Gorgeous

We have been blessed with fantastic weather since we left Wisconsin. All the way through Texas and New Mexico it was sunny and mild.

Yesterday we arrived in Tucson and the high was 79 degrees. Today the high was 76. Wow!! We’re loving it. Lows have been in the mid 40s. That’s the desert for you.

Today we went grocery shopping and then for an hour walk in the desert behind our campground. Both of us are feeling the effects of the sun today. We’re not sunburned, but definitely sun-kissed. We forgot the sunscreen today; we’ll need to be more careful in the future.

We are in what is considered the high desert, and it’s beautiful. Our campground actually is adjacent to Tucson Mountain Park so there is lots of great scenery all around us. Here’s the view out of our back window. The lady behind us has several bird feeders out so we’re enjoying seeing all the birds without any droppings in our area.

We’re staying at Desert Trails RV Park, south of Tucson. The price is $465 a month which includes a 30 amp FHU site with free wi-fi. The wi-fi has been spotty which I’m sure is the case in most places. It works better early in the morning when there aren’t a ton of people trying to access it.

The park is rather old and a bit rundown. It doesn’t appear there is a lot of money spent on upgrades. The sites are pretty tight. It’s not terrible, just a little “tired”. There is a nice pool and a hot tub. There are also quite a few planned activities. We’ll probably join in on some of them. The lady in the office was very nice and helpful.

We saw this fishhook barrel cactus on our walk. They have yellow fruit or flowers on them, very pretty. I never knew they always tilt to the south.

On the tire front, the good news is that Kevin was able to get a replacement tire in Midland, so we had a spare the rest of our trip. It was not a Goodyear store, so we will be contacting Goodyear directly for reimbursement. I definitely will be asking for all of the tires to be replaced. I’ll let you know what happens. I’m sure it will be a lengthy process, but I don’t give up very easily.

We only stayed in Midland for one night. I didn’t know it is the hometown of Laura Bush and that George and Barbara Bush lived there at one time with their family. There was a lot of oil activity around the area. This was the view out of our back window at the campground.

Quite an interesting sunset view.

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

Another Tire Bites the Dust

You may recall that last February one of our Goodyear tires on the camper lost its tread and caused some considerable damage. Since then Kevin has been keeping a very close eye on the other three tires.

Today as we were stopped for gas, he noticed that the tread was separating from one of the tires on the opposite side as last year. He put on the spare tire, and we were on our way again.

Thank goodness he has been so vigilant. If that tread would have come off again, we could have had a serious problem. As you can imagine, we are not happy with these Goodyear tires.

After our problem last year, a friend of ours had the same problem with the G rated Goodyear tires on his Carriage. We have also read on some RV Forums that others have experienced the same issue. Apparently, there was a problem with these particular tires. We will definitely be filing a claim with Goodyear to replace all of our tires.

We are in Midland, Texas for the night. Luckily, this is a pretty large town and we should be able to find a replacement tire before we head to Tucson. We don’t want to be traveling hundreds of miles without a spare.

We really enjoyed our stay at Coffee Creek RV Resort in Santo, Texas the last two nights. The park is only about four years old and is in excellent condition. The sites are FHU 50 amp pull-through. All of the buildings are super clean. The entire place was immaculate. I’ve never seen such luxurious bathrooms at an RV park. They are Passport America members, so we only paid $17.50 per night for two nights. Definitely money well spent.

We had lots of laundry to do. The washers and dryers were large and we were able to get it all done in four loads for a total cost of $10. They also had free wi-fi, although it was rather slow.

Our site was across from the bathhouse and laundry building. The pool and hot tub were next door. Here’s a view of the pool area. You can see our camper across the road. There were only about a dozen other RVs in the entire place.

The weather has been great. Yesterday was in the 70s. We enjoyed sitting outside soaking up the sun and listening to the Wisconsin Badger basketball game on satellite radio.

After dinner we had a soak in the hot tub. We were the only ones in it. What a great New Year’s Eve, soaking in the hot tub with your best friend and watching the moon and stars. I think this may be one of my favorite New Year’s Eve nights ever! The pool was quite cold, but the hot tub was just right!

Today we drove about five hours from Santo to Midland, Texas. This is one very large state. It takes days to cross it. We spent all of today on I-20 which runs through central Texas. There were very few towns along the way, just lots and lots of red dirt, scrubby looking trees and pear cactus. I did not realize that Texas was so dry and desert-like.

We saw an extreme wildfire danger sign at the rest stop. Texas has been suffering from a drought, and it was very obvious. Everything looks very dry and barren. We did see quite a few ranches, cows and oil pumps. In fact, Midland looks like it has a lot of oil activity.

We’re at Midland RV Campground. It seems to be a very basic place, although most of the sites are occupied. I’m wondering if many of the people here are oil workers. It just seems like that kind of place. They do have free wi-fi and cable. We were able to get a discount for being Escapee members, so our cost was $22.95 for the night. We chose it because of the convenient location off the interstate.

I hope everyone had a very Happy New Year. I sure hope our tire problem is not a sign of things to come this year!

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

Happy New Year

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit with family and friends in Wisconsin. The boys cooperated and let me take the annual family pictures.

I was disappointed that there was no snow on the ground for a white Christmas. However, we were lucky to have good driving conditions. The only problem was the day we left. There had been some freezing rain overnight, and we saw several cars in the ditch during about the first hour on our drive back to Kansas. After that, it was smooth sailing. Along the way, we saw quite a few RVs heading south, many of them were from Minnesota.

We arrived back in Kansas at 8:00 pm on Thursday night to find our camper just as we left it. No problems there, great! We spent the night in Coffeyville and were back on the road on Friday morning. It was another long day of driving, about 8 hours. We chose to do one long day and then spend two nights at one spot, rather than break it up. That way we won’t be traveling at all on New Years Eve. Since it’s on a Saturday, we thought there might be a lot of traffic. Yesterday’s traffic wasn’t too bad other than around Ft. Worth, Texas.

So, we’re staying at Coffee Creek RV Resort in Santo, Texas. It’s about 40 miles west of Fort Worth off of I-20. The campground is very nice and clean. They are Passport America members so it’s costing us $17.50 a night for a FHU 50 amp site. We have lots of laundry to do and unpack from our trip. We also had some things we bought from Amazon shipped to Eric’s house. So, now we have to find a place for all of it.

The weather is supposed to be in the low 70s today, so we’ll enjoy a beautiful day while doing our chores.

Happy New Year and stay safe!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my friends and family in blogger land.

Had a safe and uneventful 12 hour trip to Wisconsin yesterday. We left the RV at the campground in Kansas and are staying at a Super 8 for 6 nights while we visit with our family and friends.

Went to church with our boys and my mom and her friend tonight and then had dinner at my moms. Back to her house tomorrow for more family fun. My brother and his wife will join us for the day.

I’m loving and appreciate this time with my children!

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

Five More Hours

We got a very welcome email from Amazon this week. They have released the workampers early so we will not have to work on Friday night!!

We could have actually been done working after last night, but we’ve chosen to work a half shift (five hours) on Thursday night. We’ll sleep Thursday night and then leave early Friday morning for our 12 to 13 hour drive back to Wisconsin. I’m so excited to see our boys again!!

Tonight Janie and John have invited us over for Christmas dinner. I’m sure we’ll have some good laughs before we say good-bye to them. It was sure nice having friends share our working time at Amazon.

The Amazon Coffeyville Distribution Center had a goal of breaking a record by shipping out over 300,000 units last Monday. There were posters throughout the plant advertising the goal. They did not make it. In fact, they missed last year’s record of over 276,000 units by only 36. Amazing that it came down to such a small amount.

The night shift, however, set a record of number of units packed in an hour and the total number of units packed for the night. From what was said by our managers, it sounded like they were blaming the day shift for missing the record. Still, that’s a lot of people buying online. Amazing!

We’re not sure if we’ll come back to Amazon. It’s very hard work! We’re exploring some other options for next year. Time will tell.

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

Exciting Plans

In case you haven’t figured it out, we’re going on a cruise!

We’ll celebrate our 35th anniversary in 2012. Our friends, Joan and Al, will celebrate their 40th and friends, Wanda and Dick, will celebrate their 45th. We had all discussed a special trip to celebrate these milestone anniversaries. One of the places we all wanted to see was Australia and New Zealand. After checking into prices, the cost was just too high for us to justify. So, we put the idea on hold.

We all did some checking and our plans have finally all come together. We found a Carnival cruise to Hawaii for a great price. Since we were all planning on meeting up in Arizona in January, the itinerary will fit right into our plans. It’s a 15 day cruise out of San Diego.

We’ll drive from Tucson to San Diego on January 19th and spend a night in San Diego. The hotel price includes parking our truck in their secure lot for the duration of the cruise. We’re leaving our RV at the campground in Tucson.

We cruise for 4 days and then spend the next 5 days touring the Hawaiian Islands. We spend a day each in Hilo, Maui, Honolulu, Kauai and Kona. Then 4 days at sea with a stop in Mexico before returning to San Diego on February 4th.

Kevin and I have been to Hawaii twice before. Once in 1987 for our 10th anniversary and once in 1992 when Kevin earned a trip through work. Both times we didn’t go to the big island. I have always regretted that we didn’t go to Volcano National Park. Now we’ll get the chance. We also haven’t been to Kauai so there will be plenty of new experiences on this trip. I’m hoping to see lava flows and evidence of the active volcano. This picture is from the park’s website.

After 10 weeks at Amazon, I am so thrilled to be going on a trip. Our earnings will be enough to cover the trip plus our living expenses for the winter months.  Our hard work will finally pay off!

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!

Santa’s Workshop

It has been very busy at Amazon the last few days. It kind of feels like what I imagine Santa’s workshop must be like with a lot of elves running around.

There are so many people working, that you have to be careful where you are walking. Fork lifts, bicycles, pallets movers, carts and people are moving around everywhere. They shipped out around a quarter of a millions packages on each of the last two days. Wow!! Supposedly, the last two days were the busiest, but we’ll see.

With all of that volume have come some problems. The conveyors are constantly stopping or breaking down. It’s all they can do to keep things running. Last night was especially difficult. At one point all the conveyors sending boxes to the shipping department were stopped. They actually had a group of workers manually scanning packages, printing shipping labels and carting the boxes off to the shipping docks.

Amazon continues to reward employees during this busy time. On Tuesday night everyone was given a box of three cookies and a bottle of juice during the first break. They are drawing six names every night to win Amazon gift cards. Our department had a power hour last night where the worker with the highest packing rate wins a $300 Walmart gift card.

They are also randomly giving little gifts. We’ve received candy, an ice scraper, a mini-flashlight and a combination tape measure, screwdriver and flashlight gizmo. There will also be a drawing for prizes on Dec. 23rd for those who had perfect attendance between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The good news is we have only seven work days left. I am so looking forward to going home for Christmas and seeing our boys! We’ll spend five days back in Wisconsin for the holidays. We’re leaving our RV at the campground here in Kansas. We’ll pick it up on Dec. 30th and head to Tucson for two months. Can’t wait!

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!