Not all who Wander are Lost… Right? 

Have you been asking, “Where the heck have those Burke’s been for an entire month”? Of course you have! Hasn’t everyone?  We have tried our best to post an update every 2-weeks on our adventure, right? Okay!! Here it is in a nutshell:

• We left Silver City, NM heading towards Tucson where we were to reside for most of the winter months. And yes, we did do that: arrived in Tucson, AZ at the Tucson Lazydays KOA on the 30^st of October. But instead of checking into our reserved spot for the winter, we took a bit of a delay to have our Airstream looked at. So, we drove directly into the Airstream Service area only to find we had a bowed axel!!!!  ☹  Not too happy of campers, but then again, we are on an adventure and… things happen on an adventure that aren’t part of the plan, right?
• We found out that we needed to have some work done but we decided that, since the CTYII would be our home for the winter, we would wait to have that axel repair done. What the heck is a “bowed axel” anyway, and how did that happen? All we knew was that one of our tires had extensive wear while all three others were fine. The repair shop did some measurements and determined the “spindle” (part on the end of the axle) was out of true. We knew we wanted to swap the current set of tires for ones with a better rating, so we went ahead with that for the time being. We’ll worry about the axle after Christmas. We are now officially in our reserved Lazydays KOA space and happy to be back.
• Our boy Michael and our daughter-in-law, Debbie, arrived for a stay (came from Portland, OR.) and we swept them up from the airport in Tucson. But before they arrived, we were treated to music by a fabulous jazz duo, singing and playing the keyboard close to the baggage claim area! Well, it was like having a private show! They were magnificent! We spotted our kids, and off we went to take them to their home in Green Valley, about 20 miles from Tucson.  We had not seen them since June! We so love our kids, we could hardly let go of them at the airport!  We took them back to the CTYII (about 5 min. from the airport), then they drove their car on home to Green Valley to settle in after their travels.
• Now, some great things we have done, while our kids were here for a week:
  • You will see pictures of our first golf game of the year with our son. Such outrageous fun!  Only lost three golf balls and honestly, that isn’t bad for us!
  • We had a fabulous adventure to the Kitt Peak Observatory, which if you haven’t done is truly AWESOME! Gary, Michael and I had such fun! We had no idea how expansive the observatory was – there are a whole bunch of telescopes there!  We had a tail-gate picnic at in the parking lot, then went in for a ranger talk and walked to the #3 observatory.  There are 4 showings a day, each at a different telescope. We all want to go back and take in the rest.
• We had to bid farewell to our kids after a week of fun, food and adventures ….. and well, we were a bit tearful, we admit. They are the BEST!!!
• We said good by to our son Mike, daughter-in-law Debbie, then we were off 3 days later for our Thanksgiving tradition with Gary’s sister, Judy, and her hubby, Jim. Could hardly wait to see them. The tradition includes: Thanksgiving dinner with them and their dear friends, Lynette and Jody; then, the day after Thanksgiving, we all decorate the Christmas Tree! They are having friends over for Pinochle, so we were glad we could help get the party rolling by helping with the decorations!

And then… Oh my gosh, a major cold front came in!  We had ripping winds and temperatures that dipped into the 20’s.  (Remember, we just came from Tucson, AZ.  😊).  Anyhoo, the biggest surprise was a snow storm with nearly 4” of snow sticking to the ground on Thanksgiving Day!  Truly, it was beautiful! The mountains surrounding the city of Ridgecrest were snow covered right down to the desert floor. You can see our pictures of that – it was so beautiful, though, the pictures don’t begin to capture it.  Our Thanksgiving Day dinner with Jim & Judy and their friends, Lynette and Jody was truly joyous! It concluded with a vicious game of a variation of Mexican Train Dominos!  All I can say is, the rules should state that the highest score wins, right??  Got to get them to change those dang rules!  Can you guess who got the high score?  Well, it was almost a tie between Jim and Judy… quite unusual; we need to check those rules.

• Had awesome Thanksgiving talks and texts with our kids and our grandsons, Nathan, Dylan and Cameron, and our buddies Jim and Gayla. We have much to be thankful for, for sure!
• After tree trimming and movie seeing (“It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” – Highly Recommended!) with Judy and Jim, we were back on the road back to Tucson. We took a little side-trip adventure to Yuma, AZ, which we had never seen prior, just to check it out. Got a little lost on poorly marked roads so it took us a bit longer than expected to find Yuma.  BUT WE ARE ON AN ADVENTURE REMEMBER! After a night’s stay at the Ramada, we found the Starbucks, and headed back on Hwy. 8 to Tucson.
• We are missing our family! We love keeping in contact with them but it’s a challenge on both sides! That’s the hard part of adventuring. So what is next?
• Okay here is the scoop and the full scoop! We will be wintering here at the Tucson Lazydays KOA. While we’re here, we will be having regular adventures on our bikes, and hiking, playing Pickle Ball, and just taking in the lovely country here. AND, we will be updating our blog monthly with our adventures, complete with pictures.  So, don’t be giving up on us!  As all of you know by now (you should know, anyway😉 ) we sometimes change our minds about what we are doing, just because… we can!  SO… stay tuned!!!!