As we've done with each of our new RVs over the years, we made the short trip to Lake Pleasant for our inaugural first camping trip to make sure everything was working correctly before we head out on longer trips. Someone else must have cancelled at the last minute because space #D15 at the Maricopa County Parks Roadrunner campground was available. It was a beautiful campsite overlooking the lake with many people in their sailboats out enjoying the 65+ degree day on Saturday. 

I know, I know. I said we were done with RVing a year ago, but the RV-world has dragged us back in again. After toying around with the idea of buying a cabin in the woods in Show Low, Arizona, we ultimately decided that we really like the freedom to go anywhere that an RV gives us, so we placed an order in October, 2020, for the newer version of the Winnebago RV we had before and took delivery of it on January 22, 2021. This one is a 2021 Winnebago View 24D model. We upgraded to lithium batteries for longer dry-camping trips and choose the twin reclining theater seats over the standard booth because we found that the booth just didn't give us a comfortable place to sit. We'll have to put up with making reservations farther in advance because so many people are buying RVs so they can escape the Coronavirus in their own portable houses.

What a great way to spend a beautiful 75° Presidents Day afternoon than sailing on Lake Pleasant, AZ.

Pam and I had a fun drive up to Crown King today. At 5,770 feet high, it was a little cool, even some snow in the shadows, but what a beautiful drive it was! Love our Jeep for drives like this.

The weather was perfect to take my new Hobie Adventure Island sail-yak out for a sail. Daughter, Krista and I went out on Lake Pleasant and had a beautiful trip around Helm's Island in 75° picture-perfect weather.

Jason and I took a side trip up to the Grand Canyon on Saturday before we boarded the Polar Express in the evening. Temperature was in the 30s with some snow and ice, making walking around the edge of the canyon a little treacherous. We enjoyed a delicious lunch in the El Tovar restaurant with the best seafood chowder I've ever had! The lodge was beautifully decorated for Christmas. Winter is the time to go to the Canyon, compared to Summertime. No crowds at all!

What a wonderful trip with had with all our kids and grandkids to Williams and the Polar Express train. We rented a nice home in Williams through VRBO that had room for all 10 of us for a two nights and had a lot of fun on the two hour train ride singing Christmas songs, enjoying hot chocolate, cookies, silver bells, and meeting Santa. If you have kids, I highly recommend taking them on the Polar Express!

Since I sold our 2015 Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk, and we are no longer RVing, I've found that I missed having a second car, particularly, a Jeep. I loved that Jeep Cherokee that we towed around the country behind our RVs, so I started looking for a 2019 or 2020 model to purchase. I prefered to buy a used one, but I was having a hard time finding one with all the features that I wanted, like; Trailhawk model, sunroof, adaptive cruise control, Apple CarPlay, NAV with the larger display, 2.0-L I4 turbo engine, trailer-tow group, heated and vented front seats and more. After watching Cars.com and AutoTrader for a couple of months, one caught my eye because it was fully-equipped with absolutely everything that I was looking for. With only 4,800 miles, this one was perfect in every way. Turns out, it was a demo driven by a Chrysler Corporation executive in Detroit and was purchased by a local Jeep dealer here in Phoenix at an auction. I ended up saving over $10,000 by getting this 2019 Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk Elite vs getting a new one with the same equipment. I wasn't sure about the color when I first saw the pictures on their website, but after seeing it in real life, I love the color. It goes very nicely with our Arizona greenery!

We have had a lot of fun RV'ing over the past 6-7 years, but they are selling so many new RVs now, we found it almost impossible to get into the RV parks, state parks and national parks when we wanted to. There was so little flexibility, we were forced into planning trips 6-12 months in advance, even 2 years in advance to get that spot at Campland on the Bay in the picture above over the 4th of July! That's the main reason we got out of RV'ing.

I know it's hard to believe, but we've sold our Winnebago Navion and aren't buying another RV! After 7 years of RVing, we're giving it up. We got into RVing because of family that was spread from Arizona to California to Oregon and Washington but most of our family is here in Arizona now, so we're just not finding that the RV-life is the right fit for us any more so I sold it back to LaMesa RV yesterday.

We have no regrets of owning RVs over the past 7 years. We have a lot of great memories, all of them captured here on our blog, which I plan to continue with our future travels. Stay tuned for our next adventure!

I called the Canyon Lake Marina and RV Campground on Wednesday to see if they had any spaces available for the weekend and they said the person on the call before me just cancelled, so I figured that I lucked out. After going there on Saturday, I see why people were cancelling. The lake was filled with debris from the heavy rain storms they had the previous week. Instead of nice and clear, the water was brown and filled with branches making boating dangerous. On top of that, the state was closing the one and only road in and out of the area all day on Monday to repair the washed out roadway, so we had to leave on Sunday instead of Monday, as we had planned. The campground wouldn't even refund our $70 fee we had paid for Sunday night! At least we had a fun Saturday with Kyle, Crystal, Beckett and Jason coming over for awhile.

We made our annual RV trip to Seattle, leaving Phoenix on August 10th and returning on August 25th, 2019. This time, it was in our new 2019 Winnebago 24D motorhome.

• Day 1: Drove the 275 miles to the Lake Powell Wahweap RV Park from our home near Phoenix. We had a beautiful space overlooking the lake.
• Day 2: Drove 350 miles to a nice little RV park next to Utah Lake in Provo, Utah: Lakeside RV Campground. On the way, we took a beautiful side-trip through Bryce Canyon National Park.
• Day 3: It was a 330 mile drive through Utah and Idaho to the Ketchum, Idaho, where we spent the night at the Meadows RV Park, which was a small RV park just south of Sun Valley, Idaho.
• Day 4: Drove about 200 miles from Sun Valley, Idaho up through the mountainous Sawtooth Wilderness. We thoroughly enjoyed brunch at the quaint Redfish Lodge on Redfish Lake (Paul had a wonderful combination of fresh trout, eggs, potatoes and homemade sausage). Redfish Lake Lodge sits at an elevation of 6,550 feet above sea level. The water is crystal clear with a beautiful sandy beach. We continued on the Sawtooth Scenic Byway which hugged the Salmon and Payette Rivers for about 100 miles, ending up in Caldwell, Idaho, staying at one of our favorite overnight stops, The Ambassador RV Park.
• Day 5: We had planned on driving the 350 miles to the Trailer Inns RV Park in Yakima, Washington, but, after driving past the park, we decided that the numerous homeless people and warehouse district setting wasn't for us, so we drove the entire 500 miles toward Seattle, where my brother let us park the RV in his driveway in Issaquah until we could check into one of our favorite RV parks, The Lake Pleasant RV Park, in Bothell, WA.
• Days 6-10: Using The Lake Pleasant RV Park as our home-base, we rented a car to drive around Seattle in and spent most of our time visiting with relatives and friends.
• Day 11: We had nice weather for the 310 mile drive from Bothell, WA to Newport, OR, where we had reserved two nights at our absolute favorite RV park, the Pacific Shores Motorcoach RV Park. We love this park because it sits high above the Pacific Ocean and it's very well kept with beautiful manicured spaces and grounds. We had a premium space #189, which was one row back from the bluff, allowing us to see the ocean and the beautiful sunsets each night. Unfortunately, a Pacific storm blew through and it rained all day long on our one day we had planned on doing nothing but enjoying the view.
• Day 12: The weather cleared up for our leisurely 300 mile drive down Highway 101 through southern Oregon and northern California to the conveniently located Mad River Rapids RV Park. The best thing about going south on Highway 101 vs going north is that you're on the ocean-side of the highway, making it easier to pull into the many viewpoints. Of course, we had to stop and get some homemade fudge at the Fudge Factory in Banning, Oregon!
• Day 13: After almost two weeks on the road, we were itching to get back home, so we took a short side-trip through the scenic Redwoods Avenue of the Giants, then hightailed it over to I-5's Flag City RV Resort in Lodi, California. Traffic was absolutely terrible around the Bay Area on a Friday afternoon. I swear I will never drive around there again!
• Day 14: Drove one of my least-favorite drives; 375 miles down I-5 from Lodi to Los Angeles, then east on I-210 to one of our favorite RV parks; the Bonelli Bluffs RV Resort (formerly East Shore RV Park). This park sits high above the Puddingstone Reservoir with nice, wide campsites and beautiful views over the lake.
• Day 15: The final 350 miles were from the Bonelli Bluffs RV Resort to our home near Phoenix, Arizona. This is a drive we've done dozens of times over our 30+ years of living in Arizona, so we know it very well. Yes, it's a boring drive through the desert, but it's an easy drive of mostly 70 mph with the cruise control on for most of the 5-1/2 hour drive.

We're already planning our next outing. Possibly New Mexico to see the fall leaves turn.

After searching for the right message to put on our RV's license plate for months, I finally settled on this. It was very hard to come up with something that wasn't already taken!

While camping last weekend, our granddaughter, Kierstyn, came up with this beautiful new design for our website. Future graphic artist in the making :)

It's summertime in Arizona! Perfect time to take a camping trip to one of our favorite desert escapes near Williams, Arizona. High temperature here at this 7,000 foot altitude was 78° compared to 105° down in Phoenix! 

Exact location: 35°09'31.4"N 112°10'15.8"W

We were lucky enough to get a last-minute spot at Fool Hollow Lake campground in Show Low, Arizona last weekend. We had a beautiful space right next to the lake (Cinnamon Teal Loop, space #22). This is one of our favorite camping areas because it has paved roads and spaces, 30 amp electric and water (no sewer). My Verizon phone worked well there as a hot-spot so if we wanted to go back again and stay longer, I could get some work done.

We also drove past the townhome we owned for 3+ years on White Mountain Lake. It was fun to see it again, although the lake looked real muddy from all the rains in the Spring.

I decided to get a handful of items fixed on the RV before our upcoming summer trips. We're thoroughly pleased with this very short list, compared to our past Tiffin Class A motorhomes lengthy lists of issues, and most of them major issues compared to these relatively minor items.

We had a great weekend camping at the Pleasant Harbor RV Resort this weekend. This park is so convenient since it's only 14 miles from our home here in Arizona. Our son-in-law, Dave, took part in the very popular bass fishing tournament, which he has done several times before. The rest of us enjoyed the scenery, kayaking and a good BBQ dinner at Dillons on the dock Friday night. Our whole family celebrated Pam's birthday on Saturday with our own BBQ and cake. The grandkids kept themselves entertained catching bugs, fishing and playing catch.

Driving through Newport Dunes RV Resort to our space #1119.

Beautiful view from our space #1119.

Wildflowers in full bloom along the freeways of S. Cal.

March 16-23, 2019.

We had a wonderful 8 days in our spot #1119 at the Newport Dunes Resort over our granddaughter's Spring Break. While the resort is beautiful, it's a long way from Phoenix (375 miles) and the L.A. traffic made it seem like twice that far (stop-and-go traffic in an RV is no fun!). For a different point of view coming home, we drove down Highway 1 from Newport Beach to San Clemente, then took I-5 to I-8 back to Phoenix, thinking that it would have lighter traffic. Big mistake! Stop-and go-traffic on I-5 from San Clemente to San Diego was terrible. It took 10 hours to drive the 435 miles home this way! Because of traffic, we probably won't go back to Newport Dunes again. However, I-8 is way better than I-10 because of its lighter traffic and lack of semi trucks. The wildflowers were in full bloom in Southern California making for a beautiful drive.

Our new 2019 Winnebago Navion 24D handled perfectly over the 800 mile trip. Unlike our past Tiffin motorhomes, this RV still has nothing seriously wrong within the first 6 months of owning it. The only issue we had with this trip was the Sirius satellite radio cut out after driving over a very bumpy section of I-5. Something must have come unplugged behind the dash. If that's the only thing to go wrong with this rig, I'll be very happy!

Click above to play video.

We made our first "big" trip in our new Winnebago Navion over Presidents Day weekend, Feb. 16-18, 2019. This was a good test of the RV, as it was 377 miles from Phoenix to Lake Havasu and back over a variety of roads. On the way there, we went out via Highway  60 through Wickenburg, then through Parker to Lake Havasu. On the way back home, we took Highway 95 south to Quartzsite, then east on I-10 to test how it handled on the freeway. I was very pleased with the handling on the entire trip.

We stayed at the Islander RV Resort on Lake Havasu for the third time in several years. We had a great spot (#467) right on the lake next to the boat launching ramp which made for some fun boat-watching. Weather was cool, but mostly sunny the entire weekend. I'm getting disappointed in the Islander Resort because they're converting a lot of the RV sites into permanent vacation rental homes. I think I'll look into different locations next time we want to go to Lake Havasu.