Happy Holidays

We want to wish all of you and your families the Happiest Holiday ever. Stay safe if you are traveling, even if it's just across the street!

We'll catch up with after the holidays.

Dee & Larry

The Big Scene

Tonight we had an outing with about 40 other Workampers for dinner at Mesa's famous Organ Pizza Stop. This restaurant boasts the largest and finest Theater Organ in the world today! Its nearly 6,000 pipes, numerous percussion instruments and countless traps are masterfully presented along with electrical light accompaniment (featuring laser lights, kaleidoscope, disco ball and numerous colored spots). In the postcard photo (we forgot our camera!) you can see a xylophone mounted from the ceiling, bell chimes from the ceiling, drums mounted on the west wall, cymbals, bells, gongs, and on and on. Trumpets are at the rear of balcony out of the photo. Behind the curtain above the Wurlitzer 4 puppet cats tap dance to lively tunes. You can see the organ pipes behind the 8 louvered openings along the back wall.

The closeup photo shows the high gloss ebony and real gold leaf of the Wurlitzer "French" console. It is the largest and most elaborate design ever created by the company, containing 276 keys and 976 controls. Needless to say the organists have their hands and feet full when playing the most memorable songs - over 10,000 upon request.

As a side note, the pizza was okay.


Saturday evening First Street residents had their annual Christmas potluck and karaoke. About 114 people attending the event. Always nice to meet our neighbors up and down the street.
There are 2 more Christmas parties, one on the 22nd and one Christmas night.


This will be our first full week scheduled for work. We have been assigned to the Setup/breakdown crew along with 4 other couples and we each work 12 hours a week Thursday through Sunday. We set up the room for Thursday bingo, Friday morning Kountry Store, Friday night dance, and Saturday special events and then Sunday church services. The Large meeting room has a capacity of 1,000 and the small meeting room has a capacity of 300. It's a lot of banquet table and chairs to set up and take down but it goes really fast with 10-12 people working on it.

Roses are in Bloom

The photo shows the entrance to Mesa Regal Resort where we are staying until April 1st. Roses are absolutely gorgeous. We will be Workamping here @ 12 hours a week each. Starting Thursday we will be working with 5 other couples doing the set ups for all of the events held in the park, i.e. dances on Friday evenings, bingo, church services on Sunday, etc. The men set up tables and ladies handle the chairs. Pretty easy as far as we are concerned.

Our trip out went really well even though we had a rough start getting to I-10 from Alpine. We drove through snow flurries for about 30 miles on Hwy 90 and then stayed overnight in Van Horn at junction of I-10 because road was closed into El Paso due to snow & ice and a whole bunch of wrecks. By Wednesday around noon the interstate was open and the roads were clear. No further weather-related problems were incurred.

CoCo loves it here too as he has lots of buddies to play with, most of whom are way bigger than he is but that doesn't stop him from running after them and playing with them.

Today we put up Christmas lights (on our grapefruit tree no less!) and inside the MH on the dashboard. Our whole street is decorated to the max because a committee is judging to see who has done the best job. Most everyone has a wooden chimney display with a dog peeking out of it to indicate that we are in a pet friendly area. Decorations around the Clubhouse, Gazebo at the pool and the ballrooms are decorated to the max and are just gorgeous. It's taken volunteers almost 2 weeks to get the trees up and all the light put up. Lots and lots of work for everyone. I'll get a picture of some of the decorations and post them for you to see.

Lots of activities planned this month - 1st Street Xmas Potluck is Saturday evening and over 100 people will be attending. On Dec. 25th there will be a Christmas potluck and Chinese gift exchange. And of course there are always bridge, pinochle, cribbage and coffees to attend. Don't know when we'll have time to work!

Warmer Weather Ahead

We will be traveling to Mesa, AZ and will spend the rest of December through March 31st at the Mesa Regal RV Resort as Workampers doing various resort related jobs. Each of us will work only 12 hours a week so we will have plenty of free time for ourselves.

Our new temporary address is C/O Mesa Regal RV Resort, 4700 E. Main Street #176, Mesa, AZ 85205. This Resort is just up the road from where we stayed last winter.

We leave on Tuesday so have lots to do in our unseasonably cold weather here in Alpine, TX. Our furnace has been working overtime keeping us warm & snugly. Am looking forward to those warmer temps.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We drove over to Marathon, TX to share the day with the Charlesworth family (Jim & Cherokee; Brent & Leslea and their 2 daughters, Collee and Emily; Brandi & Joe and their 2 daughters Madalyn & Lucy) and other family and friends of Brent and Leslea's. We got acquainted with Jim & Cherokee in Raton NM some 35+ years ago a few months before Brent was born and have remained good friends through the years. We always enjoy our times spent with each other and have lots of memories to share.

When we get set up in Mesa I'll try and update our Blog with a photo of Mesa Regal along with a weather update.

Day Trip to Observatory

This is the 82" Telescope that the guide moved into place by rotating the top half of the dome. He only opened it a few inches so no birds could fly into the facility.

We discovered this little roadside park built into the stone alongside the road on our way to the observatory.

On Saturday we drove over to the McDonald Observatory about 16 miles north of Ft. Davis, TX. Beautiful drive as the cottonwood trees were a gorgeous bright yellow and the oak trees a very dark burnished red. The road is very curvy and winding up to the elevation of 6,791 ft. (atop Mt. Fowlkes), which also happens to be the highest maintained road in the state of Texas.

We took a 90 minute guided tour that featured the 82" Otto Struve Telescope and the 107" Hobby-Eberly Telescope. There also was a solar presentation in the auditorium showing live images through a 35" telescope with a white filter to capture images. We learned all about the sun's magnetic fields, solar flares and the sun orbits. It would take 109 of the Earth's planets placed side by side to make up the diameter of the Sun. Really fascinating info but a lot of the technical info on the actual telescopes was way over our heads. We did see how the telescopes moved to track stars in the sky. Different telescopes have different functions such as the one used to track man-made satellites orbiting around earth.

About 80 residents/astrologers live in close proximity to the facility and of course their workday begins about 11:30 at night until dawn. Certainly would be a different way of life. The facility continually has visiting astrologers from all over the world gathering data for research and study.

The image of the silver geodesic building houses the largest mirror telescope in the world and the 2 white domed buildings house the 82" and another smaller telescope. One of the white domes top is open for the postcard image - usually it is only open at night. The top half of each of the domes rotate around so the telescopes can track the stars as the earth rotates. Our guide rotated to dome while we were inside and it almost felt like a Disney ride because of the optical illusion it created (we were stationary yet we felt like we were moving!).

All in all, it was quite an educational day that we truly enjoyed. Enjoy the photos and if you ever get close to an observatory go see it and explore the possibilities.

Brrrr . . . Nights are chilly!

The nights here are getting very chilly. Lowest has been 32 degrees but now seems to be more in the mid 40's thankfully. Days are warming up to mid-high 70's which is much better.

We've not done any traveling this week due to chillier and very windy weather. But, Dee now will work 2 days a week in the Lost Alaskan RV Park Office. It will only be from 4-6 pm and then close up the office for the manager but it's a start getting some training and experience. Monday is her first day. The schedule is very flexible for the Workampers, they work 2 days and then off six days. She is really looking forward to learning the ins and outs of RV Park office management. Best part is, it won't interfere with her bridge playing 2-3 times a week!

CoCo has yet to find a playmate even tho there are many dogs in the park (1 couple had 4 small dogs with them!!!). Thankfully the RV next to us with two pit bulls moved from the park on Wednesday. Those animals are extremely worrisome to us even though the owners try to convince us they won't hurt anyone.

There was an antique car show in Alpine on Saturday and several of the owners stayed in the Park so we were able to see their restored cars up close. Beautiful work on a couple 1929 coupes.

Saturday evening we participated in the Park's Halloween party. About 35 people were there so we were able to meet many of our neighbors for the first time. Lots of food to eat, like we need that. It was an enjoyable evening.

That's it for now.

Day Trip

On Saturday we took a day trip to Ft. Davis about 26 miles from Alpine. On the way we stopped at the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center & Botanical Gardens. 3 photos show area. We walked about 1/2 mile through the outdoor gardens. We were sadly disappointed when we went inside the cacti greenhouse as it was truly neglected even though many species were housed. Probably it would have been better in the late spring when some of the varieties would have been in bloom.

Ft. Davis is a quaint small town at 5,050 elevation (known as highest town in TX) with a population of 1,050. We spent about 3 hours going through the actual Fort which is a National Park now. It was established on 1854 to protect pioneers & travelers on the San Antonio-El Paso road from Apache raiders. Many of the original structures remain standing (some have completely crumbled) and some are in the process of being restored. There is a rather large visitors center and small gift shop also. Lots of history and the museum was very informational. We happened to be there when the Park Ranger was giving the Ranger Oath to 3 young boys that had just completed their Jr. Ranger program. The boys were so excited.

It was too late in the day to go to the McDonald Observatory so that will have to be another day trip.

Alpine, TX

We arrived today in Alpine and have settled into our RV site. If you want to send us any mail our address for at least a month will be 2401 North Hwy 118 #B3, Alpine, TX 79830.

The Lost Alaskan RV Park is really nice. It has about 100 spaces, nicely laid out with picnic table & minimum 2 trees to each site. Also is a fenced "Paw Paw" park for dogs to run in . The small town of Alpine looked like it has several little shops and all the necessities. Now that we're set up we'll have more time to look around. Larry spent most of the afternoon washing all those nasty bugs off the front of our RV. I did sit outside while he did all the work and was grateful there were no mosquitoes or biting files and no-see-'ems. Only irritant we experienced is many, many goat-head sticker plants - hate those little dudes. Even CoCo got one in his paw.

***Big plus is we have cable TV, first time since we left Mesa, AZ last April. Cell phones work and my broadband works. We're back into the new millennium again!

As we get photos they will get published. One of the places I'd like to go is to the McDonald Observatory at Ft. Davis. They have Star parties at dusk and Twilight Programs.

Well, that's enough for this posting. More, as we discover more adventures. Weather was in the low 90's when we arrived so we turned on air-conditioner as soon as we could. Hmmm......might have to consider staying here much longer if weather stays this nice.

Columbus Day Greetings

It's still dreary and overcast with intermittent rain here in Childress. Really cool temps, down in the high 30's to low 40's at night. Sure glad the heater works really well in the RV!

Saturday morning eight of the bridge playing ladies hosted a coffee in Dee's honor and gave her a Gift Certificate for 4 meals at K-Bobs Steakhouse here in Childress. They are all such nice ladies and caught Dee completely by surprise with the gift. We are playing bridge this afternoon so hope to get a photo of the group.

The above photos were taken last month while we were at Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills. Both of us posed at the entrance of the Avenue of the State Flags with Mt. Rushmore in the background. Absolutely beautiful country. We drove from Custer, SD the long way to Rushmore via Iron Mountain Road. It was about 45 miles longer but the scenery is absolutely gorgeous. Of course Larry & I could not resist taking the photo of the Big Horn Ram in shoulder-deep prairie grass. We also say buffalo roaming free and lots of wild donkeys. The donkeys got up close and personal with one lady who was feeding them (which the Park Service posts warnings not to do!). This dummy had 3 or 4 donkeys heads through the door of her car at one point. As I said, what a dummy! Anyway, enjoy the photos.

Larry and our host friend Bob had a garage sale last Saturday, in the rain but the did okay and got rid of a few more things. I've been helping Penny clean out their spare bedroom and organizing a filing system for Bob so they can find things. It was a lot of work but they can now proceed with their plans to re-do the room the way they want.

Current Holding Pattern

We are still in Childress, TX . Larry's dental appointment last Wednesday revealed a cavity, so he has an appointment on Tuesday to have it filled. Both of our medical/lab reports turned out great, no problems in that area and Larry got a good report on his eye exam. We're "good to go" (as the Texans say) for another year now!

On Friday, October 9th we will leave Childress and drive south to Alpine, TX for 1-3 months. We might just stay 1 month, but if we like the area it will be extended to 3 months.

It's been busy here, playing lots of Bridge with the ladies and Farkel with Bob & Penny, pinnochle and BooRey (poker game). We've caught up with friends and have really enjoyed our stay. Tomorrow we are going to Amarillo with our friends - have to purchase a new All-in-One printer for my computer as the copy/scan function on my current HP produces a 1/2" black line down the middle of the page and the tech guys cannot figure out what is causing it. Also need to renew our Sprint Broadband Internet services. It's always something.

Larry had one more chance to have one of his famous garage sales today. He and Bob sold several items but don't know if they made any money or not as they haven't tallied up yet.

No awesome photos to post yet. When we get near the Big Bend country in South Texas, I'll post a couple so you can see where we will be staying.

Catchin up on past Summer Activities

Autumn begins. Our stint as Campground Hosts at Boysen State Park in the Wind River Canyon in Wyoming ended the Tuesday after Labor Day. We spent just a few six weeks plus a few days in that beautiful Canyon. Some of the camp guests were from Austria, Germany, France, Poland, Vancouver Canada and several states in the USA. Almost all were very enjoyable.

Also made some very good friends that we'll keep contact with. The Park Staff at Boysen were a joy to work with also. It always helps the job (even as volunteers) go more smoothly. Only drawback was no cell phone service, no Internet services and no TV where we were. To use our cell phones we had to drive about 15 miles south towards Shoshoni, WY and to use the Internet we had to drive to Park Headquarters about 3 miles. We have many great photos of Mountain Rams that came into the campground daily, big horn sheep that usually appeared daily near the dam site, a pair marmots near our campsite and a huge owl that liked to perch in a big old cottonwood tree right outside our RV and hoot a lot through the night.

Since this is the maiden posting I'll capsulize this past summer. In May we traveled to Boone, IA so we could attend Dee's 50th high school reunion. We also celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary the Saturday evening of the Reunion. Larry's sister Shirley was kind enough to let is park at her residence just east of Ogden, IA during our stay to the end of June. We then traveled north through Webster City, IA visiting long-time friends Gay & Fern Nelson and then on to St. Ansgar, IA to Dee's cousin's Virl Deal. We stayed 1 night longer that we had anticipated due to severe thunder storm warnings with possible hail/tornadoes. Really enjoyed seeing one of my favorite cousins again. Then we went further north to Dresser, WS to stay with Dee's cousin Walt and his wife Doris. They live on Lake Poplar around the St. Croix area. First activity was the big 4th of July celebration that Walt & Doris host every year with fireworks display at night. We watched the show from the middle of the lake on Walt's pontoon boat. Absolutely gorgeous! Then we traveled over to Wausau, WS to get a glimpse at the new 2009 Allegro diesel MH that Walt & Doris purchased. You talk about RVing in style, this is it!!! Maiden voyage was a trip to Lake Superior at Duluth, MN. We both camped at a marina right near the lake. Wonderful weekend. We really hated to leave the good company and Wisconsin but we had committed to the camp host situation so we were on our way to Wyoming through North Dakota.

After Wyoming we traveled to Custer, SD in the Black Hills (taking the route from Newcastle, WY through Hell's Canyon, SD) - what a trip around the mountains and hairpin turns! We went to Mt. Rushmore via Iron Mountain Road through Custer State Park. Also took a drive to Deadwood, Stuergis, & Lead spending the day seeing the sights. From Custer we drove Route 83 all the way into Childress, TX.

We will be in Childress until around the 1st of October and then we are heading further south to find us a winter destination until warmer weather comes. Both of us have medical appointments for our quarterly lab work, dental appointments and Larry has his annual eye examination. Hopefully all checkups will be fine. It's really good to see all of our friends in Childress and get to play bridge with the ladies.

October marks our first year of full-time RVing. Time has really flown by it seems. Don't know what the next year will bring but we are looking forward to it.