Mid November 2007

Arrived in Indio, California on November 15. We drove by car to Mexicali the next day. Larry had an appointment at the hospital there to have an adjustment on his Lapband. He had been having a lot of reflux and wasn't able to eat hardly anything. They took exrays and found that the new pouch had stretched and wasn't holding food right. So they did an adjustment and put him on liquids for a week with Nexium. He felt better right away. We drove back to Indio where we had lunch with our friends Phil and Harriet. Seems like we never run out of things to chat about. A couple of days later we drove to Redlands, California and met Larry's brother and sister-in-law (Bob and Doone) for lunch and a movie. It was great to see them. We hadn't seen them in a long time and we had lots to catch up on. We went to see the movie American Gangster. Great movie - very violent and intense. We drove back to Indio and prepared to leave the next day. That night our generator came on even though we were plugged in. We kept shutting it off every time it came on. Finally at 4:00 a.m. we got up and decided we had to get out of there before we woke up everybody in the park. We hooked up our car and headed for Phoenix.

We only planned to stay in Phoenix one night so we tried to stay at a Walmart but it was just too crowded. We went to an Elks Club and stayed there instead. We had no hook ups and our batteries were not holding a charge. We made an appointment with an RV repair place in Phoenix for the following Tuesday. Since it was Wednesday before the big Thanksgiving weekend, we couldn't get in for repair before Tuesday. So we decided to go ahead and drive up to Sedona to have Thanksgiving with our friends, Gene and Betty.

We had a nice drive up to Sedona even though the volts were dropping. We got to another Elks club and plugged the RV into electrical power. We went and had dinner with our friends and then came back to our RV for the evening. Right after we arrived, our neighbors came knocking on our door. They were not happy. Apparently our generator had been running the whole time we were gone and the diesel fumes from the exhaust were doing them in. We explained our problem to them and apologized for the fumes. We fixed the generator so it wouldn't come on again and went to bed. We were reading in bed when all the lights went out. We lost complete power. Couldn't even start the engine. It was a very cold night. The next day we packed our bags, the food out of the freezer and refrigerator and moved in with our friends for four days. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. Betty had marinated the turkey in a brine solution and then BBQ it. It was delicious and moist. The next days were filled with hours of bridge, eating and watching football. We had such a good time and they made us feel right at home. Thank you Gene and Betty for being such good friends.

The following Monday, we went back to our RV. We called AAA to come and jump the engine batteries. They arrived with a big truck and it couldn't get between the RVs to jump the batteries. So they called a smaller truck out. We got the engine started and had to run it at 2000 RPMs for one hour so we could charge the house batteries. We couldn't get the slide outs in and when we called the factory they reminded us that we had manual switches. Hooray! We got the slides in. Now we had to get the jacks up. They wouldn't come up because of the electrical problem. So, we called the factory that makes the jacks. After 45 minutes on the phone with a technician, we were able to get the jacks up. Hooray! Now all we had to do was hook up the car and drive down to Phoenix. We called the RV repair place and explained the situation that we had to bring it in early just to park it some where. He said OK and off we went.

We made it to the RV repair place. We already had our bags packed - so we grabbed our lap tops and went to a Comfort Suites. Two days later they called to say the RV was fixed. We checked out of our room and moved back into the RV. Now we had to go back up to Sedona to pick up all our food from Betty and Gene's house.