The golf club at Johnston Ranch

After a somewhat hectic week everything has calmed down considerably, and we're finally settling down a bit here in our new 'abode'. 

Doug and Brenda went back to Oregon, and the huge space of a 'normal' house is starting to feel a little more normal too. 

 

Most of the week was spend on picking out and ordering materials and appliances. Both bathrooms are going to be re-tiled and painted, the living room will get an accent wall with small stones, as well as the kitchen island, and James is going to build a wine-'cellar' in the dining room. 

And since there's going to be a pool installed in the backyard, all the little cobble stones have to go and a bunch of plants need to be re-located.

So, James hit the ground running as they say, and set up his table saw in the backyard and the tile saw in the side-yard .

 

For his first project he removed those last two cabinets on the left in the laundry room ..

                                           

 

..after which the floor was tiled and the wall painted ..

 

So now the freezer, which until now lived in the garage, could move in. Success!                  One project down, many more to go!

Here's a funny thing: the house has a security system with 6 cameras, and Doug is able to access those with his phone all the way in Oregon.                                                               We use one of them as an inside one, and set it up wherever there is work being done, so he can see exactly what's happening! How cool is that?                                                                   

The middle one at the top is the inside camera and that is James you see there, working in the laundry room.

In the meantime I'm trying to get used to cook in the huge kitchen. I've got two ovens and a microwave and several enormous work-counters!                                                                 We quickly noticed that the microwave runs way hotter than ours, so we had to adjust accordingly, which was a nice excuse to also have to test the ovens ..                                                               

                                    

So, first test .. oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with walnuts! Result: (according to James) perfect!

So far, so good!

After all that work it was time to relax a little and James booked a round of golf at Johnson Ranch, a course about 15 minutes north of us in the San Tan Valley.

 

 

 

We played in the late afternoon and had the whole course to ourselves, which is always very nice! It's a nice course, not too difficult or too long, but challenging enough, just perfect.

It's also the cheapest one around here, so I think we'll be playing it a lot this winter.

Afterward, we treated ourselves to some real Louisiana cuisine at the Angry Crab Shack. We ordered a crab, mussel and sausage boil, medium spiced, which was more than hot enough!

Always funny, those bibs!

James golfed by himself at the golf course that we are seeing from our backyard, the Poston Butte Golf Club. He got a good deal on GolfNow, otherwise it's a little above our budget.

When he came by the 17th (island) hole, I was ready with my camera:

That is the island you can barely see there in the middle of the picture above (just above the blue of the water), and that is James teeing off on the other side of it, in the picture below ..

Here he is walking up to his ball that he actually managed to get on there, and finishing it off below ..

He says it's a very nice course, but because I'll only play 9 holes it's unlikely I'll ever be on it. It's just too expensive, and most likely also too difficult for me. 

It took Merl' a while to settle down, but after Doug and Brenda left he started to come out of the bedroom and explore, and by now he's getting pretty relaxed about it all. 

Give him a chair on a patio and he's good!

OK, I think that's enough for now. We've already worked on a few other things but I think I'll post each project when it's done. That way I can show the whole process so it's easier and more fun to see what changed ..

I'll end with a picture of yesterday's sunset. It was a beautiful one, quiet, no wind at all and still quite warm ..this is our view sitting on the back porch .. could be worse, eh?

Life is good

 

 

                   How's that for a backyard view? It's ours for the next 4 months or so ..

Wow, I'm a whole week behind again, how did that happen? As you can see we arrived safe and sound in Florence but I'm way ahead of myself right there already so let's backtrack a week and a half or so ..

Let's see, I ended my last post the day before Halloween so let's pick it up on the day itself, shall we?                                                                                                                                  James golfed at Stallion Mountain that day which fortunately went a lot faster than the round we did the day before, and in the evening we drove into Las Vegas and met with Cheri, Jams' cousin from Houston.

We went for a nice Italian dinner, during we chatted about all that each of us had been up to these last couple of years we hadn't seen each other. Which was a lot!

Afterwards we decided that driving the strip up and down in the truck was probably a better idea than walking it.                                                                                                                    First of all because it was packed with people, since this was Halloween, which is not the best scenario during this time of Covid, and also because we've walked that strip before and it is a loooooong walk!                                                                                                                                                               

                                          

I tried to take some pictures of the  crazy outfits we saw, but because it was already dark (and I shot them while riding in the truck), most of my pics came out blurry.                             
I guess what happens in Vegas ... stays in Vegas, as they say!

 

The next morning we picked up Cheri from her hotel and drove to the Red Rock Canyon, a nice National Forest area about 20 minutes west of the city.                                                   The visitor center was closed due to Covid, but we took a quick look at the gift shop which was open, after which we drove the 17 mile loop through the park.

We really enjoyed the beautiful desert cliffs, buttes and spectacular rock formations!  

 

We'd brought coffee, which we drank at the scenic overlook about halfway, and enjoyed each others company and some more of Cheri's funny stories.                                                She has a lot of them!

 These little guys were rather tame and came looking for the crumbs ..

 

That evening we were treated by Cheri to a nice dinner at Ruth Chris, a rather upscale steak house right on the strip. James had helped Cheri selling her house in Florida and wanted to show her gratitude by treating us. Which was nice and the food was indeed very good but boy, oh boy, it was expensive! I mean, ridiculous expensive! Did I say it was expensive? 

                  

The cheapest (and smallest) steak on the menu was $45!                                                        
And that came with nothing, so you had to order any side dishes on top of that 'a la carte'! Holy smokes! Like I said, it was excellent and our table overlooked the strip, which was very nice, but sjeez ...

 Still, we had a great time, and after a terrific meal we took a short stroll through Harrahs and Balees ..

These are strange times in Las Vegas (well, even stranger than normal) ... being shot in the forehead upon entering the casino, plexiglass divisions at the tables, half of the seats gone, all-you-can-eat buffets closed ..                                                                 

Eventually, it was time to say our final goodbyes, since the next morning we were heading out for our final drive towards Arizona.

That's Lake Mead there in the distance ..

And so we did .. we didn't have to drive that far (230 miles), so we took it easy, left after coffee, drove through the mountain range outside Las Vegas towards Kingman, passing the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, took a short lunch break at a gas-station, and arrived at the funky Dazzo's Desert Oasis in Wikiup around 3pm.

 

We pulled into an easy pull-through site in the back of the campground, where we were surrounded by some tall Saguaro Cactae. We're definitely back in the desert!

The next morning we left right after breakfast for our last 230 miles south.

Everything went smoothly and around 1.30pm we finally arrived at Doug's in Florence, AZ, the end-destination of our trip!

We managed to park the RV into the driveway, and after a 'grand tour' through the beautiful home that's going to be our 'winter-digs', we spend the rest of the day moving everything we thought we would possibly need from the RV into the house.

And than some ... oh well, you never know, do you?

We've spent the rest of the week getting acclimated with the house, and putting a list together (and already ordered quite a few materials) with Doug and Brenda of all the things James is going to repair/change/build etc, etc ..                                                                        It's quite the list, but we have until April, so we'll have lots of time to enjoy the beautiful weather and do a lot of golfing .. we hope!  

Here's a few more pics of the house: the back yard ..

The kitchen, living room area:

 And this is side room and dining room at the front of the house on each side of the front door ..

 

Our bedroom:

                                       

And Bathroom ..

 The office/Den:

   

The Laundry room ..

 

The master bedroom and bathroom:



                                                                                                                                                 And a view into the street. We are the last house on a cul-de-sac ..                                 

 

Well, that was about it for this week, I think. We're happy we arrived safe and sound and we're all settled down.

Merlin is staying in our bedroom for the moment, the door is open but he doesn't really want to venture into the rest of the house  ..  yet.                                                                              The nights are a little bit of an ordeal, since he sleeps with us on the bed and yells whenever we move (and early in the morning when the sun comes up), but we hope it will be temporary, and eventually he will be comfortable enough to sleep somewhere in the house during the night, so we can close the door to our bedroom.                                                    We're keeping our fingers crossed this will happen sooner than later. Were tired, it's like having a baby which you try to have sleep through the night ..                                                 

By the way, this is how our RV is parked at the nearby storage place (10 minutes away), called 'absolute lowest storage' (yeah, we're nothing but cheap) :