I generally do not post once we get home, but I can change my mind now and then. Getting back to our base camp usually involves unloading the travel trailer and cleaning up our lot. Apparently summer of 2024 was a bit windy, damaging several limbs of the trees on our lot.
One of our larger limbs on a tree that we park the truck under was ripped down, and the guys at the park had to remove and cut it up. A tree at the front of the RV took damage, losing a couple of limbs, fortunately the bigger of the two fell in the "V" of several other limbs and didn't damage the 5th wheel. Another tree at the back of our lot lost a limb that fell on our neighbors clothesline, but did no damage.
Now that the trees issues were taken care, we continued unpacking the little trailer. Don't get the impression that we settled down for the season, that didn't happen.
We got home in October, then we decided to go to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. We chose to just take the truck since winter weather was rolling into town.
You cannot see them, but there were extension cords supplying electricity to most of the items. In fact, if you look real close at the headboard, you can see the extension for the table lamp at the bottom right corner. We didn't trust the water so I drove down to a convenient store and bought a case of water. We left this motel in the morning while it was still dark.
Passing through several states we made it to our destination in...
This sign is not representative of the day we made our way into Wisconsin... our day was a bit cloudy and chilly.
Did I tell you that we only drove the truck this trip. We arrived at our hotel, then called the kids.
The top photo is from our room, the bottom photo is at the indoor pool, different days; both days really cold.
Our journey to Wisconsin was to celebrate Thanksgiving with our oldest son's family. While we there we did a little touristy stuff like the movies, arcade, and a trip to one of the local towns dressed for Christmas.
Alina likes to play with making fun presentations, like this one:
Strawberries, mini marshmallows, and pretzel sticks dipped in carmel chocolate. Yes they are suppose to look like turkeys.
After our short stay we headed back home to New Mexico. On the way home we stopped in Iowa again and ventured to a bar and grill called "Buzzard Billies".
Buzzard Billies is a franchise restaurant in the Mid-west, this one happened to be in Des Moines. Anyway, you are looking at our dinner of an appetizer of mozzarella cheese rolls, that's how big they were. I had shrimp and grits with a side of hushpuppies, Carol had surf and turf and local beer. We shared a Banana Foster dessert (see video)
We made it back home without much excitement. We came home in time to prep for Christmas ourselves.
Our tree decorations required modification due to a lost limb during a wind storm while we were gone during the summer, but it looked good anyway.
The Ranch had a Christmas party, and after that some of the folks went caroling.
As I said earlier, some of the people went caroling, including me, I drove our truck pulling the trailer with the carolers on it.
With winter comes a bit of the colder weather and...
You may notice the ice flow in the bottom right portion of the photo, this happens when the fresh water tank is too full. How did this happen... when the weather is cold the backflow valve on the water pump has a tendency to remain open a bit, filling the fresh water tank. Of course it generally happens at night.
Because the RV rally (Escapade) was in Tucson this year, it was held in March. We were not part of staff this year, but we did volunteer to work the "Row" as the park's representatives. The Row advertises the different parks and Co-ops within the Escapee club.
Getting to the rally was a bit of an adventure due to weather, March was full of wind. You would have thought our path was straight from New Mexico to Arizona... not so if one chooses to use a southern route. The southern route took us into Texas, then back into New Mexico, where we stopped for the night in Demming.
From Demming it was a run to the Arizona boarder...
then the Tucson Fairgrounds.
We don't have pictures, but image our little guy parked amongst the big RVs; from a distance we were lost.
We arrived early to setup for our Row duties.
We stayed with our usual theme of aliens, since Roswell is only an hour drive away from the park.
It wasn't all work, we did play some.
This year Escapade happened around St. Patrick's Day, so Carol and I did our usual:
One of the sample batches was blueberry. We are going to attempt to make some ourselves while on the road.
Those of us from the Ranch got together for a social hour after all the business wound down near the end of Escapade.
Many of you know we are opportunists from past posts; we haven't changed as of this post. A set of stairs came up for sale, and we swooped in and bought them.
We actually didn't move them to our lot until we got back from Escapade. We needed to raise the height of the stairs by almost eleven (11) inches; the other RV sat lower apparently. I had to stack two 2"x10" planks, and raise the portable step to its maximum height.
After a run to the hardware store for materials I added two steps...
Now you know what we have been doing during the months back at the Ranch.
