Planning

It seems that this year we have fewer plans and more flexibility than we felt we had when we were traveling last winter. We had a goal last year to visit as many Thousand Trails parks as we could, go to Quartzsite, visit family and friends.

This year, we knew we wanted to visit with niece Ginny and Josh in Tucson, go to Quartzsite with the Christian Fellowship BOF and Bluebird gathering, and eventually end up in Yuma to do the various tours we have scheduled for late February and early March.

We had kind of thought that we would head to Yuma from Quartzsite, and we could have, but we realized that we had the ability to stay for "free" (already paid for by dues) at Thousand Trails parks, and Palm Desert wasn't far from Quartzsite, so, a couple of days before we were planning to leave Quartzsite, we checked and could get a place in Palm Desert, so decided to do that. (By the way, that was rather serendipitous, it isn't common that you'd be able to get 2 weeks at this park on that short of a notice!)

So, we're just kinda taking it easy here in Palm Desert. We've met up with our neighbors, and with Nellie and Ava from our visit last year. We still have a couple of weeks before our first scheduled tour in Yuma... so... we started wondering if we should do something else rather than heading straight for Yuma.

We also have started thinking about our summer 2016 plans. We've signed up to go to the Escapade in Essex Junction, VT for the last week of July (and we'll be representing the Christian Fellowship BOF there). We both have a number of former co-workers in the northeast (Princeton, NJ, Boston area, Toronto area, upstate NY) as well as friends and family in NJ. Patti had started looking at Thousand Trails parks up there. Unfortunately, it appears that most of the parks there are not in the included parks for us, so we would need to pay to stay. We decided today to talk to the sales guy here at Palm Desert to see if it would make sense for us to get a northeast zone pass - short answer, No... but he then talked to us about some other parks here in California that we did not visit last year and got us interested in those.

We talked with Nelson and Ava, and with our neighbors here, Tom and Lois, and we decided to stay in California for another couple of weeks, and to visit Soledad Canyon next week (recommended by the sales guy here and it has availability for next week (weekend of 2/13-15 is a 3 day weekend for some folks so the parks are more full)) and Rancho Oso in Santa Barbara the following week (both couples: Nellie and Ava and Tom and Lois recommended it). We then will plan on staying a night in a WalMart or somewhere on the way toward Yuma.

At the Big Tent, we got a coupon for 3 nights free at a nice resort in Yuma. I don't think we will stay there any more than 3 nights (it is significantly "nicer" than we tend to pay for!), but we will be able to do our first scheduled tour in Yuma on 2/24, and scope out somewhere else to stay. Friends of ours from the Christian Fellowship BOF are staying for a month at a park where the monthly rate seems to be more in our range, or we might look into staying at the KOFA Ko-Op (Escapees park).

So... that's the latest on our "planning"... and it is cast in gelatin, so easily changed if the mood strikes us!

Planning helpers:

Tom and Lois

 I didn't get a picture of Nelson and Ava this year - but if you look back at last year's blog on this date, you'll find them!  Santa in February