Goodlife RV Park, Mesa Dec 1st to 7th.

Time to leave our favourite state park, Lost Dutchman, and drive a whole 35 minutes into Mesa. We're leaving the motorhome here for the time we are away. We have a few days before we leave and then 2 weeks when we come back from Christmas to enjoy all their ammenities. This is a great 55+ RV park. We stayed here 7 years ago for a week and I remembered how nice it is.

The people around our site are really friendly and all came outside to introduce themselves and say "Hi". After setting up, we headed out for lunch at Uncle Bear's Grill and Tap. Great lunch and good beer. Definitely a place to go back to. They have a great patio and obviously love dogs as there are walls of framed dog pictures from patrons.

Back at the resort, we checked out the pool area to see how warm the two hot tubs are. Pretty nice. There's a band setting up to play from 3 to 6 pm. They also have a bar and grill patio side. Shortly before 3 pm we drove to the pool and found a seat in the sun to listen to the band. Old rock and roll. Great music. There's a bunch of mostly ladies all doing line dancing. Apparently they have lessons here. Of course Ray bought me a margarita. Delightful. Again a bunch of people stopped by to welcome us here to the park.

After an hour or so this line ended up being about 12 people, including a couple of men. Fun to watch. They apparently give beginners, intermediate and advanced lessons here.

A great day.

Saturday a little more set up to do, putting on the window screens etc.  Tonight we went to see the Holiday Show at Barleen's in AJ, 20 minutes away. That got us into the Christmas mood. lol As usual it's an excellent show and the food is great as well.

Sunday I did the remaining laundry and got our suitcases organized for our flights tomorrow. We ate lunch at the Cactus Grill, poolside here and then later a hot tub before settling in for the evening. We're definitely excited about going home to see Kristi, Jason and Amelia, not the rain they are getting though.

Monday, Dec 3rd Travel Day

I booked an Uber for the first time to pick us up and take us to the airport. It worked out great. The driver had a little trouble figuring out exactly where we were but otherwise we were picked up about 10:35.  I wanted to leave our car at the RV Park with our electric bikes inside for safety. Parking last year was about $220 and Uber is only $40 each way.

Of course we were at the airport super early, but that is the way we are when we have to get somewhere. For once security was a piece of cake with almost no wait. We ate lunch at the restaurant near our gate. 

After lunch we settled in for a 90 minute wait. We were priority boarded and waited for the rest of the passengers to get on the plane. We actually left pretty much on time as well. Here are some pictures from the flight while we still had clear skies. That certainly changed when we got near Vancouver, nothing but pouring rain.

Getting close to the Grand Canyon but were unable to actually see it.

We actually got great meals, and early dinner on the plane.

My Chicken Cordon Blue

Ray's pot roast dinner with a yorkie.

We landed in Vancouver about 4:30 pm BC time. Being as we were just going to a hotel we were able to "stroll" through the airport and see all the new artwork displayed instead of being like this statue last year! lol It's titled "The Traveller"

They sure have beautiful artwork on the way from the gate through the international terminal celebrating our First Nations.

Going through Customs was a breeze and we took the shuttle to our hotel, the Hampton in Richmond. It was absolutely pouring outside, teaming down with the big rain event. I didn't know that the hotel didn't have a bar or restaurant when I booked. Good thing we ate a big early dinner on the plane as we decided to just stay in our room and not face the pouring rain. We were in bed early with the time change anyways.

Tuesday morning we were up early and had their free breakfast before taking the shuttle back to the airport. Again way early but security was definitely busier and took about 15 minutes to get through. Our 15 minute flight once we boarded left on time though. We landed in Victoria at 10 am. By 10:30 we'd picked up our car and were on our way. 

First stop is BMT Fleet Management. They gave us $6400 back for fixing our motorhome because they changed out our satelitte system without permission and that's what they charged us for the unathorized work and what we had to pay down south to rectify it. 

A quick stop for lunch at OJ's in Duncan and a bit of shopping, we were at home by 2:30 pm. Tired, we were in bed early again as we have to go to Nanaimo early to get our Costco shopping done and then spend the rest of the day at Jason, Kristi and Amelia's house for a visit. 

Boy has Amelia's talking ever gotten better. We can actually understand her and she now speaks in sentences. She wore us both out getting us to chase her round the house, especially Papa.

Ray and I had a great day with the family. After dinner we headed back to the lake. 

Thursday we started early getting the house decorated for Christmas. I'd hired our gardener, Sean, to give us a hand. I don't want Ray doing ladder work anymore as it kills his back and knees. As do mine, don't like multiple times going up and down stairs carrying boxes. Sean did an excellent job. What usually took 3 days, took 5 hours with Sean's help.

And that's our trip home and the first two days back at the Lakehouse.