Home for the Winter

We wanted to get an early start yesterday to get to Happy Trails in Surprise by about noon. There were lots of things we wanted to accomplish yesterday - check-in, get set up, get keys for the storage shed and mailbox, order transponders for the vehicles to use at the gates, and get a feel for any changes since our last visit - briefly - in January this year.

By leaving at 9:30, we should have had plenty of time. We had to stop at the gas station at the freeway entrance to gas up and it was 10 AM by the time we hit I-17 for the 90 mile trip. All was going fine and we were enjoying familiar views until we reached the area just south of Black Canyon City - probably 30 miles from our destination - and we ran into this:

There was an accident somewhere along this stretch of I-17 - what else is new - and we lost 1 1/2 hours crawling through this traffic jam. Not only did it cause us to be late - we arrived at almost 1 PM - but it destroyed any expectation of getting good fuel mileage for the trip. The truck and trailer averaged 7.5 MPG on a trip that should have been over 9 MPG.

We finally made it though, and got checked in and started the set up of our fifth wheel on our spacious site for the winter:

There is a portable porch that is visible in the shot above that we were invited to use while here and was used by Dick and Carole while they used this site as their winter home for over 15 years. The problem we have with this porch:

is that it was custom built to accommodate their fifth wheel and ours has a different configuration - we have a slide-out on that side of the rig, plus ours sits a little higher than theirs, so it may be impossible to use as an extension of the trailer. Add to that the fact that it sits on a water valve that is under the porch and it greatly restricts the mobility of the porch. Sheesh. We will need to resolve that issue asap. Then we discovered that the owners - Rett and Claire Porter - have to provide a form that gives approval for us to acquire the gate transponders. We didn't know about those, and we're sure the owners didn't know either.

We had a surprise and pleasant visit from Carole who is spending the winter in one of the vacation villas in the park. She has been through a lot and she still has to clean out the shed before we can have the use of it for ourselves.

The new owners have completed the house on the space we rented almost 5 years ago:

They have a similar setup on a space in Texas for their other home. We expect to meet them when they arrive here in late November. So far, we have only communicated by phone and email, so we are anxious to close that loop.

The first order of the day today is to order newspaper delivery from the Arizona Republic so it's time to get on with the chores...