Travel to Mesa, AZ

We left Puerto Penasco on Friday, 2/24 and drove to Mesa, AZ.  Along the way we saw the usual (Bailey, remember, Grandma likes cactus!!).

This was at the border crossing.  I think the bird might have been planted there - looking for undocumented individuals attempting to come into the US!!

We got to the town of Ajo around lunch time.

And were hungry so we stopped at Estrellas again for burgers.

Very busy today and service was slow.  Only have one server and then one or two back in the kitchen.  But the food was excellent again.

We stopped for gas (actually diesel - $2.91 per gallon) and saw this wild boar crossing the road!

We got back on the road and made it to Mesa around 4:30.  A security guy met us at the office and directed us to our site.  Glad he was along because he helped me back into our site.

We met up with friends, Ray and Karen Cowan, who are here for the winter.  In the summer they are in New Hampshire.  Last summer they took us around New England for a couple of weeks - we had a great time.
They took us to Fountain Hills, about 20 miles north of Phoenix.  Nice town.  This horse was particularly interesting.

You name it - it was probably there somewhere!

Just in front of Judy was a faucet!

We drove around the town - quite upscale.  There was also a fountain but it was not in operation due to the winds.

We also drove around Mesa's main street - numerous statues on the street corners.

One corner had statues of a pitcher, a batter, and a catcher.  Unfortunately we didn't get a picture.

On Tuesday morning, Ray and Karen come over to our RV Park for some square dancing.  Ray and Karen are front and center.  Fun to watch.

After dancing, we went out to lunch for some Mexican cuisine.  Very good.

Wednesday afternoon we drove over to Denise and Joe Farmer's house in Chandler. Denise is the daughter of Russ and Elvira Diefenbach who are friends of ours in New Jersey.  We had pizza for supper and then Judy wound up helping Asiah build a helicopter with tinker toys.

On Thursday morning, Ray and Karen picked us up and we drove over the Arts Center in Mesa for a free concert outdoors.  We got there in plenty of time and got some good shady seats.

 As the crowd gathered, we noticed several 'Red Hat' ladies.

The entertainment consisted of 3 country singers and a drummer.  They were excellent.  The fiddle player did a great job of entertaining us with his antics!

 He would come into the audience and play.

He would also go behind a curtain, and, then, while the rest of the group was playing, he would come out with a plastic horse around his waist and pretend he was riding, riding a bronco, etc.  He had other get ups as well.  Unforunately, no pictures.

After killing some time at Camping World and visiting an RV dealer to look at a couple of RV's, we went for pizza at this popular place.

While eating, you listen to this man play this organ.  Almost 6,000 pipes!!  This is the largest console type organ ever designed by Wurlitzer and largest in the world.

There are four artists that play.  Charlie Balogh (below) is from Trenton, NJ, and is the primary performer.  He can play almost any tune and boasts that he has played "Phantom of the Opera" over 20,000 times!

Even had cats that danced in tune to the music!

Sorry the pictures aren't brighter, but the lighting wasn't conducive to taking pictures.

After pizza, and after desert of gellato, we said our goodbyes with Ray and Karen and got ready to leave for Gallup, NM on Friday.