Thanksgiving – Home again!

I said “home again” when of course our home is actually now on wheels and we are in a different place every few weeks or more often. In this case we got off the cruise ship on November 18th, my 64th birthday as I noted in an earlier post. We flew back to Phoenix late that evening, took an Uber from the airport to pick up our car from Mike Kosse’s house (who was kind enough to store it while we were gone), and checked in at the Crown Plaza Hotel near the airport. It was nice enough and we were able to grab a bite there for a late dinner.

The next day we went to “The Motorcoach Resort” were we were going to stay for a few nights getting ready to go to the LA area for the rest of the year. I had dented the coach on the side tube that holds the awning cover for the full length slide before we left, but it doesn’t effect any aspect of coach use. But when we stored it in the garage at Motorcoach Resort we plugged it in, but the circuit popped while we were gone and the house batteries drained to nothing. So while the engine started fine (different battery pack) nothing in the house that required batteries worked. We were able to park it and plug it in, but had to get a full charge the next day before it fully worked again. In the meantime we lost everything we had stored in the refrigerator and freezer. It is important to never let your batteries deep discharge on these coaches, so this is another error on my part.

Leslie was invited by her friend Darren to see Cher in concert and really enjoyed her evening. I was less enthusiastic and didn’t go, but after hearing them rave perhaps I made a mistake.

After a few days in Phoenix, and a quick chance to see some friends, we left for Long Beach (actually Lakewood) and parked on the street near the Kelly house for Thanksgiving. Leslie and I stayed in the coach for 4 nights there in what is called “dry camping” (people also use the term boon-docking or stealth camping) which means we had no hook-ups for water, power or sewer and relied solely on our on-board self contained systems. The only real problem was we were near the curb edge of the street so we were at an angle and had to reverse which side of the bed we had our heads on to keep our heads higher than our feet. We also couldn’t put out our slides so the space was tight, but fine for a few days.

Thanksgiving was hosted by Pat and Kelly. Leslie arranged a deal with our kids and their partners that they would all spend Thanksgiving with us every other year and alternate with their partners families. We do the reverse year alternating for Christmas as well, so we get to spend one holiday each year with all of the kids and their families. This year was ours for Thanksgiving, but not Christmas. We ended up with 7 from the Baker side (Scott, Leslie, James, Alma, Madison, Joey and virtual family member Nick Altieri) as Patrick, Mysha and Ronan couldn’t come due to work conflicts. Add in 5 from the Kelly side (Pat, Kelly, Jayden, Josephine and Devon) and we had a nice crowd. None us are dedicated to turkey for Thanksgiving so we went non-traditional and I made a Beef Tenderloin with my special corn/onion/garlic/jalapeno dish, salad, home made pies form Madison plus some snack odds and ends. While we missed Patrick, Mysha and Ronan, we had a wonderful day.