Archive for the ‘Arizona’ Category

Merry Christmas!

It’s 11pm here and it’s 1am back home so it’s Christmas Day back home, and soon to be Christmas Day here in Arizona! Let me tell you about my day today and I’ll leave you with a little Christmas treat at the end of this blog entry (pictures and a song)…..

This morning we didn’t do much but sit around outside and shoot the breeze…..I like doing that….just relaxing and enjoying good company. The sun was high and it was a beautiful day out with a slight breeze……exactly how I like December.

OH, I almost forgot…I did some research today and found two local companies in Yuma that fixes Blackberries…..I called one of them up this morning and they told me that they can fix it for free because I have an insurance plan on my Blackberry. They reopen after the holidays and I can wait that long…..I think

This afternoon we stopped by the Paradise Casino. I know we said we wouldn’t be going to any more casinos this week, but it wasn’t my idea, I just get in the car and follow everyone else. I’m innocent! Ha! I lost today at the casino, oh well. I’m use to it….

Tonight I took the electric bicycle out with Jake and snapped some pictures around the park…..I’ll leave you with pictures and a little song.

No, this next picture isn’t our Montana…..It sure is pretty though….

Okay, here’s a Christmas song for you….you can sing this to the tune of “Walking In A Winter Wonderland”……

Palm trees wail, are you listening,
in the pool, water’s glistening,
we are happy tonight
living in a desert wonderland.

Gone away, is the blizzard,
here to stay, is the lizard,
a warm sunny day,
living in a desert wonderland.

In the desert we will have a picnic,
road runners, cactus flowers, and sun,
Christmas dinner is an old tradition,
salsa and tamales by the ton.

Later on we’ll perspire,
as the temperatures rise even higher,
a warm sunny day,
we like it that way,
living in a desert wonderland.

(Lyrics Website Credit is Here)

Okay! Now I want to say Merry Christmas To Jake….

Yep, he’s out cold.

My family and I wish everyone of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. A special holiday wish goes out to all the men and women in the armed forces! Thank you for what you do for us and God bless you and your family….

Good night!

Hi! I’m blogging a little early today because it is Monday and you know what that means…..Bingo tonight! I’m settling in nicely into my retirement schedule: Monday is Bingo, Tuesday  is swimming, Wednesday is Card Bingo….yeah, and it goes on and on….I love it!

Anyways, today we went to pick fruit….we’ve done this many times before and it is always something I look forward to. Yep, I’ve got some pictures!!!

I see the prices have gone up from last year…..hey, to be expected……

Yeah, they have “pets” here…sheep, miniature horses, and roosters!

You use these tools to get the fruit off the tree that is high off the ground…..I’ll show ya how to use it

Okay, got my bucket – follow me!

Ohhh, there they are……

See, there are plenty around…..

They have oranges and grapefruits…....let’s get to work!

We were there for about 30 minutes and look at all we picked! There were five us there picking fruit and filling up the buckets!

This place is pretty big….rows and rows of trees……

I found a lemon tree too!

Time to come home and make some fresh juice. We usually use our electric juicer, but decided to try this contraption out. Don’t ask me how old this thing is, but it sure works great! I guess we had it hanging around the house and decided to bring it with us. This is the first I’m seeing of this thing…..

Well, that’s all we did today. Off to Bingo and tomorrow I’m off to see the movie Avatar!!! I’ll let ya know how it is without spoiling it for you! Have a good night. Chat tomorrow!

Hi! Wow, today was a fun filled packed day. Don’t let me get ahead of myself here, let me start at the beginning…..

This morning was “Jake” time! He wasn’t feeling so good yesterday, but now, he’s back to normal again. Whatever was wrong with him to make him sick yesterday had now moved on and Jake is back to his good old self again. We went for a walk this morning. I got a few pictures around the park, not many, but it’ll give you an idea of what’s around me…..look, alot of empty sites for you to come on down and perch with me!!!

That’s our street….there are some RVs already and in January it is suppose to be loaded, packed full here, so you better hurry if you are coming down to hang out with me…..

This is our street, home is at the end of the street…..I’ll let Jake lead the way!

We are almost there…..This RV Park has manufactured homes in it too, at the other end of the park, and on this side of the park is mostly all RVs…..

See! There we are….The RV closest to you is our neighbor we hang out with….she is showing us all the good places to go! And the Montana is right next to it! Nope, not much grass around here……

Okay, around 1pm we left to go to a Tamale Festival in Somerton, Arizona. Do you know what a Tamale is?? Me neither!! So, let’s check it out……

This is a picture of the T-Shirt you could buy for 10 dollars…..I didn’t buy one…….

They have a live band here….they  were playing music from Santana…..

Alot of vendors are here to sell food…..

What’s the commotion down the street?? Of course I’m going to go check it out – Ha!

Ohhh, they were showing everyone what “Zumba” is! Do you know what Zumba is? I do…I’ve done Zumba before! It’s alot of fun! And you want to hear something funny…..this Zumba team is here from the Cocopah Casino! The Cocopah Casino has Zumba in it’s huge conference room every Tuesday night from 7pm to 9pm. I’m thinking about going……

Awww, now they have another dance show with kids!

Tap dancers made their debut here at the festival! They are very good too…..

Okay, enough fooling around….we are going to find out what the heck is a Tamale!! This is what it looks like….I’m glad I got a picture of this because I don’t know how to explain it to you….

Well, let’s get one…..HA! We got one and didn’t know what to do with it. We were talking to the vendor lady that we ordered it from and asked her, “Do we eat this part?” Meaning the outside part of it. She smiled that big smile and said, “Noooooo, here, let me fix it for ya.” So, she was really nice about it and she showed us how to open it up and peel out the inside….

Scrap, Scrap, Scrap……

Add some fixin’s to it and Viola! Yeah, I tasted it….well, it taste kind of bland. There really wasn’t any taste to it. I don’t know…if you want to try one, come on down, I’ll “fix” it up for ya!

NOW we are in my favorite area! This is my Margarita man…..he is here from the “3 Amigos Tequila” company serving up mini Margaritas for free to pass out…….

Okay, I got my Margarita and my free T-Shirt…..

There are alot of people here. Tequila, 72 degrees outside, and food….yeah, I see why it’s packed here……

What is that?????? Is that a……

YES!!! I wanted to go over and hug it!! A slot machine!!!! Oh Boy!!!!!

I got three free spins on this slot machine, I lost, my Mom won a T-Shirt because she hit the bonus on the slot machine with her three free spins. Then we decided to leave…….we were driving around and, wow, they were picking the lettuce field on a Saturday. They usually don’t work on a Saturday……

Okay, we stopped and there’s our neighbor (our driver too) out there waiting to get free lettuce….You think that those workers are going to stop working, get some lettuce, and bring it to her????

Yep, take a look. The guy in the blue shirt in the background asked her how many she wanted and she said, “Two” and sure enough…..

He gives them to her…..

Another happy customer with her fresh lettuce. OH, you can not tip these workers. They absolutely will not take any money from you at all. And the guy in the blue shirt goes back to work…..

Okay, that’s all we picked up from the field today. We are on a roll and decided to stop at Paradise Casino (you knew THAT was coming up didn’t ya – ha!), so on the way to Paradise we had to go down these back roads (short cut roads) and there were cats all over the place……not sure why….I guess someone is feeding them……

So we went to the Paradise Casino and of course I couldn’t bring my camera inside….that’s a no no, unless I sneak it in….and I really didn’t want to get kicked out. So we spend about an hour at the Paradise Casino and I won $35 on Keno. They have the Keno on the slot machine (not live Keno), and I had a good time…..

After we left Paradise Casino, we went out for dinner. So, let’s head over to the Texas Roadhouse Restaurant!!! Have you been to this restaurant before?? They have peanuts everywhere!

Yep, I’ll take some of those…..

Oh, our name is called and I can’t wait to open the menu……I’m hungry…..

I know! I know! I take pictures of everything! I brought my camera with me……I order the ribs and the salad. Very good food there…..

And of course!! An appetizer……we had a coupon for a free onion blossom…..

I got a to-go box. Did I finish all my food? Yeah, I did….but I still got a to-go box, bet you’re wondering why……

Yum! Peanuts! The waiter says, “I don’t see anything, I don’t know anything” Haha! So we walked out and I brought my peanuts home with me…..

Well, I know that’s alot of pictures, but I wanted to share my day with you! I hope you enjoyed my blog because I had a great day today. Tomorrow is going to be a relaxing day and I hope that’s exactly what we do – relax and hang out! But you know us, we could be doing anything, so check back tomorrow so we what we do! And don’t forget to leave me a comment. Nite Nite!

Hi! Wanna know how I started my morning?? I made some more lemonade and had a supervisor, see that little furry guy watching me!!! Look…..

I already made one container of lemonade earlier this week, but it obviously didn’t last too long – that stuff is sooooo good!

This afternoon we went to downtown Old Yuma….the older part of downtown Yuma that has Lutes Casino….remember I talked about Lutes Casino a few blog entries back…..anyways, we went back there for dinner today. I had the hamburger and fries. And, no, there is no gambling in this casino, just a beer and hamburger joint. It’s so good too! Definitely stop by if you are in Yuma!

This picture is across the street from Lutes Casino. Just a typical Main Street.

This is inside Lutes Casino. I guess someone was getting an early present……

Oh, here’s the menu….can’t really read it – I swear I need a new camera. My camera is only one year old, don’t get me started on getting a new camera already!

There’s the back of the menu – it’s only a simple two sided menu…..

This is the napkin dispenser on the table. Noooo, you don’t pay for your napkins, you just take the napkins out the sides of this….this…..what do you call it. Anyways, you put a penny in and pull the level down and the reel spins…..yeah, you’re right, just like a slot machine. I invested 7 cents into this thing tonight. You think of a question and it will reveal your answer. 5 out of my 7 spins I got the answer “Don’t even think about it!” Geezz, nothing like telling me off…….

They have a menu on the outside of the restaurant for you to peek at!

Oh, Lutes Casino does sell scratch tickets and Powerball tickets…….I bought two Powerball tickets and these…..noooo, I didn’t win anything…..BUT Powerball is Saturday night……will I win 92 million dollars????? Ha, we will see……

This is just down the street from Lutes Casino where we parked. Hmmmm…..I’m not really a nightclub person, but hey, what happens in Arizona – stays in Arizona, right?? Except if you have a blog, then you just rattle off everything that you do! HA! No, I didn’t go to the night club…..

Well, other than that, it was a quiet day. Our Montana leg came back today from the repair shop. I’m not sure exactly what they fixed to repair it, but they installed the leg back on the RV and we are good to go. See, we didn’t have to take it into a dealership shop…..down here, they have the repair shop come right out to your camper, take the part off and zip it to their garage. If they couldn’t fix it, we would of gotten a new leg and the warranty did take care of the whole cost except for the 50 dollar deductible.

Jake was a little sick today. We didn’t do much with him today except for a typical walk around the park. He was acting strange, then he got sick, and then he fell asleep, but now at 11:33pm he’s okay. I fed him a little tiny bit tonight and now he’s out cold next to me. Tomorrow we will go for a walk and hang out. Not going too far tomorrow. Maybe it’ll be a “Jake Day”!!! Have a good night and, yep, I’ll be back tomorrow!

Hi! I was a ghost hunter today! We went to a ghost town in “Castle Dome” not too far from here. From where I am…probably 30 miles north. This a mine town right on the base of the mountains on outskirts of the north part of Yuma. It’s a small town. Remember those movies with the cowboy towns and everything is right next door to each other – hotel, bank, bar church……yep, a small town…..I’ve got pictures! (Oh, this is so far out in the middle of no where – both Nextel and AT&T cell phones had no service. This might not be important to you, but I was tapping the screen of my phone trying to find service)

This is the road to get there!

See! It says Ghost Town!

A little bit of history for ya!

It’s like a mini town!

This is the hotel lobby….

There’s a safe in the bank! Wonder if there is money in there??

Yep! I just had to look……

Someone’s bedroom…..

OH, a miner in the hole…..let’s look……

No one down there now……

This room here….anyone that served in any part of a military branch can sign the wall!

Want to buy some cigarettes???

Found running water inside one of the cabins…..

Close up picture of running water…….I was told that they dug 780 feet below and couldn’t find any water, they dug 1,100 feet to find water!

Me holding a gun…oh boy……

Hey, don’t forget, we are still looking for a ghost! I swear these rocking chairs were rocking by themselves! Spooky!

This is the grocery store…..

Okay, that’s what we did today. I didn’t find a ghost this time…..

Tonight we went to Card Bingo. Playing Bingo with a deck of cards every Wednesday night. I like that game. And tomorrow we already have plans to go to Mexico tomorrow morning! I’ll bring my camera cause you never know what will happen down there. Is it dangerous in Mexico? Nope, where we cross, they welcome tourists, we keep their town alive. I had my mail forwarded to me last week (I have one of those UPS Store boxes and their service ships mail to wherever you are), anyways, I got my mail last night around 7pm by UPS and I got my “Popular Science” magazine which I love! I read alittle bit of it last night before I fell asleep. So, that’s what I want to know….what is your favorite magazine! Do you like the magazine “Popular Science”? Well, that’s all I’ve got for today. Check on my tomorrow! Have a good night!

Hi! Well, I guess what I meant to say is when you buy lemons from a road side fruit stand, this is what you get……

We stop by the road side farm……just a pick truck on the side of the road with the bed of the truck filled with bags of oranges, lemons, and grapefruits. A bag of lemons (probably 10 lemons inside the bag) was $2.50 – not bad, huh! I couldn’t resist! So we got out the electric juice machine and…..tra-da – Lemonade!

Electric juice machine, electric bicycles….yeah, yeah, I know, we are lazy……LOL!

I think later this week or next week we are going to an actual farm (actual farm! Ha, I’m such a city girl!) to pick our own oranges and grapefruits right off the tree. Yep, we walk into acres of trees and start picking all the fruit we want. We did it last winter too. One of those 5 gallon pails filled is $3.00. Don’t tell me you can’t live affordably healthy down here. We used five lemons today and we will use the rest next week. OH, I forgot to tell ya, speaking of affordable healthy food…..that corn on the cob we bought at the flea market was so good. It was 5 for a $1 dollar and we are going back there to get more too.

Oh, the news last night on TV…..I took this picture with my Blackberry of the TV screen. Is that legal? Anyways, yep, that’s the weather here…..I knew if I told ya, you wouldn’t believe me, so I decided to show ya…..nice weather, huh?

And no blog is complete without a picture of Jake. He’s doing good too. We went shopping today at Lowe’s and we put him in the basket seat and rolled him around the store shopping. We picked up some little things here and there for the RV. Nothing important…..it’s just that the molding is falling down from our ceiling, but we took care of that. Nothing a staple gun and a little bit of paint can’t handle!

Hmmm, that’s all we did today. It’s 6:21pm now and usually, well most of the time, I do my blog entries late at night around 10pm or 11pm, but tonight you are getting an early blog entry because after I publishing this one, I’m shutting down the computer, and I’m going to the pool for a while, and then I’m going in the hot tub, and then I’m going to run back to the RV before the temperature drops below 50 degrees and I freeze between the pool and the RV. HA! Okay, I’m outta here. Have a great night, I’ll talk to you tomorrow!

Hi There! Wow, the title of this blog tells you just about all I did today. This is going to be a short and simple blog entry….

I walked Jake around the RV Park, went for a bicycle ride with Jake in the front basket around the RV Park, and went to Bingo tonight at the Paradise Casino (no, not with Jake ) and I didn’t win a darn penny! Bingo is 6pm to 8:30pm every night, but I just go on Monday nights because it’s a night that is not very busy. Tonight there must of been 50 people there and I still couldn’t win. Ha!

Today was a very nice day out today and I’m glad I spent most of the day outside enjoying it. It must of been touching 70 degrees today and it’s suppose to be nice the rest of the week. “Nice” meaning in the 70′s all week.

This week we are going to Castle Dome….I’m not really sure what this place is. A mine? A small town? Outlaw land of the cowboys? Not really sure but someone recommended that we go see it and it’s not too far away either, just a few miles.

Other than that, I’m not sure what’s in store for tomorrow, but I’ll have my camera, so on check on me tomorrow!

Have a good night!

Hi There! Well, I promised you I would take my camera today, so I hope you enjoy all the pictures I got for ya! Give it an extra second or two to let the site download all the pictures! Great pictures too……

This morning was rainy. Ugh. I thought for sure the day was shot, so we decided to go to the movies at noon. We went to see “Old Dogs”. It’s a Disney movie! Great kid friendly movie with a very nice story. I enjoyed it. When we got out from the movies, the weather seemed to of turned around and it was 68 degrees and the sun was shining high! So we went out exploring…..

First stop – Imperial Dam. We had read about this location in the Yuma visitors guide. The road was blocked off to vehicles, but we could walk around and visit. There really isn’t much to do there, but they have a very nice view.

See the road was block (I take pictures of everything!) …….

This lake is on my left and the Imperial Dam is on my right…..

Too bad we couldn’t walk on the dam walkway, but that was blocked off to pedestrians…..

We left there and a little ways down the road there is alot of RVs dry camping…..I think this some sort of national park, there is a fee to stay here, $5 dollars a night…..

RVers just hanging out, they waved at us while we drove by…..

We drove down the road and there was the lake to my left and alot of RVs camping on my right…..

Now, this is a neat place….we drove down there just to look around. Dry camping and peaceful……

There were hundreds of campers of all sort dry camping……

After our journey through the mountains and the Imperial area, we stopped here on the way home……

Across the street from the store is the date trees…..

So that is what we did today. We ate dinner at the new Panda Express here next to Walmart near our RV Park and it was good. We have a Panda Chinese Restaurant in New Hampshire, so I’m familiar with their fast food. I got my fortune cookie and the fortune in the cookie said, “ATM on the right, Casino on the left” – NOoooo, I’m kidding! It didn’t say that – HA! My fortune said “Speak less of your plans – You will get more of them done”. Hmmmmm, basically I translate that to say that I talk too much! I probably do, but I’m that kind of social butterfly! Have a great night – OH, and the question of the day for you….I want to know…..what is your favorite fast food joint! Hey, got another question for all you RVers…..Have you tried dry camping? What do you think of dry camping? We have never tried it. Give me your dry camping story! Nite Nite!

Hi! I don’t have pictures today, but I’m in a yapping mood, so you will have to suffer through all I have to say. Nooo, don’t hit the “Close” button yet on the browser just yet. I might have something interesting to say. Let’s see, first off, what did we do today? Everyone gets to that point in their life where you know the wiring between the two DVD players, the surround sound system, and the TV just isn’t right. Our TV works great, and our DVD player works great, but the surround sound system isn’t working right. Wiring problems? Gotta be! So we took the TV out and traced the wires between all the video and audio systems to see if we were missing something, and it looks like there’s a cord belonging (belonging? is that a word?), that belongs between the TV and one of the DVD players to activate the surround sound system around the RV. I know that makes no sense at all, but after an hour of fidgeting around between all the tech stuff here, we have come to that conclusion. Anyways, we will go to radio shack and pick up the wire and give it a shot. I don’t know, we will figure it out. Oh well….enough about that.

Let me tell you a little about Yuma! That’s where we are – Yuma, Arizona until Feb 4th (then where? Vegas baby!), and I wanted to tell you a little about Yuma! There’s a few things I want to hit on. First off, there were 9 movies made in Yuma or right around the Yuma neighborhood. 1) The Son of the Sheik – 1926, 2) Road to Morocco – 1942, 3)Flight of the Phoenix – 1965, 4) Yep, you guessed it, Star Wars! – 1977, 5) Rambo III – 1988, 6) Stargate – 1993, 7) The Getaway – 1993, The Scorpion King – 2002, 9) Jarhead – 2005.

There! That’s your entertainment and history lesson all in one. Anyways, what else did we do today? Oh, we went to Walmart and went to the Quechan Casino and Resort. Ugh, I lost a little bit of money there, but I was doing pretty good at Keno! I like Keno, I remember when I was in Las Vegas last winter and I played the live Keno (not the Keno on an electronic machine, live Keno where you fill in the numbers with a pencil and give it to a Keno host), anyways, I played the Keno at the Binion Casino and I won $380, I got 6 out of 7 numbers. I couldn’t believe it! I love Keno now! We don’t have Keno in New Hampshire, actually we don’t have any gambling in New Hampshire. Keno is in Massachusetts and the casinos are in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine.

The Peanut Patch here in Yuma is neat. I’m still thinking about it. If you are in town you really should stop by. The store has peanuts, peanut brittle, medjool dates, homemade fudge, honey, trail mixes, and citrus. Yep, I’ve got the brochure right here and I’m reading in the brochure that peanuts are a vegetable!! They are a legume! Legumes are a rich source of plant protein that contains no cholesterol. Peanuts can help reduce risk of heart disease, help you with weight loss, and peanuts contains vitamins! You can look the details up on your own time, I’m just reading what’s in the brochure! The Peanut Patch is at 4322 E. County 13th Street and their phone number is 1-800-USA-PNUT.  They have a free tour on Tuesdays and Fridays in the months of January, February, and March. Neat!

Oh, I want to hit on Lutes Casino a little bit more too (where we had dinner last night)! I had a few people email me that wanted more information on this restaurant. I got that brochure here too! And it’s interesting too….Though this is called “casino”, there isn’t any gambling at the Arizona’s oldest pool hall. Basically, it’s just a hamburger and beer joint! And they have great hamburgers too (That part isn’t in the brochure, I’M telling ya that for a fact ), so let’s see here…..The Lutes family still owns and operates the “casino”, which R.H. Lutes acquired when a gambler to whom he’d loaned money couldn’t pay back his debt! Interesting story, huh? I thought so! Neat little place! FYI: Not really a RV friendly area. There’s plenty of parking, but I am talking about downtown. You will have to be super creative to park a RV down there, so I don’t recommend it.

Well, that’s pretty much all I have on my mind today. Tomorrow we have plans to go exploring…I can’t tell you where! You’ll have to come back right here on this site to find out what we did and take a peek at some of the pictures I got! Yep, I’ll bring my camera! Have a good night and chat tomorrow! OH, and leave me a comment…say Hi….tell me what you are up to….don’t by shyyyy

Hi! We did alot today so give the page a second to download all the pictures! This morning we went to The Peanut Patch. Instead of explaining it to ya, I’ll give you the link to their site to check it out if you are interested in more details. But, basically they grow peanuts and have a little store to sell peanuts, fudge, and souvenirs. It wasn’t far from where we are staying, a few miles down the road and I do recommend going to this if you are in town. There is a tour of the Peanut Patch Factory, but their tours are in January, February, and March, so I hope we go back next month for the tour. Oh, I got pictures….

We bought some fudge (I bought Snickers fudge) and we bought some peanuts (of course!). We left there and we stopped at this Bar and Grill about a 1/2 mile from our RV Park for an afternoon Margarita! I’ve got to have my monthly Margarita! I might sneak another Margarita in when I go back down to Mexico next week. This is a nice place and I want to go back to this restaurant for lunch sometime, too.

Tonight in the Old Yuma (Old Downtown Yuma) they had a Christmas Parade. It started around 7 and when for about 45 minutes. We ate at Lutes Casino on that Main Street. Lutes isn’t a casino that has gambling, it’s just a very popular and famous restaurant. I had heard that John Wayne did some movies in this restaurant when it use to be a casino. I had the hamburger, very good hamburger. If you are in the area, stop by and see this cool place!

We watched the Christmas parade after dinner right outside Lutes Casino. We had a great day today. More to come soon! Have a great night!