There happened to be a CAP squadron near us at Mesa's Falcon Field airport. It was a small squadron and both of my kids outranked just about all of them. They were able to contribute lots during the meetings as they also had the most experience when it came to how events should be run. The squadron took advantage of their experience too by making them a Flight Commander and a Flight Sargent, even though they knew we were only going to be in town a few months.
Son and Daughter in flag detail at change of command ceremony
While here in Arizona, we had Christmas with my In-Laws, Nana and Papa, and we celebrated several birthdays to include my daughter's, my mother's, and my wife's.
Most were spent going out to dinner to Organ Stop Pizza, but my daughter wanted a girls day out with Mom and Nana.
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.
Organ Stop Pizza is a place in Mesa AZ. I grew up in Mesa and this was the place that I went for almost everyone of my birthdays growing up (there was no Chuck-E-Cheese). We came on other occasions too as the ambiance is great and admission is free. The pizza is pretty good too but maybe a smidge more expensive than some of the other pizza options out there (large 14" 1 topping pizza is $15.79).
The main attraction is a Wurlitzer Theater Pipe Organ, that was built back in the day of silent pictures when theaters had an organist play the background music for movies. This one though has been tricked out and put on steroids. It has an insane amount of pipes and is also connected to drums, xylophones, pianos, woodwinds, trumpets, and too many special effects to name.
When we walked in my kids caught a glimps of the organ an the music that was playing wasn't too familiar right away and my son later said he was expecting to hear opera music all night. Thankfully the selections ended up being mostly music my kids knew with music from Star Wars, musicals, and Disney movies. They had request cards that we tried to get my kids to fill out for requests but they didn't know what to put down until they started hearing some of the other songs played, but as luck would have it, once they got the hang of it they were excited when something they requested came up in the stack. We were also surprised when some music that you wouldn't associate with a pipe organ was played like Bohemian Rapsody by Queen, and Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry.
We've been there twice now on this trip and will probably go again as we still have a couple of months in the area. Here are a few YouTube video links, but they aren't mine
On the 14th of December we left Sierra Vista and headed to Usery Mountain Park in Mesa AZ. for a week. Usery is up on a hillside and has several small mountains in the park. It has great views of the east valley of the Phoenix area. The really beautiful thing about the RV area is that the spaces are very far apart from each other. The park has lots of cactus including saguaro, barrel, and cholla. There are also lots of hiking oportunities but we were short on time and the weather, although warm, was rather wet while we were here.
OOOWWWW, Cholla hurt.
Sign on a local mountain, long ago pointing aviators who had strayed.
Daughter said "I thought this type of cactus were only in cartoons".
Views of city lights
Black Light in the foreground is kids looking for scorpions. Big lights in middle was the bath house.
One of many trails.
I grew up in Mesa and primarily in East Mesa which is close to where Usery is. the second day we were here, we had some fun checking out all of the changes that have happened in the area in the last 20 years. There is even a new freeway system that is very helpful for getting around, but is taking some time to get used to. We took a long afternoon drive to take the kids to see all of our old hangouts, and schools and homes that we used to live in. We finished the night by taking them out for pizza at the most famous pizza place in Mesa (see next post)
When we got up in the morning while in Demming New Mexico, I made a couple calls and found an availability for a week in Sierra Vista, at the Fort Huachuca Army Base. We thought that would be a nice place to visit and it was close to Tombstone AZ., another place we wanted to visit.
Another thing we wanted to do with the kids was to eat at a Southern California Style Mexican fast food place. We had a Filiberto's Mexican food place right outside of the base that we enjoyed carne asada burritos at.
We checked out the museums about the Buffalo Soldiers that were prevalent on the base back in the day, and we also went to Tombstone and walked the streets and took a tour of the Bird Cage theater that was still in it's original condition from back in the gun fighter days.
When we were originally on this trip, but before we had big car problems back in Ranger TX, we were planning a day in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, before we would head up to Colorado. Obviously those plans got ruined but now with looking at the huge cold front getting ready to move into Colorado and most of the country it was time to move south. Since most of our plans are cast in Jell-O, and the farther south we went the better, we decided to head that direction.
We left the Air Force Academy on Monday the 5th of Dec., and headed straight down the map. The cold front was already starting to blow in and made for some wiggly driving as the wind made the RV hard to keep in a straight line. It was a long day but we made it to the Walmart in Carlsbad about 9pm and went to bed.
We woke up early as I had a plan for the afternoon in mind, but it would require leaving the caverns by lunchtime to be able to fit them in, but I didn't want to just rush through the caverns either. We got to the caverns just as they were opening and were some of the first down the trail.
We walked the Natural Entrance to the caverns and also did the Big Room loop. We took lots of pictures but most are of the same things you can see doing an internet search, and those professionally done ones put ours to shame, so here are just a few of our favorites.
The hike was long, but made even more difficult for mom with her fear of heights and claustrophobia, but she did a great job. After we finished the trails it was time for the elevator ride back up to the visitor center. Once the doors opened for us to go in the Ranger at the bottom said it was a 75 story elevator ride and mom just about bolted back out of the elevator. I caught her and the Ranger realizing her fear assured her it was only for 58 seconds. She did the ride up with her eyes closed while the kids and I marveled at the rock walls that you could see out of the elevator windows as we were going up. Once at the top, mom stumbled out of the elevator and needed to find a place to sit down and preferably outside in some fresh air. We all thought it funny how she had descended on foot close to 800 feet, walked up and down hills for over two and a half miles, legs were sore, used her inhaler, and it was the elevator ride back out that got her. She said that she was almost ready to hike the way back up the trail rather than ride that elevator.
We left Carlsbad Caverns after having lunch in the parking lot, and we headed toward White Sands National Monument. I told them that White Sands was a missile test range, which it is, but left out the other parts. We got there with almost two hours left before it closed. I went to the gift shop and was purchasing the saucer sleds when the rest of them came out of the restrooms and found me. It was then that my kids eyes lit up as they figured out what we were about to do.
We drove into the park on the white gypsum that had been compacted so hard to make roads that even a 22k pound RV pulling a vehicle could safely drive on it. We found a big parking area that was surrounded by large gypsum sand dunes and started hiking to the tops. The kids and I took turns sliding down the hills and having a great time.
Only took a little wind to get buried.... Just kidding. View looking back over the dunes toward the parking area.
It was after dark when we left and we even got to see a great sunset. We drove to Deming NM. and stayed at another Walmart. We had tracked about a cup full of sand all over the RV as evidenced by the pile we swept up. We were planning to head to Tucson, but I made a few phone calls and found an RV park in Sierra Vista AZ. that had a cancellation for the next week so off we went.
