Barry & Joyce's Adventures: February 26, 2017

Here is another “Places We have Been and You Should Go Too”:

Navajo Nation's Monument Valley Park
Southern Utah and Northern Arizona

Owned and operated by the Navajo Nation, Monument Valley is one of the most unique and beautiful places in America. It is said that the park is the most photographed place on earth and after visiting there weJoyce can understand why.

We stayed at the Gouldings RV Park which isn’t cheap (we paid about $50 a night) but it is the only gig in town. However, staying there puts you are right in the middle of the park with very nice amenities and close to other attractions.

We highly recommend you take the Deluxe Tour that can be booked in the campground office. Riding in the back of a pickup, you’ll get a narrated tour of all the major monoliths and beautiful rock formations. Photo stops are made at John Ford’s Point, the Three Sisters, the Totem Pole and more. Since most of this tour is in the restricted areas of the park, you will visit areas that can’t be seen when you do a simple driving tour including the Anasazi Petroglyphs, Moccasin Arch and more.

February 17, 2016

We’ve had to make a small change to our trip back west this spring. We’re not going over to visit Big Bend National Park this trip due to not being able to get a reservation. Waited just a tad too long.

So, if you are in the El Paso area and want to get together we will be staying at Fort Bliss the 4th and 5th of March.

Ordered our filters and oil at O’Riley’s Auto Parts to have the RV serviced. All that came to $344 and we will have to pay a service tech $150-$200 to do the work. The good news? We won’t have to mess with this again for 10,000 miles.

The weather here in Von Army is starting to get really nice. Temp’s are in the high 70’s to low 80’s right now and no major storms are in the forecast. In fact, tomorrow’s forecast is for a temperature of 87º.

February 20, 2017

Yesterday afternoon we met John and Marleen Breitenbach at Down on Grayson for drinks and an early supper. John flew with the 7th and 708th Military Airlift Squadrons at Travis AFB and later went to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He now works for Northrop Grumman in their Contingency & Deployment Operations division as a Deployed & Flight Operations Manager. It was great to see John & Marleen again and we had a great time talking about the “old times”.

Last night we had some really strong storms move through this area, a few developing into severe thunderstorms on the north-east side of San Antonio. The thunder and lighting woke me up at 10:15 so I got up and checked out the weather radar. At just about that time a huge cell was passing just a short distance to the east of us with a lot of hard rain and lightening. The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning around 11:15 that affected areas in the north-east side of San Antonio. A small tornado touched down near Randolph AFB causing a lot of damage to homes, cars and trees.

February 21, 2017

We took the RV in to a shop near here to have the oil changed, fuel filters changed and do a chassis lube job. They worked on it for two hours and charged us $238 labor. That included the fee for disposing of the old 18 quarts of oil.

So, with the parts the total came to $582. The last time we had all that work done was in Oakridge, OR and the technician charged us $640 total, just $58 more and we didn’t have to get all the parts ourselves. Guess we will have it done in Oakridge the next time.

February 24, 2017

On Wednesday the 22nd Joyce and I drove up to north San Antonio to visit with Dave Spector, a former flight engineer who I served with in the 7th MAS at Travis AFB. Dave had a very interesting career flying the C-141 and the VC-137 (Boeing 707) with the 89th Airlift Wing at Andrews AFB, MD.

Dave decided to go into the leadership side of the Air Force and served as the Command Chief at 20th Air Force at Francis E. Warren AFB, WY. He then was selected to lead the Airmen of the Air Mobility Command as there Command Chief.

Here are a couple of articles about Dave:
http://www.amc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/145475/amc-command-chief-retires-reflects-on-air-force-commands-importance-career/

http://www.warren.af.mil/News/Features/tabid/3772/Article/333475/20th-af-command-chief-prepared-to-lead-make-difference-in-few-airmen.aspx

On Thursday we drove over to Goliad so that Joyce could meet up with the “Cackling Hen” ladies at the Commercial Street Bar. We had a nice time visiting with everyone.

February 26, 2017

Yesterday Joyce and I went to see the Extreme Bulls Day at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo. I think we both agree that this was the best one we have seen.

To make the show even better they had the PRCA Freestyle Bullfights. This has to be one of the craziest thing we have seen in a long time. The rodeo bullfighters are in the arena with a very mad bull where they try to mad him even madder and play with him for sixty seconds. Here are some links to view some of the action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f099EQAsKP0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuEQv1o32GQ