Friday, July 28, 2006
WINTER IN ARIZONA
We stopped in Arkansas and visited with family on our trip to Arizona. We didn’t get out of Atlanta until around mid-day on the 26th. We drove all the way to Dermott, Arkansas that day. Our plan had been to get into a campground in Lake Village and spend a couple of days with our families near there. We didn’t arrive until about 10:00 pm so we went to Big Ben Truck stop which is owned by Mary’s brothers. We parked there and visited with her family the next morning. After we had breakfast and a good visit we went over to Hamburg where my family lives. I got to set the menu for our lunch. Because we were recovering from the holiday feasts, I asked for a pot of vegetable beef stew and cornbread. We spent the afternoon there and a good time was had by all. We returned to Dermott and had another short visit that night before departing for Arizona on the morning of the 28th.
We arrived at Valle del Oro RV Resort mid-afternoon on the 30th. We selected this place on the recommendation of friends we had met in Tucson the previous March. They recommended well. It was a great winter home. The park was huge! There are about 1800 lots in the Park. About half of them have permanent structures called park models on them.
The remaining lots are for travelers like us who want to park their RV’s. This is a winter home for a lot of “SNOWBIRDS” who come down from the northern US and Canada and spend from three to six montHs. Many of our neighbors had been coming and spending their winters here for ten years or more. The park is like a small town which sits in the middle of Mesa, Arizona. It has wide paved streets which are well lit at night. It is landscaped very well with lots of Palm trees as well as Orange and Grapefruit trees.
We didn’t have fruit trees on our lot, but we got lots of free fruit because people who did have trees usually had a box sitting on the curb with a sign inviting you to help
yourself so their surplus would not go to waste.
There are an unlimited number of arts and crafts shops available. They are funded by the park and run by volunteers who are qualified in the craft and enjoy sharing what they know. All the coordinators and shop monitors are volunteers who live in the park. I know I’ll miss some, but there are shops in woodworking, wood carving, leather working, silversmithing, lapidary, photography, pottery and more. They have a big computer center which had classes on all sorts of software and one afternoon each week you could take your computer over and get help if you were having problems.
We had two swimming pools, two big hot tubs, and a great exercise room. There is a pool room with about twenty tables, shuffleboard on about thirty lanes, horseshoes, tennis courts and softball field. There were leagues for all of these sports and competition with other RV parks in Mesa. There are hiking clubs for easy, moderate and hard hikes, there are just walking clubs and bicycle riding clubs.There are card playing clubs for about any card game you know and some games I had never heard of, and there were dances every week. They had exercise classes like aerobics and yoga. I TOLD MARY IF A PERSON COULDN’T FIND SOME TO DO WHICH INTERESTED THEM THEY MIGHT BE DEAD!!!
Mary got a lot more involved in the crafts than I did. She finally settled into Silversmithing and Pottery. She made rings necklaces and made me a bracelet out of silver.
She actually made the chains by connecting the links together in different patterns. I was impressed. She did some casting of silver and made a ring and a
belt buckle. She also made some jewelry using a technique called wire wrap... She got into pottery and learned to shape the clay into objects just using he hands. After that she actually learned to make pots and stuff on the pottery wheel. She really enjoyed this and I think she did a real good job on it.
At the end of the season they had a crafts show and each shop displayed some of the work that people did there. The coordinator for pottery asked Mary to exhibit some of her work to show what could be done in the beginning class.
I went to wood carving, but I could not work the schedule out because it fell on the same days which I had committed to play softball. I also went and took the introductory class in leather work. I learned how to use the tools and what they were called. It was a lot more tedious than I would have enjoyed so I did not keep it up. I did play softball on a team which played against other old guys who lived in other parks. They had big leagues in all sports.
Mary and I went on a diet and lost a lot of weight during the three months we were there. I had a physical in December and my Glucose Tolerance was out of range and the Dr. classified me pre-diabetic. He told me I had to cut down on fats and sweets and lose a lot of weight. I lost a little over 50 pounds and Mary lost about twenty pounds in three months.
Along with the diet we were on a very active exercise program. Mary did yoga a couple of days a week and was in a hiking club that hiked every Wednesday. They usually hiked four to six miles through the mountains. I was in a walk aerobics class which lasted about an hour and a half on M-W-F; I played softball at least once a week, golf twice and rode a lot on my bike. We lifted weights three days a week. Mary did better with that than I did, but I road the bike a lot more that she did. By the time we left at the end of March, I was up to riding twenty miles some days. Of course, the streets were well paved and flat.
Near the end of February, Bill, Liz and Mia came out and spent a week with us. We were lonesome to see them and we had a great visit. Bill and Liz got a permit from the National Park Service to hike down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and camp. We took our Motor Home and drove up there. Mary and I stayed in an RV Park on the South Rim and kept Mia while they went down They went down on Tuesday and came back up on Wednesday. They loved it and got some great pictures.
I’d love to do it, but I’m afraid they might have to send help to get me back up. Mia was a huge hit with all our neighbors who were missing their grandkids. Mary, Bill and Liz went out with the Friday Hiking Club which took the harder trails. They went about seven miles. Bill and Liz were kind of sore and thought a nice walk with old folks would help their legs. Later Bill told me that he was surprised by the pace that they walked. I missed my walk aerobics the last Wednesday we re there and went on the hike with Mary. I enjoyed it, but not enough to want to do it every week.
We left on March 30th and went down to Tucson. We spent two nights in Tucson so Mary could go to an art show at a Museum there. I played golf while she went to the art show. On April 1st we headed back to Atlanta. We loved our time out there and we plan to spend longer there next winter. We are going out around the first of November and staying until April 1st.
We stopped in Arkansas and visited with family on our trip to Arizona. We didn’t get out of Atlanta until around mid-day on the 26th. We drove all the way to Dermott, Arkansas that day. Our plan had been to get into a campground in Lake Village and spend a couple of days with our families near there. We didn’t arrive until about 10:00 pm so we went to Big Ben Truck stop which is owned by Mary’s brothers. We parked there and visited with her family the next morning. After we had breakfast and a good visit we went over to Hamburg where my family lives. I got to set the menu for our lunch. Because we were recovering from the holiday feasts, I asked for a pot of vegetable beef stew and cornbread. We spent the afternoon there and a good time was had by all. We returned to Dermott and had another short visit that night before departing for Arizona on the morning of the 28th.
We arrived at Valle del Oro RV Resort mid-afternoon on the 30th. We selected this place on the recommendation of friends we had met in Tucson the previous March. They recommended well. It was a great winter home. The park was huge! There are about 1800 lots in the Park. About half of them have permanent structures called park models on them.
The remaining lots are for travelers like us who want to park their RV’s. This is a winter home for a lot of “SNOWBIRDS” who come down from the northern US and Canada and spend from three to six montHs. Many of our neighbors had been coming and spending their winters here for ten years or more. The park is like a small town which sits in the middle of Mesa, Arizona. It has wide paved streets which are well lit at night. It is landscaped very well with lots of Palm trees as well as Orange and Grapefruit trees.
We didn’t have fruit trees on our lot, but we got lots of free fruit because people who did have trees usually had a box sitting on the curb with a sign inviting you to help
yourself so their surplus would not go to waste.There are an unlimited number of arts and crafts shops available. They are funded by the park and run by volunteers who are qualified in the craft and enjoy sharing what they know. All the coordinators and shop monitors are volunteers who live in the park. I know I’ll miss some, but there are shops in woodworking, wood carving, leather working, silversmithing, lapidary, photography, pottery and more. They have a big computer center which had classes on all sorts of software and one afternoon each week you could take your computer over and get help if you were having problems.
We had two swimming pools, two big hot tubs, and a great exercise room. There is a pool room with about twenty tables, shuffleboard on about thirty lanes, horseshoes, tennis courts and softball field. There were leagues for all of these sports and competition with other RV parks in Mesa. There are hiking clubs for easy, moderate and hard hikes, there are just walking clubs and bicycle riding clubs.There are card playing clubs for about any card game you know and some games I had never heard of, and there were dances every week. They had exercise classes like aerobics and yoga. I TOLD MARY IF A PERSON COULDN’T FIND SOME TO DO WHICH INTERESTED THEM THEY MIGHT BE DEAD!!!
Mary got a lot more involved in the crafts than I did. She finally settled into Silversmithing and Pottery. She made rings necklaces and made me a bracelet out of silver.
She actually made the chains by connecting the links together in different patterns. I was impressed. She did some casting of silver and made a ring and a
belt buckle. She also made some jewelry using a technique called wire wrap... She got into pottery and learned to shape the clay into objects just using he hands. After that she actually learned to make pots and stuff on the pottery wheel. She really enjoyed this and I think she did a real good job on it.
At the end of the season they had a crafts show and each shop displayed some of the work that people did there. The coordinator for pottery asked Mary to exhibit some of her work to show what could be done in the beginning class.
I went to wood carving, but I could not work the schedule out because it fell on the same days which I had committed to play softball. I also went and took the introductory class in leather work. I learned how to use the tools and what they were called. It was a lot more tedious than I would have enjoyed so I did not keep it up. I did play softball on a team which played against other old guys who lived in other parks. They had big leagues in all sports.
Mary and I went on a diet and lost a lot of weight during the three months we were there. I had a physical in December and my Glucose Tolerance was out of range and the Dr. classified me pre-diabetic. He told me I had to cut down on fats and sweets and lose a lot of weight. I lost a little over 50 pounds and Mary lost about twenty pounds in three months.
Along with the diet we were on a very active exercise program. Mary did yoga a couple of days a week and was in a hiking club that hiked every Wednesday. They usually hiked four to six miles through the mountains. I was in a walk aerobics class which lasted about an hour and a half on M-W-F; I played softball at least once a week, golf twice and rode a lot on my bike. We lifted weights three days a week. Mary did better with that than I did, but I road the bike a lot more that she did. By the time we left at the end of March, I was up to riding twenty miles some days. Of course, the streets were well paved and flat.Near the end of February, Bill, Liz and Mia came out and spent a week with us. We were lonesome to see them and we had a great visit. Bill and Liz got a permit from the National Park Service to hike down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and camp. We took our Motor Home and drove up there. Mary and I stayed in an RV Park on the South Rim and kept Mia while they went down They went down on Tuesday and came back up on Wednesday. They loved it and got some great pictures.
I’d love to do it, but I’m afraid they might have to send help to get me back up. Mia was a huge hit with all our neighbors who were missing their grandkids. Mary, Bill and Liz went out with the Friday Hiking Club which took the harder trails. They went about seven miles. Bill and Liz were kind of sore and thought a nice walk with old folks would help their legs. Later Bill told me that he was surprised by the pace that they walked. I missed my walk aerobics the last Wednesday we re there and went on the hike with Mary. I enjoyed it, but not enough to want to do it every week.
We left on March 30th and went down to Tucson. We spent two nights in Tucson so Mary could go to an art show at a Museum there. I played golf while she went to the art show. On April 1st we headed back to Atlanta. We loved our time out there and we plan to spend longer there next winter. We are going out around the first of November and staying until April 1st.
