November 18, 2017
Rancho California RV Resort
Aguanga, CA

We spent the last two days at our RV Dealer getting our list of about 15 warranty repair items diagnosed. After some heated discussions we believe they are on the same page we are and we have a plan for getting everything fixed. We will come back to the dealer the week of November 27th and hopefully get everything completed.

We left San Marcos this morning and drove north on I-15 to Temecula and then headed west on Hwy 79 to Aguanga. The whole trip was about 50 miles. This time I had a few passengers on board. While Marilyn followed in our CRV, Jenny, Sydney, and Evan rode in the motor home with me. This was their first time riding in the coach and they had a great time.

We stayed at Rancho California last year and had a decent site (see our main blog picture above). This year we have a fantastic site overlooking the valley and the fishing lake.

The view from our site...

outdoor kitchen, even has a washer and dryer....

beautiful, large concrete site.....

down the street.....

up the street.....

beautiful mountain view.....

gorgeous palm trees everywhere....

We believe this is the nicest RV park and the best site we have stayed in. Of course we are renting this site but it is for sale for a mere $64k.Not bad for California. The main attraction here other than the great weather is the local vineyards. We can't wait to visit a few. We are staying the winter here and won't be leaving until March 1st. We'll be spending Thanksgiving with Jen, Marc, and the kids and then we will be flying to Denver for two weeks at Christmas to visit Julie and her family. We have plans to visit places like Big Bear and Julian so it should be a fun winter here in Southern California.

November 15, 2017
Rio Bend RV Resort
El Centro, CA

Today we headed west on I-8 for 186 miles passing through Yuma. EL Centro is 68 miles west of Yuma and is nothing more than a bump in the road.

Rio Bend RV Resort is a nice, older park that is well maintained and has a lot of amenities. There are a lot of mature trees and landscaping, asphalt roads and gravel sites.

We stayed here last February after taking possession of our new motor home in Yuma. So we have come full circle.

Tomorrow we travel to San Marcos for some RV repairs before settling into our winter home at Rancho California in Aguanga, CA.

November 14, 2017
Gila Bend KOA
Gila Bend, AZ

We left Tucson today and headed north on I-10 to I-8 and then went 80 miles west to Gila Bend. This is your typical KOA and will be fine for the over night stay.

As you can see there is not much here but flat land and desert. We have another over night stay tomorrow in El Centro, CA (just west of Yuma) and then we stop in San Marcos, CA for some RV warranty work with our RV dealer. That's where we'll meet up with our daughter Jen and her family, just north of San Diego.

November 3, 2017
Old Tucson
Tucson, AZ

We've been traveling around Tucson for the past week to get a feel for the area and to see if this would be a spot for us to someday, settle down. We loved Oro Valley and even parts of Marana. Both are outside of Tucson to the north.

Today however, we wanted to do a return visit to Old Tucson. We drove about 30 minutes to get there from the RV park. Old Tucson is a movie studio and theme park. It was built as a 1890s replica of Tucson back in 1939 by Columbia Pictures, for the movie Arizona with William Holden and Jean Arthur.

Main street....

The Grand Palace where they do performances....

Walking tours led by guides ......

Located in Tucson Mountain Park which is part of the Saguaro National Park, there are many saguaro cactus trees... and they are quite large...

they offer many "shows" each day ranging from a comedy elixir salesman to a movie set gunfight.

The Mission was used for many old west movies...

Here they reenacted the movie "The Hanged Man" from 1974..

Complete with a big gunfight at the end...

Marilyn had visited here with her mother in the 1980s and we brought our grandson Steven here when he was about 8 years old (around 1997). The park is still doing well but clearly it's difficult for them to stay current and draw kids who have no knowledge of, or interest in the old west. So you mostly see older folks here who lived during that era and know a lot of the history.