Seeing Family and Friends
Most of our stops after leaving Virginia in November, and ending in San Clemente, California, in March, involved seeing family and friends. We spent Thanksgiving through New Year's with Alison's mom, where both our daughters (plus one cat) joined us on the Texas Gulf Coast for a few weeks at Christmas. We continued on to visit Doug's parents in Arizona, and Doug's nephew and then his cousin's son in California. In Alabama, we enjoyed visiting with a fellow remote colleague of Alison's, and in California, we were pleased to visit with a friend of Doug's from high school, a group of college friends gathered for a weekend mini-reunion, friends from our church in Northern Virginia, and friends from our days in Los Angeles (we lived there from 1985 through 1996). It's been a social whirlwind!
Side Trips
In December, Alison flew to Boston for a weekend with our daughters, and in January, Doug flew to New York for a family funeral. Sometimes, you just need to be somewhere faster than fits into an RV-driving schedule.
Touring
Touring has taken a back seat this winter to visiting family and friends. However, we can recommend the Angry Crab Shack in Gulf Shores (we ate there twice!), where seafood boils come to your table steaming hot in the seasoning-filled bag they were cooked in. Alison and our daughters enjoyed two museum exhibits in Boston: "Titian: Women, Myth, and Power" and "Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories". In Arizona, we visited Saguaro National Park, Tohono Chul Botanical Gardens and Galleries, and the Ft Huachuca Military Intelligence Museum and Hall of Fame (where Doug's father is among the honorees). In Los Angeles, we selected NY deli foods and Texas barbecue at the Grand Central Market, visited an Apple Store in the refurbished Tower Theatre, and wandered through The Last Bookstore. We also resumed our pre-pandemic practice of venturing into movie theaters quite often (Alison used to work in the movie industry): "Dune" (definite thumbs up); "The Eternals"; "The Matrix: Resurrection" (interesting and enjoyable); "Spiderman: No Way Home" (thumbs up); and "DOG" (somewhaintense subject matter, but a well-done buddy movie). We also saw a John Denver tribute concert by William Florian that was surprisingly enjoyable and informative.
Campgrounds
KOA Campgrounds continue to impress. The KOA Holiday in Spartanburg/Gaffney, South Carolina, was tranquil and spacious, with three fishing ponds to walk Hershey around. The KOA Journey in Las Cruces, New Mexico, was similarly impeccable, with a walking path that afforded a great nighttime view of the city lights below.
On the other end of the scale of RV parks was an overnight in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where our site in the mobile home park was labeled DUMP in the registry because it was next to the dumpsters.
More than one campground we've stayed in has also, or even primarily, been a mobile home park. The over-55 (age-restricted) parks we've stayed in offer activities that build community among the (mostly) retirees, such as a daily walking group, weekly card and bingo games, bocce and shuffleboard courts, and a pool and hot tub. Other parks, open to all ages, include families that might be living there temporarily (such as for a traveling nurse assignment or a construction job) or permanently (often in RV trailers built out as permanent homes). Often the children are the ones who build community there, running and playing together.
Another type of RV park is the in-town park, usually smaller and often fitted into an oddly shaped or otherwise less desirable piece of real estate. These lack the expensive amenities of resort-type parks but make up for that by being close to useful or desirable attractions. At an in-town park in Houston, Alison struck up a conversation with a young couple from rural Texas who had been at the park for a couple of months while their newborn underwent successful surgery for spina bifida corrections. (The nearby Texas Medical Center has one of the greatest concentrations of specialty medical care in the world.) In Santa Barbara, we returned this year to a small triangle of a park tucked between a freeway wall and a modest neighborhood of small homes, apartment buildings, and mobile home parks, within easy biking distance of the shoreline. Both parks were well-cared for and extremely convenient.
We have been fortunate to stay at some spectacular military campgrounds. In November, we spent an overnight at an Air Force campground in Montgomery, Alabama, that had a ballfield repurposed as a large dog park, and a beautiful fishing lake. We hope to return to that one for a longer stay, and to tour the Freedom Trail sites in Montgomery. More recently, we stayed right on the beach in the surfing mecca of San Onofre, California.
Finally, there are the independent gems in scenic areas. One, the Luxury RV Resort in Gulf Shores, Alabama, was situated next to a marshland boardwalk (when walking Hershey, we did keep an eye out for alligators!) and was only a block from the beach.
Another, the Hilltop RV Park in Fort Stockton, Texas, had expansive views of the surrounding ranchland and one of the city's two giant metal sculptures:
Landscape Sculptures
Speaking of metal landscape sculptures, we've been surprised how many exist in this country! You may remember the Bleu Horses of Montana, which we wrote about in an earlier blog post. We also drove around Borrego Springs, California, to see the amazing collection of large metal sculptures. We saw many but not all of the over 100 sculptures, all by the same artist! And quite a few other landscape sculptures have popped up randomly during our travels as unheralded delights.
Wildlife
From noisy seabirds on the Texas Gulf Coast, to yipping coyotes on the edge of Tucson, to melodious frogs in Santa Barbara, to skunks, ground squirrels, a flock of red-winged blackbirds, and pods of dolphins at San Clemente, we continue to enjoy the persistent presence of wildlife in human spaces. The rarer sightings are the most exciting, but there is also pleasure in the groups of crows and either starlings or grackles that flock everywhere, and the tree squirrels, mourning doves, and rock doves (aka pigeons) that appear almost everywhere.
Weather
Of course, the main reason for us to head southwest in the winter is to escape freezing temperatures, snow, and ice storms. Two out of three ain't bad! A series of below-freezing nights found us in Tucson, Arizona, in early February. Very few RV's are truly four-season, and our motorhome is no exception. While we have a powerful furnace for our interior, and tank heater pads for our fresh, grey, and black water tanks, there are still exposed water lines running across the underside of our rig. One way to protect those is to fill the water system with special pink RV antifreeze. (This is what we cleaned out of the system during our very first travel week in February 2020.) We wanted to avoid that big of a job for just three nights of freezing weather. Instead, we used a recently-purchased attachment to our portable air compressor to blow the water out of all our lines. It took us about three hours this first time, learning the right order to complete the blowout and taking notes, but we feel it will be much quicker the next time and gives us the option to stay put rather than running ahead of a cold front (as we did in last year's 884-mile race from San Antonio to Tucson).
Otherwise, we've had glorious weather. From the sands of North Padre Island, Texas, to the cotton fields of Pima County, Arizona, to the world-famous Trestles surf break in Southern California, we've enjoyed feeling the warmth of the sun.
We began our fall and winter season not far from the Atlantic, and ended it with a dip of the toes into the Pacific the night before we turned east again. Next we head for Yuma, Arizona, and then a trip to the Grand Canyon!
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