Monday, February 9, 2009

At Last! On the Road to warmer climates!

It is always great to drive south on a day that another winter snow storm is blowing into Red Deer, Alberta! On Thursday January 29 we headed to Calgary to visit Joe Koziol (& Janice) who has been in the Foothills Hospital since Dec 08/08. Joe is now on the way to a full recovery! Way to go Joe!
We drove out of the 4 inches of fresh snow about Olds and onto dry pavement which luckily stayed dry all the way to Casa Grande, Az.
We over-nighted at Joan's (John's sister) in Calgary and enjoyed her famous lasagna and pictures of their Mexico visit at Christmas. Thanks Joan & Brian!

Our 1st day of travel was from Calgary to Idaho Falls. Our drive through Idaho was picturesque with fresh snow covered fields and ice frosted trees (but dry roads!).
Day two we drove into warm weather and brown desert country side as we drove into Mesquite (25C).

We stayed at Virgin River Casino and Hotel
http://www.virginriver.com/hotel.html
where only one of us(John)was slightly lucky at the machines! The rooms are adequate and clean but the casino is tired and too smoky. The Eureka next door suitrd us better soo check it out if you are looking for rooms and a fun evening in Mesquite.
The development in Mesquite has been recent and the residential area that we drove through had some attractive houses at very affordable prices. If you are looking for a fairly quiet, casino, desert town with resonable cost housing, hotels & meals this may be for you. http://www.mesquitenv.com/

We are in Holiday mode and Day 3/Sunday is a short trip to Laughlin, Nv where we booked into the Golden Nugget Casino http://www.goldennugget.com/laughlin/accommodations/index.asp

We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Hotel Lobby, Rooms and Casino! For non-smokers the casino, bars and restaurants are really pleasant! We spent a fun afternoon at the sports bar watching the Super Bowl with some very loyal, boisterous, colourful Cardinal Fans. There were two very knowledgeable "armchair" quarter back coaches who added a lot of colour to the game. We finished watching the game in the Joe's Crab Shack downstairs where the fans were younger & noisier.....and having even more fun!. Weather has been warm & balmy for the last 2 days! Yeah! This was a fun day and I was putting in time at a Penny Machine and won $120.00!
This was encouraging so I continued and so did my winning streak........it was a Hoot!

Monday Feb 2 - Laughlin to Sun City West, Az http://www.suncitywest.org/

It is a beautiful sunny 28 C day and we are delighted that we are able to spend a day/night with our long time friends, Jim & Jean Jones who live in north/west Phoenix in the retirement community of Sun City West where the roads in the subdivision allow for golf carts on the main streets! Jim and Jean's house backs onto the golf course and I watched a humming bird splash in their fountain outside their kitchen window! It is lovely here and Jean's makes the best Eggplant Parmigiana in the Mid West......probably the US! Jean is recovering from December back surgery and is having an amazing recovery! Click on the photo to enlarge.


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