Life at an RV Resort

Our usual full-time RV lifestyle is filled with camping at state parks, exploring small towns we have never been to before, hiking in beautiful places, kayaking on new lakes . . .  So staying in a resort in the middle of the Rio Grand Valley surrounded by city is very unusual for us. We've been here many times over the last 30 years, visiting Denisa's Mother at her winter home. So we've seen most of the local landmarks and visited the highlights before. For that reason, we'll spend most of our time inside the park while we are here. This is the view riding our bikes down our street. Many of the units are permanent homes with carports attached, as most of our neighbors spend 6-12 months here in the park.

Each week there is list of activities and classes to attend. For instance, on Monday we went to exercise class at 8:00 a.m. We went home for breakfast, then to line dancing for two hours starting at 9:30. Denisa goes directly to Zumba exercise class, then to play pickleball. After playing pickle for a couple hours, we limped back to the motor home. We then met Denisa's Mother for dinner at the rec hall. Each Monday evening they serve a full meal for $6.50. We enjoyed stuffed pork tenderloin, sweet potatoes, cole slaw, green beans, and a hot roll. So our days at the resort are usually full with fun things to do.

Every day brings different activities. Since this is our third year, we have learned which things interest us the most. We also have found that a one-month stay just isn't long enough for some activities. As much as Denisa enjoyed dancing with the clogging class, she knew she would never get those fancy steps mastered with two classes each week for just four weeks. Likewise, Mark still has his first project in wood-carving--still unfinished after three seasons here.

So we find some things are better suited for people staying for the entire 6-month season, rather than short-timers like us. If people can't find anything to do, they are obviously not trying. Besides the activities we have already mentioned one could go to quilting, bingo, choir, swedish weaving, yoga, birding, encaustic, bridge, table tennis, wood carving, softball, swimnastaics, golf, stained glass, bowling, pool, darts, rock club, Spanish, biking, ceramics, radio-controlled club, shuffle board, computer club, paper quilling, wood burning, cross stitch, painting, needlepoint, scrapbooking, every card game ever invented, and kitchen band. Just in case you aren't familiar with kitchen band, it's when a group of people with a good sense of humor bring various kitchen gadgets and make "music" with them. They usually perform at area nursing homes and veterans centers. But we snapped this picture of the kitchen band performance at the tree-trimming party, with Denisa's Mother on the front row. Yes, they are wearing red noses for the Rudolph song.

This is the longest amount of time we have spent in one campground, but by resort standards we are still short-timers. We enjoy seeing the same people we met here a year ago, and it's nice for people to welcome us "home." We aren't ready to sit in one spot so long just enjoying "activities" when there's a lot of this beautiful country to see. But for this month, we're enjoying parking our tires in one spot and enjoying resort time.