Mesa, AZ

Well, we made it to Mesa, AZ. on Saturday, 2/9, and stayed at Tower Point RV Park again.  My cousin, Gary and his wife, Shirl, have a park model home here so it's nice to be close to them.

On Saturday the park had a parade which we watched.  Beautiful day but cool.

On Sunday we went to church that we have been going to in the past when we have stayed here in Mesa.  Big church with 4 pastors.

Interestingly, I noticed this parking spot in the parking lot.  Even though we are visitors, I don't think our truck would fit!!

After church we drove over to Chandler to visit with friends from NJ (Russ and Elvira) who are here visiting their daughter and family (Denise and Joe and Asahia and Sabrina) who live here.  Had a nice time, took the kids to a park so they could let off steam!!

We spent time with Gary and Shirl as well as Ray and Karen, friends of ours from New Hampshire that we met several years ago.  They have an RV in a park only a mile or two from us.

One day we all (Ray and Karen brought friends that they know from Oregon) drove over to Chandler, AZ to eat at the "The Perch" restaurant, and, yes, it's name is indicative of something - birds!  Fortunately, they are all in cages.  We ate outside because it was warm finally (for them anyway!).

After lunch we drove over to a place in Chandler called the Eddie Basha Collection which is one of the largest privately owned collections of contemporary Western American and Indian American Art in the world.  And it's all free!

An unbelievable number of different hand made baskets.

We spend a couple of hours here.  Beautiful artwork - many pictures and sculptures. 

If you would like to see more, here is the website: eddiebashacollection.com.
Would you want to drink this?

We really enjoyed our time at this museum.

The park shows movies on Wednesday nights (outdoors).  Free popcorn and pop!!  What could be bad about that!  The first Wednesday we saw a Canadian movie called "One Week" about a guy diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.  Very good.  It was cold that night - we had blankets and heavy coats.

The next Wednesday we saw "A Star is Born" which we had seen before, but decided to see it again.  Much warmer this night!

One afternoon the park provided hamburgers and everyone bought a side dish.  Good food was had by all.  After supper, Gary and I played bocce ball.  Had fun and only lost by one point!

One day we went out to lunch with Ray and Karen to a place called "Queen Creek Olive Mill.  Their specialty is olives of course.  25 acres of olive trees (7000 of them) dedicated to the production of extra virgin olive oil.  Good food.

On the way we saw a Mormon church.

One of the main reasons we have stayed in Mesa for two weeks was because of an Oregon State womens' basketball game at Arizona State U. in Tempe.

We came to watch Mikayla Pivec, granddaughter of Jim Pivec, who is a brother to Steve Pivec, Judy's sister (Pam's) husband.  Got all that???  Anyway, she is number 0 here.  She got us tickets so we sat in the second row behind her team.

We did not get another picture of her, but, after they got on the bus, we asked for her and she came out and met us.
There were other Pivec's (who do live here in the Phoenix area) at the game and here is our picture.

We had a great time getting together with everyone, and, as always, the time goes by too fast.

We are now in Tucson for 9 days.  Will post more later...