Milly and I have fallen in love with a small Del Webb community nestled in the foothills east of Tucson, Arizona. We have purchased a new home there and will be moving to Arizona as soon as we sell our Eastman home. We will be returning to New Hampshire the first week of February to prepare our home for sale. 

If you are surprised by this, so are we. We never thought of moving to this area of the country. We came here to experience “big time” Pickleball and contemplate the possibility of wintering here in an RV. After visiting several homes of friends in the area, we started to evaluate living here  full time. 

Our new home has beautiful mountain views in all directions. We couldn’t let this opportunity go. It is located in Del Webb Rancho Del Lago Active Adult Community in Vail, AZ.We purchased a recently completed “Bisbee” model home (1880 Sq Ft, 2 Bed, Den) that borders the amenity complex that includes 2 pools, 2 tennis courts and 2 pickleball courts. The community will consist of 520 homes when fully built out. There are currently about 150 homes built. Vail is 20 miles east of Tucson in the foothills of the Rincon Mountains.

We are very thankful for over ten over ten exciting, pleasant and heavenly years at Eastman. It is a wonderful place to live. We will miss Eastman and New England but are looking forward to this new adventure in our lives.

Our financial performance indicators suggested that we might consider downsizing our Eastman house. We thought we might buy a condo at Eastman. On our winter trip, we planned to visit places that we felt might be good for us as alternatives. In South Carolina, we liked The Haven near Hilton Head and Del Webb Charleston. Both were smaller active adult communities. We planned on visiting some Florida communities on our way back to look at the South Carolina again. We discovered that real estate taxes and other expenses were lower in these other locations.  For example, the Del Webb Vail, Az homes have Solar Panels installed on the roof which guarantees that the average monthly utility bills for gas and electric will be less that $75.

Milly and I spent many hours during this trip discussing the pros and cons moving to a new location. The thought of moving to Arizona was even more mind boggling.  We have children on both coasts but our families both are based in New England.

In our new location, we can walk to most activities in which we will regularly participate. Our new Catholic Church community (St Rita in the Desert) is only a 5 minute drive. It is very active and a good spiritual community. We have been attending some daily and weekly services there since being in Tucson. The soon to be built grocery store will be a similar distance.  There is a County Park (Colossal Cave Mountain Park) 5 minutes from house. See Pictures of our visit there yesterday below.

While looking at Del Webb at Rancho De Lago, their pickleball players recruited us. We were invited into their homes, out to diner and to play numerous times. We attended a community brunch where we found everyone friendly and accepting of easteners. The pickleball players wanted us to help raise the level of their play. They just created a Pickleball Club. They gave us a Club Jersey as we left to go back to NH.

We have also taken some pictures of our new home and the views from it to give you an idea of what we are moving into. The Del Webb website provides pictures and decriptions of the community.

Milly and Fred entered 4 events each in the 5 day Tucson Senior Olympics. Pickleball was held at Voyager RV Resort where we stayed for the month of January. Voyager taped one of their Tennis Courts to add 4 Pickleball Courts to the 7 that they have normally. With eleven courts and their excellent organization, the matches went off without a lot of wait time. There were manny, many matches to play!

Fred gets pumped up,

Wins Singles Gold Medal Match but gets Silver Medal age 70-74

In the first event on day 1, Fred lost his first match to Bob Helvie from St Georges, Utah & Voyager, in a fairly close match. Fred proceeded to win the losers bracket and faced Bob Helvie in the Gold Medal Match. It was quite a thrill to have your name called out of the loud spreaker system, “Bob Helvie Versus Fred Dunfey in Gold Medal Match on Court xx”, where the court had spectator seating and where linesman call each line. Milly got the word via speaker system since she was playing a womens doubles match. Fred soundly defeated Bob Helvie 11-3, 11-4 to force a playoff round. Bob told me that he was going to raise his game and he did. I lost the playoff round 15-6. Bob was awarded the Gold and I accepted the Silver, feeling every bit the winner even in defeat!

Tough Arizona Tournament Lessons

Milly won the Women’s Doubles Silver Medal in a 3 team round robin in her age bracket. She faced outstanding teams (4.5 players). Milly says some medals are unearned.

Milly and Fred went deep into the skill 3.5 level Mixed Doubles. We started playing at 8 Am and finished at 3:30 PM with little breaks between  matches. We lost our final match after Fred missed a put away shot on a match point for us. If we had won and won our next match, we would have been in the medal rounds. Just as well, we were finished physically.

Milly went deep into the women’s singles 60-64 age. She lost to both the Silver Medal winner and the Bronze Medal winner. She found the competition very tough. There were also a lot of players entered that were all good.

Milly and Fred both took IEBPROFEN and applied ben gay frequently to get through these events. We decided that trying to play in 4 events was too much. We needed to pick our events spaced out to give our bodies some relief.

Milly couldn’t swim after the tourney because her legs had seized up (Hamstring strain?)  .

We saw the nations best play in the upper skill level matches. We learned how the short game is played by watching the best play each other.

Interesting, we met several players from NH who came to Arizona to play Pickleball in the Winter.  Fred also met a man, Bob Ward, that he worked with 20 years ago. We used to play Tennis after work. He now lives and works from his home in Tucson.

To see Tournament Results, click  link at left.

Here are some Pictures taken of Milly and Fred during the tournament play:

We travelled across New Mexico from Las Cruces, NM near El Paso, TX to arrive in Tucson on Tuesday December 13th for a week stay at Voyager RV Resort before flying to San Francisco for XMAS.

The trip across New Mexico was rainy. When we arrived at Voyager, we had to put up in the rain. Heavy Rain in desert areas has no where to go and tends to puddle. This meant we got our shoes wet right away!

The week was cool in the mornings. There tended to be a strong wind blowing.

The Voyager RV Resort was named best RV park in the country for several years. It is by far the best RV place we have ever stayed. The amenities match up with what we saw at Sun City and the grounds are maintained very well.

We visited fellow Eastman Tennis and Pickleball players Mark Conner and Sharon Frank at their beautiful second home in Green Valley, AZ. We also had dinner with Milly’s nephew Arthur in Tucson.

Priscilla and Bill Scott invited us to dinner at their home in the Cove at Voyager. Priscilla was Milly’s doubles partner at National Senior Games 2 years ago. The Cove is an upscale home owners community associated with the Voyager resort. The RV resort has 3 sections, The Cove, The Bay for manufactured homes and the section for park model homes  as well as their RV tenants.

Fred has played water volleyball. We watched the Patriots/Denver Game in the large Bar Area of the Restaurant with tons of local seniors. We played Bocce Ball but haven’t played on their Tennis Courts as yet. Two of the 3 Tennis courts have artificial turf filled with sand.

We stored our camper in a local RV Storage facility on the 20th and took a Southwest Flight from Tucson to San Fransisco to be with our daughter Kim’s family for Christmas. Fred went to Kim’s doctor to look at his feet. He was informed that he had Morton’s Neuroma and needed to wear special shoe inserts to lift up his Metarsals.

Voyager Pickleball

The seven Pickleball courts start getting used at 7 AM and are busy until noon. Additional play starts later in the afternoon. Milly and Fred played Pickleball for many days in our first week.  It has been competitive play. At certain times, the advanced players were assigned to 2 courts with beginners and intermediate players assigned different courts. Fred used the heated outdoor pool to get limbered up before playing. He has been hampered by sore feet and a slight hamstring issue. We are learning to play in the wind.

Big Bend Ranch State Park, TX to Tucson, AZ 12/12 -12/13/11

We left Terlingua, Tx and headed north along the Rio Grande to Presidio. The views along this trip thru Big Bend Ranch State Park were fabulous. We then visited Fort Davis, which the National Park Service says is the most reconstructed southest country fort. We discoverd there was no wall or fence around it. They response to our surprise was the indians were gurilla fighters and wouldn’t have attacked a 200 man garrison. It seems that none of the forts in the southwest had walls around them. After Fort Davis, we proceeded to Las Cruces for the night before final leg to Tucson.

Big Bend National Park – 12/11/11

We arrived late on Dec 10th at Big Bend  Resort Campground in Terlingua, Tx right outside Big Ben National Park.

The next morning we started early in the morning on an all day excursion to all areas of the park accessible without going on dirt roads for which the park recommends high clearance vehicles. We did trail walks at The Santa Elena Canyon and the Boquillas Canyon on opposite sides of the park. The views from both trails were great.

Sonora Caves 12/10/11

We left San Anonio, Tx and travelled to a campground at Sonora Caves on 12/9/11.  We immediately saw many deer through out the campground. At 5 pm, we discovered why. There was a feed bucket contraption hung about 15 feet off the ground at the end of the parking lot. Each day at 5 pm sharp, a mechanism spread the feed around the ground.

 The tour of the caves took about an hour and a half. It was spectacular!

San Antoni0 12/07 – 12/09/11

We selected to stay at Mission RV Resort near downtown San Antonio based on what we saw on their Website. the website was totally misleading. The place was nothing as depicted. We would never recommend this place to anyone for a temporary stay.

San Antonio was one of the best cities we have visited.

The Alamo

The Alamo was an great. We found it very informative with beautiful layout and peaceful surroundings in the middle of a city.

San Antonio Riverwalk

The San Antonio Riverwalk is not to be missed on any visit there.  The walk around the basic downtown section took about an hour and a half. It was outstanding in scope, beauty and serenity. We had a snack at dusk before taking a boat ride along the Riverwalk to see the Xmas lights along along the channels.

San Jose Mission

As we left San Santonio on 12/09, we stopped at the San Jose Mission. It was an excellent stop.

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Houston 12/05 – 12/07

Pickleball in Downtown Houston 12/07

We met Jim Bauser, Houston area Pickleball Ambassador,  at the Foude Recreation Center to join their group of about 25 players there for a coule of hours of Pickleball. They normally set up 4 courts for play but can set up 8 courts as needed. We met Jim and he Wife Karen at Baton Rouge Tournament. Karen played as Milly’s doubles partner.

Space Center Houston 12/06

We stayed in a campground about 20 miles on the east side of Houston. We visited the Johnson Space Center to complete our tour of both sapce centers. We went to Kennedy 3 years ago.

After we left Panama City, we stopped in New Orleans for the night at a Wamart. We had supper in the French Quarter. We discovered we both liked Fried Aligator.

We arrived at Brec Equestrian Center Campground right outside LSU campus in Baton Rouge on Thursday December 1st figuring we had time to visit a plantation or two before playing in LSSG Tournament on Saturday and Sunday. Wrong!

We no sooner setup the camper when a mower through up a  rock or some other projectile that broke a window in our camper. We spent the better part of two days getting replacement arranged. A local glass company installed a temporary plexi glass window and sized a replacement tempored glass that will be shipped to Tucson and installed there later in our trip.

LSSG Pickleball Results – 1 Bronze & A Golden Silver

Milly played in womens doubles with Karen Bowser,a 74 year old Houston Woman,  in the 60-64 age bracket. They had a lot of fun. Click here to see Milly in action on YouTube!

Fred was partnered in mens doubles with Bob Huskey, a 61 year old Dentist from Alabama. Bob and Fred had met in Rochester National Senior games the past two years. Fred and Bob finished 3rd for the Bronze medal in a very competitive 60-64 year old bracket.  

Fred and Milly finished second in their mixed doubles 5 team pool to reach the semi-finals where they beat the first place team from the other pool. They lost in the finals 21-18 to the team that had beaten them earlier in pool play. They earned a silver medal but were awarded  gold medals for being the best out of state team.

Teams from 9 states completed in this tournament.

On Saturday evening, we were invited to join all the other out of the area players at a Cajun Restaurant that featured a live band and a huge dance floor. We were taught the Texas 2 step! We had a great time! We enjoyed grilled aligator for dinner.   

We were invited to play with the “Aging Cajuns” from Lafayette, LA on the Monday night following the tournament but it was raining when we arrived in the afternoon. We did stop in Houston to play with a group from the tournament.

Fred met with Joe Harkins to discuss the Spreadsheet software that Joe developed to schedule and run the tournament. This tournament has players play in pools where each team played 2 games to 11 min by 1 with every other team in their pool. The 1st two teams in each pool advanced to an elimination playoffs where matches were one game to 21 win by 1. Joe forwarded the spreadsheet software to Fred in hopes that they may be able to collaborate in the future.

We left Charleston, SC early in the morning on Monday November 27th with arrival at St Andrews State Park campground just before dusk. We were greeted by a grey heron perched on a tree branch guarding our assigned campsite. This park is on the end of an island across from Panama City. It was so beautiful there that we stayed a third night. There were several hiking trails in the swampy areas where birds of various species could be found. We didn’t see any alligators – it must have been too cool for them to show themselves. The beaches were windblown. You could just sit and watch the ocean waves while pondering about life. The pictures say it all.

We were surprised at  how cold it got at night and in the early morning. It hovered just above freezing.

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