Almost there
The last 24 hours have been eventful, to say the least.
On Tuesday afternoon, Amy and Greg took a tour of Taliesin West, the winter home of Frank Lloyd Wright. The audio tour was a bit boring, though they had some audio clips of Frank Lloyd Wright himself describing his architecture. One interesting highlight was that the Garden Room bears an uncanny resemblance to Canlis Restaurant in Seattle. It turns out this is not a coincidence: the architect who designed Canlis was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The audio tour uses your own mobile device and headphones. Greg lost his earbuds in the Lyft ride, but thankfully the driver noticed and dropped them off late in the afternoon.
That evening, we went out to dinner with Amy’s parents to YC’s, their favorite Mongolian Grill restaurant. Amy’s father had been feeling particularly tired during our visit. He was worse at dinner time, so the consensus was to take him to the emergency room. However, the hospital with his cardiologist is on the west side of Phoenix, so Amy’s sister Karen came to drive Amy’s parents, while Amy and Greg drove the RV. The ER was very crowded; there were few empty seats in the waiting room. Amy, Greg and Karen stuck around until about 10, then Amy and Greg went to sleep in the RV, parked in the hospital parking lot!
The doctor finally evaluated Amy’s father around 2am and determined that he had pneumonia plus longer-term health issues that require attention once he has recovered from pneumonia and returned home. (Not surprising for someone who has reached the age of 88). Naturally, Amy’s mother barely slept, so she went home in the morning. Amy and Greg walked over to visit her father in the morning, and he had made some improvement and was transferred from the ER to a regular hospital room later in the day.
Confident that Amy’s father was improving, we left for the RV tour meetup at Potrero County Park, a nice municipal park in the town of Potrero, California. Around 5pm there was a meeting for the RV tour, where we met Wayne, the wagon master. Wayne explained some rules like: no discussing politics or religion - a relief! He also gave us some information about the first few days. There were some laughs when Wayne inadvertently said we should plan to have about US $1000 in tips per couple, when he meant MEX$ 1000 (about US $50). We drew slips for position, and we are 5 of 12 in the caravan.
We also chatted with several other participants: the tour seems to be mostly Canadians and mostly motorhomes. The later is especially unusual since motorhomes are only about 10% of the total RV market; most RVs are towable trailers.
Tomorrow’s “big excursion” is that we’re walking across the border to Tecate to get Mexican visas. Unfortunately, we’re not visiting the brewery, but the tour starts on Friday!