Snowbird 102

Happy New Year!  In October of 2017 we pulled the trailer to Beaver Dam, Arizona for our second attempt at being snowbirds.  Taking the major lesson learned from our 2016 snowbird adventure, we knew we needed to go further south than Hurricane.  It was just too cold there in the winter and our trailer is too poorly insulated.

Why Beaver Dam?  Our first inquiries were in Mesquite, Nevada.   Two of the RV parks in Mesquite were glorified blacktop parking lots with hookups and the occasional tree.  And the one we were interested in wouldn’t take us because our trailer was more than 10 years old.  It’s official – we’re trailer trash!  So we turned to the Arizona Strip – just eight miles east.

Chief Sleep Easy RV Park in Beaver Dam was almost empty in September when we drove through. 

The parking was gravel with a few trees, and the parking spots looked really close together.  As we drove through, we selected several spots that we would ask about.  But when we met with the park manager we learned that they were almost completely full for the winter season.  Almost.  She had recently had a cancellation.  Site 32 was open if we wanted it.  We took it. 

By November the park was full, and the gravel drive strips came alive with trailers, carpets, bistro sets and plants, and of course, people.  Many of the residents knew one another from years past.  They welcomed us with open arms.  Paul joined right in with the guys drinking their afternoon beers, and even recruited a couple of them to repair our roof. 

Chief Sleep Easy hosts weekly activities and several potlucks during the season – all with the idea of helping the residents get to know one another.  And while there’s not much in Beaver Dam, Mesquite is only 8 miles west, and the Beaver Dam Wash offers dozens of trails to ride. 

Why is the park called Chief Sleep Easy?  Looking up from the clubhouse, you can see the Chief lying down, sleeping peacefully with the knowledge that his park is well cared for.  His head is at the right, nose protruding.  They say that when the thunder roars, the chief is snoring.

I have my planter boxes in front of the trailer, and a new bistro set graces the front entrance.  We are here for the winter.  Happy New Year! 

Snowbirding - A Review

We pulled the trailer home yesterday after our four-month stay in beautiful Hurricane.  It’s cleaned up and back in storage.  So what was snowbirding really like? 

Well, we were truly rookies.  If we had been experienced snowbirds, we would have brought a coordinated bistro set, a small gas grill, and a plant or two.  We would have also known that our trailer didn’t fit in the smaller driveways with the cutout, and would have missed the fun of vacuuming dust and mud every other day.  Now we know.

It was great not to have to shovel snow.  Yes, it did get cold in Hurricane but it never snowed.  It was also great to be so close to so many activities: Zion National Park, three state parks, and so many backroads that it would take years to explore them all.  It was also great to be able to run any time without worrying about falling on the ice or breathing the bad air.

Being in Hurricane felt like a four month vacation, and that’s just too long to be on vacation.  Every day we made a plan to go do something, because it just didn’t work sitting home in the trailer all day.  This was a good thing – we’ve seen a lot of beautiful country and done a lot of fun things.  But there were no projects to work on, and in such close quarters I didn’t feel comfortable taking time (and hogging the shared laptop) to write or scrapbook.  I even neglected my blog.  And this trip reminded us that three months in the trailer is pretty much our max.  We thought we could handle longer if we didn’t have a job, but having a job actually gave us some structure to our days.

We volunteered for VITA in St. George, and found ourselves doing far more instruction than production.  They needed Paul to be a site coordinator for an established site at the Red Rock Center for Independence, so that was our regular spot.  It was appointment only, and we only had six appointments each session for three preparers, so it was a much slower pace.  We were also asked to help a new preparer at the Deaf Center.   He was deaf, as were his clients, so we worked with him through an interpreter and helped him learn the program.  He’ll be able to do this on his own next year.  That was an amazing experience.  American Sign Language is so beautiful.  Learning it just may land on my bucket list.

What I really learned about myself is that my life is in Salt Lake City.  For better and for worse.  The air may be bad, the traffic may be bad, but our kids, our friends, our extended family, and our volunteer work are all in SLC.  I guess Dorothy had it right – there’s no place like home.

That said, we won’t rule out snowbirding again.  After all, now we’re experienced.

Snowbird 101

We did it!  We moved our trailer to Willow Wind RV Park in beautiful Hurricane, Utah, and are now starting our first stint as official snowbirds.  Our plan, once the holiday season is behind us, is to spend the first week of each month in SLC and the next three weeks of the month in Hurricane.  There’s so much to do here – fishing, golfing, sightseeing, and of course, pollution-free running!

Many years ago we had friends living in St. George (just south of Hurricane) who would always lament the arrival of the snowbirds.  “Blue Hairs,” they would call them, or “FOPs” (OP stands for “old people”). Now that we’re the snowbirds descending on the southern Utah town, I have two things to say.  1)  My hair is not blue, and 2) I.  Am.  Not.  Old.  Amazing how young 59 really is once you’re there.

Willow Wind caters to snowbirds.  They have activities throughout the week, and there are two gathering areas with large propane fireplaces where we’ve been able to meet our fellow residents.  When we investigated staying here last spring, we were told to get our reservations in before the first of July.  Really?  Yep.  I made our reservation at the end of June and paid for our first month, with a plan to arrive on December 15.  Plans change, of course, and the staff at Willow Wind were very accommodating.  Our spot was available for us to arrive nearly a month early.

So now that we’ve started our third week of snowbirding, we’ve learned a few things.

1.  While very nice in the afternoons, Hurricane gets very cold in the mornings.  One of our first purchases when we arrived was an electric space heater.

2.  We’re paying our “newbie” dues this season in one of the less-desirable sites.  If we come back next winter, we’ll know which sites to ask for.

3.  It is challenging maintaining two households.  While there are some things that I don’t mind having duplicates of – mostly food items that we’ll use anyway – there are a few things I’ve discovered just have to be hauled back and forth each time we make the trip back to Salt Lake.  So far, all the toiletries, the vitamins, the running gear, and the recipe box travel back and forth with me.

I signed up for my first 5K in Hurricane – to be held December 12.  Where else can you run a 5K in the morning and play bingo in the afternoon?

Do You Wanna Be a Snowbird?

Snowbird: Informal: a person who vacations in or moves to a warmer climate during cold weather.

After three years of spending summers away from home (campground hosting) and struggling with all the work that needed to be done around our home and our rental properties, AND after struggling with running in the bad air that plagues our valley during the winter months, my husband and I realized that we are spending the wrong season away from home.  So we are planning to spend next winter in a warmer climate.

We learned from several of the couples we've met in our camp hosting adventures that there are no paying jobs in warm climates in winter.  The best we could do would be to find a situation where working a certain number of hours a week would pay for our trailer spot.  We decided that we would choose to afford to pay a reasonable monthly rent for a spot and will not be seeking work.  One of the considerations as we select a location will be availability of an affordable trailer spot.

So – where to go?  We’re too far west to consider going to Florida, and after spending a week in Phoenix for Spring Training last month, we confirmed our decision not to winter in the Phoenix area.  Why not?  Too many people; too much traffic.  We reached out to two couples we wanted to visit while we were in the area.  Both invited to cook dinner for us in their homes.  Wow, we thought, sounds great.  Until we had to drive there during drive time.  I’ll never complain about Salt Lake traffic again!  But we’ve broken the code.  In Phoenix, it’s less stress for even the most kitchen-phobic of individuals to prepare food than to drive to a restaurant in drive time.  But I digress…where to go? 

In reality, we would like to stay less than a day’s drive away from family and friends, so we’re looking at Southern Utah, the little corner of Arizona that hosts the Virgin River Gorge, and the southern tip of Nevada.  We ruled out St. George for the “too-many-people-too-much-traffic” reason, although we expect to use St. George as the “big city” for shopping and entertainment.  We’ve narrowed our search to three towns:  Hurricane, Utah; Beaver Dam, Arizona; and Mesquite, Nevada.

Now – what to do?  One of the nice things about camp hosting is that there is a work to do.  We’ll want to choose a location where we can get involved in the community, perhaps volunteer, and take advantage of outdoor recreation.  My list includes training for a marathon, golfing, fishing, sightseeing, and continuing our work with the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program. 

It’s time to evaluate the three locations, looking for availability of an affordable spot and availability of the activities we are looking for.  We’ll look at each of the three towns and compare our wish list with what’s available.  This should help us come to a final decision.   Wish us luck!