A DAY OF RECREATION, NEW FRIENDS, MUCH LAUGHTER – AND MONEY BACK.

Butcher Jones…

Many western place names have a colorful history, and when we turned into the parking area for the Butcher Jones trail, I immediately imagined some madman named Jones butchering his family, a hapless miner or lonesome padre when Arizona was still the wild west.  But, who knows, maybe the upstanding butcher of some small, nearby community was honored by the choice of trail name?  In any case, we were happy to be out on the trail, skirting Saguaro lake in the company of our friends Alex and Ellen. 

In their emailed invitation to join them for a hike and dinner, they said “You don't need to bring anything...and we mean that.”  We took them at their word, so jumped into the Jeep unencumbered by anything other than thoughts of a fun day stretching before us.  This is our big THANK YOU!

We picked up Alex and Ellen at their RV park on the fringe of civilization and headed to Saguaro Lake, formed by one of the many dams on the Salt River.  The sun was bright, the air was cool, and the trail was up and down – just enough effort to keep us warm.  Along the way, Odel’s cell phone bleated and he had a conversation with Jerry, working on our renovations.  Good news – it appears the renovations might be done as soon as the end of next week!

Back at our friends’ motorhome, we were joined by Susan and Scott, also fulltime RV’ers, with an unusual background: they lived for ten years on their sailboat, circumnavigating the globe!  When Susan talked about provisioning for their travels for months at a time – working from a 4 page, single spaced spreadsheet – my mind boggled!  They stashed food EVERYWHERE, my favorite being wine bottles stored in the unused space UNDER a bottom drawer.

Such a congenial group, so much laughter, a delicious dinner… it was a wonderful break from the planning, list-making, ordering and purchasing that has consumed us recently, and made us even more eager to get back into our rolling home. 

With the renovations moving along so quickly, a special trip to Costco was in order today.  Before moving out of Scoopy, we completely emptied the refrigerator and freezer.   RV freezers take forever to freeze unfrozen food; consequently, we decided to stock up while we are here in the loft, using the sub-zero household freezer to freeze our chops, roasts and steaks before moving back home.

While I was filling our cart, Odel wandered through the TV aisle to admire our recently purchased TV – and found a manufacturer’s rebate that went into effect 4 days after we made our purchase.  The exact same TV was now $90 cheaper!  A quick trip to the customer service desk confirmed that we could get $90 knocked off the price of the TV, with just one catch: we needed to bring in the receipt.  That seemed a little odd to me since I know Costco has a complete record of every purchase we have made but, what the heck…

After we unloaded our goods back at the loft, Odel headed back with the receipt, only to be told at the customer service counter that he had to take the receipt back to the same Costco where we got the TV!  Huh?  I’m sure we could have RETURNED the TV to any Costco, but even a supervisor insisted that we had to get the rebate credit from the same Costco that sold us the TV.  After a phone consultation and directions from me, off he went to the Thomas Road Costco. 

Jackpot!  At Thomas Road, original location of the TV purchase, customer service was confirmed that the other location should have handled the rebate, then handed over $90 cash to Odel.  Not a bad payoff for an hour’s worth of work.  :)