Friends in Mesa and Yuma

For much of our final days in Mesa we spent our time getting together with friends. I failed to get pictures of all those visits. I missed our lunch with Linda and our trip to Cave Creek with Alan and Sharon where we went to see a painting Sharon has in a local gallery. We left Mesa for Yuma on Monday. Our first order of business was having the clear coat on Opus' roof redone (next post) so we had a few days of industrial camping. We were happy to find many of our RV friends are in Yuma so we are looking forward to some fun times here.  

This is one reason we like Florida better than Arizona as a possible place to settle down. Out here they often get dust storms that turn the sky red when there are no clouds. When there are clouds and rain these storms turn into mud rains, something we never saw in all our years living in Pennsylvania. The mud rain covers everything with dirt. 

We had invited Jim and Bobbie to our place for lunch and the day before John and Sharon arrived in Mesa, so we asked them to join us since we all knew each other from our stays at Betty's. I did manage to get a selfie of the whole group when Jim got his head into the picture at the last moment.

Nanc made gumbo and we borrowed a couple chairs, brought in an extra table and managed to get everyone around the table in one seating. Everyone agreed Nanc's gumbo was wonderful and with Bobbie's potato salad and Sharon's cornbread we had the perfect Cajun meal.  YUMMY!!! 

On our last day in Mesa we went to Red, White and Brew, our favorite local restaurant, with John and Sharon. We had a great meal, a couple toddies and spent a couple hours laughing and sharing travel tales. We hope to see John, Sharon, Jim, Bobbie, Alan and Sharon in Tucson in the spring.

A last sunset in Mesa. This may be the last time we stay here for the winter. We are going to seriously start looking for a place in Florida and even if we don't find one right away we will probably be spending our winters there.

We were set up for industrial camping in Yuma when we got a call from Rick and Barb, who we met at Betty's,  telling us they were on their way to Yuma. Since we were having Opus worked on, we let them find a place to stay. They got a good rate at Mesa Verde RV Park and we joined them after the RV project was done. We ended up being neighbors and they had us over for happy hour and dinner.  Another yummy meal with good friends.

While having the rig worked on we learned that Tom and Ann, who we also met at Betty's, were staying in the Yuma foothills near where we were staying. We got together for dinner and spent a couple hours getting caught up with them. They also gave us several ideas for summer travel stops in 2017.

On Friday, the day we moved to Mesa Verde, we went to the local casino's seafood buffet with Rick and Barb. Nanc even won a few dollars on the slots.

We are looking forward to a week of running around like a roadrunner. We are having lunch with our old PA friends, Dick and Joan, who now live in Yuma. Other people we met at Betty's, Dan, Merlene, Dan and Peggy are in Yuma or soon to be, so we are looking forward to seeing them and getting together with the whole Betty's connected group for a Louisiana style happy hour. We know all of them but some of them have not met each other, so it is a chance for everyone to expand their RV friends base.  We thought we were going to be bored here in Yuma but are happy it is turning out to be good times with good friends.