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.