On the Road Again...

Hi everyone. Well, we are on the road again and this posting is going to have a lot of pictures...I haven't posted for a while so things have sort of piled up a bit.

We left Castlegar in mid November and stayed a couple nights in Spokane then carried on to Boise/Star for US Thanksgiving. We parked our fifth wheel out at Alyssa's place and so got lots of good visiting time in with them and lots of cuddling time in with Wyatt. What a sweet boy!

After a really nice Thanksgiving Day, we left Oso with Matt and Alyssa and flew out to Mazatlan for two weeks. It was wonderful to sit in the sun and play on the beach. We collected sea shells on the beach, wandered around the old town, and went on a very nice tour of the town. One day I phoned a lady who was an artist living in the old town Mazatlan. She invited us over and she and I had a nice chat about the art of coloured pencils. She did some incredible work, especially portraits. The old town has a very European feel to it. The streets are very clean and narrow with colourful adobe buildings. The streetlamps were very ornate and quite beautiful. They have volunteer tourist guides there who are American or Canadian living in Mexico. We talked to one fellow and found that renting a 1200 sq. ft. apartment in the old town costs about $400 a month...yes...a month. Now there's another option for us next time. We had some incredible seafood meals...shrimp the size of a lobster tail....mmmmm. We found a restaurant called Cafe Bru-ha...(cafe witch) that was about a mile down the beach from us. The food was incredible...we'll definitely go back there if we go to Mazatlan again. There were a few Rv parks on the beach too which might be a possibility in the future. We didn't shop much this trip...just laid around the pool, drank our margaritas and watched beautiful sunsets from our hotel room. We were really lucky to get a penthouse room this time with an ocean view.

We stayed for another week at Matt and Alyssa's place when we got back from Mexico. There was plenty to keep us busy...everything from fixing water pipes in the RV that had frozen while we were gone, to building a playhouse for Wyatt. It was great fun. I helped Marc shop for some stuff for his new place, which is very cute, by the way. On the last Saturday we were there, we went on the Polar Express train ride all the way to the North Pole to see Santa. We sat in an open air railway car and so got a good view of the scenery and animals. Took some good pictures of eagles flying by. We really had a great time but Wyatt didn't really like Santa much this year...he was just too scary! Hopefully next year he'll understand a bit better that Santa is a good guy! Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Sunday we celebrated Marc's birthday and then we were on the road again.

We didn't get far the first day...only to Jackpot Nevada. We stayed in the Casino RV park and of course lost our shirts in the Casino. We were both up pretty good at one point, but darned if those machines didn't suck the cash right out of our pockets. Anyway, it was a fun evening. It was cold there with a tiny bit of snow here and there. The next morning we continued south and got as far as a little town called Alamo. There we stayed in a very small RV park on a shallow lake. I didn't know they had marshy areas like that in Nevada....and the birds...flocks of snow geese, merganzers, coots, mallards. At one point there must have been 500 snow geese land on the lake...it was awesome. Our site was right on the edge of the lake and we had a wonderful view of the birds. It would be a hunter's paradise, but sorry, Matt, it was called the Pahranagat Wildlife Refuge so no hunting allowed.

The next morning we continued our trip south and arrived in the Lake Havasu City area. We found a nice RV park and have now been here almost a week. We managed to get caught up on grocery shopping, laundry, and tour around the area. One day we went for a drive down to Parker and across the Parker Dam. There were signs all over about burros on the road...and there were. Seems they are like the deer on roads in Canada...Burros on road down here. In the 1970's, some fellow with far more money than brains decided he was going to buy the London Bridge and bring it to Lake Havasu. It really must have been an incredible undertaking. The bridge spans over part of the lake to an pretty little island where some very expensive homes are located. It's actually pretty nice. They've built up a little English Village around the base of the bridge and that's quite cute. We drove up to Bullhead City and Laughlin Nevada on Xmas day...again, I lost money at the casinos...Tom came out a few dollars ahead. Somebody, please...keep me out of those places...I'm just a big loser when it comes to gambling!

The people in the RV park got together and had a really nice pot-luck dinner on Xmas Eve. We met lots of folks from all round the US and Canada. Lots and lots of people from Alberta and Saskatchewan down here...guess I'd be down here too if I were from there. There is a state park down the road from Havasu that we just might stay in for a little while before we head toward Yuma. It's got all the services and hook-ups and is really quite a pretty place. We haven't really decided yet though, so who knows where we'll end up.

Oso is doing well and enjoying all the attention he gets from people here. Lots of people have little dogs they travel with, so he's found several buddies. He sure had fun at Matt and Alyssa's place playing with their dogs. He has that to look forward to on our way home as well.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and all the best to you in the new year!