Quick Update: Southwest Harbor, ME

We're now in Southwest Harbor, ME for the summer. Our RV arrived on schedule much to our relief and, honestly, our surprise (see posting "The Unexpected New Toyota Corolla".) The weather here in Maine hasn't been the greatest. Mostly it's been cold and rainy. It's still pretty early in the season so things are bound to get better.

Our trip from Mesa, AZ to Detroit wasn't very pleasant. Ross got sick the second day out and Karen got it the day before we arrived in Detroit. We didn't get a chance to see everyone we wanted to see because we spend the first several days recovering from whatever it was we had. We were in Detroit for about a week and then left to meet the RV when it arrived in Maine.

We've started our summer jobs working at the West Marine in Southwest Harbor.

More to come, just wanted to let everyone know where we are now!

New (Old) Hobby

For those who have known me (Ross) for a long time, you may remember that I used to be quite involved with the hobby of astronomy. Now that we're going to be spending a lot of time in Arizona, some of the best weather for astronomy, I decided to buy a telescope and get back into the hobby. I bought a Celestron NexStar 5 SE, a 5" telescope (click here to see a picture). It's small enough to be very portable but the optics are better than the 8" telescope I used to have at about half the cost. And it's fully computerized. In the old days we used to have to find things in the sky by finding bright objects and then "hopping" to the (usually) dim objects we wanted to see. It was slow, sometimes frustrating and often unsuccessful. Now you just tell the control pad what you want to see and the telescope automatically moves to it! I can now see in an hour what used to take all night to see! I'm really quite impressed with how far things have advanced.

I also recently bought a Meade DSI (deep sky imager), basically a digital camera for the telescope. For the technically interested it's a CCD camera. 20 years ago CCD cameras had just come out. If you wanted one it would cost at least $10,000! This camera was a tiny fraction of that and performs circles around the old ones. The software compensates for may of the tracking and exposure errors. Here's a couple of the pictures I've taken after just a few minutes of experimenting. As I learn how to use the camera better the pictures should get better too.

	A section of the moon.
	Saturn.
	Polaris, the North Star, is actually a "binary" or double star. Here you can see the bright primary star and, to its immediate left, the dimmer bluish secondary star. Click on the picture to see the 2 stars more clearly.

The Unexpected New Toyota Corolla

Since we now have a place to go to in the winter and we still want to be in the RV in Maine in the summer, we decided that once we got back to Maine we really didn't need our truck anymore. Our RV park in Maine lets you store your RV there for free during the winter. Our Toyota Corolla, which we left in Maine for the winter, is 9 years old with almost 150,000 miles on it. We decided we would trade it and the truck in on a new Corolla once we got back to Maine. One Saturday a couple of weeks ago we stopped in at Superstition Springs (SS) Toyota here in Mesa to see what a new Corolla would cost. We explained our situation to our salesman, Roger Cary, before we did any looking. He still showed us the car and had us take a test drive. Then he wanted to know what we need in order to "make the deal happen." We explained that since we were going to trade in our truck on any new car that we bought what we would need is for them to move our 5th wheel from here in Mesa to Southwest Harbor, Maine for us. We were sure that that would end the conversation. To make a very long story a little shorter, and to our eternal surprise, they finally agreed to our terms! We still can't really believe it! We drew up an agreement which they signed, moved our junk from the truck into the new Corolla and drove home in it!

So now the plan is to drive the Corolla from Mesa to Detroit for a visit and then wait to hear when the 5th wheel is to be delivered (our agreement specifies a time frame for delivery). We'll then drive to Maine and meet our 5th wheel there to make sure it gets placed in the correct site and is set level. Of course we're staying on top of the situation to make sure our 5th wheel actually ends up in Maine, but the general sales manager, Brad Johnson, seems to have everything on track so far. We'll let you know how it plays out.

Our new Toyota Corolla.

Our New Home In Mesa, AZ

When we first arrived here in Mesa, AZ, it was with the intention of staying for 1 week. We enjoyed it here so much that we extended our stay to 1 month. Then we extended it another month. One source of our enjoyment is the park that we're in. The park, Sun Life, has about 750 sites, about a medium sized place by the standards of the many parks in Mesa. There are lots and lots of activities if you choose to participate. The club house has a large computer room, exercise room, library, billiards hall and more. There's a beautiful heated pool with a very large hot tub next to it. There are tennis courts (we recently took up the game!), basketball courts and shuffleboard courts. There's even a restaurant and bakery on site. Sun Life is an "RV Resort" but it's mostly populated with small mobile homes called "park models." Some are brand new and some go back to the 1970's. We kept find ourselves looking around in the new models and checking out the "for sale" board for the used homes. Eventually we looked at one of the used homes listed for sale. We really liked it and the price was right. After checking out several of the other parks in the area to make sure we wanted to buy here at Sun Life we made an offer on the home. After a little negotiating we settled on a price. There were renters in the home so we had to wait a few weeks to close on it. On Monday, April 2 we handed over a bank check, signed a few papers and had ourselves our first non-moving home in several years! OK, so it did have wheels at one time and COULD move. At least it doesn't bounce when you walk in it like our 5th wheel. We're really excited to have a home base. We're still going to spend our summers in Maine in the RV and we'll come down here for the winters.

The place was in really good shape. Since moving in all we've had to do was fix a leaky p&t ("overflow") value on the water heater and replace the bathtub faucet because the diverter value wasn't diverting much. We also added a new hand held shower head. And just today we bought a new mattress to replace the funky "air bed" mattress that was one of the most uncomfortable things we've ever slept on!

	Our new home at Sun Life in Mesa, AZ. There's a covered carport/patio area and a shed. Our "garden" has a palm tree (like all of the lots here have), a couple of aloe plants and some other desert flora.
	Living room. The place came completely furnished except for the cat on the chair. We had to supply our own.
	The kitchen and dining area. For us the dining area is actually our computer room. We really like the hardwood floors. They were a major selling point for us.
	The bedroom.
	The bathroom.

Goatheads

It's always amazing to us to discover things that are "common knowledge" in one part of the country that are totally unknown in other parts of the country. One of these things are goatheads here in Mesa. We ride our bikes a lot around the area. After a few rides we started pulling these nasty little seeds with stingers on them out of our tires. The guy in the site next to us here at Sun Life told us they were goatheads. Turns out there are all over the place! Since "discovering" them we've fixed flats on all of our tires, sometimes several times per tire! We talked to the owner of a nearby bike shop about what to do. He said most people around here "desert-proof" their tires. This involves installing a tough, plastic liner between the inside of the tire and the tube and using tubes that are filled with "slime", a green substance that coagulates when exposed to air. "Slime" really works! Before we knew about the plastic liners we had just "slime tubes" on a couple of tires. After pulling out a goathead from these tires air and a little "slime" hissed out of the hole and then it's sealed. We've now completely desert-proofed all of our tires and, so far, no more flats!

Click here for an official US Government picture of the little beasties!

Mexican Riviera Cruise

At the end of February we took a week long cruise on the Diamond Princess to the "Mexican Riviera." The cruise left from Los Angeles and made stops in Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. Getting onboard the ship proved to be an exercise in logistics for us. We decided to get a hotel room near the port of Los Angeles the night before the cruise left since it's about 400 miles from Mesa to LA. After factoring in gas mileage on our truck and parking costs we decided it would be easier to get 2 one-way rental cars, so that's what we did. It worked out well! We spent the night before the cruise at the Crowne Plaza at the Port of Los Angeles. The next morning we took a taxi to the terminal. Turns out we could have walked since it's less than a mile. No problem checking in but Princess doesn't let anyone board until all the cabins are ready. Most cruise lines let you get onboard before the rooms are ready and feed you lunch. Our cabin had the largest balcony we've ever seen! The cabin itself was very nice too. This was one of the few cabins we've had that had a refrigerator. That came in handy as we would buy soft drinks in port and have cold drinks in our cabin.

As on most ships we played trivia whenever we got the chance. We ended up on a team of really good players! We kept winning and winning. In all we won something like 7 of 9 or 10 games that we played. Go team! We think our team cleaned out the gift shop of all their luggage straps, luggage tags, etc. If only they gave free cruises as prizes!

We found the ports quite similar to each other and have to admit that we didn't find them very exciting. In Puerto Vallarta we just walked from the ship towards downtown. Because of the distance (something like 4 miles) and the heat we didn't make it all the way to downtown. Along the way all we saw were hotels, restaurants and shops. We passed a new mall that featured Starbucks, Chili's, Subway, Baskin Robbins, etc. In Mazatlan we took a cab into the Golden Zone - the shopping district. At least in Mazatlan we saw a little of the real city. In Cabo San Lucas we walked and walked and never got out of the tourist area. The best scenery was in Cabo San Lucas - Land's End and Lover's Beach were beautiful.

As frequent readers of our blog know we do like to play a little video poker now and then. On our last trip to the casino Karen got a royal flush on a 25 cent video poker machine! Her 25 cents returned $62.50! So we probably broke even in the casino for the whole cruise.

	Our balcony on the Diamond Princess. They even varnished the wood just for us!
	View of Puerto Vallarta from our balcony. Notice anything familiar? ;)
	Artsy picture of the Diamond Princess in Puerto Vallarta.
	Want prescription drugs but don't have a prescription? No problem! This was one of MANY such signs we saw in Mazatlan and the other ports we visited.
	Land's End at Cabo San Lucas taken from our balcony. The near side is the Sea of Cortez, the far side is the Pacific Ocean.
	Our winning trivia team was (left to right) Dave, Steve, Karen, Jim, Pat and Bev. Oh, and Ross who took the picture. Can't forget him :)
	Karen's royal flush - way to go!!!

Mesa, AZ

Sorry about the delay in getting something new up on the blog. We've been here in Mesa, AZ for a couple of weeks now. We've been so busy with biking and hiking and trying not to get too much sun (gotta rub it in!) that we haven't had a chance until now. OK, that's not 100% true - we're just lazy.


After so much time in fairly rural areas it's nice to have the amenities of a large city. We've discovered 3 (count 'em, 3!) Super WalMarts within a 10 mile radius of us! And they even have a WalMart grocery store across the street from our RV park. Mesa is the land of large RV parks and ours is no exception. There are some 700 sites here and we've heard that this place is considered "small" by local standards! Unlike most RV parks we've visited this (and the others in the area) are populated mostly with "park model" units. Basically "single wide" mobile homes. OK, it's a mobile home park! But it's a VERY NICE mobile home park. The streets are lined with palm trees, we have a large heated pool with a large hot tub next to it, a computer room with at least 20 computers and high speed internet hookups for laptops, a restaurant and tons of activities. It's not your father's RV park! We do like it here.


So far we've done several good desert hikes here. We've also ridden our bikes all over the immediate area. There's a good amount of traffic here so we're constantly on guard when crossing streets and driveways. They do have bike lanes on the roads but neither of us want to be organ donors just yet.


Ross's aunt and uncle, Shari and Chuck, live just a couple of miles down the road. We all took a side trip to Las Vegas last week for a couple of days. Fun times! We figure we lost somewhere between $10 and $20 in all. It's tough to lose a lot when you mainly play the nickel video poker machines!


Next up is a week long cruise down to Mexico out of Los Angeles. Check back here in a few weeks for an entry on that! Until then, take care and have fun!

	Shari and Chuck at Hoover Dam overlook. A new bridge across the canyon is being built so traffic over the dam can be rerouted for security purposes. This bridge will not be for those with a fear of heights!
	View from the top of the Wind Cave Trail. Note the small parking lot - that's the trail head! This hike was only a 10 minute drive from our RV park. Lots of great hiking around here!
	Karen coming down from the top of the Treasure Loop Trail. Incredible scenery! This hike also was just a few minutes drive from our RV park.
	A longer drive to reach, the Hieroglyphic Trail is well worth the drive. After a 2 mile uphill hike you come to this set of petroglyphs dating back over 1000 years that were made by the Hohokam, people that originally inhabited this area. A spring exists above the rocks - that's a pond below the rocks. Standing water in the desert is a rare sight indeed!
	Karen and a giant Saguaro cactus on the Hieroglyphic Trail. Saguaro cactus take 65 to 75 years to start growing arms. Average lifespan is about 150 to 175 years but some live longer. This one is probably at least 125 years old.

Rockport, TX

We've been in Rockport since the middle of December. We had planned on leaving over a week ago but the weather kept us here. The travel conditions along I-10 were pretty bleak last week. Even here we had a stretch of several days where the high temperature barely reached 40 degrees. Not too bad if you live up north, but around here it was very unusual and harsh. Heck, there are palm trees all over the place here and that just doesn't go with 40 degrees! But things are finally getting better so tomorrow we should be on the road.

Just to be official we're actually in Fulton, TX. The area is refered to as Rockport/Fulton. We've enjoyed our stay here. The people are very friendly for the most part. There are a lot of folks from up north here. In other places they (and us, I guess) are refered to as "snowbirds." Here they are called "Winter Texans." It's basically a small town but it does have everything one needs - gas stations, restaurants and even a Super WalMart. And for the big city experience Corpus Christi is only about 30 minutes away. We've spent a lot of time riding our bikes around here. Once you get about a mile south (towards Rockport) there are sidewalks that take you all the way to the downtown area. It's in that area that we found a real gem. The Rockport Beach Park is a peninsula about 1 mile long. There is a beach that runs almost the entire length of the southern shore. There are lots of picnic tables, fixed shade umbrellas on the beach, a boat launch and many birds. It's just a really nice place to spend some time! The annual pass we purchased was only $10. Things around here are pretty inexpensive for the most part. That's probably one reason there are so many RV parks in the area. Dozens of them! In parking lots you often see more out of state license plates than Texas plates. We stayed at the Driftwood RV Haven. People here are very friendly and made us immediately feel at home. We had community meals in the club house on Christmas eve, Christmas day, new year's eve and at a couple of pot luck dinners. Rockport/Fulton is somewhere we'd definitely visit again!

	Entrance sign at the Rockport Beach Park. Note the lovely palm trees - not exactly a scene we picture when we think of Texas!
	Pelicans at the Rockport Beach Park. Dixon Lanire Merrith wrote a poem called "The Pelican" (1910): "A wonderful bird is the pelican His bill will hold more that his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week, But I'm damned if I can see how the helican."
	The local movie theater. We saw several movies here during some not so nice weather. Like most things around here it's pretty cheap. First run movies for only $4 for a matinee!
	Regional hamburger chain - Whataburger. The food was good but the name was even better.
	We took a day trip down to Padre Island National Seashore. The beach runs about 60 miles down the island. After the first 5 miles it's for 4X4 vehicles only. We rode our bikes down the beach about 4 miles before turning back.

OH OH - Cute Cat Picture!

Leave anything out, like this trash can, and Jake will crawl into or on it!

Where We Live

Here's some info that's old news to those who know us but should be enlightening to the millions of other people (haha) who view our blog: we live in our RV. We're "fulltimers", a term for people who travel full time in their RV. A true fulltimer doesn't have a home elsewhere. Our current RV, our 3rd so far, is a 25' 5th wheel. A 5th wheel is simply a type of trailer with a special way to attach to the tow vehicle. By the way, it's an "RV", not a "mobile home". At 25' our 5th wheel is definitely on the smaller end of the spectrum. Some 5th wheels we've seen are almost 40' long! We've found that to successfully live in an RV you should possess a few traits: you must like small spaces, you can live without a whole lot of "stuff" and you are flexible (of mind, but of body doesn't hurt either). Almost everything we own fits into our RV and truck. The only other stuff we have are a few items stored in family basements (thanks Mom and Dad, Lee and Jim!) It's really not as bad as it may seem. We have a TV, DVD player, laptop computer with Internet access via a Cingular broadband card, stove with oven, microwave, refrigerator, air conditioning, heat, etc. The only modern convenience we lack is a washer and dryer and almost every campground has that equipment. Most larger RV's do have washers and dryers though. We have enough storage for our clothes, a full set of hand tools and lots of books. We really never feel cramped and have never seriously considered buying a larger RV. We've owned a few houses and just simply prefer to live in our RV. After all, it's really hard to travel around dragging a real house behind your truck!

	Our "rig" consisting of our 1992 Chevy 3/4 ton pickup with a really big and thirsty engine (we average about 9 mpg) and our 1998 Kit 25' 5th wheel.
	Looking forward in our RV. On the left is the refrigerator and couch, the dinette is on the right. The bedroom is all the way forward. Hidden in this picture is the bathroom which is on the left before the bedroom.
	Looking toward the back of the RV you can see the couch and dinette and then the kitchen area. There's a "For Sale" sign on the dinette because we took these pictures when buying the RV. It hasn't looked as clean since.
	Our bathroom. The shower even has a folding glass door! The sink and medicine cabinet are across the hall. For the curious cat people out there we keep Jake's litter box in the shower and simply take it out when we take a shower. He seems to understand.

Our Traveling Buddy

As many of you know we had been catless for about 3 years. We remedied that situation this spring while traveling from Seattle to Maine. Karen decided we needed an "exotic" which is basically a short hair persian cat. She seached for a breeder who had adults (we're not kitten people) for sale. Eventually she located such a breeder in, of all places, Oakland County! So we parked the 5th wheel in a park near Toledo and made a quick cat run up there. His name is Jake but, according to his papers, his real name is "J-Cup". Either breeders have a good sense of humor or they have too much time on their hands. He's a real sweety!

	Jake LOVES to sit on this step in our RV. It's a high traffic area and he usually has it completely covered with his body forcing you to step down without using that step. Those of you with cats are saying "well, of course!"
	Jake sleeping on Karen. He's a pretty big kitty!
	What a cutie!

Travels: Ft. Myers, FL

After leaving Fort Lauderdale we spent a few days in Ft. Myers, on the west side of the state. We like Ft. Myers - the beach was almost as nice as Fort Lauderdale and it wasn't nearly as crowded. We also found the best Chinese restaurant we've every tried. We rode our bikes around the RV park we stayed in and around the beach area. One day we took a trip over to Sanibel Island and rode our bikes around part of the island and in the nature preserve.

	We found this restaurant across the street from the beach. Good food - great name!
	Here's our beach setup on Ft. Myers beach. The chairs we found in a dumpster when we lived in Seattle - they're in perfect condition. We bought the umbrella at a beach store in St. Augustine.
	Sign at the Sanibel Island visitor's center.

Travels: Central American Cruise

While in Fort Lauderdale we took a Central American cruise on the Carnival Legend. You can get some really great prices on cruises if you're flexible and don't need to fly to the port. A couple of days before we sailed they were selling inside (no view) rooms on our cruise for $299! That's for an 8 day cruise with all of your food and entertainment included. We had booked earlier and got a balcony room. The only trouble with a balcony room is that it's hard to consider an inside (less expensive) room for future cruises!

Our cruise visited the ports of Colon, Panama, Puerto Limon, Costa Rica and Belize City, Belize. We usually don't take shore excursions on cruises but this time we did one in each port. In Panama we took a ferry boat ride through part of the Panama Canal. In Costa Rica we visited a banana plantation. And in Belize we visited the Belize City zoo. On board we spent a lot of time sitting on our balcony reading and watching the ocean. We also attended several triva contests and won 2 of them. As a prize we received lovely plastic award trophies which we left in our room with a note asking that they be reused so they wouldn't end up in the land fill!

We really like going on cruises. If done right they are quite affordable vacations. This year we went on 3 cruises. We have another one book for the end of February out of LA (we'll be in the area then) visiting Mexico. And yes, we did book a balcony room.

	The Carnival Legend.
	Entering the Miraflores locks on the Panama Canal. The second ferry boat of our tour group is following us in.
	Banana plantation in Costa Rica. After the tour we knew more about bananas than we ever thought there was to know!
	Toucan at the Belize City zoo, one of the many fascinating animals they have in this zoo.
	You can eat all you want on a cruise. Some of us eat all that we can! The caption of this picture is "time to eat again!"

Travels: Fort Lauderdale, FL

Our first real planned destination of the winter was Fort Lauderdale. We were there for the entire month of November. During that time we took a cruise - we'll write about that in a future blog.

We spent the month at the Yacht Haven RV park. RV parks in southern Florida are hard to come by - and expensive! We paid almost $900 for the month there. That's a lot when you consider that we brought our own house along with us. The park is quite large but the sites are tiny. We had a heck of a time getting our 5th wheel backed into the site. And then we had to park our truck partially in the road because it wouldn't fit entirely in the site. OK, enough complaining...

While in Fort Lauderdale we spent a lot of time riding our bikes both around the area of the campground and at a nearby state park, the Hugh Taylor Birch State Park. It's a great place to ride because the auto traffic moves slowly and you don't have to worry quite so much about becoming road kill. Fort Lauderdale joke: "What do you call a bike rider in Fort Lauderdale?" Answer: "An organ donor!" We also spent time sitting on the beautiful beach and we read a lot. That's been one of our greatest pleasures since we left Seattle and resumed our transient way of life. Since we don't have a lot of money to spend on books at places like Borders anymore, we find and shop at used book stores a lot. Another great source of books are library book sales. While in Maine this summer we bought several grocery bags of books for only a few dollars.

One of our favorite things to do while in southern Florida is to take our bikes to the Shark Valley area of the Everglades National Park. They have a tram road that goes out into the Everglades several miles. You get a great view of the Everglades from the observation tower at the end. Along the way you'll see lots of wildlife including turtles, birds and, of course, alligators. No matter how many times we did it we never got used to riding our bikes only a few feet past the alligators!

	Alligator on the Shark Valley tram road. They usually sit facing the water because they feel safer that way. This one was probably about 7' or 8' long - we didn't get close enough to measure!!
	View from the Shark Valley observation tower. You can see how flat the Everglades are. This part of the tram road is straight as an arrow.
	Another fun thing to do in Fort Lauderdale is riding the water bus. $10 and you can ride all day. Here's Karen on the water bus. Behind her you can see another water bus.
	There's LOTS of money in Fort Lauderdale. Here's one of the typical yachts you see there. Meduse, about 200' long, is owned by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. I've read that Allen either sold her or has her for sale. But don't feel too bad for him, he also owns the 416' Octopus!

Travels: St. Augustine, FL

We think of St. Augustine of being 2 different places, the city and the beach. We LOVED the beach but weren't all that impressed with the city. The beach goes on and on, mile after mile, as far as you can see... (you get the idea.) We rode our bikes along said beach for many miles. The sand is hard and compacted making for a good riding surface. Further up the beach (towards land) the sand is soft and fine. People drive their cars on the beach to get where they want to go. We tried that too but found out a couple of things. First, the 4 wheel drive feature on our old truck doesn't seem to be working. Second, driving a big pickup truck without 4 wheel drive on a sandy beach is NOT a good idea! It took almost 30 minutes of rocking the truck back and forth to get unstuck. It's a great tow vehicle for our 5th wheel. It's a lousy 4X4!

We went into the city of St. Augustine a couple of times. The first we looked around at the fort, the second we took a tour of the city. As I said, we just weren't all that impressed. Lots of small boutique shops and restaurants. Tourist traps. We like the beach.

Travels: Brunswick & Jekyll Island, GA

We left Maine in early October, 2006 to head south for the winter. We spent a few cold nights in MA and PA. By the time we reached VA (we detoured around NYC, Baltimore and DC) the weather had warmed up nicely. We had a blow out on the truck south of Richmond and spent a fews days around there getting new truck tires and taking a break from the travel. We then continued south and stayed in Brunswick, GA for about a week. Most days we'd take our bikes to Jekyll Island and ride there. There are bike paths (sidewalks a lot of the time) all over the island.

	Karen on her bike on one of the bike paths. It's a great place to bike!
	Karen on the deserted beach on Jekyll Island. Summer is the busy season so we had the island almost to ourselves.
	Limulus polyphemus - the horseshoe crab. These are really quite fascinating creatures! Their blood is used by the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Check it out at http://www.horseshoecrab.org