Wheels at Rest January 16 - 22, 2011

The exciting news of the day is that we have a new home.  As I discussed earlier due to the truck being stolen we were forced to make a few decisions regarding our future and how we wanted to move around the country.  Our current mode of residency is stationary and we do not have a method of moving it or travelling with it.  The question became how do we move forward, do we buy a new truck or do we look at a new method of travel.  Well the new method won out and we purchased a motor home that we can drive.  The will forgo us having to buy a truck and we will be able to keep the car.  So all is good, except that we are broke.  Hey, you can't take it with you.


We will be taking position on the 27th of this month and I will let you know how the move went and how I made out trying to drive this sucker.  We went a little bigger that we wanted or originally taked about.  Our new home is a 42 foot Winnebago Journey. I will have pictures next week.

Wheels at Rest April 1, 2011 - January 15, 2012

April 1, 2011 – January 15, 2012

Well, the bug is back.  Actually two bugs, the first being the urge to get travelling again, we have been sitting for too long.  The second goes hand in hand with the travelling, blogging about our travels.  However, for various reasons, we are going to be in Grapevine, Texas until May of 2012.  In order to get the blog ready for our next trip I needed to update it.  It will now cover the time from April 1, 2011 when we landed at LAX on our return from New Zealand until today.  The new blog will be a continuation of the Retired On Wheels blog and this chapter will be called “Retiredonwheels 2012”

It started April 1, 2011 when we landed at LAX and caught the car service to Hemet, CA when our 5^th wheel was in storage.   I had pre-arranged for a young fellow to get our rig out of storage and set up at the RV Park. This would enable us after a 13 hour flight and a 2 hour car ride to simply drop the bags and hit the fart sag.  Wellllllllll, so much for thinking ahead.  It turns out we had a bad battery and couldn’t get our slides out .  The end result was that we spent a couple of nights in a hotel while we got things straightened out.  Eventually we did get into the 5^th wheel and just started to relax and enjoy the California spring weather.

We soon got back into the enjoyable, leisurely life at an RV Park.  There was a little a little golf, some hiking and biking and generally just shaking off the remnants of a very fast paced, but enjoyable 6 months of travel. 

It was during our time in Hemet that we were asked if we wanted to interview for a position at the Vineyards Campground in Grapevine, Texas.  We wanted to spend some time in Texas ( doctors, dentist etc ) we decided to go ahead and interview for the job.  Much to our surprise we were offered a position after a phone interview.  The start date was May 6th so we left Hemet the end of April and made the 1350 mile hike to Grapevine Texas. 

We have really enjoyed our time working in the store.  We work a 3 day on, 7 day off then a 4 day, on 7 day off shift.  The end result is that we work about 10 days a month but is it difficult to call it work.  We work with and have met some many nice people.  We have found during our travels that the rv world is full of happy, easygoing people and the same is true at The Vineyards.  In fact, we enjoyed it so much we decided to stay in Texas for the winter and signed another contract with The Vineyards. 

Vineyards Camp Store

We have enjoyed ourselves but we could have picked a better summer to spend time here.  We had a summer from hell and at times it felt like we were there.  We experienced over 70 days of 100 degrees or above temperatures with some days hitting a high of 112 degrees.  The temperatures did curtail a lot of extracurricular activities such as golf or biking. 

There were three highlights during our time here, two good and one bad.  The first good event was the arrival of The Howards, Peg and Rick, ( sister and BIL ) with their three second generation children.  Sonny, Cher and Chastity.  They were able to spend about 10 days with us and we had a real nice visit.  We even got a couple of rounds of golf in.  I thought I was finally going to get Rick as I beat him soundly the first time out.  Alas, it was not to be as he kicked my butt on the second round.   The large amount of the bet ($6) was just passed back and forth.  The Howards left us on December 7^th as they are scheduled to spend 3 months in Mexico.  We will be joining them for about 10 days in February.

Their departure co-in sided with my trip to Cancun.  This was a golf only and was with some old baseball buddies that have remained friends.  We had a glorious trip and got a round of golf in each and every day.  The resort was very nice and the service was impeccable.  My golf left a little, ok a lot to be desired but I still had a good time.

Da Boys - Rod, Brendan Casey, Bernie Anderson, Tom Smith

The Resort - Moon Palace

The Golf Course

The Golf Course

The only set back was that we had to share the course with others. Some of them were friendly and some not so easy going.


































The third and only bad experience was the loss of our truck.   It was stolen.  I was in a store for less than 15 minutes and when I came out the truck was gone.  The police told me that I was probably followed into the parking lot.  They got away with it very quickly. This left us with a 5^th wheel and nothing to tow it with.

The loss of the truck has sent us off in a couple of directions in our thinking.  What and how do we tackle the future and our travel plans.  We are currently looking at motor homes of various styles and sizes.  I think we have come to a decision to get rid of the 5^th wheel and get a motorized coach. However, what we end up with is anybody’s guess at this time.   Stay tuned for next weeks segment.