12/1/08 Welcome to December! We have started the month by staying on the RV lot of RoVing Rods leaders Barb and Ron Bonham. They went to their time share for a week and we are feeding their cat while they are gone. Having the use of their infrastructure isn't such a bad thing either! Our car and RV were absolutely filthy because we had to drive to the Thanksgiving gathering on the Colorado River during a huge rainstorm. Also, the last 3 miles were on dirt (make that mud) roads. So the last 2 days we have been washing them and cleaning up the inside too. That will continue tomorrow in the RV.
The Thanksgiving gathering was fun with about 20 people attending the dinner potluck. The location was at a boondocking area about 100 yards off the Colorado River near Ehrenburg, AZ and close to a small tributary where the guys could launch their boats to do some fishing.

They managed to catch some stripers, catfish, bass, etc. and some of them already had other kinds of fish filleted and frozen, which they contributed for a fish fry which was held on Friday night. This is one of the perks of hanging around with people who like to fish!!!!
Anyway, the Thanksgiving food was 2 smoked turkeys and a ham, prepared by Ron Bonham, along with side dishes prepared by everyone else.

This is the big advantage of attending RV gatherings for holidays - everyone helps in the food preparation so there is a lot less work than when we used to prepare the whole meal for our families and friends.
As usual, there was too much food and we had to have a leftover meal on Friday noon. Elaine and I had to go for a walk afterwards to try to walk off some of the calories. Here is a picture of the area so you can see that although we were parked in the desert, there was still lots of vegetation.

This is one of the advantages of the Arizona desert over California and Nevada deserts, which have much fewer plants and plant types.
Our friends Peggy and Chuck Palumbo, who were the only RoVing Rods members who attended our wedding, were here in their new 5th wheel. We were happy to be able to spend some time with them chatting and drinking port and eating chocolates in their new rig, because we did not have much time with them at the wedding. Here is a picture of them in front of their new Hitchhiker II.

We also enjoyed meeting several new couples who were parked near us, especially Warren and Carolyn Miller. Here they are, sitting with Barb Bonham.

Unfortunately, one of the members, Carol (don't know her last name), started passing blood on Friday and her husband, Denny, took her to the hospital in Parker. In the middle of the night she was air lifted to Las Vegas and was in the ICU until today. They cauterized 2 perforations in her esophagus near her stomach, and she is now on the road to recovery.
We will be here until Saturday, when Barb and Ron will return for the park-wide garage sale. Of course, Elaine will have to peruse all the offerings at this sale, so perhaps we won't be leaving here until Sunday....