Tearful Goodbye to Family

We spent much of Thursday getting everything ready for Friday’s departure.  Somehow, we did get away by 11:30 a.m. after many hugs and tears.  Bubba and Skruffy gave Aunt Sandy and Uncle Arny a “We are going to miss you…” card Thursday night.  Says something like, “Counting the days till we see you again…”, and when you open it, “…there are too many freakin days”.  Had a picture of a squirrel or raccoon on the cover.  That, of course, got the tears flowing just a bit.  One of those missed picture opportunities was when Bubba runs out of the motorhome right before we are ready to pull out of the backyard and refused to get in until Arny picked him up and took him to the doorway.  After a big hug and kiss for mom, hug for dad, another hug and kiss for mom (after getting the car hooked up and everything pointed in the right direction…), and off we went.  Six months, with a few short excursions, and our visit is over.  We will be back in ten months….which helps.

So here we are stuck between other RV’s which seem to be long-term campers of some sort, at Country Living Mobilehome & RV, in Madera California.  Madera is, how do you say it nicely, well….I guess there is no nice way to say it.  In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s it was a lumber town.  A long water flume carried lumber from the mountains to Madera for shipping by train.  Today Madera has a population of over 60,000, with over 75% being Hispanic.  Yet Madera is represented in the State Legislature by a Republican Senator, Republican Assemblyman, and in Washington DC, a Republican member of the House. It is surrounded by farm land, as shown in the pictures below.

    

Currently with an unemployment rate of 14%, Madera’s long term outlook is good with job growth of nearly 25% over then next ten years.  Geographically, it is near the exact center of the State of California.  One thing that might be driving those figures is the high speed rail coming through the area.

View Going to Phoenix in a larger map

This map I published over a week ago does not have us stopping in Madera.  We were going to stay at a COE park east of US 99, but when I saw that it was going to be 22 miles from 99, and 22 miles back, I just figured it wasn’t worth it.  So here we are, but we will gone by mid-morning.