The days have just flown by since we have arrived back north in April.  The job in Calgary didn’t pan out for Bryan so we decided to head back to Edmonton and be closer to our family.  We were able to get our same spot at the RV park, Bryan started looking for a job and Carol went back to work for the RV park and golf course.  Though there are many jobs available it seem that hunting for them via email is more difficult than walking in and applying for a position as we did before technology became the norm.  Bryan did find a job driving truck for a chemical company and he mainly drives their product to various states in the US.  It didn’t take us long to settle into a busy routine, with family, friends and work.   The company Bryan is working for has asked that he stay on over the winter months and we have decided to find a place to rent for a few months.  This will be the first Canadian winter we will experience in 3 years so not sure if we are prepared enough, but know that we don’t want to stay in our 5th wheel for those months. 

Cody the wonder dog turned 13 this August and is still going strong, however a bit slower than when she was a pup.  Now that we are looking to rent a place, a person doesn’t realize how difficult it is to find a place to rent when a pet is in the family.  Places either only allow cats or if dogs are allowed, small dogs under 25 lbs are only accepted.  Yikes, we would like to be settled in before the snow flies.  We did find one place that would have been perfect, but the condo board not only didn’t like Cody’s size and weight but didn’t like her breed either, so were were back to square one.  We did eventually find a cute carriage house style condo with one bedroom and a den in the area we were hoping to move to, and they accept dogs, even the size of our wonder dog.  Yay.  We get possession on Oct 1st and are looking forward to settling in.  When we first started living full time in our trailer our one son took some of our furniture and moved into his sisters basement.  He now has moved in with his brother so the living room and bedroom furniture will move with us.  One less thing to worry about.  Carol will take the winter months to go through the storage unit and sort through all the stuff that was stored away 3 years ago and will now probably wonder what on earth were we thinking to keep it.  Now that we have done without this stuff for 3 years we are sure it will be easier to give it away, sell it or garbage it.

We are both keeping healthy and hopefully now that Carol’s job is finished for the season we will start catching up with all of our friends we have made over the years of traveling.  We will keep you up to date on our move and of course the quest to downsize our storage unit.  We know we have promised this before but this time we will make the effort to update our blog at least once a month.

Cheers for now.

Wow has the weather changed.  We are now basking on hot sunny weather with the temperature reaching the high 70′s.  Our days have been lazy and we have really done very little until today.  We had read about a County fair and decided to check it out today.  What a treat, this wasn’t anything like what we get in the big cities, there were some rides, games and of course the food.  We wandered around the carnival side then headed towards the livestock show where the FFA (Future Farmers of America) and 4H members were showing their animals.  We arrived in time to watch the small animals (rabbits and cavy’s) being judged, and were able to talk to some of the participants before and after their category.  The members do not need to live on a farm to belong but the rules are the same for them as for larger livestock and it was refreshing to watch the care and attention that these animals received.  We then walked through the goat, sheep, cattle and swine exhibits, but found out that we had missed the judging on these animals.  However, we did find out that the parents of the youth were going to into the ring and show their children’s animals.  Most of the parents hadn’t shown before or actually knew the animals too well either.  The parents didn’t have any different rules but were warned that they had to be good sports and there would be no hitting, hair pulling or scaring the animal next to them.   What a hoot, they came out in full force with the cattle first, then the goats, sheep and the pigs came out last.  I can’t remember a time where we laughed so hard, none of the animals did what they were supposed to do and the parents were trying to control their animal and impress the judge at the same time.  To say there was chaos in the ring would be an understatement, especially when the swine came in.  The pigs came into the show ring running and squealing and totally unmanageable.  Some would go after another pig and start fighting, some just ran in circles and some rutted in the ground and lay down when they got tired, all the time with the parents trying to get them up, stop them from fighting and trying to get them to slow down enough to show.   The parents had fun and the audience got to see a show they didn’t expect.  We left the LaPaz County Fair, with sore sides from laughing so hard and full tummies from all the carnie food we ate.

Are we ever glad we went to watch the baseball game when we did.  The weather has been not what a person would expect for the desert, we had a huge downpour on Saturday and the days following have been overcast and cool.  Today as we left Phoenix the weather was cool and we expected to see rain along our way.  We weren’t disappointed, but the bright news is that the weather is supposed to clear up and we should expect to see hot and sunny weather in the next couple of days.  All the rain has made everything green and it was quite a surprise to see  a green desert as we drove through it.  We arrived in Parker Dam after a 3 hour drive, registered into the rv park and got set up.  Our site is quite nice and we have a river view site that overlooks the Colorado River, the only down side is that we have no cell service so have to drive about 5 miles from here for any decent coverage.

Today Bryan is feeling better and we decided to go to a baseball game.  This time of the year is spring training for the major leagues and there are numerous teams in training down here.  We went on the internet and found that the Chicago White Sox were playing the Los Angeles Dodgers at the new Camelback Ranch ball park.  The game started at 1:00 but not realizing how popular these games are, we planned on arrived close to the time the game started.  Big mistake, there was a long line up of traffic trying to do the same thing, and by the time we parked we had quite a hike to the stadium.  Not having purchased tickets in advance, we still needed to find a ticket booth, fortunately there was a person selling seats just outside the entrance.  We got our tickets from him, paid $5 less each than we would have at the ticket office and ended up with great seats, about 6 rows up on the first base line.  We never saw any grand slams or home runs, but the game was fun to watch and it was a great way to spend an afternoon.  Spring training is a big thing here in Phoenix, there are 9 stadiums in and around Phoenix with 16 major league baseball teams training in what they call the Cactus League.  People travel from all over to watch their favorite teams or to take in as many games as they can.  We talked to one lady who drove in from San Diego for the weekend and she told us that she sometimes watches up to 5 games in a weekend. 

What a busy few days.  We said our farewells to Tom and Lynn on the 18th, they are heading towards Parker/Lake Havasu area.  On the 20th of February Bruce, LaShaun, Ted and Dianne (aka the family) arrived for 11 days.  We spent some time shopping in the Scottsdale area so we could meet up with them in the afternoon when they all arrived, however, their flight was a few hours late and they didn’t arrive at the Condo until around 6pm.  We managed to find things to do that afternoon until the flight came in then met them at the condo, then headed for a late supper where we got caught up with all the family news.  The days sped by rapidly and we seemed to keep ourselves busy, golfing, eating, shopping, eating, drinking, shopping, golfing.  The family spent most days golfing and we caught up with them in the afternoons and evening.  Bryan and I did get a couple of games in with them, but he came down with a flu bug near the end of their visit, so we layed low the last couple of days.  We said our good-byes and are sad that our family are on their way back home but glad that we had this time with all of them.  We are going to miss them and the fun times we had.  Now it is time to get our trailer ready move out and head towards Parker.  We hope to leave on the 9th as long as Bryan is feeling better and then will spend the rest of March there.  Though the days have been mostly sunny here, we are hoping that the weather gets a little warmer, we have been told that it has been wetter and cooler in Phoenix than normal this winter.  We think it is the same story all over the southern states this year.

Today is going to be a wonderful sunny day so we took advantage of the weather and went on a day trip with Tom and Lynn.  Bryan and Tom rode their motorcycles and Lynn and Carol followed in her car.  We first went to Canyon Lake which is nestled in the middle of the desert in a canyon (thus the name), we drove through barren desert land for quite a while and presto, around the corner was the lake.  We stopped at a popular restaurant along side the lake for lunch, then headed toward Tortilla Flats, an old mining town about 4 miles from Canyon Lake where the buildings have been converted to small shops.  We wandered around the area for a while then headed back towards Phoenix, but before we got back to civilization we made our last stop at Gold Dust Ghost Town, another mining town at the base of a mountain which has been converted into shops using the original buildings.  We got there quite late and most of the exhibits were closed, but what we saw was interesting.  Our trip took us past Superstition Mountain sitting alone in the desert just east of Apache Junction.  We arrived back at our site in time for Happy Hour, the guys dusty and warm while Lynn and Carol stayed cool in the air-conditioned car.

This was Karen and Jason’s last day here before they fly out tomorrow morning early.  We have done a lot of things with them in the short time they have been here.   They arrived late on the 10th so we booked a tee time for 12:00 on the 11th on a course that is relatively easy just to get our swings going.  After having a great day of golf (some of us better than others) the kids came back to our 5th wheel for supper.   Karen and Jay booked a tee time for golf the next day and we decided to pass and let them golf on their own.  We didn’t see them at all that day, and took the opportunity to relax and spend time being together.  On Saturday we left the day open for sight-seeing.  Tom and Lynn joined us and we started the day with breakfast at IHop then off to Cave Creek to check out the Frontier Town there.  Cave Creek is quite artsy and full of interesting shops and galleries, which we wandered through checking out the souvenirs.  Bryan, Tom and Jason were quite fed up by the early afternoon, but it was fun for the girls.   After some beer and nachos our group split up with Karen and Jason leaving to look for some work clothes for Jay and the four of us heading towards Bartlett Lake situated in the mountains nearby.  It is hard believe that there is actually a lake in the middle of the desert, but sure enough there is.  The scenery around Phoenix is beautiful and the mountains hold amazing secrets.  The day ended with Karen and Jason coming back to our place for supper and a quiet evening.  On Valentine’s day we had booked another game of golf at Silverado Golf Club, and after our round of golf we finished the great day with a dinner at Outback.  We really enjoyed the kids visit and will miss them when they leave.

We woke up to sun shining and anticipation on our golf game.  With this being our first time golfing in a long time and Carol’s first time since the surgery, we headed to the course without any expectations except to have fun.  The course is really affordable, we paid 64.00, that included 18 holes of golf, a cart, lunch and a drink for both of us, not each.  After a couple of warm up shots on the driving range we headed towards the first tee.  What a surprise to both of us that we were able to keep up and not duff too badly.  Bryan did play with a Nike golf ball that he tried to lose throughout the course but he always managed to find it, we ended up calling it his Lucky Nike.  Our scores were a little higher than we would have liked, but not too bad for our first time in about 7 months.  Tonight we are a little achy but otherwise survived the golf game quite well.

Today we took a drive to get familiar with our area in Phoenix and to find out how far away Karen and Jay will be when they are in Scottsdale.   Yikes, the freeway system is huge and fast, and it doesn’t look like many of the drivers opted to get signal lights when they ordered their vehicles.  It is tough reading their minds when we are traveling 65 mph.  We then drove by TPC Stadium golf course (we decided not to get out a look around, it is too ritzy for our blood) and then drove out to Laveen to a course advertised in our RV park’s newsletter.  It looked so nice we booked a tee time for tomorrow.

After a short drive (about an hour and half) we arrived at the Desert Shadows RV Resort in Phoenix on Friday and set up for the month.  The first thing we did, after setting up is find a television repair shop to have our tv looked at.  $180.00 later, we brought our tv  back and set it up, wahoo we have a picture.  That still didn’t fix our dvd/tuner issue, so we jumped (actually just stepped) into the truck and found the closest Best Buy where we purchased a tuner, dvd player and speakers, to get home and realize that we truly are electronically challenged.   After a few visits back to Best Buy to talk to the sales staff and get ideas/instructions on connecting the components we finally have some of the features working.  We still need some help, but have decided we can live with the way it is for a while.  Throughout all of this, we are still talking to each other.  The weather is cooler than the normal average temperature, but the sun is shining, and we are wearing shorts.