Thursday, February 18, 2016

Life in Arizona

I haven't posted a Blog since Dec 30th.  I have no excuse. We have just been enjoying our life in Arizona with friends.
The Park has an afternoon tradition of gathering in groups for "happy hour".  We are happy other hours, too,


We take daily walks out through the alfalfa fields and we saw this hawk sitting on the lines.


The sunrises and sunsets are beautiful here in the southwest.  We have had a cooler than normal winter, but the temps are still very nice and now starting to head into the 80's during day.



There is a huge garden area with African Daisies.  They close up during the night and then open in the heat of the day.




We have been able to enjoy the pool and the hot tub that is in the far end of the building on the left.


It's not all fun and games.  We seem to always have something that needs fixing of repair on the Whale.  We have had this broken seal on the front passenger side window that makes it hard to see out of the side mirror.  We have been researching and talking to RV Repair people and finally decided to brave taking it apart and fixing it ourselves.


The entire window had to be removed and taken apart so we could clean the fixed window side.


It was a day long project.  Mainly because we used everything we could think of to clean the water stains from between the windows before putting it all back together.  It's not perfect, but so much better than it was.  This is Craig finishing up with some caulk.

We also put a new sweep around the back bedroom slide that will hopefully stop the small leak we have been dealing with for the past year.  We spent three days waxing the Whale from top to bottom.  We were worn out, but finished on Tuesday when we came in to make lunch.  I stepped on a wet rug in the kitchen that lead to a discovery of the hot water heater that was leaking at a valve.  Nothing in an RV is the same as a household.  
The 10 gallon hot water heater is under the kitchen sink.  There is a bypass valve that is used if you store the RV in cold weather and need to winterize.  The valve keeps the anti-freeze from getting into the hot water heater.  Below is the before and after.  You can see the small drip on the left side of the brass valve. 


They no longer make valves like the one we had, so we had to have help to rework the whole thing that now looks like this.


We have been able to enjoy grilling.


And growing a few things.  My pansies are finally recovering from the deer in Colorado eating all of the flowers off.


Here's two couples that we love hanging out and eating with.  One couple is from Washington and another from Canada.  It's wonderful to have good fellowship.


Here are some more sky art photos.





My Valentine bouquet.
 We woke up to a few clouds in the sky and a great sunrise followed by a few sprinkles (so much for the clean vehicles), followed by a double rainbow.






We have good friends from Indiana coming in this weekend.  Tuesday we will drive up to see Mom in Vegas and on up to visit friends in St. Charles, Utah.  We are due to pull out of Wellton on March 4th.  Our current plan is to visit friends in Texas.

Hope that spring comes early to the rest of the country.

Love and Blessings,
Kathy