It’s been a busy week or so since my last posting.  Most of the Alpine SoCal group left the park after the Spring Training Rally officially ended and we’ve been on-the-go ever since:

We celebrated our daughter Jennifer’s birthday (Monday the 14th) at Angry Crab Shack®.

After our somewhat expensive dinner of crab legs in a bag, we went over to the Brass Armadillo® antique mall to browse around.  This is a pretty cool place that we heard about from one of our fellow Alpine Coach owners.  We spent an hour or so, walking around this huge place.  Check out the website.

This was a really cool place, you can spend hours here wandering around looking at the numerous booths.  Lots of childhood memories can be found here, regardless of what age you are:)

Some of the Alpine Coach SoCal members that are still at the Cotton Lane RV Resort and/or still in the Phoenix area, put together another great group gathering at the local Wildlife Zoo’s popular eatery on Tuesday evening.  Dillon’s K.C. Style Barbecue was a really neat dining experience.

On Wednesday evening we joined fellow Alpine Coach owner’s Noel & Carol Peck, Jack & Linda Giddens, and Ed & Donna Mathews for a night-time baseball game at the Peoria Sports Complex.

Stilla and I enjoyed our night out with good friends and watched the San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres.  Fun times!

Throughout the week, we have been actively looking at travel trailers for our daughter Jennifer and finally found what I think is a good deal at a consignment park.

We found a 2005 Starcraft Homestead model 29SBS that I negotiated a decent price on.

We then spent a couple of full days driving around the Phoenix area looking for family-friendly RV parks to set Jennifer and Kaan up in their new trailer.  What a hectic couple days… we probably went through a tank or two of gas driving around town.  There’s a wide range of high-end (expensive) parks and an equally large amount of not-so-good (cheap) parks.  I saw at least 4 other Alpine Coaches at various parks throughout Phoenix while checking out locations.  One day, we even met up briefly with Mike & Donna Kuper (FlyingtheKoop.com) at their current location (a nice place but unfortunately an age restricted park) on the east-side of Phoenix.

Meanwhile, we enjoyed a couple more evening get-togethers back at Cotton Lane RV Resort with our friends from the Alpine SoCal  group that are still here in the park.

We finally found a nice RV and Mobile Home park in Glendale to set up the new travel trailer.  I had to borrow the consignor’s hitch to move it over to the park since mine is sitting in our cargo trailer back at the “dirt farm” in Casa Grande.  We reserved a month here for Jennifer and also got us a neighboring spot starting on Sunday the 20th when we have to move from our current spot at Cotton Lane RV Resort.

After getting the trailer set up in the new park, I was able to get the title transferred with no problem at a convenient Arizona ‘3rd party’ DMV location.  I also filled the propane tanks, and did a full inspection while trying to figure out all the controls and buttons.

The roof needs a good cleaning and some re-caulking in areas.  The refrigerator didn’t seem to work at first, but started doing alright after I messed with some wires in the access panel on the back.  ‘Dodged a bullet’ there… repairing the refrigerator could have been expensive.  It seemed to be getting cool when we did our walk-thru prior to purchase, but it wasn’t hooked up very long to power in order for us to make a proper assessment.

There’s still a couple buttons I haven’t figured out and I haven’t tested the heater yet… probably don’t need it anytime soon anyway, right?  I also couldn’t get the water pump to work, but since we’re hooked up to water it’s not an issue yet… maybe I have to fill the water tank first, but I didn’t even hear the pump run.  Anyway, there’s no shortage of things to do…

I also had to replace the door lock since it didn’t come with keys.  Luckily, I found a replacement at Camping World®, but unfortunately I had to modify the opening to get it to fit right… nothing’s ever easy 🙂

Meanwhile, I helped another park model owner at the Cotton Lane RV Resort fix their shingles.  You may recall that I did the same for another resident last week, and word-of-mouth got me involved in another repair job.  Oh well, it feels good to help out and the owner’s gave us a few bucks for our time.

We’re now moved over (Monday, 21 March) to our new spot at the Mobile Home and RV park where I set up Jennifer and Kaan.  On Sunday, we said our see-ya-later’s to Jack & Linda Giddens who also left the park on Sunday and Noel & Carol Peck who are staying for another day or two.  They will be the last ones to leave Cotton Lane after our awesome Alpine SoCal Spring Training Rally… we’re looking forward to next year!

Check back soon, to see see what we’re up to.  I’m not sure how often I’ll post since it looks like we’ll be sitting still for a little while until Jenny gets situated here in Phoenix.  Our next destination is the Alpine SoCal Rally at Newport Dunes, CA at about this time next month.