The Allegro Rally was our first RV club rally. It took place at one of a zillion snowbird parks in Arizona at the time when many of the snowbirders are heading north with the ducks and geese. There were 250 rigs participating in the rally and we made many new friends there. The seminars offered varied from coach related stuff to cleaning techniques to cooking in the convection oven techniques. I sat in on a few related to the coach; Freightliner chassis, Cummins Diesel engines, Onan generators, and a seminar on basic RV electricity. Even someone as thick-headed as me got something out of the seminars, it was well worth the time. The meals provided were okay, not spectacular as their reputation purports, but the entertainment was pretty good. And La Mesa RV brought in numerous 2016 models of all types of Tiffin motorhomes which were fun to go through. However, none of the new ones gave us the “oh, Wow!” factor enough to want to give up our 2014 Phaeton. All in all we had a good time at the rally.

Now, some of you may be wondering what the heck I’m talking about when I mention “snowbirds”. There is an army of RVers out there who live to follow the good weather. A lot of northerners and Canadians leave their homes in the harsh winter and head south for milder climes. And when the south heats up in summer, not only do the northerners and Canadians leave but the southern snowbirders join them in the migration north toward cooler climes to beat the heat. And there are hundreds, if not thousands of RV parks and resorts scattered across the USA that cater to these snowbirders. Multi-thousand site parks come in all form and fashion. This particular park had all the amenities that I mentioned in the previous blog post, among others. Most if not all offer all types of activities (typically geared toward the 55+ crowd) such as hikes, various card games including poker, all types of crafts, yoga and many other forms of exercise groups, just to name a few. They are definitely places to relax and socialize to your hearts content.

After almost 5 months in Arizona, we actually looked forward to getting out of the state, even when our next destination was California. We landed in Desert Hot Springs and stayed a couple nights at the Caliente Springs RV resort. We used the time to do chores, most notably drain the fresh tank, flush it with a little bleach, and reload with water NOT from Arizona. Arizona water is terribly concentrated in salt & minerals and we had to change our main water filter in the bus just after we changed it about 3 weeks ago.

With Hailey, our next grandchild, due any day, we continued to kind of float toward her soon-to-be home in Atascadero, CA. We decided to stop for a couple days at the Rincon Parkway County Park in Ventura and enjoy some beach time. We had stayed there before and liked being able to park right at the beach. It is a dry-camp only section of Hwy. 1, and the $28 per night fee, well, I’ll let you be the judge if the ocean view without services is worth it. We did have a chance to see some whales migrating north, some dolphins playing in the surf, and a seal munching on a small sole/flounder type fish he caught. And, as usual, we had to be forced to look at more of those terrible California beach sunsets…

What’s next? Stay tuned…