Dust Storm in Route to South Padre Island TX

Dairy building with "Boo" the trailer in parking lot!

We over nighted (3/29) in San Elizario TX just south of El Paso. We stayed at a place we found with our Harvest Host App called Licon's Dairy. Getting here however proved to be quite interesting, we encountered our first dust storm with an occasional rain shower. I had just hand washed the truck on the eve of our departure from Tucson AZ, after yesterday, it looks worse than before LoL!!! One advantage of of the winds as high as they were (30mph w/ gust of 60mph) it was a tail wind so I was able to get 11-12 mpg pulling the trailer! We got there to late last night to check out there choices so we will be doing that this morning! Can't wait to see what yummy things we can find before we make our exit! There is also a petting zoo here we will check out before we depart. Well, we checked, all the cheese products we sold in to big a packaging to fit into our RV fridge. So I settled for a cookies and cream ice cream bar, needless to say it was very tasty! Checked out the petting zoo, had quite the variety of animals!

Dust storm while driving thru El Paso

Dust storm while driving thru El Paso,
It was worse than this out in the open freeway

Donkeys having breakfast

Lammas, Sheep & Goats, off screen Ostriches, cows & others.
Basically, was to cold and windy to wander from the trailer.

SOWER's Project: Youth Haven, Eloy, AZ - 2021 March (I will probably be adding more pictures to this)

 

I was reminded, AGAIN, that I was not up to date on my blog! LoL, You know who you are, and thank you for the gentle reminder!!

We signed up for a project in the small town of Eloy, AZ, about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson at a place called Youth Haven, a Bible Camp for disadvantaged children. If interested, their web page is: https://www.youthhaven.org/ 

Our duties here, for me, has been helping remodel a home for the newly hired maintenance person and his family. Because a laminate floor was installed all the toilets and doors were removed and I got to reinstall them. Also helped assemble the knobs and handles on the new cabinets and becoming proficient at installing bathroom sinks! Today I was repairing bicycles!

Toilet install, reminded me almost of the old days

Door Doors Doors and more Doors

Posing on one of the kids bike I worked on.

Starr has been working on picking up after the construction crew and doing trimming on bushes, I have determined that if something is growing out of the ground in Arizona, there are nasty thorns on it!!!!

SOWER's

 

Starr & I have joined a missionary organization called "SOWER" which is an acronym for "Servants On Wheels Ever Ready". It's a Christian couples RV work ministry. We can signup to work anywhere in the United States wherever there is a need! They all start on the first Monday of the month. Majority of the work is Monday thru Thursday, six hours a day for three weeks. The fourth week is your own to do what you want. The facility that you are volunteering at are required to furnish you a place to park your RV with full hook up (water, electric sewer). We were approved on Sep11th, 2021 after a hour and a half phone interview! We were chatting with the group at the rally in July and got real excited about it, we suddenly knew what we were going to do with our retirement years! For more information you can visit there website at https://sowerministry.org/

We did our first project in Dec in California and our next one will be at Eloy, AZ about half way between Tucson and Phoenix I will post more on that later!

Rose Parade, Pasadena, CA, Dec 27th 2021 - Jan 03rd 2022

This was the actual float I worked on for the parade. I applied the black seed on the wheelchair tires & center hubs.

Diligently applying black onion seed, about the size of a grain of sand, to the wheelchair wheels. The glue, an industrial form of Elmer's glue, is brushed using a paint brush. The seeds are smattered in some way, shape or form using a 3"x3" piece of 1/4" thick flexible foam. If you look below where I am working it's all black, where as what I am doing is black and white. The glue will eventually dry and turn clear. All the floats are pre-painted the colors you see in the parade, the organics (seeds and such) are adhered to the top of that, sorta a paint by number thing!

Me working on the upper part of the wheel, kind of a great perspective shot of the actual size of these floats!! The wheelchair lady is actually tipped here on her back because to get her, and all the floats under any bridges and overhead wires, the can be no more than 16-1/2 ft. tall. In the warehouse where they are assembled, that is the height that they make the doors, If they fit thru the doors, they will make it to the parade staging area!! Once there, they pivot and move all the pieces in place to their full height!

This shows some of the detail put into the pieces.

More detail.

 

This is the seed trailer where you go and get your supplies!

Hoover Dam

Saturday and Sunday we visited Hoover Dam. Saturday we did the driving thing, over the dam and walked back over it and around the displays. Sunday we did a Lake Mead boat tour of the dam and walked up to the freeway high bridge (When they built it they added a walkway on the dam side) . I was a little disappointed that they still had the internal tour shut down, showing the inner workings of the dam and power plant. It is all so huge it is hard to capture on camera!

When you look at the pictures of the lake you will see a whitish strip on the lake bank, the is the high water mark from 1983, it left a lot of calcium deposit behind!

Taken from the freeway high bridge

Our tour boat

Dam, lake side, from the tour boat.
The things with the vertical dark lines are the water inlets to turn the generators,
four total, two on the Nevada side, two on the Arizona side.

Taa daa! We really were on the boat!

Entering the Black Canyon that leads to the dam.
I guess before the dam was built there was nasty rapids thru this canyon!

Looking down the dam wall

Starr sitting pretty next to one of the displays

A closer view of the water intake towers

One of the statues, I wondered out loud if there arms ever got tired, they didn't respond!

 

Via Las Vegas, fun times at the airport and back to Minnesota

 It's been suggested by some of my readers that maybe I should start doing more current post, so y'all know where we are and what we are currently up to! Probably a good idea! I know you all are waiting with with baited breath for our next installment, so here it is!

It is currently Friday Nov 19th! We are at Boulder Beach Campground just outside of Bolder City, NV approx. 30 miles from the Las Vegas airport, a hop skip and a jump from Hover Dam (which we are planning to explore tomorrow), see map snippet below! We paid for three nights so we will be here until at least Sunday morning. This is part of the national park service, so with Starr's National Park pass and being over 60, it's only $10 a night! And did we drive straight here from the airport???? Oh heavens no! Let me start at the beginning! 

Last week we flew back to Minnesota on Delta, round trip tickets from Las Vegas for $308 total for us both! Wednesday to Wednesday to go to our 2nd oldest granddaughter musical that she was a part of. This is her HS Senior year (more on that later). We parked our truck and trailer at the Las Vegas airport oversized parking lot which mostly worked out well, it was still there and intact when we got back. The only hitch (no pun intended) was, once we got back to Vegas and got to the shuttle bus area to get back to the rig, none of the drivers knew where the place was! After probably a 45min wait and a lengthy, rather loud discussion over the phone with a very rude dispatcher, one of the drivers went out of his way to figure it out for us, also, Starr asked if I still had the location saved in my RV app program and sure enough I did! So, Walla! We got delivered!

Because we had planned to head to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon when we got back, we made a reservation at Mesquite, NV where we had stayed the night before we left for MN. We also made some orders to be delivered there to be waiting for our return. While in MN I checked the weather for the North Rim and noticed that the lows were going to be in the high teens at night, way to cold for my RV (and me), so plans were changed to go where we are now (East of Vegas). Unfortunately, the things we ordered were in Mesquite, 1-1/2 to 2 hours NE which we still had to drive to. We arrived around 8:30, pulled into our spot without even unhooking thinking we would spend an extra day there just to unwind and leave on Friday. It turned out they were already booked with no room at the inn, so to speak, so, here we are, 150 miles or so later, 30 miles from our start position, with our Amazon ordered in hand! LoL!!

About our trip to Minnesota

BRRRRRR, I was so COLD!! The best part was going to our Granddaughter's musical at Glencoe HS. They did "The Little Mermaid". For a relatively small school, they do a really good job! Saturday before the play Arleen, Rob's mom, (aka, my ex) had us all over for an early Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings! Thanks Arleen! Through the rest of the week it was catching up with all our friends we hadn't seen since we left town! Great memories, thanks!

Some passing thoughts!

We have been on the road now for 2-1/2 months, we have been having the time of our lives, and it's surreal in a way, we are in our little "house" always the same inside, but in the morning we open the shades and it's different views most of the time. (I think the longest we have stayed in one place has been 7 days at a RV resort outside of Moab, UT and that was pay for 5 nights and get 2 free, how you pass that up?) 

While in Minnesota we stayed in our Townhouse, snug as a bug in a rug (after I got the water turned on and the water heater fired up) but waking up in our house bed the next morning felt really odd, almost like "I dreamed I went to these places, but here I am here". Anyway, I guess I digress!

Our current plan is to be in the San Diego area by Wednesday, Nov 24th. We start our first SOWERs project in Jamul, CA on Monday, Nov 29th!

Our $10/night camp spot!

It was a little cool in the morning, but tolerable with a banky!
Starr actually had humming birds check the flowers out on the blanket!

Humming bird pic 1

Humming bird pic 2

Humming bird pic 3

Leaving route 66 behind and onward to Black Mesa Winery & fruit flies!

 Oct 1st, Starr and I have been on the road for a month now. Well, technically I suppose you could say 2 weeks with the hiccup in South Bend, but, for argument sakes, one month! So far we are loving the this lifestyle. Scenery has been great, company has been fantastic!

Like the title says we are putting the route 66 spiral map away for a while. It's still on my bucket list to see it thru, probably in chunks as we wander.

Things started getting serious today! We are definitely into mountain driving! Steep grades, sharp switch backs and driving in the clouds with rain and the occasional snowflake!! Bessy worked flawlessly! We even learned that when you get into higher elevations you get spit on, things like catsup, mustard, you know things in squirt bottles! Even the drink bottles with push buttons to open the opening so you can drink has the audacity spit on you! I guess the pressure increases in sealed bottles the higher you get!

Our route for today!

We are on our way to spend the night at at Black Mesa Winery, a spot we found thru our Harvest Host App. the drive, after we got thru the inclement weather was fantastic, we were driving past shear walls, it was wonderful!

We arrived at our destination, Black Mesa Winery, checked in and was told where to park, right next to the compost pile. We backed in, unhitched and started the set up. Starr opened up the front door, grabbed the steps to pull them down to the ground (We have steps that lift up inside the trailer when not in use), the next thing I know, I hear a bang and then Starr screaming and laying on the ground holding her shoulder. It seems the steps have two gas springs that act as a counterbalance so a wee little person like Starr can lift it up and down with little to no effort. The cylinder anchor that it mounts snapped in two causing the step to come crashing down just missing her head but hit the front of her shoulder and knocked her down. It kind of broke the skin and left a bruise for a few days. Contacted the step manufacturer, sent them pictures of the mount and they sent a new anchor mount for no charge*.

It took a little work to disassemble the cylinders to able to shut the door over the steps, meaning, I had to leave the screen door open, remember I said earlier that we had to park next to the compost pile? Well, they had just dumped the grape skins and what ever else the don't use when they make wine and the compost pile was RIPE! and it had attracted fruit flies and we had the door wide open. guess where the all went? In our trailer! It took over week to be rid of them all with a jar, apple cider vinegar and a funnel, they eventually went and drown themselves in the cider!

*(Note: As of this writing it is Oct 28th, we are at an RV Park in Escalante, UT waiting for our accumulated mail to be delivered "general delivery" the anchor assembly is one of the items we are waiting for! I have been in charge of lifting the steps up & down for the past month as they seem to weigh a ton!)

The entry!

The parking spot, compost pile on right side (not actually showing in the picture)

View of the vineyard from the dining window

Bessy unhitched, vineyard in the back ground

The broken anchor assembly