Front-Porch Family-Style Music

The Haining Family with parents Mike and Peggy Haining, James age 20, twins Ruth and Pearl age 19 and Grace age 16, played a wonderful hour-long concert for our church service in Emerald Cove today. The “Front Porch” music that was both inspirational and harmonious was hard to describe. Their literature calls the music “Family harmonies, Bluegrass instruments, Fiddle tunes, and Yodeling.” They sang traditional hymns and country gospel as well as songs written by the family as they played fiddles, guitar, auto harp, banjo, mandolin, harmonica, and brass fiddle.

Their choreography was amazing as they smoothly moved closer to the microphone to perform the solos, duets, trios, and quartets. You never knew who was going to going to play which instrument next since they each played several instruments.

I asked for permission to take photos and put them on my blog. They are hoping and praying for more dates for their concerts. If you would like to know if they could perform for your church or activity, you can go to www.HainingFamily.com/ or to info@hainingfamily.com.

General Patton Museum

Terry Hager and I were classmates for three and a half years in Hudsonville, Michigan. He wrote “Death on the Night Watch” and has had several articles in Escapees Magazine. Two of his articles are in my book, “More Chuckles and Chuckholes -More Confessions of Happy Campers.” Look for his article, "Picture This" to be published in the March/ April issue of Escapees Magazine.) The background in the photo is a 1930 trailer.

Terry Hager suggested that we meet and visit the General Patton Museum. Terry and Ruth traveled east and my husband Terry and I traveled west and met at the Chiriaco Summit Café exit 173 on Interstate 10. Training for the troops was done in this geographical area. Lunch was good and we had no problem conversing about our father and teacher’s participation WWII, our writing and RVing in general. The museum was very informative about this time in history.

I knew that they had rationing during WWII but didn’t know about recycling. The poster reads:

“UP HOUSEWIVES AND AT ‘EM”
“ PUT OUT YOUR PAPER- METAL- BONES.
THEY MAKE PLANES, GUNS, TANKS AND AMMUNITION.”

Boomerville

When we left Boomerville, a temporary town without electricity located 6 miles from Quartzsite on BLM land, there were 130 RVers, which had signed in as residents.

What did we do there? Every afternoon was Happy Hour at 4 pm where we joined the other RVers to meet each new arrival, get the news and next day activities from Pam and Steve and eat snacks.

Many of our activities centered on food such as the Pancake breakfasts, potlucks and chili cook-off. My contribution, the second pot from the right, was one of over 30 entries in the chili cook-off.

There was a morning walk to counteract all the food. Each evening there was a bonfire.

Seminars were held on such topics as solar power, boondocking 101, and RVing to the Maritime Provinces.

Many Boomers helped each other with technical RV questions. Terry helped Wendy and Vic with their questions about solar power in their rig.

The PACE theater, shown on side of the PACE RV, showed such topics as Travel to the Holy Land, Travel via Amtrak, Decorating for the Rose Bowl parade, and Traveling to the Panama Canal Zone.

The traditional Jeraldine contest had five “ladies” participating. One wife said that she saw a side of her husband that she had never seen before.

The auction for the Escapees CARE facility in Texas netted over $2500.

Tom took some bird’s-eye photos of Boomerville but Terry took several photos of Tom flying overhead. I took a view from the ground but no blog can show everything that happened. With so many active Escapee RVers, you will get many stories of fun. You ask the cost of this rally? Everything was free. Even the sunsets.

Quartzsite, AZ

Terry and I parked at Boomerville along with 130 other campers who were boondocking in the desert about six miles from Quartzsite, AZ. I’ll write more about Boomerville in the next blog since I have too many photos to include it with this blog.

I sold my “RV Chuckles. . .” and “More RV Chuckles. . .” books at the Author’s Fair at Paul’s Reader’s Oasis Bookstore. He was most gracious to the two to twelve authors who showed up to sell their books.

Paul Winer, the man in the stocking hat but no pants, is the owner. Paul prefers to wear no clothes but the mornings were too chilly. However he dressed in a tux, and then changed into a three-piece suit, jeans, vests, shirts and jackets on stage as he joked and sang at his sold out family style QIA concerts. Did I mention that he plays the piano? The keys bounced as he played the ragtime, boogie-woogie blues. Jaimie and I had a great time at the two and a half hour concert.

Terry and I also went to the "Big Tent" where we saw everything that you would want in an RV and some things like a twenty pan set that you would never fit into a RV kitchen.

Of course, a visit to Quartzsite isn’t complete without going to Celia’s Gardens. It has nature paths, and many cacti and semi-precious stones in a park that began as a tribute to Paul and Joanne Winer’s eight and a half year old daughter Celia but is now a quiet peaceful garden where many people have memorialized their friends and relatives.

Aren’t the sunsets spectacular in the desert? I love them.

Purple Ladies Tea

Little girls aren’t the only ones who like to dress up. Even great grandma’s dress up and have tea. The Purple Ladies of the River went to First Impressions in Lake Havasu City on January 11 and had fun trying on clothes and hats in the boutique and of course eating and drinking high tea.

Yuma Desert

We have been camped in the desert around Yuma, AZ since the end of Nov. except for the week we flew to Raleigh, N.C. We had fun with the Boomers near Mittry Lake as we ate Christmas and New Year dinners with them and visited at Happy Hour and the Z Circle.

The only bad thing is that I’ve been quite sick the last few weeks with coughing, congestion, fever around 100 degrees, night sweats and fatigue. Terry was very concerned about the fact that I didn’t get better so he made an appointment with a pulmonary specialist in Lake Havasu City. The doctor ordered a chest x-ray, and four vials of blood. The hour-long pulmonary tests were done in phone booth appearing apparatus that was connected by tubes to a computer. All tests were negative or normal. No, I don't have Valley Fever.

The best guess is that I have some kind of immune response to dust and the spray they do on vegetables to prevent weeds in the winter vegetable area of AZ. I’ve had similar response to concentrated cigarette smoke. The good part of this is that I’m not considered to be contagious.

Yes, we moved to the Colorado River area near Parker but hope to see the Boomers again at Quartzsite.

Christmas in Raleigh, North Carolina

Christmas in Raleigh during December 7-11 was so many good things. Starting from the bottom of the page it was 1. smiles, 2. hugs, 3. secrets, 4. cooking and baking, 5. food with friends and family, 6. fun with family, 7. dressing up, 8. creating pictures, and cards and paper chains, 9. Christmas music, and 10. opening gifts. We wish you all a Merry Christmas as you celebrate the birth of the babe in Bethlehem in your own way.

Terry and Darlene Miller