Lighting up at Christmas (not a cigarette!)

Once Thanksgiving is over, the house lights and decorations come out. There is one block not far from us that goes all out every year and the whole block is lit up. I have a neat little video on my new camera but for some reason it won't upload. Will have to get the instructions out.

We are going to Las Vegas for Christmas again, but this year we will take the motorhome instead of the bus tour and plan to stay 5 days. Looks like it will be warm enough to golf one day and I have reserved tickets for one show. We will be staying at Sam's Town RV Park and Casino and they run a shuttle several times a day to the strip. The Canucks are in Phoenix on the 29th so we may head that way on the way back.

They are finally offering H1N1 flu shots to the general public now so I went and got mine yesterday at WalMart. It was only $15.

Merry Christmas to all and Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy 2010!

Black Friday Shopping

Decided we needed the experience of shopping on black Friday and it will definitely not happen again. Getting up at 4 a.m. to go shopping was not my idea of fun! We left home at 4:30 and headed to Walmart. The parking lot was already full!! What??!! Inside was just a zoo. After finally getting over to the tv section, we discovered that they were already sold out of the Sony 32 inch that we needed. It had to be that make as it was the only one that would fit in the bin of the motorhome in front of the water tank. It took another 10 minutes to get through the mob and out the door. I was sure by now that everyone in Yuma was getting a new tv for Christmas. There are 3 Walmarts in Yuma and apparently they were all packed.

We then headed back to Radio Shack in time for their 5:30 opening and there were only half a dozen people waiting at the door. I was behind one woman who was buying the Kodak camera that I wanted and she wanted two and they only had two!! The second one was on display so the clerk told the lady she would have to come back later to pick it up, so she changed her mind. We were supposed to check back in an hour so we headed back home to wait and just as we walked in the door, radio shack called to say the camera was ready, so back we went. This time we picked up a new router. There weren't any left on the shelf, but one of the clerks thought there might be one left in the back and sure enough, he found one. By now it was just after 6 so decided to head into town to check out Sears. After lining up there for about 20 minutes, we found out that they were out of the tv's as well.

At least when we left there, it was starting to get light. From there we headed to the Casino to have the early, cheap, $1.99 breakfast. We are usually never up early enough for that. Of course we had to play the machines for a little while and I lost the $30 that I saved on the camera. (I did make that up last Monday though)

It was now about 9 a.m. and we had to go home past the Yuma Palms Mall where all the major stores are, so decided to just try Best Buy and see if by some miracle they still had the tv that we wanted. Sure enough, there were 2 left and a young couple grabbed one and we got the other. Now, we had to lineup to pay. There was a blue line on the floor to follow as it wound its way through the CD and movie dvd racks in the back of the store. We got to chat with friends that were also in the line. About an hour and a half later, we finally got up to the till and paid $377 for the 32inch Sony tv.

I'm pretty sure that will be my one and only black friday shopping experience. It is hard to believe there is a recession when we saw people with their carts loaded. My next shopping experience will be at the outlet shops in Las Vegas at Christmas. The flyers are arriving with all the Christmas specials, but can't think of anything I need at the moment!

Ron got the tv set up with no problem, but it took me a few days to get the new router set up and I still can't download the software for my camera, but Picasa seems to work with it, so will use that.

The Nascar Experience

What an experience it was, "dry camping" in the desert at the Phoenix International Raceway. When we arrived and lined up to park last Monday there were already hundreds of RV's there and by Friday, there were thousands.

We found a good spot where we could park the 4 rigs in a square and it did keep a bit of the dust down, but by the weekend, they were no longer using the water trucks on the roads and it became quite the dust bowl. The water truck, propane truck, and the garbage trucks came around daily and most rigs had the generators going in the early a.m. to make coffee and for awhile in the evening to watch tv.

During the week we managed to find a couple of casinos and golfed at a nearby golf course.

Race Day finally arrived and we were taken over to the track in "trams". They were people movers pulled with pick up trucks.

We all wore ear plugs and once the race started, you couldn't talk to or hear the person next to you. By about lap 50, I was quite bored, but we were sitting right across from pit row, so when the first cars started coming in, that was very interesting. The pit crew looked like little ants zipping around changing tires. The best part was after a caution flag and all the cars were bunched up and ready to take off on the green flag. What a racket! My opinion was that a hockey game is much more exciting and at least you can cheer and be heard.

We had planned to stop in Casa Grande for a couple of days, but everything was so dusty, that we just headed back to Yuma and have spent 2 days cleaning.

Oct.28/09

We blew into Yuma on Tuesday. Our plan was to head over to Casa Grande but it was so windy that Ron just pointed the motorhome south. After picking up my internet modem and getting the dish set up, we just hunkered down for the rest of the day.

This morning, the first hummingbird appeared so a temporary feeder was set up until we can go pick up a shepherd's hook.

Oct. 28/09

We golfed at Emerald Canyon golf course in Parker, Arizona on Monday. It was a beautiful day. It was only $29.95 each for 18 holes and you have to take a cart as there is quite a distance between some of the holes. Let's just say that my score was over 100!

Oct.24/09

We have spent 6 days at Terrible's RV park and Casino in Pahrump, Nevada. There is a manmade lake for peddle boating and fishing. No swimming as there are too many ducks and coots. There is a swimming pool though. The weather has been perfect. We did golf twice at an executive 18 hole course. It was very dry in the fairways. Most courses will have had to do some re-seeding for the winter months. Just watched the Lions lose and the Canucks beat Toronto.

Tomorrow we are heading to Parker, Arizona and hope to golf at Emerald Canyon. After 2 or 3 days in Parker, my suggestion is to head over toward Phoenix and stay in Buckeye, but the driver of the bus may decide to just head to Yuma! There was some discussion about going to Scotsdale to watch the Fry's tournament but we didn't think about it soon enough.

Oct.16/09

This was taken at the rv park in Mountain Home this a.m. The leaves are beautiful colours.

We decided to come to West Wendover today. It is a small town of 5000 people right on the Utah border. There are 5 casinos and we managed to get to 4 of them today. Three of them are very classy with thousands of lights inside and comfortable chairs at the machines. They were all packed on this Sat. night with lots of young people. We noticed that a lot of the cars are from Utah. Did someone say there is a recession?

Oct 15/09

The summer has flown by and we are heading south to Arizona. Usually we cross the border at Nighthawk, but this time wanted to leave earlier and since Nighthawk doesn't open until 9 a.m. we headed off to Osoyoos. Well, Homeland Security was certainly at work on this morning The motorhome was searched and we were detained for over an hour while a female U.S. customs officer tried her best to prove that we were doing something wrong. Ron had to show the deed to the lot at Riverside to prove he did own land and she also looked through his bank statements and asked many questions about how much he paid a month on this land and if that included utilities and on and on.



The other thing she was stuck on was the fact that we were really cutting it close for the number of days that we would be in the U.S. this year as you are only allowed a total of 179 days in a calendar year. ( 6 months less one day) When I figured it out later, we were at 176 days but I wasn't sure at the time and was just waiting for her to declare that we were illegal aliens and send us back to Canada!

She finally said that she was satisfied and we could be on our way. Sure hope we don't ever run into her again. I don't know what she was doing in the motorhome for the length of time she was inside or what she was doing on her computer while she made us sit inside waiting for her.

We did get to our destination of Pendleton yesterday anyhow even though it was a little later than expected. Tonight we are in Mountain Home Idaho and plan to be in Nevada tomorrow.

Not sure why Ron bothered to set up Bell as the hockey game was not that exciting. What's up with our over paid goalie???

My computer

Thank you Ron for fixing my computer. The screen has been fading and it only came back after a whack on the side of the screen, so there must be a loose connection somewhere. This clamp seems to have solved the problem though. Ron now has a new computer, so if mine goes completely, I have a backup!

The Garden

Ron's plants are loving this weather. Just one month to go and we will be heading north.

The Hawk

Ron had to rescue this little hawk today as he flew right into the coach as he chased a hummingbird. (The hummingbird was rescued as well). We have a feeder on the window by the door and if we don't remember to close the screen, we sometimes get a hummer inside at the windshield.

I think I screamed out "big bird" as the hawk came in. It turned out to be just a small one, but his wing span looked very wide! He didn't seem upset as Ron held him to get his photo taken. Of course that is the precise moment that my batteries went dead, so had to change those first.