It is a bit hard to write. I am sitting looking over a lagoon from then Waterside Lodge after eating my third meal of the day, lunch at 1 PM. We started with a game drive at 6 AM. The highlight was following a leopard through the brush on a harrowing ride. Naturally he did not follow the road so

I am writing this on my Surface Windows 10 computer which I bought for travel. It is more adaptable and flexible than the Samsung Tablet I have been using. We will see how I like writing on the cute little keyboard. It has more key “feel” than you might expect looking at it. Enough about the instrument.

We have been getting out a lot seeing many people who we haven’t seen in a year. Yesterday we went with Joyce and Victor and Sandy and Neil to Sonnenberg Gardens for an Art Festival and tour of the Mansion. Sonnenberg is a “summer cottage” in Canandaigua NY about 45 minutes from Rochester. The house and gardens are really grand and since the state stepped up with preservation funds in 2004 it is well maintained and has regular hours open to the public. If you coming into the Finger Lakes this would be a must stop if you are into gardens. For the festival there were many crafts people and artists showing there work. Carol and I have been to many festivals and other than the people we find very little of interest to us. It may be that not having a spare square inch for anything new also reduces our desire to shop. We had a grand time dodging the rainstorms and after a stop at the
Culinary Center for a glass of wine we headed to Branca for dinner and then on to the Memorial Art Gallery for the opening of their show which includes War Rugs. Very disturbing knotted rugs from Afghanistan depicting the weapons the craftspeople see in their daily lives, tanks, helicopters, drones, Kalashnikovs and more. This combined with images from the civil war printed on leaves was really a downer. WE adjourned to the other end of the gallery where the Dady Brothers were performing music from the 60’s on a variety of folk instruments. What joy and we all felt restored from hearing the performance.

Tonight we are going to Barbara and Robert’s house for dessert and many more friends we haven’t seen yet. I have skipped over many other events to avoid spending the whole day writing.

Packing. We have a 44 pound limit total. So I started packing today to be sure I would get under the limit and have everything I need. I hope those are not incompatible goals. We will be traveling on small planes in Africa and the limit is the ability to fly safely not an arbitrary number to force paying an added fee. I already found one medicine I had forgotten to refill. I have the clothes I need and electrical adapters so we can plug in everything when electricity is available. Also a camera and binoculars. I hope to be able to post pictures as we go. Like the inside of a lion’s mouth 🙂 We will see how we do for connectivity. I am depending on provided wifi and not planning on getting a SIM for my phone – 4 countries in 27 days makes that seem pointless and much of the time we won’t have cell service either.

The writing has been easy and I hope it makes sense as well. Next post should be from South Africa, our first stop. We land there on the 26th.

We are still racking up the miles even though we are in our apartment and the coach is waiting for the estimate so the reconstruction can begin. We decided that none of the new coaches we were looking at had as useful floor plans for us as what we already have. The time to repair is about equal to the time to order new. We have little to lose by rebuilding and setting out in GeeWhiz. If everything works well, we will be in our happy home, if not we can always make a trade for something else. Stay tuned.

The miles included a trip to Hamilton Ontario as I mentioned in the last post for aunt Dorothy’s birthday. Her sons Mitch and Joel Harvey were there as were Marilyn and Al and cousin David (you don’t know these people anyhow so complete names are not included). We had a marvelous time over lunch at Dragon Court Chinese and then adjourned to Aunt Dorothy’s apartment to continue the celebration until we had to leave for the long drive back to Rochester. We stayed put on Saturday, mostly. Walked to the Park Ave Festival and strolled from Alexander to Berkeley St in the crowds. Eventually we decided the walk back would be a bit much so we walked to East Ave and caught a bus back to the apartment. Having the terminal right next to our apartment building is really convenient and the senior fare is $.50 each off rush hour.

Having sat still for a day, on Sunday we picked up cousin Ellie at the Canandaigua Wegman’s and continued on to Fox Run Vineyard on Seneca Lake for their annual Garlic Festival. Carol has covered that nicely in her blog Message in a Minute. Our most recent excitement was a call from grandson Josh wondering if he could see us on Monday night and last night we went to dinner with June  at Hose 22 and then walked the Charlotte Pier on a perfect, warm and humid evening. We elected not to stop for Abbot’s Custard as we were still full from the nice dinner.

and on . . .

Since the last post we have been very busy. Two trips to Colton RV to get our belongings off GeeWhiz and understand that we will not travel in that coach again have been difficult. We have at least one more trip, this time with a rental van to finish the job of clearing our belongings out and storing them temporarily in a spare store room provided by our wonderful property manager at 80 St Paul St.

We have been shopping and looking and trying to decide what we really want and need. The current Phaeton 36 foot floor plan does not meet our needs. Newmar Dutchstar 36 foot floor plan is close, but there are too many other compromises and the price is much more. We are currently looking at a 40 foot Phaeton that meets most of our needs and the price is only marginally more than the 36. In the mean time we are waiting for the insurance company to agree with the repair shop on an estimate or decision to total. Soon, I hope.

We have not stood still while this has gone on. We drove to Syracuse to visit with my uncle after our stop at the RV show at Turning Stone. We had a delightful couple of hours conversation and a lovely dinner out. It felt good to see him, especially since my aunt had died less than 2 months ago and he is still recovering. On this Friday we will drive to Hamilton ON to celebrate Carol’s aunt’s birthday, although we can’t call it that because she doesn’t like to be reminded.

Looking ahead, we leave for our Africa trip on August 24, fly to JFK and depart for Johannesburg on the morning of the 25th. Return to Rochester on September 19. I will write and add pictures as we go. Will post when we get someplace with internet connection. There are still 22 days until departure and we will need to firm up the motorhome decision and stuff like that before we go. I am sure there will be at least one more post before we leave.

Leaving Grand Canyon we determined to stop at Four Corners. We made it in plenty of time, although we lost an hour as we walked around from Arizona to Colorado, then Utah and New Mexico. The site is on Navajo land and is a Navajo Park. There is a line of people waiting to take their pictures on the spot that marks the intersection.

Today the plan was to stop at Four Corners monument where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. We were ready to roll, just needed to pull in the slides and raise the leveling jacks. Carol pushed the button for the back passenger side slide and nothing happened. Nothing that was operated by hydraulic motor was working. The leveling jacks don’t require the motor to come up but the valves would not activate to permit them to raise.

The good news; Our road service, Coach-net that we have been members of since 2001 responded with a tech on the phone. Rob and I worked for 30 minutes and could not locate the breaker he was sure needed to be reset. He said he would arrange for a mobile tech to come to us. I thought “yeah sure, on a Sunday a mile from the South entrance to Grand Canyon.” Well, within the hour specified, Randall appeared and working together we had the slides working by 11:45.

More good news; We had no problem booking the site for another night and we had the afternoon free to see more of Grand Canyon NP. We had given the Village short shrift in our desire to take in the scenery. Now we were able to go into the park and devote exclusive time to the village. The three places we wanted to see were the Kolb Studio sitting on the brink of the Bright Angel Trail, The Lookout Studio further along the rim designed by Mary Colter and built by the Santa Fe RR and finally Bright Angel Lodge built for Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe. Links can be found at Kolb Art Exhibit, Flickr Images of Bright Angel Lodge (none of these are ours) and Mary Colter’s designs.

Our plan for the morning is to get out early and stop at Four Corners and then move on. We have no cushion left in our original route up through Wisconsin into Canada and over the top of the Great Lakes. This route is over 4,000 miles so we will most likely stay in the US. Not sure yet how we will do this. We may drive though southern Nebraska and make it up from there.  Stay tuned.

It has been on the bucket list for 50 years. We have always found ourselves driving “near” it in January or April. Way off season and we try to avoid cold, which at 7,000 feet on the South Rim it will be in those months. The bar mitzvah delayed our eastward migration until the first week in July. We endured much heat in Jojoba Hills and all the way through Phoenix area – average high of 107! Finally got to Grand Canyon and found tolerable temperatures in the 80’s.

We no sooner got set up in Grand Canyon Camper Village in Tusayan, as close to the southern entrance as you can be without entering the park, then we headed over to the airport to check out helicopter flights over the canyon. We waited 45 minutes for our flight with Papillion in their newest chopper. We took off and flew low over forest and desert headed for the canyon. We knew we were approaching the rim when the pilot dropped even lower and seemed to pick up speed. Then he turned on “Thus Spake Zarathustra” timing it so that the grand crescendo coincided with the ground dropping out from under us and the canyon being revealed. I laughed, I squealed with delight and I clapped my hands! OMG! We saw the key points one looks for in the canyon without really intruding on the tourists on the ground. We flew over the North Rim looking for buffalo (bison) that apparently had gone into hiding since the morning flight. Some saw an elk, Carol and I didn’t. After landing we drove into the park to get an overview.

Carol getting off the Helicopter. Better than words.

Somehow we still had energy so we drove into the park as far as the Village which is as far as a private car can go in summer season. We reconnoitered and planned for the next day before returning to the coach for dinner.

Friday we took in the NatGeo Imax, Almost across the street from our campground, then found a spot in the Visitor Center parking lot after a really good lunch at Sophies Mexican Restaurant. Carol was enticed because their signboard advertises vegetarian. We started riding shuttle buses and taking some walks to see the canyon. This is a great way to get around as there is limited parking, even in the visitor center parking lots and there is a shuttle that runs from Tusayan which permits one to avoid driving into the park. On our drives we also saw several cow and bull elk along the road. Exhausted we returned to GWhiz and put together dinner.

The “new” Kiva, replacing an earlier one destroyed by fire in the ancient Tusyan Village and at the Desert View Tower: which was too crowded and hot for us to consider climbing to the top. From there we turned back to G Whiz to rest and write. One stop along the way will provide what may be our exit photo from the Grand Canyon: Duck Head Rock

Just two weeks ago we celebrated our anniversary, in San Diego. After a week back in Jojoba Hills we headed into Los Angeles in the Jeep for grandson Avi’s Bar Mitzvah. A Bar Mitzvah (becoming an adult in the eyes of the community) is always a special occasion. This one was particularly special since Avi is our youngest grandson. At dinner I mentioned that the next “simcha”, joyous occasion, was likely to be a wedding. I didn’t even look at the eldest, now 24 🙂 I swear that wasn’t what I was thinking.

When the Torah was brought out of the ark it was handed to my sister to carry through the woman’s side of this orthodox synagogue. After I was called for my turn to honor the Torah our grandson Azriel was called. We had never seen him called up so this was very special for us, and I got to stand with him. Finally Avi got to do his thing. Later, after the Sabbath had ended Avi got out his Sax and played several numbers for the family and friends. He has talent coming from our musical family and it showed.

Our boys in the middle Sandy’s children to either side and her youngest grandson

We returned to Jojoba via Astro Camp in Idyllwild where we and Dan, Malena and his clan dropped off Avi for two weeks of camp. Dan followed us back to Jojoba Hills where they saw why we are so very happy there. We toured a bit and then had a delightful dinner at our wonderful patio set under the glorious cantlever umbrella before they started driving toward LAX (stopping near Temecula for the night) for flights east.

We used Monday the 4th to prepare the site for our absence and the coach for the road. This morning we rolled out at 9:30 with a stop at Parkhouse Tires in Thousand Palms to torque the studs holding the tires on and to pick up the hub cap replacement that had been ordered for us. In and out in 15 minutes. Next stop was a lunch break at Chiriaco Summit along I 10 where there is a museum and memorial to George Patton!

Today, June 21, 2016 is our 52nd anniversary. We have celebrated this memory of a time when we were really, really young (our eldest grandson is older then we were when we gt married) in so many different ways and places. Today was weird, special. Given a whole lot of stuff I may get into below, my attention was not focused on care of the motorhome. A couple of weeks ago it crept into my mind that a year had passed since we have any service done on it. I decided that a trip to San Diego was worth considering, since there is a Freightliner Oasis Center there (Our chassis is Freightliner and Oasis is their brand for techs trained in servicing motorhomes not just big trucks- they keep things clean). There are few good places to stay close in and no free spots so I booked a place near La Jolla where we had stayed many years ago. Somehow as I was putting this together the fact of June 21 as an anniversary barely surfaced in my brain. Great, I booked the service for the 21st and the campsite for the 20th and 21st.

We spent our anniversary in the customer lounge of San Diego Freightliner. During this exciting day I attended a preplanned virtual (on my part anyhow) board meeting of CityNewspaper and conversed with assorted drivers and service people working at the counter. The service took from 9 AM until 4 PM plus paperwork leaving us to drive separately through SD rush hour to get back to the campsite.

Our great minds are closely linked after all these years and we mutually agreed that dinner out, again!, made perfect sense. I will report on Nine-Ten Restaurant and Bar in La Jolla later, maybe even later in this post.

Monday, last night, we arranged to meet Ron and Jing at there apartment across the street from the baseball stadium where the Padres play. We got to know Jing through my late mother who hired her give a massage several times a week. Jing morphed into a caregiver and ultimately into a friend and that is how we met Ron, her husband. We hadn’t seen them since Mom died and they moved out to San Diego after Jing retired as a Xerox executive and Ron retired from teaching at RIT. We had a delightful visit and then dinner at a Chinese/Japanese restaurant across the street from the apartment.

Later: Somehow we left earlier then necessary to make our reservation, I think I misread the clock or something. Carol is still in some pain when walking so that would not be a great option although that is much of what La Jolla is, given the parking is very difficult. Between a couple of fire trucks blocking traffic and just traffic in general we managed to arrive only 30 minutes early we elected to sit in the parlor of the hotel built in 1913 that houses the restaurant and had a delightful moment to relax with nothing hanging over our heads. We entered the restaurant a bit early and they had a table ready and seated us immediately. The wine list is extensive so we were saved on learning that the by the glass list was more limited. I had a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and Carol had a Syrah, both California wines. With any luck we will remember the wineries too. Carol had a lovely vegetarian dish and I had roast Halibut. No pictures, they were food! excellent food, beautifully presented, the taste was divine. I would recommend this restaurant to anyone who isn’t worrying about how much it costs. Those kinds of worries would spoil the meal.

As for distractions, Carol has had a muscle/ligament/joint pain since the middle of our Hawaii excursion. It moved from one side to the other with the truck trip to Green Sand Beach. She is walking with a cane to take pressure off the hip area and we are waiting for the results of an MRI. I continue to have painful skin cracks on the heals which reduce my desire to walk. In general terms “bummer.” We are hoping to make full recoveries in time to begin trekking again the end of August.

Wednesday we will complete our stay in San Diego by replacing all six perfectly good looking five year old tires on the coach to be relatively more certain of an unremarkable driving experience as we cross the country in hot time this July.

For those who keep asking: Leave CA July 4, Arrive Essex Junction VT July 23 to 29, Arrive Rochester August 1, leave Rochester for safari August 24 returning September 20, leave Rochester for the winter sometime in October. That’s all we know for now.