Spending Time with Brian & Rita

Here it is Sunday and we have been waiting for Monday it seems like a life time.  Tomorrow we find out what will be going on with our pin box.  I got half of the pin box off today and maybe I can find someone to weld it up for me over in Astoria.  Keep your fingers crossed for us and say a pray or two that we find someone to weld it for us, so that we can gt out of here on Wednesday.
Now on to other things that we have been doing.

We drove down to the beach and the surf was real strong and a lot of foam was blowing up on the beach. It has been a little wet down here but it is Washington and we are on the beach so we kind of expect it.
The last couple of days we have been spending it with Brian & Rita.  Brian and I have been busy staying out of the girls hair while they have been sewing.

 Rita sews for a while then she needs to take it apart with a tool that a lot of bad words are said when using it.  Anyway she did get what she was doing done and I think it is called a baby cuddle wrap.  When all done it looked great.

Cyndy has been busy playing with her new machine and enjoying it.  She has made a few things but this one was one of her best.

This turned out real good, she made a few more different ones but forgot to take pictures.  Maybe tomorrow I will get pictures of them.  She has them put away now.
This was tonight's clouds looking out from Brian & Rita's house.

One thing nice when it rains down here it seems to just fly over us and then the sun come out but is soon covered by clouds again.  One storm after another just keeps coming through.

Two Days Driving Arrived at Longbeach, WA

After two good days of driving we have made it to Longbeach, WA, at the Thousand Trails Park.  We like this one during the winter, not a lot of people and it is close to our two best friends down here, Brian & Rita.  We meet them for Dinner tonight at a small Italian Restaurant near the park.  The food as OK, but then we are spoiled by Olive Garden and the choices are a lot more their.  Any way it was good food and has been open for just a little over 6 months and the owner moved his Restaurant from the Seattle area to here, he wanted just a small place and good food in a quite community.  We visited with Brain & Rita for a good hour plus then headed back to the park.  We are planning on getting together as much as possible the next few days.
Now to show you a few pictures of the last couple of days driving.

 I know it is hard to tell what these things are that are white in this field.  But after we left I-5 and headed towards Lake Minden TTN for the night we spotted a lot of White Snow Geese in these fields.

There had to be 1000's of them all over the place.  It was a good drive and the wind was not against us today which made for a great drive.

 Day three of our drive took us towards Mount Shasta, you can verily make it out in the distance.

 They say that in the last two months of rain the the lake has risen over 100 feet.  It is looking like if these keeps up the lake may gain another 100 feet, it really needs it.

Shasta really has a lot of snow on it, we were very lucky today driving through the pass's the sky was clear and blue what a great day.  I have been watching the weather the last few days and the day after we drive over the pass it is getting hit with another storm and they may even have more snow.
Today's drive to Longbeach was not bad, just the rain that we have been missing, it finally caught up with us and followed us all the way to Seaside, then broke up and the sky's cleared up for the rest of the day.
We did have one small problem with our Trail Air Pin Box today that I have never had happen before.

As you can tell it is not hanging right.  The two back lugs have broken away and now comes the problem of getting it fixed.  Called Blue Dog today, sent them pictures and will hear from them tomorrow on what we will have to do.  I hope they can get me the parts so I can fix it here, I don't want to try and drive it over to Gresham, OR to have them fix it.  Waiting for tomorrow!!!!!

On the Road North

We left Quartzsite at about 8:30 AM this morning heading towards Bakersfield to stay at a Passport America Park, Desert Palms Mobile Home & RV Park.  It is a great little park just off of highway 58 and cheap $15.00 a night.

We drove just over 350 miles today, and stayed away from LA.  We left Quartzsite and headed north on 95 towards Needles then headed west on 40.  It has been a while sense we have driven this route.  We did hit a little bit of wind but not much, the road was great and the traffic was light.

The weather was great, with beautiful blue ski's.
Cyndy was kind of under the weather today, so the drive was hard on her.  I think I may have given her the stomach flue I had two days ago.  She was up most of the night so today she was real quite and sleeping a lot.  I hope she is feeling better tomorrow.  She is sleeping now so that is good.
Tomorrow we are driving just over 325 miles to a Thousand Trails Park Lake Minden.  We have stayed here before and it is a nice stop over for one night but it could be a nice place to head for a couple of night of relaxation.

Up by Barstow we found some white tails relaxing in the Mojave Desert.
Now I want to show you what a filter looks like after 12 days at Quartzsite.

The one on the left is a 5 mil sediment filter that I us in front of the charcoal  filter, the one on the right I change every 3 months.  I can usually make the 5 mil sediment last 1 month.  The water in Quartzsite was real dirty and glad I have the filter system.
We are heading back up to the Seattle area to do the Seattle RV Show in February.  But our first stop will be The Blue Dog repair shop in Gresham, OR to get the new gearbox installed on the slide out.  Both of us will be happy when this is fixed.  It is getting late and another long drive tomorrow plus I have to look at the pass reports for Wednesday, if they have snow we head up 101, if they are clear we go up I-5.  I would rather go up I-5 shorter drive.

 

Last Day of Quartzsite RV Show

Today was the last day of the RV Show here at Quartzsite.  It was a good 9 days, most everyone did pretty good here.  We did well and got to see a lot of guest we have traveled with over the years.  We were able to sign up 11 new guess that have never travel with Adventure in the past and 3 repeat customers.  It was a long 9 days so tonight we went out for Pizza at Silly Al's.

Here eating is Chris & Charles, Jim & Cherrill, we all were happy to see the end of this show and just decompressing with good beer and friends.  The pizza was really good and we have some for our trip down the road from here.  It was nice just talking to everyone and enjoying life here at dinner.
When we got back it was just a little after 6:30 and this is what the tent looked like.

 It sure didn't take long for everyone to get out of the tent.

There were just a few left hauling things out.  It was amazing how fast everyone got their stuff out.
Tomorrow we are on the road heading back north.  We are going to head up trough Parker and then head east towards Bakersfield.  Hoping to make it to a Passport America park near there.  We will see how we do and let you know what time we get out of here in the morning.  Hoping to be on the road by 9:00 AM, we will just see if we can get out or not.

Quartzsite RV Show Day 3

What a day, it started out kind of slow and a little cool.  But by 10:30 AM the crowd was starting to pick up here in the big tent.  We looked down our row and it was getting hard to see to the first pole with all the people.

We did have a lot of people stopping by our booth today, the Adventure Caravans coats were all over the place today.  Every time we had a new possible guest asking questions one of our pass guess would walk by and say this is the best company to travel with.  You have to like our pass guess, they are our best sales people.  We did pretty good today and sold 4 trips and have a lot of people that are home thinking about trips to Alaska and Mexico.  We had a lot of questions on Mexico and Alaska today hope they come back tomorrow.
All in all it was a pretty busy day tell about 3:00 PM and everyone started leaving,  It must of been getting close to happy hour!!!!!

 The sun sets here in the southwest are great, it is cooling off and we are going to have another cool night.

Day 2 of Quartzite

This will be a very short blog today.  Today was a lot slower this morning then yesterday, but about 12:30 the tent started filling up with people.  I don't know if it was the cold mornings or just that the people are slow at getting up on Sunday morning.  We did sign up one couple for Alaska this year.  All we have to do is gt about 5 more couples to sign up for the 61 day Alaska trip and we will have 5 trips to Alaska this year.  Tomorrow we will draw one of our $500.00 Gift-certificates. Hope it will be you!!!
That's all from us tonight will see what we can come up with tomorrow.

Quartzite RV Show Day 1

Today was day one of the Quartzite RV Show.  This is what it looked like the day before the start of the show,

and this is what it looked like just before the opening this morning.  All the vendors were not in yet, but the booths were pretty well set up.

 Last night when I took the boy's out for their last walk, there were still a lot of people working hard to get their booth up and ready for this morning.

 Look out vendors they have opened the gates and here comes the rush,

 It didn't take them long and with all the gates open the tent was full of people.  We are on the center row which is wider then the two out side rows.

 We were busy all day long talking to people and meeting a lot of people that have traveled with us in the pass.  It was great talking to everyone and letting them know about the specials we have to offer.  We did have a few people stop buy and asked us the difference between us and Fantasy and we all said that we have nothing to say bad about them.  Just take the two catalogs and compare them with the trips we have to offer and what they have to offer.

I took the boys out for a walk and there were still a lot of people heading into the tent at 2:00 PM.  We were busy all day tell about 4:00 PM and then it just shut down with people coming in, it must of been close to Happy Hour!!!!  I don't know how much I will be posting in the next few days, because it will be about the same.  People stopping by to ask questions and pass guess stopping by to say hello and sign up for a chance to sign up for one of the giveaways we are offering, and anyone can win.

Show Starts Tomorrow

We finished setting up the booth today.  It took us a couple of hours but we finally got it done.

Not bad if I say so myself, we are ready for the big show to start tomorrow.  All we have to do now is say hello to a lot of people and get a lot of hugs from all kinds of friends.   We are going to be giving away 4 $500.00 Gift Certificates and A Mega Prize For almost $4000.00 for a trip.  So everyone stop by and sign up, and maybe even book a trip with us.

Here are the four of us ready for opening day, come on in and talk to us about your great trips and maybe where you would like to go next.  We looked around and every other vendor was busy setting up there booth.
I tried to get a picture of the moon tonight, and this is all I got.

With it being only a 1/4 moon it sure looks like a full one.   Bad picture but oh well.   The area is full of vendors, we are parked against the fence and the vendors that are out side are in the next row next to us.  Will talke pictures tomorrow to show you what it looks like.

Let Explore Tyson Wells

We had some free time today and Jim & Cherrill had never been here before so we head over to Tyson Wells to check the flea market as i call it.  You can find anything over there from tools to all kinds of rocks and beads.  Cyndy & Cherrill did find a lot of bead shops, but Jim & I did find a few tool shops.

 Here we are walking around looking for something that we really need, at least I think that is what we are doing.  I did find some bungee's for holding my water hose's together.  Cyndy found some new cutting mates and a few different kinds of beads.

 The food smelled good from this place but it wasn't time for lunch yet so we keep walking around.

 We had a great walk around Tyson Wells and found some good old fashion ice cream.  It was a great day and now it is time to head back to walk the boys.  Jim & Cherrill went and looked at the some of the new motor-homes they have on display here.  When they got back we asked them if they seen anything they liked, Cherrill said no, I like the remodel job we did on our coach a hole lot better and it was a lot cheaper.

 I wanted to get a picture of what we have done in our both so far, yep the banners are hung and we are trying to figure out what to do next.  Really we like to hang the banners as soon as we are at a rally so it has time to relax a little, but with the cold mornings the heat has not relaxed it much yet.  It is suppose to get warmer the next couple of days, maybe it will be warmer here in the tent.  This afternoon while I was in there it was still at least 15 degrees colder then out side.

 This is looking up from where our booth is at and there are still a few people to get set up on our row, Really there are a lot that have to get set up yet.

Another great sunset this evening.

Here we come Quartzite

This morning we were up and moving by 7:00 AM getting ready to head over to Quartzite. It will be a long drive compared to the day we moved into the TTN park to the fairgrounds.  We have just over 120 miles of beautiful desert driving to get to the RV Show in Quartzite.

 We are getting close to Quartzite and we made it to Arizona.

It was a good drive all the way here, we arrived just before noon and with having express check in, we were took right to our spot inside the fence.  It is nice, we are right by our booth and only have about 50 yards from our entrance.

We have Chris & Charles Yust parked right behind us, we are all in a row against the fence.  We haven't seen Chris & Charles in a year, the last time was at the Escapees Rally in Tuscon.  It is always nice to see old friends at these events.  I know over the next 10 days we will see a lot of people we have worked with and traveled with over the years.

One thing nice about the sunsets here in Arizona is the colors in the sky's, tonight was some nice pink sky's.
Yesterday I was concerned about Crandall Mobile RV Service in Palm Springs, well today the money for the gear box was returned to our account, so that is one plus.  Would I us them again, I really don't know, but they were good on there word to return our money!!!!
Tomorrow we are going to walk around the market place here by the tent and see if there is anything that we can not live without.  This is one big flea market out side of the RV Tent area.

Last Day at Indio

First of all I want to say when you depend on someone that gives you the run around you walk away with mud on your face.  If you recall I have been waiting for a gear box to fix the right slide so that it doesn't make a lot of noise when coming in and out.  Well yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from Crandall Mobile RV Service.  He kind of laughed and said you will not believe it but your gearbox is going to the east coast, now wait a minute I asked you to have it overnight and you said no problem it will be here by Friday last week with no problem.  When I was calling last week they could not get a hold of the shipper and get a tracking number. So yesterday he asked if I still wanted it and they would try and get it here and then forward it to me.  Yah, I really trust you to get it to me.  I asked for the money back and am still waiting for it to show up in my account, and would I recommend them to any one else?  I would have to think on that one a very short time, NO!!!  Will let you know about the money in a day or two.
Today we went for a ride out to Slab City to show Jim & Cherrill where it is and the high lights of it, Salvation Mountain.  It has been about 3 years scene Cyndy & I was last out here.
Here are a few pictures of the great Slab City and Salvation Mountain.

 It looks like they have been re-painting a few buildings.

 Salvation Mountain with a new sign as we get closer to the mountain.

 They have put a lot of new paint on the Mountain, and now they have a path so that you can walk up on the mountain, they say follow the yellow paint.

 We seen a few people walk up to the top, but we wanted to look around in side.

 Yep, a thorn between two roses, or was it a rose between two thorns!!!!!

 This is one of the first times out here we seen people really working on this place, this young man was mixing up mud for the walls they are building.

 Cyndy & Cherrill looking up to see if this is really going to stay up or fall in on them.

 It looks the same as a few years ago, with just new paint.

 We took a drive out in to see a few of the slabs, there were not as many people here as in the past.  But the place is really going down hill with the garbage all over the place. there are still a lot of people living out here off the grid, if you want to call it that with out power and water.  But they do have internet and cell phones!!!!

Jim made a statement that really brought it all together, it kind of reminds him of the 70's and I would have to agree with him.
We will be leaving for Quartzsite tomorrow morning, hoping to get a good spot in the vendor parking area.  See everyone over there it the next week plus, stop by our both and say hello!!!