We finally made it back to Buggy Whip Court, Mesquite, Nevada! Where the skies are not cloudy all day…
Yee Haw! Hardly wait to say “Howdy” to my neighbors…
As Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home!” We cruised in from Barstow, California on Monday, October 7th with a quarter tank of fuel. Everyone was excited to walk into the house, particularly the three hounds, as they scurried about checking out old smells inside and out back.
One of my “fishies” that hang off of a Manzanita tree in our entry atrium got blown down and broke. There’s only two now, instead of three. Bummer.
On a positive note, my Ocotillo plant in the backyard “leafed out” in the Summer, which means that it is going to be a healthy one. Supposedly, the survival rate for these unusual cacti is 50-50 at best. This fellow, who is about 8 ft tall now, will grow to 12 to 15 feet and will spread out, once I unwrap it. Yay!
The neighborhood has changed considerably. Several new homes have been built on our side of the cul-de-sac, and another is under construction next door to us. We can hardly wait to meet our new neighbors; I hope they’re nice like everyone else.
Everything looked great inside, particularly the wall in the kitchen that we had upgraded with decorative tile while we were away. It looks the way it should have looked if Pulte Homes had done a complete job in the first place. Those cheapskates!
The new feature wall:
(We also plan to replace our pendant lights in the kitchen . The current ones are clear glass; we’re going to replace with black ones.)
It took all of the rest of the day on Monday to ferry all of our possessions from the RV into the house. Whew, was that a job! And, then, on Tuesday, we had to put all of those items in their correct places within our house. Charlie worked her ass off doing that, while I was cleaning and shampooing the carpet in the rig. Too much labor for old coots like us!
Oh, by the way, all of those high fives we were recently giving ourselves for a “problem free” trip were a bit premature, as the dinette slide broke just when we got to our house and opened it up. Dang it!
Luckily, I have seen this problem before: a sheared-off bolt that activates the rear portion of the dinette slide. It has now happened three times in five years. The first time was in Northern California at a park near the Avenue of the Giants (redwoods). It took five days for a mobile RV repair guy to show up, five minutes for him to fix it (with an $0.89 hardened bolt), and we were charged $500. Needless to say, I watched the repair guy pretty closely, and, on my next visit to Ace Hardware, bought a few of the hardened bolts…just in case.
Anyway, I did my own slide repair this time and saved $499.11. (I need to tell Dan Quinn what a genius I am!)
The RV is back in storage now, so I was able to take a close look at the property today. My hastily thrown-together drip irrigation system intended to save Charlie’s precious succulent collection from SoCal…failed. Dammit! Tomorrow I will clean out the dozen pots and make plans to fill them with something that can actually withstand Summer temperatures that get up to 118 degrees. Cactus, probably.
BTW, we had such a good time on our RV road trip this year that Charlie reneged on the idea of skinnying down next year’s trip to a manageable two months…we’re going to do three months again. So, I rejiggered my 2020 trip itinerary accordingly and made reservations. We’re basically going to spend six weeks up in Oregon (at Coos Bay and Brookings, like this year) and then mosey down south, ending up in Oceanside again for a month.
Paradise By The Sea, our regular SoCal haunt in Oceanside, has raised the rent again. We were going to pass on a return until our son Tim offered to pick up the dollar difference (about $500 for the month). So, we re-upped, and will now have to concoct another 1-week “Reunion Tour” so that Tim and wife Shanon can enjoy their $500 contribution.
We all love it in Oceanside where the weather was outstanding this year: 70’s and low 80’s, sunny skies, good surf. Next year I’m planning on doing a lot of bike riding along the coast between Oceanside and La Jolla. There’s a paved path right along the strand where the rider can see some of the best surf spots in America.
My good friend and neighbor, Mac McPherson, is going to help me find just the right bike. He does a lot of riding, and used to work in a bike shop, so he knows equipment and where to get it. I will probably do some test runs with Mac before hitting the road in the RV next year. It will be good exercise for my hips and legs.
BTW, my left hip replacement is 26 days away!
