Christmas Day 2011

It is Christmas today and we just got back to our RV at Rustic Creek RV Park in the very late afternoon.  We left Phoenix two days ago but got caught in a big snowstorm in the White Mountains of south central New Mexico. We were forced to spend the night hanging out in a truck stop until we finally called around and found a room at an America's Best Motel. It was a dump but it was the very only room available in town due to the storm. The state had closed I-10 at this town, so everyone had to find a place to stay here. We left in the morning after the road opened and only got to Big Spring, Texas by night, so we stayed in a Holiday Inn there for Christmas Eve and had dinner at the truck stop diner across the freeway.

Contract on New Home

We drove over to the Meritage community in Buckeye on Saturday but we had to drive along a poor area of town along I-10 and Liz became skeptical of moving to Buckeye. We spent some time there looking at the models but Liz liked the ones in Casa Grande much more. The salesman there told us about another Meritage community in Maricopa which is about halfway in between Buckeye and Casa Grande. It is called Province and after free lunch at the clubhouse at the golf course at Buckeye we headed over there to look at their models. They have the same models as the community in Casa Grande but they also have a huge community center with just about every amenity possible , so we started to look at lots and get a price on the house we wanted. We finally ended up signing a contract on a home there late this afternoon. We have to go to the design center tomorrow before we leave to go back to Fort Worth to pick out our options, cabinets, flooring and the like.

House Hunting Trip

We arrived in Phoenix late this afternoon. We are staying in a Day's Inn in Mesa. We saw a billboard for a Meritage Active Adult Community in a city called Casa Grande which is about halfway between Tucson and Phoenix. We had plenty of time, so we stopped to look at the models there. The sales lady there was very nice and it turned out that today Meritage announced that the solar package was no longer going to required but instead was going to be an option. This lowered the base price of the homes about$20K which put the smaller ones in our price range. Liz really liked a couple of the models so we took some information and continued on to our hotel.

We are going to visit the Meritage development in Buckeye tomorrow and also begin to look for a storage place for our household goods. The real plan is to rent an apartment here to see what areas are best to live in before we buy another home.

Moving Day

Mayflower Van Lines picked up our furniture and household goods today. We selected them because they were the best mix of price and service. But, our realtor told us a couple of days ago that the buyer's bank had not approved the loan as of yet and the house closing would be probably pushed back to the end of the year. All of our things were already packed up in boxes so we little choice but to follow our plans and move into our RV at Rustic Creek RV Park which is a few miles away. We will have to stay there until the house closes and in any rate we want to spent the rest of this year in Texas for tax reasons.

We are going to leave on our house hunting trip to Phoenix in two days anyway, so it is not a big deal unless the deal falls through!

Offer on Home

We received an offer on our home today. It has only been listed a little over a week but a single guy that is being transferred to Fort Worth needs to buy a home now! He works for the Federal Prison System as a guard and starts work here the first of the year. We are going to loss a lot of money on this deal but that's life. I need to start contacting movers for estimates on moving our household goods to the Phoenix area. I also need to start packing because he wants to close on December 15. We also need to schedule a house hunting trip to Phoenix before the end of the year.

Decision Reached to Move to Arizona

We have been looking online at the various Meritage Homes active adult retirement communities in Phoenix and Tucson. We have found a floorplan that we like at a price we can afford in a community in Buckeye, Arizona which is only about 10 miles west of Goodyear where the Reds and Indians hold spring training.

We have just listed our home for sale but the realtor says that the normal time on market is about 4-6 months in our area and the home prices are much less than we paid for this home last year. So, we listed the home for about $20K less than we paid for it in February 2010.

Benson Memoirs

We have spent the last week exploring the Benson area. We started out by driving down to the old wild west town of Tombstone of Doc Holiday and OK corral fame. We toured the old Tombstone Courthouse which is now a museum and other historic buildings. There were also several attractions there like a reenactment of the shootout at OK corral and gunfight shows. Of course, they charge admission to watch these shows. We also went to the Kartchner Caverns State Park. These are probably some of the best preserved caves in the world. The guys that discovered the caverns kept them secret until they could have them designated as a State Park.

There is also a Meritage homes family development here that we visited. Southern Arizona is a big retirement area and we have begun to think about maybe moving here in the future. The Cincinnati Reds moved their spring training facility here a couple of years ago from Tampa, Florida and the Cleveland Indians also have spring training at the same ballpark.

Benson Layover

We arrived at our RV Resort in Benson this afternoon. It was pretty much empty because it is summer here and very hot. This is a winter destination for "snowbirds" along with many of the other age qualified RV Resorts from Phoenix to Tucson. We saw a lot of billboards for Active Adult Communities all the way from north Phoenix to here. These are typically 55+ age restricted golf course based single family housing developments with many amenities and associated high HOA dues.

Time to Go Home

Our tour of duty at Sunset Campground ended today. We gave all of our host materials to our replacements who will finish out the season. The last three months here have been really great and we made quite a few new friends. We met people from all parts of the world here but especially many German and French people. It was a great experience!

We will leave tomorrow to return to Forth Worth but we have decided to take the longer route through southern Arizona along I-17 to I-10 which passes through Phoenix and then Tucson before going through New Mexico to Texas. We are going to stop for a week at an RV park in Benson, Arizona which is near Tombstone. Benson is just east of Tucson along I-10.

Red Canyon Hike

We went to Red Canyon today to do a little hiking. It is about 20 miles from Bryce Canyon in the Dixie National Forest. There is a nice 50 site concessionaire run campground that is also there. We started hiking the Hoodoo Trail which lead to the Pink Ledges Trail. These two trails formed a loop trail from the Forest Service Visitor Center.

Virginia finally got hold of our co-hosts that were supposed to be here by May 1 and they said that they will not be coming. So, I guess that means we will have to handle the campground ourselves.

Snow Storm at Bryce Canyon

It has been snowing off and on most of the day. Early this afternoon I ventured out to take some photographs of Bryce Canyon covered with some snow. It started to snow really hard in the early evening and the Visitor Center had to turn on the sidewalk heaters which are usually only used in winter. We made a couple of rounds in the campground to make sure everyone was ok. The tenters were our chief concern but all was well.

UT Route 12 Scenic Drive

We took the day off and drove down UT Route 12 which is classified as one of the scenic drives in this state. We drove all the way down to Boulder which is about 75 miles from Bryce Canyon. The geological landscape seemed to change every few miles along this route. There are many geological time periods visible along this route. We stopped at an old gas station in Boulder to rest before we headed back to Bryce Canyon.

Our Site at Sunset Campground

We arrived at Bryce Canyon yesterday afternoon and started to set up camp at host site #1 at Sunset Campground. This is our first duty day as campground hosts at Sunset Campground. We met with Virginia early in the morning and she issued us our NPS uniforms and gave us a big box of forms and equipment that we would need to do our job here, We also we issued park radios and instructed on their proper use. We opened up Loop A of Sunset Campground at about 7 PM.

We left our home in Fort Worth early today for Bryce Canyon. We are staying the night at the same campground in Tucumcari, New Mexico as we did last year. Tomorrow we will stay at a KOA in Flagstaff, Arizona. We should arrive at Bryce Canyon National Park two days from now.

I received a call from a park ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park asking if I was still available to work the early summer season at Sunset Campground there. Liz and I talked it over since we would have to get ready to leave in about 4 weeks. We decided that we really loved it there and we would do whatever it took to make it happen. I called Virginia at Bryce Canyon National Park back and said we would love to have the assignment. Now comes the hard part of getting ready for a 3 month assignment in a short period of time. I'm sure that we will make many mistakes packing since we have never been out in our RV for this length of time. We have to report for duty on April 15.

I have applied for a few campground host jobs for this summer. One of the places that I have applied to is an opening at Bryce Canyon National Park. I don't think that I will get it but I applied anyway!