Here Comes Strider:

We are now back in Tucson and had a great time at the Coyote Classic All Breed Dog Show. Strider, our handsome boy took Winners Dog and a four point major to finish his title “Champion” on November 18, 2007

This was a long journey filled with fun, excitement and pride. Strider’s show journey started in Tucson, Buckeye and Scottsdale, AZ in 2006. He has since shown in Indiana, South Carolina, Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, and (more…)

Travels ended, home purchased and No Place to Go!

Well we bought that dream log home on 5.5 acres in the Ozark Mountain Forest, surrounded by Oak Trees and less than a mile from Beaver Lake. Our requirements were parking for the motor home, flat space for training the dogs and a fenced yard. This home had none! The builder agreed, as part of the deal to create a flat training area, fence in about an acre, and installed utilities for the motor home. Now we had our dream home. Yes Virginia this is retirement!

The move went well; moving in all our things was exciting and actually went fast! We were completely moved in by mid-July and felt quite at home in a small community filled with really nice people. The dogs now have over an acre fenced in to run, occasionally visited by deer on the other side of the fence or a playful squirrel dropping an acorn or maybe it’s a Squirrel Bomb, at the dogs. Both equally set them off and (more…)

A lot has happened while we have been in Eureka Springs. We looked at houses for days and days. On May 9, we had just finished looking at one that we were getting ready to put an offer on when we decided to look at “just one more”. The “just one more” home was a very nice log home and brand new, but didn’t have any place for the motor home or a flat place for the dogs to run so we ruled it out. Just as we were leaving it, a guy drove up and identified himself as the house builder. After asking what we thought of the house and hearing that it wouldn’t work for us, he said he had another new log home that was smaller and on a much flatter lot. We went with him to take a look at it and (more…)

We are in Eureka Springs and have been since Sunday April 22. We have been very busy every day looking at houses in Eureka Springs area. What we do is take one day and go drive ourselves around to look at houses we find on the internet and then based on where they are and what they look like, we call an agent and have them show it to us.

We looked at (with the agent) several houses. At first we thought one of them had promise. We went back to (more…)

We’ve been in Arkansas for about 2 weeks now. New Mexico was great. We enjoyed our time there and found an area that we liked in the East Mountains. Very expensive and very cold in the wintertime so that gave the area a couple of black marks in our book. We stayed at a nice KOA in Albuquerque and had all the conveniences and met some really nice people. BJ said that you know you’ve been in an RV park too long when you know the other campers by their first names. (Mike knew a bunch of folks in the Phoenix park we stayed in for a month.) I say you’ve been in a park too long when you know which washer and dryer in the laundry work better than the others. I knew the KOA laundry better than I would’ve liked.

The trip here from New Mexico was a little hairy when we got into Texas and Oklahoma (more…)

I hope you’ve noticed the changes to the greydayz.com home page. Our son, Brandon (BJ) designed a map to track our travels, just one click and you can trace our travel and see where we are today. On the home page it’s a box along the left side, Where in the World, with a summary below of our travels. It is a really great tool; we hope you enjoy it too! Thanks BJ!

Sunday we visited some newly made friends, Ron and Barbara from Tijeras, see Chapter 2. They invited us to their home to visit, and to bring the dogs so they could run and play on their 11 fenced acres. (more…)

We’re moving closer to our goal of finding the perfect community. We left Scottsdale / Fountain Hills, AZ March 16th for Albuquerque, NM.

On the way we stopped in Payson, not only is the drive great, the town is the classic small mountain village. The drive from Payson to Holbrook then on to I-40 is an adventure, a scenic tree lined drive, dotted with signs alerting you to ELK and fun to drive with hills and turns. I also discovered Nancy is not comfortable as I pointed out scenery along the drive just because we are 60 feet long! (more…)

Remember, if you’re as old as we are, the movie The Longest Trailer, (Desi Arnez / Lucille Ball). In the movie Nicky and Stacy bought a trailer, a car because theirs was not capable for towing, then the learning experience of driving the car/trailer and the journey across the country began with one disaster after another.

To begin our journey and support our dog show activity we purchased a new mini van. This was done after checking and determining that this particular van could be towed on a Dolly. After the purchase and returning to purchase the Dolly we learned that it was not towable because of the 17″ tires. (more…)

Well..this is it…after months of telling everyone that we wanted to move out of Tucson, we are finally going to do it! Mike has been retired from Raytheon since September 2006 and our home has finally sold..after being on the market for an agonizing 6 months. It wouldn’t have been our first choice to move at this time of the year, but it is what it is…so it looks like we are going to have to say good bye to all of our friends and fellow dog folks…which is going to be very hard. We have made some wonderful friends through the dog community. The camaraderie that I have experience over the last 5 years has been indescribable and the support that all of my friends showed to me when I was at my lowest having to defend myself and my dogs has not been forgotten. We have also been lucky enough to have remained close to many of our former co-workers. The several times a year get togethers with them will be missed. These relationships are what we regret leaving the most. What we regret the least are the incredibly long hot summers and the valley fever that has plagued our dogs. (more…)

Strider’s next time in the ring was in January at the Sahuaro State show. He showed his gangly puppy side again, but also couldn’t get past the fact that it was 19 degrees! In Phoenix! It was obvious that he’d never been exposed to cold like this before and he couldn’t gait, stack or hold still. His teeth were chattering and his legs were shaking, so we just put him back into the warm car and headed for home and chalked the whole thing up to experience. (more…)