Six Saturdays And A Sunday: Retirement At Its Best

Well, I have made it home after 9 days of traveling and enjoying warmer weather. I have gone form shorts and sandals to sweats and slippers in less than 24 hours. Carol and I have ended our adventure but there's always promises of more ahead. It is good to be home but it would take me 5 seconds to take off again. Carol and I got very busy with paperwork and all the errands she had to do once she met with the sellers of her home on Monday. Add that with the time change and great food we enjoyed made us pooped by 8:00 at the end of each day. That explains why I have failed to add to this blog for the last 4 days. Too tired to type. We survived our stay at Motel 6 in Apache Junction on Tuesday and Wednesday and then moved into her new home on Thursday morning. We were so lucky that the steaming hot weather that started the week turned into a lovely, cool breeze just in time to keep us from wilting away while emptying out the U-Haul and her storage unit. We did a great job getting th...

Snakebite Golf Course, really, I'm not kidding. Good food, great company for lunch! Scenery in Apache Junction Carol had some things to print off so we went to the Apache Junction Library. It is big and very nice. This guy was waiting in the corner. Bobwhite or quail at our Motel 6, Apache Junction View going down one of the main roads in Apache Junction Superstitious Mountain Museum Doug and I have always measured how great our vacations are by the amount of weight we have gained. Carol and I have added a new formula for measuring how great our time is: weight gained plus tiredness plus frustration= A Good Day! We started the day by eating breakfast at our hotel in Mesa, the Sleep Inn. Nice place, clean, but a little pricey but doable. We decided not to change hotels, just spend the next 2 nights there while we waited for her to get possession of her park model RV on Thursday. Well, they were going to charge us $20 more ...

We woke up in a nice cool room at the Sleep Inn, Mesa, AZ. It was a great feeling to know that we didn't have to try to cover hundreds of miles today. We had a leisurely breakfast before we ran some errands that Carol needed to take care of to complete the purchase of her new home. I got to meet the sellers and see her cute, cute, cute new park model RV. There's a clubhouse area with a pool and lots of activities for the residence to do. I know she will enjoy living there even though it means she isn't in Iowa anymore. It is so tempting to check out the RVs for sale and join the snowbirds in the dead of an Iowa winter. I guess I'm here for a few more days, plenty of time to become an AZ resident. We were able to park the U-Haul at her new place until she gets possession on Thursday so we are one step closer to getting her stuff moved in. Life is good, sun is hot, this old body is tired but happy. Bougainvillea right outside our hotel window. Flowers, birds, trees al...

The most important post of the day is to say that we made it to Mesa, AZ in one piece. We didn't have snow, ice, or wrecks but that darn wind has followed us all the way from Iowa. We made good time so we took a scenic route to go through the Tonto National Forest. Beautiful, fantastic, exciting. That is until we hit the mountains and the huge drop-off canyons below. This was not the route to take pulling the U-Haul but once again Carol navigated us up and down snakelike curves, steep inclines, all the while we watched for the elusive elk and cattle the road signs warned us of. We did see some cows and one very large black bull on the side of a mountain but he didn't even care that we were whizzing by. We are now tucked into a very nice hotel in Mesa with the excitement of getting Carol settled into her new home. Good Morning, Albuquerque. Arizona here we come! Mountain views in the Tonto National Forest First Saguaro cactus sighting, no, I wasn't taking a...

   Whew! We made it to sunny, 70 degree weather, finally! The day started with waking up to snow on the ground, frozen car and U-Haul doors, and crazy Oklahoma drivers. Doug had sent a hammer with us to use in case we had issues, well, we did, but the hammer was safely tucked away in a bucket in the U-Haul which was the issue. Good thing Carol had a rubber mallet in the back-end of her Jeep. A few good wacks got things loose and functional. We saw a car wreck almost immediately upon leaving South Haven, KS heading towards OK. Little did we know that this was only the beginning of the accidents that delayed our trip southward. Several semis thought they could turn doughnuts on bridges which only resulted in delays on both sides of interstate. It took us about 3 hours to get to dry roads, usually this trip would have only taken about 2.    When we made it to Texas the roads were clear, the sun was shining but the temp was only around 40 degrees. Getting warmer but sti...

Carol and I are at it again, traveling down that long, winding road. This time the trip is bittersweet. She is moving back to Arizona as a year-round resident of The Grand Canyon State. I am lucky enough to be a stowaway to escape the cold, wintry days of our Iowa spring and to check out her new digs. We left this morning about 8:30 in a mixture of wind, snow, and cold. We are now tucked into our nice warm Motel 6 in a small town just 4 miles north of the Oklahoma border but it's no warmer with a promise of snow. We have enjoyed the sights of pumping oil wells, Oreo cows, interesting houses, and the back-sides of speeding semis all through rain, snow, hail, sleet, fog, and wind. If it weren't for the company of Harley, Carol's warm, lovable cat, and our never ending conversations the trip would have been much longer. Time flies when your mind isn't focused on the miles. It hasn't been a very productive picture day but we have high hopes of warm, sunny weather tomorr...