25 September: Home

La Quinta, California: We are home, but I want to share our latest ordeal, except I fear losing Readers tired of hearing sad tales?

Our time in the Sedona area was good, no matter the rain, thunder, and lightning. We lived in Oregon forever and know if you don’t do stuff in the rain, you just don’t do stuff. So we did stuff: two restaurants, three National Monuments, one historical fort. But we needed to get home.

Between Sedona and home sits Phoenix, where Dave’s beloved Giants were playing the Diamondbacks Friday evening. Tickets were acquired. RV site secured. Too good to be true, right?

Right.

Our large awning would not retract Friday morning as we prepared to leave Sedona. All fuses checked. Circuit breakers reset. The window awnings were operating as normal, but no power was getting to the big awnings off the roof of the bus (the one we extended to sit outside during the rain). There were three mobile RV services listed in the information booklet from the RV park. None could help until maybe later in the day. The resort graciously let us get a late check-out, but seriously, we could not leave anyway. We are not named Griswald.

Nothing else to do but phone Brian, our savant RV tech. He answered right away and talked to Dave about what to do - but we had done it all already. Brian asked where we were - and you will not even believe this - Brian was one hour away, north of Phoenix, finishing up an inverter installation! (Brian lives in Eugene, but his clients fly-him-in all the time. We have.) Dave hopped in the Jeep, drove to Brian’s hotel and brought Brian back to our RV. Fifteen minutes after arriving, Brian had somehow gone into the awning control motor (behind a screwed-on back panel in the bath area) and had magically retracted the awning. Another fifteen minutes passed and our site was empty. Dave drove the motorhome to our campsite in Phoenix. I went to Phoenix in the the Jeep to drop Brian back to his hotel (Brian drove!), then met Dave at the RV park just in time to drive into Phoenix for the first pitch. Whew!

How can people with so much bad luck have so much good luck?

Would you even believe the San Francisco Giants beat the Diamondbacks by one run?

This was the fourth time to attend a baseball game at this stadium, but the first to attend an evening game, and the first with the roof closed. I guess it was too hot, so they decided to use the air conditioning? Or was it due to all the thunder storms in the area? No idea, but it was nice to have the air conditioning. Temperature at game time was 95 degrees. Fun game and we were seated with a ton of Giants fans. Tonight, the Diamondbacks wore their Serpentines uniforms, a butter/sand yellow color, with snake spelled in Spanish. The entire stadium went wild when a video on the scoreboard showed St. Louis Cardinal slugger Albert Pujols hit his 700th home run against the Dodgers in Los Angeles Friday night. We were back to the RV park and in bed before midnight. What a day.

Saturday proved unremarkable. Not one thing broke on our motorhome. Slept-in. Dave decided to remain here for another night to watch the Duck football game - we would have been driving during the 1p game, and he didn’t want to listen to the game on the radio. (Plus, it’s so messy eating Buffalo chicken wings while driving.)

So we had a day off. No touristing. No National Monuments. Football and stitching. It was a long-haul game, with the Ducks consistently behind the Washington State Cougars in Pullman, Washington. At least we had Buffalo wings to get us through the game, and Oregon won at the last minute. (Like the Giants last night.)

Early to bed and early to rise. We left the RV park at 7:30 this morning - very early for us… but there is this thing called an alarm clock and they work!

We arrived to our La Quinta home before noon, and inspected our new veranda and pool update before unpacking our RV after 82 nights on the road. Our new pool area is so beautiful. Arnold is a genius. We are so happy!

Within four hours after arriving, our motorcoach had been emptied of our belongings and food. We returned the Magna Peregrinus to her storage garage. (One last hiccup - OF COURSE - when the slide room didn’t want to retract. Up yours, Karma. We know a work-around for this issue.)

We are celebrating/observing Rosh Hashanah this next week. Give me a couple of days to settle myself and I will post a trip recap. The Good. The Bad. The Ugly. Until my next update, I remain, your La Quinta correspondent.

---