Blogless in Mesa

May 20, 2010.

It's been a while since I last posted on the blog. We are still here in Mesa, AZ at Carriage Manor Resort near my father and Karen. We've been slowly making preparations and assisting my father in making preparations for our trip to Colorado via New Mexico.

We have to transport Maggie and Rico back and forth to the dog park in Karen's golf cart. We are not allowed to walk them through the resort. However, they both enjoy riding in the cart. We take them to the park at least once in the morning and evening.

The temperatures continue to hover in the low 90's occasionally threatening to hit 100. We are fortunate to have two A/Cs although one could do the job. We usually run the bedroom A/C in the late afternoon. At night we turn off the main A/C and occasionally run just the bedroom unit. One of our readers, Karen Tipton commented about the dry heat. For us, 80 plus degrees in dry heat is comfortable in comparison to the same temperature in high humidity. It's only during the peak part of the day when it's uncomfortably hot and we move indoors. The mornings and evenings are very enjoyable. In fact, it's 10:00 a.m. and I'm sitting outside typing this blog.

At the Carriage Rally in Texas, I had met a couple that had re-positioned the rear basement wall in their Cameo thus giving them more space. Although their floor plan was different, I decided to remove my rear basement wall and see what if any adjustments I could make to add space. So after emptying the basement and detaching the wall, I learned that I could move it back about three inches. Although a small gain, it actually opens things up and makes it easier to move things in the basement. While I had the wall down, I was able to inspect the bathroom drains and pipes and I'm happy to report, I did not find any leaks or obvious problems.

There is a Camping World here in Mesa, so we took a trip to the store and I found a porcelain coated grill grate for my Coleman grill! As you may recall from a previous post, the teflon coated grill grate was worthless. Hopefully we will be happier cooking and cleaning with the porcelain grate.

Last Friday, we had the opportunity to go to downtown Mesa, and check out the Car Show. We walked around and had pizza at a local restaurant downtown.

Last week we entertained the idea of trading in our car for a SUV. So we test drove some models to include the Jeep Liberty, Jeep Patriot, the Dodge Journey, GMC Terrain and a Toyota RAV4. We kept having second thoughts about making a deal and had almost put the idea to rest. However, my cousin Terry and her husband Rick came over one night for dinner. Rick is a salesman for a local Toyota dealership. They arrived in a beautiful pearl 2009 Toyota RAV4 Limited with only 1800 miles on it (that's right 1800). He told me they would be selling it as used and it had belonged to the corporate office. We got to drive it and it was loaded with leather and all the bells and whistles. Long story short, we almost made a deal, but the night before, Joyce couldn't sleep from thinking about it and we again decided to put off making a purchase. Our car only has 66K miles and is in great shape. A SUV is a want and not a real need.  Perhaps it's not the most practical vehicle for our lifestyle, but it's paid for and gets 23-26 mpg. 

Terry and Rick are a wonderful couple of our age and have been married for over 30 years.  They both still look young and fit and have become avid hikers. They have done the hike in and out of the Grand Canyon and were telling us about the adventure. We hope to make plans to do it with them in the near future.

We've continued to travel around the Phoenix Valley visiting Aunts, Uncles and Cousins scattered about. It's great to visit family I haven't seen in years or decades.

Yesterday, I took the opportunity to give the rig a thorough washing. It sure looked shiny when I was done. Again I used the Dawn With Bleach dishwashing soap. 

Well, that about brings us up to speed. We plan to leave on our trip by the end of next week, so we only have a week or so left here in the valley.