Spring has sprung

 

The shed was full of models that required fixing from last winters adventures so the days that were too windy to fly gave time to do a whole bunch of repairs and maintenance on them.

A rebuilt Piper Cub that's probably 40 years old

Oh boy has it been that long since I posted an update? September! And here it is the middle of March already.

After the worst winter in 20 years here in normally sunny Arizona we are shuffling off the cold and rain ready for some more adventures.

The Monaco has been in storage here since September and we only got it out once in November for an RV Rally in Anaheim California. 

 We are returning to the Escapees “Escapades” Rally in Tucson where we began planning our fulltime RV adventure 9 years ago.

If September seems a long time ago 9 years is an eternity! We have been so fortunate to have stayed healthy and still to be enthusiastic about traveling the way we do.

In preparation for the rally we volunteered to look for an overnight stop near the Pima County Fairgrounds where the “Shanty Shakers”, our great friends from San Diego, could spend a night and also meet up to go into the rally together. This allows us all to be parked in one location and simplify the nightly “Happy Hours”!

We drove to Tucson (90 miles from home) and spent a day checking on possible locations. We settled on a place called “Hot Rods of Vail” which as the name suggests a Hot Rod shop, but also has a restaurant attached. Conveniently it also has a big gravel parking area which they will let us camp on, We made reservations for 16 in the restaurant. On the night we had 18!

Getting together at Hot Rods

 The rig seems to have made it thru the winter OK and we have been wracking our brains trying to remember what we need to put back in it for a week of camping! Lists have been made and compared.

We have kept ourselves busy in Sundance this winter with our usual pursuits: Darts, model airplanes, the Elks Lodge, dinners out with friends. The usual stuff. 

Theater in the round

Barbara had a part in the annual park play and I helped by making signs for on stage. We managed a couple of nights at theaters in Phoenix and a “Western Murder Mystery” dinner here in Casa Grande.

 Our Aussie friends Mike and Lynn have finally managed to get back to the US and have spent a couple of months getting their RV back into shape after it sat for 2+ years when Covid hit. We surprised the heck out of them when we appeared unannounced in Quartzite where they were camped at the huge annual RV event out in the desert.

Mike and some real beer.

Doesn’t seem we did much in 6 months here but it has been great fun and our friends here have kept us busy and happy.

Dinner after the theater

Having said that nothing appeared to have broken while the rig was stored, we had a problem the first night out! There was a BIG thunderstorm close by the Hotrod place and a sudden intense gust of wind grabbed one of th slide topper awnings and pulled it out all the way to the stops where it jammed. The wind and the billowing topper sounded like somebody beating a drum on the roof and we had to pull the slide in to stop it flapping around.

Luckily it didn’t stop us driving the couple of miles into the rally. The entry step also decided to mess up and we had to hold the steps out using a step stool and a plank we carry for emergencies.

Parked up at the Escapades Rally

Five rigs convoyed to the rally but unfortunately Wayne and Lynn’s motorhome decided not to start and they had to catch up with us after they found a mechanic who fixed a bad starter.

We were right back into the rally routine within hours, sitting around sipping drinks, waving to passers by and greeting old friends we hadn’t seen in ages.

The Happy Hour crew getting happy

And happier

 

Remember when we complained about the kids being on their phones all the time?

 We signed in and collected our welcome packages, met more friends, ate some free donuts and sipped the free coffee. Sometimes life is tough!

Happy Hours started up at the RV dealer’s area then at our Shanty Shaker spot, we went to the evening entertainment a couple of evenings and shopped in the vendor area.

ShadePro who are an awning specialist at the rally and we had them come and inspect the slider topper awning. The wind had pulled the awning beyond it’s normal travel and torn out the spring retainer in the end plate. They also pointed out that the big main awning had a tear in the join between the awning and the side of the rig which if allowed to progress would have the awning falling down while we were traveling. For the repairs to both it was $700 but they had it done the next day and we could put that out of our minds.

Having dealt with problems on the rig I was next to have a problem when I woke up with a sore throat. This rapidly developed into a severe cold and even after I tested negative for covid I decided that I couldn’t in good conscience go to any of the remaining events and risk giving the cold to everyone else.

Sadly I missed almost half of the rally, Barb stayed healthy though and managed a few seminars etc that she was interested in.

By the time we were due to leave the cold, of course, had eased. The trip back was uneventful and we were soon back in Sundance working on our next adventure.

Stay tuned for that !

Back to"Normal"

We got to have the grand kids over for a night and a day wandering the Wirral looking for Pokemon places. Grandad is now playing Pokemon too!

Then we looked up and it’s September already!

Wow! Just enough time to get the RV into storage, rent a car so we can visit Sally and the grand kids, my sisters, Barb’s brother, sister and sister in law, old school friends and fellow workers. We ate out for lunches and dinners until we nearly burst!

My middle sister who kindly invited us to stay with her for the last 2 weeks organized a huge family get together with nephews and nieces, which was a complete blast with the family photo albums being passed around. Many family legends and secrets were shared to the delight of all!

The car went back to the rental company, a taxi took us to the rail station in Liverpool for the high speed train to London’s Euston Station followed by a ride across London to a hotel next to Heathrow Airport where we had a quiet day off before the flight back to Phoenix.

10 hours and multiple time zones later we were being picked up at the airport by our good friend Bill Jones who drove us back to Sundance and we stumbled back into #2 tired but happy.

We had arranged for a cleaning service to come in and get the place shipshape before we got back and a great job they did. Staranne had stocked the fridge with enough food etc., to keep us going for a couple of days, thanks again!

All we had to do was try and keep awake until our regular bed time. One of our travel hints is to get back to your regular sleeping times as quickly as possible. This helps recovery from jet lag. We always set our watches to our destination’s time soon as we get on the plane. Then when we get wherever we are going we stay awake rather than taking a nap, napping just extends the jet lag.

We were happy as could be the next day when both cars started on the first try! The tires all needed air after nearly 5 months and the dirt and dust was thick on them, so we hosed it off enough to get to the local car wash.

After catching up with our friends, collecting the little mail that had accumulated since we left (we get most stuff electronically), we had to go back to Yuma to collect the RV from the storage unit there.

More joy when the rig started first try! We hadn’t plugged it in when we left it but we had isolated the batteries. That worked out fine. When I checked the tire pressures they were still good too and before long we had the car hooked up and we drove the 3 hours back to Casa Grande.

While all this was going on the TV company in UK sent us a message with the link to the episode we were in. Unfortunately the link was only good for 1 week so it’s pointless to put it in here.

From the comments we got from our UK friends and family, our little segment worked out well. We thought so too when we saw it and our friends here did also. Now our UK friends have seen our US rig and our US friends the UK one.

My sister was a little disgusted by them showing us dumping the sewage, and our daughter thought it was hilarious when Barbara was showing off the giant shrimp we got in Mexico!

“Back to normal” seemed to occur in no time, and there we were back at the Elks Lodge having dinner and catching up with our friends. Seems like everyone has been following our adventures in UK via the blog and it has brought back memories of vacations in UK to lots of people. Everyone wanted to know if we were in UK for the Queens funeral, its amazing how many lives she touched.

My mornings (while it was still cool!) are consumed by flying and fixing the radio controlled airplanes. After 5 months off I was a little rusty, leading to a few hair raising moments. The shed was full of models that required fixing from last winters adventures so the days that were too windy to fly gave time to do a whole bunch of repairs and maintenance on them.

Haircuts, shopping, backing up pictures, time has flown by and now we’ve been back a month already! Darts, potluck dinners, breakfasts and dinners out with friends, we are so busy that we haven’t noticed the time slipping by.

And yet there are more adventures waiting in the wings! An RV Rally in California, another in the spring in Tucson. Lots to look forward to.

It appears that I forgot to post this!! 

So here we are in November, almost Thanksgiving and we are on our way back from that rally in California. Anaheim to be exact, with our old friends the San Diego Shanty Shakers for their pre-Thanksgiving event which included lots of eating!

We also stopped in San Diego to see our very good friends from my days working in the shipyard and had dinner with them too!
 

Keep on enjoying life, see you out there soon!

Loch Ness and South

 

Best of all was getting to spend time with our Daughter and the Grand Kids. We are going to miss them when we leave, but luckily we still have a few weeks to visit them before then.

Glen Coe 

They headed south and we headed north to drive up along the Lochs and the Caledonian Canal which links the North Sea to the Irish Sea and cuts diagonally across Scotland from Fort William on the West coast to Inverness on the East coast.

This is the real Scottish Highlands and the road wound upwards thru the Trossack Mountains into the Ben Nevis Range, (Ben Nevis being the highest mountain in UK).

The Trossacks

We found some nice places to stay especially the pub stops! In case I didn’t already mention them, some pubs let you stay the night in the parking lot if you buy dinner and drinks in the pub. Seems like a no brainer to us!

The Lade Inn in Callander was really nice!

Lade Inn pub stop

We passed thru Glen Coe, a high pass that drops you down into Fort William on Loch Linnhe. The Caledonian Canal starts here and follows North East up thru Loch Lochy (No there really is a Loch Lochy!), Loch Oich and into Loch Ness before leading into the North Sea in the Moray Firth.

Glen Coe and a turf house.

Its all spectacular scenery spoiled only by the innumerable tourists (like us!).

The Ben Nevis range of mountains

Unfortunately once we reached the top of Loch Ness it was time to start heading south again. We have nights out planned back in Birkenhead and we have only 21/2 weeks to get back, get the rig into storage and find our way back to London for the flight back to Arizona, It seems impossible that we have been here 4 months already.

Nice stop along the Lochs

We took some backroads on the way South, not wanting to retrace our steps from the trip North. We travelled thru the Cairngorm Mountains, past Edinburgh and thru Moffat where we stopped at another outstanding pub stop The Old Stables Inn. Good food and excellent draft beer.

The Old Stables, another great pub stop.

The coming weekend is the August Bank Holiday in England and we ran into heavy traffic on the way south, when we attempted to take the side roads to avoid it we found everyone else had the same idea! After a few wrong turns we rediscovered the small towns and villages of Cheshire which we hadn’t seen since we were kids and came out this way on church and scout outings.

Arrowe Hall in Arrowe Park

Pretty soon we were back at Arrowe Brook Farm, which has become home from home lately, and working out dates for get togethers with friends and family. We got to have the grand kids over for a night and a day, wandering the Wirral looking for Pokemon places. Grandad is now playing Pokemon too!

Grand Kids enjoying making some artwork

Niall's Rainbow, he even mixed some colors for it too.

Then we looked up and it’s September already!

Scotland

Great meeting everyone, thanks Keith and Carol see you again soon we hope!

Suddenly it’s August!

We decided to head to Wales and specifically South Wales an area we haven’t been to before. North Wales, which is closer to Birkenhead, we have explored since we were kids.

Until you come to Britain you don't realize how many sheep there are there.

Our first stop was Cardiff at a public park in the center of the city. We didn’t explore at all just emptied the black and grey tanks and filled the fresh water up while we charged the house battery up and got showers. All very domestic!

We traveled thru some breathtaking scenery such as the Forest of Dean and on to the awesome Pembrokeshire Coast.

Nice little harbor in Fishguard Wales

After a few stops we stumbled on “Cardigan Island Farm” campground right on Cardigan Bay. It had great views, a cafe, Playground for kids and a Farm Animal area that you could walk around and see the animals in pens. At the end of that trail you were on the clifftop looking across the bay and if you were lucky you could see seals and dolphins. We weren’t lucky!

Nice views from Cardiff Farm Park Campground

All too soon we were back at Arrowebrook Farm on the Wirral, our “Home” near Birkenhead it seems. We a had night out with Ken, Angie, John and Daphne one night and Stuart, Linda, Hillary, Sally, Iain, Nial and Katlynd the next. It was a good job the Irby Mill pub was within walking distance!

While we were there we made reservations for the end of August and the first week in September plus reserved a rental car and a hotel in London because the trip home is approaching fast.

We found a storage facility for the RV nearby too because we have decided that we are coming back next year!

We are having so much fun and the RV is very comfortable, so why not?

Our reason for heading back thru Birkenhead was mainly to get up to date with Sally on our planned joint weeks vacation in Scotland.

She has found a camping resort with both static caravans (Mobile Homes) and sites for Motorhomes so we can all camp there. Its full of stuff for the grandkids to do too. Its in Ayr Scotland, so after a few days we headed North using the old roads that existed before the motorways took over.

These led us to the Lake District an area I think is similar to Lake George New York, and for the first time we were turned away from a couple of campgrounds that were full.

Abbey ruins

The first couple of weeks in August is peak season here, the roads are congested, parking lots full and everywhere has been booked up since the beginning of the year. So after a quick look around we set off North again and stayed in Carlisle right below the Scottish border.

Hadrian's Wall 1900 years old.

Along the border runs Hadrians Wall, built by the Romans almost 2000 years ago to keep the marauding Scots out. It still stands in places and we explored it and some Abbeys and Castles nearby.

The Abbey and Town of New Abbey

Once across the border we decided to head West along the coast of the Solway Firth and we were rewarded with some beautiful scenery, no traffic and some more ruins to explore.

Managed a distillery tour along the way also.

Finally we arrived at Sundrum Castle Holiday Park just outside Ayr and set up in our allotted spot.

Maybe it was fortuitous, maybe not, but the kids playground was “L” shaped and our camp site was in the elbow of the “L”. We got the benefit of all the hyper kids yelling and screaming (and some of those little girls really screamed loud!).

At the same time we got to watch the grandkids while they played and we sat in our lounge chairs!

The weather after being great for the whole summer virtually, now took a turn for the worse, but not a really bad turn and most days let the kids play in the playground or we all took a ride into Ayr for shopping therapy.

Grand Kids

I asked Niall to take 5 pictures for me

He did an amazing job with my phone.
These are unedited.

Wednesday was predicted to be the best day of the whole week and we took the opportunity to travel to Edinburg and explore the castle there.

Edinburg from the castle

Its a great place to visit but you need to buy tickets in advance. In addition the “Military Tattoo” was being held in the courtyard. This traditional exhibition of Military skills and traditions is held every year and it’s very difficult to get tickets.

"MY" grandstands! I designed the top bit the camera gantries and lighting towers.

We didn’t attempt to get tickets but I got to brag about the grandstand because way back in the 1970’s I drew all the structure for the Camera Platforms and Lighting towers when I worked as a contractor for BICC in Liverpool that designed and built this PORTABLE grandstand. Yes portable. Every year it is assembled and afterwards disassembled and stored away offsite. It takes about 2 weeks at each end to do that.

Sally and the kids

Gray Friars Bobby, remember the story??

Best of all was getting to spend time with our Daughter and the Grand Kids. We are going to miss them when we leave, but luckily we still have a few weeks to visit them before then.