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After spending a great nine weeks traveling with our friends Norm and Linda Payne, we parted company in Palm Springs and headed to Mesa, Arizona for a two month stay. We arrived at Val Vista Villages (VVV) on March 2. Occasionally, I have listed campground warnings about some places we've stayed that were less than satisfactory. I want to start this travelog with a short review of one of the nicest campgrounds we have stayed in during our six years on the road and that would be VVV.

VVV is a Cal-Am resort that grew over the years as several surrounding parks were purchased and included in VVV. These parks were referred to as neighborhoods in VVV, and there were four of them: Val Vista Village, Fiesta, Ranchos, Casitas (which is really like a small motel). When we found VVV last September, we stayed on a nice pullthru site in Fiesta and reserved it for our recent two month stay. When we were there in September, RV sites were being constructed in the Ranchos neighborhood. One evening during our recent stay, Diane and I were walking around and went into the Ranchos neighborhood and saw the most magnificent RV sites. These sites were long concrete pullthrus with large brick paver patios, nice table for six, a built in gas grill, a privacy screen between the sites, garbage pickup at the site, and even a mailbox in front of each site. The daily rate in the Ranchos section was $55 per night and that is an outrageous price that we would never pay unless we were stuck and it was the only show in town. However, the monthly rate $550 per month is a great price for the sites. Trust me, you can't touch a site like these in Florida for that price. There were only 27 RV sites in an area where double wide manufactured homes were also being built. I included a couple of photos of the RV site in the photo section. Oh, and did I mention they had FREE WiFi (when it worked).

We liked the sites enough to ask if we could move for our second month. Unfortunately, we were told that there was a $25 fee to switch sites. We had never heard of such a thing in our almost six years on the road, so I asked to speak to the general manager to see if that fee could be waved. We had a meeting with Christina Bamper and she agreed to let us move from Fiesta to Ranchos without incurring what is actually a penalty fee for switching sites. The Fiesta pullthrus cost $460 per month and it was worth it to us to treat ourselves and pay the additional $90 for a month on the great Ranchos sites. It was easy to entertain and have some cookouts, and the look and feel of the sites was great.

Although we still love being fulltimers, it's nice to sit for an extended period every now and then. The two months in Mesa fit the bill perfectly. Once again we were able to see the pros and cons of fulltiming and snowbirding. It has happened before when we were in a park dominated by snowbirds. The excitement they feel as they shut down their park models or get their RVs ready to roll to go home to wherever they are from is very obvious. It seems to be a mix of bittersweet having to say good bye to their winter friends and joy of heading home to family and friends. I'm sure the reverse is true in the fall when they leave their homes and head back to their winter homes and the camaraderie of their winter friends. Even after six years, I still maintain that I think the one thing I miss the most is a regular dose of camaraderie. This winter was special, as it was in the winter of 2001 and the summer of 2003, because we traveled with friends for extended periods of time, especially extended long periods of time with Norm and Linda. I'm sure we will have future extended travels with them as we all want to go back to Newfoundland for a longer time and we all want to go back to Puerto Penasco before they move the campground back from the beach. We would like to spend a month in Puerto Penasco. Those margaritas on the verandah are definitely a big draw.

Diane's sister, Carol, lives in the Phoenix area and they got to see each other a couple of times a week. The new touring Cirque du Soleil show was playing in Scottsdale and, as you all know, we absolutely love Cirque du Soleil. Carol and her family had never seen a Cirque show and we got to share that experience with them. They all loved the show and were awed at some of the acts. Diane and Carol had a sisters weekend away when they went to Tucson for a couple of days. They spent an entire day touring the area and visited Kartchner Caverns State Park, Tombstone, and a mission. That made Kevin and I bachelors for the weekend.

The LPGA Tour had a tournament going on in Gold Canyon, the Safeway International Tournament. Safeway was offering two tickets for the price of one, so we got tickets for the Thursday round. The tournament was held in the Superstition Mountain community within  view of the mountain. The beautiful golf course wound its way around and between multi-million dollar houses, probably just winter homes for the super rich. We got to see most of the golfers we wanted to see, including Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer, Grace Park, Julie Inkster (who won the tournament), and Grace Park. Those ladies can sure hit the ball a long way. It was fun watching them. It helped that it was a beautiful day, whereas the final day on Sunday was cold and wet.

For the most part, we just hung around and did what we would do if we lived in a house. We saw lots of movies, visited with Carol and her family, I played a round of golf, we did a little touring. Norm and Linda came into Mesa for a few weeks, but were in another park. We got to visit with them often and drove up to Fountain Hills to see the worlds highest fountain and then over to Saguaro Lake.

One of the places we didn't know about during our 2001 trip out west was the Organ Stop Pizza. It's a restaurant located in Mesa and it's primary attraction is it being the home of the largest Wurlitzer pipe organ in the world. The organ is powered by three turbine blowers and has more than 5,500 pipes. They have several people who play the organ for diners. We went there twice while we were in Mesa and both organ players were fantastic. They had huge repertoires and played magnificent medleys of famous plays and motion pictures, such as "Sound of Music", "West Side Story", and a great "Phantom of the Opera" medley. My photos don't do the organ justice. You can get a better photo of the organ on the Organ Stop website.

We got to visit with some other folks who came into the area, including Rich Gorin, who we visited in San Diego, and his partner, Bruce, who lives in Phoenix.

Some folks that know the Paynes came into town and contacted us and we met them for lunch one day. It was nice to meet Bill Joyce and Diane Melde and we hope to see them on the road along the way.

We usually spend the winter in Florida, but decided to spend it in Arizona as it would give us a good place to start our journey to Alaska. As a result, it would be a very long time before visiting with my mother in Florida. So we opted to break the time up with a short visit with her before we headed north. We flew to Florida for a week in March to help my mom with some chores and to try and get her set up with the new Medicare RX plans, the infamous Plan D. What a mess. Not only to find a plan, but also because my mom qualifies for some additional assistance which meant having to also deal with the Social Security folks and that took months to resolve. UGH.

Our two month stay in Mesa came to an end on May 2 when we headed up to Camp Verde for a few days. We stayed there in 2001 and did a lot of touring in the area. If you are interested in more information about that area you can go to the travelog titled "Roaming America". We again stayed at the Verde River Resort, a Western Horizons resort and also a Coast to Coast campground. It's listed as a five star resort, but it really is nothing of the sort. For one, the resort doesn't have 50-amp full hookups on all sites. Many sites are just water and electric. The power is not adequate for many rigs using air conditioners. When we got to our assigned site (#41), we found the power hovering around 105 volts. It was hot and that probably explained why the voltage was low, but it's not a good excuse for a park that doesn't have enough power for all the sites. By evening, the voltage climbed up to around 118-120. But it was a Coast to Coast park and we were there as a member for $8 a night, so it may be hard to complain too much about it. We attended a pitch for membership in the park when we were here in 2001 which turned into a high pressure sales pitch. We would never buy into a park that doesn't have good 50-amp full hookups on all sites.

Norm and Linda arrived on Thursday for the last two days of our stay in Camp Verde. We won't see them again until probably sometime in late fall. We spent one day doing some touring in the area and visited Montezuma's Castle, the Chapel of the Holy Cross, and Sedona, all of which we had visited in 2001. We had lunch in Sedona and drove back to Camp Verde via US 89A looking for a boondocking spot that someone told  Norm was along that road. It turned out that the free BLM boondocking spot was actually off of Route 260 between Cottonwood and Camp Verde (on Thousand Trails Road). I put some photos on the website for this travelog, but if you would like to read more about the Sedona area you can look an earlier travelog titled "Roaming America".

One day while I was walking in the campground I spotted what I knew was a Hymermobil, a German Class A motorhome. The lady, Jenny, was outside so I stopped to talk about her motorhome. It turned out they were from Holland but retired to a home in Portugal. They purchased the 7-meter (about 22 feet) Hymer and had it shipped to Baltimore. They were touring the US and Canada over the summer months. I asked if I could get my camera to take a couple of photos and she said it was okay to do that. When I returned, her husband Hermen was outside and we chatted for a while as I took some photos. He explained the workings of what we would consider a small motorhome. One of the interesting things is that electricity in Europe is 220 volts, not the 120 we are used to in the USA. When we went to Europe we needed a device to change the voltage to 120. They had the opposite situation and had a device to step the voltage up to 220. Diane came over and we all chatted for a while. Nice folks and we hope we bump into them again along the way.

We had planned our next stop to be in Bryce Canyon, but we decided to spend a few days in Page so we could check out the Lake Powell area. It was a very interesting day. The drive up US 89 was fantastic and we stopped several times for photo ops of the rig against the red rocks.  We parked at the new Super Wal-Mart in town.  A Newell that we saw a few times during our ride up to Page was already in the lot and I chatted with the guy for a few minutes.  He was going to a Newell rally in Zion National Park and got separated from four other Newells. Diane and I disconnected the CR-V and drove over to the Wahweap National Recreation Area to check out the campground.  Although the sites were big and paved and nice, they were pricey at $33.61 a night. They did have a dry camping loop for $19 per night, or $9.50 for those of us lucky enough to have the Golden Age Pass.  However, we drove through that loop and it was pretty much full of tents and popups and most sites wouldn't hold a 40' motorhome.

We drove around the other three full hookup loops and noted some prime sites with great views of Lake Powell down below and then went back to the office and made a reservation for the next two nights.  When we got back there the other Newells showed up.  They asked about a place to boondock and I heard the guy mention a place on public land about five miles north of the north entrance to Wahweap. The Newells all left and ended up parking in the lot for the boat launch, even though the sign said it was parking for only ATTACHED trailers for up to 14 days. That's for folks who are out on the lake in a boat and leave their vehicle and trailer. We went looking for that other place. We drove up to check it out and it was actually the Glen Canyon National Park with lots of camping space right down along the lake. A dump station and fresh potable water was available. We did drive down to the lake to see how rigs got down there and we took the wrong way down and it was very sandy.  We missed the turn that was mostly dirt and light sand.  There was a Kountry Star parked down there so we stopped to chat for a while and he told me how to get the motorhome down there without going through the sand..

The cost was $8 per night. For me with my great new Golden Age National Park Pass, $4. I find it's really nice being 62. I started getting social security checks in January and got my Golden Age pass in February. Now if only I can stay 62. Diane wanted to shop in the Wal-Mart and it was already almost 5 pm, so we decided to stay there for the night and go boondock along the lake the next two nights. So we went from a possible $100.83 for three nights of full hookups to three nights of boondocking for a total of $8.

The Glen Canyon National Recreation Area was established in 1972. The dam backs up water in the Colorado River for 186 miles to form Lake Powell. The lake provides more than one million acres of desert and canyon country for leisure time activities. It was Major John Wesley Powell who explored the Colorado River and named this stretch of the river Glen Canyon.

The Glen Canyon Dam was between where we were parked and Page. Before the dam could be constructed a bridge had to be built across the canyon. The Glen Canyon Bridge was built between 1957 and 1959 and stands 700 feet above the river. Construction of the dam began in 1957 and was completed in 1964. It stands 710 feet, which is only 16 feet shorter than the Hoover Dam down river. Power from the dam is sold to approximately 1.7 million people in Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Nevada, and California. The city of Page was a result of the dam and bridge construction. It started as a construction camp in 1957 for the thousands of people who worked on the projects. Today, the city of Page has a population of approximately 8,500 residents and thrives as a tourist destination for people who come from around the world to enjoy Lake Powell.

Our plan was to spend a week at the