New Year’s 2006 found us at Twenty-nine Palms, California. This whole area of California was enjoyed by both of us. We especially liked Joshua Tree National Park and saw one of our best sunsets there. On the 4th we headed back to Catalina RV Resort in Desert Hot Springs as guests of members that we had met when we were there over Christmas. We really liked this part of California. Catalina RV Resort is a membership park meaning that you buy into it.
From there we headed to Yuma, Arizona. There are some amazing sand dunes around Yuma and lots of places for dry camping. The area around Yuma is mostly known for their truck gardens where a lot of our produce is grown. Other than the weather, there’s not much that’s interesting to us in Yuma. We also went to Lake Havasu and saw the old London Bridge then on to Quartzsite, AZ where we looked around the flea markets and the annual RV show. We stayed in Brenda at a really nice campground and only about 15 miles from Quartzsite. We then headed east and spent three weeks in Mesa, Arizona and had our best and warmest weather there. The park we stayed at was really nice and to make it better we had a coupon for a free week. There were people there from all over the U.S. and Canada. From there we went north to Camp Verde and used that as a base to see Sedona and the Grand Canyon, then south to Tucson then to Benson, AZ where we had a bit of snow!
From Arizona to Las Cruces, NM then on to Alamogordo where Gordon spent a lot of time photographing at White Sands National Monument. His photos of White Sands were Number One on his pbase.com site for eight days! From Alamogordo on to Albuquerque where we spent a week, then started heading home through the Texas panhandle where we stayed a couple of days in Amarillo, TX and discovered Palo Duro Canyon, a place where we want to spend some time.
We spent a few days in Branson, MO then on through Illinois and Indiana to Ohio where I ended up in the hospital overnight. I had been having breathing problems for a while so they checked me thoroughly, couldn’t find anything wrong with heart or lungs so determined it was related to my reflux disease. Increasing my medication cleared that up so we spent two weeks with Gordon’s family in Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus and enjoyed seeing our new granddaughter, Lillian for the first time. She had been born two weeks after we left for home the previous April.
From Ohio we headed back to Ontario, staying a while at Rideau Acres at Kingston and arriving back in Ottawa for our medical and dental appointments in mid May. We found out then that our nephew, Nicholas planned to marry his girlfriend, Becky on July 28th so we stayed in the area for the wedding. In August headed to Lindsay to spend the month there and see Betty & Garth and spend some time with them. They had their usual cottage weekend and Nick and Becky were able to attend as well.
On a very sad note, we had to leave our much loved little poodle, Bib behind in Lindsay. He got very sick and we had to put him to sleep.
In September, we had to return to Ottawa as Gordon had another medical appointment so after that was over we headed to Quebec City and Montreal returning to Ottawa mid-October to get things finalized to again head south. We enjoyed seeing Quebec City and the surrounding area but weren’t particularly impressed with Montreal. It’s just another big city with too much traffic and too difficult to find what you want to see.
After leaving Ottawa we stayed at few days at Mallorytown KOA waiting for the weather to be nice enough to travel and crossed the border into the US on October 30th. We made the 11 hour drive to Columbus, OH in one day and met our newest grandchild, Luke. That makes a total of five grandchildren to date. While there we had truck problems and wound up staying longer than planned. Everything was fixed under warranty.
Onward on our southern trek to the Texas Gulf Coast through Tennessee, Arkansas and into Texas. We spent a week in Austin but unfortunately neither of us felt well that week having picked up some kind of bug. On to San Antonio where we spent 10 days enjoying the weather and touring the San Antonio sites. Riverwalk and the Missions held most of our interest. Gordon also visited The Alamo. From there it was south to Mustang Island State Park. We had a lot of favourite places in our 2005/2006 winter trip – the Oregon coast, San Diego, Desert Hot Springs, Mesa, Sedona, White Sands, Albuquerque and of course, the Texas Gulf Coast – all for different reasons!
Since January 2006 to present (December 31st) we have put 7,341 miles on the RV and many, many more on the truck.
This winter 2006/2007 we are traveling less miles but are enjoying the Texas Gulf Coast. We were here in the winter of 2004/2005 for a while and as it’s much less expensive and not nearly as busy as Florida we decided to spend some time here again.
We spent a month including Christmas and New Year’s at the Marina Beach RV Resort at Port Aransas, Texas and will leave here on January 9th.
It appears we’ve both got some wanderlust in our veins as after a month in one place, we’re ready to move on to somewhere different.
Thank you for sharing all of your beautiful pictures. Have a wonderful new year!
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