We have been here at Valle del Oro, or how it is affectionately known by the residents, VDO, about a month now and have settled in. Our little 'home' is set up with our family pictures, patio table, chaise's and lights on our patio, hanging plants and our hummingbird feeder.....we will be here for a while.
When we arrived in October, we were amazed at how empty the park looked, but as November arrived more snowbirds filled up the park. Still awed at how many Canadians are here. There is most likely a greater percentage of people from Canada here than any other US state.
The park is really very nice and we are getting more involved than we did last January and February. I have joined a yoga class, I now know how to use the equipment in the lapidary room and I am having great fun taking rocks, shaping and polishing them and making them ready for jewelry. I am also taking a beading class. Deane and I meet up with friends at happy hour on Monday, Tuesday and Friday's when they have live music and food on the patio. We have learned how to play 65, a great card game were the most you could possibly loose in one night is $1.95. My kind of gambling! If we were inclined to gamble a bit more, we could get into the Texas Hold'em game. If we want to dance, there is one each Saturday night with a live band, volleyball in the pool every noon and there are 6 softball teams to either play on or watch! They actually have a team where you have to be over 70 to be on! There is so much more going on, you need to prioritize interests and participate.
The park has its own wildlife here.... the cutest cotton tail bunnies run all over the park. We laugh at them because of how they have decimated a particular area of pansies the park planted. The park put a little fence around the plants and the bunnies just laughed and jumped or dug under it. Within two weeks, the plants were nibbled down to the ground and some of them have been pulled out. Thank goodness they do not care for roses as the park has a beautiful rose garden where a number of them are planted in memory of past residents.
Besides the bunnies, we have many covies of quail scurrying around and flying up to the roof tops of the RV's and park models and of course the hummingbirds have found our feeder. I am so enthralled at the hummingbirds, they are so fearless for such tiny animals. They fly to the feeder when we are sitting outside, stop and look at us before they feed and will fly close to check us out. I still find it amazing how aggressive and territorial they are. Do not see many black birds or crows here, but doves are everywhere. Between the doves, the hummingbirds and the quail, waking up in the morning is very pleasant.
We have reconnected with our friends Joe and Irene who were hosts with us at Honeyman this past summer, as well as my brother and his wife Mary and my good friend Jan and her husband Mike. We have spent most of this month driving around the area with the idea of buying a home here. So far, we have found a home we really like, it is about 30 minutes south of Phoenix. The real estate prices are amazing with everyone cutting prices to lure the potential buyer. We have also found a newer RV we love.... so we are attempting to figure out what we want to do.
Deane has spent a number of days working on the RV, doing some of the projects we decided needed to be done. With a Lowe's across the street, it makes it easy to get all necessary parts. So far he has torn the shower apart searching and fixing a leak, and repairing the wall he had to cut into last December in search of the broken pipes from the freeze. When we went looking at Lowes for an inexpensive fix to the wall we ended up with a peel and stick oak flooring that matched the oak wood in the coach.
Deane spent an entire day putting up the wall, cutting around the heater, thermostat, smoke detector, etc and it looked great when it was done. We did notice a few panels having trouble adhering to the under wall in spots and we figured we would fix those the next day. The next morning when we got up, we found about 6 of the panels on the floor.... they had given up the ghost during the night. After we finished laughing, Deane made one more trip to Lowes for some liquid nail glue and redid the entire wall one more time. We now have a very nice looking paneled wall!
We are heading to Rocky Point Mexico for Thanksgiving with my brother and his in-laws and we are anxiously looking forward to D'enne, Michael and Matthew coming for Christmas.
We will be here until the end of January when we will move down to the Green Valley area just south of Tucson for 6 weeks. We will bring the RV back up to Phoenix and park it at my brothers again while we head to Europe for two weeks.
We will be back in the NW in April to start our hosting duties at Champoeg State Park just south of Portland/Wilsonville area for May and June. In July we will head up to host in Washington for 3 months to be close to Steph and family. October-December will bring us back hosting in the Portland area before we head back down here.
Will post about our trip to Mexico over Thanksgiving next month. Hopefully we will NOT have to dodge any bullets from the cartells!