Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Letting go.......

Ok - I have to do this....I can't seem to make myself sit down and write enough to catch up from my last Burning Man post to the current time, so I am just going to let go of my anal self and jump forward to NOW and maybe I'll catch up in a more round-about sort of way!


We are now in Palm Desert, didn't "plan" to be here, but here we are! We were in Colorado Springs parked at Bill's alma mater - the Air Force Academy campground having a wonderful time hanging out with family, old friends and NuRVers too when I received an email from the owners of an rv park where we've stayed before in Indio, CA - 3 miles from my parents home in Palm Desert. I think they had read my resume on the workamper.com site and were wondering if we would be interested in coming to southern California to work at their park. Well, this was an interesting proposition! My mother had just been in the hospital for a week and my sister had flown down from Alaska to help her with her recovery and was making plans to go back home. We weren't sure if my mom was truly on the mend but everyone thought she was. I had been feeling very guilty about not being there with her, but was soooo grateful that my sister could. Our "plans" at the time were to head south to New Mexico for awhile and then slowly make our way east towards Florida to see Bill's mom in Tampa. But the opportunity to go stay at this expensive park, one we were familiar with, for free (well, not exactly free!) and spend the holidays with my parents just couldn't be ignored. When things happen like this you just gotta do it! So we hashed out all the details with the park, I would work in the office about 22 hours a week and Bill would help with some outside work about 5 hours and we started to make plans to leave our little spot in C Springs. Our Florida plans will just start a little later...


Which route to take...oh my, this was quite a decision as Bill was very familiar with these mountains and we had some snow already and he was really concerned about our taking a "safe" route. But I soooo wanted to see some sites and do some fun stuff! He found a route for us that included 3 national parks - in Moab - Canyonlands & Arches and Zion in southern Utah. We finally got to actually spend some time in Utah! (we've raced through this state 3 times driving from CA to CO and back) We also had a fantastic stop at a hot spring, but more on all of that later. We took about a week to travel from CO back to southern California and stopped for two nights at Nevada's Treasure RV Park in Pahrump, where the "famous" pic of Bill working outside in the gazebo was taken. Finally in Palm Desert we arrived around dinner time at my mother's house. We had taken great pains to keep our plans a secret from my parents as we wanted to really surprise them and we did! Although, not exactly according to plan...there is that word again! So here we are in this nice little park enjoying lovely weather, working our real jobs and our rv park jobs and spending some time with my parents and my brother and his family. Next week my kids fly in for a week for Thanksgiving, my sister and her family arrive from Alaska, and cousins from L.A. are coming too, it's going to be quite the family get-together!


Now to get to the fun stuff!