May 18-24: Zion National Park

May 18: We left Vegas and traveled to Zion. As you can see from the previous blog, we were assigned what we consider an absolutely perfect campsite. We are right at the base of the Watchman Peak

May 19: We rode the shuttle from the Visitor Center to the end of the Zion Canyon. During the peak season, you cannot drive your car through the Canyon. The shuttle has about 8 stops in the Canyon so you can get off and see sights around that stop. A shuttle arrives at each stop every 6-8 minutes, so it is quite convenient and perhaps, even easier that driving our own car, finding a parking place, getting in and out.


For our first day, we stopped at the Patriarchs Peak so I could get a good picture while the sun was in the right spot. Then we traveled to the end of the canyon to the Riverside trail. It is about a mile and ends at the narrows. NO, we did not walk the narrows. Walking on the rocks of a river back into a narrow canyon did not sound good to us. Plus everyone who came out had water up to their hips, which would mean water up to our waist. NOT FOR US !



Actually by the time I stopped every 4 feet to take 6 pictures, it took us 2 hours to walk the mile to the narrows. Walking out took 20 minutes; Barb would not let me stop for pictures again!

May 20: We took a drive to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes. To get to the sand dunes we had to drive over highway 9, which took us to the Checkerboard Peak and through the tunnel. The sand dunes actually were a beautiful coral color and great to see.

May 21: We drove to the northern section of Zion, called Kolob Canyon. Drove through the canyon, hiked a mile up a bluff to view the entire area,

and then we rested and had a picnic.

May 22: We started the morning with a Ranger sponsored shuttle. It was 2 hours with Ranger selected stops to teach us about the geology of the area.

May 23: We hiked about a mile to the Emerald Pool to see a waterfall. Nice hike. Waterfall was more a trickle due to poor snow/rain conditions.

May 24: We left Zion to head to Panquitch, Ut in the Bryce National park area.

Love to all of you,
Linda and Barb

Zion National Park

WOW !!! This place is beautiful !!

We pulled into the campground, not knowing what our site would look like and found we had been assigned a perfect spot. We are located at the base of the Watchman Peak and have other peaks surrouding us on all sides. The first day we just sat outside and stared. As the evening approached, we made a campfire. Then the sunset came and the colors on the peaks just changed each moment. A glorious place to be.

Saturday we plan to take the shuttle into the Zion Valley. Probably we will take some short hikes. We would like to hike the 2 miles along the Riverside Hike back to what is called the Narrows. Will let you know how far we get.

Also, I have my new camera now. It is a Sony cybershot DSC-H9. It is the closest digital camera to an SLR without being one. So I will testing it out while we hike. So that means an hour and a half hike will probably take us four hours.

Love to all of you,

Linda and Barb

Back to Vegas Again

We returned to Vegas after Lake Havasu and had more time to spend with the kids.

The first weekend we returned, Robyn and Scott had a conference for the entire weekend. Zack and Ashley stayed with us in the motorhome for the first time. They were really excited by that. We were at the Oasis RV Park that had a swimming pool with a sand "beach" next to it. Since the temperature was in the lower 70's and too cold for swimming, the kids spend several hours just playing in the sand.

We even did some siteseeing with them and took a drive to the Valley of Fire. That is an absolutely beautiful area.





When we leave Vegas, we will head for Zion National park.

Love to all of you,

Linda and Barb

Lake Havasu City, AZ

Well, let me begin by saying that 10 days in Lake Havasu City with temperatures of 100 degrees or higher is way too long.

We left Las Vegas for two reasons. One was the fact that when we originally made these plans to use the membership parks, we needed to be out of the system for a week. The other reason was that Robyn and Scott were going to out of town for a weekend. Since the weekends were the main time that we saw them, we just decided that this would be a good time to check out the park in Lake Havasu City.



So off we drove, leaving behind temperatures of 60-70 degrees with gusty winds requiring us to wear sweatshirts and jackets and use the heat in the morning...........and on to Lake Havasu with temperatures of 106. We did not know this about this city before we left, but now we do know why the snowbirders are gone.

Our plan here was to take care of projects..............I fixed drawers and closet doors that were not staying shut and Barb caught up on all of our laundry. We also caught up on the huge stack of mail we received from Deb in SD. In addition to all of that we had an appointment with an RV dealer to work on our awning again. As much as we have enjoyed this motorhome, we have found this awning to be a continuous problem. I do not remember if I wrote about it not coming in on the day be fore Thanksgiving when we were leaving to fly to St. Louis. We had to scramble to find a mobile guy who would come out at the last minute and at least get it in. Any way, he fixed it for a few months and now it is winding up crooked and causing the rear arm not to align and so not close. So we arrived on Monday and on Tuesday brought the rig to a dealer to evaluate the problem. His belief was that we needed new fabric and a new roller. Since it is still under warranty, A&E had a say in this and they approved the fabric only. It has been ordered and we are hoping it comes in by tomorrow. That gives them Wed to work on it since we leave on Thursday. If we had it to do over again, we would never get an A&E awning !!! We have had something go wrong with it about once every 6 months !!!

So yesterday, we decided it was time to get out of the motorhome and away from projects. By the way, the fame of Lake Havasu is the fact that they have imported the London Bridge. That's right..........they took it apart piece by piece in London and put it together in lake havasu city. It is kind of a neat bridge and fun to drive or walk across............and good restuarants and tourist shops along the water underneath the bridge.

But we wanted to do something different, so we drove south of lake Havasu to the Parker Dam and the Bill Williams Wildlife Refuge. Now, for a bit of info, Hoover Dam may be the largest, but Parker Dam is the deepest. And we have seen them both!!!


The refuge was interesting.



We took some walks in the refuge.

We learned that the area that the refuge is in is on the border of the Sonoran Desert and the Mojave Desert and so the vegetations reflects this difference.





We also walked along the waters of Lake Havasu itself and then drove over to the bridge. It was a nice outing.




Today we are back to errands............Barb at Walmart and me on the computer.

Love to all of you,
Linda and Barb

Our Week in Vegas

Tamara left Vegas on Monday.

She had a late flight, so we spent the day touring Red Rock Canyon. And then took her to the airport in the evening to catch her flight home.

On Tuesday Barb's brother Doug, from California came to visit. He was really only here one night.

From Las Vegas 2007

We met him at the Wynn Casino where he was staying a had an interesting evening touring the casino. Both Barb and I felt that the Wynn was the nicest casino on the strip. It was set up in such a way that the stores and shopping were on the outside of a concentric circle and the casino itself was inside the circle. The decor was very classy without being gaudy and the ambience was quiet. At the various restuarants and dining areas in the casino there were huge and awesome waterfalls. One had figures of people standing in the water looking at the waterfall as the lighting changed as so the shadows changed. Very interesting effect.

We met Doug again on Wednesday morning and had breakfast with him before taking him to the airport.

And then on Thursday, we moved to a different RV park in Vegas, which took most of the day for us. we do move slowly!

After Doug left, we spent the rest of the week with the kids. The weekend was very busy as we spent Saturday at Zack's baseball game and Sunday at Ashley's birthday party.

Monday morning we left for Lake Havasu City, AZ for 10 days.

Love to all of you,
Barb and Linda

Our First Night in Vegas with Zack and Ashley

Our first night in Vegas we spent with Zack and Ashley. We brought them a rug size checkers game that they enjoyed playing. Oh, and we did see Robyn and Scott too.........

I will publish many more pictures of our activities with the kids in a later blog.

Thanks to all of you for your encouragement with regards to this blog. I am having fun writing in it and really do appreciate the positive comments I have been receiving from you.

Love to all of you,

Linda and Barb

Touring Vegas with Tamara

We have been in Vegas for a week now and are currently residing in our second RV Park. We spent the first week at the Oasis Rv Resort and are now at Thousand Trails Rv Park. Having memberships are great but do require moving whenever we are in a park that has a one week restriction. So yesterday we packed up everything and drove 10 miles to Thousand Trails. I think that is the shortest distance we have ever driven in one day.





My niece Tamara was here during the first weekend and we spent much of the time touring Vegas. This was the first time she has ever been in Vegas. I showed her the the strategies I use at the casinos................................the penny machines which are my favorites. Sometimes I will win $20-30 on them................... but most of the time we toured the "Disney World" charm of the casinos on the strip.




Standing outside the Bellagio with Paris in the background.






We also drove through Valley of Fire and Red Rock Canyon.

Here we are on a hike at Valley of Fire.





We also hiked at Red Rock Canyon and then had a picnic afterwards.





Some additional pictures from Valley of Fire:





Petroglyphs from the Valley of Fire:

Love to all of you,

Linda and Barb

Update on "crashed laptop" and new GPS

It is always interesting to me how events seem to line up and occur and either the best or worst time. In this case the crashing of my laptop , if it had to happen, was certainly well timed.

About a month ago, Barb and I started talking about her getting a laptop so that she can learn to write e-mails and communicate with all of you. We both acknowledged that I am very negligent in responding and when I do , it is often brief. She likes to say alot more and give more detail, so that when she dictates e-mails to me , I feel they are much too long. We began a process of visualizing a new laptop and believing that we would find one...........ie, the perfect opportunity would show itself. And so it did, we found a great sale on a Toshiba, with Vista Premium, dual core, 1 gb RAM and 160 gb hard drive. It had everything I wanted and we were both thrilled. And then, don't you know, 3 days later, the old computer crashed. I guess it was jealous and wanted some attention. It just did not boot into Windows and no matter what I did in restore, recovery, reboot, reinstall, reformat, etc., nothing worked. I spent one day on it myself and then, our friend, Kath, spent two days, including nights, trying to figure it out. Even talked to Gateway for hours to no avail. So we had to send it to Gateway for their "expert" repair services. And you see, fortunately, we had the new laptop to use. But Barb had to wait again to get to do e-mails. I was busy on the new one getting all of my programs and data back on this hard drive. And figuring our what will run on Vista and what will not. And updating Vista on what seems like a daily event. So while in Needles, Barb played poker each afternoon and I played Vista each afternoon.

The other new tech-toy I have been wanting is a GPS, but at the price of $700-$1000, it seemed much too price for us. And then, wow, we are at Costco, and there is one for $299. Seemed like a gift thrown in our lap and in fact, it was, since Robyn had been wanting to buy us a Chanukah present from last December and we could not figure out what to tell her. So I called her to say she had just bought our Chanukah present. It is a great little GPS, but is limited on RV spots. So also while in Needles, I downloaded all of the RV resorts that are in our membership parks. Plus, of course, I had to add all of the Walmarts!! So now we are experimenting with Sally, yes, we have named the voice that speaks to us. She does pretty good but does at times give misguided directions (or maybe we are misguided??).

So we are now in Vegas!!! Tamara is here from New York staying with us. We have had two days with Robyn, Scott, Zack and Ashley. Will add pictures and stories in a few days.

Love and hugs to all of you,
Linda and Barb

Yes, We Are Alive!!!

Yes, We are alive! Yes, I did recuperate from the cough and cold but it did take a month. Yes, I have been negligent in keeping all of you updated with our activities for the past two months.

So, here goes a summary of our activities. We have become very involved with the social and physical activities at the Superstition Mountain Resort where we were staying. Our routine activities have included poker 3 times a week for Barb and a photoshop elements class for me once a week. In addition, we went to classes to learn line dancing and square dancing. So we are novices at all of it, but have had a fun time trying to learn. In addition, we began taking lessons in playing pickleball and even participated in tournement. No we did not qualify for any medals but every one thought we looked cute in our matching outfits.

Other organized activities included the Mind Games and the Cactus Classic. The mind games were in January and Barb was involved in the planning for our "neighborhood" (our team). The park is divided into 5 neighborhoods that compete in challenging mind games such as sudoku, scrabble, jigsaw puzzles, and several card games. This competition lasts a week and is quite a bit of fun.

Then in February we had a week of physical competition in the Cactus classic. Again we were divided into our neighborhoods as teams. Barb and I competed in Bocce Ball and did look cute again in our matching outfits. We also attempted ring toss. I was on the photo shoot commitee and was busy taking pictures of as many activities as I could.

So our time was busy with planned events as those above and with unplanned dinners, cocktail hours and other gatherings. It seemed that Barb and I had very little time to just sit back and relax.............but being busy and being with friends is wonderful. We are grateful for all of the good times we had with everyone and look forward to returning in November of 2007 for a new season.

We left SMR on last Sunday, spent two nights at the Freightliner parking lot, so that they could do some recall and other maintenance work on the motorhome.

We are now in Needles, CA. We are staying at the NorthShore Resort which is a affiliated with the membership park program that we bought into last year. We can stay at this park or any of the others for two weeks and then have to leave for a week. Then back again for two weeks if we want. We chose this park because it is close to Laughlin and Barb can relax and play poker for the week. And I now have the time to update this Blog as well as other programs that have been ignored.

We will stay here until April 12 and then move on to Las Vegas and stay at the $8/night membership park. Vegas, as you know, is where Robyn, Scott and the grandkids, Zack and Ashley, live. So we are really looking forward to spending time with them.

In addition, my niece, Tamara, will be coming to Vegas a few days to visit with us and Doug, Barb's brother, will also be there for a few days. So that should be fun busy times.

More to come..................more about us.............and more pictures. Oh, by the way, my computer crashed. Had to send it back to Gateway. I am using the new laptop we purchased just 3 days before the crash. How about that for timing!!!!

Love and hugs to all of you,
Linda and Barb

The Past Two Weeks

As you have perhaps noticed, I have not entered anything in this blog in two weeks. So you figured that I was having so much fun, that I just forgot..............WRONG!

The first week here was pretty good in terms of being active. I did return with a cough, cold, and feeling miserable but thought that it would all disappear with the warm weather here...........WRONG AGAIN!

So here is the tale of woe........

As I mentioned in the previous writing, we were welcomed royally by all of our friends here. Since it was the 30th, we were in the spirit for celebrating New Years. And that we did quite well. First, we went to a pre-party dinner at friend's house. There were 8 of us there and we had a grand dinner. This was actually a reunion of the 8 of us who spent the month in Canon City and we spent much time catching up on our adventures and plans. Barb and I brought back treats for everyone from Bruge, including chocolates and bread dipping seasonings. So of course we immediately planned another dinner to try everything out.

After the dinner we went to the New Year's party at the club house. The decorations were absolutely superb..........the theme was Camelot and on the stage was a replica of the castle with moat. And in the house, around the house, and in the moat were carved figures of the people, furniture, boats, etc. In addition, small lamps were inside so that when the lights were turned on there was lighting inside. All around the clubhouse on the walls were placards and hangings depicting the Camelot era. And then in a separate room was this huge table the size of 3 pool tables that was covered with food for the feast. We had a wonderful time.

And that was the last day for me............the next day my cough returned and we think it may have become bronchitis. Without going into all of the gory details of my "suffering", let me just say the yesterday, two weeks later, is the first day that I have felt good. Cough is almost gone and I actually went for a short walk.

Now Barbara during all of this time was involved in all of the activities. This past week was the annual Mind Games competition. The games included poker, scabble, euchre, sudoku, cribbage, balderdash, trivial pursuit, Mexican train and others that I have forgotten. Barb competed in poker and Mexican train and in fact came in second in Mexican train. Tonight will be the final ceremony which includes "award's night". Not only is there competition between players, but between the 5 neighborhoods in this rv park. I do not think I mentioned that the park is divided into five sections that are named and are known as the neighborhoods. We are in the Hot Peppers. The other neighborhoods are Southwest, Northwest, Desert Hearts, and Rainbow Rim. All of the competition is in fun and everyone has a great time with it. The awards will be given to the winners in each event plus the neighborhood with the most points. I don't think the Peppers are in first, but well, there is always next year and perhaps, I will then compete.......and that should make all of the difference!

Love to all of you,
Linda and Barb

We are back in Apache Junction

We arrived here in Apache Junction, AZ last Thursday and have immediately jumped into the thick of activities with friends. It was such a pleasure to return. Nancy picked us up at the airport and as soon as we arrived at our rv site, everyone came out and welcomed us. There were about 6-8 friends jumping up and down and hugging us and telling us that they missed us. We feel we have returned home. We are so fortunate to have such good friends here. They are really good people.

Chihuly Exhibit at St. Louis Botanical Gardens

There is no need for explanation. I am just posting pictures from the exhibit. Chihuly has created exhibits around the world, in Paris, Israel, Scotland, Las Vegas (The Belagio). We feel fortunate on two accounts, first off that he selected the St. Louis Botanical Gardens and second that we were in St. Louis at the right time so that we were able to see it.


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Quick Catch Up on Where We Are

I have really not written anything for the past two weeks. We have been in St. Louis and have been running like crazy to get all of our appointments and visiting done. Barb, her mom and I all had doctor appointments and other kinds of appointments so every day was scheduled from morning until evening. And I of course had my regular St. Louis cough and cold, so sleeping at night was tough. By evening (5:00 pm) I was worn out from coughing and Barb was worn out from running errands. So we just collapsed, had dinner, watched a bit of TV and were in bed by 9:00 pm.

We did go to one outing at the Botanical Gardens here. There was a Chihuly exhibit. Chihuly is the artist that creates magnificient figures by blowing glass of many colors and many shapes. His exhibit was in the gardens and blended in with the plants and ponds. It was truly magnificient. I will attach photos in the next writing. If you ever have a chance to see his work, do not miss it.

And that summarizes the rest of our visit here. We leave for Apache Junction on Friday.

Love and hugs to everyone. Wish all of you a very Happy and Healthy New Year.

Linda and Barb

OUR DAY IN BRUGE

From Brussels 2006

I think Bruge was our favorite city. The main area of town is a wonderfully large plaza with the architecture of the buildings surrounding the plaza looking like they were right out of a magazine or a movie set. Only, of course, we realize that the movie sets were designed with Bruge in mind.

At one end of Bruge is this great clock tower. Both Nicolas and Caroline climbed to the top at a previous visit and loved the climb. We did not do the climb.

From Brussels 2006

But we did stop at one of the food stands and get brats for Nick and new gloves for Caroline.

From Brussels 2006

The streets were crowded with Christmas shoppers so all of the small shops were packed. What was so exciting and delightful was to peak in the windows of some the shops; our favorites were the sausage shop,

From Brussels 2006

the Dumon chocolate shop, and the Vinegar and Oil shop.

At the time we were there, Bruge was having an Ice and Snow Sculpture Show. The theme was characters from the Ice Age 3 movie.

From Brussels 2006

It was cold walking through the exhibit but the workmanship was magnificient.Each character, whether crafted from ice or from snow, was sculpted with great detail and delightful to see. Afterwards we warmed up with hot cocoa and hot tomato soup.



So as the day ended and sun started to set, left the plaza of Bruge and headed home to Erbaut.

From Brussels 2006

Sightseeing in Paris

During the rest of our week in Belgium, we went on two more one day trips. Our original plan was for Susan, Barb and me to take the train to Paris during the day on Wednesday while the kids were in school. But you know, like all good plans............Susan's house is 20 minutes from the train station, so we left about 45 minutes early to allow time to park and buy tickets. But what we did not figure on was the early morning rush hour traffic. The inconvenience of all of these people trying to get to work while all we wanted to do was to get to Paris to play. As you have figured by now, we got to the station too late.......so Susan drove the 2 hours to the Paris airport with the intention of taking the train from there. The deGaulle airport is a maze and a zoo with construction and closed roads everywhere. Once we found the right terminal and a parking place miles from the train station, we became hopeful that the rest of the trip would be smooth.
We walked the entire length of the terminal, arrived at the train ticket window to be told that the trains were stopped due to a "suspicious" package on the tracks. After several minutes of debate and indecision, the good news was that the package was cleared and we could get on the train. Next event was that the tracks were bad part way to our first stop at the eiffel tower so we needed to depart and go a circuitous route on 2 two other trains.........



BUT FINALLY at 1:00 p.m.,
WE ARRIVED AT THE EIFFEL TOWER..............AND IT WAS A WOW!












Our only other priority that day was to go to the Louvre.










Of course we viewed the "famous" pyramid.








We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the galleries of the Louvre
and did see what Susan called the "famous 3"..........Winged Victory,Venus de Milo, and the Mona Lisa.









We then wandered around several other galleries.

We only had a few more hours in the afternoon ; by 5:00 o'clock we left the Louvre and headed back to the train to leave Paris and go home to Erbaut.





We had a great day and will some day go back.




Love to all of you.