February 9, 2002
Here is Ron and Lotte. The very kind people at the KOFA park in Yuma who were kind enough to loan me their phone line so I could send and receive e-mail and update the website. And they're just as nice as they look, too. Ron was full of suggestions as to what we should see in the Yuma area and helpful suggestions like that. They'd been fulltimers for 8 years before Ron had a heart attack (he's also a cancer survivor) and after that they decided that they'd better have someplace nailed to the ground, and travel just some of the year. They're Pacific Northwest people, and we had fun swapping stories. Too bad we were on a tight schedule and had so much cleaning up to do. We'd have liked to spend more time with them.
On Monday as we were hooking up, I got a call from the head nurse at the assisted living facility where my mom is living. They were pretty sure she'd had a stroke, and wanted my permission to have her admitted for a checkup. I of course gave my permission, and Barb and I began to wonder about the wisdom of continuing on with our plans to go to Huachuca City. A series of phone calls later, we left about 11 AM heading to the Sacramento area. Mom lives in Orangevale, and we posted some pictures when we were here last July, etc. The first day on a long haul (772 miles from Yuma to Nicolaus, where we stay) we usually get some pretty good miles under our belts, and this was no exception. Spent the night in the Wal-Mart in Tulare, CA. Next morning (Tuesday the 5th) we woke to pea soup fog. Missed our on ramp to the freeway, and crept along sometimes as slow as 35 MPH on Hwy 99. This area is notorious for it's fog and today was no exception. There was a 40 car/truck pile-up that unfortunately resulted in some fatalities. The wreck was in the Southbound lanes to the South of us. We were going North. Around 10AM we stopped at a Flying J for fuel (tricky to find in the fog) and after refueling, I noticed the rear jack mechanism on the trailer was hanging loose on the drivers side. Inspection showed a broken weld. Dang! I wired it up, looked up a local welding shop in the phone book and learned they could take us in "sometime" that afternoon. We headed in that direction, got lost in the fog, and at an intersection about a mile or so off the freeway spotted a trailer building/repair outfit. In about 1/2 an hour we were back on the freeway and the fog had lifted. Cruised on into Lake Minden TTN park near Nicholas, CA, and are enjoying full hookups again. We'll be here for two weeks and then move someplace for a week, and then back here or whatever. We're sort of up in the air about what to do or where to go because of my mom's condition. This morning we got a call from the nurse saying they thought she may have broken a hip during the night. Xrays showed everything was fine. Her condition is such that we think it best to stay nearby, so we'll be staying in the area for an indefinite period of time, and my updates to the page will be a lot more infrequent as we will be spending time with her, getting caught up on little projects with the rig and stuff like that.
The news is that we're going to be putting the rig on the market as soon as I can build a flyer. When that gets done, I'll post it here as well. We're in the process of buying a used Jeep Cherokee that can act as a toad when we sell this rig and buy a motorhome. Seems a logical progression as my knees don't much like the stairs in the trailer any more, and Barb's back doesn't much like the truck any more. The aging process is a mixed bag.