Friday - Wednesday, February 7 - 12, 2013 (Lake Havasu City, AZ)

Friday

Our day started out with our normal morning routine.  Instead of going hiking with a group from the resort, I chose to do the walk away the lbs exercise, I'm really enjoying that workout.  After our morning routine, we took a quick trip to Walmart to pick up some items.  It's really convenient that the nicest shopping center in Havasu is just a short 5 minute drive from the resort. 

After lunch, I called and sang my traditional "happy birthday" song to one of my brothers who was having a birthday today.  He didn't have to go to work today because of all the snow they are getting in the Willamette Valley.  It's hard to imagine snow when we are sitting in the nice warm sunshine.  It's nice that they are getting some moisture in the valley and over in Bend, they sure needed it.  We both really enjoyed it when it did snow when we lived in Bend, I'm just wondering how come it had to wait until now for them to get such a nice big storm with lots of snow.....oh well. 

I spent some time working updating our blog and then was sitting outside chatting with my mom and who should pull up but some of our friends from Oregon, Terry & Seth and their dog Aggie.  We knew they would be in Havasu in February, we just weren't sure when.  We sure had a nice visit getting caught up on each others lives.  We made plans to get together in the coming week before they head out of town, looking forward to that.

Saturday

We woke up early this morning because we were headed to Oatman.  That is always a question that is asked of new comers, have you been to Oatman and fed the wild burros?  Well today was our day.

We stopped at McDonalds for a breakfast sandwich and hit the road.  Oatman is only about an hour away and to get there you drive on old historic route 66.  It was a pretty drive and we actually were headed up into those hills you see in the picture below.

Historic Route 66

Cholla cactus

Close up of cholla cactus - they are full of stickers, you don't want to brush up close to one or it will grab on to you and they are very hard to remove

We arrived at Oatman before all the crowds, so we got to park in front of this really old building.  The whole town is very old, it used to be a big mining town.  I believe they still do some mining in the area since gold prices have gone so high.  That was one of my disappointments was that I thought we would see more mining activity and be able to check out some old mining sites.  And yes, we saw and fed the burros.  They are wild burros that live in the hills but come into town during the day because they get fed carrots and alfalfa from all the tourists.  Here are some pics from our day in Oatman.

This building has been used in several western movies

An abandoned mine in town, there was a no admittance sign inside the door, I was surprised they didn't have the mine roped off or baricaded because when I peeked, it looked like you could walk in a ways

Oatman Post Office



Rich feeding several of the burros




More burros getting fed.  They aren't shy about coming up and checking out the tourists to see if they have any carrots or alfalfa.  Seems carrots are their favorites.



At noon, in front of the Oatman Hotel they have an old fashioned gun fight skit put on by some volunteer Shriners to raise money to help their hospital.  The blanks they use in the guns were pretty loud and the skit was pretty funny, it got a lot of laughs from the crowd.  They do it in the middle of the road which is actually route 66, they just have the crowd stand across the street on either end of the area they do the skit in and traffic gets stopped for 10-15 minutes.  The Oatman Hotel was pretty interesting inside, apparently Clark Gable and Carol Lombard spent their honeymoon in one of the rooms upstairs.  Oatman was one of the places they liked to come to get away from Hollywood.  The bar and the hotel restaurant ceilings are covered in dollar bills from people who visit.  We forgot to take a picture of the ceiling, but here are some pics of the outside of the hotel and the gun fight.

Oatman Hotel

three actors in the gun fight

Gun fighter shooting

The other gun fighter shooting back

In one of the gift shops along the street, they had a museum of sorts upstairs.  There were several old Harley Davidson motorcycles and several old fashioned bicycles.  It really was pretty cool, we couldn't believe it was just tucked upstairs like it was and there were no ropes or anything to keep you back so you could check out the bikes as much as you liked.

On the way back to Lake Havasu while we were still on historic route 66, we stopped along side the road to view this memorial to the Korean War vets. 

Sunday

We went to church service at Hilltop and then after church we stopped and checked out the winter festival they were having in town.  They had part of the main street blocked off with about 200 vendors.  We spent a couple of hours wandering through the vendors but walked away with no purchases other than two corn dogs.  When you are living in a fifth wheel, space is at a premium so it makes you pay attention to what you purchase and it's a lot easier to walk away from something unless you really love it. 

After our walk through the vendors, we did a bit of grocery shopping and came home and spent a relaxing afternoon reading in the nice warm sunshine.

Monday

With the warmer temps we are having here in Lake Havasu, it was warm enough to go hang out by the pool and actually do some swimming.  I spent a couple hours enjoying the sunshine, reading and doing some swimming. 

Rich spent some time working on repairing a running light on the truck that wasn't working and doing some maintenance on the 5er.

For dinner, we finally had some homegrown lettuce in our salad.  It sure was yummy.

view of my "garden area"

The tomato patch along with my pepper plant which is in the middle pot and surrounded by radishes which we are also eating

close up of the lettuce which is in the foreground and then the chard and spinach which is not doing as well as I would anticipate.  Something other than us is eating some of the chard because I see where there are just some stems sticking up.

Tuesday

Boy, today we did 4 miles in my walk away the lbs class, that was quite the workout but I'm loving it. 

I was vacuuming and Rich asked if I wanted to vacuum out the heat registers and I said sure why not.  So they are screwed down, so he got out the screwdriver and went to work on taking them out so I could vacuum.  It was amazing how much junk was down there from the factory.  I don't understand why they don't take the time to clean out all the wire, carpet and wood scraps, but they don't.  It felt good to get that cleaned out.  We did have a little mishap though....sigh.  Just when we think we can't screw up the 5er any more, we do.  As I might have mentioned, at times it can get quite windy down here which makes the slide toppers flap in the wind and it can get annoying.  Rich came up with this cool idea to make them not flap, he took cord concealers and attached them to the edges of the slide toppers with binder clips and it works like a charm.  The only thing is we have to remember to remove them before we put the slides in.  Well guess what....we forgot.  After Rich put the heat registers back down, I wanted to make sure they were down tight because the slides drag across them when we pull the slides in.   So I'm putting in the slides while Rich is watching the covers to make sure they are down tight and I hear this funny noise on the second slide...what's that?  Yep, you guessed it, we forgot about the slide toppers and the cord concealers were popping off.  We mangled the cord concealers and put a little bitty tear in one of the slide toppers.  Yikes....that wasn't a smooth move.  Now we have a note pasted by the slide topper buttons reminding us to remove the cord concealers before we pull the slides in.  I guess it could have been a lot worse.

We took a quick ride down to Lowe's on our bikes to pick up new cord concealers to replace the ones we wrecked and Rich got a flat tire.  Boy I guess you have to be really careful down here and only ride on the pavement.  We had done a little off road riding on the way to Lowes and I guess he must have picked up a thorn. 

After all those adventures we decided to head to the pool and cool off with a swim.  It was fun swimming and with the warmer weather, more people are hanging out at the pool. 

Wednesday

After our normal morning routine, we ran to the grocery store to pick up a few items for dinner tonight.  Terry, Seth and Aggie are coming for dinner tonight. 

After lunch, I headed to the pool for a couple of hours of reading, swimming and enjoying the sunshine.  The pool was even busier today as the high was going to be 80.  The water in the pool is really quite warm, it almost feels like bath water.

Dinner with Terry & Seth was quite enjoyable.  They got a late start to our happy hour as they got caught in some bad traffic due to an accident.  They said that it appeared like a Mercedes Benz had caught fire, boy someone was having a bad day.  We had a nice couple hours visiting and eating outdoors.  Rich BBQ'd us some very good New York steaks, we are really enjoying our new BBQ.   The weather was perfect for sitting around outside, though toward the end of the evening, the blankets and sweatshirts came out.  Thanks Terry & Seth for a very enjoyable evening.