Planning for Departure

As the winter season comes to an end all too soon, everyone here is making preparations to return to their summer homes. A few are full-time RVers like us, but most have stick-and-brick homes to care for. Seeing people leave is always sad.

Thanks to a warning from our RV Facebook group, I discovered a broken rivet in one of our slides. This part, called a “gib”, holds the slide drive shaft in place that takes the slide in and out. A mobile tech came out in January and ordered some parts from the slide manufacturer. After a number of calls, I found out that parts are 4-6 months out. Well, thanks to an guy on our FB group, he told me how to fix the problem on my own. The upside is that I could fix it immediately, and we could go on our way. The downside is if I don’t fix it, we could be here indefinitely! With, guidance, I got it fixed, but you can be sure I’m going to keep an eagle eye on it for a long time!

Getting into April in Quartzsite means rising temperatures. While the rest of the country is getting record setting low temperatures and snow, we have seen some days in the high 90’s and 100°. Since we are plugged in, I ran the AC quite a bit these last 2 weeks. We look forward to some 70°-80° weather soon!

Our Family Home Evening group had a final lunch before people started leaving. As usual, lots of really good food and sharing stories. The Branch had a big luncheon a couple weeks ago, and an ice cream social with games yesterday. I really think we have gained weight from all the dinners and desserts this winter!

We finally had an opportunity to take our new .22 rifle out to shoot. We put many holes in a bunch of milk cartons! It was a lot of fun. We went through 200 rounds in a very short period of time.

Yesterday was my chance to wash all the desert dust off Bella. To my surprise, she isn’t brown! We washed screens and did a thorough cleaning and dusting inside, too. The advantage of a small home is that all of this was done in a short period of time.

We were supposed to leave today for Marble Canyon, but high winds inspired us to wait a day. Winds were gusting up to 40 mph. We miss a day of hiking, but the trip will be safer.