San Francisco area

We arrived in Petaluma, California two days ago.  We really enjoyed the drive on 80 through the Tahoe area.  It was so beautiful, and someday we hope to go back and visit the area when we have more time.  The roads in California seem to be in need of repair and were quite bouncy considering that we were on a major highway!
My kids are really enjoying the campground here.  There are lots of things for kids to do and lots and lots of kids to play with! We don't have satellite tv and only have limited cable - the kids haven't complained one time!
Yesterday we went to Muir Woods to see the redwood trees.  All of us really enjoyed looking at the giant trees!  It is so quiet and peaceful there.  We had visited there before in 2002 but the kids were too little to remember.
Last night for dinner we went to the Rhode's house for dinner.  Blake used to do Public Relations for the Giants and he and his wife Karen became friends of ours during our time here.  We had an excellent dinner and a great time!
Today our generator is getting an oil change.  It needs to be serviced every 150 hours so we can keep it turned on while we drive.  It runs our A.C in the coach and the tvs while we are driving.
We are headed to the Giants game tonight to watch them  play the Dodgers.  We are very excited and looking forward to seeing the few friends we still know from the front office and coaches.  There are only a few players still here from when Scott played here.
Tomorrow we head to Eugene, Oregon to see my mom and sister.
I really enjoy reading people's comments on the blog.... if you have any questions about our trip, please post them and I will try and answer them.  Wireless connection is sometimes hard to find!

Our time in Utah is coming to an end

Sorry, I've been a little bit lazy about blogging the last few days.  We have been in Park City all week visiting with Scott's family.  His mom and sister spent a lot of time here at the campground with us.  Yesterday, we went zip-lining and had a ton of fun!! We were all very nervous and it ended up being a great experience.  Scott and the boys also did an alpine slide and coaster.  I opted not to do those things, but they had a good time.
Today we had breakfast with Scott's agent in Park City.  After that we headed into Salt Lake City to Scott's  Grandma's house.  Had a nice visit with more family members there (Scott has a HUGE family).
Tomorrow morning we are starting our drive to San Francisco.  We will drive at least to Reno and then spend the night somewhere, arriving in Petaluma sometime on Saturday.
Looking forward to watching the Giants beat the Dodgers on Monday night!!

Fixed and on the road again

We are so happy we were able to leave Cedar City this afternoon! We arrived in Park City this afternoon and set up in our new campsite.  I must say, this campground is probably the prettiest one so far, even though it is right next to the freeway.
We will be here until Friday morning.  We are taking two days to drive to San Francisco, planning on getting there in the afternoon on Saturday.

The repair man finally showed up

RV is being fixed right now at our campsite.  Keeping my fingers crossed that we should be on the road within an hour.

Lazy Sunday

Happy Father's Day!! We just back from IHOP where the Dad in our family enjoyed some chicken fried steak and eggs.
We are still here in Cedar City.  Looks like we will be here for sure until tomorrow.  If we are lucky someone will come first thing tomorrow and be able to fix our problem so we can leave and go to Park City.
We have developed a plan B, which is to skip Yosemite (supposed to drive there Tuesday) and go straight to San Francisco on Friday.
So you might be wondering what exciting things we have been doing for the last two day - the answer is not too much.  We have mostly been taking it easy, hanging out at the pool and the other day we got the boys' haircuts and went to the movies.  Still can't seem to shake our lazy funk though, the plan for today is to go out to the pool and see another movie.
Yesterday Caleb's friends were all together at a friend's house in Florida and they Skyped him.  I thought it was very nice that they were thinking of him.

From the thoughts of Caleb, age 11

This trip has been many things but boring is definitely not one of them. We have had many setbacks like the air brakes not filling with air, the steps not going in at one time, and the pipes leaking. The many beautiful sights we have seen are the massive grand canyon, the canyons of Zion, and the U.S.S Alabama. My favorite part about being in the RV is having the dogs around, and my least favorite part about the RV is that our cute little cats are stuck at home without us. That's all i have to talk about for now but i will post later......Bye!

Broken down

Zion National Park

Today we went to Zion National Park in Utah.  We had a great time hiking and playing in the river and pools.
They have a shuttle system that drops you at different places.  You can either stay on the shuttle or get off to see different points of interest or get on a hiking trail.  We took the shuttle up a couple of stops and then hiked to the Emerald pools.  The uppermost one was the biggest and the hardest hike to get there.  The boys had a fun time playing in the water and climbing the rocks.  After that we hiked along the Grotto trail to the next stop.
We got back on the shuttle and rode it to the last stop.  We got off to hike on the Riverside Trail.  The canyons narrow until just the river runs between the two walls.  We all walked in the river once the trail stopped.  The water was freezing!! We had a blast though - both the kids fell into the water on accident which of course they loved.  A snake crawled out of a rock right onto the trail we were walking back on - luckily it seemed harmless but it was pretty long! We also saw a deer today.
We are exhausted tonight.  We figure we walked at least 5 miles today.  The boys did great, much better than the day we biked.  Can't decide if I liked the Grand Canyon or Zion better.  They are both beautiful places.  Scott thinks he might prefer Zion.
Not sure what we are doing tomorrow.  We were thinking of going to Bryce but the boys and Scott are leaning towards finding somewhere to go fishing.

Today = rough day

If we weren't in Utah I would say that today was basically the day from H-e double hockey sticks, but since we are, I guess you get the picture.  It started out just fine, left the campground on time and went to Freightliner to get the coolant reservoir repaired.  Had breakfast, went to Wal Mart and Camping
World- still having good day.  Got back into the repaired RV at noon and started heading west on 40.  It sure was WINDY!!!! Weather on iphone let me know that all of Northern AZ was under wind advisory until this evening.  Gusty winds and high profile vehicles do not play well together.  Scott did a great job though of keeping the RV on the road.  After hearing repeated thumps though we realized one of the awnings above our slide kept trying to unwind and there was nothing we could do to fix it.  Luckily, it stayed in place.  Had to pull over on the middle of a hill we were climbing when the engine started overheating.  Later at a gas station the steps would not come out, making the lowest step 2 1/2 ft. above the ground.  When we finally get to the campground in Utah just before 10pm (the stairs miraculously are working now) we realized the car battery was completely dead and Scott could not move forward because he had put the car in park from neutral.  Nice man at KOA jumped the car for us.  Moving the few feet to our campsite, generator shuts off for no reason??? Still not sure why it did that but we are hoping it is ok.
On the positive side - for whatever reason my kids played nicely together the whole way here.  I really don't know what got into them but it was great!!!  The dogs were also very good today:)
Tomorrow we are going to Zion, but I think we will sleep in first!!

Biking at the Grand Canyon

Today we rode our bikes on a rode that ran along the South Rim.  Scott and I really enjoyed doing this, but if you asked my boys (especially Jacob) they would tell you that they preferred the hiking that we did yesterday.  Since we live in Florida the boys have very little experience with peddling up and down hills.  Some of the hills were were pretty long and steep and the boys really struggled to get up some of them.  The best part of course was going downhill!
Tomorrow we leave Arizona and head for Utah.  We will be in Southern Utah for a few days to see Zion and Bryce.  Then we are going to Park City to visit Scott's family.
Our coolant reservoir has a crack so we have to be at Freightliner in Flagstaff at 7:30 tomorrow a.m to have it replaced - as soon as they finish we will hit the road.
The weather has been perfect while we were here! 80's during the day and 40's at night (my Florida friends will be so jealous)  We actually have to turn on the heat in the RV at night!
I would like Caleb to contribute to the blog, but right now he's playing with some boys he met in the campground.  Maybe I can get him to write a few words later.

Grand Canyon

Today we saw the Grand Canyon!! It was truly amazing and my pics do not accurately portray its greatness!  By just walking a short distance along the rim, the angle of what you are seeing looks completely different.
The four of us hiked about a mile and a half into the canyon.  It was a breeze getting down, but we were concerned by all of the people huffing and puffing on their way back up, so we turned around before we got too far down - we had a train to catch.  The hike up was not easy but not that bad either.
To get to the Grand Canyon we rode the Grand Canyon Railway from Williams, AZ.  It was a lot of fun - there was a navajo singer on our car and a train robbery on the way home!
Tomorrow we are going back to the canyon (taking the car this time) and we are going to ride our bikes instead of hiking.  Scott and the boys are hoping to go fishing tomorrow afternoon at a lake near our campsite.
After we got back from the Grand Canyon we ate at a restaurant on historic Route 66.   It was a converted gas station made into a restaurant and it had a lot of cool memorabilia on the walls.  We have really enjoyed the town of Williams, it is much nicer than I expected it to be.
We were able to leave the dogs at a kennel for the day today.  It was great not to feel rushed to come back and let them out.

Albuquerque

Hello!! We can hardly believe we have been on the road for a week now!  This afternoon we pulled into Albuquerque, New Mexico.  After a lot of vast flatlands, we finally got into some more interesting scenery.   The kids identified different landforms, plateaus, mesas and buttes.  Just before Albuquerque we reached the mountains.  It was extremely windy with strong gusts blowing the RV all over the place.  Not too much fun for Scott.
We went into Old Town in Albuquerque and had some really great Mexican food.  Then we walked down the street to see a church built in the 1700's.  It's a very cute area, but most of the shops were closed when we were there.
Tomorrow morning, (hopefully early) we will head to the Grand Canyon.  I took some pics tonight but I am too tired to download them so maybe I will post them tomorrow.

Spending time in Oklahoma City

Today we went to Willie and Rachel's apartment.  Willie is Scott's brother and he plays AAA baseball in Oklahoma City.  The kids and Dad's had a great time playing in the pool together.

Tonight Scott is taking the boys to Willie's game and I am going to stay at the campground to get the RV ready for an early departure tomorrow AM.  We are stopping in Albuquerque tomorrow night on our way to the Grand Canyon.

Oklahoma City-Day 6

We just got settled into our KOA site east of OKC. There was a lot of recent tornado damage as soon as we got off the hwy - a mile down the road. We have decided not to point it out to Jacob, he is terrified of tornados! Later we are going to see Willie's game (Scott's brother).

We had a great visit with the Bako's. They took us to some fabulous restuarants while we were visiting. We parked in an empty lot down the street from their house and ran the RV off of our generator, that is called "boondocking."

In Dallas we visited my friend Tanya Smith from high school. We had a nice visit there as well. It was great meeting her husband and kids, her mom even came over to say "hi."

That's all for now, we are off to find some kind of grocery store, we hear there is a Wal Mart nearby.

On our way to Oklahoma City from Dallas. We have had a great time visiting old friends. Hoping to have good wireless service at next campground!

The USS Alabama and AA baseball game

Our first day

Jacob and Max
Our house on wheels
Greetings from Mobile, Alabama. It took us ALL DAY to get here but we made is safely and that's all that matters.

Scott was not feeling well for most of the day so I did a lot of the driving today. I had never driven the RV for more than 10 minutes before, but after a little while I decided it's not so bad. It's very big though, our RV is 40 foot long and we are towing the car which has the bikes on the back of that!

Tomorrow we are going to visit the USS Alabama during the day and go to a Mobile Bay Bears minor league game tomorrow night. They are playing the Birmingham Barons which is the same team Scott was with for AA ball. He's pretty excited!

Our dogs did really well for the first part of the trip. My youngest dog, Maggie (collie) was kind of nervous. Scott made too sharp of a turn at the start of our trip and things went flying all over the place, Maggie jumped into the closet to hide which is kind of funny because the closet is small and crowded and Maggie is pretty big.

It will be a miracle if we leave on time

Scott is our Captain!

We have just two days left to get ready for our trip. We still have to take the RV up to Tampa to have the injector looked at by Cummins. Scott was supposed to take it today but he was puking all day!! Luckily, he is starting to feel much better, he is one loud puker! We are also trying to have the left driver's side window replaced if they can get one in on time. In the meantime I ran a zillion errands today, and thought of a bunch more things that need to be done before we leave. I can't wait to leave so I can stop packing and buying things for the trip.

Our first stop is Mobile, Alabama and then we are headed to LaFayette, LA to visit our recently retired friends the Bako's.

Over Memorial Day weekend we camped at a local campground to make sure things were working in the RV that we didn't already know were broken. It was fun, and we were able to celebrate Scott's birthday with some friends of ours.