We are now going to park the Winnebago for a few months here near Phoenix. Except for a trip over to the Rose Parade the last week of December we are staying at Pueblo El Mirage RV Resort and Golf Club till the end of March. The small city of El Mirage is located on the west side of the greater Phoenix area just south of the city of Surprise and just west of Sun City. Just because the Winnebago is slowing down does not mean that we are.

 Pueblo El Mirage has 1200 sites with a mixture of about 40 percent park models and 60 percent RV sites. It has two pools, a whirlpool, fitness club, an 18 hole Fuzzy Zoeller Golf Course, with club house bar and grill, horse shoe pits, lawn bowling, tennis courts and Pickle Ball courts, a cross between tennis and ping pong. There are many activity rooms, a hair salon, a nail salon, a barber shop, book library, video library, recreation hall, banquet hall with restaurant and a laundromat. The grounds are beautifully landscaped with many plantings of native flowers and cacti. They have Halloween decorations up now and are already starting to put up Christmas lights. 

There are so many activities available for us to participate in that we are finding we do not have enough time for all of the ones we would like to do. We have already met many nice folks at the re-opening of the Golf Club Bar and Grill, and at a pool side Luau. This coming Wednesday we have a hot dog cookout at the community fire pit followed by a movie on the lawn and then Friday a Halloween Party. 

Josie is into water aerobics every weekday at 10 am, Mah Jongg two afternoons a week and she will try to fit in Tai Chi Gong a type of stretch exercise similar to yoga. She would also like to take crochet lessons. She also has plans for a wine tasting while I am gone on a road trip with my brother to see sprint car races in El Paso, Texas and Las Cruses, New Mexico. 

I have been playing golf two or three days a week with one of the golf groups. The El Mirage course is still closed for over seeding and will not open till October 31st, so we have been meeting for breakfast at the club house and then car-pooling to other area courses. Once our course opens I will join the golf league. I hope to also play on the softball team as we also have our own field here on the grounds. I have started a birding group through the activities office and our first outing will be Wednesday morning here on the grounds. With all the plantings and folks with humming bird feeders, I have found 33 species of birds on the grounds so far. 

If there were not enough to do here at El Mirage we also have a six pack of tickets for the NHL Arizona Coyotes Hockey team, so we will go to one game a month while we are here. We like to froze to death at the first game last Saturday. I talked Josie into NOT taking a blanket along with her sweater, coat, gloves and head band. I wore shorts but took a small jacket. Big mistake! It might have been 92 degrees outside but it was very cold in the arena. Major League Baseball has a fall league here in Arizona with 6 teams, each team is made up of players from 5 Major League Teams.   We have been to one game together and I have gone to three others. Next Thursday we are going over to Scottsdale to watch the first round of the PGA Senior Tour Charles Schwab Cup Championship. 

If any of you are going to be in the Phoenix area over the next five months let us know. We would love to see you. The weather is great!

We checked into the Balloon Fiesta RV Park around noon on Monday. We were met by our Winnebago Outdoor Adventure hosts Paul and Mike who guided us into our camp site. As you can see from the pictures below we were almost alone in the park, but by Friday over 6000 motor homes had arrived. There were 36 Winnebago's in our group with a community tent in the middle for meetings, happy hour and catered meals. 

On Friday we boarded buses and our first stop was the cable car ride to the top of Sandia Peak on the eastern boundary of Albuquerque. At over 10,000 feet the views of the city and the surrounding area were spectacular. As we were leaving the cable car we were met by our friends Leon and Laura Hoots who were going up to the top. They had driven all the way out from Virginia Beach to meet us here for the Fiesta. From here we traveled to a local community market where we were treated to the smell of roasting chilies. In this part of the Southwest the roasting of chilies is an annual fall event. The chilies are roasted to take the tough outer skin off them. The locals eat green or red chilies with just about everything. Each of us was given a bag of chilies to take home. We then had a fantastic lunch at El Pinto, a beautiful restaurant. After lunch we visited Old Town Albuquerque for shopping where Josie bought a pair of hot air balloon earrings. We then returned to the RV Park where we again met up with Leon and Laura and we had a great evening catching up on all the events since we last saw them in December of last year. 

On Saturday we were up before dawn and we met Leon and Laura at the Fiesta grounds at 6 am. Each day a dozen or so balloons take off  in what is called the Dawn Patrol before the sun comes up to let the other balloons see how the winds will take them during the mass ascension at 7 am. We were able to grab a few fresh mini donuts and hot chocolate before the mass ascension. Once the balloons start taking off it is just over whelming. Over 500 balloons taking off in waves that for almost two hours. They allow you to walk among the launching balloons so you have to be alert but it is all very well organized and it goes off without a hitch. I took over 200 pictures the first morning alone. I will only put a few below but if you Google Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Pictures, you can see what it is like. Then that evening all the balloons return to the launch area and they inflate but do not take off but glow as you walk among them. The winds were too strong the first evening so only a few balloons inflated. But we were treated to spectacular fireworks show. 

On Sunday the winds were too strong for launch so we were unable to see them in a mass ascension again. This gave Leon and Laura time to repair the flat tires on their bikes. Here in the Albuquerque area they have these small thorns that are like sand burrs on steroids. They call then Goat Heads. They seem to be everywhere and they stick to your shoes, and puncture bike tires. The locals use a slime that they inject into heavier than normal bike tires to keep from having flats. Here in the RV Park we saw a lot of people put booties on their dogs while walking them. 

We went over to the launch area Sunday night and as you can see below took a couple of pictures that you can guess what we were thinking. The winds died down to near calm and we were treated to a fantastic show of glowing balloons. As I said before you can walk right among the balloons as they inflate. It was almost impossible to take it all in. Again I took hundreds of pictures and I will post a few below. If you would like to see more search Albuquerque Balloon Festival Balloon Glow.  

On Monday Leon and I played golf at the Sandia Resort. Sort of hard to concentrate on golf with hundreds of balloons flying over. After golf the Hoots headed off to Santa Fe. That evening we were treated to a Mexican buffet with entertainment provided by a Mariachi band in the Winnebago tent.  

For Tuesday mornings launch I climbed on top of the RV and watched the balloons come over the RV Park. This created a whole new perspective Again I will post a few pictures starting with the dawn patrol. Near the end of the day we even had balloons landing in the Park right outside our window. After the morning launch our tour group boarded buses and we drove back to Santa Fe for the day. Since we knew we would be coming back to Santa Fe we did not take in some of the sites that we knew we would see with the group. We first toured the Cathedral, then the Loretta Chapel with a spiral staircase that to this day architects do not know how it stands with no support. It is said that St Joseph answered the prayers of the nuns of the church and he built it disguised as a poor carpenter.
We then were treated to another fantastic lunch at the La Fonda Hotel. After lunch we again met up with Leon and Laura for a few hours of site seeing and shopping.

There was another launch on Wednesday morning so I went over early and watched from the hill at one end of the field. That evening we were treated to a BBQ buffet from Rudy's BBQ and great music by a Texas Swing Band with lead singer Syd Masters. Check out his song Cooking Bacon in the Nude on Youtube. 

Thursday was Special Shapes Day so we went over to the launch area early and saw many special shapes balloons we had not seen before. I have posted a few pictures below. We then took a tour of the Balloon Museum. The evening Special Shapes Glow was limited because of high winds and scattered showers so we decided to just stay in since we will be leaving in the morning. But we were treated to another fireworks show out the front window of the RV.

The Balloon Fiesta exceeded our expectations and if you ever have the opportunity to attend it you should. The Winnebago Outdoor Adventures tour group was a lot of fun. We had great leaders and met a lot of nice people. 

We will now head west back to Phoenix.