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If you have followed our travels you know that we had a truly marvelous summer in 2003 as we traveled with Norm and Linda Payne for ten weeks as we toured the Canadian Atlantic Provinces and some of northern Maine. It has been almost two and a half years since that  time and we are once again traveling with Norm and Linda, this time for about nine weeks as we head west to attend a couple of Newmar RV rallies and roam around Southern California. This travelog picks us up after having spent the New Year's weekend at Rainbow's End in Livingston, Texas.

We left Rainbow's End on January 5th after celebrating the new year and watching the last couple of football bowl games. Our destination was Austin to visit John and Libby Veach. John had been working for FEMA for several months and was stationed in Austin to help handle housing situations for hurricane victims. Although he said he had been working very long hours and six days a week he said he loved the work and felt good about helping people. We were able to book into the same RV park the Veaches were staying in, Oak Forest.  It was a nice park with friendly people in the office. The site we had was a 50-amp, full hookup, pull-thru. The free WiFi was an added benefit.

Our next stop was the San Antonio area to visit a few RV friends. We stopped at the Camping World to see if we could boondock there for a couple of nights, which worked out fine. The last time we saw Gene and Ann Dwiggins was in 2001 as we made our way west.  They drove up to the Camping World and led us to a great seafood restaurant where we enjoyed a great meal and camaraderie.

It was also in 2001 that we last saw Willie Nunez and Betty Sue Basham at the last RVAmerica Y2K Party in Gold Canyon. They had since traded their Winnebago Vectra for a Dutch Star, but were now in the process of building a house in San Antonio. We met them at the construction site for a tour of the house. They are doing a lot of the work themselves and it is coming along nicely. It will be beautiful when it is finished and furnished. They led us to a fantastic Chinese buffet restaurant. It was one of the biggest and best we had ever been in.

We weren't following any particular schedule other than we knew we had to be in Quarzsite, Arizona to attend the Newmar rally starting January 18. There was enough time to spend a few days in Gold Canyon to allow us to do the necessary shopping and other preparations for spending seven nights boondocking in the desert. We also wanted to visit with Ron and Barb Hofmeister who live not far from the Canyon Vistas RV Resort in Gold Canyon. It was a two day trip from San Antonio with overnight stops at the Wal-Mart in Fort Stockton and a rest area in Lordsburg, New Mexico. Rather than take the interstates, we headed up US 70 to Globe where we picked up US 60 west over the mountain. The views were fantastic as we climbed and then descended into the valley where the temperatures were much warmer. We pulled into Canyon Vistas, one of the many large RV parks in the Phoenix area mostly populated by snowbirds from the northern states.

Ron and Barb were some of the first folks we met as we were getting ready to join the ranks of fulltime RVers. We read both of the books they wrote about RVing and attended several of their seminars. They spent 14 years on the road before deciding to buy a house in Gold Canyon. Diane and I visited with them when we flew out to Phoenix in February 2005 and we always enjoy visiting with them. Barb was involved with the local theater in their community and was the director of this year's play. She invited Diane and Linda to watch a rehearsal session, which they did the morning after we arrived. Later in the day we all went to their house for a meal and fellowship.

While in the area we got our shopping done and Diane and I went to see a couple of movies (Glory Road; Tristan and Isolde). It would be several weeks before we would see another movie theater, which probably would mean that we would start to suffer from withdrawal symptoms from not seeing movies.  :-)