Starting to get busy

They are rolling into the resort more and more everyday. The cocktail parties have started. Yesterday we had our first owners meeting for the season. It went surprisingly well. You can imagine how these meetings can be when you get a bunch of ol’ farts from different cultures around the country and Canada together with their different ideas.

Last night after the meeting a few of us headed into town for the Relics and Rods car show. There were over 900 pre 1070’s cars involved.

This is another one of those events where practically all of Havasu show up. The streets were packed and there were lots of Really Nice Cars. If you drove it in the past, it was there. One of the hits of the show was this truck.

It is powered by a Detroit Diesel V12. This thing is all hand built by one man and is something to see. There will be a video interview of it on YouTube soon. I will post it as soon as I see it. It’s still a work in progress. Here are more photos.

A shortened Nomad

Converted to a Motorhome

Well already I had a problem with the new furniture. The stitching on one of the cushions is coming apart. I grabbed the cushion and off to Home Depot I went. Of course they sold out all their stock so an exchange was out of the picture. The manager however called the company and arranged for a new cushion to be delivered to us here at the resort. Then he handed me the one I brought in and said, “Here, sew this up and you will have a spare.” Nice!

They’re coming back

People are starting to come back to the resort here in Lake Havasu. They are coming in at the rate of a couple a day. We are taking another trip over the Halloween weekend and I am sure when we get back the park will be pretty much full again.

That means the wildlife will be heading back into hiding. This guy was a little upset that the lizard he was chasing ducked under the pot and he couldn’t flush it out.

Well, the sun has taken its toll again. It was time to replace our patio furniture. I started looking around and checking prices, looking for a good end of the summer sale. We got a pretty nice patio dinning set last year from sears for half price. I set out to pick up a $20 item from Home Depot and came across this set.

Not quite half price but a good price anyway. I went back to get Susan to show her and get her approval. We got lucky and found a buyer for our old set the same day so we didn’t have to find a place to stash it until we could get rid of it. Now if we can just keep the sun from destroying this set for a few years. Now that we have a covered patio and I am going to install some sun shades we should be good to go for a few.

Made it back

We pulled into Lake Havasu about 12:20 this afternoon. It was an uneventful trip, which is a good thing. We did run into a bit of dense fog going over the Cajon Pass on I-15 but it was short and I only lost sight of the truck in front of me for a couple of brief seconds. The rest of the trip I had the cruise set so it was just sit back and steer. I am glad to be back in Arizona where the price of gas is close to a dollar less per gallon. I had to stop about 100 miles from the border for fuel but only put enough in to get me to Arizona where I filled it up. I like to park it with a full tank. As usual we had a really great time at the track. Got to see some friends which I only see a couple of times a year, usually at the track and got to hangout with our daughter and her husband. That’s always a good time. I took a few photos (check the thumbnail link in the sidebar NASCAR Oct 09) but for some reason the camera had a hard time with the focus so I had to trash some.

This is one of our friends spot at the track. Yeah they are a bit of a fanatic but the really know how to have a good time. I guess they got themselves on ESPN with all their NASCAR paraphernalia. Last year a photographer came by and we all got our pictures taken at their spot to be used as advertising. Somewhere my mug is probably plastered on a billboard or in the back of a magazine. Well, a few more folks have arrived here at the resort and I expect more will show up in the next few weeks. Let the parties begin.

Extenze

The NASCAR weekend is over. We are heading back to Havasu first thing in the morning. Susan is a happy race fan as her favorite driver, Jimmie Johnson,

Extenze his lead in the Race for the Championship. Sorry for the pun…

Jimmie's Burnout in the backstretch right in front of us after the race.

It was a pretty good race for California, which usually hosts some of the most boring races during the whole series. There were still plenty of crazies in the infield. That’s one thing California has going for it. It makes quite a show at times.

We arrived

We arrived in Ontario, California yesterday about noon. It was a good drive, nice weather, little traffic, and they are fixing more and more of I-40 along the way so there are only a few spots of rough road. I usually move it on over to the hammer lane where the road is in better condition. There is little traffic so I don’t have to worry about holding up traffic. I just keep an eye out behind me for upcoming traffic and pull over when necessary. This place is pretty much full. We were lucky to get a good spot.

On the move

Tomorrow we will be on the move again. We are heading back over to California for the NASCAR race in Fontana. We usually get there on Tuesday so we won’t have a problem getting a spot for the weekend. Where we stay, they don’t take reservations so by getting there on Tuesday we have never had a problem. This morning I thought I would give them a call since I know some of the people and see if they can save my favorite spot for us. Well it’s a good thing I called since a bunch came in yesterday and there was only one spot open. Even though they don’t take reservations, they will save the spot for me. It’s good to know people.

The last couple of days, it’s been pretty windy here. I was hoping the wind would stop for our travel on Tuesday and it looks like we are in luck. Today is a perfect day and tomorrow is suppose to be the same. The temperatures are dropping here. No more 100+ days. This morning it was 61 when I got up at 7:00a and I hear it was in the high 50s earlier. Our air conditioners are finally getting a break along with our electric bill. It won’t be long before I will be burning the dust out of the furnace.

Speaking of burning, I had to fix our convection oven again yesterday. The fan that circulates the hot air stops working about once a year and I have to partially disassemble the oven to oil it. Susan doesn’t use the gas oven. She cooks everything in the convection so it gets a lot of use and since the fan is basically in the heat the oil gets burned off after a while. I have been oiling it with the same Mobil-1 synthetic oil that I put in the engine. This has worked pretty well. This time however I didn’t have any on hand so I used some regular “Dino” oil I had. That was a mistake. Now when Susan cooks anything in the oven it smells like an old oil burning car. I am hoping it goes away soon or I will have to go in again and clean it out and use the synthetic. From what I can tell, it looks like a major oven removal and disassembly job to go in and replace the fan. And if I did the new one would probably do the same thing.

Well we are pretty much packed up and ready to head out in the morning.

It’s been a while

It has been a while since I posted last. Not much going on right now. We are waiting for next week when we head for California for the NASCAR race. We were going to do our annual river trip…sounds kind of strange since we practically live on the Colorado River, but last year we headed down to Parker Arizona just about 30 minutes away. We took a drive the other day and found all the reserved sites are taken for the next few weeks. We could take our chances and drive down in hopes to get a non-reserved site, which is most likely possible. The catch is, there is no cell service there and our friend’s daughter is about to have a baby. We decided to put the river trip off until further notice.

Tuesday we plan to head for Fontana California, well actually Ontario is where we will be staying, for the California NASCAR race. I say plan because we are in the middle of a windstorm right now and are expecting another one right behind this one. They should be gone by Tuesday but you know how the weather can be. I really don’t want to drive in 25 to 50 mph side winds. We don’t need to be there until the weekend so I can hold of a day or two if needed.

People are starting to trickle in here at the resort. I hear that some of the northern states are already getting a dusting of snow. That means the Snowbirds will be heading on down soon.

Gunner the roadrunner

During the summer when there is not a lot of people or dogs around the wildlife comes out. We sit and watch as the rabbits, quail, dove, and roadrunners roam around the common area. We also have scorpions and rattlesnakes but fortunately we haven’t seen any of the bad guys…yet.

This is Gunner. The Manager named him. Not sure where the name came from but Gunner the Roadrunner has a bit of a ring to it. This guy comes by several times a day to visit and will follow you around if you are walking around. He no doubt is looking for a handout. We threw him a pretzel one evening but he didn’t care much for that. Roadrunners are more meat eaters and he was probably looking for something more like a little hamburger. It won’t be long before everyone starts to arrive and Gunner and his friends will go back into hiding.

100+

We are back in the 100+ temperatures. We arrived in Havasu today about 1:00pm after our usual stopover in Bakersfield last night. It was a good drive but I did see a pretty gnarly semi truck crash. I don’t know when it happened but the wreckers were there trying to figure out how to haul it off. It looked like something out of the TV program Wrecked. The driver had to have gotten hurt (I hope he’s OK) since the cab was pretty messed up.

We had a great time in the Morro Bay area even though we only had 3 sunny days. The rest were foggy and cool. We covered the coast from Pismo Beach to just north of San Simeon. The bad part…I went through about $400 in gas. The California prices are killer. The good part…Stocks have been good to me in the last 10 days.

Ready to go

We are just about all packed up and ready to head back to Havasu tomorrow. Yesterday we headed back up the coast to San Simion and checked out the Elephant seals.


Check out this fat boy.
Today we spent the day in Pismo Beach and Avila Beach. We have had a great week here in Morro Bay. The weather had been mostly fog and overcast but we have had a couple of perfect days with lots of sun and low 70 temps. Last night late we even had a little rain. By morning it was over and things dried up pretty fast. Well tomorrow we will be heading for Bakersfield for a night then over the mountain to Havasu on Wednesday. I hear the weather in Havasu has cooled a bit to the high 90s and low 100s. Maybe it will start cooling down a bit.

Finally got a chance

I finally got a chance to write something. We have been busy here in Morro Bay.

The other day we spent the day cruising shops and walking on the beach. Later that evening we headed up to San Luis Obispo for their street fair.

Of course you can’t visit SLO without seeing Bubblegum Alley.

Sure it’s disgusting but kind of cool to see.

Yesterday we did the night tour at Hearst Castle. On our way we spent the day in Cambria. As many times as I have been through there, I have never stopped. There are a lot of cool shops there. We found a park on the beach for lunch and then hit some more shops.




If you ever get a chance, you need to see the night tour at Hearst Castle. I have done just about all the day tours and always wanted to see the night tour. They combine all the day tours in this one and have volunteers dress in the era so you feel like you stepped back in time.

Today is NASCAR day so it is an R&R day.

Morro Bay

We arrived in Morro Bay about 11:00 this morning. It’s been go go go since we arrived so I haven’t had time to write much. I will post more hopefully tomorrow.

Oranges

We are now in Bakersfield at the Orange Grove RV Park. We are on our way to Morro Bay for a week and this is our favorite stop over. We are only going to be here for one night then it’s off to the coast in the morning. We are…were traveling with our friends from Havasu. It started out good but the kayaks he had tied to the roof of his truck decided they didn’t want to go and tried to abandon ship on the freeway so He decided to take them home. Fortunately we weren’t too far along. So he turned back and we continued on. When he got to Bakersfield about 1 hour behind us he decided to continue on to the coast so we are going to meet up with them tomorrow in Morro Bay. I think it’s crazy to drive 8 to 9 hours a day when you don’t really need to.

Unfortunately it’s too early for the oranges to be ripe. Orange Grove RV Park is literally in an orange grove. They cleared all but 3 trees per site to build the park and they encourage you to pick oranges when they are in season. Of all the times we have been through, I think they have only been ripe once. We did find a time when they were still green on the outside but orange and sweet on the inside. Susan tried one today and said they are sweet but kind of dry still. Anyway the weather here is nice. It is about 90, a little humid but not bad with a light breeze, a lot better than the 105+ in Havasu. The drive was good and being the last day of the holiday weekend I thought the traffic was going to be terrible but it was good. Maybe less people are traveling these days.

On our trip here we traveled over the Tehachapi Mountains. Last time we came through here it was snowy at the top and grassy on the foothills. This time it was dry and brown. Not a pretty site. We traveled about 35 miles as the crow flies from some of the terrible fires in Southern California but didn’t see or smell any smoke.

Well I am able to update the web site today because although our Verizon aircard is struggling here (VERRY SLOOOO) the WiFi here at the park is one of the fastest I have come across. We will see what happens when we get to Morro Bay.

Midnight Monsoons

Summertime in Havasu is also Monsoon time. We have a number of Monsoons roll through this time of year. Usually we can see them coming and prepare for them by putting away all the awnings, rolling up the windows in the car and battening down anything that will blow away. The problem comes when they come through in the middle of the night. Last night was one of those nights. I woke to the sound of the palm frowns rustling from the wind. I laid there for a while to see if it would calm down but it only got worse. Finally I had to get up and go outside to secure everything. Just all part of living in the desert.

No more feeding the Burros

This summer we took our grandson to Oatman here in Arizona. Anyone that has been to Oatman, or is familiar with Oatman knows that they are famous for the Burros that come to town everyday looking for a handout from the tourists.

Even the merchants sell carrots for feeding the small donkeys. Well no more. I guess someone did a study and found the burros that are hand fed carrots all day are not as healthy as they would be if they were to venture out and rummage the desert for food on their own. The merchants have been asked to no longer sell carrots for feeding the burros and signs have been erected around town to not feed the animals. I will expect this may be a big blow on the tourist trade in Oatman since the burros will soon no longer come to town in hopes for an easy meal.

Monsoon

Friday we had a sever weather warning for unseasonably high temperatures. Saturday we had a nice rainstorm come through. Tonight we had a sever thunderstorm pass over. Usually storms go around Havasu. In fact most of the storms today did just that as seen in these photo.


Note the frowns on the palms. The wind was blowing mighty hard.

Then one hit just about dinnertime. We sat at our dinette and watched out the window as it came over. For a while there I thought we were going to loose a window to the nickel sized hail. The wind was slamming the hail against the window pretty hard. We watched as our patio furniture slid across the patio into the motorhome and Susan’s favorite pot blew over and cracked even though I had a pretty good size rock in the bottom. After the mayhem we were treated to a lightning show that rivals a good fireworks show. I went out and snapped a bunch of pictures in hopes to get some shots.





I missed the million dollar shot of a big lightning bolt going right through a rainbow. That was cool.

It’s Still Hot

Yeah, we are back in Havasu. We took off last Wednesday morning about 8:00a and arrived in Havasu around 1:30P. Not much has changed here in Havasu. It’s still hot, about 110° today, and there is still no one here at the resort. Our plants are struggling from the heat so it’s a good thing we came back. I will have to soak them real good to see if I can bring them back. I think they will survive. We will be here for a few weeks then it’s back to the coast.

As you may know from our previous posts, it seems every time we come to Havasu we pick a mouse or two. I have always taken the reactive approach, this time I am taking the proactive approach. I have set traps at the most likely entrances and one under the kitchen counter. We will see if they are brave enough to invade us again.

Getting ready

I like my MiFi. So far it has worked flawlessly. It will be interesting to see how well it will work in Lake Havasu since the Verizon Broadband signal comes from across the lake and it can be hard to lock on to at times. The good thing is I can put the MiFi just about anywhere since I connect to it wireless. This means I will be able to place it where it gets the best signal.

We are about ready to head back to Lake Havasu. We have sat here long enough and are anxious to get back. It has cooled down to below 110° out there so it might be a little more tolerable. The manager at the resort called to tell us our plants are struggling so he will turn up the water a bit. It’s nice to have someone keeping an eye on things. So far it looks like Wednesday is travel day but you know how things change. Why Wednesday you say? Well because since there are no sewer connections here we have to put things away, pull in the slides, pull up the jacks, and driver over to the dump station once a week. Wednesday is a good day because we can get it done before all the weekenders get here.

Isn’t Technology great

It can also give you a big headache. Since my computer has been spending more time down than up and I am tired of having to fix it often, I went out and bought a new laptop. I am no longer the power user I used to be so I elected to get a computer just to keep records, cruise the Internet, and email. I found a nice Toshiba for $300. The problem is, PCICMA or PC Card as they also call it is no longer popular so they do not include a PC Card slot in these computers. Since my Verizon aircard is a PC Card it is useless with my new computer. It turns out I am due for a free upgrade with a new 2 year contract with Verizon so I started looking at the best fit for the new computer. What I found is this new MiFi card.

No I spelled it right…It’s MiFi. This is a battery powered aircard with a built in WiFi router capable of connecting 5 wireless devices to the Internet at one time. Since the old computer is still running (some what) Susan can connect to the Internet at the same time I am connected using WiFi. As you can see it is no bigger than a ½ deck of cards. You can slip it in your shirt pocket and have a WiFi router everywhere you go. Now comes the problem. I pulled it out of its box, hooked it to my new computer and set it up. Then I unplugged it and connected wireless. Everything worked great…until I tried to connect with my old computer. Seems the security measures they are now using are way too sophisticated for my old computer’s WiFi card. I consulted the Internet for a solution. Seem a lot of others are having this problem and a lot of them had solutions but none worked for me. After hours of thinking I knew everything I finally gave in and called Verizon Tech Support. Well it turns out I do know everything, at least more than Verizon Tech Support does. After over an hour on the phone with 3 guys from Verizon I said goodbye. Back to the Internet for help I went. Still no help so I dove in to the setup of the MiFi. After a while of trial and error I found a happy medium where now both computers are happy and connected to the MiFi.

Pretty Cool!

It’s getting’ better

I mentioned in my last post how I feel about Windows Vista operating system. Well It’s getting better. I am starting to get use to the difference and have searched the Internet for ideas on how to tweak the things I don’t like. I have changed every setting I can find to the “classic” setting and that helped a lot. I even found ways to load most of my old software even though it is not supposed to be compatible and it all seems to be working so far. If I was one that is satisfied with the “right out of the box” look and feel, it would probably be fine, but I have always liked to tweak things to my liking.