I’m a little frustrated with my laptop right now. I had written about half of today’s post when suddenly a window popped up asking if I wanted to leave the page. The next thing I knew, I was back at the WordPress dashboard and my draft was gone. Oh well, I just have to start over.

I haven’t posted dinner photos for a while. Donna still feeds me like a king. Tuesday was wet and blustery, so Donna cooked indoors. She prepared pan-fried pork tenderloin medallions with a dijon mustard-butter sauce on the induction cooktop.

Pork tenderloin medallions in a Lodge cast iron skillet on the induction cooktop

She served it with steamed broccolini and baked sweet potato.

Meal fit for a king

It rained heavily at times overnight on Tuesday. The last of the showers passed through Mission Bay around 8am Wednesday morning. Donna drove Shauna’s car to the medical center – she had a 9am appointment for blood work. Afterwards she stopped and stocked up at Trader Joe’s.

When she returned, it was my turn to head out. I had an 11am appointment for follow up with Dr. Ryan. As expected, he upped my dosage of Lisinopril to 40mg/day to control my blood pressure.

On the way home, I stopped at Subway® sandwich shop. They had a special – I bought two six-inch subs for two dollars each. I brought them home and Donna and I enjoyed them for lunch. It’s not all gourmet meals at chez Koop. Lunch for two for four bucks is hard to beat though, right?

I put a lot of time into our plans for the first quarter of 2015. We’ll be back here in early April through early May for Shauna’s graduation from Cal Western School of Law. Between now and then, we’ll spend time in the desert.

Our plan is to leave here on Saturday, December 27th. We’ll spend two nights boondocking near the Imperial Dunes area. It’ll be a nice change of pace to get away from civilization where we can listen to the coyotes and see countless stars in the sky at night.

We’ll arrive at Hidden Shores Village on the 29th. Hidden Shores is on the Arizona side of the Colorado River, north of Yuma near the Imperial Dam. When I was a kid, it was known as Imperial Oasis. We plan to spend a week there and join Bruce and Debbie Bednarski for a New Year’s Eve celebration.

From there, I’ve booked a week at the Casa Grande RV Resort. I want to have our coach serviced at Speedco® while we’re there. Then we’ll move on to Mesa, Arizona.

Finding a place in Mesa turned into a challenge. There are a lot of happenings in the greater Phoenix area over the next few months – the Superbowl, Barrett-Jackson auction, major league baseball spring training (Cactus League) and of course, the Phoenix Open golf tournament.

This schedule of events has almost every RV park booked full. It’s been a logistical nightmare. After many phone calls and time spent looking at options on the web, I found a place in Mesa called Orangewood Shadows that can accommodate us for two months. Donna has book signings and a speaking engagement scheduled in Phoenix in late January, so we needed to be there. I still have time open between our departure from Mesa and our return to San Diego. We’ll wait and see what we feel like doing in March when the time comes. Places should be opening up by then. We might want to spend some time in the Tucson area.

Last evening, one of our neighbors, Joel, organized a potluck dinner at his site. More than half a dozen couples attended, mostly younger (under 60) full-timers. We had a happy hour (more like three hours) with lots of food. We enjoyed socializing with like-minded folks and it was a nice change of pace. With only nine days left before we head out, we wish we would have met some of the people earlier.

Fire pit, cocktails and lots of food and conversation

At some point over the next few days, I need to clean out the trailer and begin re-organizing it for travel. The road beckons and I’m getting excited to find new places, new friends and new adventures.