Nelson

This was really a fun weekend as we spent most of it out and about, looking for specific destinations, but enjoying seeing lots of different parts of the Phoenix metro area that we hadn't yet seen.

Earlier in the week, we'd made plans to spend some time at this huge flea market in Phoenix, and seeing Old Town Scottsdale on Saturday, and we'd talked about visiting a few other RV parks in the area, just to make sure we weren't missing something we should see. So we started out the day driving 40 miles across town to North Phoenix where there were three RV parks that we wanted to see. Unfortunately, we were disappointed about each of them. One was because the park itself was just OK, but it wasn't one that made us want to stay there instead of Mesa Spirit. The next one was cozy. Small, with nice hedges and even lawns (which are pretty unusual here), but the surrounding neighborhood was just a little too industrial for our tastes. The third was probably the nicest of the three, but it again was in an industrial area that we didn't care much for.

After the RV park search was done, we mozied on down the road to the big flea market. Wow. What an experience that was. A three acre building (looked like a former K-Mart or something of that sort), with hundreds of booths selling everything from Avon to used computers. But mostly, the stuff was just junk. It was kind of a depressing thing, we thought. The vendors didn't appear to have much going for them, and most of the customers were thrilled to be finding prices they could afford on the things they needed. But the saddest thing of all was the Elvis impersonator who was "singing" during the time we were there. Ever watch the initial auditions part of American Idol? Well, this guy would have chased Simon Cowell right out of his mind, he was that bad. I think he was even messing up the lyrics on some of Elvis' songs. Ugh. Pretty ugly. At least he was accurate in the fact that he was shaped like a pear. ;)

I've been occasionally working on my boat during our trip too. My goal is to have the boat ready for some testing and practice time while we're in Lake Havasu City. But I needed some supplies to continue the work, so today, we went driving all over the Phoenix area (put 58 miles on the car) checking each of the three hobby stores I'd located thanks to the internet to see if I could get the supplies I needed. Turned out we found just about everything I needed, except a cooling fan for my electric motor. One of the hobby store guys suggested that I use a computer fan that I could pick up at Fry's Electronics, so I may do that this week sometime, before we move on Thursday. I did spend most of the afternoon working on putting together battery packs for the boat once we got home. But there's more work to do still. That's the way it is with model boat racing, when you think you're 90 percent done, there's still 30 percent more work to do.

That's another thing. On Thursday of this week, already, we're moving to Lake Havasu City. In one sense, we're in disbelief that we've already been gone two and a half months, but on the other hand we're excited to move on to a new place.

Tonight, we watched two of our favorite shows, but Desperate Housewives was a rerun. Greys Anatomy was a tearjerker. I got a few hours of work in during our shows, too. At the same time as all of that, per Brooke's suggestion, I also worked out an algorithm while on hold with the technical support department of our wireless internet provider, ate popcorn and drank hot chocolate. I'm here to tell ya, THAT's excitement!