Brian and Barbara RV'ing: 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!