El Paso, The Flores’ & Home

After getting on the road following the ‘fix’ on the rear jack, we made good time and arrived at El Paso, TX at about 3:30pm.  We contacted Ed and Patsy Flores as we crossed into Texas at Anthony, and they confirmed our plans for dinner at their house.

Ed Flores is a Mechanical Engineer that I met in the summer of 1969 at ALCOA when both of us hired on as Summer Engineering Interns.  I was from The University of Texas at Austin, and he attended The University of Texas at El Paso.  We also both accepted offers that summer to return after graduation in the Engineering department.   However, Ed and Patsy decided about 1972 that they preferred the dry climate of West Texas over the humid conditions on the Gulf Coast, and he resigned to move back to El Paso.  He currently owns his own Engineering and Inspection company.  He also contracted and built his own house with some nice amenities.

During the drive, we had talked to our DIL and found out that our grandkids had a basketball game on Saturday morning at 9:45am, so we decided that we wanted to get to Victoria on Friday evening.  I decided that we would do some driving after dinner, so we drove the Bus with the car attached to the Flores’ house, which was pretty high up on a hill, rather than disconnect and then have to drive back and reconnect.   Ed had assured me that the road into the neighborhood was wide enough for travel.   It was,  although I had a nasty turnaround on the cul de sac at the end of his dead end street all worked out!!

Here’s a picture of the Bus in front of ( and hiding most of) the Flores’ House…….

Here is a picture of Ed and Patsy…….

Here is a picture of the ‘open’ dining area…………

…….. and some pictures off his back deck:

My Patsy and I were treated to a nice Lasagna dinner, and good reminiscing conversation.   We found a lot of common results in our lives…… both at work and in family!

We left about 8:00pm and after filling up with diesel at a Wal-Mart that Patsy Flores told me was “in tha hood” at a price of $3.51 after all discounts, which is a really good price.

We drove to Ozuna, TX which, left about 550 miles to drive on Friday.   We got home about 7:30pm after driving to the local park to dump our tanks.

We made it to the basketball game, but pictures were with my iphone camera, which does not ‘stop action’ very well, but here are a couple of Matthew.  In the last picture, he made an “all net” shot from the edge of the court!  Good shot, Matthew!

This was a good three-week trip.

Leaving Tucson for El Paso, TX

We had a nice two days at the Lazydays campground in Tucson. 

On Wednesday morning, we ventured out into Tucson.  Our goal was to see the Old Tucson area (not much), find a post office to mail a package to our granddaughter in Little Rock, stop at a Wal-Mart for supplies, and to go to a Kohl’s to buy a matching bowl to the one that we purchased in Yuma.

All was successful except for the Walmart……….. they did not have all we needed, so we hit a Fry’s supermarket.  We did well here, plus they took our Kroger card for a bunch of specials, and to top it off, we got a 10% discount for being over 55!

We got back to the campground, and spent the rest of the day planning our trip home, cleaning up the inside or the Bus (mostly from Quartzsite dust), and relaxing.  Patsy cooked a stew in the crockpot, and it turned out to be really good.

We got up this morning to leave, and after dumping the tanks, and putting in the slides, I pressed the button for the levelers to retract.  All was good for a short while, then they stopped and I got an error light on the DS rear!  I turned off the system and started again, and they retracted a little more…….. then the error light again.  After repeating this process a couple more times, the indicator lights showed all was well.  I decided to check, and found the DS rear jack still almost all the way down!

Unlike in El Paso earlier in the trip, the air bags stayed inflated, and the jack could not be hoisted by hand.,  I decided to call the Atwood factory service center.  After discussing the situation, they told me that they had had previous problems with the motor amps indicating ‘jack up’, when in fact the motor was just pulling high amps!!  They instructed my on how to raise the jack with a portable drill motor, and that worked!

It is a really good thing that we are due in Red Bay to get the whole jack system upgraded to a more dependable system.

We left Tucson about 10:30am and expect to arrive in El Paso about 4:00pm to have dinner at the home of Ed and Pat Flores.  Ed and I started at ALCOA the same year, but he quit to come back to El Paso in 1972.

By the way, Patsy is driving the Bus for the first time in almost 2 years on I-10 in New Mexico.  That is giving me an opportunity to watch Fox News and do this blog update!

I will do another update after our visit with the Flores’,

Tucson, Arizona

We arrived in Tucson at about noon today. While we were walking through the big tent in Quartzsite checking out all of the vendors, we picked up a coupon for a free nights stay complete with dinner and breakfast at an upscale campground. It is called Lazydays, and for non-RV readers, it is a large RV dealership in Florida who recently bought out the property of a bankrupt dealer in Tucson named Beaudry RV. Here are some pictures in the park. Here is a look down one of the streets….

An orange tree at one of the sites with fruit……..

The store/restaurant complex and some carvings across the street…

Our site and the Bus………..

The park, RV repair shop, and the overall dealership is first class. However, the overhead is so high that they really can’t complete with a lowball price on a new RV. They said that they are offering the free night to get people familiar with the property. It is a good idea, and it is working. Most of the people in the restaurant tonight had the free dinner coupons.

Here are some pictures in the restaurant, beginning with the free menu….

For my buddy, Mark, who will be stopping here on his way back to Louisiana, here are a few bullets:

• When arriving, use the Irvington entrance (same as Camping World)…. not the Country Club address. Locked gate!!
• Water pressure is 90—100 psig, so set up your regulator to begin with.
• Verizon here has 4G service
• Sites are very good, and full hookups including cable.
• The restaurant food is also very good. Free menu is an abbreviated one, but food is great.
• No sales presentations or pressure. Just check in and go to your site. You’re free to do whatever you want like any other campground
• We are staying an extra night….. $45. Averages out at just over $20 a night for great accommodations.

After setting up in the site, we headed off to see Mt. Lemmon, as recommended to Patsy by Jag! It was a very nice drive. Here are some pictures……..

As noted above, this route is one of the America’s Byways roads. The peak was over 9000 ft, but the road did not go that high! It appears that the upper elevations are a good environment for the cactus….. they grow tall and look very healthy. We did find snow, and it was a very pleasant drive. It was about 44 miles one-way from the campground.

As of now, we don’t have a major plan for tomorrow….. may just relax in the campground or drive to Old Tucson.

On to Gila Bend……….

Monday morning, we left the casino in Yuma and drove on I-8 to Gila Bend.  We discovered a small campground behind Holt’s Shell Truck Stop several years ago, and it is a Passport America park, which means we park there with full hookups for 1/2 price.

As we left the casino parking lot, we spotted a couple of interesting sights…. a very small Winnebago motorhome, and a Class A from Canada that must had the level sensor out of kilter, or the driver leveled it manually after drinking too much!  You can see the front wheels way off the ground …… while the coach in the forefront is leveled with wheels on the ground….

Along the way, the road was somewhat lonely, but pleasant to look at the tall cactus.  Here are a few pictures…….

On the way, we passed by Dateland, AZ, which used to be just a fuel station and a date store that sold all things…. dates!  Now, they have combined both into one new building, and the date stuff is disappointing……… it is now just a fuel/convenience store with a token selection of date stuff……

It took about 2 hours to get to Gila Bend, and as soon as we fueled up and got parked in a space, we began to wash the car and the Bus.  There was a lot of desert dust on both…. inside and out!  Here are the results……

After a good night’s rest, we will head to Tucson for two nights.

Yuma and Mexico

I forgot to post a picture in yesterday’s blog……. it is a poster that Mark and I saw in a store in Quartzsite, and we liked it. If you are tired of stepping in stuff left by other people’s dogs, you can capture it and print your own poster.

Now, on to what we did today. We woke up this morning, and since we had used up our three nights of ‘resort’ camping, we moved two miles closer to Yuma to the casino. Here are our new “digs”………..

T
After we relocated the Bus, it was on to Mexico, about 3 miles away, and a walk across the border. It costs $5 to park the car in a safe lot, and the crossing was free. Since it was Sunday, and the most of the eyeglass places and all of the dentists were closed, the traffic was light on the sidewalks. The vendors were still aggressive, and we purchased something for our grandson, two bottles of Peach Schnapps for Patsy and her friends, as well as some vanilla extract and other legal drugs at the pharmacy.

Here are a few Mexico shopping pictures……….

Crossing back was very easy with our passports, and there was not a line of people backed up. As soon as we got to the car, Mark called and said that some friends, Dave and Sandy were in town and at the place where they were staying. They were celebrating two ladies birthdays and cooking burgers, so we went over. Here is a picture of Dave (on left) and Sandy (on right), with Sue and Patsy in the middle. They stopped by and are on their way to San Diego.

The event was at the home of Ed and Lavonne, friends of Mark and Sue.

Our friends, Greg and Mandy, also showed up. We had seen them yesterday at the Burger Bash at Jag and Bev's home resort.

Here are more pictures of the party and Ed and Lavonne’s place. They have a nice place with a patio yard. In the second picture, you can see Dave and Sandy's rig out in the street……

Here’s Ed (hiding behind the pole) and grilling the burgers……

Here are the two birthday girls (Betty and Sue) fighting over the cake………… or were they just innocently posing for a picture!!!

A big thank you to Ed and Lavone (and Mark) for inviting us to the party!!

We left the party about 4:30 and headed back to “our” casino. We had registered yesterday for membership, and each received credit for $10 free play money. Before going back to the Bus, we decided to try our luck.

The rules were that you had to put at least one dollar in with the $10 credit to get it going. I put in $2 thinking that on the $$ machine, I would get 4 maximum bet plays. On the fourth spin, I hit $100, so I played one more spin, and Patsy made me quit!!! I cashed out for $102 (my winnings plus my original two dollars), and we tried Patsy’s free play. We hit a $10 win once, but kept playing until we went broke.

Our score for the casino was one night’s free dry-camping plus $100 cash. Not bad for a little fun. Now it Patsy hadn’t be with me, I might be a billionaire by now!!!

Tomorrow, we plan to head East to Gila Bend for one night, and then two nights in Tucson before heading back to Texas.