Hello to all our family and friends from sunny Arizona. Yep--we are in the Phoenix area, not Estes Park. We finished working there the end of September and decided we needed to retire again! So we are spending the winter in Black Canyon City (about 30 miles north of Phoenix on I-17). We’ll be here until the 1st of March and then we are heading to Sacramento and Merced CA to see the other grandkids.
Lots has happened since we last sent out our blog--(October, a year ago, after we got back from Alaska. We couldn’t believe it had been that long) Sorry everybody. We’re sure you thought we dropped off the planet.
We spent October, 2016 in Cotopaxi, CO at the KOA where we park and work and fish. It has become a home for us. Then we worked December through March in Estes Park at River Spruce. It was a tough winter! Lots of wind, cold and snow. So much wind one Friday morning that trees were coming down all over town. We lost a huge pine tree in our parking lot and it missed everything except for the root ball taking out the sewer line to the cabin it was next to. Becky was able to capture the TIMBER on video and post it on River Spruce’s Facebook page. Check it out. (River Spruce facebook page) The root ball was HUGE and the tree covered the whole parking lot. We were so blessed because next door 3 trees came down onto their cabins (No one there because they are closed in the winter) and took out the power lines for the neighborhood. So between renting chainsaws, cutting up trees, ER calls to the plumbers & excavators and no electricity (phones & internet, too) for 12 hours it was quite the day!
The rest of the winter was fairly uneventful, thank goodness. Our Golden family came up for Spring Break (Alisha and Billy, Kalyn and Allie) and we all had a great time. Then we gave into temptation and traded in our black jeep for a new blue 2016 Renegade. It’s really pretty.
In April we went to Bonnaire in the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean for an awesome dive trip. It was amazing diving. We stayed at Buddy Dive Resort and had a lot of fun. Bonaire has over a 100 shore dive sites and all of the resorts have stairs to walk down or to giant stride off, descend and swim to the edge of the reef and explore. There are some sites that you can only get to by boat so we did that, too. It is a protected marine park so the coral is in great condition. Buddy Dive Resort has an ongoing coral restoration project and it is fascinating to see it in practice underwater. You can take a course to become a restoration diver. (Buddy Dive coral restoration project) Our friends Jim and Bren, who went with us, took a course to be certified Lionfish hunters (with spear guns!) We cooked up the fillets for dinner. Amazing! Eat, Sleep, Dive, Repeat!
We got back to Denver just in time to get hammered by the worst hail storm in it’s history. Where daughter Alisha lives in Golden got absolutely trashed. The mall at Denver West was closed for 7 months! People had holes in their car windows that looked like they’d taken a hammer to them. It was awful. We had our motorhome parked in front of her house and we were getting ready to drive to north Iowa to trade ours in on a newer one. We were parked under a tree and it saved us from much damage. Just 1 big ding in the front. Thank goodness for fiberglass roofs and Class C overhangs!
And now the story about the motorhome. We had been thinking about a bit bigger motorhome for a couple of years and after looking online and going to RV shows we found a model, floor plan and size that we really liked. It was a Winnebago Vista 30T (Class A style) However finding a used one was the hard part. Over the years we’ve been emailing a dealership in Iowa, Lichtsinn RV. They are 1 mile from the Winnebago factory in Forest City. They get a lot of trade-ins from folks buying directly from the factory and their customer reviews are 5 star. We found one online that we really liked but it sold in just a couple of days. However, our salesman said he had another one (a 2015) coming in on trade the end of April. He asked us for pictures of ours and offered us a great trade-in price, sight unseen! So we sent him a downpayment in March for our new one, sight unseen and drove to Iowa in May after we got back from Bonaire. Very busy spring with a tight schedule but it all worked out great and we have a beautiful new home!
Too quickly we had to park it and return to River Spruce for our summer stint there. The first task to complete was planting the 14 hanging baskets and 22+ window boxes. A lot of the plants were wintered over in the greenhouse we built the summer before. That was fun and the plants were so much bigger than buying them from the nursery. We have such a short growing season...not to mention cool nights. In fact the property was so gorgeous by the time we got everything arranged we were nominated for the Estes Park in Bloom Award and received the award in June. (Its awarded every 2 weeks in the summer to businesses around town).
We had a very, very busy summer with lots of return guests, whom we love to spend time with. Lots of new guests too. We are 100% booked in July, August and September and almost that booked in May and June. Lots and lots to do!
I don’t know what possessed us but in August we bought a 10 week old Aussie puppy named “Sadie”. She is a blue merle where Lucy is a red merle. She has brown eyes instead of blue like most blues have, which we like better. We finally got through potty training and not sleeping through the night. Jim took her to puppy school and she’s very smart and learns quickly. She’s also very strong willed and has no fear of cars, which she barks at and tries to chase. She also takes off and runs like a jackrabbit given half a chance so she has to be on a leash all the time.It is so different from Lucy who walks right beside you, better than on a leash. We’re hoping we can train her as well as Lucy was trained. 
He continued to have a lot of back pain all summer with all the physical work he has to do at River Spruce so we told the owners that we would not be back next summer. We also said that if they could find someone sooner, it would be fine with us. They found full time managers that could start right away. .So we retired again...well almost. We’re going back to workamping. The summer of 2018 we will be in Cotopaxi, CO. Cotopaxi KOA website Becky will be working in the office about 20 hrs a week and Jim will be growing veggies in the big garden Amy has there. We are both excited.
We spent Thanksgiving with son Jeremy in Whitewood, SD (close to Deadwood) and played tourist for a change. Went to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse and the Devils Tower in Wyoming. Now we are in Arizona. Our friend David sold his place in Cave Creek (where we normally stay) a couple of weeks after we got here with a fast closing date so we had to scramble to try and find another place to park. It’s absolutely amazing how much RV parks get for a space...and they are half mobile home parks, besides. If it has “resort” in the name..forget it! $600/month and up, if you can find a vacancy! We aren’t resort types anyway so no great loss. We finally found a spot in Black Canyon City because of a last minute cancellation. Rivers Edge RV park is an older, funky park with about half snowbirds and half permanent residents. Our neighbor has been there 18 years. It has lots of shade trees and grass and big spaces and some pretty unique characters.We love it!
It’s wonderful getting to spend time with the kids and grandkids here in Phoenix. It’s been so long since we’ve seen them. (And all our friends in the area) We’ll spend Christmas at daughter Melanie’s and head to California in March before we start working in Cotopaxi in April. Look us up if you’re going to be in Arizona this winter or Colorado this summer.
Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
(Our New Year's resolution is to edit more pictures and write more blogs--Promise)
Love Jim and Becky
