Arizona

We left the Monaco service facility in Wildwood Florida early Thursday morning. They did a good job on sealing the windshield & so far everything is fine. We decided to violate our "300 mile per day rule" & make the "run" to the desert. The weather forecast was excellent & we were well rested for the 2000+ miles to Phoenix. The route was all Interstate highway (mostly I-10) so we made good time. The first night we stayed in a Wal Mart parking lot near Biloxi Mississippi. We dry camped there & were on our way the next day at sunrise & drove right through to Seguin Texas (about 30 miles east of San Antonio). We again overnight ed in a Wal Mart parking lot next to the freeway & were up & away the next morning at daybreak. After about 500 miles we found ourselves in a nice RV park near Van Horn Texas. We had a full hook up there & were able to relax a bit & get cleaned up.Then we were on the road again early the next morning & pulled into ViewPoint RV Park here in Mesa AZ at about 4:00PM. We had cranked off 2040 miles in 4 days!! We crossed Florida,parts of Alabama,Mississippi,Louisiana,most of Texas (it's real BIG),New Mexico & a good chunk of Arizona.The scenery out the panoramic front windshield was awesome, particularly from San Antonio to Phoenix.
We are now parked in Viewpoint RV & Golf Resort in Mesa Arizona. We plan to stay here until the end of March & then we'll start to migrate back north. It's a very nice RV park with an adjoining 18 & 9 hole golf course, 3 swimming pools, ten tennis courts, lots of "activity centers" & orange trees growing all over the place. Most of the people here either live in "park model" homes or RV's & most are "snowbirds" like us.
Tomorrow morning I am flying up to Vancouver. I will be attending the pilot retirement reception on Monday evening & then working my way back to the desert. Judy is not going to make the trip to Vancouver with me. She just wants to kick back & relax here & we both feel that it is a good idea to have somebody watching over the coach.

The desert is beautiful. We both really like the "wide openness" & of course the warm temps & no precip. So far the temps have been quite a bit above average with the afternoon highs getting well into the mid 80's!

We plan to get in lots of golf.

Maybe I'll see some of you in the next few days ... I hope so.

Brian.

Monaco

It's Monday morning & we're now at the Monaco service Centre in Wildwood Florida. This is one of 4 facilities that Monaco maintains around the US to provide service for their coaches. As I mentioned in my last post, we are here to have some work done on our windshield. The service writer told us this morning that it is a 3 hour job & that barring any unforeseen delays we should be on our way no later than Thursday morning ... we'll see! After the work has been done on the windshield the coach has to sit virtually motionless for 24 hours in order for the sealant to set up. That means that we can't move it & we can't put the slides out, so we're thinking that we might have to get a hotel room for one night. Anyway it will be worth it to get the windshield fixed & be on our way. The plan now will to be to motor from here to Phoenix & then I'll fly up to Vancouver (for the pilot retirement party), from there. It will be a lot less hassle to fly from Phoenix than from Tampa, especially since it's American Thanksgiving next weekend.

The plus side of all of this is that we've had a week of relaxing in the Florida sunshine. It is so nice to get up each morning (in November), to sunshine & warm temps, put on a pair of shorts & know that it will be nice all day. We have "explored" around the area & have visited some interesting places. A lot of this area is set up for retirement living & some of the developments are VERY NICE.

Will try & get some pictures in for the next post.

Savannah

We left the KOA RV park near Fayetteville North Carolina on Friday morning. Got off to a good start & were back on I-95 southbound by 0800. We targeted an RV park near Savannah Georgia for our destination. We arrived there at about 3 in the afternoon & were all set up & out "exploring" the place by 4:30. We ended up at a nice little seafood restaurant for dinner. I had catfish fillets & they were delicious!
The next morning we headed into Savannah & signed on for a city trolley tour. It was great. You could get on & off the trolley at your leisure & the whole route took about 2 hours to complete. It was narrated by the driver so you always knew what you were looking at out the open side windows of the trolley. Savannah has a lot of American civil war history & was an important cotton port for the early Euoropeans. We saw a lot of small memorial parks & famous buildings from the civil war era. Apparently a lot of movies are made there, one of them being Forest Gump. We saw several of the settings that were used in the movie, one of the most memorable was the opening scene where Forest (Tom Hanks) is sitting on the park bench & begins to tell his life story . The bench has been put in a museum but the park & the spot where it was is still there.
This morning we got back on the road & drove to Wildwood Florida. We are now in an RV park here & plan to have some work done on our front windshield at the Monaco service facility here in Wildwood. We have an appointment for Nov 12 but are hoping to get in sooner. The seal around the windshield is shifting & if it rains we can't be sure that it won't leak so we're going to have it fixed here before we move on.

The weather has improved remarkably as we've moved down the east coast with the temps now well into the 70's F. We haven't seen rain for a week or more now.This has not been good for the locals as the whole area is drought stricken & they are praying for rain.
We have been watching with interest, the weather reports for the eastern part of Canada & the havoc that Noel created as it roared through. We were in those exact areas less that 2 weeks ago.
Anyway I'll add some more notes & perhaps some pictures in the days to come once we know how long we can expect to be here.