Saturday, February 26, 2011

Chevy Tracker Gone/Chevy HHR In

We kind of went shopping this month and ended up buying a 2007 Chevy HHR for a tow vehicle. It's not the white painted vehicle we wanted but it will do; fully loaded-even has "butt warmers in front seats", leather interior, sun/moon roof, and the ac will cool you down quickly. Best part is it tows all wheels down without much fuss and doesn't accumulate miles while being towed. Our Tracker was a '99 model with over 131,00 miles on it. Still have to get our permanent plates from Oregon but that takes a few weeks. Photo below taken a week ago.

Larry spent last Tuesday at the garage getting the towing mount bracket put on, electrical hookups done and the auto braking system installed. Took the better part of the day, beginning at 7:30 a.m. to get all of this done.

We've been working about every day here, not long hours at a stretch but enough to keep us confined to the RV Park each day. Things are a little better this last week though. The Resort is almost to capacity right now, 2005 spaces, so people are everywhere busy, busy, busy.

Several park residents are coping with pneumonia and Valley Fever. Larry's brother has had pneumonia and the hospital rooms and hallways were filled with patients so he was not admitted for treatment. So far we have missed getting the viruses going around. Valley Fever is a mold type fungus, spread by air, that affects the lungs and recovery is prolonged. We truly hope we don't get this.

Our daughter Suzy began her radiation treatments in Portland, OR on the 21st. She has 14 more to go before they are completed. The same day (21st) our niece, Joni, received her diagnosis of breast cancer also. She is to have lumpectomy next week sometime and then she will have radiation following. Unfortunately Dee and 2 of her sisters all have had breast cancer so their daughters didn't have much of a chance avoiding that cancer gene. Joni is undergoing genetic testing to positively identify the gene for her daughter. Suzy hopes to have the testing done also.

Hope all of you are staying warm and that your weather is improving some.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

We've Been Feeling the Cold Here!


This is what it looked like at the front office entrance to Mesa Regal this morning (one of the other Workamper couples took this photo). It was down to about 29 degrees last night. We had about 30 minutes of no electricity early yesterday morning also. The electric company has been experiencing power overload with the cold weather and has not been unable to fill the needs like it should. Luckily we have propane backup and also a generator as back up when we have no electricity. Many of the elderly here have all electric park models so they just had to tough it out when they got up. Weather should be better in a few days after this cold front gets through the country.

Hope you all are staying warm where you are. Don't envy any of you that have snow along with the cold.