A Road Trip and Days at Jobaba Hills

We have been enjoying our time at Jojoba. As I mentioned in the previous blog, this is a co-op and so we have started some volunteering. I am volunteering at the Mail Room. You just sign up for when you want to work. You can work as much or as little as you want. Joe has gone to some budget and marketing meetings. We went to a pizza party for those who are currently volunteering for the recycling in the park and for newbies such as ourselves. We take care of several of the recycling areas, which are separated into glass, plastic and aluminum. Only CRV labeled items are allow. We will take the items to a recycler center and money received will go towards things for the park. There is a lot to do here. One of the things we joined was the Photo Bug Club and our first assignment was photos of drinks. There was also an outing to Bates Nut Farm where there was a big pumpkin patch for Halloween. It is in Valley Center and the drive there was nice going the back way with great scenery. It is here in the Escondido area. We went on a weekday morning and were surprised on how popular it was.

There are some farm animals, several stores as well as many pumpkins.

Lots of cute seasonal decorations, some of which I ended up photographing and using for my photo bug group assignment.

I also took pics for our drinks assignment when we went to Borrego Springs with Nancy and Terry. We had a lot of fun and had no problems finding drink pictures as we ate out most of the time. We stayed at the American Legion which as free boondocking there for veterans, which Terry is. We attended several dinners there, which were good. As part of Borrego Days, which included a parade. We only watched a little of it before meeting Terry and Nancy at Carmelita's, Mexican restaurant in town.

Below a picture I took for my drinks assigment and what I did to it on the computer.

AT the Christmas Center Park, where they have the Farmers Market, they have booths selling things, games and other things for kids and a beef garden for the adults.

There was a car show where one person had a little ghoul show up. It is the Halloween season and I added a frame to add to the spookyness.
Another day we ate at the Red Ocotillo in the Palms Hotel where we ate at last winter when we were in the area boondocking.

Terry and a friend

We ate out at several other restaurants which were very good, including Carlee's and Casa de Zorro. One day we took a little drive and stopped at one of Terry and Nancy's favorite boondocking spots down the road from Rockhouse Rd, where we stayed the last few times we were here. We met some nice people staying at the spot Terry and Nancy call Dad's. People have added a path of rocks to this site which circle around the camping site. Pretty cool.

The weather has bee wonderful with mostly sunny and warm days. So nice after lot of cool days during our summer in the Pacific NW. Temecula is wine country and we finally got to a winery, or at least a winery restaurant. We went out to lunch for our anniversary to the restaurant at Callaway's.Great views and great food. We had appetizers, ceviche and duck confit tacos along with the recommended wines. You could have a full glass or tastes, which were about 3//4 of a glass.
Well, that is it for now.

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October Days at Jojoba Hills

There will probably be fewer blogs while we spend the fall and part of winter here at our new site at Jojoba Hills. We have actually been fairly busy, even taking a short trip out of the park in the MH. Our early days here saw us driving into Temecula four times to get storage cabinets for our "garage"(storage unit). We put them together and took things out of boxes with the occasional surprise of "oh, I forgot we had that". Lot of work but it looked pretty good when we were done. Then decisions on what we do about plantings as there is only about 4 plants on the property and also needs some other work done. Well, you know how us full timers change their minds on where we travel all the time. We might be heading in a certain direction and then decide to head a different way. Before we start our big project, we decided to take a look at what sites were available. Wouldn't you know, we found a couple we liked. One was really nice with a better view and completely landscaped. We really like our neighbors at our original site but this new site is just so much better. So we went down to the office and made the official change. Of course we had gotten rid of all the boxes as we hadn't though we would move for a long time. Right. It actually went pretty well as we emptied the storage cabinets and put them on back of the golf cart and moved them to our new spot just a few streets away and filled up the jeep with the other stuff. Below are pictures of our new site, with a few showing our new patio furniture we just got from Home Depot last week,

 

 

 

 

Nice view out our window, don't ya think.

 

Besides our move, we also been busy attending meetings as this is a co-op and volunteerism is big here. A few weeks after we arrived here, was the big Yard Sale. We helped pull everything out of the big storage units and set them up in different areas. It is amazing on how much stuff there was for sale, including huge amounts of clothing, electronics, crafts, jewelry. Around 17,000 dollars was made on the sale, including some of the nicer items that were sold on ebay. I think around 700 people attended the sale over the 3 day event. Of course we have had fun socializing, getting together with our friends, Nancy and Terry, as well as some of our neighbors at our original site as well as our new one, happy hours are big here. Also attended a dinner as well as a few lunches, one for all who worked on the yard sale. Temecula has a Saturday morning Farmer's Market which is a good size and we have gotten several times. It is in the Old Town section which is a neat area. One day they were having a Quilt Fair and quilts were all over the old town.

 

 

Lots of good produce at the market with all the other usual things.

Next blog will include our long weekend trip to Borrego Springs for Borrego Days, with Nancy and Terry as well as a day trip with some of our Photo Bug members of a group we recently joined. We went to one meeting where some really cool pictures were shown.

 

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Mostly Sunny Days in Avila Beach and Back to So Cal

We got to Avila Beach late Thursday afternoon. It is after Labor Day but this place is still busy. We had to park in the Overflow area up on the hill. Still nice views but we like being down below with the short walk to the beach. There is some morning fog on Friday.

Joe was on the phone on a work related conference call when I noticed someone leaving on our favorite spot where we were last time. I tell Joe and jump in the car to go down and stake out our new site. Hurrah!!

Joe gets the MH ready and drives it down and we set up in the spot we will stay in for the next 11 days

There are more paddle boaters and kayakers than we have seen here before. I don't know why but we never do out boating ourselves. Maybe we need to go back to our hard shell boats that we don't have to set up.

We had a nice time just enjoying sitting out reading, listening to the waves, taking walks along the beach, and people watching, We had to go into Arroyo Grande to pick up the new router for our computer. The other one died and we had no wireless available. Joe could get his computer to work with an ethernet cord but I couldn't use my ipad. We had to send the broken one back first and they fixed it and sent in back. We also did some shopping,including at a local farmer's market style store up the road. They have great produce and an inside section with other food products. There are also some farm animals on site and it is very popular, especially on the weekends. We walked down to the end of the San Luis Harbor Pier for dinner one night. Good food and good views of the water. One area has tables that you can look through and see the water below.

 

 

 

We had a nice clear night with a Harvest Moon above.

 

As I said before we had a good time just walking on the beach, Savannah loves this place and had fun chasing her ball and finding a few new ones she found on the beach and brought back home with her. She has a small ball but seemed to like the bigger tennis balls lately. I am a big dog now she says. She had fun touching noses with other dogs and sniffing out messages from others.

 

 

Below picture shows our MH taken from the beach.

Humm, some sea creatures in the picture below or maybe just scuba divers.

 

 

 

 

 

We really enjoyed our time at the beach but are now back at Jojoba Hills where we will be until at least February. We got back Thursday and got together with our friends, Terri and Nancy for some appetizers and some adult beverages. Friday there was a lasagna dinner in the Friendship Halls. We ran into some of the people we met in the spring and some new ones as well. We had bought a golf cart from a friend of Chris's during our time away and Chris, Karol, Michael and Casey all came over to deliver it. It was good to see them again. Kristi's birthday was on the 2nd of October but we drove down to Irvine to have dinner with Kristi and Brock on Tuesday. Also there were my two nieces and their hubbies. Both Kori and Heather are pregnant and both are having girls!!! How fun to go through this together. Those cousins should be close. Heather is due the middle of December and Kori early next year. They already have picked out names. Heather and Ryan's baby is named Amber Nicole(middle name is Kori's middle name)and Kori and Nick's is Kayla Lynn(middle name isHeather's middle name). We had a nice dinner at the Cheesecake Factory at the Irvine Spectrum. I had a yummy pasta which was huge. I had enough left over for dinner the next night for both Joe and I. Of course, one of the reasons I didn't overeat was to enjoy some pumpkin pecan cheesecake. The birthday girl got a dutch apple cheesecake with a candle and singing was involved. We both shared ours with some of the others. Both the preggies are being good with what they eat. Before we met them for dinner we stopped for a short visit with my Dad. They had a lady there that comes once in awhile and sings and plays the piano for the people at the home Dad is living at. It was nice. Dad was singing along on some of the show tunes. Very cute. We got to talk a little and will be able to see him more often while we are in the area. Well about 2 hours away but closer than we are most of the year.

Well that's it for now.

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