The Sandcastle

I don’t like to make people jump through hoops to comment on my writings. But over the last few days, hundreds of ads got posted in the comment sections on many day’s of my blogs and each of those ads got sent to me by email since I have all comments forwarded to me. It’s a nuisance. I have deleted all the spam comments for now but in the next few days Dave will make time to add one of those funny word boxes to my comment section so the spamming will stop. I’m terrible sorry for the inconvenience to my readers caused by adding this “feature” which I hate doing because it often doesn’t work well for me when I comment on other people’s blogs. If you have trouble with it, please, do your best to let me know.

TTYL,

Linda

…in Arizona!

We all know the song, “London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down…” So London had to decide what to do about their falling bridge. It would be expensive to fix it. So they sold it. To Mr. McCulloch who had each piece of the bridge numbered as it was dismantled then shipped to Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

There he had a concrete bridge built that exactly matched the dimensions of the famous bridge. Then each piece of the original bridge was placed on the exterior of his concrete bridge. So it looks just like it did when it crossed the Thames River. Now it crossed–the desert? Not a problem for the guy who, apparently, had lots of money to spend fulfilling his fantasy. Because once the bridge was rebuilt, he had a channel dredged under it so it would, once again, cross water. Clever guy. Rather than try to find water of the right dimensions, he built the bridge then made the water fit it.

Even after all that, tourists are often disappointed when they see it. They expect to see Tower Bridge which is still in London, England. But you can see bits of Englad if you go to London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Surrounding the welcome center there are fountains, postal boxes, and telephone booths also representing London.

And pubs where you can eat. Which we didn’t do. We’ve been to London. Except for fish and chips there’s really not much to like about English food.

Anyway, here’s the new/old London Bridge.

TTYL,

Linda

You all know by now that we belong to an RV club called Escapees. Through them we have several types of campgrounds available to us. The first category is the Escapee Parks where members can camp at very affordable prices with a first in-first out policy. The second is the Escapee Co-ops where the co-op members own the right to camp on their own lots but they can rent them to the rest of us when they are not using them. The third type is regular campgrounds owned by other people who offer discounts to Escapees.

The Kofa Ko-op is near Yuma, Arizona, so it is pretty much full all winter of co-op members. But there are about a dozen sites where Escapee members can park overnight with no hookups.

Because they have so little space for non-members they got a reputation for being not friendly. That wasn’t helped by hiring a park manager who had no patience so she would be rude to people who stopped there expecting to get a cheap place to camp. Their reputation finally got so bad they had to do something about it. So they fired their office manager and started a Welcome Wagon.

We had only been there long enough to level the RV and open the slides when the Welcome Wagon Lady came calling. She gave us a welcome packet and offered to answer any questions we had. We couldn’t think of any questions so she was soon on her way.

But in the packet she left behind was a zip-top bag labeled “Your KOFA KO-OP Friendship Bag… a few reminders of our new friendship.” It contains several items with explanations of them that I want to share with you.

Lifesaver–To remind you that every now and then we all need a little help.

Rubber Band–To remind you to be flexible.

Candy Kiss and Hug–Because we all need a hug and kiss now and again.

Paper Clip–To help you keep it together.

Candle–To remind you to share the light.

Marble–To keep you rolling. Or in case you loose one.

Happy Face–Because smiling is contagious. Pass it on!!

Band-Aid–To help patch a hurt–your own or someone else’s.

Eraser–To remind you that you can start every day with a clean slate.

Hug Koupons–to share a hug, anytime. [Reedemable by any participating human.]

I think we all need some of those things sometimes, don’t you?

TTYL,

Linda

As a teenager, I took Driver’s Ed in school. I learned all the things I needed to know to pass my driving test plus the importance of driving defensively. I’m a pretty good driver. But man, this behemoth we just bought scares me. I’ve never driven anything even close to that size. So, being the intelligent person I am, I signed up for Driver’s Ed again.

This one is called RV Driving School. You can check them out at http://www.rvschool.com/. Since, I wanted to have confidence in Dave’s driving as well, we signed up for a combination class where we would take turns driving for two days of six hours per day. I had my doubts about my ability to spend that much time doing this but our instructor, Dan Sheppard, said he could work with us on timing and what we’d do when. We ended up doing three hours on Friday afternoon, two three-hour sessions on Saturday, and a final one Sunday morning with the morning ones starting at 9 am rather than the usual 8 am.

To make it easier on all of us Dan has an RV lot with a casita and two RV full hookup spots in the Yuma, Arizona, area. He and his wife live in their RV using one set of hookups and he rents the other one to his students.

This is so none of us will have to function quite so early in the morning. It turns out Dan is not an early morning person, either. Each morning he came out to greet us still eating his cereal.

Then once he and Dave checked everything out we set off for our lessons.

It was fantastic! Dan taught us how to use our RV as a measuring device. We learned how to set up our mirrors so we could see the things we’d need to be able to see.  We learned how to line up the side curb along the windshield wipers then how far to pull forward to be able turn right corners without driving over the curb. We learned how to line up the center line of the cross street in our side window to turn left without wiping out the car waiting there for its own left turn. We learned how to line up our tailpipe with a campsite’s entrance to get in with enough room on each side to be able to open our slides. We leaned how much tail swing our RV has in case we ever get parked next to the railing of a ferry so we know how to exit the ferry without hitting the railing. We learned how many typical traffic lanes it takes us to be able to make a U-turn. We learned how to test our air brakes. We learned how to make our engine shift into high idle and when and why to do that. We learned how to use our transmission and exhaust brake to help us go up and down mountains. And we learned how to keep the transmission from hunting back and forth for the correct gear which can make me car sick.

We are now exhausted but we know a LOT more about how to handle this behemoth we bought. You are safe being in our vicinity when we are driving now. Of course, I need LOTS of practice yet so don’t come too close if you see me trying to park the thing.

TTYL,

Linda

Nick & Terry Russell, who publish the Gypsy Journal, some RV how-to books, and several blogs, http://gypsyjournal.net/blog/ sponsor two rallies each year. We are currently attending one in Yuma, Arizona.

Arrival day in the staging area where RVs lined up waiting to be escorted to camping sites looked like this.

Yuck. I had to walk through that muck from the motorhome to the car. Dave had it worse; he had to unhook the car from the motorhome in that muck.

Here’s the good news.  Look how close to an entrance gate they had us park. That’s Dave coming through the gate with our dash and windshield wiper in the foreground.

But, here’s more bad news–our electrical hookup. It’s only 20 amp. When it works at all. Dave has had to go our several times to reset the circuit breaker.

Then more good news. The seminars have been fun and informative and the vendors have lots of good stuff we need.

Of course, that means we are spending lots of money. Here’s the company that got most of the money doing upgrades to our RV.

At least now our car has it’s own braking system for when we are towing it so it won’t try to push the coach if we should have an emergency. And the coach itself should be much easier to handle while driving down the road. We’ll find out how true that is when we take our driving lessons starting tomorrow afternoon.

In the sunshine.

Which we’ve had all week once that first day’s rain was over.

Life is good.

TTYL,

Linda