The Annual Christmas Letter

2010 Holiday Greetings to all our friends and family…

You would think after more than three years on the road that we would have “been there done that” by now…but we found wonderful new places to visit this year and already have fun plans for 2011. We also made a decision to spend our winters in Lake Havasu City for the foreseeable future and have bought a lot in an “own your lot” RV park there. We had a storage building constructed, complete with full BEAUTIFUL bathroom. I now have a Jacuzzi tub and Larry has a ginormous tiled shower that is constructed in such a way that the water doesn’t splash out the door so there is no glass door to clean. (YAY). We have a few amenities to make RV living a little easier while we’re there such as a washer/dryer, big refrigerator freezer and a wet bar on a covered patio. We have lots of new friends there and look forward to nice peaceful winters from now on. I’m looking into volunteer work at the local animal shelter and Larry has set up his whole reloading outfit in the shed so we’ll keep busy.

Construction of the shed (or Casita as they are called in the resort) kept us in Lake Havasu City later than we wanted. June is HOT. It was 118 degrees when we finally left. We went back to Los Angeles over Fathers’ Day to be there for our grandsons’ first Disneyland trip and had a blast with them before we headed out for our annual travels.

We visited Kartchner Caverns in Benson AZ. They have done a wonderful job of keeping the cave “alive” and it is well worth the visit if you’re in the area. From there we traveled through New Mexico, spending some time in Albuquerque before heading up to Raton and the NRA Center there. They have a very nice, if rustic, campground. Lots of wildlife…in fact, Larry heard a snort in the bushes when he was outside smoking that sent him scurrying back inside the rig. The next morning we found a dirty bear paw print on the front of the motor home…apparently the bear tried to peek in the windshield. We continued from there up to Castle Rock CO to see the grandkids again (and their parents, too), made our second stop at the Terry Bison Ranch in Cheyenne WY and then spent a couple weeks in Rapid City SD. We REALLY like Rapid City. Have seriously thought about settling there when we stop traveling - even looked at a few homes for sale. Too bad about those winters. There was a pretty nasty hail storm when we were there. Minimal damage to the rig. Broken marker light and a few small holes in the slide toppers. Leaving South Dakota, we stopped for a couple of days at Devil’s Tower (pretty impressive) on our way to Montana and Glacier National Park. We both fell in love with the Flat Head Lake area and plan to spend at least a month there next summer. It is beautiful and peaceful. There aren’t words to describe Glacier. It’s amazing. So are HUCKLEBERRIES. We ate a LOT of huckleberry ice cream when we were in the area. Leaving Montana we visited with friends in Washington, Oregon and Northern California on our way back to Lake Havasu. Right now we’re sitting in Los Angeles. We’ve done our annual visits with the medics (all good) and are looking forward to Christmas with family before we head back to Havasu for New Years and the rest of the winter.

While we were in the South Bay of LA, we found ourselves a new toy. We’ll be taking a Can Am Commander 800N UTC back to Havasu with us. It’s a side by side seat quad. Lots of fun out in the desert. We have BLM land right outside of the RV park and anticipate a lot of fun trips with it. It can also be made street legal in Arizona (as well as South Dakota) so we can use it as a second vehicle in the winters, too. We were really lucky to find this on the showroom floor…..there are people on waiting lists for MONTHS but mostly they want the big engine and, being old farts, we settled for the smaller one.

We hope this finds you all well and happy. Christmas is such a special time for friends and family. I miss the fun of throwing our annual Christmas party. With love and good wishes……