Silver City, New Mexico

Took off for the day to check out a town about 50 miles away. Interesting place. Small artsy shops, a cabin that Billy the Kid lived in and then the most amazing restaurant. Very upscale, but without the upscale prices. I had a Chicken Penne and a glass of red that were both just topnotch! I really enjoyed the place! There was a really quaint and obviously old hotel called the Palace Hotel.....the shot is their lobby.
Lisa was pretty pooped coming home, so she took a nap (see pic). LOL! I guess the sun was in her eyes! Once we got back to the RV park and mentioned going swimming she perked right up. That girl was a mermaid in a previous life, I swear! She likes to let the pool water go in her mouth which definitely grosses me out, but I keep telling her to close her mouth. Hopefully, before she gets sick from it, she will get the hang of it. The park backs up to I-10, so we have that noise at night, plus 3-4 times a night a train goes by, sounding it's whistle!! Egads! You can even feel the vibration in your butt as they go by!! Hopefully, on Monday, they will have a quieter place for us to stay. I would like to stay in the RV, but I'm not sure that will be possible, especially if they have to remove the entire slide! I just am REALLY not looking forward to sleeping with Lisa in the same room (at a hotel). It would actually be quieter in the Magic Bus because we have 2 doors we can close to drown out her snoring.
With the pool and the people we have met, the park is just fine. It's a gravel lot and not all that pretty, but the social end of it is great! We went to an ice cream social last night. $1.50 bought a bowl of ice cream with caramel or chocolate or strawberry toppings and they had homemade peanut butter cookies that were outstanding. So, we'll spend the weekend here and then we'll take the Magic Bus to Las Cruces on Monday. Hoping we don't get a ticket because of that damn slide.....with it extended out maybe 6" it puts us over the legal limit (on width) by that very 6"! The limit is 102" wide. Keep your fingers crossed!!!!

The new guy

The second guy showed around 5:00 PM and we immediately knew that this guy knew his stuff. He literally tried everything, including trying to wench out the slide with his service truck.( see pics).....all it did was move his truck! By that time, we had made 5 or 6 new friends!! Everyone was really interested to see how the hell this guy was gonna get the slide to move at all. And we have collected cards from people that want to hear how this ends up.
Coach Net is our towing service and because the slide is jammed and won't go all the way in or out, they will not tow us on a flatbed. Liability issues....So, we have an appt. on Monday with an RV repair place in Las Cruces...60 miles away. Alan is gonna drive the RV there and I'm gonna drive the truck.  The large metal Roadrunner was a statue at at rest stop...very cool. But, not so cool, are the signs warning of snakes everywhere!!
Meanwhile, we are talking a LOT about what we want for our future. Tons of people have told us that Rv's have 3 or 4 things going wrong at all times....they all stand around talking horror stories of things gone terribly wrong. One guy overfilled his fresh water tank to the point of buckling his floor and blowing out his joists so badly that the slides would never, ever come in again. Other stories of overflowing black tanks and shit flowing freely into the coach, rats eating wiring and birds building nests in exhaust pipes.! Can we take the stress? I dunno.....one day at a time, I guess. I just know that stress is SO not good for either of us.....it sends Alan's blood pressure skyward and throws me into a fibro flare, big time.And, of course, Lisa and Irie both feel it in the air and react it accordingly.
Speaking of birds, two of our new friends have FOUR parrots in their coach! We had a hard time with the noise and mess from one parrot....we'd never make it with four! But it sure is fun to visit with them. They have a 4 year old Goffin Cockatoo....such a sweetheart bird! It's wings aren't clipped, so they take him outside on leash. He flew off their shoulders and came to visit both Alan and me.....fun stuff!

and the saga continues.....

Ok, today, a mobile RV repair guy shows up right on time and he came from over 90 miles away. I thought to myself, "Cool! Maybe this is a good omen" NOT! The guy was here at 9:30 AM and left around 2:00 AFTER he broke a rod that is made to manually get the slide in. Now, the slide won't move at all! Resigned, we call Coach Net and they tell us they can't tow us with the slide out because it could damage the slide even more. They referred us to the same guy that was already here! Alan told them what happened and that the guy basically just left.. So, they called around to find someone else and that guy is even further away, but says he'll be here today. The closest dealer (again, MANY miles from here) can't take us til next Monday, so we are stuck here til then. The hope is that this new guy can get the slide in and then we will drive to the dealer if it is safe to do. We are fairly sure the ins. will cover the repair, tho we also know how well that has worked out in the past!
We are both debating about continuing this lifestyle. We want to stick it out, but, financially, these repairs are killing us. It would be hard, if not impossible, to get all of our money out of it if we sell. There apparently is no such thing as a lemon law for us. And the stress!! Alan tends to go to anger and I tend to go to tears and neither one helps a bit. We imagined a life of easy travel days, arriving 2-4 PM and then spending a day or two sightseeing, not this "OMG! It died again, the slide won't move and has torn up the carpeting, the GPS has us on a street you wouldn't take a VW bug down, this doesn't work or that is making a weird noise" It's crap.
The up side is that we have met some really nice people here....ones we'd like to keep in touch with, there is a nice pool, a great shower and laundry. We played pool the other night and that was fun.

STUCK AGAIN!

Our biggest slide won't come in all the way. At first, we saw it was hanging up on the carpet, so we pulled that away....nothing. Alan has tried everything...nothing. Since it's Sunday, we are stuck here in Deming. As more and more of these things happen and we sink more and more money into this thing, I am dreaming of renting a house somewhere. The stress of this is just awful and I'm frankly not sure how much more we can take.....sigh....pray for us, please!

Chiricahua National Monument to Tombstone, Az.

We try to get out and see what's around us...this day, we did more travel than usual, but there just isn't much in the desert! At once, we saw these huge grasshopper things... I'm talking like 3 inches long and they were everywhere!! Must be mating season...lol! We did find out at the Chiricahua Visitor's Center that they are called Grouse Locusts....crazy.
From the early 1400's southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico have been home to the Chiricahua Apaches. They were traditionally nomadic, hunting large animals and gathering plants. When settlers arrived, they fought relentlessly led by Cochise and Geronimo. But in 1885, they ultimately surrendered and were taken to reservations in Oklahoma and New Mexico. I still have a hard time with that. They were here first afterall.
Really didn't think I would ever want to look at another rock formation, but they still intrigue me. I think Alan (and definitely Lisa) couldn't care less, though! These pics are from the road as we couldn't hike the trails. There was a large forest fire up there last May and burned thru July...all roads and trails were closed. The "This button doesn't do anything" pic was positioned below a film screen in the Visitors Center....kinda cracked me up!

Off to Tombstone, Arizona thru more sand, sagebrush and flash  flood zones. There were some crops, though. What looked to me like pecans, corn and even cotton. I was surprised to see the cotton! Tombstone is pretty much what you would expect...touristy gift shops, tee shirts and even a Harley store! Check out the old Harley! Of course, we went to the reinactment of the gunfight at OK Corral. That was pretty fun and they did a good job of setting up scene with all the tension in town between the cowboys and townies. We both warned Lisa several times that it was gonna be loud, but when the gunfire started, she nearly climbed into my lap!! LOL!! On our way out of town, we stopped at the Boothill Cemetary....pretty cool. There was a guy trying to get people to go to his shop/museum. It was a reptile place with over 30 snakes. I stopped to see the snake and Lisa loved it....even pet the snake with me holding her hand. Alan hates snakes, so he went into a gun shop. LOL!!

We are now in Deming, New Mexico.. ...NOTHING here to see, so we have done laundry and they have an indoor pool...that was nice! Off tomorrow for Van Horn, Texas.....

Willcox, Arizona

Sorry this has been a few days. We pulled into the Camping World in Mesa, Arizona last Saturday with an appointment for Monday....we thought! Wrong! No record of an appointment made, so they pushed us to Tuesday. It's all good.....they put us up for free in their gravel parking lot in the back and we had 50 amp. power. But no WiFi....grrrr... But, we did get to have lunch with Bill, Alan's brother. He walked right in and made buds with Irie right off the bat. Our little Queen Bitch turned into a lover right in front of us!!
So, Tuesday AM the guy shows up at 7:30 AM and wants to know how quickly we can be ready and out of the Magic Bus. Alan tells them to give us 1/2 hour (I wasn't even up yet!). We made it! We took off for Montezuma Castle National Monument and Tuzigoot (toos E goot) National Monument, both in Camp Verde Arizona. They were both really interesting and all about the dwellings of the Sinagua. At Tuzigoot, the pueblo consisted of 110 rooms, including second and third story structures. Montezuma Castle is nestled into a limestone recess high above the flood plain of Beaver Creek in  the Verde valley. It is the most amazing cliff dwelling! The ranger I talked with told me that last July 3 it was 104.6 in the valley, but 74 inside the cliff dwelling. The Sinagua accessed their home by ladder after ladder. Man, my knees were screaming just thinking about it!!
On the way, I saw and advertisement sign that said MASSAGE $19.00 per hour! I couldn't believe it! I also noticed that none, and I mean NONE of the desert homes have yards. It's so strange! I would make raised beds and use shade cloth if I had to because of the heat. And throw in a bunch of shade trees or palms or something!! We also enjoyed a fun store called The Old Hippie Emporium...complete with tie dye and incense!
We have two GPS's. The one in the truck we have named Ken. At first, we thought he was just confused, but now we truly think he has Alzheimers! Coming home yesterday evening, he directed us to turn right, which we did, but then he took us thru a residential area and 3 more right turns to take us right back where we started! I got the giggles and couldn't stop laughing! Lisa was asking why Momma was crying! LOL!! Now, the other GPS is our trucker's GPS and it's in the Magic Bus. We call her Barbie. She's better than Ken, but still a blonde bombshell ditz. Barbie is very polite, but really insistent that you "turn around when possible". We think you should be able to program with "WTH???? Why did you turn THERE?? or "I give up....you're on your own...find your own damn way!" "Turn, turn, turn, you idiot!!" Of course, the GPS would fly out the window on the wrong day!!
We finally did manage to get back to Camping World. They fixed our heat problem and it wasn't too costly, for once. What happened?? Well, suddenly, the entie back of the coach would heat up to nearly 100 while we were travelling. We figured it was a loose something and it was. All fixed.
The dying thing it does is still there, but it happens rarely now and not at all since Monday. That will be a trip to a Cummins diesel dealer and will, undoubtedly, be pricey. We're putting it off and crossing our fingers, toes and eyes while we save.
And our new Even Brake? It will be fine for hours and then it beeps and flashes "Emergency Break Away". Scary the first time, but now we just unplug the system and try again later. Next Camping World visit...
On the way today, I was driving and kinda watching a truck coming up on my left to pass. The guy was all over the lane, so, as he got close, I pulled as far right as I could. Sure enough, he was still all over the lane and then starting pulling into my lane a good 10 feet too early!! I love our air horn!! I did scare Irie and Lisa, but he pulled back and missed us. I kept behind him even when we hit hills and slowed down. The Magic Bus has plenty of power and I can pass trucks all day, even on hills, but I wanted the guy where I could see him!

We are in Willcox (yup, double l's!), Arizona in a typical desert RV park. Gravel, hot, no pool, next to I-10. But we are only here til Friday. It  gives me time to catch up on things like this blog and laundry. Next stop is Deming, New Mexico and that park should be nicer...they have an indoor pool, at least.

Blythe, CA

Ok, driving along thru the desert and suddenly, WE LOST POWER!!! NOT again!! I just wanted to cry! I suggested we try the "secret code buster" and we were off.....made it to Blythe with just one more unscheduled  stop, but it took a toll on us and our mood. We decided to stay 2 nights instead of ,one, mostly I think, because we couldn't stand the idea of doing it again the next day. It's  SO nerve wracking. I just HATE not being sure you will get somewhere and I REALLY don't like the idea of being stuck in the desert.
I like this park, but Alan doesn't. There is barely a signal for his TV and internet and that makes him grumpy!! I can do without (definitely the TV!).....they are just huge babysitters and mostly a waste of my time. Anyway, they have a great dog park next to the Colorado River...all enclosed and safe for the dogs. The river is still running fairly swiftly, too. Lisa even got into it in the park yesterday.
And, today, we took her to the pool which she always loves! I am getting more worried about her Alzheimers. She sure forgets things she used to have down. Maybe her hearing is bad? She often doesn't hear  us talk to her and, during those times, seems to be staring off into space. I just hate this.....every little thing is a reminder to me that we will lose her. It's an icepick to the heart for me and WAY to much like my grief for David, my son.

 Last night, Alan took a shower here at the park, and I was gonna go next (someone has to always be here with Lisa), but he said they were barely warm. Forget THAT! So, I took mine in our little shower where I knew my water would be hot. I use this little net thingy for my washcloth lathered it up with soap and was just about to go to the "good parts" when  something stung or bit me! It hurt like hell!! I found the offending critter and squished him, telling him exactly where he and his little stinger/teeth could go!! Man! My finger stung for a good 10 minutes! I think I'm gonna live, though I still have a wound on my finger! SO glad he got my finger and not "elsewhere"!! LOL!!

Tomorrow, we are off for Camping World in Mesa, Arizona. This is where we bought the Magic Bus. We are thinking it may have been funky gas, but we'll have them check it on Monday.