Christmas Day, the day after, and the day(s) after that!

I can't believe how fast the days are moving. Actually to be factual......the days are exactly the same length......24 hours......but as we get older the days 'seem' to get shorter. Maybe it's how we use the available hours. Anyway, here I am trying to catch up on the blog posts.

Wednesday, December 25
Of course we started the day with phone calls home and set up a couple of Skype calls with the Gkids. Sounds like everyone is doing fine and Santa found his way to all (the good ones at least!) All our group of friends here at Pilot Knob have kids and grands at home and we all miss them.

Our park is just across the border in California. The station at the end of the access road sells fuel for nearly $2/gallon more than Yuma just a few miles down the road in Arizona.

The start of a nice Christmas morning sunrise. I wanted to get a walk in early today.

The California Highway Patrol station across the Interstate from our park.

A long-legged photographer.

Desert art!

Mid afternoon we all convened over at the Clubhouse for Christmas dinner. The Park puts on the dinner and charges $10/person. Wow, what a feast! Turkey, ham and all the trimmings. Pumpkin pie for desert. Washed down with wine we brought.

What a feast!

Good friends to share Christmas dinner with.....John, Gayle, Bill, Pat, Cheryl

.......and more good friends....Ken, Kim, Bob, Jo-Anne, Deb, Tom.

And a beautiful sunset to cap off a great Christmas Day!

Thursday, December 26
An early morning stroll netted this amazing sunrise over Pilot Knob.

Red glow off the clouds to the east of Pilot Knob

Imperial Sand Dunes all illuminated in the morning light.

We decided to head back down to Los Algodones Mexico to get Cheryl new lenses for her glasses. She brought her prescription with her from Canada and based on recommendations from Bob and Jo-Anne and others we decided to give Meyers Optical a try. New bifocal lenses for her old frames with transition (auto tinting) glass was $100 and they were ready in less than two hours. Wow! We barely had time to shop and eat before it was time to pick up her glasses. Not only that, she says I look better with her new lenses! I should have bought her new lenses months ago!!

Nothing like a fishbowl sized Margarita at 11 Am to start the day off right! 

A hearty lunch.

Not too busy today. It was raining pretty steady by the time we left.

Entertainment. He was much better when he sang in Spanish.

Back at Pilot Knob it was almost time to head to Happy Hour. You do not want to miss these!

Bill and Pat hosted HH in their beautiful Mobile Suite. (that's Bob waving)

Not the best sunset we've seen, but it'll do!

Friday, December 27
Bill stopped by to see if I wanted to watch him do a few circuits with his nice foam Timber plane. Sure I did! The open desert makes for a pretty good flying field as long as the wind is calm. He managed a short flight until the battery gave up and the breeze was almost too strong anyway.

Pilot and co-pilot

Bill doing a pre-flight inspection.

And she is off!

A great landing

We had a lunch date with our neighbors and friends from Gull Lake back at home. They have a place here in Yuma. We saw them a week or so ago but wanted to have one more visit before we head down the road. We may not see them again before we all get home in April. So we met at the Golden Corral. This is not a good spot to go if you are trying to lose weight but we kept the portions reasonable and were able to walk out without assistance.

Next stop was the Yuma Palms Mall. We heard about a great deal on towels so we stopped and picked up a few.

We have such a great time at our Happy Hour gatherings back at the park we hate missing them but tonight it just wasn't going to work out. By the time we visited all the stores and then buy groceries the sun was setting as we got home. We still had laundry to do so that took up the rest of the evening.

Beautiful crescent moon and Venus just above the fading sunset.

Saturday, December 28
Bill stopped by this morning as he was heading out to do a bit of flying. It was very calm this morning and you definitely want to take advantage of that. It doesn't last long before the breeze picks up.

Bill doing a bit of inverted flight.

Ken taking the controls. I can see an RC plane in his future!

Another successful flight

Tom came by to see the action.

I spent most of the morning online with Rogers. They have a pretty good promotion for a 20Gb data plan that includes all the US and Canada. It's $105/month and I'm supposed to be able to get the same deal for Cheryl's phone for $90 more. So that would give us 40GB of data per month and we could get rid of Roam Mobility (our US cell provider) and our Verizon Hotspot that costs about $90/ month for 15 Gb. I still don't have it all straightened out but at the end of the day we'll have higher data for less money and only one bill, not three.

Bob prepping his Lake Erie Walleye. He had a secret recipe......which he shared.

I think it was coat, dip and re-coat if I remember correctly.

Ken the fry-guy and Bob the fish-guy.

We had a great time in Bob and Jo-Anne's beautiful Redwood trailer.

Somehow we all forgot to look outside for a sunset tonight. We must have been distracted!
It's been a great couple of weeks here at Pilot Knob. A fun group of folks to hang out with. We've had some good laughs, shared stories (and maybe the odd lie) and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these folks better. Hopefully we'll meet up with these folks again at Quartzsite.

We hate to leave but other adventures await so we pull out in the morning heading for Ramona, CA.

......and that was Our View From Here!