2025 January, Winter in Southwest US

 A new year and a new experience for me to winter over in the Southwest US! I usually winter in Florida, and the difference being in the southwest is considerable. Dryer air, dusty conditions and longer roads between stops. The WIN's seem to be scattered and not many or no people at the Circuit locations. So I headed to Apache Junction, AZ where a friend stays for the most of the winter. Here I found the most number of WIN's and some cool people that I enjoyed talking with. Stayed nearly a month here and had a good time doing small projects on my RV or truck. 

I like to stay busy and the time flew by until time to meet my brother in Quartzsite, AZ. We met up and decided that since a cold front has arrived where the nights got to below 40' and moved to a campground with electric. I was in the WIN's January meeting area but it was before the meetings started up. 

Bob's ladies were so excited to go see the Rock and Gem show. several times this week they browsed different parts of the show, yet amazingly no stones showed up in Bob's RV! 

The local museum had good displays for a "free" museum, the staff were very enthusiastic in showing us around. 

Saguaro Today is a shell of what it once was, high winds toppled this giant. The below pic is with Haleys comet.

I provided a demonstration at the WIN's gathering for the Alaska trip, sharing information of what amazing sights, cost of travel, and highlights of the trip. At the end there was only one question so I think we provided the information they wanted to know.

Bunnies Travel Notes:

THE 4th ANNUAL BLOUNT FAMILY MOTORHOME TRIP.

PROLOGUE: we’ve been on the road for 11 days now, so it’s probably past time for me to write my travel log. A little prelim info: we have a new family member with us this year; introducing Leslie Plau, aka Erin. She has joined our family to help us with cooking, driving, and whatever else we need as we are all aging and don’t have the energy, and sometimes cognitive abilities we used to have. She’s delightful, quirky, thoughtful, and talented.

PART ONE: PORTLAND TO ANAHEIM

As most of you probably remember, last year we ended up doing our RV trip without an RV, and had many transportation problems. We finally got the problems with the RV fixed, took a shakedown trip to the coast in October, and felt good about the logistics and shape of the RV.

As usual, about 4 days before our departure, we brought the RV up to the house to load it up. Sunday night, we moved it to hook up the jeep so we’d be ready to take off at 0darkhundred Monday, and realized the steps didn’t automatically retract as they should, Bob put them in permanently and we’re using a step stool to get in and out. New steps and mechanism were ordered, and are waiting for us at our niece’s in Mesa.

Monday, Jan 6, 2025 we pulled out of the drive 15 minutes ahead of scheldule, and began our journey. The trip was mostly uneventful, other than Bunnie slipping in the mud at our first rest stop. We made it through all the passes without any snow and arrived in the RV park in Lodi in time for dinner. Tuesday morning, we got on the road @9ish, went down the road about a quarter of a mile, and stopped for gas. We then realized we’d driven off without the step stool. Leslie and Ode went back to get it, and we went on our way. We kept hearing warnings of high winds through the grapevine, and they were right. It wasn’t so bad in the grapevine, but going through LA area was awful. At one point we heard a strange cracking noise on the roof, and pulled over to find the seal on the windshield (or something like that) had torn loose. Bob managed to secure it so we could keep driving, and we went on to Anaheim, where we couldn’t find the RV park. After driving back and forth on Harbor Blvd, we finally found it. The GPS kept changing the address to Fullerton, instead of Anaheim. I was getting a bit anxious, because I knew Disneyland is on Harbor, and we were on Harbor, yet I couldn’t see it. I was so close, but not there. But I managed. We got the RV hooked up, jumped in the jeep to check out how far Hayley’s day care was, ate dinner and settled in for the night.

Disneyland was wonderful of course. It was Leslie’s first time ( other than a trip when she was 12, of which she rembered nothing), so I had a great time being a tour guide, and sharing memories of my many trips. It was also Ode’s first visit, and first major outing as a service dog. He did great. I rode the IncrediCoaster with Leslie (why do I this to myself?), while Bob and Jan were waiting some kid ran past and smacked Ode in the face. That and the noise of the roller coaster freaked him out, but once they moved away to a quieter spot, he was able to settle down. He also freaked out on the Pirates of the Carribean. The two quick drops in the dark at the very beginning scared him, and he was trying to climb into Bob’s lap the whole ride. Other than that, he did great.

We did the Main Street tour, which took us into Walt’s apartment, which was the second time for me, but still so exciting to know I was in the space where he actually slept. This time, we got to go out on the patio, and while we were there , the parade went by. It was so exciting to view it from up there, and to think of Mr Disney and his family watching it from there.

World of Color was a new one, and always incredible, but it made me feel old to see most of the movies and characters featured were newer ones, not the classics I remembered from my childhood.

The fireworks the next night were a combination of fireworks and laser projections on the castle. Although they were amazing, I thought the projections competed with the fireworks, drawing my attention away. They were good, but not the best fireworks I’ve seen at Disney.