Ozona to L.A.

Sunrise in Ozona, Texas

So Ozona was okay. "Okay" is high praise against the vision that my mind had created for a spot for Mary to spend the night. After the skylight debacle in Tampa we had a broken neo-dome but a sparkling clean coach. I had visions of dust storms embedding grit in every nook and cranny of Mary's surface. The RV park in Ozona was positively utilitarian and a little like spending the night on the moon. Rows and rows of hookups on a flat piece of graveled ground with a grassy spot in the middle for the dogs to do their business on. It was a little noisy due to a small truck stop a quarter mile from the entrance to the RV Park. We had been very healthy, eating light and doing all of the right things until we got to Ozona where we fell off the wagon and went to the Tex-Mex truck stop restaurant and chowing down on a salt laden, fat globbed meal, topped off with sugary lemonade. Yum. We went back to eating healthy the next day after dragging our shell socked-systems out of bed before sunrise and getting back on the road. All in all Ozona wasn't the worst place we ever stayed. Remember Wildwood? Better than that.

John and the kids on the moonscape in Ozona

Next stop was Las Cruces, New Mexico at our all time favorite KOA. We spent the day crossing West Texas as Mary hummed down the road. It was a little windy but not nearly as bad as last year and diesel is at an all time low since we started traveling with Mary. Late in the afternoon we pulled into the little campground which is hosted by the nicest people and parked overlooking a valley that twinkles with lights at night. The backdrop is the Caballo Mountains and when the sun goes down they turn to a burnished brick color. It's really beautiful. After we set up we took the dogs for a walk and then I started dinner while John took a well deserved nap. As I was cooking a big new coach pulled in next to us. I watched the sides expand and the gentleman who was driving got out and sorted out the hookups. I was watching a movie and cooking away when I looked out Mary's front window and saw the couple standing outside of the coach, each with a beer in their hands, gazing glassy-eyed at their coach. I recognized the look immediately...new coach owners. If there were bubbles over their heads revealing their thoughts this is what they would have said. The woman: "Holy shit...we really did buy this resort on wheels." The man: "Holy shit. I need another beer." I told John about it when he woke up and we laughed remembering the first night that we had Mary.

We were in Wakarusa, Indiana very close to the northernmost border and not far from Chicago. We drove the Camry up so that one of the local shops could install the transmission pump and towing apparatus to the front end. We spent part of two days in the shop taking a crash course (no pun intended) in how to operate Mary's systems and then we both drove her in a school parking lot. It was January and it was ice cold and spitting snow. I remember having nightmares about our first trip in Mary being in a snow storm or worse, on ice. The nice people at Monaco assured us that we would be fine so off we went to the transmission place to pick up the Camry. After that we spent the night at the hotel we had been staying in being as Mary was winterized (her water systems were full of anti-freeze). I got up in the night and looked out the window in both awe and horror (the look I saw on the faces of our new coach owner neighbors in Las Cruces) at Mary, under the lights of the parking lot. She looked like an office building on wheels. But she was beautiful. Very early the next morning we got up and found a light blanket of snow on the ground. We put our things in Mary and John fired her up. The first thing that we had to do was to get on a turnpike which required that we drive over an overpass. When you first ride in a big coach it is a little hard to assess where your sides and wheels are in relation to the side of the road and the center line. I spent a good deal of my ride to Lexington with my butt puckered thinking that we were driving on the shoulder of the road or in our neighbor's lane. Try that going over an overpass! The next thing that happened was a discussion regarding the directions that Tom Tom (remember our GPS headaches?) were giving us about how to head south. We listened to Tom Tom and John ended up driving Mary through downtown South Bend...another seriously butt puckering experience. The last mistake was a trip through downtown Versailles which is a tiny town near Prospect Lane, the farm where Mary resides when we are in Kentucky. That little jaunt made the trip through South Bend look like a drive down a super highway. A few days later we were at a dinner party with some horse people when a friend of ours told us a story. He said he was driving through downtown Versailles the other day when he looked up and saw this huge coach working its way down through the narrow streets. He said he thought some rock star must have made a wrong turn. Then he got close and said, "Wait a minute. I KNOW that woman! And that's Johnny driving that big bus!"

When I think about how much we didn't know about this coach when we took off for Florida the first time I shudder. Now we are pretty comfortable with all of the systems and John drives her like he's been doing it all his life.

Breezy lounging in Scottsdale

So we left Las Cruces and drove to Scottsdale on Monday. We met Tim and Ryan Arcuri there in the afternoon and took off to our favorite haunt, Earl's Restaurant for a light dinner. The week in Scottsdale was great. The weather was fabulous, in the mid to upper 70's all week and we had a very relaxing week with our friends. They had a great horse show and on the following Monday morning we left to head farther west to Los Angeles. But first we decided to make a stop in Palm Desert for a couple of days of rest.

The red boulders heading into Tucson

There is an Outdoor Resorts in Palm Desert. That is the same name as the RV park that we stayed at in Newport, Oregon that was so beautiful...we thought. In Newport we overlooked the ocean and the spaces were huge and private and it was just plain heaven. So we made a reservation for two nights and happily headed down the road. When we arrived at Outdoor Resorts Road (pretty impressive to have a road named after your business) we made the left by the incredible landscaped entrance and pulled into the park. John registered us and we passed through the gates into the park. We had a map of the park and my eyes bugged when I saw all of the spaces. It was landscaped impecably and there was a golf course that ran through the property...twenty seven holes! We drove in and I promptly blew a fuse and got us lost. The roads through the place were narrow and it felt like we were going the wrong way on a one way street for the entire ten minutes that we drove looking for our space. After winding all over the park we finally found space number 850. Yes, eight hundred and fifty. There are actually 1,213 spaces in the park and it is nearly full, mostly with fifth wheel trailers, golf carts and bicycles. Honestly, I have never seen so many golf carts of so many different descriptions and full of so many well...old people in my life. They swarmed together like herds of impala and when they passed by Mary it was a virtual parade of the goofiest golf carts I've ever seen. In the mornings they were loaded to the gills with golfers, all dragging wheeled golf bags behind them. The empty spaces are rented out at anywhere from $66.00 to $77.00 per night with the space owner collecting 70% of the rent. The association fees are $319.00 per space. Do the math. Holy cow. The spaces are stacked in like cord wood and the people are highly social. You would have to be highly social to be stacked on your neighbors like bees in a hive.

We decided that we wanted to eat out on Tuesday night before we left. We were lounging in our chairs, under Mary's awning enjoying the desert air (it was fragrant with orange blossom...fantastic) when our neighbor drove in and got out of his car. John asked him for a recommendation on where to eat in town and he said a place called Oceans 111. His wife came out and suggested that we go early because it was St. Patrick's Day and everyone would be out. That struck me as a little weird. I never considered St. Patrick's Day to be a big night out unless of course you are Irish. So we went early and drove up to this restaurant which is built into the side of a hill...like a cave. It had a nice look about it when we walked up to the door. Then John pulled the door open and I was bowled over by a bad smell. I leaned toward him as we were approaching the reservations desk and said, "I hate to say this but this place smells a lot like a nursing home." He shrugged my comment off as we were seated. We ordered a nice bottle of wine and the waitress, who was very sweet, gave us our menus. John had been craving steak for the last two days so he ordered prime rib and I ordered sweet and sour chicken. We had an ahi appetizer that was really good. Then the waitress came and delivered the bad news about the prime rib. All they had left was the end cut. I looked at my watch. It was 5:30. Who ate the rest? So he got the menu again and ordered the herb roasted chicken. Great. A healthier choice. She delivered our dinners and John tried to put his fork into the chicken. He couldn't pierce it. He stabbed and dug while I ate my sweet and sour chicken and rice. Finally he gave up and set it aside. We shared my entree, which was fair at best, and ordered desert. Between the wine, the ahi and the desert our dinner was salvaged. As we exited the restaurant in the Camry at 7:00 I commented to John that there was no traffic. I mean zero traffic. I think we saw five cars on our way back to the RV Park which was about five miles. I said, "I figured out where all of the prime rib went!" John said, "Where?" I said, "They start serving dinner in the middle of the afternoon so people can be in bed by 7:30." He said, "No, I think it was leftovers from yesterday." We had a good laugh as we were entering the park.

In the land of the pink bus (click on the photo to enlarge it...it's worth it!)

We got past the gate and I turned left. John said he thought I should have turned right. I said no, that we turned right with the coach and were lost. He said, no, we turned right then right and we should have turned right and left. We were lost within 60 seconds. So we drove around the park marveling at the fact that there were St. Patrick's Day cookouts going on all over the place. I think as we get older we must look for any occasion to celebrate and toast our continued good health and good fortune. The thousand-plus people at Outdoor Resorts in Palm Desert are havin' a good time regardless of the bleak economic forecast!

Golf Course Road...it's something like the Yellow Brick Road!

We are now at Los Angeles Equestrian Center being buried in that grit and grime that I was concerned about in Ozona. It is gorgeous here though and the place is just hopping with equestrian activity. We have enjoyed our stay, visiting with the people at Bennett Farms and walking the trails in Griffith Park. Today we got a behind the scenes tour of the Los Angeles Zoo and both of us got to pet a full grown giraffe!

We are leaving in the morning to head back to Kentucky. We were going to make the trip to Oregon but apparently winter won't surrender on this first day of spring and they are closing mountain passes to buses and RV's. I'm disappointed that we won't get to see my family but really anxious to get home and enjoy the spring blossoms and all of the new foals in the pastures around Lexington. I'm getting reports that the dogwoods are in bloom and the grass is coming up green and beautiful. I can't wait to get home! I hope you all had a great week and enjoy the first weekend of spring!