Day 56: Nov 25 Thanksgiving.

Today is Thanksgiving and it’s my first one ever away for my kids.   I hope they all fair well and miss me. But I am with family and friends will arrive shortly to enjoy the day with us.

Thanksgiving is about food and we had plenty from date nut bread, stuffed dates and celery, shrimp cocktails, and other appetizers, rutabaga, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, gravy and I’m not sure what else, but definitely plenty of food for us.

Ms Shirley was busy in the kitchen all morning long. 

Friends arrived at about 2:30 for cocktails and appetizers before dinner.  

Time to check the turkey.

 Mike takes his job seriously.

It’ sure smells good…

And looks good...

Falling off the bone.

We had a completely wonderful Thanksgiving Meal, thank you Shirley.

I made the pumpkin pie and to be truthful will you… it was not my best in fact I will honestly say… It was my worse.  I have not a clue what I did or didn’t do to it but… we can joke about it anyway and I probably won’t have to make another one for this crowd.

We all have things we are thankful for but for me it was different this year.

For me to be away from my kids for Thanksgiving has been part of a growing experience for me as has this entire trip.

This may sound weird to some of you but in 62 years... Yes I had a birthday while in Death Valley… I have never been alone for 24 hours.  While I am not alone here on this trip; I have also never been away from my kids for any extended period of time. This has been the longest by far.

 I want to say that daily I have thought of my kids, and I have called them often, but I now know that I can survive. The next step obviously will be for me to get my own RV and begin a new era in my life.

Then I will finally be able to say, I have made it.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, I hope it was great and safe, mine was.

Tomorrow we head out of Yuma and head to Tucson,  Mike and Shirley’s home for the winter.

Until tomorrow,

Marie

Days 53, 54 and 55: Nov 22~24

Today is Monday and we are having a relaxing day reading and sewing are on the agenda for today.

I promised you all a picture of my quilt I am making for my precious Sophia for Christmas.  After about 70 hours or more of hand sewing it is done enough for me to take a couple pictures of it for you. The edging isn’t done yet but I have what I am going to put on it for a ruffle so you get the whole gist of it. 

I have close up of one of the princess to show you the detail in it.

This was all done with transparent thread so many times I felt like I was sewing the Emperors New Clothes not seeing the thread at all.  I am very proud of it though I think I did a great job hopefully my edging ruffle comes out like I hope it should.  The back is a pink striped flannel and I will do the top border with the flannel so my sweet granddaughter won’t have to  contend with a ruffle in her face when she is trying to sleep.

I’m going to apologize to Sophia right now because she is not the first to sleep with this blanket for comfort.

Miss Gradie had found this a very comfortable spot.

Day54:

On Tuesday Ms Shirley and her friends went off on a short trip to Mexico, I don’t want to lie here so I will tell you she brought back some Tequila for Margaritas at cocktail hour.

Mike and I went touring here in Yuma. We went to a very historic place that sort of left me unsettled for a bit.  

We went to the Yuma Territorial Prison.

I usually am fascinated with history and the way things used to be. Always thankful I live in the 21^st century.  But something about this place left me chilled.

The museum part was fine and had a lot of good artifacts from the prison. And I learned that this was a very humane place and had electricity and a hospital it cared about its inmates.

But…..

When I stepped into one of these small cells I just had a very eerie feeling come over me.  I stepped in to a couple others after and didn’t get the same vibe,  even the dark cell where you went if you needed to be punished.

After the prison we continued to tour a bit.

The bridge behind this bridge is known as the “Ocean to Ocean Bridge” because it completed the span across the Colorado River totally connecting the east coast to the west coast by roadway without the use of ferries.

 We then traveled on to another Museum.

This place had an original house and area of the Quartermaster and how they lived back in the day.  Fascinating how crude some of these places were and they were considered comfortable.  The dirt floors always get me.  The Quartermaster’s house was very elegant though and didn’t have dirt floors.

By the time we got back home the trek to Mexico was over and it was time for cocktail hour. Always the highlight of my day.  

Day 55:

Wednesday morning I baked my famous homemade pumpkin pie.  After all that strenuous work I decided to tour the neighborhood here were we are staying for a bit. 

This is our site. Our closest neighbors moved out today so I had a much better shot but you can see how close they are and how small.

I like the trees here they are large, branchy and the leaves are tiny I hope to find out what kind they are before I leave here. I do know they are like an evergreen and the name begins with an “F”,  that narrows it down nicely.

We have the Colorado River at the end of our street. It is not large and impressive here like it has been and here it is hidden with all these reedy things.

There is a very nice dog walking path that is landscaped very well.

That is the end of my tour…

I intend to sit out and enjoy the sunshine while I work on the top edge of Sophia’s Quilt and wait for happy hour. 

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we all will over eat.  I intend to call my kids later to make sure they all have plans for the day and if they are cooking that their turkey is thawed. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Until tomorrow,

Marie  

Day 52: Nov 21. On to Yuma.

I woke up early on our last day in Buckskin to a very full moon fluttering in and out of the clouds above the rock mountain.

Even after the cloudy start of the morning the sun was breaking through shining brightly on this rock.

I had shown my brother the big “X” in the sky the day before. I’m thinking he finally is having faith in my weather observations.

Because today we all had risen early we were underway by 8:15 headed to Yuma where we will spend Thanksgiving.

After leaving this marvelous place along the Colorado River and in the Valley of some very nice rock mountains the land started to level out again.  We were entering the desert.

We drove through a little blip on the map called Quartzite, well it is a blip in the summer time in the winter the population grows to over a million with the Snowbirds just parking anywhere and living in the desert.  The Bureau of Land Management charges $10.00 a year to park here. There are no hookups it is all dry camping but they come by the thousands to winter here.

Off in the distance here you can see a few RV’s claiming their winter home. This place will be a sea of RV’s within the next few weeks.

As we headed on we went through the Yuma Proving Ground. This is a military testing sight for everything from jeeps to who knows what.

Not far from the Proving Ground we finally had a drastic change in scenery.  We went from mountains to desert to…..

"Agriculture"!!!!!!!  This was a very pleasant site for me.  Not that the rest of the tour hasn’t been wonderful and scenic because it has been beyond my wildest dreams.

But finally we found people working.   I have mentioned many many times on this trip to my hosts and tour guide “what do people do around here for jobs?”  As I see it if you are not in the service industry, gaming halls, casinos, retail, restaurants, things of this nature, there really is no employment. I’m guessing the tourists keep people employed. Thank the lord for snowbirds.

We arrived at our destination about 11:00am and got into our site. We have been in many RV parks along this trip and I have learned a lot about how to travel in an RV, what makes a good RV park and what doesn’t and I think this one is not high on my list.

 It is a huge park, 495 sites, most full so some one likes it.  It is right on the Colorado River and it has a pool and laundry area and those type of amenities. It is nicely decorated it has the potential of being a great place.  

But the sites are small and cramped, it doesn’t have any internet and it only has 6 channels on the TV.  For me these two things would make or break it for me especially if I were going to spend a length of time here as many of those parked here intend to do.

But we are here only until Friday morning then we head on to Tucson.  We are having Thanksgiving here with friends.  They are parked next to us again and they will remain here until just before Christmas when they head into Tucson.

We did some touring of the area this afternoon and we went to The Market Place which is the largest Flea Market I think on the west coast.  After wandering through half of it we had had enough and came back here to relax for the rest of the day.

I think my blogs will be sporadic after this one because we are here basically to relax and not much going on.

It is time for cocktail hour…. So….

Until my next blog,

Thank you all for reading them,

Marie