Apache Junction AZ.

While we were here we decided that we should stay in the Mesa/Apache Junction area for a few months and see about me getting a job for a while to help pay down some of the bills that arose from the car problems we had in Texas. My In-laws are here and the reason we came to Arizona was to spend Christmas with them, but as we haven't had a lot of time to spend with them over the last 20 years, we thought an extended stay would be appropriate. My parents just recently bought a Park Model at a mobile home park in Mesa and could use some help with some maintenance on that as well, and my mother would be staying there for the winter months so that was another contributing factor to sticking around. Now the search was on for a place to stay for an extended period of time.

There are probably close to a hundred places in the Phoenix area that take RV's. Most of these are combined with mobile home parks and are designed for winter visitors. The problem arises that all of these places cater to the retired crowd and have age restrictions that state you have to be 55 years old or older to stay there. I unfortunately don't fit that category, and having kids along is a strict negative. There are only a few RV parks on the east side that are popular for camping, with families, and those are Usery (where we were at), and Lost Dutchman State Park, but both of these have 14 day stay limits and are booked up most all winter. There is a KOA campground pretty far out, that could also be a possibility but it would be very expensive. I finally found an RV/Mobile home park that accepted families in Apache Junction (East of Mesa), and they had openings and we could stay for a few months. It's nothing special but it's cheap.

There are other kids in this park and daughter has made several friends. The kids have also been able to find a Civil Air Patrol squadron near buy and have gotten involved in that. I wanted to do some workamping but it was a little to late in the season to find one of those available and the lack of family parks was really going to make that impossible here, but I was able to get a job with a temporary company that sends workers and maintenance men to apartment complexes. I was sent to my first complex for a few days and I was offered the job permanently but I had to explain that I wasn't looking for permanent employment.

Sunset from a local playground.

Another sunset