Back to Blogging January 8

Wow! It has been quite some time since we have blogged.  Time is flying by!  Quite a bit has happened since Ann posted on December 20.

We stayed in Shiprock RV Park in Apache Junction till Tuesday January 5th, when we moved to Holiday Palms RV Park in Quartzsite Arizona, which is about 140 miles west of Phoenix. We came here to be a part of the annual RV show which attracts 50-60 thousand RVers to the area.  We plan on staying in this park till January 16th, then we are planning on going out on BLM land and "boondock" with a group of RVers for a while.

Our time at Shiprock went by really fast as we were pretty busy and did some really fun things.  Ann's daughter Ali flew out from Iowa on her way to California to meet up with a sorority sister during semester break from Iowa State University.  We picked her up at Sky Harbor Airport about 10:00PM on Christmas Eve.  As neither she nor us had eaten dinner, we looked for a place to eat; not an easy thing to do on Christmas Eve, but we managed to find a Village Inn that was open, and had a good meal.

We didnt do much on Christmas Day, as we had already celebrated Chistmas with family before we left Iowa.  On December 26 we drove to Los Angeles to do a little site seeing and have Ali meet up with her sorority sister.  It was a pretty long drive, but not bad, as I like driving.  We really didnt have any plans for what we were going to do when we got there but Ann and Ali did want to see Hollywood Boulevard.  So we took the appropriate exit and drove down the boulevard, we were all pretty disappointed as there really isnt much to it, and looks mostly like a tourist trap.

After that we decided it was time to start looking for place to stay for the night.  Without being too sure of where to start looking we jumped back on the freeway, and in a couple of minutes we saw a Sheraton and a Hilton at Universal Studios....good enough for us!  After checking in and having a nice meal at the hotel restaurant, we were ready for a good nights sleep.

We got pretty early the next morning to go to Universal Studios.  We got there early, and stayed till about 2:00PM, when it was time to drop Ali off and then head back to Apache Junction.  It was a great way to spend a day!  I had been at Universal Studios in 1972, but now it is more of an amusement park than studio tour, but still a great time.  We got some really nice pics that I will post soon. In quite a coincidence, Ali's sorority sister's dad works at Universal Studios, and lives nearby, and offered to come to the hotel to pick up Ali!  That was really nice, and saved us sometime, and some city driving.  He was also nice enough to tell us a better way to get back out of LA than we came in.  The drive back to Apache Junction was fairly uneventful, and we arrived back at the Winnebago about 10:30PM on the 27th.

In a phone conversation with my daughter Shanda,and her husband Matt who, is an Iowa State alum, before we left Iowa, they said they would be coming down to Arizona for the Insight Bowl on New Year's Eve, and may have extra tickets.  It turns they did, and invited us to join them and some of there friends at the game.  I cant say it was the best played game by either team, but Iowa State was able to come away with a 14-13 win...not bad for a team that only won a couple of games last year.  It was my first college football game, and we sat right next to the Iowa State Band.  Between watching the band, and the game we were pretty well entertained.  On the way back to Apache Junction from Tempe we stopped for dinner, went to a place that had live music, had a drink, but after a day of tailgating, and the game we were ready to head back to the motorhome.  We let others celebrate the New Year as we slept.

On January 4th Ali stopped off overnight on her flight back to Iowa and the snow and cold, to return to classes at Iowa State University on January 11.  So in the four trips to Sky Harbor Airport  within a couple of weeks, we learned more than we though we ever would about this airport. So it has been a busy and fun few weeks here in Arizona.  I am sure I have forgotten something I should have included in this post, but maybe I will add more when I add the pictures.

Ah ha, I just remembered one thing.  Ann mentioned something about smuggling in her last post.  Well, unknown to us when we booked our stay at Shiprock RV Park, it is a 55+ park.  That means that at least one person be at least 55, AND the other half of a couple must be at least 45! Hence the smuggling.

More later

Paul