Curlycup gumweed (Stickyheads)
Grindelia squarrosa

This past Friday, we drove over to the Phoenix area for a weekend visit with my Mother who was flying down for my nephew's first birthday.

We stayed at Sundial RV Park in Peoria which is only about a mile away from my sister's house. We stayed at the RV park several years ago and it seems to have been cleaned up since that last visit, although it is still owned by the same people.

Mom, Earl, and I went to dinner on Friday evening at the Siamese Kitchen where we had excellent Thai food! Saturday afternoon, we went to Tortas La Presa for lunch and again had excellent food...this time Mexican. Both are places to which we will return...we've eaten at Siamese Kitchen before, but never at Tortas La Presa, which was recommended to us by my sister.

My mother left Sunday morning, but before Randi took her to the airport, we drove over to visit and say goodbye. Afterwards, we did shopping at Wal-Mart and filled up with diesel ($2.899).

We returned to Quartzsite yesterday...and, fortunately, beat our new TV here.

Last year, while we were still staying at Running Lizard RV Park here is Quartzsite, I happen to mention on the Excel Owner's Group that the TV that came with the rig didn't have a good picture...from the start it had vertical lines in it which were getting worse. The President of Peterson Industries (makers of Excel) who participates in the forum, read my post and contact the people who supply them with the TVs that they put in the rigs. That company, in turn, contacted me and offered to send us a new TV. The only problem was that, by the time we were contacted, we were just about ready to leave the RV park, so we told them to postpone sending it until we were somewhere long enough for them to send it.

Finally, in December, when we landed on Mike and Mary's lot, we called to have them send the TV out. We got it, but the screen was badly scratched (it was a reconditioned unit), so we told them we were going to send the TV back to them. They offered to send out another TV, but we were again in a position where we were getting ready to leave (for the trip over to the Phoenix area), but the guy we were dealing with said no problem...you'll get it by Friday. However, once I got the UPS tracking number, I found it wasn't going to be delivered until Monday...after we'd already left, and we hadn't planned on coming back.

We did decide to leave the Phoenix area early in the morning, hoping we'd be back before UPS made their delivery...which we did. So now we have a brand new Panasonic TV (not a reconditioned unit) and two TVs to return (the original one that came with the rig and the first one they sent out with the scratched screen). The wall mount on the new TV is a different configuration that our original TV, so for the moment we have it sitting on the shelf with the stand.

Pearly everlasting
Anaphalis margaritacea

On Friday, December 18, before moving to Mike and Mary's lot, we took our fifth wheel by RV Lifestyles to have the Wilson Shorty RV Through Roof antenna installed (it requires a hole be drilled through the roof...something we didn't want to attempt).

We also had them look at our water heater to see if they could discover what was wrong with it. When we stayed at the Passport America park near Klamath Falls in early October, we had smelled a strong odor of burning wires when we plugged in and turned on the water heater. We quickly unplugged, leaving the fifth wheel unplugged from electric the rest of the night. We've been using the propane to heat water since. RV Lifestyles couldn't find anything wrong with the water heater...no burned wires, no shorts.

When we got to Mike & Mary's place and set up, we turned on the electric water heater...no smell of burning wires (so the burning wire smell in Klamath Falls was probably the RV park's wiring), but also no hot water. It appears that the electric element on the water heater is out, so we'll have to have it replaced at some point in time. For the present, though, we are just using propane.

We had a quiet Christmas...I cooked a ham for dinner plus all the fixin's and Earl watched football games.

Maxx went back to the vet on Monday, January 4, to get a new round of antibiotics because of the teeth cleaning he'd had done December 1. He'd picked up a cough in the meantime, and the antibiotics helped, but they didn't completely get rid of his cough, so we'll have to take him back for some more.

On my birthday (January 5), we had breakfast at Taco Mio and then drove up to Lake Havasu City to buy chairs for our dining table. These are the chairs we bought, except we did not put the arms on them. The chairs that came with the fifth wheel keep loosening at the joints...Earl and Mike had taken both of them apart earlier this year and reglued them, but mine was starting to come loose again. The new chairs are adjustable and, since they swivel, it makes getting out of them much easier.

We ordered a water softener for our rig...the Watts M7001 Portable Water Softener, which was delivered on Friday. Saturday, we picked up salt and Earl got the softener up and running...boy, is it nice to have soft water again!