Our Travel Blog

Cool and sunny at wake up time, but a return to higher temperatures later in the day with a high of 26°C.

We took advantage of the free breakfast service offered here for the first time this morning, we didn’t do it earlier as we were afraid of making it a habit! We had waffles, orange juice and coffee, not bad for the price and very popular with the residents.

Back at the trailer it was time to continue yesterdays battle. All I was trying to do was add a 4G stick to the internet system here so that we could improve the the Skype and telephone connections. The WiFi here is normally pretty good for downloading, e-Mail and surfing, but lousy for audio and video. I bought a USB stick for T-Mobile off eBay and headed out to the T-Mobile store to get a SIM card and a data plan. Back at the trailer, I managed to get the stick to connect, but only at very slow speeds. The connection was far from perfect and many times the connection could not be made. This was worse than the WiFi. The stick finally gave up and I was not able to connect to the cell network.

A couple of hours later a connection was made again, it seemed to be better this time so I tried a Skype call with Paul and the grand-kids. It was perfect, I was finally happy ……. until I found out that the stick had died and the system reverted back to the resort WiFi!! We must have caught it at a quiet time.

Enough was enough, time to declare the stick dead and start proceedings to get a refund. More research last night and plan B was to get a small MiFi unit, instead of receiving the cell signal and receiving it through USB at the computer, this unit receives the cell signal and converts it to WiFi.

I set it up, but the SIM card was smaller than the one I bought yesterday! There was a SIM card with the unit so I figured it would be easy to have T-Mobile transfer the data allowance from one card to another…. wrong, they are not allowed to do that, “Sorry Sir, you’ll have to throw that data away and buy some more”…. Wrong! A little bit of thinking and a pair of snips seemed to be the answer. I cut the larger card down to the size of the smaller one, and presto the new device now works on the old SIM card. Take that T-Mobile.

The new device works at full 4G speed, and hopefully it will improve the Skype and phone calls.

After I got back this morning, Lyn headed out on her own to do the weekly shopping, I think she was secretly pleased that she was going alone for a change.

After lunch we headed out for some geo-caching. There are many areas around here where sub-divisions have been laid out, roads put in etc, but no houses built as a result of the real estate crash around 2008. These make ideal hiding places for the caches, we got all six of the ones we were looking for. On the way back from there I dropped the USB stick in the mail to get a refund! Hopefully the electrons will learn who is boss.

It’s now midnight, and the internet is sort of back up. The electrons around here have been ganging up on me all day as I tried to get a cell data stick to work. I think I may have won.

This is one of my shorter blogs!

Good night.

A cool(ish) night and a struggle up to 20°C today, but clear blue skies and sunshine with little wind.

Last night we went to a “concert” at the resort, it was billed as a John Denver concert and was performed by a guy from Colorado who spends the winter months travelling around entertaining, and the summer as a park ranger in the Colorado Mountain State Parks. The concert was actually pretty good, not only did he do John Denver songs he also sang a few that he had written himself. A good evenings entertainment and the price was right.

As the wind had finally calmed down I took the quadcopter with its new software for a test flight. Part of the software upgrade requires changing some of the switch positions on the transmitter, shame I forgot about that. The first 10 minutes of flying were great, but then the inevitable happened, I flicked the wrong switch which put me into the super agility (aerobatic) mode. I wasn’t expecting this, and by the time I worked out what had happened I was 2ft above the ground going both forwards and downwards a little too fast! As it hit the ground stones, sand and bits of helicopter went everywhere, but once the dust had settled the only obvious damage was that the battery cover had come off and the battery had come out. The machine was smart enough to know that it had crashed and switched off power to the blades so there was no damage there. I got the switches into the right position, tried a quick flight and all was good. A close inspection back at the trailer showed a couple of cracks in the body, and some stress marks as well. Maybe time for a new body.

After lunch we headed south towards Tucson to visit Pinal Air Park. This is home to one of the many boneyards in the Arizona and California deserts where aircraft come to die, or be stored in the dry desert air.

General Views

These ones came here to die

 National Guard Helicopter Training in the Circuit

On the way back we planned to do some geo-caching in the mountains south of Casa Grande, unfortunately the road we were following to get to the start point stopped at the local funeral directors. We figured that was enough of  boneyards for the day.

Woke up this morning to clear blue skies to the west and black clouds overhead and to the east. It had rained overnight, and  was now clearing. The mountains in the distance that are normally shrouded in haze were nice and clear. The downside was a maximum temperature of 16°C. Still on the weather front (groan), the 50cm of snow expected for our next stop is down to 10cm already! Well done those forecasters.

After breakfast we headed north to the outskirts of Phoenix, Lyn wanted to drop into Hobby Lobby, not to buy anything but to return something…. must be a first!

From there we headed over to get my truck gauge reprogrammed, which took all of 5 minutes. Finally over to Costco to get some coffee. We went on the I-10, but returned on the back roads; back roads in this case being 6+ lane roads going through sub divisions. As I have said before, they do know how to build roads down here.

Back at the resort, the wind was still to strong to fly or paint, and it was a little to cool to spend much time outside. Luckily we both have enough hobbies to keep us occupied inside.

We headed off for a short (~1 mile) walk around the resort just before having some coffee, then settled back down hobbying (new word).

Tonight is the highlight of this weeks social calendar, a John Denver concert!

Another warm night, but not a warm day, again we just made it to 20°C. We did manage to spend sometime sitting outside, but it was cool (for us).

My apparent miscalculation involves the next place we move to, Williams Az, next Tuesday. The current forecast has 50cm of snow falling between Friday and Sunday, with night time lows around -8°C. That may not be low at home where there are big furnaces and well insulted double glazed houses to keep you warm. In a not so well insulated, propane heated trailer it is bl**dy cold. Hopefully the forecasters will be wrong yet again!

Lyn headed off to the craft group this morning. Unfortunately it was still too wndy for spray painting or quadcopter flying, so I spent some time with Excel trying to get it to do what I wanted and not what it thought I wanted. I won, eventually.

I have a gizmo in the truck that monitors and displays various engine parameters that I use primarily for measuring fuel consumption. It is about 5 years old and I have never updated the software in it, primarily because you need to send it off to the US for the update (and pay $25!). I finally decided to do something about it, but found out that the turn around time wouldn’t guarantee it would be mailed back before we left, BUT I discovered the factory was only about 20 miles from here, and I could go up there and get the upgrade done in 10 minutes for free. Guess where we’re going tomorrow.

After crafts Lyn spent some time on planning the Alaska trip, we suddenly realised it is not that far away!

We went for a walk around the resort after lunch and we even got a few drops of rain to keep us company.

Woke up to overcast skies at some ridiculous hour for me (7AM). Hopefully that bad habit won’t continue. The trailer was the warmest it had been overnight and the heating didn’t kick in at all. All sounds a bit contradictory to the title, but as the day wore on it struggled to get above 20°C! It was also much windier than usual, but it remained dry.

This morning we just hung around the trailer doing odd jobs, it was a bit too windy to do any spray painting today. I finally got around to doing some work on the quadcopter; one of the engine mountings needed a little TLC (glue) after a “wobbly” landing, and there was also a software update available for the flight computer. This software update then required a change in programming to the transmitter. Once that was all completed it was still too windy to do any test flying unfortunately.

After lunch we headed out to the town of Maricopa, about 25 miles NW of here. The primary reason was to get some antenna cable from Radio Shack. The price was ridiculously low, no wonder they filed for bankruptcy protection.

While we were there we also did some geocaching, we got 7 for 7 (they really don’t hide them too well down here!) which took me past the 300 mark.

Running out of titles and things to say! Another warm day, a little overcast but still up in the high 20’s.

It was a very slow start for me, but Lyn headed out after breakfast to a craft sale that was taking place at the resort. She returned remarkably empty handed , only 2 items! Over the course of the day I continued painting the frame of the 3D printer, it’s now about 75% painted.

We spent some time sitting around outside doing very little. After lunch we did a longish walk around the resort, and then on to the gas station outside the resort to get some shopping. We did about 2 miles in all.

I did some programming and computer work when we got back, and managed to destroy one of the computer boards I had been using. You live and learn!

Other than that, a very quiet day.

Warm and overcast today, temperature went up to around 28°C, but with the humidity down around 30% it doesn’t feel as warm as it would back home at that temperature.

Lyn had a bit more laundry to do this morning, so I got a little more painting done while she was gone. Once the bedding was hung out to dry we headed off to do the weekly shopping.

After lunch we headed into Casa Grande so I could get some more shorts, the ones I am wearing at the moment are 36″ waist and believe it or not, I now fit (comfortably) into a 32″. Lyn was being helpful and even found me a pair with a 33″ waist, but they were too big!

We also picked up a few other things that we hadn’t been able to get in the morning, then it was my turn to choose the store. Harbor freight was the store of choice, similar to Princess Auto back home. There were so many things to buy, but so little justification for buying them.

Back at the site we had coffee and sat around outside for a while, then I did a little more painting and called it a day. Don’t want to do too much work right ahead of the week-end.

Usual wake up conditions, but it is getting warmer during the day. We got up to 29°C this afternoon.

After breakfast Lyn headed out to do the laundry and I decided to start working on the 3D printer. The first order of business is to paint all the components that make up the framework. I got the first part done, then Lyn returned from the laundry, and I decided it wasn’t a good idea to spray paint while the laundry was hanging out to dry! I retired to do some programming. Later I just hung around outside doing some Sudoku as it was getting pretty warm in the trailer.

After lunch we headed out to the convention centre in town where there was a presentation by the Canadian Snowbirds Association. This is a group that provide support and information for Canadians spending winter months in the US. One of their key pieces of work at the moment is to persuade the US to allow retired Canadians to spend longer in the US than current rules allow, i.e. 182 days. They also have customised medical insurance and currency exchange programmes. One of the things that we have learnt through them is to fill out some IRS forms that will exempt us from being treated as US citizens for tax purposes…. worth doing if you are in the US for more than 30 days a year.

Once the information session was complete there was some entertainment provided by comedian Jimmy Flynn and singer John McDermott.

Back at the resort we just lounged around again, doing nothing in particular. Again the BBQ was brought into use for dinner, it gets used about 5 times a week. Talking, indirectly, of food I am having problems with my weight….. it continues to fall. I’m down 45lbs from the start, and Lyn is down 50lbs and still slowly dropping. I’ve started to eat some snacks, and as I don’t feel particularly hungry I’ll plod along as is and at some time an equilibrium should be reached.

It has got very quiet on the comments from readers…. is there any one out there, besides Michelle?

Again, sunny and clear when we woke up.

After breakfast we decided it was time to go exploring. Our destination was to the south, just outside Tuscon in the Saguaro National Park. We used the Interstate to get there as there was no simple alternate route.

Once off the freeway we had a few navigation problems, but got those sorted out with a quick stop at the tourist information bureau.

General View From Truck

We left the paved surface and started out on a sand / gravel road that was recommended for high clearance vehicles only! The road was pretty rough with a washboard surface, it meandered its way up and over a 3,000ft mountain; I wouldn’t have been happy taking the car. All around us were cacti and more mountains.

We even found a flowering cactus

We had packed a lunch and stopped at one of the picnic areas that had been set up back in the 1930’s. The US government had a make work project back in the great depression to allow out of work people to earn some money and and do projects that will benefit the community.

Lunch with a view

After lunch we headed out along the road to walking trail. This was a hard slog as we were about 3000′ up and the temperature was around 25°C. To make life a little more difficult the trail was fairly soft sand. Along the trail were a number of Blue Palo Verde trees, which despite the English part of the name, are green.

Two miles of this was a good workout. Back at the beginning of the trail, there was a shorter trail that led up to some petroglyths (rock engravings), that date back many thousands of years.

After the exercise we slowly wound our way home over more hospitable roads.