After we called Dean and Jane we called the state park and found that there was only one site available for three nights and it was one away from them.  After a 112 mile drive down from Scottsdale we settled into the park and were joined by Dean and Jane for Happy Hour.

Jane told us that she had a planned hike with a group for the morning.  The profile was 5.5 miles round trip and the elevation difference between the start and the high point was 900 feet.  Her hiking group rated it easy to moderate.  I will try to up load the actual profile as an attachment, but needless to say the description left out some details like the elevation changes along the way which resulted in a lot of steep climbing and, oh by the way, much of the trail was rock and narrow passages through more rock.  We stayed with the group most of the way to the pools, the hike was to Romero Pools.  Carol and I dropped back the last half mile as our lack of recent climbing caught up with us.  We rejoined at the pools and took a half hour break before beginning the descent. 

 Carol and I brought up the rear and were dropping back most of the way.  We returned to the trail head about 20 minutes after the gang.  We took the afternoon off to read, recoup and clean up.  Happy Hour on their coach was accompanied by a great bottle of wine from our expedition with Anna Lee and Jerry – this bottle was from Hahn the Syrah, yummy.

The next day we located the UPS Store that had our mail and did a bit of shopping.  We put stuff away and went for a bike ride in the park.  We road all the paved roads and even some of the dirt.  Although we were sore when we got off the bikes it was good to get back on them.  We had not taken a serious ride since December in Livingston.  Neither the locations we were in nor my sore wrist had been conducive to riding.  The wrist was sore before we left Rochester and after the ride in Livingston I had to splint it and rest it completely for a week.  At some point it has stopped bothering me.

We could not make our minds up where to go from Catalina SP.  We had read a lengthy article in the NYTimes Travel section by Paul Theroux on Nogales and decided that it was time for us to venture across the border into Nogales Mexico even though US State Department says Mexico is dangerous and everyone we mention it to agrees that it is foolish to go there.  So we are a bit foolish.  We drove to Nogales, AZ and parked a short walk from the border.  As in most other places the walkway is reasonably controlled, sort of a cattle chute with no turning back once you enter.  The fence, wall, that extends through the town is a steel obscenity.  Peering through the bars from either side must be what it feels like to be in prison.

The Fence seen from the US

  The silliest thing is that three miles out of town you can walk around it!  Nogales Mexico does not feel any different that Algadones, or any of the other border towns we have visited over the years.  Lunch at La Roca was a real treat.  It was better than many of our previous experiences.  We walked in on a huge baby shower that occupied two thirds of the tables with very well dressed women and several very large stomachs.  There were three tables of Americans along one wall, we were at the middle table.  We did talk to a few others who had come over the border.  All in all it would seem that the most of the people we saw were Mexicans and there were very few Americans from north of the border.  The Chicken Mole was wonderful and well seasoned without being excessively spicy.  I also had a lovely soup and Carol had Chiles Rellenos.  She gave the dish high praise.

After lunch we did a little shopping. Carol bought a small bottle of Vanilla and I bought a bottle of Blue Agave Tequila for me.  Then we located the line to get back over the border. We no sooner got ourselves situated when the couple from the table next to us came walking along and joined us in the line this gave us someone to talk with for the hour long wait to get to the border.  They have had a place in Tubac for twenty years and come over to Nogales fairly often.  We parted at the parking lot and we headed up I 19.  We got off in Tubac and began to wander through the galleries and shops near the presidio. This is a very substantial art market. After a couple of hours the galleries were closing and it was time for us to return to the coach and have supper.

Here is a picture of a Hudson Hornet I saw in Tubac.  Mostly I remember that my father had one that started out green and eventually was repainted brown, this must have been when I was 10 years old.

Still in Phoenix, well Scottsdale and we are leaving in the morning as I write this for Tucson, another long day on the road 🙂 Google Maps says 110 miles, 2 hours 1 minute

On Saturday Jackie Mobley came over and restrung (restrang? restrunged?) three of our day/night blinds.  If you haven’t been on a coach and seen them there is no way I can explain how they work, just take my word for it that the stringing is either far more complicated than your average mechanic can deal with or mere child’s play if you know what you are about.  She did the whole job in an hour and a half and that included repairs to two of them.

This left us time to go back t the Musical Instrument Museum for our second visit.  We spent over four more hours there which is include an excellent lunch in the grill – from the Global Menu we both had the Ethiopian Stew, a vegan stew that was very flavorful and filling.  Friday we had taken a bike ride and wandered through Papago Park.  It had been so long since we had ridden that we limited our time and distance to avoid strain.  Nonetheless we were out for a couple of hours and determined that there was much more to see in the park.

Yesterday, Sunday, we got back on our bikes and started to ride into the park.  We made it as far as the Desert Botanical Gardens, about a 15 minute ride.  There we cabled the bikes to the bike rack and began a lengthy exploration of the gardens.  We wandered around the paths in the gardens for three hours, leaving only because they were closing and the sun was setting.  Carol took way too many pictures to begin to sort through and I took none, well a few on my phone, because I was too dazzled to think what to take a picture of.

If you are at all into botanical gardens, desert flora, this is one of the musts.

Other stuff.  After over a year of depending on my droid for wifi hotspot, I got fed up with the limited available monthly data and relatively slow response.  Also it meant I could not leave the coach and take my phone if Carol wanted to work on her computer while I was gone.  Today I bought a 4G LTE MiFi thing from Verizon that provides a very nice, fast wifi hotspot with 5 GB of data monthly.  So far it is very fast and relatively reliable.  Carol also got a new phone as hers was four years old – virtually an antique.  Verizon Wireless is grateful for our long term relationship forking over large bucks every month.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, we will drive to Catalina State Park, just north of Tucson where Dean and Jane are camping.  We have not seen them since last April just north of Calgary.  This is the joy of RVing, we meet new people and we get to see them over and over as our paths intersect over the years.

A reminder, SKP is also spelled Escapee and is our primary membership organization.  They also provide our postal mail address – that Livingston TX address you  may see from time to time.  The campground at North Ranch is about 60 miles north of Phoenix and about 20 miles north of Wickenburg.

We returned to Wickenburg on Saturday and had lunch before walking over to the museum which had so impressed us almost two years ago on our first visit.  The open shed that had faced the center of town has been enclosed and houses some exhibits that were in the main building, minerals and Native Americans, as well as a new exhibit of the history of the “Express” companies.  It was interesting to see which of the old companies continue to exist in some form to this day.  The two most dominant ones are Wells Fargo which was primarily a stage coach line then and American Express which handled freight on stage and then rail.  Some of you might remember Railway Express Agency, later R.E.A. the last company to handle interline freight on the railroads as an independent company.

As we toured the main exhibit building we found a collection of photos of Arizona ghost towns with really fine interpretive audio by the photographer, Kurt Wenner.  To see much of what we saw click on this link and select Arizona.  As we walked through the exhibit and listened to the audio we noted that a few of the sites were near by.  On Sunday we worked around the coach until after lunch then we took off to see if we could find anything in Congress and Stanton.  We took 89 a couple of miles north to the intersection with 71 and turned left over the railroad tracks to Ghost Town Road which I had noted as we drove by on our way in.  There was also a sign pointing to the Congress Cemetery.  Eventually, as all interesting roads in these parts do, we left the pavement behind.   Proceeding up the dirt continuation we passed a BLM dry camping area about .6 of a mile along and eventually we came to the Old Congress Cemetery.  The most recent burial we saw was in the ’50’s and that seemed to be forty years after the next most recent.  Retracing our tracks we found a turn with no indication that the road was private and followed it to the current town cemetery.  We returned to 71 and contemplated our next adventure.

We had heard that Stanton was east of 89 just north of the intersection and a check of the website and Google Navigation confirmed that. So we set off on another adventure.  Six miles of good dirt road brought us to a sign that read LDMA Stanton.  LDMA? It did not mean anything to us so I decided to play stupid, not hard on some days, and parked and walked into the office as if I was looking for a campsite, which I might indeed have wanted.  I learned that LDMA is the acronym for “Lost Dutchman Mining Association.”  The campground is members only and we were given permission to look around.  We immediately met a member who was not out mining for placer gold and was more than willing to give us some of the history.  The buildings date back to the gold rush of 1863! and have been restored and maintained by the association for their own use.  There is a large Opera House with a bar that fills one end and the hotel across the street houses the card room, TV room and kitchen.  Most of the men were off on their claims and the woman we spoke with said she preferred to “mine” on beaches for lost coins and jewelry as the sand is easier to dig than the rock in the claims around Stanton.  Membership in LDMA includes the privilege of working the claims the association owns all over the west and into Alaska.  We have run into the name in our travels, but had never met any members before this excursion.

Following directions from our guide and in agreement from Google Nav we continued up the road we had come in on and 6 miles of tortuous dirt road that climbed a couple of thousand feet brought us back to 89 in the town of Yarnell at 4800 feet.  This is the Big City for the miners and there were a couple of businesses that seemed to still be open, most of the town which sits astride the road from Wickenburg to Prescott seems to be verging on becoming a ghost town itself.

We returned down the very long grade from Yarnell to the valley floor and our coach at North Ranch.  We concluded the day’s adventures by going to the activity center for the weekly Ice Cream Social.  We slipped the ice cream but enjoyed the social which became a do it yourself program responding to questions about the states east of the Mississippi.  Carol and got roped into telling what there was to do in Alabama.  We surprised ourselves, and others, with how many interesting paces we knew to recommend in Alabama.  Lots of fun.

Dinner, the Grammy Awards, and our books on Kindle concluded the day.

Yes indeed we went to Laguna Seca Recreation Area, the Chapparal Camping Area which happens to over look the Mazda Race Track at Laguna Seca.  We got to watch school cars race around about half the track from our campsite.  Some were slow and many got faster as the day progressed.  Most were Mazdas, but there was also a class of open wheel racers out there at times.  Side note, had an open wheel racer pass us on PCH in Malibu one day!

Point Lobos walk

The climb to the campground was noted as a 16% grade!  Since the curves lilmited speed to the 20 MPH we were able to make on the grade it did not seem outrageous.  Coming down on the other hand. . .  even in the car it was hairy.  At the top we met Anna Lee and Jerry and the rest of the Springfield RV Club.  We shared a wonderful potluck dinner the first night – it was so good we were able to repeat it the second night after a day that included a long walk on Point Lobos, lunch at  Vivolos Chowder House – Carol found a place next door where she enjoyed a vegetarian meal without the smell of fish.  I will refer you to Jerry and Anna Lee’s blog for food pictures and site pictures.  I am working with limited bandwidth so will take advantage of other’s pictures when they are available and excellent.  Day two included wine tasting at Ventana Winery followed by a trip to the Farmer’s Market where some of us bought fresh fish to bring back and grill.  More fresh halibut for me, yum!

Thanks for the warning!

The third day included brunch at First Awakenings in Salinas followed by wine tasting at two wineries; Paraiso and Hahn.  At each we enjoyed the tasting and made some purchases.  Storage has become an issue.  We have several bottles under the bed and the wine rack is temporarily full.  We also have added a Port to the standing collection in the food file.  As always visits with friends come to an end, although we hope to see Jerry and Anna Lee in Rochester in the Fall and maybe go on up to Niagara-on-the-Lake and Stratford with them.
 
Left Anna Lee and Jerry at Laguna Seca and headed up to Sacramento to see niece Minda and her fiance Will for dinner Thursday night at their apartment in Davis.  We stayed at the KOA on the western edge of Sacramento as it is the closest place we could find.  The Elks is way out on the other side of Sacramento. Friday we had them come to the coach for dinner.  Carol made a wonderful vegetarian stew and salad which we all enjoyed.  On Saturday we picked up Will and Minda and went to the farmers market in Davis where we had breakfast and bought some great produce and lots of oranges.  Will went to write and Minda joined us for a walk which we based on a Volksmarch.  We found some interesting galleries and ended at her friend Val’s home.  Will joined us there and we had dinner together at Tulli a local restaurant.  After dinner we made our farewells and returned to Gee 2 for a good nights sleep.

We were in touch with the Hoggs (see past posts) and learned that they were in Ehrenberg, AZ for a few more days.  We set off early on Sunday morning with 600 miles to cover.  Clearly this was going to be a two day push for us.  We started out with a determination to head down I 5 as it is another route that many take and contains the “Grapevine.”  We didn’t make it more than 30 miles before we crossed over to CA 99 which is parallel to and slightly east of I 5.  This road surface seemed much better than the 5 and traffic flowed easily.  Over the distance we traveled (Stockton to Bakersfield) it was entirely freeway.  At Bakersfield we picked up CA 58 which heads out into the mountains.  Reading “Days End” (an Escapee website that tracks free and cheap overnight camping ) I learned that there was a parking area just off exit 172 that had been reported as  an overnight stopping place.  We pulled off the road and settled into the large flat space with Edwards Airforce Base to our southwest.  We watched a magnificent sunset over the base and the lines of wind turbines marching along the ridge lines.  After sunset we could see the red lights on the many towers flashing in unison across the desert. As we had breakfast we watched lines of oversize loads with wind turbine blades headed out onto the highway.  We prepared for departure with a minimum of effort and by 9 we were moving.  The route was 58 to 395 to 18 to 247 to Joshua Tree NP and then south on 177 to I 10.   I will let you pull up your own Google Map or paper atlas to see the area.  

Ehrenberg sits on the east bank of the Colorado River barely into Arizona.  The Hoggs are in a membership park on the river.  We settled into a desert parking lot for $1 a day which seems exorbitant since it buys us nothing but desert.  On the other hand a buck seems pretty cheap.  We have had a couple of Happy Hours and dinner at the Hoggs and dinner at the Quartzsite Yacht Club the next night.  We moved to Quartzsite to wait for our mail to catch up with us after the Hoggs moved on to El Centro.  I took the car  in to have someone look at the tires.  One valve core is leaking and another tire seems to have lost a bit of air for no reason.  

Purple Mountains Majesty – Hi Jolly  BLM Area Quartzsite

The mail did not come in on Thursday as expected so while we were waiting I stopped at Best Auto for a look see at the tire with the leaking valve.  The owner replaced the valve core and I handed him a $5 and much thanks.  We camped in the desert at the Hi Jolly BLM area.  There was plenty of sun and no reason to run the generator until we wanted toast for breakfast.  The solar panels were putting out plenty of power for our needs and the batteries held up fine running the furnace overnight and my CPAP machine.  Friday the mail arrived and we moved on to North Ranch Rainbow Campground north of Wickenberg AZ (north of Phoenix).  This looks like an exciting week to be in Arizona as they are celebrating the centennial of Statehood on February 14. 

I have just reread Brave new World by Aldous Huxley.  It was published in 1953 and I believe the first time I read it was in 1958 in a high school class under the tutelage of Carl Lang.  None of that will mean much to most of you, but if you haven’t read the book recently the relevance  title of this post will mean even less.

It all started because in response to something someone said I replied “In the year of our Ford”.  My next thought was “where did that come from”?  Then I thought that it was from Brave New World (hereafter BNW).  Since we are on the road, just running to the library to pick up a copy to read is not simple.  However, when we were visiting in Florida, I bought a Kindle.  I “went shopping” and found a copy of BNW in Kindle format and zap I owned it.  Yup in the far future as written in the early 1950’s they have changed their worship to Ford and taken the tops off of every cross to change them to “T” (as in Model T).  I will not pursue BNW any further, if you want to get the link between the title and the book, you will have to read it.  Time for me get a half gram of soma.

Today we have gone Elks Lodge to Elks Lodge.  We are back in the Monterey Lodge we visited last March.  It still has a wonderful view of the ocean.  We had thought of stopping at a Harvest Host winery, actually we did, but it was only noon when we stopped so we tasted Tobin James reds and bought a couple of bottles of their Merlot before retreating from the mobs to our coach for lunch.  We decided to move on to the Monterey Elks, as planned 3 hours previously.  Harvest Host is yet another “club”.  It is a loose association of farms with sales venues across the country which mostly have space for a motorhome or two to dry camp on their grounds  for a night.  The list is only accessible to members  and it includes wineries, dairies, cattle ranches and truck farms with farm stands.  They are mostly well off any route we are likely to be on when going point to point, but they will be interesting when can take the time to venture off the beaten path.

I seem to have drifted away from my initial thread.  That happens.  Back to the Kindle.  These are wonderful sources of reading materiel.  We have a shared subscription to the NYTimes and it is really much easier to bring the Kindles to the table over breakfast than trying to find room for two laptops along with the meal.  See a book you think you might like to read and find it and sample it before buying.  Think a strange thought like “In the year of our Ford” and track down the 60 year old book and begin reading it within minutes.  It is really amazing, by the way, how much I forgot about that book.  I may have to venture into 1984 of similar vintage and assigned reading by the same teacher.  I have reread that some time in the last 50 years, but darned if I can remember when, I do remember RATS and I do remember turned down page corners for the sexy parts, or at least they seemed sexy then.  Can’t dog ear a page on the Kindle, but I can bookmark it, or highlight it or share it.

I search through the “Under $3.99” regularly and download samples.  If I like them they are mine at once, if not,they are deleted from the Kindle and the wishlist.  In case you think you will miss the feel of the paper and the heft of a book, remember trying to read something like War and Peace or a really fat paperback book.  They all fit in the same 4 by 6 inch frame that weighs a few ounces and on e ink can be read in any light you can read paper in, you do need light.  Carol has the Kindle Fire, she does not need any light since it is backlit, but reading in sunlight can be difficult.  Also the Fire weighs much more, maybe twice as much as my Touch.  It still is lighter than most books.  When we fly to Rochester, it will be so much easier to carry our Kindles than than the books we need for the flight and down time in Rochester and if we run out of reading material on the ground no need to find a bookstore or news stand.  If wifi is not available, I merely turn on the hotspot on my phone and we are connected to more books than the Library of Congress.  How cool is that?  I must seem like a real ad for Kindle, but I am sure that if we had Nooks or Sony’s the atitude would be the same.  Maybe if we had “Gizmos” – see The Last Bookstore in America by Amy Stewart – we would feel differently.

The Lagavulin tastes fine and I am sure the dinner of fresh giant artichokes (from the San Luis Obispo Farmer’s Market) and squash and salad will feature some really nice wine.  I had best post this before I become maudlin.  Tomorrow we drive about 15 miles to Laguna Seca Recreation Area (yes the race track is there) to meet the Braunsteins and the Springfield RV Club.  Should be some great fun.

We stayed on in the LA area as planned and visited with the Arnalls who we know from my days on the JDC Board (that’s American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee – for those who don;t know the acronym). we had dinner at Palomino which was a nice restaurant in the UCLA area. We also had lunch in Venice at Roses Cafe with Jan Shapiro, Carol’s sister-in-law’s sister.  Along the way we had a brief visit to Yechiel’s office, a couple of trips with Avtalyon to Capoeira, a Brazilian dance form that derives from a martial art.  He is quite taken with it.  We also had a day out with Azriel which included a stop at an air museum, The Black Bird site.  There is a display on the grounds where they were built of a U-2 and a couple of Black Birds (one SR 71 and an early prototype that saw extensive service designated an A-12).  There were also several interesting planes ranging from a C-47 to an F-4 D Phantom and a F 111 Stealth fighter.  Azriel was captivated .by a maintenance worker who was working on the U-2.  His grandfather had flown the U-2, it was quite a tour of the plane.  From there we went to Devils Punchbowl State Park.  Words will not do it justice.  The upthrust rocks jut into the sky at angles over 45 degrees.  The mountains around are over 8,000 feet and the park itself is over 4,000 feet.  We all had a good time scrambling over rocks and down trails.  Azriel got into it as well and was quite a trooper.

Eventually it was time to move on.  As we rolled out of Malibu Beach RV Park our only destination was Agoura Hills, about 30 miles away, to get an oil change and routine service.  We once again were thwarted in our effort to stay at Santa Barbara Elks as they were full.  We continued on up 101 to El Capitan Beach State Park.  there we paid $35 for the privilege of staying on a parking lot sandwiched between the ocean and the 101 with a passenger rail line in the mix.  There are no hook ups and there is not even a dump.  The views were  wonderful and we had a couple of very nice walks.  Pictures will be posted when I have some bandwidth to work with.  While stopped we made some phone calls and changed our plans.  We are going to hang out on the Central coast for a while and meet Anna Lee and Jerry Braunstein and their Springfield RV club in Monterey on Sunday for a few days of fun and wine tasting as a group.  Then we will continue on up to Davis to see our niece before turning around and retracing to get to Phoenix well before we fly to Rochester.  Of course there are other friends including the Hoggs who are in these parts (these parts means southern California and Arizona –  rather broad designation).  Also we hope to see our friends in the Phoenix area as well.  Time will tell.

Elks Lodge 322 is located between a cemetery and an RV storage lot and backed up against the 101. Interesting surroundings.  The lodge is nicely kept and seems to be very active.  The camping area is extensive with water and electric (30 amp) hook ups for a dozen coaches and a dump available to members. The RV storage lot is part of the Elks property.

To any RVer the subject line is a standard answer to the capacity of a motorhome no matter how big.  We have been known to break the “rule” on occasion, for instance when we invited Deb and Scott to spend the night with us New Years Eve.  Privacy can be hard to find in a coach as the space is so limited and the walls so thin.

This past weekend we stretched the “rule” yet again.  We started by having our grandson Azriel on board Saturday night after bringing him out after Shabbat.  This was a down payment on his 11 year old RV trip with us.  We have neighbors in Malilbu Beach RV Park who have a 9 (almost 10) year old boy and Sunday morning we took a wonderful walk just south of the grounds of the park with Nate joining us and accompanying Azriel.  About 2, Azriel’s parents Yechiel and Miriam and his brother Avtalyon came out.  While the boys played, I got busy on the grill with vegetables cut up by Carol preparing dinner.  Although there were only six of us as compared to ten last year, the grilling did seem to go on forever.  Eventually we were able to gather in the coach, the temperature had dropped too low for comfortable outdoor dining.

After an episode of National Geographic “Galapagos” from Netflix it was time for everyone to bed down.  Yes, we made room for all six of us to sleep on board.  We, of course, took the Master Suite in the back.  Yechiel and Miriam got the convertible couch, Azriel got the dining booth (the table top gets dropped onto the benches and the cushions cover the surface) and Avtalyon got the floor using the cushions from the couch as his mattress.  I don’t think anyone would recommend this as a long term sleeping arrangement (more than one night!), but it did work fine for the night.  In the morning we took a ride to Point Dume where we walked on the beach and climbed the Point to look over the ocean.  There was a video production crew set up on the parking lot to record an episode of Modern Family (whatever that is).  This tied things up a bit.  We returned to the coach for lunch and everyone seemed ready to take it easy for the afternoon, playing some catch and just talking.  Later in the afternoon we watched another episode of “Galapagos” and it was time for everyone to go home.

Carol and I wandered around the coach putting things back to where they belong then sat and read in the peace and quiet.  It is a mixed blessing, we enjoy the quiet, but we also really enjoy having the kids (both generations) with us.  Can’t have both at the same time.

It is always surprising to find something new and different right under your nose and realize it has been there all along.  We have been visiting our family in LA for several years have driven up and down Venice Blvd more times than we care to think about.  Carol at one time noticed the Museum of Jurassic Technology and after wondering for a bit put it out of her mind.  Yesterday Carol, our daughter-in-law Miriam and I were wondering what to do with some spare time with Avtalyon in tow.  We decided to head over to the museum to see what it had to offer.  We first checked out the web site to see if it seemed interesting.  If anything it left us with less idea of what we might find, but it intrigued us enough to venture in the door.  Once in it took us over two hours to extract ourselves.  I will not try to describe everything, check out the link above for much more detail.  

As promised Friday morning the delivery trucks arrived with new batteries and a new motor for the slideout room.  When we were preparing o return from lunch I got a call that the coach was ready to roll.  We finished our walk back from Andele, a Mexican Restaurant about a half mile from Sunland, paid our bill and were underway before 2 PM.

While we were rolling we called Bev and Dan Armstrong who we knew were in the Tucson area to see if we could get together.  After a bit of back and forth we realized that they were going to drive to Saguaro SKP Coop in Benson AZ to hear Arvel Bird perform in the Coop clubhouse.  We were aware of Arvel Bird since he has played at the Ganandogan Powwow just south of Rochester several times, while we were away.  He has also performed with the Rochester Chamber Orchestra.  Since we were already headed for Saguaro Coop and planned to stay there a couple of nights, it made sense for us to meet there.  And we did.  Bev and Dan arrived at about 11 Am and we had a great lunch spread that Carol put together with a minimum of effort.  We ate in the sun just outside the coach and conversation continued non stop until Dan got word that Arvel was in and setting up.  We walked over to the clubhouse where Dan contributed his effort as a “roadie” schlepping stuff from the car to the stage.

Eventually we returned to the coach and ordered in pizza which we elected to go and pick up.from G and F Pizza in Benson.  Good pizza if you happen to be in Benson and happen to be in the mood for pizza.  Not likely for most of you readers I am sure.

The show was wonderful.  Arvel is a master of the fiddle and native American flutes and I am sure many other instruments.    Rather than my blathering on about him click here to go to his website  http://arvelbird.com.  We came away with 2 CDs we bought and 1 that he had messed up the signature on which he gave to us.  We also picked up a DVD of him in performance which he gave away with the purchase of the CDs. He and his wife are very close with our friends the Armstrongs.

We all parted company after the concert and in the morning Carol and I left Benson behind to roll closer to LA.  We stopped mid afternoon at the Hi Jolly STVA (that is Short Term Visitor Area) just north of Quartzite AZ.  As I may have mentioned in the past Quartzite straddles I 10 just east of the California border.  Most of the land is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the Department of Interior and with some limited regulation is generally open to free or very low cost camping.  In STVA here there are no facilities.  We have no access to water, dump or electric.  We have plenty of water with us – 100 gallons and the capacity to hold 100 gallons of sewage.  For electricity we are using solar panels and some time on the generator.  Those new batteries are working out just fine.

We shopped for a new coach, we will be doing that for some time now, we may even buy something eventually.  Today I was pretty enamored of a Winnebago Journey (you heard that right Dot and Larry).  It is the same length as out coach and has a lot of nice features.  The price is, lets just say up there.  Plenty of time to think this over and look some more.  In the mean time we added some new LED lighting and other “stuff” that we just had to have.

Tomorrow we will rise at our usual time and try to get on the road by nine.  we have about 4 or 5 hours (LA traffic will determine that) to drive I 10 to the coast and then up the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) to Malibu Beach RV Park where we will stay until the 24th.  There may not be much posting for the next two weeks.  We also booked flights to Rochester from Phoenix, February 17 to 20.  Haven’t been in Rochester in February in 12 years but our friend Zvi Zeitlin is giving his 45th annual recital in Kilbourn Hall on Sunday at 3 PM and he has announced it will be his last.  Two days later he will be 90.