Family, Friends, Doctors and More RV Repairs

I haven't been posting the last few weeks while back in Orange County and so here is a catch up blog on our time in the area. We arrived at Sunset Vista in Huntington Beach on Sunday, April 22nd. We have stayed here before and love it. Great views of the beach and water and bike/walking path in front of the temporary rv park It is closed for the summer season when they need all the parking spots they can get in their busy summer season. We had our kids over that night for dinner and to watch one of the many Hockey playoff games the Kings have won. Our hearts are always with our Ducks, but since they are out of it this year, we are rooting for the Kings. I was born in LA and grew up in LA county and so will be happy to see them win this time. We ordered pizza for dinner. Yikes, I took a picture of one of the pizzas but not sure if you can tell how loaded it was. Seemed like it weighed 5 pounds.

                                                                          

          Joe had a conference in San Diego on Tuesday and Wednesday. He also had a few doctor appointments and one of his doctors wants him to have a few more tests which means we will be here longer than we thought. We had planned to stay through Sunday only but he couldn't get an appointment until the next week and it is a conference only and meant it could be the following week before the actual test. Well that is what happen. We had to cancel our rv get together in Moab. Joe's tests ended up being okay, but you have to be careful with health issues and are just glad tests were okay and we will be able to head north to Alaska which is our big planned trip. On Saturday, the 22nd, we went to Kristi and Brocks for our brother-in-law's 60th birthday. It was fun getting together with family and friends. Didn't have the camera out much while here in OC and so didn't take any pictures of where we stayed or places we went.    We actually had to move on Saturday to Newport Dunes as park was full on weekend and we had only reserved through Saturday as we were originally going to leave that day but decided to stay for Brocks birthday party.
Sunday we drove down to San Juan Capistrano, as they were having a garden tour of the historic Los Rios area where our friends Bonnie and Kaylee have their shop, The Tangled Vine.   I was busy checking out their shop as they are always changing their place and getting in new things and didn't pull out my camera to actually get some pictures. . Stupid girl. They specialize in flowers and photography but also sell jewelry and other interesting items. We stopped at the Hummingbird House Cafe, one of the restaurants on the street and sat at an outside table with Savannah and enjoyed people watching and I finally remembered to take out my camera.

Note Train in background

        A beautiful area right near the Train Station.
We had some cool cloudy weather but Thursday was suppose to get some sunshine and so we took my Dad out to lunch in Dana Point at a restaurant in the Harbor It was still overcast and so we stay inside but it was still nice. My Mom and Dad use to spend a lot of time down in this area, sometimes just taking a lunch and enjoying the views.
While here we also got some other things done. Joe had to buy a new computer as his old one died. We also took our boats down to my Dad's house to store. My niece , Kori, is leasing  and hoping to buy it.    They had a major plumbing issue recently and had to dig up the floor that had just been newly installed. One of the problems with old houses. This neighborhood was the first one in Mission Viejo, which my parents purchased back in 1966.  Other than the plumbing problem, the remodel went well and the house is beautiful.
We finally got the okay from the doctors and we left Newport on May 8th. We had to stop in Chino for our on going problem with a low coolant message that we keep getting even though when checked the coolant is not low. Some places we have been these past months have either not been able to find the problem or gave us a what turned out to be a wrong solution as we found out this time. M & M,  checked a number of things and figured out what was wrong which included sending us to another place,Valley Power Systems, who specialize in engines and are now working on the problem. Unfortunately, as it was close to the weekend and parts have to be flown in which won't get here until Monday, we needed to find a place to stay. We stayed one night at a La Quinta Inn, in San Bernandino. There was a chance in could be fixed on Friday but when they checked and saw that the bearings needed replacing as well, those  were the parts that wouldn't be here until Monday. We decided to spend the weekend in Palm Springs and are now here hoping our motorhome will soon be fixed and we can start making our way up north.