and do some distance!

Need to make some small alterations to the trailer interior storage before we put the 'Bird back in position to travel. Will post more later today after we are on the road!

10:30pm - Monday, February 6th

At last we pulled up anchor at around 11am and headed down to the local ARCO to put $200 of diesel in the tank to get us into Arizona where everything is less expensive. We got on I-10 about Noon and set our sights on the Arizona border. We just don't feel like we have "left" anywhere yet because until today we have been within an hour of our home. Our goal today was Mesa, AZ...about 265 miles southeast. Around 2:54pm we approached the Colorado River which is the dividing line between California and Arizona, and wondered if we could break free of the Southern California vortex and bust through the force field that thus far had kept us from really being on the road. Now that we have crossed that border we "feel" like we are finally underway.

Of course Arizona does not observe Daylight Savings Time....thank God, but escaping the nutty State of California means you have to give up something....that something was one hour of time....it was suddenly 3:54pm, not 2:54pm! As darkness approached I noticed the running lights on the trailer were not coming on, so we pulled off the interstate at exit 94 and checked to see what could be wrong. It turns out that the "fix" I did to get the brake lights on the trailer working nullifies the running lights when they are turned on, so I had to cut that splice in order to have the running lights come on. There appear to be several other issues that have developed today with our exterior lights that will have to be resolved tomorrow before we can haul anchor again.

A positive today was that since I replaced the air filter (you remember, that big behemoth!) I have regained power that had been slowly disappearing over the last year....apparently the old air filter was more clogged up than it appeared. Now that the Detroit Diesel is breathing better she is running like a thoroughbred again!

We will be here at our good friend's, Tom and Darlene, home in Mesa, AZ for about 5 days while we install the new refer, and diagnose the wiring issues that have developed in the last week, or so. With Tom's expertise I am sure we will figure it out quickly!

Thanks for stopping by!

I-10 headed southeast

2012-02-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

Saturday, February 5th - We unhooked the Newell's umbilical cord around 8:50am, and drove down the hill (Jojoba Hills) to the boondocking area where we "dropped" our trailer when we came into the park on Monday. Today we were going to hookup the trailer, and then, for the first time in a long time, load the T'Bird for travel. As you will recall we spent parts of 3 days reorganizing the "stuff" inside the trailer, which included re-securing a number of items, and getting rid of others. We donated a large bag of clothing to Goodwill in Temecula we knew after a year at Rancho Jurupa we were not going to use. The loading went fine, I had forgotten how tight things can get in that trailer with the car in....haha! We had decided we would drive the 12 miles back to the outskirts of Temecula and find a large parking lot near Stater Bros. (SoCal supermarket chain) to park and check the load inside the trailer for "movement" while Elaine went in and did some shopping. Everything looked good, with the exception that the T'Bird had moved a few inches forward.....this is typical as it seems to find it's own sweet spot, and there is plenty of room in front. So I tightened up the large cargo straps front and rear and we headed on to I-15 which we would take north to CA 60, and then east to join up the I-10 eastbound traffic.

The drive was delightful with temps in the low 70's until we descended into the Coachella Valley where they rose slightly to the high 70's...this is why people flock to this area in the winter. Our destination for the day was Indio, CA where my good friend Claude Banker lives. I have done a number of extended bicycle trips over the years with Claude, as well as backpacking in the Sierra's. Our longest bike ride was 465 miles starting at his home in Indio and heading north through Yucca Valley into the Mojave National Preserve, continuing north into and out of Death Valley, ending at Lone Pine, CA, I kept a blog of this trip which can be found at Mystical Mojave Meanderings. We arrived at Sun City, where Claude lives, around 1:30pm. We are parked down the street from his home about 100 yards where there are no driveways to interfere with....we are a little over 60' long and these lots are not that wide...lol!

The solar panels are tilted toward the southern sky to catch the sun's rays as we are off the grid for two days! We will watch the Super Bowl with Claude and his wife Lindy, then then continue our trek southeast into Arizona on Monday morning.

Sunday, February 6th - Today, before the Super Bowl comes on we'll take a "trike" ride with Claude and Lindy to breakfast, and around town. I'll post some pictures of us on the trikes...you'll get a kick out of them!

Thanks for checking in!

Solar Powered - Day One

2012-02-02T11:45:00.001-08:00

7:15am - Got up on the roof as the sun was cresting the local hills and tilted my solar panels for the first time in order to catch the maximum sun exposure. The process took less than 5 minutes. They can be tilted to the passenger side, or to the driver's side. Mike and Lisa (The RV Guy, Inc.) are attending their AGM for this SKP park, and will be back over at our coach sometime this afternoon to complete the installation and to give us a little instruction on the use of our system.

7:35pm - Last night our installer had me turn off the converter/charger so I could monitor our usage during the evening and early morning before the sun came up. We are still plugged in for our major AC appliances (TV, microwave, electric heaters) but everything else is off the house batteries since last night. Tomorrow we will turn on the inverter and start to experiment with the larger appliances to see what our electrical draw will be, and what we can use, and how long. To me this is the fun part. We will get to know our electrical system, and what the possibilities are for living off the grid as much as possible, and how many of our bad electrical habits we can live with....lol!

The sealant was applied this afternoon around 3pm, so we must sit still for another 24 hours before we can move the coach, which means we will not depart SKP Jojoba Hills until Saturday morning.

Elaine and I spent another couple of hours in the trailer securing everything that might come lose and hit the T'Bird. On Saturday, when we leave, Elaine will once again follow me back into Temecula where we will find a large parking lot to check out the interior of the trailer to be sure nothing has shifted, or come lose. If all is good then we will load the 'Bird in the trailer and head to Indio where we will spend a couple of days with an old friend, and take in the Super Bowl. On Monday we will get back on I-10 and head into Arizona....Mesa, AZ specifically, where we will spend a few days with a good Newell friend who is providing our replacement refrigerator, and who will help me install it. After a few days there we are off into Texas.

After we worked on the trailer Elaine did some laundry, and I started washing the coach....first time I have done that in a few years. I say "started" washing the coach, because I ran out of gas after doing the driver's side, back and front. Tomorrow morning the passenger side will be done before the sun gets too high in the sky. We had planned to have it washed before we left Rancho Jurupa, but it was very windy for several days prior to our departure, so it never got washed. I hate driving a dirty coach, so when we leave here on Saturday it will be clean again!

Thank you for stopping by today!

Heaven at 2750' elevation

2012-02-01T18:55:00.000-08:00

This Escapees Park is a little slice of heaven......crystal clear winter views, light breezes, a few clouds, and temperatures in the 60's. We are really cherishing our time at this park, and as of this evening we will be here a least one more day than planned. There were a number of issues the last two days that have extended the instllation time, but all were overcome with good solutions, and we are very happy with the professionalism of the installation. Below are a few pictures of the step by step process of installing the solar panels. I will post more pictures tomorrow of the charge controller, and batter monitor.

Panel upside down to be "wired" up.

Panel now wired and attached to the roof.

How the panels are configured

"Combiner" box mounted on side of refer chimney

Cables now plugged into "Combiner" box and power flowing to batteries.

The panels come with tilt bars that can be used to tilt the panels left, or right to catch the sun when it is low in the sky as it is this time of year. Tomorrow the sealant will be applied to the areas where screws were used to attach the panels. By the time we finished hooking up the cabling it was too cold to apply the sealant. So, we will be here until at least Friday afternoon, BUT, frankly, that is not bad duty at all. We love it here and will probably take a bike ride tomorrow, and then finish up securing a few more items in the trailer to be sure nothing falls on, or into the T'Bird.

I was able to diagnose and fix a problem we were having with a brake signal making it to the trailer brake lights, so that was a major accomplishment today.

Life is good, and in another day and a half we will be on our way into Arizona.

Thanks, as always, for stopping by and visiting. We appreciate your interest!

The First Day of the REST of Our Lives

2012-01-31T19:36:00.001-08:00

Our site for the next 2 days!

For the first time in one year we woke up to a different view....we are still in parkland, but now it is the hill country of Aguanga, CA. We stayed in the boondocking area of Jojoba Hills Escpaee (SKP) Park....our site, 224, was occupied until this morning. We moved up the hill at 9:30am, and at 10am Mike and Lisa Sylvester arrived to install our solar charging system.

Our view....

And more...

Today they ran all the cabling, and associated wiring for the Blue Sky Charge Controller, and battery monitor. Before they began Mike did a thorough inspection of all the possible routes we could follow, but trying to determine the most direct (shortest) route from the panels to the batteries. We came up with "Plan A" that was acceptable to Elaine and I, and then they began pulling wire. Amazingly, Plan A worked. The wiring was run through the refrigerator "chimney" and into the wire tunnel on the passenger side, through the cabinets on that side, and down the wire chase along the right side of the front windshield, and through the floor into the house battery compartment. Mike and Lisa (The RV Guy, Inc.) are wonderful technicians. They kept us involved in every decision along the way. We are very happy with their professionalism, and expertise. They are certified installers for A.M. Solar, whom we bought out solar panel kit from. A. M. Solar shipped the kit directly to Mike and Lisa here at Jojoba Hills, so everything was here waiting for our arrival.

Mike

Lisa

The "shunt" that will monitor all the in going voltage, and out going voltage.

That's it for today.......this retirement thing is really a lot of work!!! LOL! Thanks for stopping by and sharing our journey!

Tomorrow morning at 8am the installation will reconvene. The actual solar panels will be installed, along with the charge controller and monitor, and by this time tomorrow night we will be officially solar powered!

January 30th

2012-01-30T06:01:00.001-08:00

OK, now it is January 30th....it is about 6am, and the only thing left to do is unplug the umbilical cord from the power pedestal, turn over the Detroit Diesel 6V92 and say goodbye to schedules. I just handed over the keys to the golf cart we have had use of since we arrived here a year ago to or fellow camp host who occupies the site immediately adjacent to ours....in fact it was on a Monday, January 31st, 2011, exactly one year ago, that we pulled into Rancho Jurupa Regional Park for our 1 year sojourn.

We really already done the hard part.....compacting our lives into a little under 300 square feet.....AND...the BIG AND, learning to live with each other in that same space. We have never looked back, and love our simplified lifestyle. As I was lying in bed this morning cuddling with my wife I thought about wonderful our life has been these past 40 years together.....raising 5 children to adulthood, and how proud we are of them and the families they are now raising. We're not wealthy people, but we feel so rich right now. I had no idea how much our children were going to miss us until yesterday. As I posted previously, we had all our kids, grandkids, and many friends of our kids over to the park for an extended goodbye party two weeks ago, and I have seen each of my children several times since then, so I thought we had said our goodbyes, but yesterday morning I got a text from my youngest daughter, who is 27, saying she had a dream that we left without saying goodbye. I texted her back to meet us at our sticks and brick home around 1:30pm as we were helping my oldest daughter move back into our house. She came over as we finished unloading the truck, hugged me and started crying. Then my oldest daughter did the same, and then my youngest son, etc. Man oh man do I hate goodbyes! In just 30 minutes we will start the Detroit Diesel and motor up to my mechanic's shop (Joel's Automotive) in Upland, CA.

6:30am.....as we drove past the Kiosk (checkstand) the three people on duty all came running out and waved goodbye! I tell you, these people we have worked with the past year are the salt of the earth people. We will truly miss them A LOT!!!

9pm.....we got my mechanic's shop around 7:30am, and I deftly backed the rig, including trailer, into his lot so he could begin the work scheduled previously....oil change (5.4 gallons of Shell Rotella T 40wt Heavy Duty), oil filter, two fuel filters, check transmission fluid, check tires, recharge panel A/C. We left at just after 1pm with the service work done.

We then headed south on I-15 to Temecula, CA, and then east on HWY 79 to Jojoba Hills SKP Park where I sit now finishing the post I began this morning. The day has been a whirlwind capped by my last soccer match, a high school match, in Corona, CA at Santiago H.S. Elaine went to bed early....7:30pm....she is tired, and so am I, but we are both smiling a lot. We are on the road, at last!!!!

Tomorrow morning Mike Sylvester, The RV Guy, a certified installer for A.M. Solar, will begin the installation of our 300 watt solar charging system tomorrow morning. With any luck we will leave late Wednesday, or Thursday morning to head southeast. Lots of pictures tomorrow both of the park we are in, and the installation of the panels.

Good night for now, and thank you so much for stopping by and reading!

January 30th

2012-01-24T07:01:00.000-08:00

The replacement BIG air filter

No, the title of this post is not today's date....you haven't misplaced 6 days overnight. January 30th is the day we crank up the Detroit Diesel 6V92 power plant and begin our trip south, and yet to be told adventures.

We are busy tying up all the lose ends. I spent most of yesterday at my office "taking down" everything. Putting files into storage, removing pictures from picture frames so they can be scanned using our recently acquired Docuscan, which, by the way, is a wonderful piece of technology! Thank you Nick Russell for recommending it!

In preparation for my visit to my mechanic early on the 30th I removed the 3 year old air cleaner for my Detroit Diesel so I could order a replacement. Man, that thing is big! 3 years ago, when I was still quite naive, I paid $348 for the one I just removed. With a little help from a fellow Newell owner I found a source online where I could get the same one for $122.50 shipped (NO shipping charge). I got it via FedEx yesterday and it is, thankfully, identical to the old one, so I will be rolling up my sleeves and installing it later on today.

On Monday my mechanic will drain out the old Shell Rotella 40wt Heavy Duty motoroil (takes 3, or 4 gallons), change the oil and fuel filters, and recharge my A/C. Sometime early that afternoon we will head south to Temecula where we will have our A.M. Solar panel kit installed by an authorized representative starting on the afternoon of the 31st. He should be finished by Noon of February 1st....we will sit for an additional 24 hours while the sealant cures, and then on the 22nd we will go back north to I-10 and head southeast into Texas over the next few weeks. We'll stop off over night in Indio to visit a very good friend, and then in Mesa to have a new fridge installed, which has been donated by a good Newell friend, and then off we go into the wild blue yonder.....OK, I guess that's a mixed metaphor! We'll be flying low along I-10 for a week, or so.

So, things are heating up in my neighborhood. As of today I have 5 high school soccer matches left on my schedule, and then I will become an officially retired soccer official.

Thank you for stopping by and reading!

21 Days.......

2012-01-10T17:40:00.001-08:00

It's been 17 days since I last posted......I have watched lot of College bowl games in the last 17 days. Amazingly the worst game I watched was last night's BCS National Championship game between Alabama and LSU. But, the most important thing is we are just 21 short days away from departure day! We are doing our final sifting and sorting, and deciding where everything will be stowed. Amazingly everything we really want with us will fit with room to spare. A month ago I was not optimistic.......even a little! Fortunately, my wife has very exceptional spacial skills. When we would take driving trips it was always her job to fit everything in the trunk, and she always did!

My brother and his family are coming in their trailer this weekend to see us off, and the next weekend my kids are coming to the park. The park staff is holding a going away party this Friday evening for us and another couple who have finished our tour of duty.

The high school soccer season is winding down. Of the 46 games I was assigned, only 13 remain. The time, she is a flyin' by!

One of the things Elaine is hoping to finish before we hit the road is to finish scanning all of our pre-digital camera family pictures. To speed this job up we bought a Docuscan. A blog we follow, Nick's Blog, recommended this device to those of us living the RV life style. I can say without reservation that his recommendation was a wonderful one. Thank you Nick! There is a very short learning curve, and is very easy to use. It comes with a 1 gb SID card. The cost is around $99.

The weather here in Rancho Jurupa Regional Park has been clear. For the first week of 2012 it was in the 80's. It has settled back down to the low to mid 70's each day. We haven't had rain in about 6-7 weeks, so it has really been a dry fall and early winter. One thing we have had way too much of is Santana winds. I can't remember the last time we had an onshore breeze. It's been offshore for about 2 months now......not the norm for sure.

Well, that brings us up to date. Thank you for stopping by and reading!

Christmas Eve - 2011

2011-12-24T06:16:00.000-08:00

Just a few sunrises left until our view changes!

Wow! Did December go fast, or what? Come on now, we just had Thanksgiving dinner a few days ago.....it seems. It's funny to think that I've spent the past few years trying to slow time down, unsuccessfully, I might add. For the first time in years I've been happy to let go of the coat tails of Father Time, and let him have his way for change. This past 11 months have flown by. I remember first broaching the subject of us moving into the Newell, and leasing the house to the kids in mid August of 2010. While our goal was to do just that, but in another year, Elaine was a little hesitant at first mention of my big idea. Like most people we know, the recession that started in 2008 put a serious strain on our finances. I wanted to salt away some more money for retirement, and there just wasn't enough to go around. I saw this as a chance to put a serious dent in cutting our living expenses, and direct a little more into savings.

I'm glad we had started to divest ourselves of a lot of the "stuff" that had overtaken our lives the past 25 years back in January of 2010. We had a couple of yard sales and really cleared out the garage, and closets of "stuff" that wasn't being used, and was just takin' up space, and donated what was left over to Disabled Vets. By that August a lot of the hard work had been done, so I just presented the plan, and then left her alone for about a month. Eventually she came to me and said she liked the idea and was ready to execute it! What a great wife, and partner! I then let the kids know our plans, and they loved the idea of having the house to themselves.

OK, that part was easy, but Elaine wasn't going to retire until September of 2011, so where would we live until then? Our initial plan had been to bounce back and forth between a couple of local county parks (Prado and Rancho Jurupa) every two weeks....each park has a 14 day maximum stay per 28 day period. That would have cost us around $750 a month......not bad compared to our mortgage payment. Then I had the idea of applying for a camp host position at one of them so we could just put down temporary roots, and stay in one place for FREE. Easier said than done.....I found out that the local parks had waiting lists, and turnover in camp hosts was low. Well, I put in one application at Rancho Jurupa just after New Year's 2011 thinking we should have done that a year before, but as they say "nothing ventured, nothing gained". Within 10 days we got a call from the resident ranger who asked us to drop by for a face to face interview. When we arrived she walked us over to the new "cabins" they had just put in (really what I would call "park models") and asked us if we would be interested in taking care of the cabins as our camp host job. Originally the County was going to hire someone to do that job, but due to budget constraints they decided to use volunteer labor. We, of course, said "YES!", and the rest is history...by February 1, 2011 we had become FULLTIMERS! Neither of us has, for one minute, regretted our decision, and, in fact, we love our new life......of course you knew that, right?

So, here we are just a few weeks from continuing our FULLTIMING life, but now on the road. Tomorrow we will drive up to our oldest son's home in Rancho Cucamonga to exchange Christmas presents with his family, and our other children and their significant others. Tomorrow evening we will go to our traditional Christmas movie, which, this year, will be the new Sherlock Holmes movie. We started this tradition a number of years ago when the first "Lord of the Rings" movie came out.

We took a nice bike ride on Wednesday to run a few errands.....it's great when you have a wide open schedule....you can just dawdle around from one place to the next with no time constraints, other than sundown.....lol! One errand was to stop at Staples so I could get the 2012 calendar insert for my DayRunner, and then off to Target to get a video game for our grandson's XBox Kinnect, and then to Von's to pick up some filet's to grill that night. On our way back we stopped in at a local coffee shop we had not been in yet called "Back to the Grind".....kind of a cool place.....and then back home.....probably only about 15 miles round trip, but we took 3 hours to do it....what a very nice afternoon!

I have really been enjoying my new Kindle......I've read 12 books on it since I got it, a couple of months ago, and have 3 stacked up in the home page to read. Later today Elaine and I will spend some time in the trailer deciding what goes with us on February 1st, and what stays in the office warehouse, and what gets tossed.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all! Thank you for reading!

December 17, 2011

2011-12-18T07:40:00.000-08:00

The title of this new post has no particular significance other than to say that we can now see February 1st just rising above the distant horizon.....we are no longer counting months, but weeks now....less than 6 weeks until we pull anchor.....soon it will become days that are counted, and we will begin to feel the pressure of wrapping up all the loose ends as we finish our preparations for life on the road.

One of those loose ends is the installation of a solar charging system on the roof of our "home". We have chosen AM Solar to complete that task. They come very highly recommended, and we have been impressed with their communication so far. One of their authorized mobile technicians will be stopping by our location on December 19th to do a pre-installation inspection, and then on Fedruary 1st we will journey down to an Escapees park (Jojoba Hills) near Temecula, CA to have the installation completed.

On the home front I just finished my last soccer matches of the Fall Club season last weekend....seems like it was just September 12th (opening day) a few short weeks ago. I just finished the 3rd week of High School soccer and have done around 21 matches to date, with about 24 to go. My last High School match is January 31st, and that date will mark the end of an era for me. I did my first youth soccer match in the fall of 1984. Hard to believe 27 years has passed so quickly. I will truly miss the exhilaration of running up and down the soccer pitch, as well as the camaraderie of my fellow referees. Many players whom I coached, and whose matches I officiated over the years are now grown, and now I officiate their children's matches. That is a lot of water under the proverbial bridge.

In addition to that we will soon bid farewell to our home of the past year (Rancho Jurupa Regional Park), and most poignant of all, we will be saying goodbye to the many friends we have made here. I really do not like saying "goodbye". The resident ranger has agreed to keep us on the approved host list, so we can return. Frankly, if I had to pick a place to spend a few years at this would be my choice. All other future camp host jobs will be compared to this experience. I have read a number of work camping horror stories, so I know it is not all "peaches and cream" out there, however, our experience here has been nothing short of amazing.

The weather the past two weeks has alternated between severe Santana winds, below freezing temps several times, and major rainfall....it is now raining again as I write.....just 24 hours ago we were being buffeted by 40 mph winds.

Well, that's the update. Stay tuned for more posting as we edge toward our road trip. Thanks for stopping by!

Why am I so thankful?

2011-11-24T06:43:00.000-08:00

Tim and Sharon about 13 years ago...

About 9 years ago we had no RV of any kind. We did, however, own a 26' Columbia Sailboat we kept in the water near Belmont Shores, CA. We became the owners of that vessel in 1992 quite by accident. A long time friend of ours, who lived aboard his 38' Scandia double ender sailboat in the Long Beach Downtown Marina at the time, called one day to tell us there was this sailboat for sale for $800, and that if I didn't buy it I was stupid. Well......no one likes an intelligence challenge more than I. Anyway, the long and short of it is we drove down to see the boat, and bought it on the spot. It was an amazing deal. The economy at that time was in the tank, and the market for boats of any kind was also in the tank. The fellow who owned that sailboat had health issues, and needed to sell it as he was moving to Colorado, and had run out of time. The lease on his slip had run out, and the boat was moored on an "end tie" on a day to day rental. In just a few more days he would be forced to donate it to the Sea Scouts to be scrapped. We were in the right place at the right time. It was well equipped, and presented an opportunity to us to expand our horizons. We had visions of our children really getting into sailing with us....trips to Catalina Island, and eventually the other Channel Islands danced around in our heads. The kids never really got into sailing, however, we did make numerous trips to Catalina Island with and without our kids over the 10+ years we owned the Columbia, however, we mostly did "dock" sailing. We would drive down on a Saturday afternoon every few weeks, spend the night on the sailboat, and drive back the next afternoon. Elaine and I used it as a getaway place where we could spend 24 hours every few weeks by ourselves (we had 5 children living at home at the time).

1973 Columbia 26'

In 1992 our oldest son had purchased his first RV...a Fleetwood Gear Box trailer. I would hear stories each Monday I came into the office of their adventures with their in-laws that weekend camping at Glamis, Dumont Dunes, El Mirage (a dry lake in the upper desert not to far from where we are now). Eventually my daughter-in-law came to me one day saying her mother and father were selling their Fleetwood Tioga Class C motorhome and were we interested? We had been talking about selling the Columbia and buying a trailer so we could spend more time with our son and grandkids, so it didn't take us long to sell the sailboat, and buy the 1987 Class C motorhome!

Our first trip with my son and his in-laws was to Lake Tahoe. I had been going to Lake Tahoe since the early '50's with my parents, and every other summer with my wife since we were married....we, in fact, spent our honeymoon at Lake Tahoe. Well, after 10 days on the road in that Class C were were hooked on the life style, and even began to talk about living full time in an RV when we retired. Over the next 4 years we put around 15,000 miles on that Class C mostly in the western half of the USA, and fell more and more in love with the lifestyle.

After returning from our longest trip yet (over 3 weeks) to Yosemite, Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Lakes (in the Eastern Sierra) we came to the conclusion that if we were serious about fulltiming we were going to need a bigger motorhome. About that same time, my son, who had progressed from the 30' Gear Box to a 42' Road Warrior 5th wheel, and then to a 38' Fleetwood Class A diesel pusher (with 4 slides) suggested that we look at something like he had. Well, the one thing we knew for sure was that we did not want a loan payment, and if we went that route we would have to finance....I think his cost around $100,000. We decided we would try and find something around 10 years old that we could afford to purchase free and clear.

The time was late 2007, and I spent a few hours a week cruising the RV for sale sites looking at used rigs. We had decided we didn't want slides...one more thing to break. We were looking for a "low tech" coach that had systems I could work on myself. In early 2008 we went to the big RV show at the Pomona Fairplex and spent the better part of a weekend going from RV to RV. Nothing really struck my fancy....they all looked the same inside, no matter the manufacturer. The benefit of spending those two days looking at new coaches is that it helped us narrow down what we were looking for, and from which manufacturers. The key was to find something durable, well made, in good condition, in our price range. We found a number of coaches that interested us (Safari's, Monaco's, Rexhaul's, etc.), but the rigs in our price range, between 5 and 10 years old were just threadbare, and in most cases needed to have the carpet replaced, upholstery redone, wood floors refinished, had prior water damage, etc.

Then, in late February I was cruising Craigslist....just typed in diesel pusher in the search window.....one of the first items that popped up that day was a 1982 Newell. The picture in the ad looked like a bus conversion. I had never heard of Newell, but I showed the picture to Elaine. The coach was listed as being in the Thousand Palms area near Palm Springs. Well, as luck would have it we were going to Indio (also near Palm Springs) for a wedding that very weekend, so she says "Why don't you contact the people and see if we can take a look at it while we are down there". What could it hurt? We were going to be there anyway, so I e-mailed the person suggesting a rendezvouz that weekend, and within just a few minutes I received a call from Fred, and older gentleman. We set the time and made our plans. We were planning to drive our Class C down to Lake Cahuilla and camp that weekend while attending the wedding and reception. We drove down Friday afternoon (Elaine following in the T-Bird), and met with Fred the next morning at the storage facility where the Newell was kept. We walked up to the coach, and knocked on the door. Fred greeted us and invited us in....Elaine entered first, and before I got to the top of the stairs, following her, she had already fallen in love......with the Newell. I kid you not! In her mind it was already ours. I'm thinking, "What on earth! This thing is 26 years old, and I've never heard of a Newell before! Are they even in business anymore? What the hell is a 2 stroke Detroit Diesel?".....I'm seeing visions of a money pit.....but Elaine has already moved beyond that, and now I'm playing catchup. My good friend, whose wedding we were attending, told me he knew about Newells, and that they were still in business, and they were very well built. Fred gave me a 2 hour tour of every basement area of the coach, and every system inside and out. The coach was in immaculate condition, and we found out later, had been stored inside a warehouse for 22 of its 26 years of life. He invited us back on Sunday to look at it a second time...that afternoon, and evening after the wedding, I spent several hours on the computer reading about Newell, and Detroit Diesel 2 strokes, etc. By the next afternoon when we returned to visit Fred it was just a matter of discussing the details of the purchase. The price was right, and by March 1st she was ours.

Original Craigslist picture of our 1982 Newell

We love serendipity, and that moment in time when I stumbled across the Craigslist ad so smacked of serendipity, and the subsequent days as everything fell into place, were truly serendipitous! We have never looked back, and now, coming up on our 4th anniversary of being Newell owners, we are so THANKFUL we again were in the right place at the right time back in February of 2008! We had planned on our next RV being a transitional one, but, instead, found our future home. We can't imagine owning another RV.

So, now you know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey often said in his weekly broadcast. On this day of National Thanksgiving we have much to be thankful for.....our children, grandchildren, health, retirement, and yet untold adventures to come.

Thank you for stopping by, and may God Bless each of you on this special day!

The week in review.....

2011-11-12T10:00:00.000-08:00

We returned to our home park last Friday to rain, so we had to set back up in the rain, just as we "took down" in the rain up in Ventura. Of course, it didn't rain most of the 2.5 hour drive home, but it rained on each end.

Saturday I had 4 soccer matches at the San Bernardino Soccer Complex in Highland, CA. The weather was cool...for a change, and the day was uneventful. Sunday was a different matter....I had 4 matches scheduled at U.C. Irvine (Irvine, CA), and the weather forecast told of rain starting that morning and lasting most of the day. My first match was at 7:30am, which means I had to leave Riverside around 6am in order to be there 45 minutes before match time. The match got underway to threatening skies, but it was NOT raining yet. We managed to get in 70 minutes of an 80 minute match before it started drizzling, then raining.....that was my match as center referee. The remaining 3 matches I would be an assistant referee. The second match began at 9:15am, and within 20 minutes my sideline was a 50 yard mud path. By the end of that game (a 90 minute match) I was muddy from the knees down, and my shoes resembled large mud clods than shoes. My next match was not until 1:15pm so I decided to take my wet stuff back to the parking structure, and my car, to change into some dryer clothes, and shoes, and steel myself for the next game, and more mud. While I was at the car I got a phone call from the center referee assigned to the 11:15am match saying the replacement assistant referee had not arrived, and would I come back and take his place until he arrived? OK, fine.....I walked back to the field munching on a half sandwich, and arrived a few minutes after game time. The missing referee arrived at half time and graciously offered me half the game fee for filling in for him, which I gladly accepted. It was then I found out this was the last game of the day.....the organizers had decided to cancel the rest of the games that Sunday as the fields were in horrible condition after 3 hours of heavy rain.....so I got to go home 4 hours early!

The rest of the week saw Elaine and I reorganizing some of our basement storage areas in the coach. We had discovered on our trip to Ventura that some things we use when dry camping were left in the trailer, and there were many things that we rarely use. So, we spent the better part of the day pulling things out of several of the storage areas to be sure only the things we need for short trips are there. Amazingly, we have a lot of room left. Somethings went up to my office warehouse where they will remain until we depart. One of the storage areas had room for a shelf, and so we installed a shelf thereby increasing it's capacity by almost twice....very nice! Pictures to follow.

Right rear storage (just behind drive wheels)

On Tuesday and Wednesday I applied a wood sealer to the plywood pedestal the new toilet sits on to better protect the wood in the event of another leak. Then Elaine created a paper pattern of the platform which we used to modify the carpet piece we had purchased to fit around the toilet base. Instead of stapling the new carpet in we decided to use stainless steel screws with beveled washers so, in the event of a future water leak, we could simply unscrew the carpet and easily remove it, instead of removing 84 staples....lol! In addition we had to replace the quarter round molding that had been damaged by the water leak. It turned out way better than I had imagined.

We are now working on how to transport our two Terra Tadpole Trikes, and my mountain bike. We already have the tandem and two road bikes figured out, and now I think we've figured out the final three "bikes"....I know, I know.....who needs that many bikes? At any rate, once I get the necessary hardware I will share with you have we have solved that mystery. For those of you who wonder what a Terra Trike is, here is a picture taken at the top of Towne Pass (between Death Valley and Panamint Springs) on a 465 mile trip I took with a friend a few years ago. The one in front is mine (with a trailer). Elaine's is the same. We call them "rolling lawnchairs". We rode from Furnace Creek (272' below sea level) to the top of Towne Pass (4,956' above sea level) on one leg of this 9 day trip.

Anyway, that's what's new in our neighborhood. Thanks for stopping by!

Rincon Part II

2011-11-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

Sunset Wednesday

We went to bed Wednesday grateful there had been no Santa Ana winds as had been predicted, BUT at 1:30am on Thursday we were awakened by strong winclds grabbing at the still deployed awning....well, that's not good. I woke Elaine (taking down the ZipDee awning is a two person job, especially in the wind!) telling her we needed to get the awning down quick. We threw on some clothes and jumped outside to save our awning. It was amazingly warm for 1:30 in the morning. It took us 3 minutes to put the awning down and put away anything that might blow away, and went back inside. I hate waking up like that...with a little adreniline burst, because I know it will take me time to go back to sleep. I think I fell asleep again around 2:30am, and woke up to bright sunshine around 8:30am....that is late for me!

Elaine enjoying the view on Wednesday afternoon.

The sky was crystal clear Thursday morning, and, thankfully, the wind had died down. The Channel Islands were clearly etched against the morning sky. After a quick breakfast we put on our bike clothes for our annual ride up the Ventura River bike trail to Ojai, CA. Ojai sits at about 750' above sea level, so the ride from Rincon (sea level) was mostly uphill. The round trip ride from space #119 on Rincon Parkway to Ojai and back was 36 miles. The the weather was perfect riding at 65 degrees. We left the coach around 10am, and arrived in Ojai around 11:30am. It was getting on time for lunch so we stopped at a Starbucks and ordered a couple of the hot Pannini sandwiches. After a nice lunch we began the downhill run back to Rincon.

Feeling mellow after the 36 mile bike ride........

We arrived back at the Newell around 2pm, took showers, and headed outside to sit in the lounge chairs. Since we hadn't had a fire Wednesday night we had a lot of wood left for this night. We started up the fire around 4pm, and sat there watching the evening overtake the day as the stars began to twinkle, and the lights of the distant oil platforms became visible. What a great way to end our stay on Rincon. Of course there was a bottle of wine involved, and some Frank Sinatra on Sirriusly Sinatra (XM/Sirrius) channel 71. Since rain was predicted for today, Friday, the clouds were rolling in big time. After dinner we put almost everything away, because we did not want to be loading up in the rain.

Cloud cover getting heavy...

First thing Friday morning it was still partly cloudy, but no rain, so, in order to speed up the rain I went outside to wash off the windshield...lol! Within 10 minutes it started to rain....works every time!

We departed Rincon as the intensity of the rain increased, and headed south on HWY 101 to HWY 126 which takes us through the Santa Paula Valley to I-5, and home. The rain quit as we hit Santa Paula, and it remained dry all the way home. We had barely backed the Newell into site 216 (our permanent site) when it started raining again. The rain continued the rest of the afternoon until around 4pm. Well, we avoided packing up in the rain, but got to unpack in the rain, so our day was complete. The temperature when we arrived "home" was in the low 50's.

Well, that's the rest of the story....thanks for stopping by!

Buena Ventura

2011-11-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

On Monday we only had two cabins to clean so we hit them early, and were finished by 9:15am. Right after that Integrity Mobile Detail arrived to do the monthly wash and detail on our coach....I like to hit the road in a clean coach. Hitting the road means hitting the road north for Rincon Parkway north of Ventura.

The last time we drove the Newell up to Ventura was last February....almost 9 months! Every time we are here I tell Elaine, "Why don't we come here every month?". The weather in November is always nice, and there are no crowds with which we must compete for a parking spot on the "Parkway". There are 127 50' spots end to end on the Parkway. Rincon Parkway stretches about 5 miles from the Sea Cliff exit on the north to the State Beaches exit on the south. It is what is left of the old Highway 1 in this area, which was replaced years ago by Highway 101. The County of Ventura has converted 1 mile of the Parkway to dry camping to the 127 dry camping spots. At either end of this section of the Parkway are two County Parks....Hobson on the north, and Faria on the south. Each of these parks offer a dozen, or so full hookup spots including cable TV. Most the spots in these two parks are just a dozen feet from the surf at high tide.

We were able to depart Rancho Jurupa around 1pm.....after a 30 minute stop over at my office to drop off my grandson's BMX bike, which he left behind after his stay with us over the weekend, we entered the 210 FWY and headed west to I-5, and then north a short way to Highway 126, and then west about 30 miles to Ventura and Highway 101. We arrived on Rincon Parkway just after 4:30pm pulling into #119 on the southern end of the dry camping sites. There were probably 2 dozen RV's here when we arrived, and just a few more today (Wednesday). There are 8 empty sites to the south of us, and 2 empty ones north of us, so we are by ourselves.

The first night (Monday) there was a very heavy marine layer to the point of a heavy mist falling. We grilled a couple of filets for dinner and sat by the fire for a while...there wasn't much to see because of the heavy marine layer and fog, but it is one of the things I love about Ventura. The sound of the ocean drowns out any other sounds.

Tuesday morning it was still overcast, but not foggy. I had some insurance work to do, but by 11am we decided it was time for a bike ride. Our destination was downtown Ventura where we always visit Anacapa Brewing Company on Main Street. It is a great, local micro brewery. One of their signature appetizers is sweet potato fries with a honey mustard dip. The ride from #119 is just over 7 miles to ABC, and we arrived there after a 30 minute bike ride. We quickly ordered a plate of the fries, and two Porters. What a nice al fresco afternoon spent sipping Porter and munching Sweet Potato fries.

Sweet Potato Fries!

On the wall at ABC

We arrived back at site #119 around 3pm and sat in our recliners watching dolphins swim up and down the beach for the rest of the afternoon. Since we had a big lunch we decided to roast some artichokes Elaine had steamed earlier that morning. So, we sat there watching the sun dip lower in the sky sipping wine, and eating artichokes. What a great end to a great day!

A little Zin' to wind down the day....

Today, Wednesday, the forecast called for Santa Ana winds, so we decided to stay close to camp....neither of us likes riding bikes in the wind. As it turned out there was NO wind all day, but it was balmy and crystal clear, which is what you would expect with a Santa Ana condition. The day was spent sitting in our lounge chairs reading, watching dolphins again, and two long walks on the beach, and a long nap. Elaine had been marinating chicken all day, and soaking sweet corn in a salt brine, so around 5pm I lit the BBQ and cooked the chicken and corn. We watched the sun sink below the horizon once again and sat until well after dark just watching the colors change, the stars and moon come out, and listening to the soporific sound of the never ending waves.

We'll be here two more days, and head back to Rancho Jurupa on Friday afternoon. Tomorrow we're thinking of riding up the Ventura River bike path to Ojai for lunch.

That's it for today....thank you for stopping by!

Dometic 310

2011-10-29T07:49:00.000-07:00

The new Dometic 310!

Our coach came to us in 2008 with a Thetford Aqua Magic pedal flush toilet which was a year, or two old. It has worked well these 3 1/2 years, but all plastic toilets just get harder and harder to clean with hard water deposits, staining, etc. Plus plastic tends to hold odors. So, when our Newell friend, Steve Ward, who also has a 1982 Newell, decided to replace his Thetford with a Dometic 310, which has a PORCELAIN bowl we decided to check his out. Elaine loved the look of it much more, and the porcelain bowl sold her. These toilets run around $125-141 on sale. We got our for $141 including shipping. I ordered it on Wednesday, and it was at my office the next morning....WOW!!!

My friend's motivation for replacing the toilet was that his seals were shot, and the bowl would no longer hold water. Our motivation was just to improve our toilet....we thought. It seems Mr. Murphy was peekin' over my shoulder, but this time he didn't have the last laugh!

Since we are rolling the coach up to Ventura on Monday I decided Friday (yesterday) was the day to do this "1 hour" job. Our toilet sits on a 1.5 inch plywood platform (1.5" above the bathroom floor grade), and when we had the carpeting replaced with wood flooring 3 years ago we decided to leave the carpeting on the platform as it would have been a pain to remove the toilet and then put it back in again. Nevertheless, Elaine really did not like that carpeting, so we decided that when we removed the Thetford we would replace the carpeting at the same time. So, while I removed the toilet and the old carpeting she went to Lowe's and Home Depot in search of a suitable carpet remnant. The theory was that by the time she returned I would have the old toilet out and the carpet removed, and everything prepared for the new carpet and toilet.
It took me about 10 minutes to remove the toilet....that was the easy part. What I was greeted with made my heart skip a beat....just a beat. The carpet behind the toilet was saturated with water. Visions of major wood removal taunted me as I pulled out the 82 staples holding a 2' square piece of carpeting in place (why do they use so many staples?). It turned out the entire piece was damp due to a leak in the water supply line to the toilet. I'm sitting there looking at wet wood and thinking I'll have to remove it all, but how the hell am I going to remove that flange without damaging it? Is it screwed on to the stand pipe, or glued......well, it's been 29 years since it was all installed, so even if it is threaded, how will I get it loose without damaging everything? It's starting to look like a 1 week job, not a 1 hour job.

Before I caused any damage I decided to call Steve.....we have basically the same setup. He didn't know if the flange was glued, or threaded, and said I might have to cut it off....NO!! Then he asked about the condition of the wood....was there any visible rot? Were there any soft spots in the wood? Is there any warping? I replied that the wood was just wet, but looked fine. Good, he says, that means the leak is pretty recent. Just put a ceramic heater in the bathroom, and close the door for a few hours and see if the wood dries out, so I did. Within a couple of hours the wood was dry, and there were still no soft spots. It's obvious that this plywood must be marine grade, as regular plywood would begin to warp and delaminate pretty quickly.

Anyway, we decided to postpone the installation of the carpet allowing the wood to finish drying completely, and just install the toilet. When we get back from Ventura we'll install the carpet around the installed toilet.

Just after we bought the Newell

With the wood floor installed

Bare wood raised platform

Since today is Saturday it must mean I have soccer matches that need attention. Today I have a "late" start....11:45am down at U.C. Irvine at the Premier league. Three Boys U-17 matches with my center being the last game of the day. Tomorrow it's back to my schedule from last Sunday....5 League Cup matches starting at 8am, with two centers. I'll be gone all day, and will be very tired Sunday evening.

Here is the view I am greeted with most every day (that it's sunny), and here is what the park looks like when it is pretty full. Surprising how many families camp on Holloween!!! There are a lot of creative Holloween displays here in the park this weekend!

Looking out salon window

Lookin' west

Lookin' east

Have a great week, and thank you for reading!

Indian Summer

2011-10-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

Monday through Friday last week we had a heavy marine layer, and fog on several of those days. Then, magically, as if a lever was pulled, we had summer on Saturday and Sunday....low 90's, and clear skies. Monday morning the "lever" was pulled again and we are back to heavy marine layer, and rain! The skies partially cleared by Noon yesterday, but then mid afternoon we had 20 minutes of heavy rain, and then the sun came out again. Last night it rained again, and we have awoken to a heavy, heavy marine layer. Ironically, this next weekend the forecast calls for "summer" again. The weather is flippin' and floppin' just like a politician.

Enough with the weather talk, but as you will see, the weather is woven through our activities the past 8 days. Last Friday we got a call from Kool Filtration regarding the need to do our annual servicing of our reverse osmosis (RO) water purification system at our house. He said he could meet us around 1:30pm, so we decided we would ride our tandem the 13 miles (26 round trip) over to the house to meet Ruben, and then ride back after he finished. It was a perfect day for riding....very overcast, and temperatures in the high 60's. We took Crestmore over to Riverview and then up to Mission Blvd. which would take us all the way to Ontario. We arrived just after 1:30pm and Ruben arrived a few minutes later. He was done within 20 minutes, I wrote the check for the service, made arrangements for Ruben to come to our coach in January just prior to our departure and service our RO system in the coach, and then jumped on the tandem for "home". We decided to take a different route home....who likes to see the same scenery? We headed east on Riverside Dr. to Etiwanda where we turned south to Belgrave, and then east again to Van Buren, and then south again to Limonite where we angled eastward back to Riverview and then Crestmore and home. On the way we spied a Carl's Junior where we decided to have an early dinner, and use some coupons out of our Carl's Jr. coupon book our daughter gave us a few months ago. Those suckers are only good until December 31st, so we need to start using them. We finally arrived home around 4pm. Our cyclocomputer showed that we average 13.8 miles per hour and that our riding time was just under 2 hours round trip!

Saturday I was scheduled for 5 soccer matches...3 as assistant referee, and 2 as center. Sunday's schedule was the same....so 10 matches in two days in temperatures in the low 90's and NO BREEZE! With no breeze it seemed like 100! The site was the San Bernardino Soccer Complex located in Highland.....about 20 minutes from Rancho Jurupa. I was on fumes by Sunday at 5pm, but had a large wad of 20's, 10's, 5's and dollar bills to show for it, and another $500 went into the fuel fund! On top of that I got some good exercise, and my legs are feeling much better after a few weeks of soccer.

Elaine and I have been riding our bikes 5 days a week consistently since we got back from Spokane. We have this 8 mile loop we do most days, with a longer ride like last Friday's mixed in for variety. We've both dropped about 5 pounds!

We had 6 cabins rented this last weekend so after our bike ride yesterday we went and pulled the soiled linens, and cleaned two cabins. We'll clean 2 more today, and the final two on Wednesday. So far only 2 are rented for next weekend. We'll get those cleaned along with any last minute rentals Sunday afternoon, and Monday morning. Monday afternoon we will pull anchor and head up to Rincon Parkway, north of Ventura, for 4 days! Will be great to roll the tires....we haven't left the park since we filled up with propane in early August. Looking forward to hearing the sound of the surf just 20, or 30 feet from our coach at night, watching the sun set over a campfire, and doing some great bike riding.

On Rincon Parkway a couple of years ago.

As I am writing it has started raining again.....well, more like a drizzle. Looks like our daily bike ride may occur later in the day. Oh well, now that Elaine is retired it doesn't really matter. As long as it's not 100 degrees outside, or raining we can ride at our leisure!

Elaine is really enjoying her iPad. She's reading books on it, taking care of e-mail, surfing the "net".

That brings you up to date....thanks for reading!!

Is this May, or October?

2011-10-20T07:58:00.001-07:00

You wouldn't know there was a mountain there....

The weather pattern around here is reminding me more of May/June gloom, than clear, dry Fall weather that normally prevails this time of year! Once again we are socked in with a very heavy, deep marine layer that will hang around until early afternoon again according to weather.com. Don't get me wrong.....I love cool, partly cloudy weather, and I certainly prefer that to hot, mind numbing heat. Having lived in Southern California since my birth in 1949 I've had my fill of sunny, hot weather over the years......after all that's what you get when you live in desert environment, which, essentially, is what Southern California is. I am beginning to chomp at the bit to start turning the wheels of our home down the road seeking new horizons, and chasing short pants/t-shirt weather. When I am refereeing a soccer match that is pretty much on "autopilot" (by that I mean managing itself, requiring very little interference on my part), as I was last night, my mind starts to drift to the time when I will no longer just be dreaming of our life on the road, the hum of the tires as they drive us toward that horizon presenting new vistas, new adventures, new friends, and, yes, new challenges. I am ready! Bring it on!

Here is what our park looks like on a Thursday....wait until tomorrow afternoon!

We are currently researching our options for changing our domicile to another state. There are so many things to consider. The Escapees website seems to have a lot of good information on how to make that decision. We don't have to make a decision right away, but within the next few months we need to decide.

This weekend will be a busy soccer weekend for me. In addition to the normal Coast Soccer League games my referee association handles we will also be covering a lot of fields for League Cup, which is in its 3rd week. Just this weekend our association will cover 500 matches. My share is 5 matches on Saturday, and 5 on Sunday, with 4 of those being as the center referee. It will also be a good "payday" for me.....almost $500 in cash, which will go into our diesel fuel fund. Many of the large truck stops, and gas stations offer 15-20 cents discount for cash. That can save us over $30 on each 180 gallons. By the end of December we should have enough saved to pay for 2 years of fuel for the coach!

We had been planning on pulling up anchor and setting sail for new horizons on January 2nd, but now we have pushed that back a few weeks to January 31st. The lease on our home comes up on the 31st, so we need to be here to be sure every gets "signed, sealed and delivered". In addition it will allow me to do another 4 weeks of Coast Soccer League, and High School Soccer. The money from those 4 weeks will more than pay to install a solar recharging system on the roof of our coach. Being able to dry camp, and boondock is an important part of our plan. The more we can avoid having to "hookup" the lower our operating expenses will be.

So, that is where we are at, and where we are heading. Thanks for reading!

Who saw this coming?

2011-10-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

"FOGGY BOTTOM"

Where is Mt. Rubidoux???

Woke up this morning to as heavy a fog as I have seen in years. Could not see Mt. Rubidoux, or any of the other hills surrounding the park. Could barely see the cabins. When I checked weather.com and saw that the fog would "hang" around until almost 1p I knew we weren't going to get our early morning bike ride in today. We decided to clean the last 3 cabins first thing, and hope the fog lifted enough by 11am to take our ride. That plan worked out perfectly, and we were able to start our ride about 11:30am.

So far, there are only 3 cabins being rented this weekend, so Monday will be an easy day for cleaning them. The next weekend only 2 are rented, which will make it easy for us to get on the road Monday, 10/31, up to Ventura. As we suspected, the rental rate has begun to decrease as we get further into the Fall season, and temperatures cool.

Today, Wednesday, is also "mow" day....this is the day each week when the county mows and edges the grass in Cottonwood, where we are staying. It takes 5 people all day to manicure the grass just to give you an idea of how much grass there is. It is one of my weekly pleasures to watch someone else mow the lawn, and it doesn't cost me a dime!

Heading out in about an hour to referee an adult soccer league I do once a month.

The park is pretty empty right now.....a few "snow" birds, and a few campers who move from local park to local park living in their RV's....a symptom of our economy. They range from young families with small children trying to make ends meet, to groups of 2, or 3 adults who have banded together to keep costs down. As I have said before, you are only allowed to camp here in Rancho Jurupa Regional Park 14 days out of every 30 days. Most of the County parks in the area, including Yucapia Regional Park, and Prado Regional Park have this same limitation.

Well, that's it for today. I am hoping to begin posting now on a more regular basis, so check back to see what we're doing tomorrow!

Thanks for reading!!

What's next?

2011-10-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

SPOKANE

Hangman Valley Road - my brother-in-law and the Lovely Elaine

On September 30th Elaine worked her last day for her employer of 20 years. We went out for an amazing Italian dinner at Mario's Place in Riverside to celebrate.

Returned from our trip to Spokane, WA.....a week of relaxation, many, many naps, hikes, bike rides, anniversary celebrations, a trip to Cabela's, and walking in the rain. Our Alaska Air flight from Ontario to Seattle left at 6:20am. Our second leg of the trip was aboard an Alaska/Horizon Air propjet into Spokane arriving just before Noon. It rained all the way from Seattle to Spokane, and as we deplaned from the propjet we got a little wet walking across the tarmac into the terminal. All in all it was a fast trip...less than 6 hours....of course we had to get up at 3am in order to be at our home (where we would leave our car for the week we would be gone) and meet the shuttle service that would deliver us to the airport. Since our plane left at 6:20am the latest Super Shuttle would pick us up was 4:20am. It's only 10 minutes from our house to the airport so we had a 2 hour wait....don't you just love sitting in airports waiting for flights?

The Spokane River

My sister and her family live in the hills on the southwest part of Spokane. Their home is about 10 minutes from downtown. The home has 3 levels, including a full basement that they had built out when they bought the home a few years ago. The basement is just under 2,000 square feet all by itself, and is divided into four areas......a family room with a large screen TV, a media room with theater seating, a guest bedroom (The Queen Suite) with its own full bath, and a large guest suite (The King Suite, of course!) with a kitchen, dining area, bedroom, bathroom, patio, and laundry.....that is where we stayed.

Our suite

The view to the south

We slept in until after 8am almost every day. Since we had our own coffee maker in our suite we didn't have to run upstairs for our morning dose of that wonderful elixir! We had a wonderful trip, and thoroughly enjoyed visiting with my sister and her family. We loved hearing the rain during the night, and taking walks in the gentle rain that fell 5 out of the 7 days we were there. We watched several movies with our hosts in their media room, and many college and NFL football games over the weekend. We did a 13 mile bike ride on the one clear day along Hangman Valley Road. What a great way to celebrate Elaine's retirement.

Just before we left for Spokane I bought Elaine an iPad, and a Kindle for myself on Ebay. Since she no longer has her company laptop she needed a computer. She decided what she wanted was an iPad. Both items were waiting on my desk when we returned from Spokane. Elaine is going through her learning curve on the iPad, but she loves it a lot! The first book I downloaded was "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway. Much to my shame I have never read any of his books. I became fascinated with him after seeing the recent Woody Allen movie "Midnight in Paris" on our Texas trip, and then on the trip home from Texas read a long article in the Southwest Airlines in flight magazine about his life and times.

The weather is decidedly cooler at night, and, although the temps are still in the 80's during the day it just feels like Autumn should feel. I'm doing soccer each weekend, and will be attending the High School soccer recertification class next week. This is my last Fall soccer season, and the High School season will be my last. I have bittersweet feelings about finishing my career as a soccer referee, but would rather go out this way than gradually finding myself assigned less and less competitive matches as I get slower and older. I'm still being sent to do CSL Premier games down at UC Irvine each weekend, and that's how I want to end.....on my terms, when I decide....still at the top.

Since Elaine retired we have been riding our bikes virtually every week day in the morning. We've developed an 8 mile loop that takes us across the Santa Ana River, over to Fairmont Park where we ride around the man made lake, down Market to Mission Inn Blvd. and home. The first time we did the loop it took us 46 minutes. Our last ride it took us 39 minutes!

Today while Elaine drove down to South Coast Plaza near Newport Beach to have lunch with an also retired work friend I spent time checking the coach over. First on the list was to pull each battery tray out, check water levels, and check the batteries for overall condition. The first battery I pulled out had a problem. The positive post is "pulling" out of the casing for some reason. Interstate Batteries will warranty the battery, so I just have to pull it out and take it in for exchange. Fortunately, the other 3 8d batteries checked out fine. But, that is the whole point of preventative maintenance....find the stuff that is failing and replace it before it breaks. I also checked the oil level, coolant level, etc. and that all checked out fine. Tomorrow I'll check the air pressure on all six tires.

We're planning on driving the coach up to Rincon Parkway just north of Ventura on Monday, October 31st where we will spend 5 days.

Well, that's it from Rancho Jurupa Regional Park. All is well as we drift ever closer to pulling up our anchor and heading out on the road. Thanks for reading!!

2011-09-22T07:47:00.001-07:00

What are we smiling about?

In just 8 days the Lovely Elaine (background) retires. She has worked for the same company for the past 21 years. I think the longest I worked for any single company since age 22 was 12 years, and I cannot really explain why I stayed there that long, BUT that is another long story...lol!

So, about 5 days after Elaine retires we are flying up to Spokane to spend a week with my sister, brother-in-law, and their two amazing daughters. Spokane is a great place to be in the Fall. We plan to do so bicycling, and just decompress a little, especially Elaine. I think it will take me a few weeks to get used to NOT hearing the names of familiar co-workers, or the many issues she dealt with over the past few years with her employer, and supervisors. So, to some degree, I am retiring too....from being a sounding board.....haha!

When we return from Spokane it will be just 2 1/2 months until we pull anchor and set sail for unknown territory. Our tentative plan (which has been evolving over the past 6 months, and continues to do so) is to get on Interstate 10 and head southwest eventually over a month, or so hitting the Gulf Coast around Corpus Christi, and then meandering eastward as the spirit moves us. How far east we will get this time around we don't know, and, "frankly Scarlett, we don't give a damn"! Wherever we are in May we will begin to head north by northwest to the great Pacific Northwest and spend the summer there visiting with friends, bicycling to our heart's content. In late August we will head down to Lake Tahoe to meet my brother and his family for a week, and then we're not sure. The NOT BEING SURE is really the cool part, because we don't have to be sure....maybe we'll head to Colorado for a few weeks of Autumn weather, maybe we'll head to Yellowstone after the summer crowds have gone. We will just make it up as we go, and isn't that the real reason we "all" aspire to this lifestyle? I've known where I'm going to be everyday for the past 41 years. As a soccer referee my life has been proscribed by the length of each match I do....90 minutes at a time, 80 minutes at a time, 70 minutes at a time, depending on the age group. I yearn for the days when I don't know what time of day it is exactly, and I may even forget what day of the week it is, when I don't have to be anywhere unless I choose to be there, when I can wake up one morning and decide it's time to move a 100 miles to a new view, and new adventures. I look forward to the day when I can chase the almost endless summer.....live in short pants, t-shirts and flipflops, stay up to 2am if I want, and sleep in if I want.

I have been gradually reducing my time in the office to a few hours a day, and 2, or 3 days a week, but that has been a psychological adjustment. I went through feelings of being a slacker, because I wasn't physically in the office, even though I was working from home. However, I am happy to report that I have gotten over those emotions and have adjusted to my new semi-retired, part time schedule. Through attrition I have been reducing the number of customers I will continue to service whilst on the road. Obviously, I haven't been adding new customers in quite some time, by design.

The weather here in Rancho Jurupa Regional Park has continued to be very moderate this summer. We've had a few days of triple digit temperatures here and there, but generally it has been in the high 80's and low 90's with low humidity. Autumn officially begins today so here's hoping we escape this year without an "Indian Summer". I remember years ago...maybe 10, we had a 4 day Indian Summer when temps hit 110 degrees on November 1st! Obviously, that is an extreme, but until we get into November there are no guarantees that it won't get really hot, if only for a few fleeting days. For today, anyway, there is a crisp feel to the early morning air.

Well, that catches you up to date on our fulltime life.....thank you for reading!

Living Life

2011-08-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

Not much to report since our July 4th post. Elaine is counting down until her official retirement on 9/30/2011...tomorrow it will be 6 weeks +, or 47 days to be exact! Monday through Friday we wear our workaday hats, and clean a few cabins on the side. On the weekends we have been doing a lot of bicycle riding. Three weekends ago we rode our single bikes from Angel Stadium in Anaheim down the SART (Santa Ana River Trail) to Newport Beach where we had brunch at Cucina Alessa, which is right on Pacific Coast Hwy just south of where the Santa Ana River Trail terminates at the ocean. The total round trip mileage was 26.

Two weekends ago we did a shorter 10 mile ride to a local Starbucks for breakfast.

One weekend ago I spent 2 days at Mammoth Mtn. riding in their mountain bike park doing about 54 miles of downhill riding over two days.

Mammoth Mountain Pictures

This weekend Elaine and I got out our recumbent tadpole trikes and headed up to the Pacific Electric Rails to Trails bike path in Rancho Cucamonga. Normally we start our ride at the eastern most trailhead in Rancho Cucamonga on East Ave. just above Baseline (a few hundred feet west of Interstate 15). When this rails to trails bike path is finished it will run from Rialto, CA all the way to Claremont Colleges in Claremont. This path follows the right of way for the old Pacific Electric railway, which, in its day, was one of the best mass transit systems in the Western U.S. There were literally hundreds of miles of track running all over Southern California on which the Electric Red Trolley Cars carried citizens at very little cost. When this amazingly efficient mass transit system was replaced by buses the right of way sat dormant for decades, and was, frankly, an eyesore. Now the cities of Claremont, Upland Rancho Cucamonga, and Fontana have joined together to repurpose this right of way providing a wonderful local resource for recreation for thousands. Our intent this day (Saturday, 8/13/2011) was to ride west to Vineyard where the trail temporarily ends as "they" construct a new bridge over Foothill Blvd. We did not realize that in the past few months Fontana and Rancho Cucamonga had connected their two sections under the I-15 freeway making the trail virtually complete now....just awaiting the one small section on the one short stretch over Foothill connecting the Rancho Cucamonga and Upland sections. As we were riding westbound an older gentleman (like we're not older, too....haha!) pulled up along side us as we pedaled and informed us that the Fontana section was now connected! After making our turn at the Vineyard closure we decided we would head all the way back into Fontana and see how far the trail went. The ride we had planned was about 13 miles round trip, but with the addition of the Fontana section we ended up riding 27 miles total. Below is a video of our ride.

The weather has been very moderate the past 5 weeks....maybe one day over 100, but mostly high 80's, low 90's with a lot of heavy overcast many mornings, aka: marine layer. The campground has been 90% full each weekend.

So, that't it from Rancho Jurupa Regional Park for now. Thanks for reading!

Happy 235th Birthday America!

2011-07-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

Mt. Rubidoux, July 4th, 2011

For me the 4th of July weekend is always the real beginning of summer and the attendant heat in Southern California. We have this annual ritual provided by Catalina Eddy. No, Catalina Eddy is not a person, but an annual weather pattern that creates what we call "May/June Gloom". This weather pattern off the coast drives a heavy marine layer sometimes up to 50 miles inland, and keeps temperatures in May and June in the high 70's to mid 80's. The overcast burns off by noon most days. By late June we usually see the end of this pattern, and we wake up to bright sunshine each morning. Often temperatures are into the 80's by mid morning with day time high's into the mid to high 90's.

Our last marine layer morning was Wednesday, June 29th. Thursday broke with BRIGHT sunshine and temps into the high 90's. By Sunday, July 3rd, we broke triple digits to 102.

Normally our only responsibility in the park is taking care of the cabins, but on holiday weekends all the hosts take turns working in the kiosk to help with the influx of large holiday crowds. Elaine and I were assigned two shifts: 10:30am to 2pm on Sunday, and 10:30am to 2:30pm on Monday, July4th.

One issue this park has had on past holiday weekends occurring during the summer is power outages. By 10:30am on Sunday it was already in the low 90's. One of the rangers went to each RV park to check voltage readings and came back to the kiosk advising voltage had dropped from 120 to around 108 in both parks, as well as at the kiosk. Fearing another outage he took one host and went around asking people to shut down one AC unit if they were running two, or if they had generators, and wanted to keep using both AC's they could switch over. Everyone was co-operative and we made it through the day with voltage running around 109-110....low, but not destructive to AC compressors. We thought Monday, the 4th, would be easier since the forecast was for about 8 degrees cooler. NO SUCH LUCK.....by 1pm the voltage had dropped to 105 and we had personally turned off our AC to avoid damage. Not everyone did, however, and by 3pm we had our power outage.....UGH!!! So, we returned to our coach after our kiosk shift to no AC, and no prospect for electricity anytime soon.

As you know, we do have on board a 7500kw propane generator. Normally I would not hesitate to fire it up....when full we carry 48 gallons of LPG. Our generator burns about 1/2 gallon per hour, so we could, theoretically run it for 96 straight hours, or 4 days. HOWEVER, we last filled up when we moved into the park, and after 5 months we are down to 1/4 tank, or less. I have been planning to drive out of the park in the next week, or so to refill. Theoretically I could run for 24 hours on 12 gallons, but when it gets this low the reading is not as accurate as when it is full, and I didn't know when power would come back, so we sat outside in the shade. Two of our kids camped overnight Sunday night, and had gone into town to buy a small wading pool. How fortuitous was that! We put our bathing suits on and submerged ourselves in the deliciously cool water. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking, laughing, and drinking cold drinks.

As the sun set we noticed some lighting coming on at the Club House (houses showers, laundry and restrooms), and then some of the interior lighting came on, but NO power at the individual site pedestals. Eventually I remembered I had the little Honda 1000 watt portable generator and 5 gallons of gas, so I plugged it in and fired it up, so at least we could run the "attic" fan and move air through the coach, as well as lighting, and the outside radio. It ran until we went to inside around 10:30pm, and it was getting cooler by that time. Still no power restored.....we noticed around 9pm that lights were on in the cabins, but still no power in the RV parks.

One reason Rancho Jurupa Regional Park fills up with thousands of people on the birthday of our country is the spectacular fireworks show the City of Riverside puts on each year on the top of Mt. Rubidoux, in whose shadow we reside. Pretty much anywhere in the park you can get an unobstructed view of the mountain top. The show starts precisely at 9pm, and it did on this evening too. We had all our chairs set out with our 3 daughters and their boy friends to watch what we thought would be a 25-30 minute show. We were around 10 minutes in the show when it suddenly stopped. We sat there for 20 minutes expecting it to restart, because, after all, there had been no GRANDE FINALE! You have to have a GRAND FINALE, right...it's a rule, isn't it? It soon became clear that the show would not restart, so the cars began to surge toward the one exit to the park. After the traffic had leasened we said good bye to our kids and headed inside for the night...around 10:15pm we heard two loud "KABOOMS" from the direction of Mt. Rubioux and rushed outside to be greeted by the resumption of the fireworks show, and it was spectacular, and there was a "GRAND FINALE"! We had no clue what had happened, but 80% of the people who had come to the park to view the show missed the ending.

We found out the next morning that 3 fires had ignited on the east side of the mountain (we are on the west side) and the fire department had told them to stop the show until the fires were put out.

We then went to bed with only the basement Norcold fridge still on. Every other DC source was off to preserve our battery power with the exception of the attic fan that I ran for about an hour to pull in cooler air. I awoke around 4:30am to find that the power was back on and quickly went outside and reconnected our cord to the pedestal. Today we ran the AC from 9am until 9pm, but, of course, the park is empty so we had nearly 120 volts all day long.

Well, that our 4th of July story, and we are sticking to it! Thanks for reading!

Extended workstation!!!

2011-06-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

The PitProducts.com extended workstation

I've had a number of projects for the car hauler that I've been holding back because I wanted to find and install some sort of "foldup" work bench in the front of the trailer. Since I wasn't sure what the dimensions of the work bench would be I couldn't install a few other items there until I found what I was looking for. I've been looking for several months and thought I had found something at Lowe's that would serve my purposes (but was quite heavy and bulky) when I stumbled across Pit Products.com. They make stuff for the interior of trailers like mine and they had exactly what I needed (Pit Products). It is called an "extended workstation", and has a 46" X 20" fold up/down table. Made of stainless steel, and surprising sturdy, and very light. Well, it arrived via UPS a few days ago, and yesterday afternoon I eagerly ripped the box open to begin installing it.

Work table folded up along side the screws and small parts cabinet

Work table folded down. Has two shelves.

Some of my stuff on the shelves

Wall mounted odds and ends storage...I love these organizers!!

Wall mounted TEAC CD/am-fm stereo....a guy has to have his music to work by!!

The extended workstation came with 8 self tapping sheet metal screws. I added a couple more to make 10 fastening it to the front wall of the trailer. It is really solid and very well made. Once the workstation was installed I was able to mount the "odds and ends" organizer for all the small bike parts, electric connectors, screws, bolts, nuts, etc. I have. Then I was able to mount the TEAC stereo. Now my work area is complete, and it sits right over the tandem bike, my mountain bike, and the road bikes. I have to remove the mountain bike and road bikes to use it, which takes a couple of minutes, but I don't have to take out the tandem!

Next on the list for the trailer are a few wall mounted cabinets and we're set. We are really enjoying checking off one project after another as we prepare for our traveling adventure in just a few months.

Elaine will be submitting her application for her retirement benefits in the next couple of days (you can apply 90 days prior to your retirement date), so she is inside 90 days now until retirement.....yea!!!!

Nothing much new to report from Rancho Jurupa. Life is good here. We have made some great new friends, and love waking up every day in "parkland", as we call it. It is soooooo quiet here at night....I don't think I have slept this soundly in years. It is as if we were a 100 miles from anywhere, and yet we are only a few minutes from "Old Town" Riverside for services and great eateries. Last night we ran over to "The Brewery" on Mission Inn Blvd. and Lime, a local micro brewery, and had the best hot pastrami sandwhiches washed down with a couple of pints of their own locally brewed Vanilla Porter.

We've also been doing a lot more bike riding since my last post. We've taken the tandem out twice on 25 mile jaunts around the Riverside area, and last weekend rode our road bikes down the SART (Santa Ana River Trail) about 24 miles round trip.

So, you are now up to date on the "goings on" at RJRP (Rancho Jurupa Regional Park). Thanks for reading!!!

4 months!

2011-05-24T07:34:00.001-07:00

This weekend we mark the end of 4 months living in our Newell fulltime. We have our coach and trailer waxed and detailed every six months to keep them both looking new, and to protect the paint from the UV rays of the sun, but also from the overspray from the sprinklers. 10 days ago we had Integrity Mobile Detail come out to Rancho Jurupa to perform their semi-annual magic, and while they were here we had them wash and detail both cars, so it was a long day for them. For those who live in Southern California and are interested, they now have a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Integrity-Mobile-Detail/185500384828328).

The 'Bird has her top off

The boys getting up high to clean the roof

Lookin' good!!!

For the past 4 months we have been filtering the water we drink here at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park using a "Zero Water" filter. When we first moved in we were going through a filter each week (they cost over $20 each). To slow down the water filter replacement we installed an "in line" RV water filter at the point where we hook into the city water supply. That helped reduce the filter replacement cycle to one every 2+ weeks.....a big improvement. But, alas, it was getting tiresome to have to be worrying continually about filtering water every day to keep up with our consumption. We decided this week to install an "RO" (reverse osmosis) system in our coach. We have been doing business with Ruben at Kool Filtration in Alta Loma, CA [909-948-2465] for for over 24 years at our home in Ontario. We went with a 1.5 gallon holding tank, and added a 4 watt UV light which will kill any bacteria, etc. that manages to get through the RO system. This is of great importance to us when we are using water from the fresh water tank on board our coach, and I am sure it is the same for our readers. Again, if you live in Southern California, we highly recommend Kool Filtration. Ruben stands behind his work.

Yesterday we were once again reminded that we are getting old.....haha! My grandson, Christopher, whom I have blogged about recently, had a promotion ceremony at his elementary school where is has now advanced on to 6th grade!. Geeze, it seems like he was just born a few years ago, and now he will be 11 in just a few months. My grand daughter, Cynthia, graduates from High School Thursday, so this week is really forcing us to acknowledge the rapid passage of time.

The graduate!

The past few weeks have seen a rapid increase in cabin rentals. We've even been renting them mid week now. Memorial Day weekend they all are rented, so we better get them all clean by tomorrow.

The weather continues to be colder than normal, and we have been getting a steady dose of May/June gloom. The marine layer (we are about 50 miles from the coast) pushes way inland this time of year giving us a heavy cloud cover until later morning, early afternoon most days keeping the temperatures in the high 60's, low 70's most of the time. I heard on the news last night that there is a lot of concern up in the Sacramento river delta area about the huge snow pack in the Sierras that has not begun to melt yet. If we get a sudden heat wave it will begin to melt with a vengeance resulting in flooding. Certainly not on the scale of what is happening in the Mississippi River valley, but a concern, nevertheless. At Mammoth Mountain (Sierra ski area) they had a record snow fall this year of well over 600", and have added an additional 24" in May.....very unusual. Resevoirs that were way down just 12 months ago, are now full and water is being released.

Well, that's it from paradise! Thank you for reading......

A lot of stuff......

2011-04-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

A lot has been happening the past two weeks. About 4 months ago we started working on getting our mortgage with a large national bank modified. We had a 5 year interest only loan going with a pretty good interest rate that had about 2 years to go. We needed to get that refinanced and back on to a regular fixed rate mortgage, and if we could get the interest rate a little lower that would be great, too! Well, two days ago a large FedEx envelope from the lender arrived. Now, I know this lender is notorious for dragging their feet for months, and then saying "NO". I slowly opened the envelope and began reading the first page of the multi page document. It took several seconds for the obvious to sink in.....we had been approved, and the lender had lowered our interest rate to a wonderful 4.5%, and our payment remained the SAME!!! Well, today we had to get the documents notarized, copied, a cashier's check, and then FedEx it all back to Pittsburgh, PA so it arrives by Monday. OK, one thing off the long term check list that we will not have to worry about when we hit the road in the Fall.

This past weekend we rented out 5 of the six cabins, and then we (me) had to clean them this week to be ready for this coming weekend. Elaine had to go down to Orange County for a two day overnight meeting for her employer, so it was left to me to get the cabins cleaned, and the linens washed. I started at 8am on Wednesday and finished around 4:30pm. Wow...that was a long day. I have a whole new respect for the hard working men and women who clean hotel rooms. Surprisingly, only one of the 5 cabins required a lot of work...the tenants must have had a bunch of small kids. What a mess.

In about 10 days Elaine flies up to Oregon for her annual week long women's retreat in Cannon Beach, so I'll be baching it again, and it will be up to me to clean any cabins rentals that occur. Hmmm....how is that working out for me?

As the summer season grows closer the park is filling up more and more each weekend, and actually there are a lot of people still here through the week. It's fun to watch our neighborhood evolve into something new each Friday. Right now as I write the motorhomes and trailers are steadily rolling in. The kiosk stays open until 10:30pm on Fridays so all the weekenders can check in.

On our way back from getting all the mortgage paperwork done and sent off we got a call from our oldest daughter and agreed to meet her at Islands Fine Burgers and Drinks in Riverside for lunch. I love their fries, and their Big Wave burger is great with a wheat bun.

Well, that's it for Rancho Jurupa Regional Park today....sitting watching the San Antonio Spurs on the verge of losing their opening series to Memphis. My Lakers closed out the Hornets in fine style last night winning by 18, and it wasn't really that close.

Thanks for reading!

Vacation from our vacation...

2011-04-16T20:31:00.001-07:00

Big Bear Lake with Snow Summit in the background

My brother called me a few weeks ago asking if we could join them at Serrano Campground on the north shore of Big Bear Lake, CA for a long weekend starting April 14th. Of course, we never turn down an opportunity to change the view out our front door, so I said "YES!".

We live at around 800' elevation in Rancho Jurupa. Serrano Campground is at 7,000' elevation. We would gain over 6,000' in elevation in less than 40 miles on State Route 18. I had been noticing the past 6 months that even on moderate climbs on cool days that my Detroit Diesel 6V92 was running hotter than it should. Normally on the flats the operating temp is around 180-182. On climbs it might get up to 195, but lately it was getting over 200, and once up to 220. I had been applying Simple Green degreaser to the radiator, but apparently I was not getting all the gunk off. Knowing that I would have to climb around 6,200' in less than 40 miles had me concerned, so this past Tuesday I applied a heated solution of Simple Green and water to both sides of the radiator several times washing it off each time with hot water. I saw a lot of particulate matter fall to the ground. I repeated the process again Wednesday and got even more off. On Thursday the temperature never got past 188! Big, big improvement.

We left home around 10am, and arrived at Serrano around Noon time.

Serrano Campground is a National Forest campground, but is administered by California Land Management. There are 4, or 5 loops. Only one loop, Snowberry, has full hookups. The rest of the loops are strictly dry camping. There is a bike path that runs from Serrano into Big Bear City. We rode this path a couple of times. The bike path ran along the lake providing great views.

We were assigned site 42, and my brother, Philip and his wife were in 41, right next to us. The campground was very quiet, and very well maintained.

On Saturday we rode into town to find a bike shop where I could have my front hydraulic brake line bled to get out an air bubble that had developed causing the front brake to be useless. We found a shop called "Chains Required" and got the work done in about 20 minutes.

We waited outside the bike shop next to some unmelted snow from the storm last weekend that dumped about 12 inches of snow, most of which melted by this weekend due to warm weather all week.

Near the boat launch ramp on the east end.

Looking westward from the causeway at the east end of the lake

Work Camping

2011-04-04T11:09:00.000-07:00

April 1st marked the end of our first 2 months as camp hosts, and fulltiming in our Newell, and of being camp hosts at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park. Both Elaine and I have continued in our full time jobs (mine a little less full time than Elaine's), and our part time jobs as camp hosts. After this Wednesday we will have donated 36 hours of office time, and numerous hours spent on readying the cabins for occupancy. Needless to say March was very busy with very little down time. Now that we have finished our office training rotation we will be devoting our monthly hours to the cabins full time. This is a good development as we will not be locked into specific office hours each month, and can spend time on the cabins when we choose as long as they are ready for occupancy as the reservations occur.

On April 14th we will take a vacation from our hosting jobs and head up to Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains at Serrano Campgrounds (http://bigbear.us/serranocampgrounds.html) for 4 days and three nights with my brother and his family. Then, the very next weekend my oldest son and his family plus a few of their friends have made reservations at Rancho Jurupa to spend Easter weekend with us.

Wednesday thru Friday of last week saw us hit with a heat wave where temps got into the mid 90's for the three day period, and then dropped 20 degrees by Saturday. Last night the lows got under 48 degrees....more the norm for this time of year.

We have been exploring Riverside by bicycle, and have found it to be a very charming city. Not far from Rancho Jurupa is a funky Mexican restaurant called Tio's Tacos. Great food and a very entertaining ambiance.

2011-03-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

MAGICAL EVENING IN RANCHO JURUPA

Setting sun lights up Mt. Rubidoux

After an evening and early morning of rain we were treated to a great sunset tonight as we were taking our evening walk around the Cottonwood campground at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park. As the sun dipped just below the heavy cloud cover it suddenly lit up Mt. Rubidoux for just a few minutes.

Some of the darkest clouds I have ever seen, and not a drop of rain!

A beautiful sunset

After moving back and forth between site 215 and 257 for several weeks we have, at last, been granted special dispensation, and given a permanent spot, site 216. It is slightly longer than 215, and gives us enough room for the golf cart for which we are now responsible. We are approaching 2 months as fulltimers and are still loving it! We love watching the campground fill up on Thursday and Friday each week, and empty out Sunday afternoon. Each weekend has a different feel with all the different big rigs coming and going. This weekend we had a club of Fleetwood Bounder owners....I checked in most of them on Thursday during my office shift. Their club was called "La Bounders", of course.

This park is finally becoming popular as word of mouth spreads. The county employees do a wonderful job of keeping the grounds looking neatly trimmed, and virtually immaculate all the time. The grass gets mowed and edged every single week....a lot of work.

We are now permanently ensconsed on site 216....NO MORE MOVING!!!!

Over the past couple of weekends I was able to finish installing the flourescent lighting in the trailer. What a difference! With just the flip of a switch, a switch I installed, it looks like broad daylight inside the trailer now! Much easier to find my "stuff". I'll post pictures tomorrow. The great thing about this installation is that everything worked the first time. Usually electricity and I are strange bedfellows, but I am gradually becoming more comfortable working with both direct current and alternating current wiring.

One thing most of us don't talk much about is "DUMPING THE TANKS". Now that we are living in our coach fulltime that indefinable pleasure presents its ugly head much more often, like at least every 7 days. Elaine said she was going to take a shower this morning and a little voice whispered in my ear...."you ought to check the gray tank...she won't like it if it backs up into the shower". So, I turned on the ignition and pushed the toggle switch down.....uh oh....over 3/4 full...time to dump. I ran out side, opened the hatch and quickly pulled the slide valve to the up position and listened as 100 gallons of gray water gushed into the sewer connection. As I listened to the last of the gray water gurgle into the hose another little voice said "whenwas the last time you checked the black tank, huh?" Well, I think that was 8 days ago....uh oh, better check that one too. Can you believe it was at almost 100% full, too? OK, pull the handle and let it out! I recently bought a new sewer hose made by Rhino Flex System.....what a great improvement over the old leaky hose. I know, you're asking why I am so excited about dumping 160 gallons of effluent? Whenever I can add something that makes it easier and cleaner I'm excited. The great thing about being parked in one place now is that I DON'T have to disconnect the sewer hose anymore...that was the nasty part.

After all that excitement Elaine followed me in her T-Bird to our mechanic where I dropped of the Expedition to check on a coolant leak, then she dropped me at my office and went on her appointed rounds for her job. She returned arround 2:30pm for a conference call, and we hit the road for our home around 4pm. Just another day in paradise!

Thanks for reading.......

Mt. Rubidoux from the top

2011-03-11T19:58:00.000-08:00

The Entrance

I've lived in Ontario for 25 years and probably driven by Mt. Rubidoux hundreds of times on HWY 60 as we have been headed eastbound for one adventure, or another over the years. I have intended on more than one occasion to get off the freeway and walk to the top of Mt. Rubidoux, but, to my shame, I never have. I'm sure it is the same for many of my readers. You live in an area for decades and never explore the little treasures close at hand, or even the big treasures, for that matter. There is a local winery, San Antonio Winery, less than a mile from my home that I have never visited. In fact, there are 3 wineries in the area I have never visited, but I have visited wineries in Napa and Temecula numerous times.....why on earth is that? Well, I am determined to change that.

A view of Rancho Jurupa from Mt. Rubidoux

Today was one of those days. My grandson, Christopher, spent the night with us and I asked him if he was interested in hiking to the top of "that mountain over there"......Rancho Jurupa sits in the shadow of Mt. Rubidoux.....the entrance to the park is less than 3 miles from where we now live......it's NOW, OR NEVER!

I grabbed a couple of bottles of water, a hat and we got in the car and drove over to the park entrance arriving around 9:30am. I had no idea how popular this hike is...we had to park 3 blocks from the entrance and walk to the entrance. On our way up the very gradual 2 mile climb to the top we saw probably a hundred, or more people going and coming. The days was very clear, and we arrived at the top in less than an hour. There were numerous groups of young mothers pushing their babies in strollers to the summit, and then back down. There were also numerous cyclists making the roundtrip.

There are two things you can see from a distance when viewing the top of Mt. Rubidoux. One is the enormous cross at the highest point, and an enormous flag pole with the "red, white and blue" flying in the ever present breeze. The cross, up close, appears to be 80-100 feet high. You will see my grandson at the base of the cross in one of the attached pictures. The path to the top is very smooth asphalt. The grade must be 3%, or less. It is an easy hike, even if you are not in shape.

OK, one more local treasure visited, and checked off the list!

Cabin fever!

2011-03-10T08:07:00.000-08:00

8:30am....Thursday morning:

OK, now down to business. It's about 8:30am today, Thursday, and at 11am I will report for my first official office duty. We will initially split our time between office duty and working on the cabins. Three of the 6 cabins we are to manage during our stay here are now ready for occupancy. They are fully reserved for the 4th of July weekend. There is some minor cleaning that we will be doing over the next 2 weeks, and we (Elaine and I) must also apply the sealer to the wood paneled walls within those 3 cabins. Initially we will be getting the bathrooms sealed as they will be subject to moisture.

We have been given a golf cart to assist us in our duties, so we are not burning gasoline running around the park. Speaking of the park.......I love how empty the park is mid week....it is like living in parkland. This is our view every single day!

These are 4 of the six cabins we are managing as part of our volunteer work here at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park.

Here is our cute golf cart complete with headlights, turn signals, rear and side view mirrors, and windshield wiper.

I'll post pictures later today of the cabins, and the interior.

7:55pm......Thursday night:

As promised, here are some pictures of the living/dinning area of cabin 6. Just beyond the front portion of the cabin is the kitchen which includes a microwave, stove, oven, sink, and coffee maker.

Below is the hallway between the kitchen and bedroom where a bunk bed is situated.

Below is a view into the bathroom (opposite the bunkbeds) and bedroom with queen size bed. Rental includes sheets for the beds, comforters, and bath towels.

The rate for the cabins is $80 per night with a two night minimum. All cabins have heating and air conditioning, along with a covered porch, and outdoor fireplace/bbq. The cabins are located directly across from the "front" lake. There are actually two fishing lakes here (which I didn't know until a few days ago). The back lake is located way in the back of the park, and is not visible from the main road in.

The County of Riverside stocks the lakes twice a month with trout during trout season, and then with catfish after trout season when it gets too warm for trout.

We are really enjoying our new home, and are beginning to take time to explore. Today was my first day working in the office, and all went well considering I was by myself for most of my 4 hour shift. I've got that cash register down!!!

Orientation

2011-02-23T07:14:00.000-08:00

One of the many giant cottonwood trees in the park.

This one will give us great aftenoon shade this summer.

Elaine and I have been enjoying our first month here at Rancho Jurupa (pronounced hurupa). Up until a few days ago our only job was to move our coach every week, or so to a different spot while we wait out the advance reservations in the system. We've been meeting the various camp hosts as we move around the park, and when we pass through the check station re-entering the park each day, but so far we had not been assigned any office, or field duties.

When I was entering the park last Saturday after a visit to Home Depot, Jennifer asked if we could come into the office Monday morning at 6:30am for opening orientation (the procedure for opening the check stand each morning). We met Terri, a fellow camp host, just after she had opened the office and she showed us how to shut off the alarm, and went through all the procedures for getting ready to open at 7am. Usually, the first big rush of the day is all the fishermen lined up at the gate coming into the park to fish for the day. As they wait in line we must ring up their fishing ticket on the register, make change, sell bait, answer questions about when the lakes were last stocked etc. Fortunately, Monday was a slow day, and Terri was able to take us through the process slowly and we each were able to take turns taking care of our customers. Their computer program is very intuitive, and relies heavily on "touch screen" technology so it really is easy to learn. We spent a pleasant 2 hours with Terri, and then returned to our coach around 8:30am to begin moving our coach back to Space 215 where we will be until March 3rd when we must move back to 257 for a few days.

Space #215 - Our mostly permanent site

In addition, our detailing guys (Integrity Mobile Detailing) were coming at 10am to wash our coach, trailer, and two cars. I think that's the first time we have had them wash everything in one day, but with our cars now outside 100% of the time the get dirty faster. When we got permission for them to come in the park there was a lot of interest among the other camp hosts, and we provided a supply of business cards for them hoping others will begin to use them and help expand Integrity's business base. We really like these guys, and they do a good job.

After our "opening orientation" we were asked to meet with Jennifer the next morning (Tuesday) at 9:30am for general office orientation which involves checking in campers with advance reservations, and keeping track of how many people and vehicles in each site. Park rules limit the number of motorized vehicles to 2 per site, and a total of 6 people per site. Any additional motorized vehicles, and/or people must pay an additional charge. There was lot of information and no doubt I will need a refresher course. My 61 year old brain is full, and trying to absorb 2 hours of technical procedures in one sitting is a challenge, to say the least, but we are enjoying meeting all of our co-workers, and making new friends.

Well, I'm sitting here typing this journal entry and watching the ground fog evaporate as the sun peeks over Mt. Rubidoux to the east. What a great life we have, and we are so thankful for this new home and friends.

On Sunday two of our adult children and their significant others came for "Sunday dinner" around 3pm. We BBQ'd hot dogs and hamburgers, lit the portable fireplace and sat talking until almost 7pm. For the first time in a year, or so we set up the Camp Chef stove, which has a grill box that sits on two of the three burners so we can BBQ. It is a great system, and now we can just hook it up to on our onboard propane system. Elaine put up some decorative awning lights she bought a few years ago, but had not used yet, and added a lot of ambience to the evening.

Thanks for reading.......

It's not always sunny....

2011-02-16T07:16:00.000-08:00

We woke up to rain this morning......and I was reminded of that Albert Hammond song from 1973....."It never rains in Southern California". So, the forecast for the next 4 days is rain and temps in the low to mid 50's (cold for SoCal). On days like today I miss my garage that I can drive into and exit my car without getting wet. It is a small inconvenience, but it is one of the realities of fulltiming in an RV....some of the conveniences of a sticks and bricks home are missed on days like today.

In the background you'll see I have put my tire covers on....these are new. The old ones were literally falling apart so I bought four new ones from Campingworld online. These guys are very sharp. After I had placed the order for the tire covers (the evening before) I decided we needed a new entry step and went on their website again. I saw that if my order was over $125 that shipping would only be $5, so I called their "800" number to see if I could piggyback the platform step onto my order from the night before.....the young lady who answered knew who I was without me even providing any information, just based on my phone number. Her computer matched my phone number with my account, saw the platform step in my "CART". She quickly added the step to my order and revised the total as well as the reduced shipping rate, and I was done in less than 3 minutes. How slick is that!

Our new Stromberg Carlson Platform step!

Last night I attended the annual AGM (annual general meeting) for my high school soccer referee association, and was notified at the end of festivities that I had been awarded a CIF (California Inerscholastic Federation) playoff game scheduled for this Friday, and it's supposed to be raining then......my father had a saying that is so apropos....."if it wasn't for the honor I'd just as soon pass....", but it is an honor and I will proceed with style....wet or not!

So, that's it for now in our wet world.....thanks for reading!

Moving day....

2011-02-14T06:41:00.000-08:00

Sunday sunset....

Usually the phrase "moving day" conjures visions of the open road, and new vistas. In our case it simply means moving from site 215 to 257 on Friday for the weekend, and then back again on Monday. Rancho Jurupa allows reservations for specific sites up to 6 months in advance. As you would surmise, site 215 had a few reservations outstanding for the next six months so we will be moving periodically to 257. This past Friday was one of those moving days, but today we get to move 1/2 a block back to our preferred site.

This is the first weekend we have been here as camp ground hosts, and the weekends are certainly a different experience when viewed from the perspective of a fulltimer. During the week there are probably a dozen rigs here, including camp hosts. On the weekend Rancho Jurupa becomes a small village with up to 140 RV's (80 sites in the Lakeview Campground, and 60 in the Cottonwood Campground, where we are). In addition to that there is a large tenting area which is on a first come, first serve basis. On holiday weekends like the one just passed on our population swells from a couple of dozen residents to 6-700, plus all the day use peopel who come for picnics, fishing, etc pushing the population to 1,000, or more. Overall I like the feel of the park on these weekends. Generally everyone is very well behaved, and it never seems too noisy. People are respectful about how loud their outdoor stereos are, and there is plenty of room between sites so you don't feel like you are sharing your site with your neighbor.

While I fulfilled a couple of morning soccer assignments this weekend Elaine continued her winnowing of our interior storage. She was able to remove a large trash bag of duplicate items, and individual items no longer being used ranging from toiletries to glassware to pots and pans. I was able to reorganize the trailer so I can now access everything more easily, and can see pretty much everything. We enjoyed a couple of hardwood campfires Saturday and Sunday evenings. I love hardwood fires....they burn hot, and slowly without the bonfire effect.

Our tadpole trikes are under that tarp

Rear of trailer now accessible

Smiles of contentment

Settling in.......

2011-02-09T07:18:00.000-08:00

Pull out tool drawer

The biggest challenge for me, individually, is to develop new routines, and new organization....that is my nature, and having set routines and things organized creates a sense of peace and calm. I am getting there, and am enjoying the process. I've already had time to complete some minor repairs that have come up over the past few months, but since I didn't have daily access to the coach, were hard to complete. NOW I have daily access and things are getting done!

Three examples: 1) My coach has two slide out drawers in the storage just to the right of my mid entry door. The top drawer had a lot of odds and ends in it (automotive bulbs of all sizes and applications, extra windshield wipers, marker lights, headlights, misc. screws, bolts, fuses, etc.) The bottom drawer, the bigger one, had/has most of my tools, plus a spare house water pump. I went through all the bulbs, etc. in the top drawer and disposed of the uneeded and/or duplicate items. NOW I can find things! 2) Door latch - the original door latch (for the entry door) just wouldn't hold the door open anymore, even with me continually replacing the rubber gasket, so I bought a new latching type one 2 years ago, but had never installed it. We were holding the door open with a bungy cord. Now it is installed. 3) The lid that covers the stove top has stainless steel glued to the bottom side so when open it provides an attractive, cleanable surface. It had begun to come lose.....no doubt the 29 year old glue was giving out. That got fixed yesterday!

As I move through these projects my sense of well being increases. Like a fewllow Newell owner says, often, "I like things to work" and look good on my coach. Soon, God willing, another Newell friend and I will get together and tackle the 3, or 4 electrical issues I have been stalled on.

Elaine has been going through all the interior storage areas sifting and winnowing, and has created a significant amount of extra space. We've had to change over from travel mode to living in mode, which means a lot of things we kept in the coach for monthly trips is not necessary now that we are sitting in one place most of the time. When we travel, as we did last weekend, we will just load our vacation stuff back in...meanwhile, we have a lot more space to live in now.

So, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Just got a reminder on my Droid smart phone that I have jury duty today......uggh! I'll be off the office to set up my new laptop that arrived via UPS yesterday.....my old laptop is giving up the ghost, and I'm trying to be proactive in replacing it before it crashes for good. I've been able to resurrect it twice so far, but I'm sure it does not have 9 lives like our cats...haha!

Stainless steel under stove top lid

New door latch

Upper pull out drawer

Ventura by the sea.....

2011-02-04T11:58:00.000-08:00

8:30am -

A few weeks ago before we knew we were going to be accepted as camp hosts I made arrangements with my brother to meet him and his wife in Ventura this weekend. We love visiting Ventura in the winter, because it is so easy getting a spot right by the ocean. Southern Californians don't like to camp so much when it is under 60 degrees, and that makes it easy to snag a first come, first serve spot right here on Rincon Parkway, just 4 miles north of the city. The front of our coach is 30 feet from the water, and the temperature has risen all the way to 63.

Elaine and I are doing a little office work since it is, afterall, Friday, and we are not retired yet. In a few minutes we'll drive into Ventura for lunch at the Anacapa Brewing Company (ABC). ABC is a micro brewery that we have been visiting for 6 years. Great beer, and food!

Here are a few pictures.......thanks for reading.

10:41pm -

What a great day on the Pacific Ocean.....had a great lunch at ABC with my brother and his wife, stopped at the local Von's supermarket to pick up some filet mignon's and headed back to Faria. Took an hour nap....ohhh that felt delicious to lay down and not have to get up to be anywhere at any particular time! Around 5:30 I got the Sea-B-Que BBQ out and grilled our filets while Elaine prepared some great asparagus and salad, the sat down with my brother and his wife for dinner while the sun set behind us. What a great evening. Sat by the fire for about 4 hours chatting, and laughing....like we usually do. My brother and I are separated by 14 years which was a big deal when we were young, but not so much now that we are 61 and 47....today is his birthday....he's not the baby anymore.

We are official.....

2011-02-02T19:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, February 1st, I was leaving the park to head for the office and saw Ranger Dana driving into the park, so I pulled a quick U-turn and caught up with her at the new cabins. I asked if she had received the results of our back ground check, and she answered she had just received an e-mail on her phone confirming we are not felons. So, our start date was officially yesterday. We are ensconced in site 215, an 80 foot back in concrete pad. That should be long enough for our coach, trailer and two cars, but we will find out tomorrow.

I just brought the trailer here from storage, but it is sitting in site 214 temporarily as I had to drop it quickly and head off to officiate a high school soccer match. So, tomorrow morning I'll unhook the coach, pull it out of the site and then back the trailer in......will probably have to push it back to where the rear wheels are at the edge of the concrete to make it all fit, but I'm sure it will work.

After I got home, around 5:30pm (after dark), Elaine prepared some of her famous burritos, which I washed down with a very cold Newcastle. Next we headed over to the trailer to reorganize the stuff inside so we could find things when we look for them in the future. I'll take a picture of all that we are currently storing in there.

We also transferred our DirecTV DVR receiver into the coach and it works great. Now I need to run a second coax cable from the LNB on the satellite dish so we can record one channel while watching another. That will be a project for after we return from Ventura, where we are headed tomorrow for 4 days to unwind from the hectic past three weeks of moving.

Looking forward to some down time........my brain is full, and my body is tired....gee...you'd think I was 61, or something.....haha!!!

Thanks for reading.....stay tuned for great pictures of the Pacific Ocean, and a few great sunsets thrown in for good measure!

Gravitational pull.....

2011-01-31T18:49:00.000-08:00

Today at 3pm we slipped the gravitational pull of our Ontario home and "rocketed" 13 miles east at 60mph to Rancho Jurupa Regional Park.......free at last, thank God, free at last.........we are now fulltimers! This Newell is our home.....what a marvelous feeling!

We are still awaiting our start date as camp hosts, so we are staying here thru Thursday on our Passport America discount, and then heading up to Ventura to sit on the beach staring at the Pacific Ocean for 4 days, and then back here on Monday. I'm hoping by then we will have our start date. So we are in a wonderful park with 50amp service and full hookups for $17.50 per day....1/2 price Monday thru Thursday. If you don't belong to Passport America seriously think about joining. We'll save enough money this week to pay our annual membership fee. It is a great deal and pays for itself quickly.

Good News!

2011-01-21T09:26:00.000-08:00

We have gotten the go ahead to do our "Live Scan", which is essentially finger printing, and background check from Riverside County. Once that is complete, and we are found to be free of felonies we will receive our start date for being camp hosts at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park. Our anticipated start date is 2/1/2011, but we will update that shortly.

We are, NEEDLESS TO SAY, very excited about this timely development!

Thanks for reading......

Update....

2011-01-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

Received a call from Ranger Dana at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park last Friday. We had submitted an application a few weeks ago to become camp hosts at the park starting in February, when we move into our Newell fulltime. We were invited for an interview on Monday, January 10th.

When we arrived for our 8:30am appointment Ranger Dana walked us over to the new cabins for a tour. On our last trip there we had spent a few minutes looking through the windows of the new cabins and were impressed with the amenities. We are tentatively going to be responsible for the 6 cabins recently added to the park, helping people check in and out, being sure the units are left in good condition, and cleaned. We are awaiting approval, and the completion of our back ground check.

Essentially, in exchange for the use of a site (including utilities, and rent) we will each donate 10 hours per week. We are very excited about this development as it will further reduce our overhead, and allow us to remain in one place for the next 8 months until retirement! We should get final confirmation within the next 2 weeks!

Thanks for reading!

Spontaneity......

2011-01-03T07:56:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about owning a motorcoach is the increased spontaneity in our lives. We had planned, as has been our custom for the past decade, to be at home on New Year's Eve. On Wednesday, December 29th, I got a call from a long time friend, Claude, who lives in a retirement community (Sun City) in Indio, CA with his wife Lindy. They have a small two bedroom home there, but the second room is used for his wife's therapeutic massage business. He invited us down for New Year's Eve, and suggested we bring our coach so we could spend the night. It took me about 5 seconds to say "YES!". We're always looking for an excuse to head some where in our coach.

So, Friday morning around 9am I went over to the storage lot to pick up the coach. When I arrived the outside temp was around 40 degrees, and had been in the low 30's most of the night, so I knew I would have to run the block heater for a little while to turn over the Detroit Diesel. As always, the genset started right up, so I switched on the block heater and began readying the coach for departure. Since I had about 40 minutes before I knew it would be warm enough to start I decided to clean the windshield inside and out, as well as the mirrors. I always feel kind of rushed at home when we're trying to hit the road, so this opportunity gave me time to do a thorough job. By the time that task was done and I had removed the tire covers, raised all the blinds, the engine was ready to be turned over and it roared to life immediately!

I got back home around 11am, and while Elaine was finishing up some work on her computer I decided to clean the aluminum wheels and clean a little of the road grime off our trip down to San Juan Capistrano a couple of weeks previous in the rain.

Claude and Lindy's home in Indio, CA

We finally were able to hit the road around 1:30pm for our 90 minute drive down to Indio, arriving at our destination around 3pm. At the security gate we were promptly checked in and given a two night pass to park in front of Claude's home. I don't think the temperature the entire day got above 49 degrees!

Claude ran a power cord out from his garage so we could gobble up 15 amps of power for our coach. I knew the temps would get into the low 30's again that night, and was grateful for the 15 amps. We could at least run our bedroom electric heater, which is much quieter than the gas furnaces. Those electric heaters each use about 11-12 amps, so there is no way to use two of them at the same time. Both mornings I got up before Elaine and turned on all 3 gas furnaces to take the chill off the interior while the coffee was making (I had to turn off the electric heater to run the coffee maker as the two draw about 16 amps). Wow was it cold inside for a few minutes!

Courtesy Parked!

We spent the early evening on their patio in front of their roaring gas fire ring all bundled up. Eventually Claude fired up his Weber BBQ and cooked some great "baseball" sirloins for dinner. We sat around after dinner until almost midnight talking and laughing, which pretty much sums up the rest of the weekend, other than we watched the entire Rose Parade New Year's morning, which I haven't done in years, in High Definition, and then watched a "few" college bowl games the rest of the day. Of course, I managed to take a few cat naps, and snacked way tooooo much.

Around 10am on Sunday we bid our farewells to our gracious hosts and headed home. As we pulled on to our home street in Ontario we commented to each other that in just a few weeks we would no longer be going home after a trip, but now fulltiming in our beloved Newell home!!!

A Happy New Year to all of our readers! Thank you for reading!

Sooner than we thought.....

2010-12-22T11:39:00.000-08:00

You just never know when things are going to go in a different direction! I've been writing for some time now that our target date for beginning our fulltime life was the fall of 2011.....not that far away....for Elaine retirement happens in September of 2011, and October for me....yes I did marry an older woman...haha!

For the past few months I have been examining our budget and how to pay down our remaining short term debt. It became obvious to me a few months ago that with the number of months left until we hit the road, our current income level (which for me has declined due to the economy since 2008) that we would have to eliminate a big chunk of our monthly overhead to get those debts zeroed out by October. One of our children has agreed to rent our home beginning February 1st, so that means we will move into the Newell permanently February 1st. Elaine and I will continue our respective jobs as planned until the fall, but eliminating the mortgage payment, and household utilities will free up a significant amount of money monthly so that we can finish paying off those nagging balances.

Wow, the future is NOW! We've got less than 6 weeks to clear our home out, and reorganize our STUFF that currently fills around 2,000 square feet, to fit in less than three hundred square feet. Fortunately we started the process last January when we cleaned out the garage attic, and storage areas, so I feel a lot better about the prospects of finishing in the next few weeks.

There are a lot of emotions coming at me like waves on the ocean. I thought I was past this part, but apparently the idea of moving out was still far enough away in my mind that I hadn't focused on the reality of actually moving out of our home of 26 years........for good. I have processed this intellectually, but it is obvious that the emotional part is yet to be processed.

Nevertheless, Elaine and I are both very excited about the change coming sooner than later, and spent a couple of hours this morning talking about what needs to be done. She is a great organizer, and seems to have all the steps laid out in her mind, so I will just line up, receive my daily instructions, and proceed with style.

Stay tuned for more frequent updates now that our move in date has accelerated!

Thanks for reading....

Other adventures....

2010-11-23T11:57:00.001-08:00

Del Mar, CA.....across PCH from Del Mar Racetrack

Like many of you who follow our blog, our identity is not defined soley by our love of RVing. We have other interests that add to our identity. One of our numerous interests is bicycling, and to further that descriptive, multi-day self guided bicycle touring. We have been planning for a number of months to do a two day tour with a college days friend starting at the AMTRAK station near Angel Stadium in Anaheim, CA (yes, near Disneyland, also) and finishing at the AMTRAK station in downtown San Diego.

Terri, our good friend from our college days, was scheduled to arrive at our home in Ontario, CA November 11th, and she did. She lives in Northern Nevada, so it was about a 9 hour drive for her.

Our plan was to drive down to the AMTRAK station located in the parking lot across from Angel Stadium (baseball Angels) in Anaheim. We left home around 8am, and arrived in Anaheim around 8:45am, starting our ride around 9:45am. As always there were a few mechanical issues with the bikes that had to be resolved....one was a flat tire on Elaine's bike....inexplicable since the tires and tubes were brand new....oh well, so much for plans to depart the train station at 9am.

We proceeded over to the Santa Ana River Trail that runs parallel to the Santa Ana River all the way to Newport Beach, CA about 14 miles south. The bike path is completely separate from local roads, and highways. We hit PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) around 11am, and proceeded south through Newport Beach, Corona Del Mar, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, San Clemente, Camp Pendleton (Marine base), and Oceanside to our destination for the evening, Carlsbad, CA. The distance for that first day was 68 miles, and we made it just before sundown at 4:40pm!

Dana Point Warf, Dana Point, CA

We ate lunch in Dana Point at Proud Mary's located in the Dana Point Warf area where we joined some friends who have cycled with us in the past, Ted and Eileen.

Ted and Eileen (below) to my "right", Terri to my "left"

In front of Beach Terrace Inn, Carlsbad, CA

View from our balcony....

We had a nice evening in Carlsbad, CA staying overnight at the Best Western Beach Terrace Inn, and dinning out at a local Italian Eatery (Fresco's) located on Carlsbad Village Drive just below Carlsbad Road.

We departed the next morning around 8am heading south on PCH to our final destination for the day, San Diego....40 miles away. The day was spectacular.....sunny, cool, and no clouds. We passed through Leucadia, Del Mar, Solana Beach, La Jolla, and finally arrived at the downtown San Diego AMTRAK station around 2pm. Before arriving at the station we stopped at an In-N-Out burger place in Northern San Diego for lunch! Our return ride would be on the Surfrider and it was scheduled for departure at 3pm. We chose the Surfrider as they have bicycle racks on each car that can handle up to 3 bikes....exactly the number we had! Their cars look a lot like the Metrolink commuter trains. There was a delay of about 45 minutes as the train arrived late from Los Angeles. We arrived just after sundown in Anaheim.

In line at the San Diego AMTRAK station

Our 3 bikes at San Diego AMTRAK station

Home for now.....

2010-10-22T07:02:00.001-07:00

Our trip home was pretty uneventful, and, as usual, a little bittersweet. Each time we leave on one of our Newell adventures we jokingly say as the trip nears it's end...."why not just keep going for a year?"....of course reality hits, and responsibilities we must maintain for another 11 months, or so, intrude, and we head home. The day when we leave home for good and begin our endless summer is less than 11 months away for Elaine now.

After loading the T-Bird, securing the bicycles, and putting away the few things we had put out while in Santa Fe I turned the key around 9:30am to fire up the big Detroit, and, while it turned over strong, would not fire. It got very cold last night...probably into the high 30's, and I should have turned on the block warmer when I got up. So, I turned it on now. Took about 40 minutes for it to get warm enough, and it then fired right up. We finally left Santa Fe Skies around 10:20am on October 15th, pointing the Newell south on I-25. The weather was cool, and clear, just as it had been for previous 6 days. Our tentative goal for the day was Holbrook, AZ. We had driven by Holbrook many times over the years, but never even got off the freeway.

As we neared Albuquerque the signs for I-40 westbound began to appear. We transitioned smoothly from I-25 to I-40 and then began a 60 mile climb to 7,300' elevation, before descending back down to Gallup, NM. We stopped to top off our fuel just over the Arizona line at an Indian owned truck stop called Speedy's that seems to have the best diesel price between Albuquerque, NM and Kingman, AZ....we paid $2.91 (cash price) on our way east, and $2.94 on our way west. From there it was a quick 72 miles to Holbrook. We arrived in Holbrook around 3:30pm, parking in a local supermarket parking lot for about 30 minutes while we decided whether to push on to Flagstaff, or call it a day......"call it a day" won out, and we quickly checked into the OK RV Park located about 2 blocks behind the supermarket. This is another nice overnight park...good strong WiFi, level pull through pads, which were about 100' long....more than enough for our 60' length! The staff was courteous, fast, and efficient.

We had one filet mignon left so I pulled out the BBQ (Sea-B-Que, a marine grade BBQ made by Dickinson Marine.....http://www.dickinsonmarine.com/bbq.html) and cooked it to a beautiful medium rare condition.....combined with a nice salad, and some Pinot Noir.....mmmmm!

Our goal for Saturday was Kingman, AZ, only 238 miles west of us. Our "plan" was to get there late afternoon, and park either at the local Walmart, or Cracker Barrel until about 3am, and then push home to Ontario in the cool of the early morning. We arrived in Kingman around 3pm, and found an empty parking lot a block away from the Walmart in a Medical Plaza, which was not open on Saturday. Much more privacy than Walmart, or Cracker Barrel. Shortly after leveling, setting up the Satellite to watch a few college football games, it began to rain with lightning and thunder for about 2 hours. I'm glad we were stationary for that display! I took an hour nap, finished reading a book, while glancing up once and a while to see some of the game. Around 7pm I suggested to Elaine that I was wide awake, so why not press on now for home, and stop when I got tired. She agreed, and we broke camp. We basically descended on I-40 all the way to the Colorado River where we began a long, long, long climb that seemed to go on for an hour. Finally, around 10pm, as we approached the Kelbaker Road exit (one of the gateways to the Mojave National Preserve), I decided I was tired, and needed a nap, so we pulled off, crossed Kelbaker to the on-ramp, and parked on the shoulder of the onramp. I laid down for what I thought was a 30 minute nap, waking up over 3 hours later at 1:15am. As we merged back on to I-40 I realized our adventure would be over in around 3 hours....we arrived home to Applewood Drive around 4:20pm, parked, and hit the sack.

What an amazing 9 days! Looking forward to retirement, and being on the road for a couple of years. We never get tired of living in our Newell. It is so comfortable, and easy to live in!

Thanks for reading....tune in again for our next adventure over Thanksgiving. Don't know where we are going, but go we will!

Scenic drive to Taos

2010-10-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

We have wanted to visit Taos for years, and now we are only 80 miles south of Taos, so we decided to drive up there on our last day in the Santa Fe area. Our intent was to spend 5, or 6 hours walking around Taos taking in all the sites and sounds. As it turned out our "plan" was pre-empted by the scenic drive to and from Taos. Normally it would take a little over an our to drive directly to Taos, but we decided to take the scenic routes to and from. The scenery, and historical sites along the way were so interesting it took us over 3 hours to get there. By the time we walked around the "plaza" area, taken the tour of the Kit Carson home, and eaten lunch it was after 3:30pm. If we wanted to get home before dark we needed to be moving along. On our return trip we decided to do the "Angel Fire" scenic drive, and it was well worth it. We arrived home around 6:45pm just as it was getting dark.

Our drive up to Taos took us north from Santa Fe on US285 to NM68, and then NM75 up to Taos. Our drive back took us east from Taos on NM64 to 434 where we drove south NM 518, and the town of Mora. Mora has special meaning to me because I have read a lot of Louis L'Amour's westerns and many of them revolve around Mora where a couple of his fictional Sackett families settled in the 1800's.

Here are some of the pictures of our day.

Santa Fe Skies

2010-10-15T16:43:00.000-07:00

Santa Fe Skies RV Park

It won't be hard for anyone reading this blog to understand that we were dead tired Saturday night when we arrived in Gallup, NM. Elaine whipped up a quick dinner consisting of Pea Soup and some buttered bread. That was chased with a Rogue Brewery Moca Chocolate beer......mmmmmm!

We went to bed around 9pm, and did not wake up until 8am the next morning....I don't remember the last time I slept 11 hours straight. We didn't leave USA RV Park until around 10am, but we only had 190 miles to go to Santa Fe, so we took our time driving stopping several times for 30 minute breaks along the way finally arriving at our home for the next 6 days......Santa Fe Skies RV Park located at 14 Browncastle Ranch Rd. just south of Santa Fe. Following are pictures of our view.

Sunset the first night

Forest and Cindy, whom we met in Creede, CO last summer, arrived in their Newell about 30 minutes before we did. Once we were settled in and unloaded the T-Bird we decided to head into Santa Fe for a late lunch, as well as do some food shopping. We located a little Mexican restaurant called Posas located next door to the local Albertson's supermarket. This was/is real Mexican cuisine......Forest ordered a green sauce enchilada that he says was the hotest thing he had ever eaten, and he is Cajun!

Palace of the Governors

Forest, Elaine and Cindy

The next morning, Monday, we headed again into Santa Fe for a day of site seeing. We were able to find a public parking lot rather easily. We started our walking tour of Old Town Santa Fe by walking directly to the Plaza where we came upon many vendors, mostly Native American, selling their wares. Elaine bought a copper guitar pic for our son, Tim, a Santa Fe chili pepper refrigerator magnet for home, and a really cool necklace for Elaine. After that we headed down Palace toward the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. What a beautiful cathedral! From there we walked over to the Loretto Chapel, and then to lunch at the Iluminaria Restaurant. The Old Town area is very charming and easy to walk from one end to another. I would love to spend a few days exploring all the shops and restaurants, but that will be for another day!

The famous spiral staircase

Later that evening another couple we go to know better at the Creede rally drove down from Denver to spend a little time with us.....David and Denise. They came over around 8pm for some snacks, drinks and a great fire. We sat around laughing until after 10pm....I hope we didn't disturb anyone with our laughter....haha!

Tuesday morning we decided we would drive down to Madrid, NM located on NM 14, otherwise know at the Turquoise Highway. Madrid is a quaint little art community. The local artists display their art in every conceivable medium. I was very impressed with a lot of the art. From there we headed further south to drive up to Sandia Crest located at about 10,400' elevation where we got an amazing view of Albuquerque. We got back to camp around 4pm and made plans to join David and Denise in Santa Fe at "The Shed", an amazing Mexican restaurant located on Palace just a half block from the Plaza, and the Palace of Governors.

Madrid, NM

Sandia Crest, NM

"Us"

We said our goodbyes after dinner to David and Denise who had to return to Denver the very next morning for pressing business.

Wednesday morning we decided we were not going to do anything except putter around camp, and then, maybe, take a bike ride that afternoon. Forest and Cindy took off to see a historical point of interest north of Santa Fe. Ultimately we took a bike ride on the tandem for about 20 miles. The weather on Wednesday, like every single other day was marvelous.....high 60's, low 70's. Forest and Cindy got home around 6pm, and invited us over to their coach for some Gumbo....some of the best I have ever had!

On the road!

2010-10-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

Our intent had been to start our adventure around 7pm on Friday the 8th, but like most best laid plans we left a little after 9pm. Our "plan" was to drive to Kingman, AZ and spend the night behind the Cracker Barrel, and then hit the road early the next morning. I figured we would be in Kingman by 2:30am.......but.......we were about an hour out from Kingman in the tiny border town of Needles taking a short break...you know, get out walk around the coach, making sure nothing is going wrong that we're not aware of yet. We get back in, I turn the key, and nothing. I check to be sure it is in neutral.....DP's have no "Park". You have to start it in neutral. Yep, it's in neutral, but it won't even turn over...I can hear the solenoid on the rear panel clicking. The batteries are all topped off, and all the lights are working so my old problem in the rear panel has not returned (loose connection). Finally, I give up and call Good Sam Club ERS. They initially want to tow me somewhere, but I ask "where" at 2am??? I ask them to locate a 24 hour service who can send someone out to troubleshoot my problem. Don from Advanced Mobile Tire, Inc. arrived at my location around 3:20am.......he quickly determined that the starter was getting a weak signal....only about 3 volts.....not nearly enough to turn the big Detroit Diesel over, so we removed the existing trigger wire and ran a new one down to the starter, and what do you know...it started right up. He had us back on the road by 4am, and we arrived in Kingman around 5am......I ended up sleeping around 2 1/2 hours.....not what I had "planned".....haha!

We got up and got dressed around 7:30am and went into the Cracker Barrel for a great breakfast and lots of coffee. We were on the road by 8:30 headed east into the sun. Our destination for Saturday was Gallup, NM. We took a 30 minute break in Flagstaff, and then pushed on down I-40....the weather was great....crystal clear skies and a slight tail wind.

By the way, this is the first trip we have pulled our new car hauler trailer with the T-Bird in it and it has pulled great so far!

Flagstaff rest stop....

With the trailer we are 60' long now.....

Our distance on Saturday was 327 miles.....I really don't like driving too much more than 300 miles a day, so this was within my comfort zone. I was planning....there's that "p" word again...to fuel up in Albuquerque, but I hadn't accounted for the extra weight of the trailer and car. We were about 30 miles out from Gallup and I had to give in and get fuel as it appeared we were down to less than a 1/16th of a tank...maybe 11 gallons.....not a good idea to temp the gas gods so about the time I was getting concerned we saw a sign for "Speedy's", and a price of $2.91 per gallon....almost 40 cents lower than Ontario, so we exited and I took $500 into the cashier for pump #29 expecting to leave most of that with her after filling.....my tank takes 180 gallons and I expected, based on where the needle was, to put in close to 170. Well, to my pleasant surprise the pump clicked off at 143 gallons! Looks like the gauge is a little off as I must have had close to 37 gallons left....hmmmm....I could have made it to Albuquerque.

We finished fueling up and got back on I-40 for the final 19 miles into Gallup, NM and USA RV Park. This is a great park, and is a totally family run operation. They really provide great customer service, and do everything in their power to make sure your stay meets your expectations. In addition to all that the WiFi signal was amazing on the back row where we parked for the night....very fast considering how full the park was.

USA RV Park, Site 86

Watching the sun set.....

Land of Enchantment here we come.....

2010-10-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

Today is Wednesday, and in two days we depart on our next Newell adventure to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There is a lot of history in that area, and I've wanted to visit there for years, so, needless to say, we are very excited to, at last, be embarking on a trip to that destination. We'll leave about 8pm tomorrow evening......avoiding the heat of the day to get over Cajon Pass, and into the Mojave Desert. Our first destination will be Kingman, AZ where we plan to overnight at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant, then on to Gallup, NM on Saturday, and finally arriving in Santa Fe on Sunday around noon......it is about 812 miles one way and I-40 will take us through some spectacular country to Albuquerque where we will pick up I-25 north to Santa Fe, NM.

Walking Tour of Ventura RV Park and Southbound on Highway 101

2010-09-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

September 5, 2010

A Walking Tour of Ventura RV Park

Ventura, CA

Drive south from Pismo Beach

to Ventura in the Thunderbird with the top down

Ventura - Day 2

2010-09-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning dawned with an even thicker marine layer than the day before. Our plan, and like all plans eventually meets reality, was to ride south on PCH to Oxnard, and back...about 24 miles in all. The day before Elaine's rear tire had gone flat. This is a continuation of a problem encountered over a month ago when we rode several miles on a bike path that apparently had a lot of thorns and stickers which eventually ended up in our tires. Elaine's tires being older than mine, are a little thinner, and more suceptable to puncture....well another thorn we had missed punctured her tube again on this morning only about 2 miles south of the RV park. The picture below was taken just south of the Ventura pier immediately after I had repaired her tire again. While repairing the tube I discovered a large slice in her tire which made riding so far really a bad idea with such a badly damaged tire, so we turned around and determined to just take a short tour of downtown Ventura and share some pictures with our readers. Ventura is really a quaint oceanside community, and we always enjoy our visits here several times a year.

Just after repairing Elaine's tube....

The Ventura pier as it disappears into the overcast.....

Statue of Father Serra....he built 21 missions along the California coast

The beautiful Ventura City Hall....formerly a county courthouse

The current incarnation of the Ventura Mission....the original site and mission were/are to the left of this current building. The original mission no longer exists.

The view from south of the mission

Looking eastward on Main Street....Ventura old town

After returning from our brief jaunt around downtown Ventura we lowered the top on the Thunderbird and headed north on Highway 101 toward Pismo Beach to have lunch. Once we escaped the vortex of Ventura the sky turned blue and the temperature rose into the low 70's. It turned out to be a great day for a 200 mile drive with the top down.

We had lunch at "Steamers" in Pismo Beach

We arrived in Pismo around 3pm for a late lunch at Steamers.....this reastaurant for many, many decades was known as Trader Nick's......we used to eat there when we stayed at the Kon Tiki Inn (see picture below) on our numerous trips there in the 70's and 80's. This was a favorite destination of my father.

Our view from the restaurant

The ever lovely Elaine.....waiting for lunch

We have stayed here many times over the years...

A late 1980's wide body Newell

On our way home from Pismo Elaine spied another Newell (man she has got good eyes...she was driving at the time and saw it.....I did not see it until she pointed it out) parked along the beach just north of Carpenteria. The owners were not in at the time, so I took a couple of pictures. This coach is in beautiful condition, and shows obvious pride of ownership.

We arrived back in Ventura to the heavy, cold marine layer just in time to light a fire and settle in for a relaxing evning.

My view.............

Ventura state of mind....

2010-09-04T16:06:00.000-07:00

Ventura is always a great place to escape the dog days of summer......at this writing (4:10pm) it's 103 in Ontario, and it is 65 in Ventura. The sea breezes and sunshine are good for my state of mind. Our group, composed of family, in-laws, and friends, includes 6 RV's (4 Class A DP's, 1 Class C, and 1 Toy hauler trailer). All four of my grand kids are here.

My oldest granson, Christopher, named after his father, is celebrating his 10th birthday today, so we had a big party and a pinata.....but I get ahead of myself.

I left home about 9:30am yesterday (Friday) to cruise north where Elaine would meet me later in the day....she had a few sales calls in the Long Beach area, and would head directly here when she was done.

I got so busy loading the final items into the storage bays that I forgot to eat breakfast.....this oversight became apparent as I was entering Fillmore, CA from the east.....just about the time I was wondering why I had hunger paings I spied a Carls' Jr. on the left, and quickly pulled over to stop. I snagged a chicken salad to eat in Ventura (I was only 15 minutes from the RV park).

When I was inside getting my salad my son and his high school friend passed by in their rigs.....OK, so I won't be the first one to the park.....haha!

Pulled in right behind Chris and Keith around 12:30pm, checked in at the office, and headed to Space #74 which is on the back row.....as far from HWY 101 as possible. The one negative about Ventura RV Park is its proximity to HWY 101, which is essentially a north/south divided highway in this area. Since this is a popular area, the traffic is continuous, and even on the back row I can hear the dull roar of cars whizing by on their way north and south.....I just pretend it's the ocean, which is just on the other side of the highway.

Elaine got in about 3pm, and by that time I had everything set up. On her way in she stopped at Vons and picked up a couple of filets to BBQ for dinner, and a nice bottle of Pinot Noir.

We sat outside by the fire with the kids and their kids until about 9pm, and then it was time for the old fogies to hit the sack.....lol!

Woke up this morning to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, poured a cup and sat down to watch ESPN's Game Day with my son who had his outdoor LCD TV setup.....life is good!

After breakfast Elaine and I got on our bikes to ride north around 7.5 miles to Seacliff along the ocean. This is an area where you can park your RV right next to the Pacific Ocean. It's called Rincon Parkway.....Ventura County has marked off around 150 spots end to end for self contained RV's only. All the sites are on a first come, first serve basis, so during the summer it is almost impossible to beat the locals to the spots, unless you come up on the previous Monday to save, and pay for a spot for the whole week. During the winter we can come up on a Thursday afternoon and snag a a spot just 50 feet from the breaking waves.

On our way back south I spotted a rare classic Newell parked in the day use area south of Rincon. It looked to be a pre-80's Newell with Nevada plates, and was in pretty good shape. Unfortunately the owners were not around at the time, so we missed an opportunity to meet our fellow Newell owners, but I did take some pictures.

***We drove back by that Newell the next day and found the owners "home"....this is actually a 1980 Newell, 37' in length. We introduced ourselves and were treated to a tour of the inside. These folks are from Las Vegas. They day camp along the ocean during the day, and park at the local Wallmart at night. ***

When we returned it was time for Christopher's birthday bash, and now we are getting ready for another meal....looks like BBQ'd hamburgers tonight! Watched part of the UCLA game vs. Kansas....they were only down 2 with a minute to go, but missed the 2 point conversion.

Oh well, another day in paradise........enjoy the pictures!

1980 Newell

In GREAT shape!

Looking south ^

and

north >

The preparations.....

The birthday Boy....

Son of a "beach.....

2010-09-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning we head out to Ventura, CA for the Labor Day weekend. This is a very cool beach community just south of Santa Barbara. They have a wonderful old town, which is a 5 minute bike ride from the RV park we will be inhabiting. We'll probably take one day and ride south to Oxnard for breakfast, but most of the time we will be enjoying the sea air, 65 degree weather, and great friends and family. Tune in tomorrow for the first installment!

Mammoth Mountain

2010-08-22T02:17:00.000-07:00

Just before the first descent of the day...

I first visited the Mammoth Mountain Bike Park back in 1995. Up until then all my mountain biking had been done in Chino Hills State Park, and other local Southern California locations. I had heard about the bike park built on the ski slopes of Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort a short time before my visit in 1995.

Previously my family had spent many winters dating back to the early 70's skiing at this resort, and occasional summer trips to relax and play tennis. In 1989 I took up the sport of mountain biking, then in its infancy. All bikes being made had NO suspension. In the succeeding 21 years the technological side of this sport has exploded. High end mountain bikes can cost upwards of $6,000.

Over the years since 1995 I have returned to the bike park with friends several times each summer to ride the 70 miles of single track trails. On a typical day we log almost 30 miles of riding downhill in the park.

This past Friday, August 20th, I left home around 11am to drive up to Mammoth Mountain to meet friends and ride. Last summer (2009) was the first summer in years I didn't ride at Mammoth. We spent most of the summer getting to know our Newell, and took a number of trips. In addition I injured my left achilles tendon backpacking in the Eastern Sierras in late July. Ultimately I was not able to ride my mountain bike due to this injury for over 10 months. Finally, this past June it had healed and I began training on my stairmaster to start riding again. Two weeks ago I rode in Claremont Wilderness Park and was pleased with my progress, and no pain, so I decided to join my friends this weekend at Mammoth. We started riding Saturday, August 21st, around 9:30am, and finished around 4pm having logged 29 miles. The weather was great.....low 70's and partly cloudy.

Lunch at the Yodler Restaurant

Our annual picture by Red's Lake

The end of the day.......

Next adventure......off to Ventura, CA for the Labor Day weekend in the Newell.....story and pictures to follow! Thanks for reading!

The Near Future......

2010-08-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

The next 60 days will be very, very busy for us:

-On August 20th we head up to Mammoth Lakes to play in the Mammoth Mountain Bike Park for a couple of days. They have built (many years ago) a 70 mile network of what mountain bikers call "single track" trails all over the mountain. The two highest trails start at the 11,000 foot mark.

-On September 3rd we head to Ventura, CA to spend Labor Day weekend on the beach. This is a continuation of a family/friends tradition of gathering together on the 3 major holidays during the summer. You will recall we met at Rancho Jurupa over Memorial Day, then at Yucaipa Regional Park over 4th of July, and now Ventura.

-On September 15th we fly to Seattle, WA to visit our long time college friends who have lived on Whidbey Island for the past 11 years. They have a beautiful home on the side of a hill near Coupeville overlooking Saratoga Passage on Puget Sound.

-Finally on October 8th we head to Santa Fe, NM for 8 days of exploring this historically rich area of the Southwest. Amazingly we have never been to Santa Fe before.....not even through it on our way to some other destination. We'll be meeting some of our Newell friends there.

I'll post more details about each adventure complete with pictures as we move through our travel checklist over the next 60 days.

Thanks for reading!

Summer?

2010-08-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

Today's date is August 5th. Normally, by the end of June Southern California inland valleys start to heat up into the high 90's, and hits low 100's periodically for a few days at a time, here and there. Not this summer! Typically we have what we call in Southern California "May/June gloom", or, if you will, a heavy marine layer caused by what local meteorologists technically call the "Catalina Eddy" effect. Simply put each evening the marine layer which sits off the coast in the daytime, pushes way inland, yes even to Ontario, California, resulting in heavy overcast each morning until about 10, or 11am. As of today we are still getting that marine layer most days. The pleasant result is a daily high of around 88-90 degrees, and down into the 60's at night....sometimes high 50's. So far this summer we have had maybe 4-5 days of temperatures over 100. Most days it hasn't gotten out of the 70's. This past 10 days it has been steady in the mid to high 80's, occasionally hitting 90 for a couple of hours.

I would still expect that we will get our "hot weather" at some point in the next few weeks, however, I was talking with a friend who works at the AQMD (air quality management district) in San Dimas. Their meteorologist told him yesterday that the long range forecast is for the same weather we have now into the Fall. If that happens that would be a first. I have lived in Southern California since I was born in 1949. I don't remember a summer like this, ever! At any rate, we'll see what develops.

Our next scheduled outing in the Newell will be over the Labor Day weekend (September 3rd to 6th) when we travel up to Ventura, CA. Just exactly 4 weeks from now! Stay tuned!

This past weekend Elaine and I rode our bicycles up to the storage facility where we park the Newell when not in use, and drove it home to do some work on it. The microwave that came from the factory in our Newell was a 28 year old Amana that I am sure would stop someone's pacemaker if they got too close while it was on.....LOL! Elaine wanted to replace it with a microwave/convection unit. They are pretty expensive (about $450 at Best Buy), but I found a "new in the box" GE Profile one on Ebay for $250. It has been sitting in our garage for about 3 weeks, but this past weekend was the weekend to install it. Usually a simple project such as this takes just an hour or so, but knowing how well I am acquainted with Mr. Murphy I allowed for 2 days to switch out the units. Remarkably we had the old unit out, and the new one installed in less than an hour! That left time to fix a couple of other electrical issues, which included a new LED reading light I had installed a few months ago that wasn't putting out the kind of light I was expecting. I finally found a good 12 volt electrical source to tap into that wasn't dedicated to something else already, and got that light working at full capacity.

Anyway, that's what's happening in our corner of the world.......13 months 4 days until we retire and "hit the road"....yeah for us!

234th Birthday!!

2010-07-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

Space #29

Just another way of saying "4th of July". We celebrated America's 234th birthday at Yucaipa Regional Park. All together we had 7 RV's including family, extended family and friends of family members meet at this great San Bernardino County Park. It is difficult to get reservations for Holiday weekends at this park, but we were successful by making them 6 months ago in early January. I have written briefly about this park in my January 6th "Another Country Park".

Elaine and I arrived on Thursday, July 1st. My dad always used to say..."if we can leave on Friday, why not on Thursday?". That's my philosophy, and my wife bought into it "this time"...haha! My grandson, Christopher, asked if he could come with us since his parents were not leaving until the next day. Of course, we said yes. After setting up Christopher and I walked down to the water park, bought our passes, and got in line to use the water slides. There are two of them....an aqua tube that is 290 feet long, and an open slume style slide that is 350 feet long. I didn't like the tube too much as it was totally pitch black inside, and it completely disoriented me. The open flume type on was faster and much more enjoyable. After about an hour and a half we headed back to the campsite.

The rest of our entourage arrived the next day, Friday. The one thing we learned is the northern part of the park is more conducive to satellite reception (fewer trees), and is further away from the road, resulting in NO road noise. If you are concerned about satellite reception then be sure to request site #21 to #32. I was expecting it to be warm to hot this past weekend, but the hotest it got was on Thursday (the day we arrived). The rest of the days it didn't get much over 82, and there was a nice cool breeze blowing most of the time. One thing I didn't realize until we drove the Newell up there is that the elevation is close to 3,000 feet, or so says the altimeter in the Newell. The air was crystal clear all 5 days we were there. Everyone in our group loved the park, and we plan to return again.

My view most days......

What I did most days......

What we did most nights.....

Put up the awning lights this time!

Catching up....

2010-06-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

Since my last blog post about our garage sale, and our continuing efforts to rid our lives of a lot of "stuff" we do not need in preparation for fulltiming in (now less than) 15 months, we have covered a lot of ground! Now, that was one LONG run on sentence!

In mid May I flew up to Spokane, WA to visit my sister and her family while Elaine went on a women's retreat near Canon Beach, OR. I spent about 6 days there bicycling around the Spokane area with my sister, Hilary, and her family. Spokane is really a very beautiful place, and there are so many things to see, and every kind of outdoor activity you can imagine. I spent one day playing 18 holes with Hilary's husband, Bob....haven't played in 10 years, and I still have all those bad habits! During my stay there my Blackberry gave up the ghost, so I was "forced" to by a Droid....oh my goodness.....it is like 100 times faster than the Blackberry. All of the pictures in this installment of our blog were taken with the camera option on the Droid. I like the quality of both the still camera, and video camera options. In addition, I loaded all the music from my Ipod to the Droid, so I have eliminated two separate items I need when travelling...the Ipod, and my camera. I only need the Droid now.

My sister Hilary and her daughter Caroline

Bike riding on the Centennial Trail (Hilary's husband Bob in the background)

Spokane River and Falls in downtown Spokane....note the 3 gondolas visible in the lower left of the picture.

Rocket Bakery....a local institution, and a reputation well earned!

Shorly after our return from our "trips" to the Pacific Northwest we headed out for a long Memorial Day weekend with family and friends in our respective RV's. In all we had 6 RV's at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park for the long weekend (5 motorhomes, and one travel trailer). We watched Boston trample Orlando in game 6 to advance to the NBA finals, and the next night watched the Lakes do the same to Phoenix in their game six.

Set up by 11am on Friday!

I called the RV park Friday morning around 9:30am and found out we could check in anytime we wished, so I headed over the ARCO station and put $400 worth of diesel in the near empty tank of the Newell...that got us almost to full! Then we headed over to the RV park and got setup by 11am. My brother Philip and his wife arrived around 2:30pm. Philip is in the picture below with Elaine cooking breakfast the next morning.

Cooking pancakes

Part of our extended family - Rex and Joyce. They have a Fleetwood Bounder with a couple of slides.

Our long weekend ended on Monday and we headed home to unpack and prepare for our flight to Austin, TX the next afternoon. The purpose of our trip was to attend the high school graduation of our niece, Sarah Katharine Parker from the Griffin School, a small private arts school. There were 16 kids in Kate's graduating class, and the cool thing was as each graduate was given their diploma someone, chosen by the student, from their family, or faculty, got up and spoke for 5 minutes about the graduating student. Very, very touching, as well as very humorous at times.

My lovely wife Elaine (left) and her sister, Laureen Parker at Precision Camera

Laureen took us out to do a little site seeing, and while out we paid a visit to the well known local camera experts at Precision Camera in downtown Austin. She is heading to Taiwan on business the day we leave to fly home, and needed a new camera for the trip. As is turned out they did not have the camera in stock that Laureen wanted so she paid a visit to the local Best Buy and they did. Precision Camera will match anyone's price, however. Later that evening we returned to downtown Austin on South Congress street to listen to some blues music at The Continental Club, a local institution since 1952. If you are ever in town be sure to check out this funky club. Afterward we walked around South Congress enjoying the atmosphere and the humidity (hahaha!), ultimately stopping in Guero's Taco Bar for a late dinner. They have an outdoor garden with a bandstand, and on this evening a group was playing 50's music....a lot of Chuck Berry....an who doesn't love Chuck Berry?

My brother-in-law, Glen Parker, in front of The Continental Club in downtown Austin on South Congress Ave. Listened to some great blues music.

Small narrow gauge railroad along side Town Lake in downtown Austin

Town Lake

On Saturday we headed over to Town Lake in downtown Austin to take a 3 mile hike around a portion of the lake. This is a great local asset, and the citizens really use it.....there were runners, bicyclists, kayakers, canoers, as well as many just walking. I think the humidty was in the 70's, and the temps at 7pm were in the 90's....very, very muggy! After the walk we were ready for something cold so we headed over to Sandy's for some dipped ice cream cones.

The famous Sandy's....great dipped icecream cones!

A few months after we bought our Newell we met Michael and Georgia who own a 1992 42' Newell. They fulltime in their Newell, and we met them in Newport Beach, CA where they were for the winter of 2008. They are now in Austin, TX at the same RV park we had our min-rally in April 0f 2009. We couldn't come to Austin without spending a few hours visiting with them and catching up on their adventures.

Our good friends Michael and Georgia Day, the first Newell owners we met after buying ours.

And, of course, the main reason for our visit....Katie's graduation.....from left to right, Laureen (Mom), Katie, Jeffrey (Son), and Glen....very proud father! Katie graduated from the Griffin School in Austin, TX.

Waxing eloquent....

2010-05-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

8am

Has it really been six months since the boys from Integrity Mobile Detail put a winter coat of wax on our baby? Seems like we were just embarking on our trip into the frozen tundra, and here it is late May (even though it feels more like February) and time for another coat of wax......Tom and Carmello Montoya will be here on Thursday at 8:30am to wash and wax our Newell, and detail Elaine's Thunderbird.

On Friday we will head back to Rancho Jurupa Regional Park where Elaine and I spent President's Day weekend in February. This time 5 other family members, and their respective RV's will be joining us for 3 days of relaxation at this great local park!

After my last trip to Temecula for the soccer tournament I noticed I was getting an error message on the Prodigy brake controller.....the flashing initials "SH" kept taunting me all the way home. I pulled out the Prodigy owners manual and discovered that "SH" was short for, well, SHORT! I put on the right blinker and had no blinking light. I turned on the lights, and had NO tail lights.....ugghhh! This has been the winter for electrical problems. I took the coach into Joel's Automotive Repair (http://www.allmar-tech.com/joels/Joels_New/new_contact.html) in Upland (he has been my trusted mechanic for about 12 years). They discovered a short in the wiring between the brake controller and the rear of the coach which had blown the rear fuse. So, they rewired the controller, reset the fuse, and all is well once again. I go in today to pay my bill (gladly) and bring the coach home to get detailed on Thursday, and prepare for our long weekend.

This past weekend marked the end of the spring soccer season, and the summer tournament season will start this weekend (I won't be wearing my soccer official hat this weekend!). Before we know it we will be starting the fall season again, and Elaine and I will be less than 12 months from retirement and hitting the road in the Newell....yeah!!!

9:15pm

Picked up the Newell this afternoon. They completely rewired the brake controller using existing conduit to run the new wire so there won't be a "shorting" problem again. I decided to check the turn signals, etc. before leaving and they worked, however, the trailer jack was not putting out any turn signals, so they had to rerun those wires....took about 15 minutes, but now it all works.

Great to have the coach home again....we'll be cleaning up the inside in preparation for our long weekend, and getting the outside washed and waxed in a couple of days.

I'm still in mourning as the Lakers lost for the second time in Phoenix, so now they return to L.A. all tied up at 2 games a piece. Hope Orlando can extend Boston a couple of more games, but now am not sure the Lakers will be their opponent the way we have played the last two games.

Simplifying...

2010-05-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

We sold 2 trundle beds, dressers, etc.

Part of our strategy for starting our "fulltime" adventure (now just 16 months away) is to divest ourselves of "stuff". A few weeks ago we spent parts of two days removing stored "stuff" from the attic over our 3 car garage. That exercise was in preparation for a garage sale. Garage sales are really cool.......people pay us for the priviledge of hauling away our "stuff". What a great concept!! The City of Ontario requires that you obtain a "garage sale" permit. You are only allowed to hold two of these per year. Failure to obtain the permit is punishable with a $30 fine. We chose the "two consecutive weekend" option. Over the 2 consecutive Saturdays (April 24th and May 1st) we sold a lot of "stuff" we hadn't used in years, and received around $700 from eager buyers.

Our fair city also provides a free pickup of "LARGE" items once per year, so the couple of remaining large items (old entertainment center, 4 poster bed) will be picked up in the next few days. Our garage attic is now emtpy, and we now have the use of our 3 car garage again for garaging cars! What a novel concept.....haha!!

The pieces are slowly falling into place. Our next big task will be getting rid of stuff inside the house as we get closer to our "exit" date. No doubt some of the "stuff" will end up in storage. In the mean time we will be doing a lot of long weekends, and maybe one long trip this year. It really depends on Elaine's schedule. We have two "flying trips" planned over the next 30 days. Elaine is flying up to Oregon next week for a getaway with girl friends from her company, and I am flying to Spokane to visit my sister and her family for a few days. Next month we will fly down to Austin, TX for our niece's graduation and to visit with the Texas contingent of our extended family. Additionally, we wil get out in the Newell over Memorial Day weekend, and the July 4th weekend visiting local county parks (Rancho Jurupa and Yucaipa Regional Park respectively).

Thanks for following along!!!

All purpose room......

2010-04-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

As you will recall, we have been looking for an enclosed trailer for the past month, or so. This has been a part of our "master plan" since we bought the 2002 Thunderbird, and then the Newell. There are many ways to "drag" your car with you on your adventures.....flat towing (four down), dolly, flat bed trailer, or enclosed trailer. I guess there is a fifth option...ship it to wherever you are going....haha! That, of course, would be expensive and impractical. The inherent risks with the first three are your car will be hit by road debris, flying objects, oil thrown off by the diesel, and will be generally dirty, if not filthy when you reach your destination. In addition, there is extra hardware that must be attached to flat tow, as well as a transmission pump, and/or a disconnect for the drive shaft. Finally, there is just the extra wear and tear on the chassis, tires, suspension, etc. Modifying our "baby" in this way is not desireable, and subjecting her to the perils of the open road is even less desireable. The added bonus of an enclosed trailer is that "it" becomes an "all purpose room".....at our regular home I hang out in the garage listening to music, working my bikes, cars, etc. This will be my garage on the road when the car is not in it.

So, the search for an appropriate conveyance for the 'Bird has really been going on for at least 2 years (since we bought the Newell), but very, very seriously the past month. Our search has brought us in contact with scammers...remember the Haulmark trailer on Craigslist with the Lamorghini for $3200, including shipping.....haha! Additionally, I've enlisted friends in distant out of state cities to inspect trailers of interest. I even contemplated flying up to Sacramento to inspect a trailer. You might say, "why not just have a new one built to your specifications?" Certainly, that would be easier, but way more expensive, and I really don't like wrapping my mind around the instant depreciation. I always feel like I'm flushing several thousand dollars down the toilet when I buy new. I haven't bought a new car since 1987. The down side to buying used is that what I want is not readily available in the used market. After a lot of research I determined I need combined axle ratings (GVWR) of at least 10,000 lbs, and I really wanted to keep the trailer down to around 20-22'. Typically, the trailers that have 10,000 GVWR or higher are at least 24' long, and may have up to 3 axles. It's rare to find a used trailer under 24' with 2 axles rated at combined 10,000 GVWR.............until this past Friday!

I have been cruising Craigslist (in most of the western states) for the past month. I have been interested in a few....the one in Phoenix would have been great, but it turned out the trailer was really 28', not 26', plus the length of the tongue,which would have put it over 30'......way, way too long.

So, fast forward to this past Friday.....I was searching the Inland Empire Craigslist and came across a 2006 American Trailer, 20', 10,000 GVWR. The price was about 1/2 what it cost to build 4 years ago. Well, to try and make a long story a little shorter, we bought it, and here are the pictures!

Front view...has a locked tool box mounted on tongue!

Not large side door on drivers side...this a 4' wide ramp door that lower!

The view of the interior looking in from the rear beaver tail ramp door

Looking out the rear door.

This trailer was built with a lot of extras......g-flooring, e-track, 2nd ramp door on the driver's side, independent rear axles, locking tool box, sway control, 10,000 GVWR, and finished interior. To boot, the current owner just installed new radial tires....original tires were bias ply.

I will return to Murrietta (just north of Temecula off Interstate 15) on Monday to pick up the trailer. More to follow as we add our own touches to the trailer....work bench, 110 lighting, A/C, etc.

Thanks for following our adventure!

"They look brand new!"

2010-04-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

We bought our Newell March 1, 2008. At the time we thought the tires were less than 4 years old with the exception of the right front that had been replaced by the prior owner due to hitting road debris a year before. Tires on any kind of RV (trailer, 5th wheel, motorhome) have a life expectancy. Since, typcially, RV's are not used on a regular basis, and in many cases sit for weeks, or months at a time you cannot judge their condition by the depth of the tread, or their appearance. In fact, it is extremely important when buying "new" tires for your RV that you have the date codes on the tires checked. Whether, or not tires are being used, or sitting on the rack at the tire store, they are deteriorating. Depending on the brand of tire, you can expect 5-7 years of use out of a tire, no matter how good the tread looks.

In our case the Goodyear tires that had been installed by the prior owner just a couple of years previously were really much older at the time of installation than the prior owner thought. I did not know I had a ticking time bomb on my hands.

In mid May of 2008 we drove the Newell down to Tempe, AZ for my daughter's graduation from Arizona State. It was a good excuse to take our first extended trip in our new purchase. All went well until we were about 85 miles from the California border, between Tonopah and Ehrenberg, on our return trip. I was in the #2 lane on I-10 cruising along about 60mph when I suddenly heard a loud "BANG!!!".....initially I thought I had hit something in the road, but quickly realized my left front tire had exploded. The coach jerked violently to the left taking me about half way into the #1 lane. I remembered my drivers ed training from years ago "Don't make dramatic corrections, or oversteer!".....I firmly gripped the steering wheel, took my foot off the accelerator, and gradually regained control, began steering to the right while coasting onto the shoulder about 100 feet down the road. Traffic was light that day and there was no one withiin a mile of me front, or back.

I sat there in the driver's seat listening to the gentle rumble of the idling Detroit Diesel, then heard one of my daughters sitting behind me say "Dad, you did a great job of saving us!". I turned off the diesel, and my wife and I (shakily) walked outside to survey the damage. Typically, when a tire blows out on a motorhome the damaged tire is the the least of it. A lot of times the exploding rubber acts like shrapenal damaging sheet metal, taking out plumbing, wiring, etc. As we walked around to the left front of the coach we soon realized the only damage was the tire.....not even the rim, which was now on the ground, appeared damaged.

Blowout on I-10

The picture above is what we first saw. I then looked back down the road and saw an enormous debris field of rubber going back a hundred feet, or so. Fortunately, we carry Good Sam Emergency Road Service. I called them, gave them the mile marker we were near and they arranged for a tire service to drive 80 miles out from Mesa, AZ with the proper tire. I turned on the generator so we could run the roof A/C's, cranked up the satellite dish, and turned on an NBA playoff game...can't remember who was playing now. Elaine and the girls prepared some cold cuts for a snack. In about 2 hours the guy arrived, changed the tire with the rim still on the motorhome, and had us on our way in 30 more minutes. My only cost was the tire....$350. Good Sam paid everything else!

The next, after arriving home without further incident, I had my mechanic check the date codes on the tires.....they were 7-11 years old! Wow, that meant when they were installed they were already 5-8 years old. I immediately had the rear 4 tires replaced and have had no further trouble since.

The moral of the story? 1) Do not take anyone's word for what kind of shape the tires are in on a new, or used RV purchase. Determine when they were installed (ask for paperwork), and then have the date codes checked to be sure "old/new" tires were not installed. 2) Have a good ERS provider!

Serendipity

2010-04-13T08:26:00.001-07:00

Was at the San Bernardino Soccer Complex in Highland, CA this past Sunday getting ready to officiate my first soccer match. I looked up about 7:30am and saw this "Happy Face" in the clouds. Lasted about 30 seconds.....just enough time to get my phone out and take this picture.

Pretty cool, huh? Put a smile on my face the rest of the day.....

2010-04-12T07:10:00.000-07:00

A day after I saw the ad for the Haulmark trailer (prior post) in the L.A. Craigslist I got an e-mail from a friend who saw the same one in the Houston, TX Craigslist. I began to think this is a scam. Then the next day I got the following e-mail:

"Hello, I'm the owner of Haulmark Enclosed Car Trailer Elite II on which you've recently shown interest. The trailer is in perfect working condition with a clean title. The price is 3,200 $ , shipping and handling are included in the price. Why is the price so low ? Because I am in a divorce dispute with my husband.The Trailer was bought for him and I no longer need it. I am located in Augusta, ME now and it will be shipped from here. Shipping will be done via Cargo Auto Shippers and it will take no more than 3-5 days (depending on your exact location).The transaction will be made through eBay Solutions for our own protection. If you like what you see,email me back with your exact location so I can calculate shipping costs and to discuss shipping and payment details and also other things regarding my trailer. If you are interested please email me back for the next step.

Sincerely,

Alpina McBride"

First of all, this trailer, used and without A/C, winch, generator, & workbench is worth between $6 and $8,000, so this LOW price is too good to be true. Then to imply that the $3,200 price includes shipping and handling is an even bigger red flag. I recently shipped my mother's car from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Spokane, WA. The cost was $1,000, and that was the low bid by 1/2. I can only imagine what the cost from Augusta, Maine to Ontario, CA would be....probably closer to $2,000, or higher. There is no way this "lady" would settle for a net profit of $1,200 (or less) on this trailer, unless she just wanted to stick it to her "ex". The third red flag is she wants to use something called "eBay Solutions" to complete the transaction. I have been using Ebay for 6 years with over 500 transactions, and I have never heard of eBay Solutions. The fourth red flag is I can find no information on an outfit called "Cargo Auto Shippers". Finally, in my initial e-mail to her I asked several specific questions, and in her reply she answered none of them.

Am I just being paranoid?

If any of you reading this post has heard of eBay Solutions, or Cargo Auto Shippers let me know.

Lamborghini?

2010-04-09T13:50:00.001-07:00

Came across this enclosed car trailer today for $3,100! Includes A/C, generator, winch, work bench, lighting, etc.!

$3,100---Lamborghini NOT included...Haha!!

Waiting to hear back from seller....this is right in my back yard......killer deal.

Enclosed Trailer

2010-04-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

April 8, 2010

Part of our "fulltime" plan has been to buy a 24-26' enclosed trailer that would hold our 2002 Ford Thunderbird, plus our bikes, and have a little room for a work bench in the front. We really don't want to "flat tow" the T-Bird 4 down due to wear and tear, and pitting to the paint that would inevitably occur. We have 6 "bikes" that we will want with us on our journeys (a mountain bike for me, 2 road bikes, 2 tadpole trikes, and a tandem). I've been looking on and off for about a year. A few days ago I stumbled across what I think may be the trailer to hold all this stuff....LOL! It is 26' long, and has a "tilt" feature, which will make it easier to load the 'Bird, which has very low clearance. I have had difficulty in the past driving it on to trailers.

A good friend, who lives in the Phoenix, AZ area where the trailer is, will take a look at it this afternoon and let me know his thoughts.

As you can see it has a front side door on the drivers side, and what you can't see is that there is one on the right front side, too. In addition, there is a 4' X 4' door (visible) just above the tandem wheels on the driver's side that will enable me to comfortably enter and exit the car for loading and unloading purposes. It was previously owned by a guy with a race car, so it was built with that issue in mind.

If all goes well we will have moved one step closer to our dream with one more piece of the puzzle in place!

Not much else going on right now. No trip plans in the near future, but if we buy the trailer we'll be heading down to Phoenix to haul it back home the weekend of the 17th.

Thanks for checking in!

April 9, 2010 - Update!

My good friend was able to stop by and look at the trailer in Phoenix, AZ. It is a great deal, however, it turns out the actual length of the trailer is 28', plus the tongue of 4' for a total of 32'. This combined with my coach length of 36' would put me 3 feet over the maximum legal length in California, and many other states, of 65'. So, still looking....

I did find another killer deal right here in my "back yard".

No, the Lamborghini does not come with the trailer......hahaha.....this trailer is a Haulmark, which includes A/C, work bench, generator, and winch, is going for $3,900! Waiting for a reply from seller for more on the specs for the trailer (GVWR, length, width, etc.). I need at least 9,000 GVWR.

The last 10 days.....

2010-03-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

March 20 & 21, 2010:

Since my last blog post about our trip to the John Blance Memorial Soccer Complex in Temecula, CA I returned there again last weekend for another 2 day tournment. Elaine was going to have our grand daugther, Charlise, over the weekend as our daughter was attending the wedding of a close friend, so she bade me farewell Saturday morning as I headed south for Temecual once again.

Since my first match was not until 1pm I decided to leave Saturday morning instead of Friday night. To be sure I was able to secure a good spot for the two days I left around 6:30am, arriving in Temecula around 7:30am. I am really glad I arrived early because by 8:30am the RV parking area was crowded. I took my time setting up, visiting with one of my "neighbors" for a while, before eating some breakfast, and then laying down for a nap. I had barely dropped off when I got a call on my cell phone asking if I could fill in for a missing referee on one of the fields. Originally my schedule for Saturday was for 4 matches starting at 1pm. It was now a little after 9am. I barely had exited my coach with my soccer bag when the referee co-ordinator drove arrived in a golf cart and wisked me 4 fields over. As I stepped from the cart I heard him say, "you'll be an assistant referee on this match, and the center referee on the next match..."....before I could turn and reply he was heading off to solve another problem....groan......I'm over 60 now, and even though there was a time (maybe 12 years ago) when doing six matches in one day would not even phase me, it does now, but what could I do....they need help, and I'm available.

After finishing the 2nd match I had 1 1/2 hours until my 4 game stretch started at 1pm, so I trudged back to the coach, got a bite to eat, drank some gatorade, and then layed down for an hour. The four game set starting at 1pm included two center referee assignments (Boys U-19) and two assistant referee assignments (Girls U-17). I finished shortly after 7pm as the sun was setting over the Cleveland National Forest to the west. Thankfully, I did not have an hour drive home, but just a 5 minute walk......I hopped in the shower to wash the sweat and grime off before eating dinner and watching an NCAA March Madness game. I was in bed by 9pm, and slept like the dead until 4am. I finally got up around 6am (my first of FIVE matches was at 8am). I fired up the generator, turned on the coffee maker and "made" a bowl of Grapenuts with a banana sliced on top. I love that first cup of coffee in the morning!

Sunday, I had been given 5 assignments (one less than the 6 I had the day before), but this day I still had 3 center assignments, inlcuding a Girls U-19 (under 19 years of age) final at 3:05pm. I had a 1 hour break between my 4th match and the U-19 final, which I really needed. Being able to take that break in the comfort of the coach is really appreciated.

The Girls U-19 final went well, and I headed back to the coach to put everything away, take a shower, and then drive home. I arrived home around 6:15pm grateful Ididn't have to make the drive to Temecula twice that weekend, saving 96 miles of extra driving, but totally beat.

March 23, 2010:

I had planned to return the coach to the storage facility on Monday, but I decided I needed to do some maintenance. I had noticed a few "popped" rivets that needed replacing, and the basement storage compartment just to the rear of the left front wheel had been getting water in it when it rains, so I need to do some caulking to seal that up again. Additionally, when I had been under the coach a few weeks ago to fix the generator starting issue, I had noticed how completely filthy that area was.....probably had 15 years of grime, grease, oil, dirt built up. I pulled the generator out (it is mounted on a slide with 6 rollers on the bottom for servicing), sprayed down the engine, and the entire compartment with Simple Green. After letting it "stew" for a few minutes I hauled out the pressure washer and blasted all the gunk off. Needless to say I was completely filthy after that experience, mostly because I had to roll under the coach again on the "crawler" to reattach the exaust pipe for the generator. Obviously, that is where all the gunk ended up. I'll have to scoop up what is left off the street after I take the coach back to storage this afternoon.

So, you are now caught up on the last 10 days of our Newell Adventure. Thank you, as always, for reading!

A lovely, clear weekend in Temecula, CA!!

2010-03-14T18:04:00.000-07:00

Parked in the northeast corner of the complex looking east toward the San Jacinto Moutains, which are still sporting snow on their highest peaks.

On three separate occasions in the last 6 weeks we were headed to John Blanche Memorial Soccer Complex in Temecula, CA to spend the weekend dry camping whilst I served in my capacity as a soccer referee. Each of those times we were rained out. For those of you who are familiar with Southern California, we don't get much rain each year, and it rarely ever rains on the weekends, but this year we have been "blessed" with an El Nino condition in the South Pacific which sends many more storms to Southern California than in a normal year, and this year it has rained most often on the weekends.

Looking southeast

This weekend I signed up again for a two day shift at the soccer complex in Temecula, and this time it did not rain. Had two days of scattered clouds, light winds and mostly sunny weather.

RV Row...there were about 6 of us spending the night

Looking northwest....the soccer complex is nestled against the foothills of the Cleveland National Forest

My soccer matches were scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, but I had some indoor matches Friday night in Chino Hills, so we left our home around 5:30pm on Friday heading over to Chino Hills for my Friday night matches. I finished around 11pm, and then we headed down to Temecula arriving at the soccer complex around 12:10am....we were in bed in less than 20 minutes. Since we arrived so late we had to park outside the complex (the gates were locked) in the quiet industrial area. I've stayed on the street before, and it is quite quiet, and have never been bothered by anyone, including the local police.

Saturday morning we were up at 6am when the gates opened, and drove in and snagged a nice spot in the northeast corner of the complex where motorhomes are allowed to park over night. While I walked over to the referee checkin area, Elaine whipped up some scrambled eggs, toast and coffee. I was back at the coach a little after 7am, ate my breakfast, and then headed out to do my first match.

The tournament we were at was the Arsenal Football Club tournament that had been cancelled due to the rain about a month ago. I was assigned 4 matches about 2 hours apart, finishing my last match around 2:20pm. In between matches I would walk back to the coach for a snack, and at one time a short nap as I had a 2 hour gap before my last game.

This morning I was originally assigned 3 matches, with my last match scheduled for 2pm. I ended up picking up 2 additional matches and did 5 in all finishing around 4pm. It was nice being able to take a quick shower before turning over the 6V92 diesel and heading back north on Interstate 15.

All in all it was a very pleasant weekend. I enjoyed not having to drive all the way back to Ontario each day and then repeating the same drive the next morning. I got an extra hour of sleep last night, and got to see my lovely wife, Elaine, several times during the day each day. Elaine read 3 books this weekend, and really enjoyed being "unplugged" this weekend.....no business e-mail, no phone calls, and no text messages from any of our children.

Thanks for following our continued Newell adventures!

A temporary/permanent solution......

2010-03-11T18:54:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine (a fellow Newell owner) coined that phrase about a year ago. We were in Austin, TX at a Newell Mini-Rally last April. I had noticed on our trip out to Texas that the Airconditioning dryer was not cylcing off as it should automatically do, and the result was the evaporator was freezing up. My friend helped me install a manaul on/off switch in the cockpit area so I could manually turn off the dryer periodically to keep the evaporator from freezing. It has worked wonderfully.

As I wrote recently, I have been chasing a generator problem for about 3 weeks now....not continuously, mind you, but a few hours here and there. For some reason the trigger wire that should only send an electrical signal to the starter solenoid when I press the start switch is getting power 100% of the time, whether or not I press the start switch. As soon as I turn on the house batteries the generator tries to start. I had ohm tested the 4 separate start switches throughout the coach, including the one on the controller box next to the generator, and they all checked out. I had thought that one of them might have gone bad and was sending a signal all the time, but they all checked out. I then opened up the controller box and saw that there were 3 relays in there, each with 8 connections. I assumed one of them had gone bad, so I ordered new ones and replaced them. Upon reconnecting the controller box, and turning on the house batteries the same problem presented itself. I then crawled under the coach (after first blocking the frame to avoid getting squished should air suspension spontaneously lose air....it has happened to others, and the result is usually death) and opened up the back panel on the generator and found a 4th relay. Now I need to find that part and try replacing it.

In the mean time I resorted to the temporary/permanent solution previously used with great success (hope it will only be temporary this time....LOL!). I disconnected the trigger wire from the solenoid, and added a 10' extension to it so I could run it into the coach. I purchased a push button starter switch at Autozone, and attached the trigger wire to one terminal, then attached a second 10' wire to the other terminal and ran it back down to the trigger terminal on the solenoid....wala! Success!!! I can now start the generator from inside once again by using the temporary push button starter switch combined with pushing the old starter switch to open the propane solenoid at the generator allowing propane to flow into the motor. I can still turn off the generator by pushing the original start switch to the "OFF" position.

So, the trouble shooting is deferred to another day.

The reason I spent the entire day today trying to get this issue resolved is we are going down to Temecula tomorrow night to another soccer tournament......I know, the forecast is actually for sunny weather this weekend. We'll be dry camping at the John Blanche Memorial Soccer Complex I previously wrote about several weeks ago. That weekend was rained out along with two other weekends in the past 5 weeks. So, this will be the first successful tournament overnight trip....keeping my fingers crossed, and knocking on wood....LMAO!!

Almost well.....

2010-03-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

Since my past blog post I've been fighting a bad chest cold, which morphed over last weekend into tonsilitis. After a quick trip last Sunday to Urgent Care, and a prescription for antibiotics I am finally on the mend. I spent most of last weekend in bed. Usually I can "work" my way through a cold, but this time it flat knocked me on my back.

So, as a result of being mostly sick the past 2 weeks I have not had much to write about. This weekend's weather forecast shows rain both Saturday and Sunday, so I won't be doing much to finish diagnosing the issue with my generator, which won't start. The issue started shortly before the problem I wrote about last time with the bad ground that was depriving the coach of 12 volt power. I think on my last trip down to Temecula that water go into the switch module on the genset and shorted something out. After I fixed the ground issue I started to work on the generator issue thinking at first that the starter solenoid had gone bad. I was able to jump the two poles on the solenoid and start the generator, but, as it turns out it was not the solenoid. When I installed the new solenoid and turned back on the house batteries the starter started turning over motor without me pushing the button. I disconnected the starter, then turned on the house batteries and then went inside and toggled the starter switch back and forth. When I reconnected the starter the spontaneous starting ceased, but then it wouldn't turn over when I pushed either the toggle switch on the dashboard, or the remote start on the generator. The trigger wire is not getting any power now, so my suspicion is that a fuse has blown inside the switch box.......that's the next step, but I can't work on that until it stops raining.

So, that's where I'm at. I will update in a few days when I can open things back up again and do some more troubleshooting.

When things go wrong.....

2010-02-24T07:26:00.000-08:00

As many of you most certainly know, either from personal experience, or from hearing the "war" stories of others.......owning a "home" that moves down the road will, from time to time, mean stuff will break, or stop working. When things go wrong in a motorhome it is the result, often, of the flexing, heating-cooling, and/or vibrating of your moving home.

This past Saturday morning I unplugged our coach from shore power, ensconsed myself in the captain's chair, and turned the key "sending" electrical power to the starter fully expecting to hear what I always hear as the 6V92 Detroit Diesel rumbles, once again, to life. What I was treated to were the "sounds of silence".....not even a click....nothing. At first I thought the transmission was not in neutral (there is no "PARK" option). If the coach is not in neutral nothing will happen when you turn the key. I tried several times to reposition the gear shift in neutral with the same silent result....still no response. I sat there staring dumbly at all the gauges looking for signs of life. I slowly turned the battery condition switch from one battery to the next and see that all batteries are at 100% charge. I then flip the battery merge switch to merge all four batteries, and get the same disconcerting silence. I try the back up monitor....won't come on...then I start turning on light switches (all the lights are of the 12 volt variety) and still am not "seeing the light". I walk to the kitchen.....nothing comes on. I pass on to the bedroom and get the same result. There is literally no 12 volt power reaching any 12 volt fixture anywhere in the coach.....WOW!

Now I have moved from the "seeking adventure on the road" to "death of a vision" to starting to trouble shoot the electrical problem. I decide to plug back in the shore power, because I remember when I first entered the coach this morning before unplugging all the 12 volt was working.....as I mate the male and female ends of the shore power cord I hear the "click" I always hear and all the 12 volt power returns to the coach, and, in fact, I turn the ignition key and the diesel rumbles to life....OK, that's progress. I then unplug the shore power again, and it still runs, however, all 12 volt power vanishes into the ether again, and I find that flipping the kill switch does not turn off the diesel. I reconnect the power and am able to turn off the diesel.....OK, we're not going anywhere in our moving home today.

Our plan had been to head down to Temecula for a 2 day soccer tournament and spend the night. Since I had a start time of 9:15am I had to forego anymore trouble shooting and just go do my games, and worry about this issue when I get back in the afternoon.

I arrive back home around 2:30pm, park the car, and put up a post on the NewellClassic.com website outlining my problem. While waiting for a reply I start checking all the batteries with my multi meter to confirm the readings of the meter inside. I check for voltage pole to pole (positive to negative) and get 12.20 to 12.35 volts on all four batteries....pretty close to a full charge. I then check positive to ground and get the same readings....so, all 4 batteries are charged, and all four grounds are fine. I check for voltage on the front electrical panel and get nothing, EXCEPT for the radio...it has power, and it turns on...the only 12 volt item in the coach that comes on without shorepower....weird!

I get a reply on the website from one of my buddies, Richard, and he says to call him, which I do. I the relate all the symptoms to him, and then he goes through a list of things he wants me to check out, which I do, but we still have no idea what is happening. He suggests I call one of the other owners who is a brilliant electrical engineer, and has successfully solved many of his Newell electrical issues. Soooo, I call Tom in Arizona and find he is on his way home from a weekend adventure in their 1990 Newell...as he is driving he outlines several issues he wants me to check out before we talk the next time. I make notes and plan to do the additional trouble shooting the next afternoon when I again return from Temecula.

The problem is, I am coming down with a cold this past weekend, and when I arrive home on Sunday around 3pm I am out of engery, and it is getting cold. I just decide to take a shower, and lay down for a while....."tomorrow is another day" as Scarlet would say.

Monday morning dawns sunny, and warmer....I have a cup of "joe" and then head out to the coach. I get Tom on the phone and I report back to him the results of the things he wanted me to check.....gradually we move back to the electrical bay located just in front of the engine compartment at the left rear of the coach....since the converter/charger is obviously putting out 12 volt when plugged in, then the issue must be between there and the rear electrical junction panel......I am in the process of tracing the "red" wire from the conveter to the rear junction when my neighbor, Russell, walks up...."what's wrong?" he says....that's what he always says when he sees me staring dumbly at my coach, or car. I briefly relate to him the symptoms....he asks to look in the electrical bay, wiggles a few wires there, then asks to see the rear junction panel...as we are talking he starts wiggling the various large wires (yes, the shore power is unplugged, but thank you for being concerned...). He wiggles a large diameter black ground wire and I hear the "click" I used to hear...then he wiggles the other one, and the same thing.....it is obvious that both connections are loose....one more than the other.....hmmmmm....why didn't I "see" that? I unscrew both bolts, clean off all the connections, and then reconnect them...I turn on all the battery switches, and what do you freakin' know....I have 12 volt restored throughout the coach!! I call Tom, and tell him what we discovered, and he congratulates me on finding the problem. I then thank Russell for his fresh set of eyes, and that he always assumes the problem is simple, first. I tend to think the problem is large, and complicated, first.

A lesson learned once again.....more often than not electrical problems occur due to the vibration, flexing, heating and cooling....ground wires come loose, or get corroded. A special thanks to Richard and Tom for "sharing" my pain, and working with me....Tom we were on the right path....we just hadn't gotten all the way to the rear junction panel......Russell, you're a life saver...thanks for being a good neighbor!

The rear electrical panel ground connections...all cleaned up and reconnected!

Walking Tour of Rancho Jurupa

2010-02-14T09:25:00.001-08:00

Sunday, February 14, 2010 - 9:00am

Decided to do a walking video tour of the park for those who may be interested. This is really a great regional park, and the layout and amenities show a lot of thought. Below if a view looking north from site 201 toward Mt. Baldy....still a lot of snow. Just below you can see the little kiddie water park in the right center of the picture.

Mt. Baldy in the distance, and the kiddie water park on the foreground

Just before the kiosk

"Gopher Hole" miniature golf course

Looking west along Cottonwood Drive

Walking Tour Video....enjoy!

Sunday - Noon to 2:30pm

Later, around Noon, we took a ride into the City of Riverside to their old town area. They have a nice promenade area which they have closed off to pedestrian traffic only. There are also a lot of churches on Mission Inn Blvd., as well as the historic Mission Inn. Here are a few pictures we took of the area.

Civic Auditorium

One of many churches

Universalist Unitarian Church

One of the towers at the Mission Inn

Mission Inn Valet Entrance

Valet Exit

Historic Fox Theater

Elaine in front of the box office

Southside of the Fox Theater along Mission Inn Blvd

Some of the restoration detail just above the box office

Cool stone bridge over Mission Blvd...note beginning of elevated walkway on left

Looking west on Mission Blvd. from stone bridge shown in previous photo

Video of ride along elevated walkway

Entrance to Mt. Rubidoux hiking trail

We didn't get a chance to take the hike up to the top of Mt. Rubidoux....Elaine had a head cold this weekend and just wasn't up to it....I'm glad she joined me for the bike ride! Above is the ornate entrace to the hiking trail that takes one to the top of Mt. Rubidoux....next time!

End of another great day!!

We had a great weekend.....I read a book, and took care of a lot of little maintenance issues. BBQ'd chicken one night and salmon last night. We will return to this park. Less than 15 minutes from home, but it felt like we left the State!

Thanks for following our adventures!