Frerx Adventures

Is This Winter???? & A Death in the Family

2012-02-07T00:10:00.001-06:00

Since the first of January there have been more days over 60 than below zero! Unheard of in Western Illinois! Usually January here has several days where the temperature does not get out of the teens and only a day or two that the temps get near fifty. This winter we have no days below zero that I can remember and many days in the sixties with only one snow that needed to be shoveled out of the driveway. I know several of you hard core republicans out there don’t believe in science, but you got to wonder if there might be such a thing as climate change.

Crazy weather does make for great sunsets!

Also with the wild weather, I was able to see the “northern lights” late one night! They were behind a row of clouds on the northern horizon and it took a few minutes for me to recognize what they were. It was like there were several colored search lights moving around behind the clouds.

On January 13th my mother died. She was 93! She is survived by 10 children, 30 grandchildren and 37 great grand children! She was quite a lady. While raising 10 kids she worked the garden, raised chickens, was a 4H leader, made quilts, and helped at church. Then after the kids were raised she continued her work at the church, to make quilts and crochet as well as travel. The last few months she suffered from dementia and lived in a nursing home. Years ago the ever practical Mildred had made up her mind that when she died she wanted her body “to go to science.” As per her wishes her body was shipped off to Washington University in St Louis. By doing this it allowed us to have her funeral/memorial on the weekend when it would be easier for family members to travel.

All my brothers and sisters…one of the few times in recent years when we were all together!

My mothers death was a relief. It was hard on my older brother and sisters to be the ones taking care of her. She did not know where she was or who anyone was. I had said my goodbye several months ago when I saw the light return to her eyes. We were able to talk for about a minute before the light faded. She told me she was scared… how do you answer that! With my illness, I had been near death a time or two and in those situations it would be easy to just relax and let go. So that is what I told her. I told her we would all be fine and it was ok if she wanted to let go. Now some of the family members are struggling with guilty feelings for feeling relieved that she is dead. I guess that is normal and natural.

On the way to our house for the funeral, our son and daughter in law, hit a deer totaling their car. They ended up in the ditch destroying the passenger side of the car. Lucky their car had side airbags or Kyle might have gotten hurt. As is was, he was just stiff and bruised for the funeral. So the next Saturday after the services we went car shopping!

While the kids were looking at a car, I ducked into the show room. Cindy and I have been looking to replace our A4, but I just could not justify trading our old A4 in on this new A5. It is a thing of beauty but these cars have gone up $20,000.00 in the past seven years! Top down, forty mile an hour exits at eighty, Led Zeppelin “When the Levee Breaks” blaring away, then blue and red lights and the bubble bursts. When we first got our A4 seven years ago, Cindy and I combined to get 3 speeding tickets in six months. She sure is pretty!

Ah back to reality, Kyle and Jenni were able to find a nice used Maxima in Springfield. It drives well has a moon roof, leather and is big enough for Kyle’s to get comfortable. I believe they got a good deal too. The salesman told them he would hold a car that Jenni had fallen for on an earlier test drive. But before they could get back with a checkbook another salesman had sold the car. Jenni was mad and she let the salesman know it! All 4foot of her! Kyle used that in the negations on the Maxima to get a better price. We all know not to upset the women but now I know you really do not want to upset the little women!

Christmas

2012-01-04T16:42:00.001-06:00

Traditionally, Christmas for us starts shortly after Thanksgiving. Kyle and Jenni helped get the decorations started on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Then while Cindy worked I continued cleaning, decorating some everyday till I got the house ready. Then it was shopping. Most of our shopping is done on line, which I think is much easier. Things that may not fit or might get exchanged we try to buy locally.

But this year was different, WE GET to BUY TOYS!!!!! On weekends when Cindy was home we would walk the toy isle to see what was new. We were amazed that some of the toys were the same as they were thirty years ago. We had fun playing with the toys in the stores and before wrapping them. I thought we were almost done (we only needed one more present) when the grand parent urge hit. I had picked Cindy up at the St Louis airport and we had stopped to eat as we usually do. At dinner we discussed where we were on the Christmas preparations: Decorations, cleaning, party plans, all done and presents one to go. We only needed stuffed Santa or other Christmas like stuffed creature for an exchange gift. Toys R Us was around the corner so we stopped there. That was a mistake for new grandparents! Too many toys! As you guessed our “one more present to get” turned into several filling the trunk!

Another part of Christmas that Cindy would not miss is the candy making Sunday at Kathleen’s. This year was different here too. Kathleen is undergoing cancer treatment so the girls stepped up to take a greater role in the kitchen while Kathleen took breaks in the recliner.

Sweet tooth delight!

The kids help with the organized confusion!

Looks way too serious!

The girls really have fun making the candy. Cindy’s sister Kathleen usually organizes the proceedings with her three daughters and one daughter in law and of course Cindy. They work from mid morning with help from the kids and occasional help from the guys (between the football games). The day ends with a very tasty roast beef and turkey sandwiches fixed in crock pots. The homemade candies are used as treats at the various work and home parties and some are given away as presents to some lucky people.

The week before Christmas, our neighbor called looking for my help. The Santa for their school was sick and she was looking for a stand in Santa. Having never done anything like that before, I was very hesitant to do it. I did not want to disappoint the kids by making a mistake and ruining their Christmas. But if I didn’t step up they might not have a Santa at the school party. So I did it! The school is K through 3rd grade with one special ed class. I had help from a pair of helper elf's that made my job easy. One elf organized the tee shirts and checked to make sure the next room was ready for us. The other elf lead me around and helped pass out the candy canes and tee shirt to each child. All I had to do was play the part and have fun with the kids. The toughest request that I was asked was: “All I want for Christmas is a ride in Santa’s sleigh.” Luckily we were interrupted before I attempted a answer. All in all the kids were great and I had a great time too.

Dress rehearsal with Sox and Ditka!

Santa gets caught!

Too late to sneak up the fireplace!

Ah! This works, blending in with the other Santa's!

While working from home Cindy would take breaks to wrap presents.

Wrap, wrap, …………………………………………………..Oh what did I just wrap!

Christmas eve is our big Christmas celebration. Most of the Frericks family get together at our house for the evening. During the party I move the dog gate to the top of the stairs to keep the dogs confined.

Ethan came in the front door and went right up the steps to see the dogs. His parents did not even get their coats off!

Ron and Lois are in the party mood!

We played our exchange game and ate before I was talked into:

Eventually the party wound down and everyone headed home. Then it was our turn. It has become a tradition that after the party ends, the immediate family opens their presents.

Christmas day was Christmas all over again! Trevor Leah and Jameson stayed in Chicago on Christmas eve to celebrate with Leah’s family, driving to our house on Christmas day. So Christmas evening we got to celebrate all over again!

The center of attention! Like most kids his age Jameson was more interested in paper and bows than the toys.

The look says it all … can I play now!

Grandpa’s favorite toy……………………..…Jameson favorite toy…………..until………………He saw mom and the bottle!

All too soon it’s all over! The house was full of noise and activity crowded with people everywhere, then all of the sudden the house is quiet and empty feeling. Trevor, Leah, and Jameson left first so they could get back for their jobs. Kyle and Jenni were able stay a little longer, but they too needed to get back to work. For the first day or two it was a little clean up and a lot of relaxing. Cindy resumed work from home and since it was unseasonably warm outside I took down the outside decorations. Then the flu set in. First Cindy then me. Neither of us felt fully recovered till the new year. Now the house is back to “normal” and Cindy is back to work. Her first assignment was to be in Cincinnati for two days. Since it was only two days I decided to play chauffer and drove. So today I’m writing this blog from the motel room. Tomorrow while she works I’ll explore the area a bit.

Snow and Catching Up

2011-12-08T15:10:00.001-06:00

It snowed here two days ago! We had a good snow during the day then a little more overnight. The ground was not froze so most of the snow melted as it landed but enough came down to cover the ground about an inch deep! This picture is looking out the back door onto the golf course.

The snow really makes it feel like winter. Just before Thanksgiving I winterized the RV and just recently had it serviced. Before parking it on blocks I filled the fuel and propane tanks in preparations for winter. We had talked about going south for the winter after Christmas but we need to be back here in February for a baby shower that Cindy and the daughter in laws are hosting. So I will be spending the winter at home while Cindy works. We have a routine now … I drive her to St Louis airport on Sunday evenings and pick her up on Thursday evenings. It is a two hour drive that I have come to enjoy. I purchased some college courses that I listen to on the road. They are put out by Great Courses and are usually very good. They can be expensive so I only buy them when they have their 70% off sales.

Now to catch up!

Even though I complained about the leaves in the last post, I really enjoy the fall. Especially sports playoffs. We went to High School soccer play offs with Kyle and Jenni. This game was of special interest to Kyle as it was his new home town playing his old High school. Both he and I have coached soccer. I coached for 14 years, mostly younger kids and when he coaches it is usually kids that are in high school or just before high school. He knows the game better and is the better coach, I just have fun teaching the little kids the basics.

Soccer play offs in the Midwest! As you can see this is definitely farm country! Kyle’s alma mater won this game and then went on to win the state championship!

I also called a buddy and took him to see one of the best high school football games I’ve seen since Trevor was playing. Neither of us had a connection to the teams but I had heard that the quarterback on one team was really good and that the other team had a really good running back. They did not disappoint! Both the quarterback and running back put on a show with the game going to overtime. The winning score came on a pass from the quarterback in a back and forth game. Very enjoyable game … too bad someone had to lose!

As some of you know our youngest son bought a house in Palos Heights. The weekend after the closing we drove the RV to Joliet to help move and set things up. Cindy job was to take care of our grandson while Leah was a work and Trevor and I worked on the house.

It was King’s job to keep an eye on the neighborhood and let us know what was going on!

After working on the washer and dryer and doing some other small jobs outside it was time to set up the TV and the shelving around it. Leah did a good job picking out the shelves and designing how it look when done.

One shelf up and now for the TV.

After moving the wiring into boxes behind the TV we finally hung the TV and began putting up the bottom shelf.

During one of our breaks, Cindy snapped this picture of the happy new home owners.

The highlight of the day came when everyone got to see Jameson roll over for the first time! Cindy, Auntie Em, and Leah all recorded the feat!

We were able to get a lot done on Friday night and Saturday. Sunday morning we had breakfast with Leah’s family and returned to the house to finish up and pack up tools. That afternoon I took Cindy to O'Hare to fly back to work and I returned to the RV to walk the dogs and relax.

Monday morning I drove from Joliet to Carlinville to see Kyle and fix a leaking toilet. When in Carlinville we stay a Beaver Dam State Park. It is a very popular park with the locals so I was pleasantly surprised that there was only three campers in the whole park!

The weather was in the 50’s and 60’s with partial sunshine…beautiful days!

The lake at Beaver Dam.

After returning home, I called a tree trimmer to take care of the leaf problem that I mentioned in the last blog!

No actually I called him to take care of some storm damage that was too high up for me. So while he was there I had him top some trees that were close to the house.

The tree trimmers finished up on Wednesday before Thanksgiving just before we celebrated our Thanksgiving. All the kids had their plans for Thanksgiving day so we had a unthanks giving meal with the kids the night before. No turkey, no dressing, none of that, they would get all of that on Thursday. We had pot roast mashed potato carrots and fried apples with biscuits. Also Cindy fixed the most unusual food I’d ever heard of.

Chocolate covered bacon!!!! It was good!!!! But you could only eat one. Fat on a stick with chocolate and nuts, mmmm!

After Thanksgiving and before they returned to their home on Sunday they helped start the Christmas decorations.

Sox and Santa on the stairs.

During the following week I finished the decorations inside and out..now we are ready for winter and Christmas!

KP.

PS: Jim our plant experiment did not work. We kept the pots small to make them easy to move but the plants need bigger pots. Then when we moved I put the plants in the back of the Jeep and the ride there shook the peppers and tomatoes off the vine.

PS: Dee we now have a Culvers in town!

Love it … Hate it

2011-11-02T11:54:00.001-06:00

You got to love the fall! The grass lands are subtle shades of purple and beige, the shrubs are bright reds, the trees are blazing yellows, oranges mixed with greens and browns all under brilliantly clear blue sky. You got to love it!

But the leaves won’t stay on the trees! What a waste of time and energy … raking leaves … argh!!! Hate it! We have a small lot but have 18 trees or big shrubs that all drop their leaves. Do they drop their leave at the same time? Oh no that would be too easy! The decorative trees are done, the hard maples half done, soft maple will go on for months, oaks won’t get good start till December, Mulberry trees are just starting now…. If the leaves would just stay on the trees!!!

Don’t get me wrong, I planted most of the trees in the yard and love them all but one. Love the trees, I could be a tree hugger if the need arose! But the leaves! Halloween day I raked a small area in the front yard and had leaves piled head high under one tree! Today I ran the mulcher over the yard several times. Now more leaves are falling. Where is that 50 mph wind when you need it!

Where is the best fall color?

I seen the fall colors in Colorado, Ozarks, Upstate New York and all along the Mississippi River, it is all good! But the best I’ve seen was in the north east corner of Alabama in the Desoto State Park and Little River Canyon area. The water falls, rocks, tree colors just gorgeous! I looked for pictures because I took a lot, but can not find them. If you search “Desoto” in top left corner of the blog you can see several pictures. These pictures are pre Picasa so are un touched! The amazing thing about the fall colors was that the locals that we talked too all said that it was not a good year because it had been too dry and color was sometimes brighter and the waterfalls were not running as strong as usual!

Detroit …. Actually Novi and Farmington Hills Area

2011-10-17T20:02:00.001-05:00

A typical day here is up at six. While Cindy gets ready I make coffee, then a short walk with the dogs, and then fix a couple eggs for Cindy’s breakfast. We usually leave the RV around seven. It takes twenty five to thirty minutes to get to her place of work depending on traffic. So I am usually back at the RV by eight or eight fifteen. We found a way to get to her office avoiding the Interstate using city streets. It is a lot less stressful and no traffic jams.

After I get back to the RV is when I cleanup, fix my breakfast, watch the news I recorded, and take the dogs for a longer walk. By then it is ten o’clock or so and time for a nap. Ah the life of a kept man! After my nap it is time to eat again. Most days I will eat leftovers at the RV but occasionally I will run to town to eat with Cindy. She found a small Thai restaurant that has great food and good service, so it has become a favorite lunch stop.

In the afternoon it’s another walk with the dogs and chores of some kind or other before leaving to pick up Cindy. About half the nights we eat at the RV the other half we eat out somewhere. That’s the fun part of the day. We had never been to a Red Robin so we had to check them out. But the best was one night when we made a wrong turn and ended up across the street from a strip mall. Cindy can spot a restaurant any where and she spotted one in that strip mall, and it was a good one. It was an Italian restaurant called Maisanos (I am learning…you just witnessed my first link!). It is a small nicely decorated family restaurant with the owner hanging around a small bar greeting people as they came and went. Cindy is much better at choosing wines and again she picked a good one. With the wine we had our appetizers of soup and then our meal. This restaurant is known for the sauces they use on the entrees but the soups were excellent also. One of the best meals we have ever had at any price.

On Friday night, we went to a play at the local playhouse. The Farmington Players (#2 link…. not a virgin anymore!) presented To Kill A Mockingbird. The young girl that played “Scout” the daughter of the stories hero was spell binding, she was that good. The playhouse is in a converted barn so it has a unique appearance from the outside. The stage and seating were nicely arranged with comfortable seating and good acoustics. It was a nice evening.

Cindy had heard from the people she worked with that there was a minor league hockey team in the area and that they were fun to watch. So on Saturday evening we watched our first hockey game. The Plymouth Whalers play at Compuware Arena in Plymouth MI which is only 10 to 12 miles from the RV park.

Cool Logo!

It was Pink Out! night at the hockey game and the home team were wearing pink and black jerseys and the crowd was encouraged to wear pink. At the entrance to the arena anyone who wanted could get their hair painted pink … Cindy said she would do it if I would and I politely used the excuse that we were going out to eat afterwards.

The opposing team had a keeper with the name of Hope and wore the number one. So we teased that they had only one Hope and later when he was substituted out we teased that now they had no hope! It was a great game, the Whalers took an early 3-0 lead in the first part of the game and had a lot more shots on goal. But the visiting team came out with a more determined attack and out shot the home team sending the game to overtime, then eventually winning the game. An exciting game! Now Cindy wants to go to a pro game! Before we do that we will need to figure out that blue line .. we determined that it had something to do with offside but not exactly. Good times!!

Next week will be a short week as Cindy will work while I drive and we head to Eastern Illinois for Football on their homecoming weekend!

Chicago, Quincy, Kankakee, and Detroit

2011-10-11T15:57:00.001-05:00

After our babysitting weekend I had planned to go to Carlinville to work on my son Kyle's house. However, his wife Jenni was sick with a sinus infection so I told them I would do it at a later date. So now I had three unplanned days. Well if your me and you have unscheduled time what to do what to do? I did my favorite thing not much.

After driving back to Quincy, I cleaned and washed the RV. That took all of Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I did a little yard work and played cards with a buddy of mine. Thursday did laundry and did some repacking of the RV before heading to St. Louis to pick up Cindy.

Friday was Cindy’s hair and nails day and then a visit with her sister. Me it was some errands and another card game.

Saturday we drove to Kankakee River State Park for the night. We called Trevor and Leah and they met us in Frankfort for dinner at a nice Italian restaurant called Francesca’s. The food was excellent! Leah and Trevor had been there before so Leah ordered some of their really good appetizers with some risotto to share. We had wine with dinner then some of us had a cappuccino for dessert.

Sunday morning we continued our drive to Detroit area. We arrived early enough to explore a different route from the RV park to Cindy’s place of work. The GPS was taking us onto the interstate for a few mile before exiting again. The problem with this route was that there were two lanes in the on ramp joining three lanes on the interstate so it was five lanes quickly reduced to three lanes. Every morning this intersection was a mess. We found two other ways that were both faster and much less stressful than the interstate. So it was well worth the time it took to find these routes and once again you can not always trust the GPS.

So Monday morning I took Cindy to work and got back in time for these early morning pictures.

KP.

A Week End With Jameson

2011-10-03T15:46:00.000-05:00

When we last saw our hero I was dropping her off at the St Louis Airport on Monday morning with plans to pick her up at O'Hare in Chicago on Thursday evening. So on Wednesday I drove the RV to Joliet and Leisure Lake Membership Resort.

Our campsite and view out the front window. Leisure Lake is a membership campground but they keep a number of sites open for short term stays. It is a nice park and is generally clean and well maintained but can get crowded and slightly rowdy on the major holiday weekends. Otherwise it is a nice place to stay.

After picking up Cindy we went to Portillo’s for dinner. We really enjoy their Italian Beef Sandwich and Chocolate cake. They are located all around the Chicago area and I have not seen them anywhere else. Our daughter in law Leah took us to one on one of our first visits to the area and it has become a favorite for a quick and good meal.

Friday morning we picked up Jameson at Trevor and Leah’s. They were going with another couple to see friends of theirs that had move to Minnesota to coach football. So we had the honor of taking care of Jameson Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday.

Jameson is such an easy baby to care for … We and the kids are very blessed to have such an easy going baby!!

While Cindy worked via phone and pc, Jameson and I watched college football, drank coffee and studied the maps looking for those elusive shortcuts. Cindy did eventually get me out of the chair and we took Jameson and the dogs for a walk around the lake. But first we had to figure out how to assemble the stroller. Here we go showing our age we can’t even figure out how to use a stroller! We eventually got it and had a nice walk that we repeated a number of times over the weekend.

Eventually Cindy was able to pry Jameson away from me for a turn with the baby!

Sunday afternoon I delivered Cindy back to O’Hare before dropping Jameson off at Trevor and Leah’s. I was not keen on the idea of driving from the airport to their house with Jameson alone in the backseat. I was worried about him getting upset or needing attention during the 45 minute drive, but again he was calm and slept most of the way.

So ends a happy weekend with the grandbaby!

A Visit From Good Friends

2011-09-26T13:38:00.000-05:00

After the Christening, Cindy returned to work in Farmington Hills and on Monday I drove home to Quincy for a week of appointments. I had eye and doctor appointments and the dogs had a grooming appointment . Then on Thursday evening I drove to St. Louis to pick up Cindy. On Friday we got our chores done in anticipation of visits from our son and daughter-in-law Kyle and Jenni, and from our good friends Jim and Dee.

Kyle and Jenni were in town to participate in a fund raiser sponsored by Jenni’s parents and to see Jenni’s brothers. Jim and Dee came to see us since we were not going to be able to see them later in the year. We had both planned to meet at “camping with Lisa” in October but for both of us it was no longer possible. Camping with Lisa is a blast, I am going to miss seeing everyone there. Lisa and Tony are great hosts and even better people.

Jim and Dee arrived late morning on Saturday. After chatting over home made chicken and wild rice soup we took Jim and Dee for a tour of Quincy. Being history buffs they seemed to really enjoyed visiting the site of one of the Lincoln Douglas Debates.

Another highlight for Dee was a tour of the golf course. Out our backdoor is a public golf course and Dee had never been on a golf course before. We walked two holes showing her the tees, fairways, rough, and greens. She got the biggest kick out of the ball washer. You gotta know Dee!

To end the day we played a game of hand and foot, where Dee and I allowed Cindy and Jim to slaughter us. Here is a picture of Jim and Cindy plotting our demise!

We had a great visit and after breakfast we said goodbye to Jim and Dee and later in the day Kyle and Jenni. Then to bed early as Cindy was flying out of St. Louis on early Monday morning. Alarms set for 4:30 AM.

Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, con’t … Jameson Christening

2011-09-18T09:58:00.000-05:00

After setting up at Leisure Lake Trevor stopped by with grandbaby Jameson.

As you can see Grandma was ecstatic! Jameson changes so much between visits, he is quickly becoming a little boy!

We spent the day catching up with Trevor and spoiling Jameson!

On Saturday we went to stock up on groceries and on the way we saw the Goodyear blimp at the Joliet Airport. Besides the big event of Jameson’s Christening the area was also hosting the lesser events of a pro golf tournament and a Nascar race.

On the way to Chicago this weekend I saw the Met Life blimp struggling in the wind. It was vacillating between nose up and nose down and moving side to side. Needless to say it did not look like the comfortable floating on the air image we all have.

Sunday morning we Christened Jameson.

Then had a get together at Grandma Amy’s house.

Near the end of the day Trevor and I delivered Cindy to the airport so she could return to Farmington Hills…Of course her flight was delayed! We received a message that the flight was delayed as we were entering the departure lanes at the airport. She decided to wait it out and only had to wait a couple of hours.

I returned to the RV for the night, driving back to Quincy the next morning.

Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, con’t

2011-09-15T21:45:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday afternoon Cindy got to the RV in mid afternoon so we packed up leaving the Cincinnati area and headed for Detroit area. She had an appointment in Farmington Hills near Detroit early in the afternoon on Thursday and again Friday morning. We had planned to drive most of the way Thursday afternoon and evening and stop at a truck stop (again) driving the balance in the morning. At about dark we found a Flying J that had a large parking lot off to the side for RVs.

When your tried and hungry is when you make mistakes. At the Flying J I grabbed the wrong pump putting unleaded fuel in the diesel tank. When I realized my mistake I was sick. We spent the next several hours getting the tank pumped out and refueling with diesel. One good thing was that I realized my mistake before I started the engine, therefore the filters and fuel lines were all ok. The worst part about the whole thing was that after we were done with the RV and were parked in the Flying J, Cindy was unable to get any sleep because of the worry and the noise. One thing I learned was that Coach net emergency road side assistance only covers mechanical beak downs. Now I have Good Sam emergency road side assistance and they said the towing would have been covered.

Shortly after daylight we drove the rest of the way to Farmington Hills and parked the RV at Haas Lake Park. We had time to get cleaned up and meet our neighbors before I drove Cindy to her meeting. Shame on me but I went back to the RV and slept till she called for a ride. Friday the meetings were over at noon so we again hit the road to get ahead of the traffic heading for Chicago.

The campground that we stay at in the Chicago area is actually in Shorwood and is called Leisure Lake. It is a membership campground, but have spaces for rent like a normal campground. It is a gated campground with the office closing at 7:00 and we knew when we left Haas Lake that it would be unlikely that we could get there before they closed. We spent the night at a small campground call Kamp Across From the Dunes in Sawyer MI. arriving early enough to drive to the dunes and site see a bit.

These are some of the dunes along the shore of Lake Michigan and the beach area. We had stayed at the Indiana Dunes State Park a few years ago and this area is very similar. Both are beautiful areas. For dinner, the campground owner recommended a café in the next town just a couple of miles up the road. The name escapes me but the food was excellent and inexpensive, the pie was so good that after sharing a piece we decided that I needed to take a piece back to the RV for a late night snack.

Saturday morning we drove on to Chicago. To our surprise all four lanes on I80 were open making it a easy drive. Later we learned that they had opened I80 for the weekend because of the NASCAR race and the BMW golf tournament that weekend.

Next Blog is all about Jameson!

kp.

Catching up! Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago

2011-09-11T14:37:00.000-05:00

Over the next few days I hope to get everyone caught up! I will start with Cincinnati. The Sunday of Labor Day weekend we left for Cincinnati. It is never good traveling on a holiday weekend so after a few phone calls to campgrounds we decided to stay in truck stop. This always creates a problem because I feel more secure in the noisier truck stop and can usually get some sleep and Cindy get little or no sleep, whereas in a Walmart parking lot I won’t sleep because I don’t feel secure and Cindy can sleep. So after I got some sleep and Cindy got a little sleep we pulled up to the truck pumps like we normally do and were told we could not get fuel at the truck pumps because they were commercial only in Indiana. We were told to pull out to the front pumps to get our diesel. The price at the non commercial pumps was almost 40 cents a gallon higher. Learned something new: Don’t Fuel-up In Indiana!! We had enough fuel to get on our way so we stopped down the road further at a Flying J and got enough fuel to get out of Indiana and had breakfast too.

We arrived at our campground mid day as we had planned. We wanted to get there and get setup early enough to drive around northern Cincinnati to find the locations of Cindy’s meetings. From the campground to her offices was only about a twenty minute drive in moderate traffic. Not too bad! We had planned to stay at a campground closer in but they were full. I am glad they were, the campground we stayed in was much nicer and cleaner. We stayed at the Olive Branch Campground in Oregonia OH. It was kind of pricey but we have found that most campgrounds near bigger cities are pricey.

Later that evening Cindy found a café on one of the travel apps that was highly recommended and it was only a couple of miles from the campground. The Little River Café was almost full when we arrived with the parking lot full of bicycles and motorcycles. We had a very nice meal before heading back to the RV and a good nights sleep.

While Cindy was working and attending meetings I got to know our neighbors and the surrounding area. The people I met were great, all of them friendly. The surrounding area (northeast of Cincinnati) is very hilly with small rivers that have become kayak and rafting areas. The roads to these areas are steep with lots of sharp turns. Along these roads you can see the entrances to Y Camps, Church Camps, and Salvation Army Youth Camps.

On Sunday we decided to go to the Cincinnati Zoo. It is the United States second oldest zoo and is in the older part of Cincinnati. Cindy and I enjoy zoos, we like watching the kids as much as watching the animals.

And of course the monkeys:

This group all had diaper rash!

Towards the end of the day at the zoo it started to rain and we cut our visit short but all in all it was a fun day!

We had planned on staying in Cincinnati for at least two weeks but the company had other plans for us. On Wednesday they decided that Cindy needed to be in Detroit on Friday for a meeting…..more to come!

Here We Go!

2011-09-08T14:47:00.019-05:00

Since Cindy has gone back to work, I have been placed in charge of the blog. As many of you know I am a terrible speller (I was in Sixth Grade when I learned that it was not git but get) and a hunt and peck typer. So please be patient as it may take me awhile to get the blog going again.

Here We Go!

Cindy began work traveling to Cincinnati for a few days for her orientation and to pick up her work computer and cell phone. After that she spent three weeks in West Palm Beach, and now we are in Cincinnati. At first I stayed home because it did not make sense to travel with her. I would drive her to St Louis to catch her plane on Monday morning and then pick her up late night on Thursday. I also took the RV Beaver Dam State Park to work on Kyle's House while Cindy was away. Now she was sent back to Cincinnati to help on a project here. This time it worked for us to travel with the RV. We left Quincy on Labor Day Sunday spending the night at a Pilot and arriving in Cincinnati Monday afternoon, giving us plenty of time to set up and familiarize ourselves with the area.

Our site at Olive Branch Campground in Oregonia, Ohio

The campground here is just north and east of Cincinnati and Cindy's two work locations are both on the north side of Cincinnati making it a twenty minute drive to work. Nice campground with gravel sites and friendly people.

Since Cindy's last blog we have had visits from both of our sons and daughters in law. The weekend we left Kyle and Jenni were in town for Kyles' 10 year High School Reunion. They had a lot of fun at the reunion and football game. One of the bad things about returning to a work schedule was leaving town while Kyle and Jenni were still at the house and shorting our time together.

The weekend prior to that Trevor and Leah brought Jameson to Quincy to meet his relatives here.

Notice that Aunt Shelia is holding Jameson.. He had lots of loving that day!

While Trevor and Leah slept in the mornings Jameson and Grandpa watched and talked about the humming bird feeding on our flowers and listened to the turtle dove coo to us from the neighbors roof.

Grandma time! Both of them with smiles!

Just too precious!

It took me most of the afternoon to write this blog because I did it all in blogger. I had forgotten how to use live writer and upload the pictures to/from there. I will have to spend some time re-learning them and figure out how to do links etc. I will get it figured out and promise better blogs in the future. For now Cindy seems to like her work and I can relax in the RV and visit with the neighbors. We will be here for two weeks then onto Chicago for Jameson's Christening.

Thank God for spell check...Ken F

Change your thoughts and change your world!

Another Big Fork in the Road!

2011-07-30T11:11:00.004-05:00

Yup, as some of you have already caught on, we are about to take another big fork in the road!

It’s been two years this month since Ken and I decided to follow our dream of extended travel in our motorhome.

I had worked for the same company for most of my 32 year career and except for the 6 weeks I stayed home when my sons were born had never not worked full-time.

The past two years have been wonderfully refreshing. I realize now just how totally burned out I was after many years of long hours and excessive stress.

We have been pleasantly surprised to find out that years of analyzing our financial strategies for retirement have held up and we have actually finished these past two years with more money in the bank than we started. So the idea of making my early retirement permanent appears reasonable in terms of the pocketbook.

But, once again, as we face a major decision, it’s not about the money.

During these past two year, Ken and I were able to clearly evaluate what worked and what didn’t work for us on how we live our day-to-day lives. While we love being on the road, it also made us even more appreciative of just how much we love our home and being here with our family. While we truly love the wonderful people who’ve welcomed us into the RV lifestyle, full-timing RVing is not who we are at this point in our lives.

And, as Ken predicted from the beginning, I do not slow down well, or hang up my career and laptop easily. While we gave me a good two years adjustment time, my need for projects and meaningful work hasn’t waned. Yes, I’ve tried blogging and photography and sewing and cooking and gardening and projects around the house—doesn’t do it for me. And, believe me, the kids really don’t appreciate my making them, their homes, etc., my project—while I need something where I can be worrying over the details, it’s not healthy for anyone if I’m making it their lives!

As an option, Ken and I talked about doing either Red Cross on the road or Habitat for Humanity. For us that’s not going to be a good fit either. When Ken is in an environment where things need to get done he can’t find the brake. While Ken’s health has been pretty good on the road, we also know that with more than a few hours exertion, he can be down for the count for several days. Being somewhere where there’s work to be done that he’d be good at and then having to go very slowly not to over due it – that tends to be really maddening for Ken. And, let’s face it, Red Cross or Habitat is in greater need of a piece of my nice paycheck than they are of my remedial skills with a hammer!

In recent months, we’ve come to agreement that I really need to find some real work. My most marketable skills, my decade of experience managing SAP software projects, makes my prior employer the only option within 100 miles of our hometown and I’m not interested in going back there. I really didn’t want to go back in to the director level role at a corporation as the work I really loved was when I was hands-on leading projects. So, do I take considerably lower pay working in a non-SAP role to stay in Quincy or do we move?

As some of you may know, we looked at the moving option when a really interesting position came up with SeaWorld. They had been spun off from Anheuser-Busch after the InBev purchase and were now working on putting together their own corporate offices and their own SAP implementation in Orlando. Nothing like starting basically a new company that already has 10 parks, 20,000 employees and 60000 animals to manage! My kind of challenge!! And, I really liked the idea of working for a company that was so committed to education and conservation. I really liked the folks I’d be working with too. While I loved the level of fairness and respect you saw for employees with Seaworld, in the end, the tight rules they had to try to maintain that fairness made it impossible for me to take the job. They had a non-negotiable vacation policy which meant that I’d only be getting two weeks vacation for several years to come—no negotiating, everybody treated the same. Considering the amount of time it takes to travel back and forth to Quincy from Orlando, that was a deal-breaker for us.

After Seaworld, Ken asked me to take a deep breath and really lay out what it was that would work for us in my ‘phase 2’ career. I’ve continued to follow SAP and the really cool stuff going on in the industry right now—particularly the growth of cloud computing and what that will mean for the future of company business systems—I really missed being part of that discussion on a day-to-day basis. While I wanted to continue working in the SAP arena, I did not want to move away from Quincy right now, and we probably do not want to move away from Illinois longterm. I wanted to work but not if it put a serious hurt on my time with Ken, family and friends. I really didn’t want a job where I spent a lot of time on international travel—despite years of this, I never was able to sleep on planes and that made frequent trips back and forth really brutal on my health. I was also really wary of getting in to a project management job where I’d be leading a team that would be treated like a commodity to be pushed to the max and then discarded. I can’t treat people like that and sleep at night. The culture is a really big deal to me. I like working with manufacturing companies where I can put my production and inventory management to good use. I also like the smaller companies where I can get to know the folks at all levels and really feel a part of their business. Those were my favorite projects in the past.

So I had some very definite ideas of what kind of work I wanted and it aligned more closely with working as a consultant than for a particular company. I could jump in to the consulting market on my own, but the idea of doing my own marketing, the overhead of running my own company, trying to come and insider to the latest industry developments and the limited market for project leaders not tied to a consulting team---it all meant added time and risk, doing parts of the job that weren’t my forte.

There were a few consulting organizations that I had hired over the years that I’d grown to respect. Ken suggested that I pull out my old contacts and start making some inquiries. At the top of my list, considering the type of work I was looking for was itelligence. Itelligence is a consulting company originating in Germany and specializing in the SAP software (which also originated in Germany!) Their specialty has been in developing streamlined implementations for small to medium businesses, especially in manufacturing and distribution companies. They not only implement ‘big’ SAP R3 but also sell and implement the streamlined SAP All in One product, the small company SAP Business One product and the really intriguing SAP ByDesign SaaS product which is run fully over the internet for companies that simply want to buy subscriptions to the software and not have to deal with having the people or hardware on site to support it. I had worked with people from itelligence both in Europe and the US. I always liked what I saw in the caliber of people that itelligence recruited and their lockstep partnership with SAP. In fact, two SAP employees I’d worked with back in the 1990’s and had a lot of respect for were now CEO and Exec Operations VP at itelligence USA. So I decided to send them an inquiry, explaining my desire to jump back in to the SAP arena. I had a response within hours. The next week I was on the phone or in St. Louis talking to 6 different people and received an official offer on Thursday.

I’m really excited about this opportunity, and looking forward to working with the kind of people I see in this organization. Although we talked about a lot of options of where I might focus in the future, especially with my interest in discrete manufacturing solutions, coaching teams, developing methodologies and the whole SaaS trend, my job going in is as SAP Project Manager where I can get my feet on the ground, learn their implementation methodology and see some projects beginning to end. I’ll be headed out to Cincinnati on Monday to begin learning their project management processes and go through a full company orientation the next week.

Does this mean we’ll be ‘coming off the road’. Not really. Itelligence does not require that I relocate to a specific office. While I’m currently officially working out of Quincy, they really don’t care where we live so long as I can get from there to my assignment without excessive time or cost. For example, Ken and I could have just as easily taken the RV over to Cincinnati for the next weeks instead of me travel back and forth to Quincy. In fact, in most cases, the cost to the company for us to travel via RV, mileage allowance and RV park fees, is actually less than my flights, rental car and hotel. Project management assignments will generally run in the 4-6 month range and could be just about anywhere in the US. I travel to the site Monday morning and travel back Thursday night. So for example, if I’m doing a project in Dallas (which is one of the first possibilities, I can fly in and out of Springfield, IL or St. Louis and still be sleeping at home in my own bed 4 nights a week. Of course, it is also quite possible that Ken and I could choose to move the motorhome to Dallas (especially in winter!), or any other project site, for several weeks to months and just fly back to see the kids periodically. If Ken wants to sit the motorhome up in Chicago with the kids for a few weeks, I’ll just fly in and out of Chicago to my assignment and still have long weekends with the kids. The other nice thing about the motorhome is that with the full access to the internet we have via PDAnet and our booster, I can be working while Ken is driving from location to location. Being of good German roots and interest in work/life balance, besides 10 holidays, itelligence offers 4 weeks vacation from the beginning, with 5 weeks after 3 years. This means we should still be able to get in some nice road trips between projects.

Is it easy work? Heck no! Unless you’ve been through a complete replacement of the computer system at a company, it’s really hard to appreciate all the planning, details, testing and contingencies. For the time you are implementing, that company becomes your company, and your job is to make them better with a whole new way of doing things, while not disrupting the business. Sometimes that means 20 hour days, sometimes that means going toe-to-toe with some folks that don’t want to hear what you have to say, sometimes that means wiping the tears and listening when someone is seeing the whole way they’ve done their job for years change. It’s challenging and exciting and stressful and intense. And, I miss it and am thrilled to have found a way where we can make it work in our lifestyle.

This means we won’t be making the Gillette Escapade , but I’m looking to try to keep Camping with Lisa on our annual schedule.

And, Ken has agree to take over the blog writing now.

Hugs, C

Jameson David Frericks–Our New Little Man

2011-06-30T22:14:00.001-05:00

Trevor, our youngest son, celebrated his 25th birthday today in a big way. I think he received the most precious birthday gift possible –- an 8 lb 2 oz, 21.5” baby boy named Jameson David Frericks, coming in to the world at 3:29 pm. What he will actually be called is somewhat vague at the moment since I’ve already heard Jameson, JB, Jamesie, but probably most often he was still mostly referred to as Stitch which has been his nickname for the last six months or so. We’ll see if that sticks!

An interesting tidbit in this age of technology, is how we grandparents actually first found out Stitch was born. It has to do with his first picture, at about 10 minutes old, that I’ve included below. But more on that later.

We actually knew that the baby would be arriving no later than today which made it much easier to plan our latest week of RV travel. We spent the weekend with Kyle and Jenni in Carlinville and then scooted up here to the Chicago area on Monday. We are actually staying at Leisure Lake RV Resort in Shorewood, IL, which is about 45 minutes from the kids and the hospital in Palos Park, IL.

Although the baby wasn’t due until 7-7-11, the doc decided that the baby was plenty big and, based on positioning, very ready to be born, so she scheduled Leah in to the Palos Community Hospital early Thursday morning.

By the time we arrived at the hospital at 10:00 am, they had induced labor and Leah’s room was a beehive of activity. Leah and Trevor kept themselves busy updating friends via Facebook and text messages.

They started the epidural for Leah after the first major labor pain. I was amazed at how she continued to show contractions and make progress with no real pain. Shortly after 2 pm they decided the birth was imminent and so all of us except Trevor were scooted out of the room so they could share this momentous occasion, just the two of them.

At this point it seemed like things were taking forever. Amy’s Mom, sister and I were really getting antsy. We didn’t know it in the waiting room but, apparently, Leah’s doctor was suddenly pulled in to another delivery where there was problems and Leah was put in ‘a holding pattern’ for 45 minutes. I guess they can do that with the epidurals, but we didn’t know it in the waiting room and were really anxious. Leah said the birth itself really wasn’t that bad and she didn’t even call Trev any bad names! Once the baby was born, they soon had him swaddled and in Leah’s arms. However, they told Trev the rest of us couldn’t come back in until after they’d cleaned up the room. So in the meantime Trev took the first photo above and posted it on Facebook. About 5 minutes later, Ken and I both received Congratulation texts from our “#3 son”, Luke Henke. This caught me by surprise since we were still waiting to hear the baby had been born. I flipped my phone over to Facebook and lo and behold up pops a picture of my new grandson!! So even though we were only a few rooms down from the birth, the whole world got their first glimpse of Stitch before we did!! But that’s ok since we were soon getting our face-to-face introduction with the handsome little man.

We were met by this glowing, happy little family.

Personally, I’ve never seen anyone look so good after giving birth. Leah was amazing!

We all took our turn getting to say hello to the little fella.

Here’s Grandma Amy with Aunt Emily looking on.

And Grandpa Kenny enjoy his moments with his first grandchild.

And, of course, I got my fair share of time with him!

Later, Trev looked every bit the super proud papa as he showed off the little guy to his friend, Jeff Sobut. All indications are Stitch came in to this world in excellent health, with an Apgar score of 9.9. They were already arguing which position he’d be playing once he made it to the NFL.

Here’s the first picture capturing the three generations of Frericks men.

Leah’s friend, Erin, drove in from Iowa for the big occasion with a giant personalized chocolate chip cookie that Leah shared with all of us.

The room was quickly filling with family and friends come to meet the new little guy, so we decided about 6pm that it was time to make our exit. But not before getting plenty of ‘Stitch time’.

I sign off tonight with one of my favorite photos from this very special day for the Frericks family.

Hugs, C

Frericks Fab Five: Cities/Attractions

2011-05-28T15:03:00.002-05:00

When Ken and I went back through our Southwest trip, we started out with a separate list of our favorite towns/cities and our favorite attractions. It soon became apparent that it was really very difficult to separate the two. So, we re-calibrated and, instead, are giving you one list of our top five cities that includes our favorite attractions in those areas.

We realize, more than ever, that by putting the time and effort in to studying our potential destinations in advance, asking for advice from fellow RVers and then talking to local residents once there, we get a really great combination of classic ‘must see’ stops along with some unique finds along the way.

One of the best parts about taking a breather from travel and spending some of that time reviewing the last adventure is that we find, through this exercise of choosing our favorites, we are getting to relive some of those marvelous times together.

It reminds me of the rules for writing a good paper, 1) Tell me what your going to tell me 2) tell me 3) Tell me what you told me. For us it appears the most enjoyment in travel comes from: 1) Finding out all we can about where to travel 2) Travel 3) Review the trip.

Ken and I really wrestled with the list for this post to the point that I thought I’d mention some of the contenders that didn’t quite make the cut:

Note: where city names are highlighted you can link to our original trip posts for that location. Usually there are several posts for each location so click ‘Newer Post’ at bottom of blog to page. I didn’t do hyperlinks to attractions, national parks, etc., in this blog since you can find those in the original posts.

Oklahoma City, OK- Alfred P Murrah Memorial, Bricktown, some great bbq! (Link to original post here).

Rodeo, NM – wonderful place to kick back in the middle of nowhere, enjoy jeep trips in to the mountains (right through ‘Paradise’!), and enjoy the small town café and tavern

Palo Duro Canyon – it’s this kind of place that makes us want to buy a smaller rig that we’d be comfortable in taking in to more of the national parks.

Quartzsite, AZ– RVers gotta go once just to experience it! We really loved our side trips 4-wheeling with other Escapee jeeps and visiting the Desert Bar. Best of all we met many

El Centro, CA – we liked it so much here we went back again mostly because of the perfect weather, great Italian restaurant and laid back atmosphere. I also loved meeting Leonard Knight at Salvation Mountain on one of our day trips, and watching the harvests in the huge fields of vegetables across the Imperial Valley.

Ok, so here’s the final cut…the top 5….

#5 Roswell, NM – UFO Museum, Bitter Creek Wildlife Refuge

Granted, you really have to have the right mindset for Roswell ! To some it would be downright tacky. But, we found it to be wacky fun.

Lamp posts still decorated for Christmas in Roswell

The museum hasn’t been updated in many decades which, to us, adds to its quirky charm. If you go in knowing its not going to ‘wow’ you and take the time to read a lot of the information, it’s really pretty interesting. In fact, we’ve agreed that if we get by this way again, we will take the time to go to the museum again and sit through the hours of low-budget films about Roswell. You can spend the who day just watching films! Ken and I always enjoy attractions where we come away with lots to talk about and this definitely fits that bill. I can’t say that either of us were any more or less convinced that aliens actually crashed but we certainly have a much better understanding of the whole event and spent a lot of time talking about what did and didn’t make sense to us.

We didn’t know anything about the nearby Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge until we arrived in Roswell. Our timing was quite good to catch the thousands of sand cranes coming in. This is one of those ‘take your breath away experiences’ at sunset, the lines of cranes all across the glowing sky, the sounds of nothing but nature all around you. I’ve had folks say that with HD Discovery Channel you don’t need to leave your armchair for this kind of experience. Well, it’s just totally different being there for us.

Bitter Lake was definitely a Top 5 for Ditka and Sox

Cranes arriving at sunset

We found the smalltown atmosphere we love in Roswell with friendly folks, decent restaurants and comfortable weather for exploring. It was where we really started feeling we reached our general ‘Southwest’ destination after days of travelling through Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

Our timing was wrong to hit the wine-tasting room in downtown Roswell called Pecos Flavors Winery as they were closed the day we planned to visit. This place is actually rated the #1 attraction in Roswell and another reason we’d probably go back.

In fact, next time in Roswell, while we were comfortable at the RV park in town, we’ll probably go to nearly Bottomless Lake State Park which we now understand to be a major attraction in itself.

So, I guess, in a way, part of our attraction to Roswell is that it’s a place we definitely want to visit again, now that we have even more things we want to do there.

#4, Sedona/Oak Creek Canyon/Jerome/Camp Verde, AZ

Staying in the Camp Verde area, we were in easy driving distance to a huge variety of attractions.

Our timing was just right to make a trip to the Sedona Film Festival to get in on a showing of the winning film, The First Grader, and get to participate in the post-showing discussion with the film’s producer.

Sedona’s Red Rock area is just gorgeous and we had the unique opportunity to see it during the deepest snowfall they’d had in 20 years.

Snowy Sunday Morning – Red Rocks of Sedona

Oak Creek Canyon was one of our favorite driving trips followed closely by our day-trip up to Jerome, AZ.

Scenic overlook above Jerome, AZ

Our hike in search of the vortex near Cathedral Rock was also one of our favorite days.

In front of Cathedral Rock, Sedona

While we weren’t particularly blown away by the Montezuma Castle Monument, we found the Montezuma Well site intriguing.

Camp Verde turned out to be a perfect center of operations for us, with things to do in many different directions while we could still come ‘home’ to a really nice RV site, and head across the highway to wonderful meals at great prices in ‘The Gathering’ restaurant at the casino. Every night, this restaurant had a top-notch unique special for under $10. After long days of adventure, a quiet evening with a nice dinner that we didn’t have to prepare just added to our enjoyment of this location.

#3 Borrego Springs, CA

We had no idea when we started our winter adventures that we would end up boondocking in Borrego Springs. In fact, if you would have asked us where is the Anza Borrego Desert, if we would have answered right, it would have been a guess!

One of the absolute best parts of this lifestyle is its flexibility. Our RV friend, JoAnn, called and asked if we wanted to join them boondocking in Borrego Springs and next thing you know we’ve got the map out and the good ol’ GPS is calling out: ‘Rerouting’!

Our Rockhouse Road boondocking site with JoAnn and Doug

We probably would not have enjoyed this location so much had it not been for Joann and Doug.

Doug admiring one of the newer sculptures

This is one of their favorite places and they knew all the great attractions, hikes and drives for us to make the most of our experience, including hikes through slot canyons, driving tours to visit all the gorgeous Galleta Meadows sculptures, daytrips to mountaintop Julian for their famous pie and west to Temecula to see the Jojoba SKP Co-op. There were sunsets and sunrises at Font’s point, and jeep adventures getting lost out in the Borrego Badlands.

Sunrise at Font’s Point

Of course, it was this time with Joann and Doug when we got to meet other great RVing friends such as Richard and Marlene and JoAnn and Fred, not to mention, had no end to the number of great dining adventures they all knew about.

Borrego Springs itself is a really neat little town with a farmer’s market and a rather upscale, artsy feel without the stuffiness that sometimes goes along with that. We were glad we’d been forewarned that the grocery shopping was limited and a bit pricey.

While Ken is not convinced he enjoys the actual boondocking experience, we would love to go back to Borrego, especially to take in more of the hiking. They also have a wide variety of programs, such as birding and astronomy workshops that operate out of the museum/visitors center along with unique little community get-togethers where winter residents are made to feel welcome.

Unless we go to boondock with other couples, we will probably stay in the very nice RV sites at Anza Borrego State Park. This will require some pre-planning since they take reservations and the nice sites for big rigs tend to fill early. You can read Laurie and Odel’s rave review on that park here --- again, one of the awesome parts of getting to know fellow RVers, especially those with such informative travel blogs!

#2 Ajo/Why, AZ – Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

We found the Ajo/Why area to be at the top of our list for the most naturally beautiful and diverse desert area we found on our trip.

Hiking Alamo Canyon, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

I also found it interesting that we both rated it so high considering that other than the hiking and beautiful natural surroundings, you’re pretty isolated here – our Sprint cell phones didn’t work, there aren’t a lot of choices in dining or attractions.

We really loved driving and walking this national park. They’ve done a wonderful job of making the visitor’s center and the driving tour very informative. I’d suggest you take a picnic lunch and plan to make a full day of the 21 mile driving tour.

Variety of cacti on Ajo Mountain Drive: ocotillo, saguaro, organ pipe, teddy bear choila, buckhorn choila, prickly pear

While we drove down to Lukeville to see the infamous border fence, we probably wouldn’t do that again. Not much to see at the border and the café that was recommended there was nothing special.

I thought the campground in the national park was absolutely beautiful and it would be my pick for our next stay even though it is essentially bookdocking. They have showers and a dump station and with Ken’s ‘geezer pass’ we could stay for only $6 per night. Sights are available for rigs up to 40 feet. Ken thought the roads were really tight for a big rig and prefers the rather drab but full hookup campground we used on the Indian reservation where we were serenaded by burros every evening and he could sit outside with the other men shooting the breeze over coffee every morning.

Despite the reputation for problems this close to the Mexican border, we experienced no issues and saw nothing else to indicate there were any issues while we were there. Of course, we did see an abundance of border patrol and regularly came across impromptu security checkpoints along the highways in this area.

#1 Tucson/Benson, AZ

It might be cheating a bit to put Benson and Tucson together since they are about 40 minutes apart but if we had to pick any of the areas we visited to stay for an extended period it would be in this area.

We include Benson because we not only found the SKP Co-op there to have a really homey and welcoming feel but Benson itself has a comfortable small town feel still with the conveniences of a nice grocery store and a Walmart. Of course, the Horseshoe Café and the ice cream shop with 44 flavors of soft serve were some of our favorite Benson stops. The other attraction to Benson is its close proximity for day trips to the quaint little town of Bisbee, AZ or the drive in to the Coronado National Monument.

We really had all the best of the best here: some of the best scenery, best attractions, best dining and best RV sites. We had the special conveniences of the big city (ie., Trader Joe’s!) alongside some of the absolute best desert landscape (ie Saguaro National Park).

And, in fact, if we had to pick one attraction that most represented this trip it would be the Desert Museum. I think if I lived in Tucson I could visit that museum--which is really more of a sanctuary of living desert plants and animals—once a week and never tire of it.

Yes he’s alive!! Captured this shot of a coyote among his natural desert surroundings in the Desert Museum

It’s great that they have all the plants labeled for us desert newbies!

We also found a beautiful place to stay in the Tucson Mountain Park. I think being happy with your RV site makes the general surroundings feel more attractive.

First rain we’d seen since leaving the Midwest approaches our site at Tucson Mountain Park

I could sit for hours in that area of West Tucson amidst those majestic Saguaro’s as they seem to reach up in worship to the sun and moon.

Saguaro National Park

Sadly, our visit to this area was just shortly after the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabbie Gifford who was still in the hospital there with well wishers still standing vigil when we happened to drive through that part of town. This will always be on of those ‘do you remember where you were when’ times for us.

There’s another reason, I think we both remember the Tucson area as a highlight. It seems that in Tucson we really finally got out of vacation mode. We didn’t try to plan too much in one day and enjoyed several down days hanging close to the campground. We just kept extending our stay.

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I might mention what could be a downside to doing these reviews. When I talk to Ken about our next snowbird adventure and whether it will be Florida or Texas next, his answer is the Southwest, again! We’ll have to weigh our passion for experiencing new places against having fallen in love with New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California.

We have one more Fab Five to finish this review. That will be on RV Parks and we are arguing over ….oops, I mean discussing which will make the Top 5 cut.

Stay tuned!

Hugs, C

May Brings Baby Showers

2011-05-24T11:22:00.001-05:00

This past weekend, there was a baby shower for Leah in Quincy.

Jenni and Kyle arrived Friday evening and Leah and her mother drove down from Chicago Saturday afternoon. We treated them to some old-fashioned home cookin’ Saturday evening with pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, roasted carrots, fried apples and peach cobbler for dessert.

The shower was a luncheon at the Pier Restaurant which has a nice view of the river and Quincy bridges.

Here’s Leah outside the restaurant with shower hostesses Lois (Trevor’s godmother), Cousin Erin, and sister-in-law Jenni.

The tables were beautifully decorated with fresh fruits and flowers and lots of pretty ‘baby boy blue’ touches.

Jenni provided some very nicely decorated and tasty cupcakes.

Jenni had put together a nice little scrapbook with slots for cards from the guests where they could each provide a note of baby advice. As usual the Pier provided a very nice lunch and our family provided lots of chatter!

Here’s Erin seated with Aunt’s Mary, Cindy, Kay and Jean.

And, the ‘Duesterhaus side of the family (clockwise from 7:00) Aunt Betty, cousin Peggy, Aunt Judy, cousin Laurie, cousin Sheila, cousin Darlene, Aunt Kathleen and cousin Deanna.

Leah ready to dig in to her gifts.

These showers are a real education for me. For example, one of the gifts was an Angel Care Breathing Monitor. I never knew such a thing existed. What a great idea! This little guys is going to be one decked out little man with all the awesome clothes and gadgets. Of course, I’m sure one of Leah’s favorites was the baby bib that say “My Mom is Hot”!

Thanks to the hostesses! Everyone seemed to have a really nice time.

Hugs, C

Graduation Weekend, Fox Ridge State Park

2011-05-23T17:45:00.001-05:00

Although we’ve been staying in Illinois recently, we’ve still been able to enjoy the lovely spring weather in our state parks.

We spent 5 days at Fox Ridge State Park to see our newest daughter-in-law, Leah, receive her bachelor’s degree at Eastern Illinois University.

We made it an extended celebration weekend, with Trevor coming in to Charleston on Thursday evening and then he and Leah spending time with us at the park on Friday.

One of our gifts to Leah was a pocket-book size photo book of their wedding.

Trev and Leah brought me a very thoughtful Mother’s Day gift--A beautiful geranium planter that folds and travels easily in the motorhome.

We did some grilling out. Ken showed off his enthusiasm her for being ‘head bottle washer’.

The weather was quite nice for a campfire.

Leah and Trev brought fixin’s for S’mores so Ken got to show off to Leah his high tech marshmallow roasting sticks. She’s obviously impressed!

On Saturday, Leah’s mom hosted us at the Firefly in Effingham for a luncheon to celebrate Leah’s graduation.

We took a group picture on the deck outside the restaurant. From left: Ken, me, Trevor, Leah, Amy, Leah’s Mom, Chris, Leah’s brother, Jenna, Chris’ girlfriend and Angela, a Sobut family friend.

Trev and Leah have traded in Leah’s little VW bug convertible for a vehicle that will be safely carry a carseat in the backseat, this Infiniti FX.

The business college had the third round of graduations that day at 6pm.

Leah was at the end of the aisle directly in front of us where Trevor could take lots of pictures of her.

Then it was time for Leah and her roommate Marie to say good-bye to their house. Trev had borrow his friend Chris’ truck and within a few hours they had her packed up on her way back to Palos Park, the college years and many happy years at EIU that both she and Trev spent on campus now just happy memories.

Hugs, C

Frericks Fab 5: Restaurants

2011-05-17T17:21:00.001-05:00

Continuing our breakdown on the best of our Southwest, I'll cover here our top 5 finds in restaurants.

As readers are well aware, eating out is a big part of the FrerxAdventure. We go out of our way to try to find local favorites and to try restaurant specialties. We only do chain restaurants when there something we haven’t tried before such as ‘Beer and Burgers’ in El Centro, or when nothing else is open like when we hit the Pizza Hut in Meade, KS.

Looking back over my records, we ate ate out at restaurants 63 times during our 71 day Southwest trip, usually based on local recommendations or searching online reviews. There were only a very few restaurants we really didn’t like. I attribute our good luck to Ken’s penchant for talking and finding out from folks what restaurants to go to and then getting friendly with waitresses to find out what’s best to order once we got there. Ken’s standard line is usually “So what’s your favorite item on the menu”. I also attribute it to my love for tracking down the unique hometown favorites based on online reviews. I think we can all really help others improve their adventures by taking the time to do honest online reviews—of course, I’m still working to get caught up on all of mine!

I did find that restaurant owners are beginning to catch on to the importance of online reviews. In fact, the top rated restaurant in the Sedona area, the Red Rock Café, hands out little business cards with instructions on how to review them on TripAdvisor.

With restaurants, once again, Ken and I had a really tough time trimming down our list to a favorite 5. Actually the list could easily have been at 15 top picks, but in sticking to our format here you go…

#5 Bisbee Breakfast Club, Bisbee, AZ

The Bisbee Breakfast Club is a favorite meeting spot and destination restaurant for full-time RVers so that is how we found out about it.

I’m sure part of the appeal of this restaurant for us was sharing the experience with 8 other RV friends. You can find that original block here.

The menu has wonderful variety with a blend of the old breakfast and lunch standards such as pancakes and burgers along with special Southwestern touches such as the Sonoran burger with Santa Fe seasoning, guacamole and chilies. While you can find plenty of upscale touches in the menu such as stuffed avocados and unique omelet combos, their prices are very reasonable. Despite having to deal with a group of ten, the service was good and, most important of all, everyone’s food was VERY good.

Beware, while Bisbee Breakfast Club is open 7 days a week, they are only open until 2pm.

This is one of the few restaurants that we actually drove to in our RV and were thrilled to find a place to park within a block of the restaurant. The quaint little town of Bisbee was not a planned stop for us but we intend to plan a longer visit there in the future and will return to the BBC for sure!

#4 OPA!, Tucson, AZ

OPA! was found via a last minute check of the TripAdvisor and Urbanspoon apps I have on my phone. We had planned some shopping in Tucson at lunchtime so I used both apps to find choices close to Trader Joe’s which was our next stop.

We were so not expecting to have a ‘top 5’ meal that we hadn’t even brought our camera. That said, I used the phone to get a few shots! You can find our blog for that day here.

So what was special about OPA! Well first, Ken and I really like authentic Greek food and there were over 80 different items to select from on the menu so we could try something new which is always a way to catch our interest. The meats were absolutely cooked to perfection and the vegetables were so fresh and wonderfully seasoned. There service was perfect, the ambiance was a perfect lunchtime retreat from shopping with linen table clothes and tasteful décor with an open kitchen area. While it was slightly more than we usually spend for lunch, the $10-$13 an entrée was definitely a good value.

Access to this kind of restaurant in a very nice easily accessible area of Tucson is part of what will bring us back to this city.

#3 Courtney’s Place, Toronto, KS

We might list Courtney’s Place as one of our most pleasant surprises on the trip.

It was a driving day and we had a terrible time getting set up because of electrical problems at multiple sites in the state park. Based on the way the day had been going I did not have high hopes of finding a place to eat in the tiny little town of Toronto, KS, but Ken and I were both just too tired to cook. You can get back to that day’s blog here.

Driving through Toronto you could easily miss the little sign over the door marking Courtney’s Place, and it certainly does not look like anything special from the outside.

When we walked in we were greeted by a friendly lady who asked if we were there for pizza or wanted to be seated in the more formal Italian restaurant. We looked at each other, and after the day we had, quickly agreed we deserved the nicer dining experience. It was Thursday night and the restaurant was deserted except for one of table of diners. The lady who had seated us turned out to be Courtney who, in fact, was also our cook and waitress that evening since she had given her chef the evening off to handle some personal affairs.

The menu was very limited but changes nightly so that Courtney can offer different Italian favorites on different nights of the week each recipe tuned to her specifications. Every course served was absolutely outstanding. It was then that we questioned Courtney about being able to run this kind of restaurant in such a small town. (Toronto has a population of 269!). She told us that, in fact, her restaurant is so popular as a ‘destination’ restaurant on Friday and Saturday night’s that she has had to start taking reservations charging for cancellations and no-shows because she regularly has all tables reserved. She has been written up in several Kansas magazines and newspapers. There are links on her website to some of those articles as well as the interesting story of how she ended up owning an upscale restaurant in such an unlikely place.

Everything was homemade, the dining room décor was very tasteful, and Courtney did an amazing job as hostess, waitress and cook!

While we only paid a higher tab at one other restaurant on our trip, this restaurant was definitely worth the $70 we laid out for the two of us with appetizers, drinks and dessert.

We were very pleased with our decision to take Highway 54 across Kansas versus staying on Interstates and will definitely give this route preference when in that part of the country again to insure we get to stop by again to visit Courtney!

#2 Los Nopales, Tucson, AZ

Cindy: Wow, did you realize I didn’t take any pictures of our two favorite restaurants from the trip, even though we ate at both multiple times??

Ken: Understandable…you were too busy eating.

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This photo courtesy of Dani R. on the Yelp website.

Stuck in the corner of a strip mall behind the laundromat, you could drive by Los Nopales many times and not realize there was a restaurant there. In fact, we had a little bit of trouble figuring out where the door was. I guess that would definitely qualify this place as what we tend to call a ‘hole in the wall’! Unlike our other selections, they don’t even have their own website I can use as a link here, although there are no shortage of rave reviews on Tripadvisor.

The internet is, in fact, once again, how I found this restaurant. I had heard mention there was something served in some Mexican restaurants called a ‘cheese crisp’ that was quite unique to the Tucson area. After doing a fair amount of googling, I determined that these cheese crisps were the signature item at Los Nopales which was only a few miles from our RV site in Tucson Mountain Park.

Both times we visited this restaurant, the place was packed, mostly the patrons appear to be snowbirds who had crossed from the large RV park across the street. The location is also very convenient for Tucson visitors as its not far from the Desert Museum, a definite ‘must see’ in the area.

They serve very good Mexican food, cheap, and the Dos Equis Amber beer nice and cold. What more can I say! This is a real ‘diamond in the rough’ with no curb appeal, no atmosphere and truly good authentic Mexican.

If you’ve never had a Mexican crisp, give it a try, but be forewarned they are huge!

This photo of a chicken cheese crisp courtesy of April G. on the Yelp website.

It’s a homemade fried tortilla the size of a large pizza topped with melted cheese and optionally, carne asada, chilies, etc., and is only about $4.50 depending on toppings. Although the tortilla is homemade and fried, it is not greasy at all but very crisp and tasty. Our first trip, we ordered the crisp as an appetizer. I liked the crisp so much I ordered it again on our return visit, trying a different combination of toppings, but knew not to order anything else with it that time!

We’d also recommend the fish tacos, and the steak fajitas and the 3 cheese burro. We didn’t have anything at Los Nopales that we wouldn’t recommend!

Be forewarned, though, while this restaurant did not have an open table either evening we visited, they are not open very late in to the evening, so don’t try to beat the crowd by going 7:30 or later.

If Ken and I lived in Tucson, I’m sure we would be Los Nopales regulars!

#1 Cicinelli’s, El Centro, CA

What was it about Cicinelli’s that put it at the top of our list?

I can best describe it as ‘the whole package’. This is not a fancy dining experience but a small 3rd generation restaurant, with red and white checker tableclothes, and pictures of local teams they support on the wall. Like Courtney’s, the owner was our waiter and cook both times we dined there. He said most of the recipes were handed down from his grandmother. In fact, some of her recipes from during the Depression are displayed on the wall. Although they serve some great looking pizzas, Ken and I could never get past the awesome salads, soups and pasta dishes. They have a decent beer and wine selection and some luscious looking homemade desserts, although we could never get that far.

This is casual dining, in a comfortable, unrushed environment, with great authentic Italian dishes. The prices are a bit high for just a ‘pizza joint’ but then that’s not how we viewed it or the way the food tasted. And, hey, want to save money? Go Friday night’s when the beer is half price!

If we lived in this area, we would definitely be regulars at Cicinelli’s. In fact, we actually visited El Centro twice on this trip and one of the first places Ken wanted to visit on our return trip was this restaurant.

We had gotten the recommendation for this restaurant from one of the ‘winter resident’s at the RV park who had spent many prior winters sampling the various dining opportunities around the city. I’m really amazed I can find so few online reviews (and no pictures!!) for this little gem, so I’ll have to make a special effort to get something out on Tripadvisor and Urbanspoon.

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Ok, well, now I’ve made myself hungry….and it’s half-price pizza night at one of our hometown regular haunts, Tower of Pizza!!

Happy eating!

Frericks Fab Five Fotos

2011-05-13T12:17:00.001-05:00

As mentioned in the previous post, I thought it a good time to review our longest adventure yet, our trip to the Southwest.

Part of who I am is keenly entrenched in Socrates statement “An unexamined life is not worth living”.

While Socrates was applying that statement at a very deep level, I have found most satisfaction and success in life when I can apply it to everyday life. As a project leader, it means a constant observation and evaluation of what works and what doesn’t in given situations and using that knowledge for continuous improvement. In our travels, it’s a similar observation and evaluation of what brought the most pleasure, satisfaction and meaning to us in our adventures and how to make more of that in those adventures that come.

In reviewing the pictures, I learned a lot about what parts of the trip really stood out as special for me. In fact, if I were to focus on pictures from moments that gave us most pleasure and satisfaction, I would be boring you, my beloved readers with a lot of similar pictures of folks sitting around the table enjoying getting to know each other better over good food. While those pictures bring back treasured memories for Ken and me, they don’t mean much to those who weren’t present.

We also got great satisfaction from getting to know the plants and animals of the region and have many photos of these. Of course, these tend to me more ‘factual’ pictures. We have enough pictures like that that I could do a lengthy instructional slideshow just on Southwest plants and animals. These photos seem to be pretty much of what you’d pull from a field guide, so again, they mean a lot to us, but pretty boring to the reader.

Our hikes and our jeep trips stood out as well, but our photos of those days didn’t really catch the essence of the adventure.

So please understand that our Fab Five Fotos were picked not based on what we observed to be our favorite times but instead based on the photos that we think capture the essence of what we enjoyed in this adventure, capturing the beauty and diversity of what we saw along the way, in a way that we think might help share the feeling in the photo.

That said, we actually have about 20 photos that really bring back the feeling of this gorgeous part of the country so while I’m showing five today, tomorrow I’d probably pick a different five that fit my mood!

Fab Five No. 5: Diversity in the Desert, Why, AZ

No. 4: Saguaro reaching toward the full moon at our boondocking site outside Quartzsite, AZ

No. 3: Red Rocks of Sedona

No. 2: Sunset from our site in Rodeo, NM

No. 1: My ‘cowboy’ taking in the view across the Borrego Badlands.

Hugs, C

Southwest Trip–Recap

2011-05-05T14:52:00.002-05:00

Rushing through the adventures and challenges in life, be they major projects at work or major life events, I’ve noticed that we seldom take the time, after the fact, to reflect on those events and understand more deeply what we enjoyed most, what we’ve learned and how we can add more quality to our work and our lives as a result. After I added a ‘lessons learned’ phase to my project methodology at work, it proved to be extremely enlightening and seems like it could provide similar advantage in our ‘adventure’ projects. In that light, I’ve decided to provide a recap of our first ‘snowbird’ adventure to the Southwest. Best case, this exercise will help Ken and I mold even greater future adventures based on what we saw and learned, also perhaps help family and friends get to know us a bit better by understanding what stands out to us, and last but not least maybe provide a reader or two some ideas of how to add to the quality of their own adventures.

Route - 2011 Southwest Trip

View Larger Map

To add structure to the recap, I’ve developed a series of ‘Fab Fives’ in the areas of:

Locations visited
Attractions
Camping sites
Restaurants
Photos

To be sure that you got both Ken and my picks, I made a list of each category and then independently Ken and I listed our top 10. I then did an average of his picks and mine to come out with our top 5 picks. Yes, very anal and analytical but that’s not a habit I’ll probably ever break!

But, first here I thought I’d include a few general statistics.

. Days on the road – 71

. Miles travelled in motorhome – 4111

. Miles travelled in jeep – 2000, swag based on gas used…we forgot to track

. Estimated mpg motorhome – 9 mpg

. Estimated mpg jeep – 16 mpg (swag based on past history…we forgot to track)

. Average price of diesel (motorhome) - 470 gallons used averaging $3.59, lowest paid $3.09, highest paid $3.90

.Average price of gasoline (jeep) – 116 gallons averaging $3.28, lowest paid $2.95, highest paid $3.59

.Number of different sites we camped overnight - 18

.Number of nights boondocking - 13

.Average cost per night of RV site (includes free boondock nights) – $17

.Most paid for an RV site – $33.33

.Number of blogs posted – 53

Overall Cost of Trip

$1183            RV sites

$1685            Motorhome fuel

$382               Jeep fuel

$1400            Grocery Store/Walmart – includes non-food items such as soaps, paper goods, sundries, batteries, over-counter drugs, beer/wine, stamps, etc.,

$1736            Eating out

$128               Entertainment/Entrance fees

$195               Clothing/laundry – tennies for hiking, new spring coat, Ken new hat, T-shirts, plus laundry

$362               RV/Jeep maintenance-Hot Water Heater repair, wiper blades, waterless RV wash and brush with extension, water filter replacements, water regulator gauge, parts for hubcap when hit cone on highway, door clip replacement

$56                 Propane

$220              Gifts for volunteers handling mail, snow removal, watching house

$199               Miscellaneous - $19.50 Oklahoma Turnpike; $22 Collapsible cooler; new ceramic heater $42; Southwest cookbook $15; New Vacuum Cleaner $40; dog grooming $60

$7546            TOTAL

There were certain expenses that we have set up in such a way that we can easily move between home and RV such as phone, internet and satellite TV. Since we pay the same whether on the road or home, they are not included here.

With the exception of the RV site costs, motorhome fuel, and having people watch the house, we spend about the same amount on the other categories whether at home or on the road so the true ADDED cost of being on the road was only in the $3000 range…..and of course, the ‘adventures’…..PRICELESS!!

Stay tuned for our ‘Fab Five’ posts!

Hugs, C

‘Anytimer’ Travelling Garden Experiment

2011-05-02T14:51:00.001-05:00

One down-side to extended travel is that it makes it difficult for me to play in the dirt.

As a young child I grew up on a farm and then at age eight was transplanted to town-life after my father died while our home and farm were under one of the major Mississippi floods. Even in town, I found a place to start digging and planted my small patch of flowers and vegetables.

In the twenty-plus years at our home, Ken and I have attempted to minimize the work required in our yard by planting hardy annuals such as hostas, iris, lily of the valley, various ferns, ivies and other perennials. In fact, Ken has gradually arranged the lawn so that everything can be quickly mowed on the riding mower. This means that we can be gone in the motorhome for extended periods with little attention needed outdoors except for the lawn mowing.

But, that certainly doesn’t quench my thirst for garden time and my love for picking and eating things fresh from my own garden.

Since we have determined that we do not want to become full-timers without a home-base, we are able to keep a few more garden tools around since things like potting soil, pots, and tools don’t have to travel with us in winter months. However, since we tend to be on the road a lot more than most part-timers, maintaining a garden at a home-base just isn’t practical. As Anytimers, we need a more flexible solution.

So, this year I’m trying a low-cost experiment. I’ve just finished filling five matching pots with some of my favorite garden items: Better boy tomatoes, green peppers, sweet red peppers, sweet yellow peppers, and one pot devoted to herbs: oregano, rosemary, basil and stevia. The pots were only $1.98 each and are made with built-in drainage trays.

I usually would fill the bottoms with gravel for good drainage, but this time we are trying styrofoam packing peanuts so that there is less weight to transport. Yes, gardeners, I know these plants are probably packed too tight but I’m hoping to offset that by using Miracle-grow moisture control potting soil. I’m also expecting that there may be some loss simply due to the stress of transport.

We plan to move my garden with us as we travel. This is one more benefit of towing the jeep. Since it is the ‘unlimited’ version, it has plenty of room for storage in back that we currently don’t use for much and can handle a little dirt- IT’S A JEEP. I plan to store the plants there when we are ready to head out, set them out at the campsite and then repack them into the jeep last thing before we leave.

At home the pots will decorate our back deck and on the road we’ll be able to place them outside where they get appropriate sunshine. I had considered using the new upside down hangers with shepherds hooks but decided those would be harder to transport and not everywhere we’ve stayed has ground conducive for punching those hooks deep enough in to the ground. This also turns out to be a much cheaper experiment.

While we have seen campground hosts with a lot of live plants and even small vegetable gardens, and almost all the full-timers we’ve met have a few favorite plants they transport, I haven’t seen many who actually travel with their garden. I’d love to hear from any of you RVing readers who may have already tried this experiment, especially if you have any lessons learned to share.

Will it work? Stay tuned!

Hugs, C

Another Mrs. Frericks!

2011-05-01T17:31:00.001-05:00

Last week, our son, Trevor, married the beautiful love of his life, Leah Sobut, at her home in Palos Park, IL.

Here’s our new family of six. 6 months ago we were only 4 so our world is changing quickly.

We had a lovely dinner after the ceremony. Trev provided the food and drink for immediate family, and a few close friends. Leah’s Mom, Amy, provided the location in their lovely family home.

Grandma Sobut, at 94 years old, is thrilled to have Trevor in her family and they have become very attached.

There was a really elegant wedding cake from a local Polish bakery. It was absolutely the best tasting wedding cake I’ve ever tasted with a wonderful strawberry filling.

Leah’s ring is gorgeous. Trevor had a setting custom designed to show off the 2.4 carat diamond handed down from Leah’s great-grandmother. It has an equal number of carats spread in smaller diamonds around the band.

It does a heart good to see our baby boy so happy!

Hugs, C

Ditka and Sox do an Update

2011-04-30T21:49:00.001-05:00

Hi, this is Ditka and Sox. Mom has taken some time off blogging since we’ve gotten back from the Southwest but we wanted to give you an update.

The weekend after we returned to Quincy, we headed out again in the motorhome to Carlinville with the primary objective to pick up our three months worth of mail that Kyle had been collecting.

We love Beaver Dam State Park and long walks there. Mom and Dad even lucked out arriving just in time for St. Pat’s Day and their corned beef and cabbage at the state park café.

While we were in Carlinville, there was an trip to watch the St. Michael’s girls volleyball team play. Jenni helps coach the team.

Since Kyle and Jenni know that every Frericks Adventure needs a new dining experience, they suggested the nearby Fast Eddie’s Bon Air in Alton. Really cheap but good food is the draw here. It’s another ‘destination’ restaurant with a huge outdoor patio and frequent live music. If you are ever through Alton hit Fast Eddies between lunch and dinner when they are less crowded. Two people can have great burgers and shish-ka-bobs and come away stuffed for $10! We were hoping for doggie bags.

On the way back to Carlinville, there was a stop to see Jenni’s classroom. She sure had lots of neat stuff to look at. Those kids are really lucky to have her for a teacher.

After the Carlinville trip we stayed home for a few weeks. I think Mom and Dad may have figured out that they came back to the Midwest too early. Here’s Sox sitting at home in the snow, dreaming of that warm Arizona sunshine!

As we understand it the reason we are spending so much home time is because our house here in Quincy needed some fixes. There has been a couple of nice men coming in and out of the house a lot putting in a new furnace/heat pump.

There was also a lot a bad words being said around Dad’s laptop for awhile. Something about another card going bad on the inside and so a few days later Mom came home with a new HP laptop.

We were really looking forward to a trip back down in to Tennessee to the RV-Dreams Rally in mid-April but with all these unexpected expenses and activities, Mom and Dad decided it was was best to do some home time, especially considering that with current fuel prices they’d be spending $1000 just in fuel to go down to the rally and back.

Instead we got to go over to our other favorite Illinois State park, Fox Ridge in Charleston, IL. Trevor’s Leah is finishing school there so that meant we got lots and lots of great Leah time. She really knows how to find those best places to scratch where we itch!

We even got to go mushroom hunting with Dad. He told Mom we were too noisy though and scared them away.

Mom and Dad ended up spending their 30th wedding anniversary sitting by the campfire with us, serenaded by the owls and the coyotes. Of course, we couldn’t let those coyotes sound off without joining in ourselves!

Sunday that week was a long down day for us since Dad and Trevor went golfing while Mom went in to Charleston to a baby shower that Leah’s roommates put on for her.

The theme of the shower was ‘Lilo and Stitch’ since Lilo is what the girls always called Leah and now they call the baby ‘Stitch’. Here’s Leah at the party with her sister, Emily, to the left and her mom, Amy, to the right. We’re hoping that baby Stitch comes out looking more like his Mama’s pretty family and not like Stitch-- blue, with big ears, teeth and claws!

Ok, well that’s a pretty brief update. There’s other big news from last weekend but we’ll let Mom fill you in on that!

Lovin’ Licks,

Ditka and Sox

Home Sweet Home

2011-03-14T17:47:00.002-06:00

Plans in jello, that’s for sure!

We started our travels Saturday destined for Bennett Springs State Park in Missouri, a comfortable 200 mile drive. We planned to stay there for a couple of days, then go to Beaver Dam State Park in Carlinville, IL for awhile where we could pick up our mail from our son. This would mean maybe about one more week on the road before home to Quincy.

When we got near the cutoff to turn south off of US 54 to Bennett it just past noon. Too early to be settling in? On a whim, I pulled out the trusty android and started checking other options, distances and campgrounds. In fact, we were making great time and could even be back in Quincy before dark if we didn't stop. Suddenly with a lovely driving day that just made perfect sense.

As it turns out, I’m writing this on Monday and have just seen on the weather that along yesterdays' route Jefferson City, Mo, got an unexpected NINE inches of snow overnight. Boy did we luck out in making that last minute change in plans!

We pulled in front to our house at 5:30 with 380 miles covered for the day. We agreed to unload nothing but necessities and the refrigerator after the long travel day.

It wasn’t but a few minutes later when our neighbor, John, came out to invite us to dinner at their house. John’s wife, Stacy is recovering from ankle surgery and so he played chef with some awesome steaks on the grill. John had taken on the Herculean effort of snow removal at our place when the big snow hit in January and so we had brought them back a case of a variety of wines from California. We ended up sitting at their house far too late considering Stacy needed her sleep but had a really enjoyable evening. It was a reminder of how great it is to be back home in our wonderful neighborhood with our great hometown friends. Just like our RV friends, seems our neighbors weren’t going to let us cook on a travel day!

We’ll head down to our son’s house in Carlinville by the weekend to pick up mail so I can get our taxes done.

Other than that our next several weeks will probably be pretty boring compared to the last 10 weeks, so I won't be blogging much until we are back on the road again.

Thanks for joining us on our first trip to the gorgeous Southwest!

I’m already working through the details of our next adventure!

Hugs, C

Toronto, KS: Crossed Timbers State Park

2011-03-12T14:06:00.003-06:00

On Thursday, March 10th, the forecast called for a one-day break in the high winds so we took the opportunity to head farther East. The distance between the two Kansas State Parks, Meade State Park and Cross Timbers State Park is 271 miles. The route is almost entirely two-lane US 54, which is a comfortable highway for motorhome travel with pretty classic Kansas scenery as you see below.

We arrived about 2pm at the Cross Timbers State Park. They have campground hosts this time of year which is a bit unusual. Apparently this nice couple has been there pretty much full time for ten years. Once again, we had the park to ourselves except for the folks that worked there. It turns out it was lucky we arrived early because before it was over with we moved in to 4 different sites—a new record for us!

At Escapade several years ago we invested in a Progressive Electrical Surge and Voltage Protection Unit that Ken hardwired into our motorhome electrical system. He felt strongly about this from both a safety perspective and to keep the coach's electrical systems from getting fried by dirty power. There's now been several occasions where we think this system has more than paid for itself. In this case, it was throwing an error code that there was a bad ground, when Ken hooked up the 50 amp. We tried 3 different full hookup sites with the same problem every time. Finally we pulled in to a 50 amp site where the water was not yet turned on and the electric showed clean. Ken contacted the park maintenance crew and found out we were the first folks to use those sites for months. Since we were the only folks in the park Ken just lined up all his fresh water hose and hooked up across the road to one of the full hookup sites.

Now add to this that what appeared to be perfectly level sites were actually leaning to the left enough that we had to use several boards under the tires on the driver side in order to keep them from hanging in mid-air once the rig was leveled. And, I think, just to add that last little bit of aggravation, this big gorgeous stray dog, all young and frisky, decided to come play in the middle of all of this.

We had put both dogs on tie-outs and suddenly everybody was getting all tied up in each other and a little snippy. Once I got our dogs back inside, ‘Red’, the name we ended up giving the stray decided to adopt Ken and was under foot everywhere he turned. Red had no collar and visited us often in our two days here. It was pretty obvious that if we didn’t already have too many dogs in the family, Red and Ken would have been hard to separate.

Don’t get me wrong, despite the set up difficulties, Ken and I both fell in love with this park. It’s very well-maintained. We’ll give them a pass on the electrical issue since they were give to respond, had someone who quickly understood the issue, and were very apologetic that they hadn’t gotten the electric checked out for the season yet. They have brand new shower houses, a beautiful lake and a swimming beach. We can’t imagine why this park hasn’t had reviews on rvparkreviews.com but we have already made sure to get it out there.

Of course, spending hours at what should have been a five-minute setup were the perfect excuse to eat out. We figured that might be easier said than done in this rather remote area. The park is just outside the tiny town of Toronto, KS, where we found only two small cafes on the short main drag, and only one, Courtney’s Places, was open.

Courtney saved the day! Talk about a gem in the wilderness! Courtney’s turned out to be the best restaurant we’ve visited in our 10 weeks on the road (and if you’ve been following us you know we’ve been to a lot of restaurants!) From the outside you expect to be walking in to a typical smalltown ‘hole-in-the-wall’ cafe. What you find is a pizza parlor on one side with a beautifully appointed Italian ‘pasta house’ on the other.

Courtney apologized at the start that her waiter was out that night but she did her best to cover all the bases. She offers 3 different entrees each evening, one appetizer, salad, homemade breadsticks, several desserts and a full bar. We went all out trying all the courses, except when it came to desert we were sadly just too full. Ken had a special Italian sausage and pepper dish with a really tasty marinara sauce over pasta. I had the chicken alfredo. The food was awesome, even the house merlot was very good. There was one other table filled besides our’s in the pasta house which appears to be able to hold up to 50.

Courtney said that she is usually full on Friday and Saturday nights and has become a destination restaurant for folks several hours away. This is not a cheap place to eat if you are doing the Italian pasta house. If we’d had time we would have tried the pizza which appeared reasonably priced and I’m expecting is awesome based on everything else. If you are going to go to Courtney’s I’d try Wednesday or Thursday evening when you get a chance to meet and talk to this really neat lady named Courtney.

On Friday, we were once again looking at 35-40 mph wind gusts and so planned to explore the state park instead of going back on the road. Ah, the joys of ‘anytiming’ -- no need to hurry, get there when we get there.

The park has many nice walking trails. Ken took the pups for a jaunt down one called Ancient Oaks. He forgot the camera but did take a few shots with his phone so we could get a feel for what it was like.

It was good that I didn’t make an attempt at this trail since it was very rocky and uneven.

The main features of this trail are the post oaks along the way which are up to 300 years old.

These trees only grow to be 40 foot tall and really don’t look any different than any other oaks in the area.

However, they do a good job on the trail of pointing out the ancient oaks and providing historical comparisons to give you a sense for how old they are.

Toronto Dam on this lake is used primarily for flood control. Apparently a few years back there was a 100-year flood here and they used the dam to keep the brunt of the damage (as you see at the left) in the park rather than across the towns and farmland in the area.

At he height of the trail there was a large open area providing a view for many miles across the lake.

Later in the afternoon, Ken opened up the jeep top and we enjoyed a tour of our corner of the lake, checking out the rest of the campground.

They are spending a lot of money on this park. There are new restrooms and shower houses, and several of these cabins that appear to be new. I got nosy and looked through the windows. They have full kitchens, baths, bedroom, living and loft areas in that small space.

This is the view from the cabin above. I’m thinking it would be a gorgeous place to watch the sunset over the lake. It was still pretty breezy when we were there mid-afternoon, as you can see by the whitecaps on the water.

By evening the winds had died down and so we grilled chicken and cabbage while enjoying some time on the patio.

If you are looking for a route across Kansas, other than the interstate, we’d highly recommend US 54 and the Cross Timber and Meade State Parks.

Hugs, C

Meade, KS: Spending my Birthday 100 Years in the Past

2011-03-11T16:29:00.001-06:00

On Wednesday, March 9th, we knew, with predicted win gusts of 35 mph, we had an excuse not to get back on the road.

Instead, we decided to do some exploring in the little town of Meade, KS.

The Meade County Historical Museum is said to be one of the finest in Southwest Kansas.

It is designed to depict the lifestyle of early settlers, letting you walk down a typical Kansas main street of the 1900’s.

There’s the General Store.

I was fascinated by the sample of items for sale. My mother always marked the renderings from butchering ‘Good Lard’ when she put them in the freezer but, I guess, I never realized you could also buy ‘Bad Lard’.

It was fun looking around mama’s kitchen.

Notice the little potty chair’ in the child’s room. We questioned whether they actually used that bed-warmer in a crib. I know you want baby to stay warm but with hot coals under the mattress? World has certainly changed a lot when it comes to child safety!

The doctor’s office made us happy to be born a hundred years later!

There were some interesting stories to go along with the different rooms. For example, to go along with the jail house is the story of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde and their Highway Robbery at Meade Park.

One of my favorite pieces in the museum was this permanent wave machine. I honestly thought it was some sort of electric chair until I red the captions. And we think women now days go to extremes to follow fashion!

Not everything portrayed was related to life in town. For example, the reconstruction below shows what the sod houses built by settlers out n on the plains looked like. Those really thick walls could withstand a lot of wind and insulate well from cold and heat.

It was also really interesting to see a reproduction of what the inside of a covered wagon would have looked like. I guess this would be considered the predecessor to the travel trailer!

One story I found particularly sad was on the wall below. Meade was a central point for a lot of the buffalo hunting that went on in those days. Apparently one of the largest kills recorded took place right here in Meade County when one hunter killed 120 head of buffalo in just 40 minutes.

Unfortunately, Meade was also a central in the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. (Picture below taken from photo in the museum).

The Meade County Museum is free with donations appreciated. It is to this kind of non-profit organization that Ken and I love to donate, as they are truly in the work of feeding the spirit and enhancing the lives of those they serve, in this case through an appreciation of the day-to-day lives of our ancestors in a creative way that visitors can really step in to.

From the museum, we travelled a few blocks down the road to the Dalton Gang Hideout, considered Meade’s major attraction. In this case, there was a $4 admission fee. There really wasn’t a great deal to see here but the curator on staff when we were there was worth the price of admission. He had tremendous in depth knowledge of cowboy/outlaw history in this area, and was also very active in re-enactments, most often playing the role of Doc Holiday. Most of our time here was simply spent talking to him and hearing a lot about the various relationships between some of the famous outlaws. For example, the Dalton Brothers were first cousins to the Youngers, who in turn rode with the James brothers. Apparently it was not at all unusual for these guys to be sheriffs, deputies and US Marshalls one day and then turn to a life of crime when they got tired of getting shot at for little pay. This was, in fact, the case with the Daltons.

The house shown below belonged to their sister, Eva.

It turns out that a tunnel had been build between this house and the barn some 90 feet away. Today they’ve rebuilt that tunnel so visitors can actually walk the distance. Back then it was nothing more than about 4 feet high, mostly dirt and a hodge podge of quickly assembled timber supports. It’s thought that the Dalton brothers and some of their cohorts dug out this tunnel in only a few days in order to allow themselves access to the comforts of their sister’s home without detection.

My favorite part of the story is that the tunnel was never detected while Dalton’s sister lived there and the owners after her moved in not knowing it was there. They found out, with a shock, when a man suddenly seemed to appear out of nowhere in the middle of the house as they sat down for the evening meal. Apparently he did not realize this was no longer an outlaw ‘safe house’ and very quickly made his departure back through the tunnel, which they only then uncovered. That puts a whole new twist on the phrase “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”!

Apparently, the Dalton brothers, four of whom were actually known to become outlaws, were never really hated and feared as we today might think of criminals. They had somewhat of a ‘Robin Hood’ reputation, stealing from the rich railroads. In fact, they’d never robbed a bank or actually killed anyone in the commission of their crimes until the fateful day in 1892 when Bob Dalton set out to best his cousin and “beat anything Jesse James ever did--rob two banks at once, in broad daylight”. Well, that’s Bob and his brother, Grat, in the center of the photo below, with two others of gang, all shot dead when some of the Coffeyville townspeople caught on to the bank robberies in progress, and shot it out with the gang as they ran for their horses. One other brother, Emmett, was shot 23 times but still survived only to be caught, tried, sentenced and given a life sentence. He was pardoned after 14 years and ended up in California working as an actor and writing a book about his family. (Picture below is my picture taken of one of the pictures in the museum).

While there’s not a lot to see in the Dalton Hideout museum, there are items from the area that aren’t related to the Dalton’s, such as this two-headed calf, which definitely fits with our love of finding the quirky attractions along the roads less traveled!

As if,spending the day walking through Kansas history and coming face-to-face with a two-headed cow wasn’t enough of a memorable birthday, Ken was nice enough to put together a special birthday dinner for the two of us back at the rig.

He did steaks on the grill, along with grilled garlic/butter asparagus and rice with a nice bottle of Merlot on the side.

He even had a little chocolate cake and insisted on candles as well!

A very memorable birthday indeed!

Hugs, C

Albuquerque, NM to Lake Meade State Park, KS

2011-03-08T17:35:00.002-06:00

(Meade, KS) Saturday, March 5th, we travelled 232 miles from Holbrook, AZ to Albuquerque, NM, ending the trek at the Enchanted Trails RV Park.

This RV park is basically a parking lot with full hookups, but, since we only planned a one night stay, it worked fine for us,with cost including tax and add-on for 50-amp totaling $18 with Passport America membership. The park is adjacent to a Camping World and we were in need of a replacement for our pressure regulator. Actually, Ken ended up getting he regulator cheaper at another RV supply house a little farther down the road.

One interesting feature of this RV park is that they rent out vintage campers and matching antique autos to pull them. I bet those would be fun for a weekend and certainly catch people’s attention in a campground!

I had been to Albuquerque twice and Ken once when my niece, Michelle, lived here. One thing we had missed on those trips was a visit to ‘Old Town’.

There are lots of unique little boutiques and galleries nestled in to little market courtyards just off the main streets of Old Town.

Our intent was to wander the shops of Old Town and then pick out a restaurant for dinner when we’d tired of walking. However, most of the restaurants we came across were either lunch-time cafes or featured Mexican / Southwest cuisine which (I can hardly believe I’m saying this) we’d had enough of for this trip.

We finally happened upon the High Noon Restaurant and Saloon. It turned out that once we were inside we realized we had eaten at this restaurant when we were in Albuquerque for Michelle’s wedding. That time we had done lunch here after a visit to the nearby New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, another local attraction we really enjoyed. Since we always like to try new restaurants this was sort of an ….oops!! Considering the hundreds of restaurants in Albuquerque, what’s the likelihood we walk in to one of the two or three we were at in year’s past? Oh well, it turned out fine. The good news is, that the service and the food were excellent, the bad news was the prices were significantly more than we were planning to spend.

As you can see from the presentation of Ken’s Pine Nut Crusted Pork Chop to the left, this is more of a special occasion restaurant for us than a Saturday night, “let eat out’ place. Of course, that didn’t mean we didn’t thoroughly enjoy a very nice dining experience.

The next morning we were on the road by 9 a.m. planning to try to out-run the incoming weather front bringing high winds and rain/snow.

Our original destination was Ute Park Lake, NM. However, when we arrived at the turn-off to the park, we did not have any Sprint cell phone or data coverage. At that point, we decided,, since it was still early afternoon we’d try to make it farther down the road.

It turned out that we drove one of our top five longest treks in one day, crossing 4 states, from New Mexico, through, Texas and Oklahoma and on to Liberal, KS, a total of 388 miles. Pretty good for folks that usually only do 200 miles a day!

We found a highly rated little cafe just past Liberal called the Cattlemen’s Cafe, great home cooking at really reasonable prices which helped make up for our splurge the night before. We don’t usually stop to eat with the rig but this place had a large lot so it was all good.

We also knew that the Western Star RV Ranch I’d found, just down Hwy 54 a bit, had pull thru sites and after 400 miles on the road, and plans to leave immediately the next day, we liked the idea of not having to unhook the jeep.

Ken and I would both highly recommend Highway 54 as a route if you want to get away from the monotony of the interstates. Likewise, we were very happy both with the restaurant and the overnight RV park we found in the Liberal. Again, the RV park is nothing but a gravel lot, but its new, with level sites, good hookups and easy on/off the highway for $25.

When we awoke Monday morning, there were high winds expected by mid-day followed by a few days of really ugly weather. We decided to head only 18 miles down the road and hunker down in Lake Meade State Park for a few days.

We were very happy with this decision. The folks at the park office couldn’t have been nicer. They told us to pick out whatever site we wanted since we were the only people in the whole park! They also gave us some suggestions of where we might be least impacted by the wind.

The site we chose was a pull through with 50 amp service, water and a nice view of the lake. We are paying $23.90 per night here which includes separate day-use charge for jeep, premium site charge and tax.

Sox thought is was the best place ever because it had real live grass below those leaves. After 2 months in the desert, this little lady was rolling around in absolute heaven!

With no one else around, Ken and I found it a great place to take long quiet walks with the dogs.

A lot of ducks were coming in, apparently, like us, looking for a good roosting spot to wait out the coming bad weather.

Here’s the view we had back toward the motorhome from farther down the lake.

A heron high in the trees above seemed undaunted by humans invading his territory.

By Monday evening, the winds were picking up and we went to sleep to the sound of the rain. Tuesday morning the rain continued.

I was really grateful that Ken did more than his share of dog walking duty so I didn’t have to get wet!

Ken did some vacuuming while I made a nice hot batch of Italian Sausage Soup. We could not find any evidence of a laundromat in Meade but after lunch Ken was getting stir crazy and decided to load up the wash baskets and head in to town for awhile. He went in to the local pharmacy and asked. Sure enough, there was a small coin operated laundry located behind the local tavern. While he was gone, it began to snow big fluffy flakes so I enjoyed the beautiful view outside my window, along with a hot cup of tea, while working through my list of outstanding to-do’s on my laptop.

The weather front has been less fierce but slower than originally forecast. This means we will probably stay here at Lake Meade for one more day and then follow the warmer weather Northeast on Thursday when there are lesser wind gusts forecast.

Hugs, C

The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest

2011-03-07T09:52:00.001-06:00

Since Ken and I were children we have both been intrigued by stories and photos of the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. Today was our day for first-hand experience in the Petrified Forest National Park.

We first stopped at the visitor’s center to watch the 20 minute video and pick up information.

We then began the 28 mile scenic drive.

The beginning of the drive is in the Painted Desert.

It’s said that on a clear day, you can see for 100 miles here!

In this section we visited the old Painted Desert Inn was built over an even earlier Stone Tree House as a Civilian Conservation Corp project in 1937. Today it serves as a museum and bookstore with patios out to more beautiful vistas.

The interior is maintained in much its original form with furniture and equipment from when it was an active inn back in the 20’s and 30’s. There are several Indian murals by Hopi artist, Fred Kabotie, that were done in 1947.

The Petrified Forest National Park contains some of the best examples of petroglyphs (made by chiseling) and pictographs (painted) of the Ancestral Pueblo peoples dated back to estimated 1000-1350 AD. These peoples were the ancestors of the Hopi and Zuni tribes.

After our visit to the desert in we finished our drive through the Painted Desert on the north side of I-40.

On the south side of I-40 the drive continues through the Painted Desert but the colors and formations change.

The area below is aptly named, The Tepees. The colored layers in this section is really striking.

We stopped to walk around Puerco Pueblo which is an ancient 100-room pueblo thought to have been inhabited in about 1250AD by as my as 1200 people.

It is near this pueblo that some of the most detailed petroglyphs are located.

It’s at this point, about halfway in the 28 mile drive that we began to encounter the first obvious remnants of the Petrified Forest.

We stopped at various points along this part of the drive to get closer to the petrified logs.

Unfortunately, over the years, a lot of the petrified wood has been pilfered. These objects are now considered archeological treasures on national park land and collection or removal is considered a federal crime that can be punishable by imprisonment.

The Rainbow Forest Museum is located near the end of the scenic drive.

Here’s Ken getting to know some of the prehistoric beasts that existed at the same Triassic Period petrified trees found in the park.

I found the pictorials in the museum for helpful in understanding the evolution of these creatures from this period some 200 million years ago. This was so long ago that they were considered the ancestors of dinosaurs.

The graphic below also made it more obvious how the logs ended up without limbs in the formations they’re found in today, considering that this desert area was once a large open waterway.

So there it is, the end to another wonderful day of exploring!

Hugs, C

Camp Verde, AZ to Holbrook, AZ

2011-03-06T16:29:00.001-06:00

Thursday, after a week of exploring around the Camp Verde area, we departed to gradually start our way back North and East.

As we neared Flagstaff, the highest peak in Arizona, Humphrey’s Peak, elevation 12633, dominated the vista, offset by a forest of green ponderosa pines, with some remnants of snow.

Having had a white-tail deer total my car before, I can only imagine the damage an elk could cause!

Once again, we were surprised by what a difference an hour’s drive can make in the landscape of the Southwest.

Now, while we are in these long expanses of openness, let me mention that, yes, dear Reader, Ken and I do eat out a lot. So long as we are blessed with a budget that can handle it, trying out the local restaurants is one of our favorite parts of travelling. That said, one of the reasons we really like having a motorhome is that I have access to the kitchen while Ken is driving.

And yes, eating out so much is not great on the waistline either so I’m trying to focus on low carb when not in restaurants. This was the chef salad I organized on our road-trip. Just have to be really careful with that big chopping knife while the rig is moving!

There was some discussion about whether we wanted to do the Petrified Forest in the RV and then just continue on down the road. There were two reasons for this. One, we didn’t find an RV park that sounded great in the area, and, two, it didn’t seem like there was much to see and do in the area but the drive through the Petrified Forest.

As it turns out, we are glad we did make an overnight stop at the Root 66 RV Park just off I-40 between Holbrook and the Petrified Forest entrance. While this is a pretty dilapidated mess of buildings with the sites being nothing more than gravel parking lot with hookups, it served our purpose. The owners were extremely nice and with Passport America, the $18 for 50 amp full hookup service was well worth it.

After a quick setup and dog walk, Ken and I ventured in to the town of Holbrook.

This is a neat, quirky little town that was in its hey-day when Route 66 was heavily travelled.

The sign below is the largest map of Route 66 in the world.

Because of the link between dinosaurs and the Triassic period that resulted in the Petrified Forest, there are all these dinosaur statues everywhere you look, along with endless numbers of Rock Shops where you can get your own personal piece of petrified wood. If that’s your thing, you’d best stop at one of these shops that get their rocks outside of the national park since if you pick up a rock in the park you go to jail.

I was really excited that we happened upon this piece of Route 66 folklore, the famous Wigwam Motel. It’s really cool how they scatter the old vintage automobiles around the lot.

For Oprah fans, you may recall that during Oprah and Gayle’s Roadtrip, they spent the night in Wigwam #1 here, the farthest to the right.

Then, guess what…time to eat!! Once again, we decided to depend on TripAdvisor and Urbanspoon to find the best place to get a ‘taste’ of Holbrook.

Based on our luck with ‘hole in the walls’, our pick was Joe and Aggie’s, a small family restaurant now in its third generation.

They are famous here for their green chili so that what my choice.

Ken went with the combination platter with both green and red sauce.

We decided at this point that this place might just squeak to the top as our favorite Mexican restaurant. While the chips and salsa, which they bring to the table immediately, were not our favorite, chips a bit hard and salsa a little too hot for Ken’s taste, the green chili was awesome and the rest of the food, hand-made and as good as we’d had anywhere. The added touch of bringing warm sopapillas with honey to the table with the entrees, is a definite plus.

The other plus was our waiter, Chris. He was talkative, fun, attentive and helpful, even though he had to split his time between us and a group of dads who’d brought in a tribe of 10 rambunctious little boys.

Now what we didn’t picture here is the dessert and that is what put this restaurant to the top of our Mexican favorites. On the restaurant website they offered with coupon a free apple burrito dessert with purchase of 2 entrees. Even though we didn’t print the coupon, I showed it to Chris from my Droid and he was more than happy to give us the freebie and even added a generous scoop of ice cream. Ken and I didn’t think to take pictures because we were two busy fighting over every delicious morsel. The owner came by the table and told us that these dessert burritos where a specialty made from scratch by his sister.

Once again, we stopped in to a town we didn’t know much about and ended up having a really great time!

Hugs, C

Oak Creek Canyon: North 89A March 2, 2011

2011-03-03T17:28:00.001-06:00

Today we drove the famous Arizona 89A north out of Sedona. This road is also called Oak Creek Canyon Road. It is a narrow winding road that takes you up several thousand feet to an overlook then on to Flagstaff AZ.

We stopped at one of the numerous pullouts to walk down a short trail to a cliff over Oak Creek. When we got there one of the first things we saw was snow covering this Prickly Pear Cactus. A sight not seen often!

Views of the creek and its’ surroundings.

Further along the drive and higher elevation we saw pine tree for the first time in two months. The air here was amazingly fresh and aromatic.

The drive to the overlook was somewhat challenging for someone with inner ear problems. The elevation changes kept the ears popping. Here are the pictures from the overlook at the top.

This picture from the overlook shows the switchbacks on the road to the top.

Between the overlook parking area and the overlook, Native Americans have displays of silver, jewelry, and pottery. Very nice items at what seemed to be reasonable prices.

On the way down we stopped at a National Forest Cave Springs Campground to walk around and have a look see. The campground was closed so we parked by the road and walked in. This beautiful stream winds through the campground. This NFS campground has something we’ve not seen before – coin-operated showers, $4 minimum, in place of a shower house. Since there is no water hookup using this would make sense. I wonder if they allow us to share a shower! ;-)

A campsite. Many paved level sites, but no electric,water or sewer.

At the end of the drive we stopped at the Red Rock Cafe. It is the highest rated cafe on trip advisor for this area. It is a breakfast and lunch cafe that closes at 3:00. We had some very good soup, and great salads.

Tonight we will go to the casino again for dinner. We signed up for their players card and can get another good meal at really reasonable prices. It wears on a guy all this eating out!

KP .. Gpa

PS. In response to question….our camera is a Canon Powershot SX20 IS. We bought this last May when our 5 year old Powershot had seen better days. We must admit that we are very much photography amateurs and this is an easy point-n-shoot camera with 12.1 megapixels, 20x zoom. Since we didn’t want to have to go the next step up and invest in extra lenses this seemed the best option at the time. I bet if we read the users guide we might get some really good pics. We use Picassa to clean up the pics and reduce megapixels to 800 dpi before publishing.

Mile-High Jerome on the Wrong Day

2011-03-02T19:37:00.001-06:00

Note: To try to catch up on all our adventures we’ve posted several blogs in the same day so don’t forget to click on the ‘Older’ tag at the bottom to be sure you haven’t missed anything!

(Camp Verde, AZ) We decided Tuesday would be a great day for a trip up to Jerome which 130 years ago was home to one of the wealthiest mines in the world. The town is said to be “America’s Most Vertical City” and the “Largest Ghost Town in America”.

The trip was an easy 25 miles though mostly up, to the top of Cleopatra Hill!

As usual, the views along the way were great. Although most snow is gone, the mountain tops are still frosted.

In 1876, the first mining claim was worked here, and at that time the town was named after a major investor, Eugene Murray Jerome whose great-nephew was Winston Churchill. The mine became known as the United Verde Copper Company when William Clark purchased the claims in 1888. Clark became one of the wealthiest men in the world, built over 1100 miles of railroad and was founder of both the cities of Butte, Montana and Las Vegas, Nevada.

At it’s height, in 1929, the town of Jerome had 15,000 residents living on this mountainside.

“Rawhide Jimmy” Douglas, who discovered the second major ore body here, opened the Little Daisy Mine in 1914. This meant that Jerome was never really a “company town” since it thrived supported by two separately owned and operated mines.

The photo below overlooks the Little Daisy Mine and the Douglas Mansion which have now become the Jerome State Historic Park.

The mine closed in 1953 and today there are only 358 residents who today appear to all be either artists or caught up in the tourist business of this quaint little town .

Jerome State Park and the Little Daisy Mine Museum Tour are suppose to be a great experience. Unfortunately, we did not know until we arrived that they are now closed on Tuesday and Wednesday even though the link from the chamber of commerce site says open every day. Argghhh!! Ok, well that means we have yet another reason to come back to Arizona next year. And when plans fall through it always seems we can find things to do instead….like, you got it--shop and eat!

We enjoyed time exploring all the little shops. You can find just about everything from flea market style shopping to very high-end jewelry and, of course, some beautiful artwork.

In 1903, The New York Sun proclaimed Jerome the “Wickedest City in the West” with 37 saloons and 13 bordellos.

The residents continue to play on this reputation.

For example, the shop to the left, a house of ill repute in its saucier days, is called the ‘House of Joy’. There is a local restaurant in another old bordello called “Belgian Jenny’s Bordello, Bistro and Pizzeria.

We decided to go with a local shopkeeper’s recommendation and have late lunch at the Mile High Grill pictured below. Ok, the town elevation is 34 feet less than a ‘mile high’ so the name is an obvious exaggeration ;-) but the food was definitely as good as advertized. I’d definitely recommend the burgers and Ken said the country-fried steak was really good too.

We took the picture to the left to get a shot of the restaurant but only noticed when reviewing photos the tower above the town hall. Ok, we’re clueless. Any idea what that is?

Ken tries to be very careful on studying our routes before we head out with the motorhome. He’s found his Mountain Directory West for Truckers, RV and Motorhome Drivers an invaluable resource in determining where he is willing to drive the rig. The notes on Jerome made it clear this drive was definitely NOT big rig friendly. To our surprise (although I was too shocked to grab the camera!) we met a 40 foot Allegro Bus coming down these narrow streets. We’re guessing he doesn’t use the Mountain Directory!

As usual when we got in the jeep to head out of Jerome, we spent some time purposely trying to get lost, continuing up to the peak of the mountain instead of back down.

The rock formations, with the hints of snow still hanging on were just beautiful.

I only wish I could take an aroma-photo because the clean air in the cool moist mountains was just amazing.

The photo below was taken above the town of Jerome looking down into the valley and the town of Cottonwood. The say you can see 50 miles on a clear day.

Even though we were not able to visit the mine museum, our original destination, it turned out to be yet another wonderful day of exploring.

Hugs, C

Vortex At Cathedral Rock February 28, 2011

2011-03-02T09:18:00.001-06:00

Today we drove to the Village of Oak Creek in search of one of the famed vortices that are in the Sedona area. A vortex is a magnetic field that is stronger in some areas over others. Sedona is believed to be a powerful vortex area. These vortices are believed to increase the power of prayer and enhance meditation. Personally, I believe that any time we spend time in a natural setting and open ourselves up to the forces of nature we are opening ourselves up to an enhanced spiritual relationship. To get to Cathedral Rock we took the back way via Verde Valley School Road. After the pavement ends we continued on to the parking area near the end of the road.

The parking area has a pay box where you fill out a card and make your payment before you begin your hike. (Free on ‘geezer pass’) The trail was wet and covered with sandy red dirt, but was an easy walk.

The vortex area is not marked. If you are open to it you can feel a change. For some it is a hum in the head like a humming electricial transformer. For others it is a tingling feeling. For some it is a heightened sense of awareness. For some there is nothing. In any case the vortex is marked by twisted juniper trees. It is said that the magnetic field causes the trees to twist as they grow.

This tree is near to the place where we thought the vortex was centered. We found small stacks of rocks and other signs of ritual activity in this area. It was also a very beautiful area because of the run off created by the recent snowfall and the mountain setting.

After visiting the vortex area we began looking for the trail to the nearby waterway. Cindy had been here ten years prior (almost to the day) and had visited Cathedral Rock entering the area from the Sedona side rather than the side we had used. We found the trail which at times was very narrow and shaded, and at other times open and bright.

We were well rewarded for our efforts.

The ducks in the upper picture welcomed us showing no fear of us. They were diving and floating just a few feet from us.

After leaving the Cathedral Rock area, we returned to the Village of Oak Creek for a quick shopping trip to the outlet mall area where we found Cindy a new jacket to replace the one she had been wearing for the last 11 years. (It is still a good jacket there are no holes in it and it still fits, why get a new one?)

Yet another good day in the life of Frerxadventures!

KP….Gpa

Sedona in the Snow and Our First Film Festival

2011-03-01T20:28:00.001-06:00

(Camp Verde, AZ) On Saturday there was a lot of talk going on around here about a big storm coming in. Before we went to bed Saturday night, the winds were beginning to pick up so we pulled in the slides to reduce the noise from flapping slide awnings. We were glad we did since on Sunday morning we awoke to a liberal frosting of snow. Yes, Quincyans, this is the first snow we’ve seen since leaving the Midwest on Jan 2nd.

Here’s a few shots taken from our site at Distant Drums RV Park.

Despite word that some highways were closed, it sounded like everything would be in decent shape for a jeep trip to Sedona.

As we entered Red Rock Country, some of the snow was still lingering.

From what we were told at the visitor’s center this was the most snow they had seen along this highway since 1980. We were really thrilled to get to be out playing in it!

I guess not many people get the opportunity to see this wondrous landscape under snow cover.

Today, I was getting to fulfill one of my ‘bucket list’ items, attending a film festival. Since we weren’t really ready to jump in to the full week-long, 145 film event, we instead decided to wait until the last day, and hope for opportunity to land a ticket to the film that won ‘Best Feature Film’.

When we pulled in to Sedona, we located the Sedona Film Festival ticket office but as we’d been told by folks at the visitor’s center, parking was very hard to come by so I jumped out and got in line while Ken did parking duty.

Apparently this year everyone at the festival was pretty sure which film won and the four showings in the 3pm hour were selling out fast. However, just as I got to the front of the line they announced the winner and the agent suggested that I might consider the 12:10 showing in about 15 minutes which still had a few seats.

I grabbed the tickets, rushed out to grab Ken and then got him back in to the theater which was filling up fast. Once we had our seats he headed off to the concession stand since I’d obviously just screwed up his lunchtime.

The next couple of hours were some of the best we’ve ever spent in a theater. The movie, The First Grader, is the true story of an 84-year-old Kenyan MauMau veteran and his desperate battle to learn to get an education.

This is a ‘must see’ film that will be released in May. You don’t have to take my word for it since in all recent film festivals this film has been a big winner and only lost by a very, very small margin last year at the Toronto film festival to guess what: The King’s Speech.

What is really awesome about going to the film festival is that after the film is shown, someone key to the film, in this case, the producer, Richard Harding, sat in front of the audience, talked about the film and then answered questions for a very long time. I was really glad to find that these were not technical film questions but instead the audience asked questions such as:

Question: How many of the children were actors? Answer: Only one, the one who wrote his 5’s backwards.

Question: How close to the true story is the film? Answer: very close. Some minor items were changed such as the age of the teacher, or what objects the children were throwing at one point in the movie but by and large it is factual.

Question: Have the children seen the movie? Answer: No but they are going to also be taking a ‘children’s version’ (torture/violence scenes removed) to Kenya for them, and yes, they will include on the DVD scenes from that trip and how the children react.

Question: How did you get the BBC to back a film that show Great Britain in such a bad light? Answer: Good question. They were willing to fund with English tax money and not try to change the portrayal.

Question: Did Maruge see the film? Answer: No sadly, while he had been instrumental in working with the writers, producers, directors, etc., he passed away before the final filming.

I am so very glad that Ken and I had the opportunity to get our first taste of attending a film festival in this way.

Is The First Grader next year’s big Oscar winner? Ken and I talked about this on the way home and, sadly agree, probably not. It has no big names like James Cameron producing or Colin Firth acting. While it seems highly deserving it probably won’t fit the mold….but, hey, go see it anyway, you won’t be sorry! And, we REALLY hope we are wrong about the Oscars!

After the movie, we decided to do a little more sightseeing. We’d been told that there was a great view from the scenic overlook up by the Sedona airport and so that’s where we headed.

Again, it was a great choice.

It was now passed 3pm and we hadn’t eaten lunch. Based on a recommendation from Marilyn and Ed we paid a visit to the Tlaquepaque Village which seems to be a very upscale collection of arts and crafts stores in a really beautiful setting. We ate there at the Oak Creek Brewery and Grill. Ken had a very good Baja burger with fries. It was a bit pricey at $13.95 but we expected that in this local. I had a pizza with “Crimini mushrooms, fresh spinach, Fontini and Brie cheeses, red onions, roasted garlic and toasted pine nuts with garlic olive oil.” The pizza turned out to be one of the best combinations of flavors I’ve had in a long time but was much larger than we expected and so half was left for Ken for later. If we didn’t have a winding 30 mile drive home I would have liked to have done what they call ‘The Seven Dwarfs’ which was 7 5oz. little steins of their award-winning beers.

The shot below was taken at about the same place where we stopped to take photos on our way to Sedona 6 hours earlier.

It certainly didn’t take that freak snow long to disappear!

It only seemed fitting that we end this special day watching the King’s Speech take home the major Oscars!

Hugs, C

Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well

2011-02-28T11:50:00.001-06:00

On Friday the 25th we visited Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well. Both were misnamed by early explorers who believed the Castle and Well were once Aztec dwellings. This area was actually home to the Sinagua culture who lived and farmed here till around the year 1400.

Montezuma Castle had been repaired numerous times over the years to stabilize the structure, therefore, it did not have the older appearance of other cliff dwellings that we had visited over the years. The path past the cliff dwelling wraps around to take you past the fast running Beaver Creek.

The dominant tree in this area is the Arizona Sycamore. These trees are very similar to the Midwestern sycamore, but seem to have thicker trunks and branches and a whiter color to the bark.

Several miles away and much more interesting is Montezuma Well. Montezuma Well is a natural sinkhole with cliffs that tower 70 feet above the waters surface. Everyday 3 large underwater vents pump 1.5 million gallons of warm water (74 degree) into the Well. The water exits underground through a cave under the cliffs into an irrigation ditch that watered the fields.

In the cliffs around the Well you can see the remains of several dwellings.

Only pictures approvable by Association of Lady RVers are used in this blog so no pictures from behind showing anything below the waist have been included!

Notice the dwelling in the upper left corner of the picture below.

Climbing up out of the well and over the rim you descend to Beaver Creek. If you follow the path you will walk along a rebuilt irrigation channel that runs along the banks of Beaver Creek.

The source can not be seen because it comes up under the rocks at the end of the trail. The water is warm as there are places here where you can put your hand in the water to feel it. Also, plants can be seen growing above and below the surface of the water.

Another beautiful sunset over Distant Drums RV Park.

It’s a Boy!

2011-02-26T15:13:00.001-06:00

Introducing our first grandbaby!

Isn’t it amazing how adorable he is 4 1/2 months before it’s time to be born!

This is week 21.

Trevor and Leah called as soon as they returned from Leah’s appointment today and this picture was on my phone minutes later, along with another with obvious proof of gender!

It was wonderful to hear how excited Trevor was as he told me about being able to see the little guy rub his eye and suck his thumb.

The doctor says that Leah and the baby are both doing very well and all the little details they checked out looking around on him were just fine.

Technology is really something!

Of course, Grandpa Kenny told Trev to tell Leah she ‘done good’ getting him a grandson and then then Grandpa and Daddy were immediately on the phone talking about how tall he might be and what position he’d play in basketball, baseball and, of course, football.

For me it’s definitely love at first sight!! I just can’t wait until July when I can start to spoil him rotten!

Hugs,

Grandma C

Tucson, AZ to Camp Verde, AZ

2011-02-24T21:50:00.001-06:00

(Camp Verde, AZ) Wednesday evening, I had salmon out for dinner but then Ken decided we needed one more outing to our new favorite Mexican restaurant, Los Nopales, before leaving Tucson.

I’m especially glad we decided to venture out, since, on our way out of the campground, we were surprised to see the German friends we’d met a few days earlier. You see there is a story here. Several nights earlier when we were returning to the campground after dark, we were flagged down by a couple standing by the campground office. As it turns out, it was a couple from Germany, Guido and Esther, who had just arrived at the campground and were confused by the notes on self check-in posted on the office door.

We were surprised that this couple was travelling by themselves in a 35 foot Hurricane motorhome that they picked up in El Paso. They had never driven anything like this and were brand new to the whole RVing experience. I stayed at the office with Esther while Ken took Guido in the jeep to check out sites in the dark, knowing that options were limited for motorhomes. After they filled out the registration, we went on to our rig and then Ken walked over to be sure they could get backed in to their site in the dark, something even he, as an experienced motorhome driver, has trouble doing.

We found out from our time talking with them that Guido’s father had moved to the US and runs an RV park in El Paso and apparently also rents out motorhomes. He invited them to come visit and then turned a rig over to them telling them to have fun exploring for a week or so. These two brave young folk were on there way to Las Vegas the next day.

I know how timid Ken and I were when we first got the motorhome. We really limited our travels until we had a chance to learn all the complexities of these houses on wheels, I can’t even fathom having our maiden voyage in a motorhome in a foreign country!!

When we got up the next morning our new German friends had already vacated their site, so, sadly, we figured this was yet another interesting couple we meet on the road that we’d probably never see again.

Then, lo and behold, Wednesday evening, there was the Hurricane again, parked three sites down from us! Seeing us drive by, Guido and Esther hopped out, waving, and happy to see us as well. We invited them to come eat with us but unfortunately they’d just finished,. So, instead they said they hoped we might get together for a beer when we returned.

Sure enough they came over and we had an absolutely wonderful evening getting to know each other. They had some really cool weather around Las Vegas and so had some back because they really liked it here in Tucson, especially since it was warmer and they had been having intermittent issues with electricity and heat in the rig.

I love meeting new people, but its extra special when its a couple that is so obviously out for fun and adventure, and excited to try new things.

Esther and Guido, if you are reading this, we hope you have really safe travels back to Hamburg. Be sure to let us know when you are coming back to the US because it is always a fun time when Germans and Americans can get together with Mexican beer!! We will be sure to have plenty of cold Dos Equis!

Thursday morning, we waved our good-byes to Esther and Guido as we headed out of Tucson Mountain Park at about 9 am.

This park has only 30 amp electric and no water or sewer hookups, no shower house, and a 7 day stay limit. We turned off our water pump and limited our use of our fresh water tank to showers. With regular trips to the water spigot and judicious recycling and distribution of our grey water we made it comfortably for a week without water or sewer. We’ve made it 10 days boondocking in the desert on our tanks but then we were really limiting showers, cooking and dishwashing. This time we followed more of a regular routine, knowing ,worst case, we could pull up the jacks, pull in the slides and drive the two blocks to the park dump station. I’m glad to know that we can do electric-only sites for a week without giving up our normal lifestyle.

About 1/2 hour in to our trip, Ken brought the trip computer to my attention. The good news was that we were getting 13.5 mpg.

The bad news was that we were headed in to the mountains so we ended up with 10.5 by the end of the trip.

Once again we enjoyed 200 miles of awesome scenery.

Ken was glad to finally get past the Phoenix traffic and the 6% grades and pull in to the office of the Distant Drums RV Park.

When I called all the Passport America sites were taken until Saturday. Instead we are going for next best which is a weekly rate of $195.

We’re very happy with the site we were given since it’s on a corner with a view of the mountains.

The two shots below are from our patio.

We’d read on RVParkReviews that the casino across the highway had great meals for $10 and so that was our travel day dinner. Once again the reviews were spot on. Ken and I both had a great garlic chicken chowder followed by very tasty pasta dishes and garlic toast for less than $20 with the players card discount.

It’s suppose to get below freezing tonight here so we have our electric heaters on and are snuggled in for the night.

Hugs, C

Could it Be? We Are Actually Slowing Down!

2011-02-23T15:12:00.001-06:00

(Tucson, AZ) We are often told that we are in vacation mode compared to full-time RV mode because we move a lot and are usually sightseeing. We are seeing that we are finally slowing down and just having some ‘normal’ days at ‘home’ after 2 months on the road.

Monday we spent a quiet day around the rig while I caught up on some work I needed to attend to via the laptop.

We drove over to Valencia drive, about 10 miles, to visit the nearest Walmart for a few sundries and items for our planned evening barbeque.

JoAnn and Doug, and Sandy and John, arrived at 5pm.

We had set up to eat outside. I guess we are still in Illinois mode because it felt quite comfortable to us outside but everyone else seemed chilled at mid-50 degrees so we picked up and moved indoors. This was probably a good idea since everyone was able to comfortably enjoy a delicious spread and spend plenty of time with after-dinner shooting-the-breeze that might have been shorter outside as the night-time desert cold dropped in.

Ken provided his signature chicken breasts with Monterey jack cheese and peppers topping. I added cheesy red potatoes. Sandy brought a macaroni salad and broccoli salad. JoAnn added a fruit salad and homemade chocolate cheesecake.

You’ll notice that blur in the middle of the picture below…

It’s Sox who decides to temporarily give up her cushy spot cuddling with Sandy to see if she and Ditka might look just needy enough to get some goodies from JoAnn.

Of course, Fillmore’s mom knows that its a big no-no for furkids to have chocolate, no matter how cute they try to be.

We had a really enjoyable visit and then said our ‘see ya down the road’s since we expected to head out Wednesday morning.

Tuesday, Ken packed up outside while I checked out our next stop up toward the Sedona area, and created some documents to send to the Tucson Staples for printing. Doing some quick internet searches, I laid out a lunchtime outing, Staples stop and Trader Joe’s stop all on North Campbell Drive.

Again the online reviews from Tripadvisor, Urbanspoon and Yelp sent us the right direction when it comes to great eating.

Opa! is a very nice Greek restaurant directly in front of Staples on North Campbell.

Ken and I both like Greek and haven’t been to a Greek restaurant since before we left Quincy.

While you are going to spend about $10 -$13per meal here plus drink, which is a bit more than we normally do at lunch it was definitely worth it.

Both Ken and I were particularly impressed with the freshness, flavor and quantity of vegetables as well as the seasoning.

I have been watching carbs lately and picked this cafe because they feature low carb selections. I had the filet mignon low carb plate which was absolutely awesome!

Tuesday evening when we watched the local weather we got an unexpected surprise. Winds were suppose to be very gusty on Wednesday afternoon. Wouldn’t you know it—windy the one day of the week we were planning our drive.

Since we were in no hurry we decided to postpone our departure one more day. Although Ken had everything packed up outdoors, we really didn’t have to unpack just to stay on more day. We had laundry to do and thought it might be a good idea to get the furkids in for some general maintenance (bath, ears, teeth, nails) so we had plenty to occupy ourselves for one more day.

So, yes, we are definitely slowing down!

In fact, our next stop is Distant Drums RV Park, in Camp Verde, AZ. We know we want to stay at least 4 nights so I’m thinking we might as well take advantage of the much better weekly rate.

Hugs, C

Arizona Sonora Desert Museum

2011-02-21T23:50:00.001-06:00

(Tucson, AZ)

We had an absolutely wonderful day on Sunday. The Desert Museum is our kind of attraction.

The cost is $14.50 and worth every penny. I’m sure they would have to charge more if it weren’t for the number of volunteer docents who spend months in training to provide a wonderful learning experience for the visitors.

We were there at 10:00 a.m. and took an orientation tour where the tour guide filled us in on interesting facts about the plants and animals during our a one hour walk and gave us tips on how to make the most of the rest of our day.

It was really helpful that all the varieties of vegetation were labeled.

There were cactus such as this cholla, where we knew it was a cholla but now get a better understanding of all the different variations, like this buckhorn cholla that we had seen often in our hikes but could now put a name to.

There were also the rarer cactus we’d never encountered like these Boojum which is usually only found in the Baja.

There were well-known little critters like this squirrel skittering about

and desert animals like this coati that Ken and I had never heard of before.

There were desert dwellers that we had seen but hadn’t before been able to photograph like this bighorn

and the prairie dogs.

We have regularly been hearing coyotes late at night both in California and here. Just yesterday saw one at the campground but these beauties we sought out at the museum seemed more willing to stay in range for a shot.

So many of our RV friend mention having javalina right in their campground but Ken and I have never seen these guys live and up close before. We were told that these animals are much more social creatures than pigs and seem to stay in herds, take care of each other and, as you can see, even like to cuddle together at naptime.

These Mexican wolves could have given those javelinas quite a wakeup call, I’m thinking!

And there were certainly some animals native to this desert that I’m very glad we didn’t happen upon in our hikes, like this gila monster

And, we’d even been told that there were mountain lion sitings around Why and the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument trails.

That mountain lion is one magnificently noble creature but I’m still glad his relatives didn’t decide to hike with us.

Ken and I took a break and did a late lunch at the Ocotillo Cafe, sitting outside and enjoying the perfect weather and good food for this kind of venue. There is also a full service restaurant onsite that is suppose to be good but a little pricey for us for lunchtime.

After lunch we took in the raptor free flight demonstration where they had a family of five Harris hawks flying out in the open.

The keeper explained how the families hunt as a team to track prey and surround it. It just so happened that they honed in on a packrat when we were watching.

To the left is a juvenile, identifiable because of the speckling under the wings. The younger in the family must stay back and wait while the higher ranking family members get first shot at the food.

There was this black necked stilt hunting the shallow pools.

They have a great aviary with a variety of colorful and melodious birds.

There is a wonderful little home for hummingbirds where you can sit and watch as they swoop all around you. The gentleman next to me referred to this little guy as an Anna’s hummingbird, but I’m not sure that’s right since he has a dark neck.

This tiny little hummer had an equally tiny nest. A Costa’s hummingbird, maybe?

There was a docent in the hummer house. I wish now we would have asked her the names. There were at least a dozen different types of hummers swooping about. One little pair actually took to wrestling under a push near us. These little guys can be really nasty to each other!

(Any of you birders who can name these birds for us, we’d love to hear from you!)

Of course, we’re sure of the name of the one below, the barn owl. This majestic bird can turn its head 270 degrees and studied us as we studied him. This owl lives on every continent except Antartica. I know it can be a bit creepy to be out in the woods at night and suddenly find that face staring back at you!

At around 4pm, Ken and I were beginning to wear down after 6 hours of trodding the museum pathways. We covered all the major parts of the outdoor park. We could have easily spent more time here. I would definitely be a member of the museum if I lived nearby because its the kind of place you could come back to again and again.

As we drove the short distance back to the rig in Tucson Mountain Park, it was easy to see the rain headed our way across the mountains to the west.

Hugs, C

Eat-n-Sleep Days

2011-02-20T22:11:00.001-06:00

(Tucson, AZ) Ken and I have found that its important after travel and exploring days to have what Ken terms his ‘Eat N Sleep’ Days.

We had intended to have such a day after our Thursday drive to Tucson but it just seemed to evolved in to 2 days. If you follow the blog you’ve noticed that I’ve actually written 5 blogs in the last couple of days using the time for catch up. We also did all those things that needed to be done once we were back in cell phone range, including bill paying, phone calls back home, etc.,

On Friday night Ken and I decided to try our luck at a Mexican restaurant that was just down from the campground named Los Nopales. It was a very small ‘hole in the wall’ spot that had great reviews. The online reviews really came through for us on this one. We tried a Tucson Mexican specialty called a Cheese Crisp. This restaurant was reported to have the best. These are great, sort of a mix between a pizza and a quesadilla, about $4.50 on the menu depending on toppings. And, believe me, a small crisp is enough for a meal. Ken and I ordered a small cheese and pepper crisp to share as an appetizer and by the time our dinners came, I couldn’t eat anymore! Ken had a really great steak fajita plate and I had a 3 cheese burro that Ken ended up enjoying later as his midnight snack since I couldn’t do much more than taste it I was so full. Ken and I would go as far as to say this is the best Mexican we’ve had since we started our trip to the Southwest. The restaurant is only open until 7:30 so we went at 5:30. I’m glad since it was packed the entire time we were there.

Saturday, we did actually socialize with others a bit, going out to eat with JoAnn and Doug, and Sandy and John at another restaurant just down the road from the campground called Coyote Pause.

We had good service and the food was good but the highlight was getting to have some time with these two great full-timing couples.

Staying true to form, wanting to try flavors unique to the area, I had taken the time to check out their menu online in advance and ordered their special Sonoran meatloaf which gets a unique southwest flavor by adding nopalitos with a prickly pear/tomato glaze. Ken had the steak special but was much more impressed with my meatloaf.

On the way home, as the sun was setting, the clouds were really starting to drop in over the mountains.

There was 50% chance of rain in the forecast and it looked to be on the way.

Hugs, C

Tohono O’Odham Reservation to Tucson Mountain Park

2011-02-19T22:20:00.001-06:00

Note: Two separate blogs posted today to get caught up!

(Tucson, AZ) On Thursday, despite truly enjoying our time in Why, we decided to move on, mostly because we did not have Sprint cell phone service. If we come back again, we will likely stay longer and buy a month of Verizon which does work here.

We drove the 120 miles to Tucson along two-lane Highway 86. It is wild that we were in Pima County the entire time. I figured this might be the largest county by area in the US but when I checked found out that in Arizona alone, there are 5 bigger counties!

We were actually on the Tohono O’Odham reservation the entire drive as well!

It’s a lovely drive with almost no traffic and miles of untouched land.

The Tohono O’Odham tribe even own the mountain on which the Kitt Observatory sits.

We did something on this trip that we really don’t like to do. That is, we started driving without knowing where we would be staying the night in Tucson. We had hoped to stay at Justin’ s Diamond J RV Park since both JoAnn and Doug and Sandy and John were currently parked there. However, since we had no phone service, JoAnn checked for us and let us know via Facebook that Justin’s was totally booked.

Since we had no cell phone service it was a bit hard to plan our landing. In fact, we did not reconnect to Sprint until just outside of Tucson, a definite concern considering its Rodeo Week in Tucson. I had my list of possible parks prioritized and started making calls as soon as my phone started working. We were thrilled that on our first call the Tucson Mountain Park, Gilbert Ray Campground still had sites available for 40 foot rigs. Since this is a first-come, first-serve campground, we headed straight there, hoping they didn’t have a rush for the upcoming holiday weekend suddenly show up before us.

While this is usually a self-registration park, during the busy season, the campground office is open. Being new to the place and having seen some review comments about small sites, we expressed those concerns to the nice lady in the office and in no time she had us assigned one of the biggest sites in the park.

The site was really easy to get in to as it was on a loop. There’s enough room to actually park the jeep over on the driver side of the rig if we have company.

There’s plenty of awning/patio room.

And even our own little enclosed desert garden area behind. The cost is $20 per night tax included. The downside is that is for 30-amp electric only and there is no shower house. You can stay for a total of 7 consecutive days.

This little couple is apparently sharing the site with us. Did you know that Gambel’s quail are monogamous and usually mate for life! What a sweet pair!

Later when we took a walk we noticed there were several more big rigs headed in. There are 130 sites here and I’d guess every 5th one is long enough for a big rig.

Since it was a travel day, we decided to head in to Tucson to eat. That meant taking Gates Pass Road over the mountain. It looked like it was glowing in the setting sun.

On the other side of the mountain, we were greeted by a full moon coming up over Tucson.

I was in the mood for pizza and found an Italian restaurant with great reviews called Bianchi’s Italian.

I understand the good reviews considering the pizza itself was jock-full of fillings, with a good sauce and lots of cheese. For the size of the pizza, the price is reasonable. Unfortunately by the time it got to our table it was barely lukewarm. I guess we don’t really understand this kind of restaurant. They are set up like fast-food, place your order at the register, pay and take your drinks , get your own napkins, utensils, etc., and set your number on the table. Not the kind of place you would expect to tip. Yet, when I paid on the charge card without adding tip, I noticed the waitress give the paper a dirty look and then shove the drinks at me seeming perturbed. They literally dropped the pizza on our table 20 minutes later. Ken attempted later to go up and get a second round of drinks for us, beer and margarita, but there was no bartender at the bar area and the registers were packed with new customers. I think this could be a good place to eat, we just had a less than satisfactory service.

But, the pizza was huge so we had half of it to bring home and warmed up as leftovers its still good pizza!

All in all, another really good day in our every-changing neighborhood.

Hugs, C

Last Day in Why

2011-02-19T14:26:00.001-06:00

(Tucson, AZ) A slow and easy Wednesday morning evolved in to a slow and easy day.

Ken really enjoyed the morning dog walks at Hickiwan Trails since they normally spent about an hour shooting the breeze over at the fountain that seemed to be the gathering spot for the guys to have their morning coffee. It was directly in front of our site so Ken could easily come back in for periodic coffee refills.

Meanwhile, I was enjoying my coffee time watching this little Gila Woodpecker trying to peck his way in to our electrical box.

It ended up being a late breakfast but the kind I enjoy when we both cook together, playing around with some variations on a western omelet with toast.

Then, as I’ve suspected, nearby tools must have given off some sort of scent tied to testosterone because as soon as one of our neighbors pulled out his toolbox he was surrounded by men!

We had originally planned to drive over to Bates Well to check out some boondocking sites we’d heard about. However, we talked about it further at lunch and decided that because of the border/drug war issues, if we came back to this area, unless we came with a group, we would prefer Hickiwan Trails or the campground in the national park. We are just not quite brave enough to be all by our lonesomes miles from anyone else in the part of this country.

This meant we could change our afternoon plans and decided to take a long walk in the desert directly out of the RV park.

I had hoped we might catch up with some of the dozens of burros that frequent the park, but, once again, they must have known I had my camera and kept out of sight.

That’s not to say we did not have some company on the trail, like these cute little Gambel’s quail. I love their cute little top knots!

We are very slowly getting better acquainted with the desert and are now noticing that the small saguaro and barrel cactus always seem to have a mesquite, creosote or palo verde as their nurse plant. The little guy below is called a fishhook barrel cactus.

Here’s his big sister with a nice big showing of fruit.

We had another enjoyable meal with Ken making a great salmon fillet sauteed in olive oil, garlic and rosemary with me adding some fresh garlic mashed potatoes and green beens with ham and onions.

I heard the burros braying shortly after dinner and took my lawn chair and camera and sat quietly behind our RV since they often came right up that path in the evening. I watched their shadows in the distance as they grazed around a small water area about a block away. However, once again they never came close enough to attempt any night photography. I guess that clinches the need for us to come back to this area. I’m intent on getting that wild burro photo!!

Instead, I’ll end this lovely lazy day with yet another photo of the lovely living desert on the Tohono O’Odham reservation.

Hugs, C

Ajo Mountain Drive: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

2011-02-18T20:23:00.001-06:00

Note: Two separate blogs posted today to get caught up!

(Why, AZ) Tuesday after our morning hike in to Alamo Canyon, we stopped for a picnic lunch, grabbed the free guide for the Ajo Mountain Drive and were off.

The scenic drive is 21 miles long and makes for one totally satisfying afternoon of immersion in the desert.

The free drive guide really made the trip for us. For example, did you ever hear anyone say the desert smells like rain? They explain why in this pamphlet so we tried an experiment. Take some of the tiny leaves from the creosote and soak them for a minute in a little water, rub them between your fingers and smell. This is the intoxicating fresh aroma these bushes give off after a rain storm.

There are 18 stops along the drive with a brief story in the book for each stop. Most explain something unique to that part of the drive.

At Stop 6 there is a ramada built from ocotillo branches like those that would have dotted this landscape when the Tohono O’odham tribes inhabited this Diablo Wash canyon as far back as 12,000 years ago.

At Stop 9 there is this strange looking organ pipe cactus, with some unusual arms calls crests. This is a rare and beautiful phenomenon that is considered a mutation but which scientists are still not able to explain.

Midway in the drive you come to a set of arches high above the canyon.

Can you see the double arch configuration? Again, a highly unusual natural phenomenon.

At the higher elevations you encounter some different vegetation, like jojoba bushes and these agave. The agave nectar was used in ancient Indian rituals in this area. Yes, and today it makes great tequila!

At Stop 14, there is a sketch in the guide of the various peaks with their names like Diaz Peak to the left, Sweetwater Pass, and Diaz Spire to the right. The Diaz Mountains are named after Captain Melchior Diaz, who was a leader in the Coronado expedition, 1539-1542, and died of a freak accident here.

Once again, we were lucky enough to have this drive almost totally to ourselves. It’s a great place to take your time and enjoy being out in some of the world’s most beautiful natural landscapes.

Since we weren’t much in the mood to cook after our day of exploration we ventures 10 miles north to the quaint little town of Ajo. We ate at 100 Estrella. If you are staying in Why this is about the closest we found to a decent restaurant. They do have a very good beers, burgers and homemade fries. I had a flatbread Tuscan Chicken pizza that was good, but while the tomato and spinach toppings were very fresh and tasty they were not baked with the flatbread so it wasn’t the way I personally like a thick gooey warm pizza topping.

If we were rating our days since starting this new lifestyle on the road, we aren’t able to think of many that would rank higher than our day exploring Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

Hugs, C

New Favorite NP: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

2011-02-18T12:14:00.001-06:00

(Why, AZ) First a side note…I’ve been noticing there are a great many of these little roadside shrines in this part Southern Arizona.

These are not just roadside memorials to car accident victims like we often see in the Midwest. I found an article here explaining that these are a unique Southern Arizona cultural icons, called capillatas or grutus.

We’ll remember Tuesday as one of our best exploring days ever.

Our plan was to do a combination of driving tour and hiking. We started by registering at the first fee area we came to in the park. The fee is $4 but if you had the geezer (Golden Age/Senior) pass it’s free. You still have to register though and get the tag for the vehicle. This is an honor system at fee stations but we’re told rangers will look for the tags in the window and stop you if you don’t have one.

From Hwy 85 we headed east on a dirt road in to Alamo Canyon.

At the end of the road is the Alamo Canyon Campground. There are four rustic campsites here that have an absolutely gorgeous setting. The photo below is of site#4. These are only available if you are in truck camper, van or tent but if you are, wow!, this is the place.

The only ‘convenience’ at this campground is a pit toilet which also happens to be conveniently located at the Alamo Canyon Trailhead.

This 2 mile trail was our chosen adventure for the morning.

We found out later that we apparently missed the notice that this trail is off-limits to dogs. The reason is the teddy bear cholla along the path.

These sneaky little cactus are sometimes also called ‘jumping’ cholla because those little balls of spikes like you see on the ground seem to almost jump on to you as you go by. There are some real horror stories of dogs getting these lodged in their mouths or stuck through their paws. We were very attentive to these and Ken used his walking stick to keep the furkids well away from these unfriendly plants.

It was surprising how colorful the desert can be with the beautiful variations in stone against all the different greens of the bushes and cactus.

We were amazed how the cactus could grow on what looked like nothing but rock.

The trail leads in to the canyon to what was once a small ranch. Ken spent some time inspecting the construction.

We tried to imagine what it would be like to live so far from anything, especially in the intense heat of the summer. It did seem to be much cooler in the canyon

Ok, is it just me or can you see the little soccer player here heading the ball?

We carried water in for us and the dogs.

While Ditka and Sox had no problems with ‘attacking’ vegetation, it became apparent at 1.5 miles that Ditka was struggling much more than we’d expected. It was obvious by the time we were back at the jeep that he was done for the day. In fact, I’m sad to say that a result of his hip problems, I think Ditka’s hiking days may be over.

Well, I have so many more pictures of this great day, that I’ve decided to stop the blog at this point and save the driving tour for next blog.

Hugs, C

Touching Mexico – Close Enough for Now!

2011-02-16T14:06:00.001-06:00

(Why, AZ) Ken and I woke on Monday, Valentine’s Day, to same-old-same-old, beautiful clear blue skies, highs in the 70’s, slight breeze. Could this weather get boring—we’ll give it a few decades!!

I must admit neither of us had a really good night’s sleep. You see, its the burros. The little snots wait until about 10pm and then come up within about 20 feet of our back bedroom window and decide to a sound-off for a minute or two of braying every half hour. Here’s how it works, donkeys bray, Ditka barks warning at donkeys, Ken growls warning at Ditka, Cindy rouses from almost being asleep, grumbles and throws her head back in to the pillows. Repeat this about half dozen times during the night and there’s a good chance that the human barking, growling and grumbling will find its way in to the rest of the day!

Thing is, I think it is REALLY COOL to be sleeping where these wild little burros are running free. I’d just prefer they show up when I could photograph them. It reminds me of my Mom’s saying about children: they should be seen and not heard!!

When Ken took out the dogs for a morning walk he found plenty of fresh poop-evidence of our noisy night time visitors. Even better, he came across this really neat ‘relic’ in a nearby Teddy Bear Cholla.

Look closely.

Apparently a snake had braved the nasty spines of this cactus in order to use them to shed his skin. As sharp and sticky as these teddy bear cholla are, I’m amazed that the snake wasn’t stuck in there!

We decided we wanted to take a drive down to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument Visitor’s Center to plan our visit around the area.

The Kris Eggle Visitor’s Center is named after the Park Ranger who was slain in the line of duty here in 2002 when he encountered Mexican drug smugglers. This memorial, just outside the visitor’s center doors, is set to honor him. Click here for more on the story of this amazing young man who was only 28 when killed.

The border issues have only worsened since that time and at this time most of the roads in the southern sections of the park have been closed to the public. This is why we are currently hesitant to go off boondocking totally alone this far south in Arizona. The sign below has been posted in front of the BLM area between Why and the national park.

I must say, I fell in love with the park campground, Twin Peaks, behind the visitor’s center. While this is the busy time of year for them, they seemed to be only about 1/2 full. The sites are absolutely beautiful nestled amid the saguaro and desert rocks! There are several trails from the campground and the whole setting is uber natural. The ranger does an educational van tour every day out in to the desert and at 7pm each evening they have a different educational program in the amphitheater. What a great way to get to know the beautiful living desert all around us. There is a nice bathhouse in the center of the grounds so your tanks will last longer especially since they mention that it is ok to drop buckets of gray water down the large sinks, just never outside. They also have a nice dump/fresh water station. With the ‘geezer pass’ (Golden Age/Senior Pass) we would only pay $6 a night and could stay up to 21 days. To me this would be a really nice compromise between cheaper, more natural boondocking and the safety and amenities of the RV park. However, Ken, being the more practical of the two of us, was not so convinced. The number of sites where 40 foot rigs can fit are limited and you have to be really skilled to get in to insure you don’t drive over any of their cactus. They have no hookups and generators can only be used in certain sites and only from 8-10am or 4-6pm. Since we have no solar and 4 year-old batteries, this would put a real crimp in Ken’s 8-11pm chill out time in front of the TV. Probably worse, and the clincher for me, they have no wifi and so, since our Sprint access does not work here, we’d be sans internet AND phone. Ok, well, I guess I can stay 10 miles away for $19 a night and just come visit. But, I’ve noted this here because if you can handle the generator hours and have Verizon for phone/internet, I would definitely consider the onsite campground here at the park.

If you are relatively new to the Sonoran desert, we’d suggest you take a quick loop on the nature trail around the visitors center.

This is where you can learn to identify some of the desert plants. They even have pronunciation guides in the free guide they hand out. Ken and I have been driving around ever since then making a game of calling out and pointing: sa-WAH-row, CREE-oh-sote, CHOY-yah, Oh-koh-TEE-yoh, , PA-loh VAIR-deh, mess-KEET---like a couple of little kids trying to memorize their vocabulary lessons!!

From the brochures we picked up at the visitor’s center, We laid out a plan for the next day. Then, since we were only about 20 miles from the border and had decided NOT to go in to Mexico this trip, we instead decided we’d at least drive down to Lukeville, the border town, to have a look at the infamous border fence and grab some lunch at a cafe we’d been told about.

You really can’t see much of the fence from the main street of Lukeville and I was not keen on driving back too many unmarked dirt roads considering the place is thick with border patrol, so this is the best shots we got of the fence.

We sat by the window in the cafe next to the border crossing and ate hamburgers while we watched the activity.

There is a swarm of construction machines everywhere with the active expansion of the Lukeville Port of Entry. It appears that the primary checkpoint at this time going in to Mexico is temporarily under a tent on the left.

Coming back in to the US, as might be expected, is much more strictly laid out. However, on the hour we were here, on this mid-day Monday, we never saw a line.

What we did see were many US citizens doing what appeared to be some sort of duty free circle dance. While we didn’t check to see exactly how this worked, it appeared they would buy the duty free goods at the UETA shop but have to go across the border and then cross back in order to qualify for the duty-free savings. From what I’ve read this can be 30-55% savings for folks on things like perfume, alcohol and cigarettes. It was surprising the number of folks we’d see crossing in to Mexico and then a few minutes later coming back out. If we hadn’t had the dogs with us, we might have tried it, just to say we did!

There also seemed to be a lot of shuttle services bringing folks down here from the bigger cities, like Tucson. The two vans I saw unload were packed full of folks with lots of luggage. Hope they had someone to meet them on the other side!!

Ken had backed in to a parking spot directly in front of where we sat in the cafe so that we could keep a watch on the dogs who had joined us on this driving adventure. They do such a good job of looking like they need attention, don’t you think?

They do such a great job with the sad-eyed abandoned looked that they gots lots of attention and petting to keep them occupied while we ate our lunch.

There were two border patrol checks to cross on the way back to Why, both with canine units, but neither our dogs nor their’s seemed interested in each other, although one border patrolman did take the time to stop and pet and say ‘hello’ to Ditka and Sox.

We enjoyed a nice down evening and an early bedtime, which unfortunately was at about the same time that the burros decided to start serenading us again!

Hugs, C