Quartzsite, Week #3 - Finally Entertaining - Jan 16 - 22

I'm finally starting to feel more like myself. We should've bought shares in Kleenex for the amount we went through in the past 2 weeks. Today I prepped for our Chinese Food dinner to cook for us tonight. Lots of chopping lol so it's ready to fast fry later.

Dave and Cheryl McMechan arrived in the afternoon around 2:30 and we invited them over at 4 for Happy Hour. Since I'd prepped dinner anyways, we convinced them to stay. What a great visit. We've not seen them in person since Ray's 65th birthday, a year ago November at the lake.

Cheers!

Sweet and Sour Pork and Chicken Chowmein

A lovely evening, lots of wine, and lots of laughs. Just before they left at 7:30 we heard a bunch of thunder. Wow at 8 pm the skies opened the wind came up and quite the thunderstorm went through for an hour. It also rained later on in the middle of the night as well. Fortunately when we got up we were not surrounded by water.

Tuesday morning we woke to lovely sunshine after the rain last night. Ray dumped water collected in the shade structure lol and of course soaked himself. Paid for another two weeks here at La Posa South. We will be heading to Parker on January 31st to a full service site for 5 days for laundry and cleanout of the holding tanks.

Tuesday Happy Hour is here as our shelter kept everyone out of the wind. The crowd kept growing with Dave and Cheryl's brother and sister-in-law arriving today too.

 

And the party grew some more. :)

Yup full house.

Wednesday it took me 3 tries to get my "monkey bread" to work. This microwave does not work like the one at home and instead of proofing the dough it cooked it! Finally for the third go round I used my breadmaker and proofed it old school and it turned out glorious. I promised Steve Colibaba I would make it. lol Once done, we invited Steve and Dianne, Greg and Debbie and Marilyn over for a taste.

Steve and me

Ray managed to get this picture of a Prairie Falcon watching us from a nearby tree.

Everyone left at 2:30 to rest up before Happy Hour.

Happy hour today is at the Colibaba's for core crash. I stayed home as my foot is flared up really bad at the moment and felt best laying down on the bed elevated. Ray took the picture below.

Thursday another gorgeous day. I puttered in the kitchen prepping for dinner as Dianne and Steve are coming tonight and so far my foot is somewhat better.  Ray headed out to the Pow Wow at the QIA. He said there's lots of gorgeous things, and came home with a beautiful poncho for me. :) He sure knows what I like, lucky me. Nice soft Alpaca wool and hand stitched from Ecuador. 

Steve and Dianne arrived at 4 pm and we sat outside for awhile as I was monitoring the "cook" on the Pork Prime Rib. By 5 we went inside as the wind came up and it turned too cold. Ray made his famous margarita's for Steve and Dianne.

Once the meat cooked at about 5:30, Dianne help me with the "stir" of the fried rice and veggies to go with the meat. 

A great evening. This is the first time it's just the 4 of us since we arrived in Q with us sick for 2 weeks.

Friday another cold but sunny morning. Now to clean up my kitchen after the big meal yesterday lol.  Last nights dinner provided us with lots of leftovers so no cooking for me today. 

Ray headed out at around 12:30 heading to the Pow Wow again and the Rock and Gem show, just for something to do. I stayed home and made my baked beans for tomorrow's potluck plus prepping the ribs. My foot's still not up to trapsing around yet, but is getting better.

It's no wonder people come from everywhere if they are interested in rocks. lol It would be hard to camp close to this though as there are rock tumblers going 24/7! Here are some of the pictures Ray took while there.

Fulgerite, sand fused by lightning

Looks like jellyfish suspended in rock

Crystals

Ocatillo Cacti Ribs

Petrified Wood

Obsidian blades mounted with carved antler handles

Gold Nuggets

They even had Dinosaur Dung lol This is Dianne's pic as Ray deleted his by mistake lol

At 3:30 Dave and Cheryl and Dave's brother Brian and wife Deb came over for a happy hour. Of course Ray fed them some of his famous margaritas lol. After that we had a quiet evening.

Friday tere's a "hard freeze" warning. woke up to 33F/1C ... burrrr. The sun is out though, so it didn't take too long to feel the heat. Ray headed back into town to look around and I held down the fort with dishes and getting ready to start cooking my ribs at 11:30 am.

Everyone's dishes are delicious. We all dug in by 3:15 pm. The wind died down and it's very pleasant. I picked the right day. :) These pictures compliments of Debbie  #2 as there's four of us ( i.e. Debbie and Greg).

L to R Steve, Dianne, Dave, Greg, Debbie #2, Cheryl, Debbie #4, Brian and Debbie #3 and a well-loaded food table.

Debbie and Deb

After we all rested our full bellies for awhile it's time for a rousing game of core crash. Of course playing over at our house is a bit more challenging with all the rocks. 

Once we started, the wind came up and as I'm only watching, not playing I bundled up. They all called me "Whistler's Mother" all bundled up so I decided to make the appropriate scrunched up face. lol Everyone enjoyed poking fun at me. :)

Sunday we woke up at 6:45 am .... Yikes! We had to be packed up and over to the dump by 7:30 AM so we could get to our appointment with Dometic at the Big Tent to get our stove fixed. Our oven hasn't worked properly since installation 2 years ago. Fortunately I ded all the dishes last night so it's just a matter of putting a few things away inside and Ray working outside so we're travel ready.

As we prepared to drive off the new stairs would not come back in!!!!!! I guess the new sensor Colan just installed is smaller than the original one and the contacts were not being made. Ray unscrewed the magnet from the door and I scotch taped it together. Thankfully it worked and the stairs went in for travel. Always something. It took us an hour to dump and refill with water. Some slow people in front of us took 15 minutes or more to dump their waste. Oh well, we arrived at the Dometic Repair tent at 8:45. Perfect timing.

While we walked the show while they replaced the top of the range. Dometic replaced all the valves for the burners and oven as per the recall. They determined the connection from the stove to the coach was mangled and replaced the fitting. They think their contracted installer 2 years ago did this! After testing everything and leaving the oven on for 45 minutes to make sure "no smell" we were on our way 3 hours later and happy campers with no charge. Crystal also gave us two new Yeti style mugs for our trouble. Of course we enjoyed walking the "Big Tent" while they were working. Fortunately my right foot behaved itself and walking was not a problem today.

Walking the show we found a booth, RV Decor, who install tilt beds. Ray arranged for him to come by later tonight and give us a quote on replacing our bed platform which is be better for Ray's back. The prices on these came down substantially since I looked at them 5 years ago.

Back to camp we rearranged how the coach sat to maximize our solar panels. This also meant moving our shade structure with help from Steve and Greg. Tonight we are to get 30 mile per hour winds with gust to 50, so we made sure everything is secured. The new spot blocks the shelter from the wind by our coach and Ray finished up securing the ropes and cinch straps to the ground.

After set up it was time at 4 to go over to Steve and Dianne's for core crash. I got to play this time and I sucked! Had fun anyways.

At 5:45 the guy arrived to check out the bed situation. He determined we could do it, they would just have to remove our corian side shelves and cut them down about 3" smaller so they don't impede the bed going up and down. The best part of this tilt bed is that when travelling you can raise the back of the bed which drags the bottom toward the back and gives us back the 18" of room to walk to the back of the coach while travelling. Currently you either climb over the bed or don't go. :) Funnily enough, he told us a lot of his customers are Tiffin owners for that very reason.  lol The other upside of this platform is it raises up with a push of a button and has a light underneath. We should also gain a foot or so of storage. I think Ray is going to go for it but it means going to Yuma for installation and it takes a whole day. Stay tuned.

And that wraps up our week.