Well we’ve spent a month back in Yuma at Pilot Knob RV Resort.  Bill and Patsy Richards are here for the month and Keith Schneider is here as well.  It’s been mostly a time for relaxing.  I’ve been playing bocce ball and poker a couple times a week.  As the month progressed the temperatures continued to rise with highs during the day near the end of month reaching high 70’s – low 80’s F (25-27°C).  

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I won’t go into a lot of detail as to what we did each day but I’ll tell you about some of the highlights.  We arrived at Pilot knob on the 29th of January which was a Friday.  Fridays and Mondays are poker nights so I was usually in attendance.  Friday at suppertime is 5$ burger night at the clubhouse so we went to a few of those.  Monday and Thursday mornings are bocce ball, and I usually played.

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Every other Saturday is Karaoke at the clubhouse.  I went to listen back in December when we were here.  There’s a couple here in the park who volunteer with many of the activites;   Gordon and Barb.  Gordon runs poker and both of them run the Bocce Ball games.  Barb is also the organizer of the Karaoke Nights and she had asked me to sing.  So I decided to go down for Karaoke on Saturday.  Barb almost met me at the door to ask me to sing.  After some arm twisting I agreed.  So I made my public Karaoke debut.  I sang an Elton John song and a James Taylor song. It was a little later in the evening and crowd had dwindled down a lot.  But it went over well.  So I sang again at Karaoke night on the 15th.  I did 7 songs that night.  Gordon and Barb convinced me to go with them on Wednesday to the Palms Resort to the big Karaoke competition.  This runs for 12 weeks I think beginning in December.  Every Wednesday.  Anyone can enter, and each night a singer is chosen to compete in the finals at the end of February.  I went on the last night before the Semi-Finals. Barb warned me that the winners were chosen by the crowd vote and she said it was more of a popularity contest with most of the winners being people from the Palms since the crowd was mostly Palms people.  I decided to sing anyway.  I sang Elton John’s ‘Your Song’.  I thought I did quite well but I was an unknown and I’m sure I didn’t get a lot of votes.  Oh well, it was fun.  I sang again at Karaoke the last weekend at Pilot knob and tried a few more new songs.   

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Sunday February 2nd was Super Bowl so even though Bill isn’t a football fan, he knew that Keith and I are so he invited us to come over to watch the game on his big screen.  Well as it turned out we had a Super Bowl party.  Lots of snack foods and drinks during the game and Chili at halftime.  What an exciting game to watch.  And the company was equally as good.  Thanks Bill and Patsy for putting this all together….. it was fantastic.

On Tuesday we headed into Mexico for some shopping and breakfast. This was not to be our last trip to Mexico;  we ended up going twice more before the end of February.  On Thursday we went the Arizona Marketplace.  I’ve described this place in previous blogs.  We managed to find a few deals.  

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On Tuesday the 11th Bill and Keith and I decided to drive to San Diego to tour the USS Midway.  The Midway is a retired US Aircraft Carrier.  It was a long drive, about 3 hours from the campground to the dock in San Diego.  But it was so worth it.  We left at 7am planning to arrive when it opened at 10am.  We forgot the time change from Mountain time to Pacific time so we arrived a 9am instead.  We walked around the waterfront area for a while waiting for the gates to open.  There is a nice park on the waterfront with a nice walking path along the water.  We took the time to take some pictures. We were right near the front of the line for the ticket booth.  At 10am the booth opened and we were on our way aboard the ship.  The first stop is the hangar level.  I was surprised at how large the hanger was; it was almost as long as the ship and as wide.  It must have been been close to 40′ high.  They had several aircraft on display in the hangar as well a theatre and food area.  Up on the flight deck there were many more aircraft on display and there were many information lectures and demonstrations where you could learn about the various activities happening during a typical day on the carrier.  Things like landing, takeoff, armaments etc.  Very interesting stuff.  Without telling about the whole tour which would take a lot of words, I’ll just say the tour is a self guided audio tour of almost the entire ship.  You see the living quarters, the various messes, the engine room, the officer’s quarters, the brig, the bridge etc.  Pretty much everything of interest onboard the ship.  Along the way there are many volunteers to answer any and all questions you might have.  I think all the volunteers are ex-servicemen.  Many were Navy veterans who served on the ships as well as Navy pilots who would have flown off carriers like the Midway.  I think we were onboard close to 5 hours.  This was without a doubt the best museum tour I have ever been on.  If you’re ever in or close to San Diego this is an absolute must see.

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Our new friend Doug Laning, who we met at Quartzsite, arrived at Pilot Knob around the middle of the month with his new to him Safari Serengeti Motorhome.  Doug had a C class motorhome and decided to upgrade to a diesel pusher A class.  It’s a very nice coach and much longer than his C class.  He had a few issues to work through at first and now he has a bit of a learning curve to learn all the new features of his Class A.  Doug stayed for a week in the park and then moved out to the BLM area behind the park.  Doug joined us most days for happy hour.  Speaking of happy hour, we usually got together with Bill and Patsy and Keith for happy hour at 3pm.  We took turns hosting.  We had different people join us depending who happened to be around. It was always a good way to catch up with each other.

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On Thursday the 20th Ken and Shirley Kay arrived in the BLM behind Pilot Knob for a couple nights  They joined us for Happy Hour.  Nice to see them again.  They were just passing trough on their way east.

On Saturday the 22nd Bill and I went to the Yuma RC Club Air show.  The morning didn’t look promising and it rained on our way to the field but then the sun came out and after a short delay the show went on as planned.  I came to the show last year and this year’s show was almost as good. It might be that last year’s was a new experience for me.  I do enjoy the jets.  They go screaming by at 200+ miles per hour.  Remember these are remote control aircraft.  Pretty impressive.

On Sunday the 23rd Keith headed out bound for Quartzsite for a couple of days and then further north to Emerald Cove resort near Parker.  We’ll meet up with him again in March in Lake Havasu. Patsy and Bill left on February 29th, and we’ll also catch up to them in Lake Havasu.

That’s kinda the highlights of the month.  We did make a couple more trips to Mexico and many more mini shopping trips to the Yuma Palms Mall.  Kim’s favorite was Marshall’s and mine was Hobby Lobby.  I’ve built a couple plastic model kits in my relaxing time.  Also a favorite of Kim’s is Goodwill, so we’ve made a “few” trips there as well.  

I did a couple upgrades to the motorhome while here in the park.  I ordered a new tv antenna head and installed that.  Now we get good over-the-air TV reception when we happen to be in area with TV towers nearby.  I also replaced the propane detector inside.  I replaced the handle on the side of the front passenger seat that allows the seat to move forward and backward.

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It was nice spending more time here in the park this year.  We got to know a lot more people and made some good friends.  Looking forward to coming back next winter.  

So now you’re caught up again.  We’ve headed off for Lake Havasu and we’ll stay there until the weekend and then head up to Bullhead City for a week.  After that we’ll start to slowly make our way east back to Ontario.

So long for now….