2008 Has Come to an End

It's hard to believe that another year has come and gone. Where does the time go? We've had an interesting year. Judy and I both retired this year. She'd say that I was already retired but I don't concider working part time really retired. She officially retired at the end of May and I quit my part time job at Wally World at the same time. Early in June, we loaded up the 5th wheel and headed for Durango, Colorado by way of Claremont, California for the summer. We had jobs (I guess we didn't retire after all) Workamping at Durango Riverside Resort and RV Park. It was a lot of fun even though more hours than I wanted. We met a lot of nice people and made some new friends. Dharma had a great time too. Lots of new smells and places to explore and she got to spend a lot laying in the sun, which is her favorite pass time. There was a lot to see in Colorado and the mountains were absolutely breath taking. We just wish we'd have had more time to see more. On the trip back to Arizona, We spent two day seeing Mesa Verde National Park where there are hundreds of ancient Indian cliff dwellings. They were amazing and well worth the trip if you ever get the chance to visit. We then stopped for a few days in Sedona at Sedona Pines, a resort partcially owned by the owner of Durango Riverside.
We arrived back in the Valley the 10th of October and stayed for a month at Meridian RV Resort. Since all our friends we'd made while we lived there were gone, we decided to find something cheaper and found Superstition Lookout in East Apache Junction. The people here are very nice and friendly. It's a mix of RV's and Park models with a lot of people who return year after year. We're not working just staying busy. We had a lot of Dr's appointments to catch up on so we got all that done. Then we were kept busy with Christmas.
We had hoped that the warmer weather would be better for Dharma's arthritis, but it has not really helped. We have her on several medications to try to help relieve her pain. She has good days and not so good. She has a lot of problems walking and some days she steps on the back of her feet a lot and then stumbles. She is very healthy other than the arthritis so it's very hard for us right now trying to decide what we should do. We don't want to see her in pain.
We finally had a garage sale a few weeks ago and got rid of all our stuff we paid to haul to New York with us, store there, then haul back to Arizona and store at Rob's for four years. The only thing we have left is the two white couchs we had in our living room. After 10 years of storage and non use, they are not in too good a shape, so we may have to dump them.

Kevin, Romana and the kids are here visiting for a few days so we got together at Buca De Beppo's Italian restaurant for lunch and exchanging presents. It was fun and good to see them. I don't usually like Italian food but this place was really good. You should try it.
We are starting to look for Workamping jobs for next summer. I would like to go to Alaska but Judy is not too hep on the expense of driving all that way. It was nice last summer in Durango because our space was furnished for 30 hrs/wk/of work so anything above that we were paid for and were able to put money in savings that helped pay for truck upgrades. We would like to find something this summer that would allow us to do the same. The problem with most of the jobs in Alaska is they don't pay extra and a lot do not even have full hooks, so it would not allow us to save anything. So we will probably have to forget Alaska this year. We would like to find something in a cooler climate because cooling an RV even at someone else's expense is not easy.
We want to wish everyone a happy and prosperious New Year and hope things pick up for the economy although it does not look good with the Country's new leadership.