A New Chapter in Clapham’s Adventures

Twelve years, 5 months later and here we are starting a new chapter in our lives.  We started out living in our fifth wheel May 4, 2005.  We were so excited about hitting the road and seeing all kinds of new places, meeting new people and enjoying our early retirement.  Tom was 53 and I was 57.  That seems young now.  I’m 70 and Tom will be 66 in a month. 

We’ve had many fun adventures, a few setbacks (Tom with a MRSA infection in 2006, an accident that took us out of the rig for a month, Donna with breast cancer in 2008-fully recovered, a total knee replacement in 2013-totally recovered).  We’ve lost family members and friends along the way, but we continued with our lives appreciating what we had and each other.  We’ve been fortunate. 

We’ve rented a very nice park model at Mountain Shadows RV Resort in Hemet, CA October 1, and are settling in well.  Tom has a new nickname, “Tom the Tool Man”.  He has an abundance of tools but is beginning to find a home for them.  Donna has her own abundance – yarn! Knitting professionally now for about 4 years has added to her stash considerably.  The joy of it is hard to explain.  Creating beautiful things from sticks and string is very gratifying. 

Our next big adventure is a Panama Canal cruise in December – 19 days!  It was Donna’s 70^th birthday gift from Tom, our anniversary gift, Tom’s birthday, and Christmas all rolled in to one!  We are so excited to be able to sail away and live on a cruise ship for 19 days.  Donna has always said she’d like to live on a cruise ship and now she’ll get a taste of it. 

Through the years we’ve both contributed to our blog and now it’s time to let it go.  We won’t stop traveling, but if we have a blog, we’ll do a different one.   Thanks to all our family and friends who have followed us all this time.  We will be in touch.

More Portland Activies

So we've been going up to the Saturday night karaoke in the RV park and Tom has been trying his hand at entertaining the folks there! Ha. We do have lots of fun and every once in a while we have a good singer show up! Here's a clip of Tom doing "Ring of Fire" with Ms. Juanita.  Rockin' Does "Ring of Fire" with Ms. Juanita

We had a special event yesterday by celebrating our friend's 69th wedding anniversary! A delightful couple Duane and Juanita. Duane is 94 and in declining health. This couple is so lively and have such a great outlook on life. So full of joy and fun, it makes being around them a blast. Tom loves to sing Love Me Tender to Juanita whenever we are here. You can check it out here. Rockin' Sings Love Me Tender to Ms. Juanita

Today we went our friends, Tom and Rita, Michael and Wanda to the Pepperbox Cafe in downtown Portland. An eclectic little place that serves authentic New Mexican breakfast. You know with red and green chili (hotsy-totsy). Just so happens they had the Hatch chili cart down there roasting the chilis right there in front of the cafe, so you can buy a batch if you like! The gal running the cart was very chatty and shared her life to us and doing Chilis as her partner was burning down a number at 9:30 in the morning! In front of God and everybody. Things are pretty relaxed around here. We ain't in Texas anymore! Interesting morning to say the least.

We Made it to Portland!

Sorry for the long time since I posted. Just a few things to bring you up-to-date. First we celebrated our Mountain Shadows friend’s birthday, Annette, by going out to eat at Polly’s Restaurant in Hemet. Then another evening we had her over for a nice Chicken Marsala meal. Yummy for sure.

Donna has been working on her knitting projects for sure. It is amazing the work she does. Every one of them look perfect to me.

We got to see Mary and Paul's new Ford F-350 truck and boy is it beautiful. It has more bells and whistles than I've ever seen before. Amazing truck for sure. The color is called white gold and looks very similar to the color on our Captiva.

We got here to Portland on July 7^th. It been fun to see lots of the old friends. Tom has been doing park activities like water aerobics, walking class, karaoke and the like. Donna does some water class, card games (Mah Jongg) and some craft class. We enjoyed the park but boy has the price of rent gone up with the new park ownership!!!

Tom has been working on his new computer and it takes lots of time to get everything changed over from the old unit.

Our plans are to go back to Hemet after we sell the rig and rent a nice park model for the near future. Then we’ll see what that brings and go from there!   

Our focus has been on trying to sell the rig and truck, but it’s a niche market for our style of 5^th wheel. Just gonna have to find the right buyer. If you know anyone looking for a well-cared-for, fulltiming 5^th wheel and truck, have them go to this website to check it out.

We hope your life has lots of fun and good health in it.   

Cinco De Mayo in the Park "Andale Arriba"

We had quite a Cinco De Mayo celebration in the park thanks to our resident Mexican lady named Cookie. She uses that name cause no one can pronounce her real name! Ha. She and all her helpers put on quite a nice festivity for about 75 folks in the park. As you can see by the pix that we had plenty of chow. Since I was doing all the grilling I didn't get as many pix as I would like. I didn't get the carne asada meat, only the chicken. Asada is very thin, well seasoned sirloin tip, quickly grilled and then chopped. Some folks also called flap meat carne asada. Ours was the sirloin. Really good on a couple of  small corn tortillas referred to as street tacos. Topped with pico or salsa and you've got a great meal. We had a bit left over which we'll have around Memorial Day! Sounds good to me. Any excuse to eat, drink and party!       

Happy Easter!

Bet your not surprised to see more photos of food! I believe my secrets out! This was first time to smoke a spatchcock chicken. Spatchcock is just a fancy word for butterflied. Boy was it good smoked in apple wood and my homemade "slap your mammy" BBQ sauce. Yum!  The Mexican food plate was at a super nice place in Solana Beach, CA just north of San Diego. We met our RVing friends Marc and Cheryl there to eat and visit. Man was the visit and food good! What fun.

Donna went to LA to meet up with our GD Julia and daughter Beth for a girls day. She had a blast and snapped this nice photo of them.

We have a new member to our family. There's a couple of doves set up a home on the side of our shed on our site. Tom's been watching them since the making of the nest. Momma laid up 2 eggs, but only one hatched (common). We are now to the point I think the baby is about to leave the nest. It's been kinda fun watching this process, but then again, I'm easily entertained!!! :o)

The park has mostly cleared out of our Canadian friends. Things are pretty quiet and there are mostly permanent residence here now.  Our plans are to stay here until June unless it gets super hot and then we'll slowly start moving north for the summer. Happy Easter and Spring!!!!

More Mountain Shadows Winter 2017 Activites

The Valentine's Day Ladies Luncheon seems to be one of the most favored because the ladies get escorted to their seat and served by the men. Donna did a great time of MCing. This year theme was a fashion show done by ladies that purchased their outfit at a local thrift store. Most paid $7.00 or less for everything they had on! 

 

In early March we had the annual Variety Show. Again this year, Tom was on stage with the line dancers doing "Lollipop". The lady, on the floor in the center with glasses on, is our instructor and she is very good! Then Tom did another skit of singing of "Chantilly Lace".  This is his first time of singing on his own! I know don't quit your day job of retirement!!!! More later.

Winter in the Park

OK, it's been a while since we posted, but when you set still it seems like there's less to take pix of and talk about. We had a Western Mystery Play in the park that was good, and I took pix, but my new phone camera doesn't take very good pix, especially in lower light condition. That's why I didn't include them here. Donna is doing her knitting stuff and I've been mainly taking care of the rig and doing some cookin'. Tom does water aerobics 5 days a week, we both do the weight group here in the park. Tom does line dancing 2 times a week. Weather hasn't been conducive to having many happy hours. Looks like we'll be having some soon though. The pix on this post will be of food!!! Oh yum. I smoked a couple of Boston butt pork shoulders. They were the best pull pork I've ever done. Fabulous. The 3rd pic is authentic beef cheeks in a wine gravy, a friend made. There is mashed potatoes under them. Yummy. Also did a 5 lbs. Tri-Tip roast too, but overcooked it a bit, but still good. Donna and friends really love my egg rolls. So good. Seems like on Sunday AM I do an Denver omelet or breakfast tacos. Anyhow, that's enough for now. Next month is our Variety show and I've got a couple of skits, so should have some pix/video of that to post. 

  

No serious bites on the rig. Only "wannabees" and dreamers. I think some are just bored and wanna see the rig. Hopefully, when the weather warms and clears and the "shock" of the new president settles down we'll get some serious folks to look at our setup. Good thing we aren't "having" to sell it quickly, that would be disappointing.