I’m Back!

 

Howdy folks.  It has been awhile.  As we get ready to leave Southern California I thought I would get you caught up on what we have been doing over the past couple of months. 

We arrived in Southern California (Anaheim) on Veterans Day in November.  We picked this area as my parents live here as well as some others relatives for the both of us.  In addition you cannot beat the weather this time of year in this area.  It has generally been in the high 60’s or 70’s most days.  The nights do a little cold but the sunshine makes up for it.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my one of my aunt’s.  She has been having a large Thanksgiving  gathering for years and I believe this is the first one we have made.  It was great to catch up with a lot of my relatives.  A real treat was seeing an uncle and cousin I had not seen in over 30 years.  We had a great time.

Next up was to celebrate Christmas a little early with our three daughters and son-in-law.  As flights are much cheaper before the holiday we celebrated in the middle of December.  Our two daughters from Knoxville flew in for 4 days and our daughter and her husband drove down for Portland.  We had a great weekend and it allowed them to visit with their grandparents. 

Christmas in the RV

Family picture

Since then we have been enjoying the great weather with daily walks and/or bike rides and visiting with my parents.  We have not done much sightseeing as we both grew up in the area and do not have much interest in revisiting places we have been.  We did end up going to Venice, California as neither one of us had ever seen the canals or the beach. The beach walk was pretty rundown but did have some interesting people.  It appears many people take up residence on the grassy area between the beach and the shops.  We walked the canals and it was interesting to see the nice homes all crammed together around these tiny canals.  I am sure you have all seen these as it is a popular filming location for TV shows. 

Venice Beach

Venice canals

We left Venice and drove up the coast highway a couple of miles to the Santa Monica pier.  You all should be familiar with this icon as the carousel and entrance sign has been in many TV shows and movies.  This is the ending point (or starting point) for Route 66 so it sort of means we have made the whole journey on the Old Route 66.  Technically we did not drive every portion where it still exists but we have hit all the major cities on the route, so I bought the T-shirt!  We had lunch on the pier and then walked the coast highway and their shopping district.  You could not have asked for a more beautiful day.

Santa Monica pier

Carousel building (it was closed for the day)

Entrance sign for the pier

On Saturday we head out for Salome, Arizona.  This is near Quartzite, Arizona where the annual RV show is held along with a crafts show and rock and gem show.  Due to the large number of snowbirds in the area these shows are very popular and supposed to be the largest ones around.  We are meeting up with my Aunt and her husband along with their daughter.  Following that we move onto Las Vegas to attend the wedding of a friends daughter then we begin a trip up the west coast to visit our daughter in Portland.