At Home with Rick and Vicky

The trip back to our "ancestral" home in the Dallas/Ft Worth Metroplex took us on Interstate 20 through Pecos (no pleasant surprises here.) We needed an extra day in town to take care of our state vehicle inspections. Our permanent address is in Livingston, TX, so our TX registration requires an annual inspection whenever we are in-state. Then it was on to Abilene for the night. Here we had one of those "unpleasent" surprises that occassionally happens when traveling cross-country. Abilene is home to Dyess AFB, an active flight training site with at least one B1 bomber wing as well as large cargo planes attached to air transport operations. They practice touch-and-go's at all hours of the day and night (especially the night) and our RV was parked right on their approach pattern - a mere 500 feet below. Guess we were lucky to be on the landing side - the take-off end would have been REALLY loud.

We arrived at Cedar Hill State Park in the rolling hills of suburban south Dallas county on the shores of Lake Joe Pool. It is a very pretty area and only a few miles away from the home of our dear friends from our previous life - Rick and Vicky Bartosek. Rick and I worked together at the "bomber plant" for many years. While I bugged out after 25 years, Rick stayed on through retirement a few years ago. Friends and family ties keep them in their beautiful home - a really tough life.

Lots of time for some Wii games together. Rick has traded in his briefcase and computer manuals for a chef's coat (it's a real one) and a direct line to the Food Channel celebs.  The coat was joke from Vicky, and he really only digs it out only for special occassions. But it is a well-deserved accolade. No wonder his grilling at all those group get-togethers so many years ago ended up so much better than mine. "Come on over - I'll burn some chicken ."

Even got in some shopping/browsing/dining at a very nice local outdoor mall.

Oh, yeah....and lunch with my beautiful sister, Dr. Judie Gammage and one of her many grandkids Samantha Haney. We started making plans for her joining us along the road somewhere when she (FINALLY) retires from teaching next year.

A Few Days in Southern New Mexico

We pass through the mining country of southern Arizona and back into New Mexico, which is a very quick hundred miles or so if you stick to Interstate 10 - kinda like driving this same highway through Mississippi or Alabama, and saying you've visited these states. (The 800+ miles it courses through Texas really does qualify as "seeing the state.")

We stop for a few days in Deming to do a little rock-hounding at (where else) Rockhound State Park, and also to visit City of Rocks State Park about 40 miles out of town. This trip we discovered a museum in town that exemplifies the gifts of our RVing lifestyle. We could have spent a whole day at the Deming Luna Membres Museum and not seen all the tens of thousands of items and artifacts housed in this community sponsored and maintained center of local culture - everything from 500 to 800-year old pots and pottery shards donated by local ranchers to the huge collection of geodes and other gems from the area. If you travel through town, don't miss it.

Then we veered off the I10 track to go up to Alamogordo/White Sands. The National Monument is a remarkable artifact of Mother Nature. The sand is sooo white, it really looks like snow. And the plowed roads remind us of pictures of wintertime in the midwest.

It was Mothers Day, so we planned a lunch at Rebecca's at the Lodge at Cloudcroft, a (supposedly) wonderful restaurant in a small community perched at a 9000-foot highway pass between Alamogordo and Artesia. It turned out to be so wonderful that half of the surrounding coutryside had the same idea we had. The 2 1/2 hour wait reduced it's charm enough that we ended up sampling the beer at one of the local watering holes and settled for dinner back down in the valley.

The next morning, the winds were so strong that the mountain pass to Ruidosa was closed to high-profile vehicles and the trip Roswell had to be scrubbed for a safer path though El Paso and on to Pecos. Those alien burgers (those would be the "little green men" type of aliens) would have to wait till next time.

A Quick Stroll Through U.S. Aviation History

The city of Tucson, AZ sits at the intersection of Interstates 10 & 19, one the Jacksonville to LA route through the southern U.S. and the other the path to Nogales, the largest (legal) border crossing between Juarez and Tijuana. We have passed through Tucson at least a half-dozen times on our way to visits with the kids, and our only sure stop has been for a great Mexican lunch at Micha's, a few blocks off the highway. This trip had a planned overnight in the area, so after lunch at Micha's we payed an overdue visit to one of the largest collections of historical (mostly) American aircraft in the country - the Pima Air and Space Museum.

The exhibits include hangers and outdoor displays full of early 20th century replicas of Wright brothers-era and WWI,  real WWII warplanes, commercial aircraft from the 20's through the 50's, and modern-day military fighters and bombers. Lots of special-purpose planes like Air Force One, and the Blackbird spy plane from the 60's. I was ready to test-fly this little gem, but we couldn't figure out where to insert the quarter.

They even had copies of the F8 Crusader and the A7 Corsair that might have rolled off the assembly line in the 60's and 70's during my 25 year career working for Ling-Temco-Vought in Grand Prairie, Texas. Woo-hoo!

Churches and Organ Pipes

We are in our fifth year of this fulltime RVing. We have seen more of our wonderful country in four years than in the previous 45 years of our marriage - even more than we experienced in 15+ years on the sailboat. But when we sit still for months, like last winter in the Texas Valley, or when we retrace familiar steps like we did from last Thanksgiving through April of this year, we forget how endlessly fascinating, how interesting, the new discoveries can be.

We are headed east to see David and family in San Antonio and Trace in south Florida, and on the way to  reconnect with good friends. We can see how ruts can get established - traveling the same familiar route to see the same familiar (and treasured) people. But this spring we are reverting to our explorer nature. First along the way is a trip to Organ Pipe National Monument, a scenic spot in the Sonoran Desert south (way south) of Phoenix, Arizona. It is so far (75 miles) off the beaten path that we have bypassed it seven times. But this time...

We decide to base our little excursion in the town of Ajo (the campground at Organ Pipe was closed.) What a pleasant surprise this turned out to be. Ajo is a picturesque town, full of a century and a half of history. Today, it serves as a home base for over 400 border patrol agents and their families, and a bit of a tourist stop for Phoenixites on their way to their vacation homes in Puerto Penasco on the Sea of Cortez, 80 miles into Mexico.

But historically, Ajo was the home of a large copper mining operation which started in the early 1900's and continued until the 1980's when production was shut down and the mine closed. It was a devistating blow, but Ajo didn't dry up and and blow away in the desert. There was a group of retirees and a touch of tourism (on the way to the national monument and Puerto Penasco) and the town survived to experience a bit of a rebound, thanks to the INS and new uses for the leftovers from the mining operations.

Friendly people, and civic pride, and traditional values - it makes for a delightful community ethos which shows through in the RV parks - the place we lucked into was great - and the eateries - the places we ate were great - and the merchants that visitors deal with. The school, churches - the plaza, and the mine, and the museum - they all contribute to the enjoyment of our brief stay.

And, oh yeah, Organ Pipe was interesting too.

Interstate 8 to Yuma (at 3:10?)

In our previous life aboard evermore, traveling with mechanical problems was pretty much par for the course. But so far our RV life has been free from this kind of stress....until now. (Could it be as simple as a 30 year-old boat versus a 5 year-old RV????)

When it came time to leave Palm Springs, after spending three weeks idyling  next door to one of the biggest RV centers in SoCal, we discovered that one of our slide-outs (those are the things that change an RV from a road rig to a livable home when parked) was broken and wouldn't retract. You know Dave - "It's time to go - let's get it fixed in Yuma." Since we can't drive down the highway with it hanging out, we muscle it in by hand. Then, to keep it from sliding out while making a left turn (I can picture this happening to Robin Williams) we place wooden blocks under it to keep it wedged in. And off we go to Yuma Lakes RV Park.



We're heading here to see our old friends Len and Connie Martin (see our blog post of a year ago) as well as traveling across the border here at Algodones, Baja California, Mexico for meds and presciption glasses. We are joined by our good friends from Lake Havasu City, Larry and Phyllie Coon who have appeared a numbers of times in this blog. Both Larry and Len are "Mr. Fixits" and I instantly recognize an opportunity for a do-it-yourself (with a bunch of help) project.

We called all over Yuma looking for the broken part, with Len using his local contacts as a starting point, with no success. Then Jan said "check out the Internet." (She left out "...you Bozo" because she's too nice to say it out loud.) Hallelujah! There it was, and only a UPS Saturday delivery away from us.

We remove the offending piece and wait for Brown to show. This is not what it looks like.

Eureka, we are saved. We slap it back together and IT WORKS! $90 instead of $500 if we had had the pros fix it. That deserves a big hug!