By Bonnie and Bill Neely
After wonderful Christmas holidays with our Los Angeles family, we hugged sad goodbyes on New Year’s Eve morning. We had a long RV drive ahead. The Rose Bowl would be the next day in Pasadena, California, and as we were leaving Los Angeles we went to see the floats being constructed. We looked forward to the amazing floral creations each year on TV. We purchased tickets to go inside the large barn-looking buildings where hundreds of volunteers were frantically putting finishing touches on the floats. It was incredible to watch the intricate details that untrained people could achieve using only fresh natural flowers, seeds, and greenery. The floats were enormous, and we could not imagine how many millions of flowers had to be flown in from all over the world to achieve the beautiful designs, which would perish within a week. We had never seen the parade in person, but we, like most of the world, faithfully watched it on TV every New Year’s Day.
We wanted to return via a route we had not done in years, so we drove to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, near the California line. The lake was formed by Parker Dam on the Colorado River and provides the perfect place in this vast desert for water sports and all kinds of fun. We stopped early to avoid the holiday traffic and inebriated drivers celebrating New Year’s Eve. We parked near the lake and intended to splurge and buy tickets for the elaborate buffet at the best restaurant in town, which advertised a band and dancing. We almost never go out for this celebratory evening in our little hometown, so this sounded like fun until we saw the $100-per-person ticket price. No thanks!
We couldn’t pay that, so after walking around the pretty lake and exploring its island, we returned to cook our dinner in the RV. When we finished our meal, we went out to sit by the lake and watch the spectacular orange sunset in the western sky. A young man approached us and asked if we knew that the bridge nearby was the actual London Bridge, which had been purchased and moved to this state park. We did not and were so glad to learn this. We asked if walking across it is permitted.
He replied, “Yes, ma’am, but there is a much better way.”
We asked what he meant, and he pointed to his gondola tied beneath the bridge. “Let me serenade you on this beautiful New Year’s Eve, while I oar you around the lake and we go under the London Bridge.”
We jumped at this unusual and very romantic way to end the year. It seemed as if we were mixing the United States, Italy, and England, together as we floated along beside the Native American land of the Chemehuevi Indians of the Southern Paiute people. The moon came out brightly, and the singer’s voice, in a serenade, was indeed a memorable way to welcome the New Year while we very thankfully reminisced our happy holidays and serendipity finds, like this one, on RV travels through the years.
To learn the rest of this and many other exciting and hilarious tales, you can order my new book with 5 stars all over the Internet: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and YouTube: #RealVentures:DidWeReallyDoThat?! by Bonnie Burgess Neely. This makes the perfect gift for anyone, any age, whether a traveler or an armchair dreamer! My book is guaranteed to keep you laughing and sometimes gasping at our unplanned adventures during which my husband, Bill, drove mileage equivalent to the moon three times or around the Equator 25 time during 47 years of holiday RV travels. You’ll find my book with five stars all over the Internet, E-book, or Paperback. Enjoy! And Happy Holidays!
If You Go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ7ZSYTmUBw, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Bowl_Game, https://www.visitpasadena.com/, Lake Havasu City, Arizona, London Bridge, Chemehuevi Indians
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