A Brief Indio Interlude

Hello again friends, welcome back to our story. Our last chapter concluded on Saturday, February 25th, when we traveled from San Diego to Indio, California and the Indian Waters RV Resort. Indian Waters, which used to be one of our membership parks, is now a privately owned RV park, but they still give discount rates to Western Horizons members. This year we can stay here for $11 a night, which is an absolute steal for the Coachella Valley in winter, “almost free” one might say.

Sunday, February 26th, had every promise of being a very nice desert winter day, temperatures in the low 80's and lots of sun. We decided that we were going to spend the afternoon at the Riverside Country International Date Festival, being held at the nearby fairgrounds in Indio. Despite it’s rather auspicious title, it is really just the Riverside County Fair. The name goes back to the time in the mid 1900's when Indio was truly the “Date Capital of the World” and date groves covered the desert landscape. They still grow a lot of dates in the far south valley, down by the Salton Sea, but it no where near the capital anymore. When we lived in Indio we used to go to the fair every year, but we hadn’t been to one since we sold the house in 2005 and went on the road. We just never seemed to be in Indio at the end of February anymore. Today was the last day of the fair, so if we were going to go it had to be today.

We left the RV park about noon and went to Cactus Jacks Restaurant for lunch. We were meeting our friends Bev and Jerry King, who have a house near Pomona, but also have an RV and an RV lot here in Indio. They are Monaco owners and we met them at a Monaco rally some years ago. They are also heavily involved with the Military Veteran’s Chapter and we have helped them with chapter fairs and parties for that Chapter. We had a very nice lunch with the Kings and also delivered a huge bouquet of paper flowers to Bev. She had asked Jackie to pick up a bunch in Algodones, Mexico when we were there because the Kings were having some sort of Mexican themed party at their RV resort next weekend. Jackie had bought the flowers and for the last month we have had this huge bunch of brightly colored flowers in the back of the coach.

After lunch we walked from Cactus Jacks over to the fairgrounds, which was just a block away. It was convenient to leave the car at the restaurant because fair parking is expensive. After standing in line for 20 minutes to get tickets and go through the screening, we got into the fair. Because of fear of gang activities and violence issues people going into the fair go through screening just like in the airport, everything out of your pockets, walk through the metal detector.
We spent the next couple hours walking around the fair and discovering that not much had changed in the six years since we had been to one. The most interesting part was the youth art building where there were big displays of artwork from school kids around the county. There are some pretty talented kids out there. After the fair we walked back to Jacks, got the car and returned to the RV park for the rest of the evening. We were pretty whipped from all the walking and the heat, it was over 80 degrees and the sun was really hot.

Monday, February 27th, we left the RV park after lunch and drove over to the Rancho Mirage area of the Coachella Valley, a few miles to the west of Indio. Our first stop was at a Supercuts shop. Both of us needed haircuts. Jackie, who has been growing her hair out for several years, decided she wanted a shorter hairdo again, so she had a lot of hair cut off. I just had about four inches or so cut off and still have a fairly long pony tail, still down below my shoulders. After our haircuts we made a quick Walmart stop and then did some caching in the Rancho Mirage area. As with the other day, our very first effort turned out to be a DNF, we just couldn’t find the cache. However, things improved after that and we were able to get ten new finds in less than two hours. We were also able to trade four travel bugs, trackable items, which is unusual when we are caching in urban areas. Usually the caches are too small for trackable items. After caching we headed back to the coach for cocktail hour.

While we were having cocktails our friends Jay and Donna Blumenthal came over to the coach for a visit. They are parked just a few sites down from us and have been here at Indian Waters since before Christmas. They are spending the entire winter here. We chatted for a while and when they left we had dinner and then went over to the clubhouse at the RV park for Texas Hold’em. The game had a $5 buy in and I ended up 55 cents ahead after the two hours of playing. Jackie lost about $3. Pretty cheap entertainment. We then went home and watched TV for a little while before turning in for the night.

Tuesday, February 28th, Happy Birthday to my brother Russ, the Las Vegas branch of the family. Today was doctor day for me. Having just turned 65, and hence now a recipient of that governmental largess known as Medicare (as if I hadn’t paid for it all my life), I was eligible for a “Welcome to Medicare” physical. I left the coach after lunch and drove to my doctor’s office in Palm Desert and submitted myself to his inspection. Turns out I’m not doing too badly. A few dozen pounds overweight, but my blood pressure was normal, as were my temperature and pulse. My prostrate is fine, although my dignity is dented, and he didn’t find any other issues. I got a pneumonia shot and would have gotten a tetnus, but they were out of them. I also got a referral for a colonoscopy (talk about lack of dignity) and for a dermatologist to check me for anymore potential melanomas. I didn’t get back to the coach until nearly cocktail hour, so we just stayed in the rest of the night.

Wednesday, February 29th, Happy Leap Day! For geocachers this is a big day because it comes around only once every four years. One of the “goals” for dedicated geocachers is to try and get your statistical page to the point where you can say you have found a geocache on every day of the year. There is a grid on the stats page that shows how many caches you have found on each of the calendar days. Not just for the current year, but over your entire caching history. The idea is to “fill the grid” so there is at least one find in each box. Obviously, one can only get a number in the February 29 box when that date comes up. For that reason there are a lot of caching events, where a group of cachers get together for a little meet and greet, scheduled all over the country. We had found that there was one right here in Palm Desert this afternoon and we had planned to go.

We left the coach about noon and went out for lunch to La Casita, one of our favorite Mexican restaurants here in the valley. After lunch we did a couple quick geocaches and then quit to attend the caching event. We had found two caches, and got one DNF, before quitting and heading to Civic Park in Palm Desert, near the College of the Desert. When we arrived at the event site Jackie spotted an old friend, Sherry Grana. Jackie and Sherry had been very close friends for many years before I moved to the desert in 1998 and I met her as a result of her involvement with the church group we belonged to. Although we haven’t seen Sherry in several years, she and Jackie stay in touch through Facebook and it was an post on Facebook that brought Sherry to the park. She had spotted Jackie’s post about the event and Sherry works nearby, so she took a late lunch just so she could wait for us to arrive. Very cool. We had a very nice, although brief, reunion in the parking lot.

After Sherry left to go back to work we went over to the caching event. We have done a lot of caching in the Coachella Valley and know a lot of the names of local cachers from seeing them on caches, but we haven’t met too many of them. The only local caching event we have been able to attend was in Banning last year. There were probably twenty people at the event, and a number of them were folks that we knew by name. We had a very good time, exchanged a lot of travel bugs, and got to know even more of the local caching crowd. The event was specifically for Leap Day and was scheduled to start at 2:29 p.m. on 2/29. The group finally broke up about 3:30 and everyone went their separate ways. We did a couple more caches that were right in the park before heading home. We managed to get four new finds today, which will fill the hole in our grid for February 29th. Yea!

We went back to the coach for a while and about 6:30 or so we went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em again. This time I had a good night, cashing out over ten dollars from my five dollar investment. I more than doubled my money and had fun too. Jackie lost her five dollars, but had fun anyway. It is good, cheap entertainment and we meet some very nice people. After poker we went back to the coach for a little TV and then bed.

Thursday, March 1st, another new month already. We had lunch at the coach and then went over to Costco to do a payday liquor run. Need to stock up the vodka cellar. After Costco we drove over to the Motorcoach Country Club to spend the afternoon with our best buds Barry and Colleen Cohen. We got there about 2:00 or so and spent some time talking and catching up. We last saw them when we were here in January. They are still trying to sell their lot at the resort so they can get out on the road like us. Barry said they had several lookers, but no offers on the table yet. He did say that sales of lots at the resort have picked up this season and that a half dozen have sold in the last couple months. He is still hopeful for this season, which has about another month to run.

After a little while we took their electric boat out for a ride on the lakes around the resort. The weather was very nice, low 70's with a little bit of a breeze. We were out about an hour and then the wind started getting a little stronger, so we decided to go in. Jackie and Colleen went in to the coach to play cards while Barry and I just sat out on the patio and talked. We were going to cook dinner on the BBQ, but we kind of let time get away from us and by the time we decided to start cooking it was getting late. We ended up getting in our cars and driving over to nearby Cactus Jacks restaurant for dinner. We had a very nice dinner, Jackie had lamb and I had beef ribs, my favorite. George, the owner of the place was in, so we had a chance to say hi to him. After dinner we went back to our coach and the Cohen’s went home to theirs.

Friday, March 2nd, we woke up with the wind still blowing, not that this condition should come as a surprise to those who have lived in the Coachella Valley. It’s almost always breezy, if not down right windy, here. The two mountain ranges to the west of the valley create a funnel effect that makes the wind blow right down the path of the freeway. Fortunately, these same mountain ranges form a barrier that keeps most rain and bad weather out of the valley as well. Everything comes with a cost.

After lunch we went out to do a couple of quick caches not too far from the coach. We needed to get at least one cache today to fill in the March 2 date on our grid. We had never had a cache on this date before. We did get two, so now we have filled one more of the squares. We then went home and did a little light housekeeping and some chores. About 3:30 or so Barry and Colleen came over to our coach bearing foodstuffs. They brought over the stuff that we were supposed to have eaten at their house last night. Once again the girls were in the coach playing cards while Barry and I sat outside and talked.

When it got a little too chilly to sit outside Barry and I went into the back of the coach to do some karaoke singing. Barry loves to sing, but he won’t do it in public. He will only sing when it is just family and friends. About 6:00 we fired up the BBQ and had dinner. Jackie and Colleen had lamb chops and Barry and I had nice burgers. Neither of us cares for lamb. We also had some sauteed asparagus and corn on the cob, fixed in the microwave, if you can believe it, and it was great. After dinner we did some more singing and the girls played cards until 9:30 or so when the Cohen’s left for home. A very nice evening with our very good friends, nothing is better.

Saturday, March 3rd, we left the RV park after lunch to do some more geocaching. In the course of a few hours we managed to add ten more finds to our stats page. We didn’t have any DNFs, and even managed to fix one of our DNFs from a few days ago. While looking for that one we came upon two other teams of cachers looking for the same cache. After caching we went back to the coach for a brief rest.

About 5:00 we left again and went over to the Motorcoach Country Club and our friends Barry and Colleen. We came over for dinner and to see our friends from Lodi, California, Andy and Fern. Regular readers will remember that we met them for dinner back in December when we were up in the Lodi area. Also at the Cohen’s for dinner were Colleen’s sister Janet and her husband John. Barry made one of his signature Italian meat sauces and we had spaghetti, meat sauce and bread, along with copious amounts of liquor of course. Actually I only had two, less than the previous two nights. About 9:00 everyone got tired and the party broke up. We went back to the coach for the rest of the night. It was very nice to see our friends again, especially Fern and Andy and Janet and John, who we don’t get to see too often.

Sunday, March 4th, we stayed at home for most of the day. About 5:00 we left the coach and went to the Jackalope Ranch, a nice local restaurant, to meet some friends for dinner. We got to the restaurant and had a nice dinner and a couple of drinks with Jay and Donna Blumenthal. They are also staying at Indian Waters, but they have been here for a couple months and will be staying through the middle of April. They used to be movers and shakers with FMCA, holding one of the main national officer positions for many years. As a result they had to travel all the time, back and forth across the country to attend different FMCA events. Now that they are out of the governance end of FMCA they are enjoying staying in one place.

They talked quite a bit about the BNP Tennis Classic that is starting in Indian Wells, just down the street, this coming week. This two week tennis tournament is fifth in the world in importance, only behind the for National Opens, the U.S., French, Australian and Wimbledon. The Blumenthals are tennis fanatics and they are volunteers for the tennis match here. They will be working most of the next two weeks at the tennis gardens, being ushers and watching the world’s best players. Pretty cool if you’re into tennis. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Monday, March 5th, our last full day here in Indio. It was overcast and cool, about ten degrees cooler than it has been. We decided that we would do lunch at a local taqueria called Guerrero’s, which is owned by a guy named Jose Guerrero, with whom we are acquainted from hanging out at Cactus Jacks. Jose started with one taqueria and now has four around the desert, along with a Mexican market. The place has excellent food for a reasonable price and we like to do lunch there. We are often the only gringos in the place because it is a favorite of the local Hispanic community. After lunch we did some shopping at Walmart and Winco, and then went back to the coach for the rest of the day. I spent a couple hours getting things packed up in preparation for our travels tomorrow.

Tuesday, March 6th, we woke to clear skies, but cool temperatures and a fairly stiff breeze. We packed up the coach and departed Indian Waters right about 10:00 and hit Interstate 10 headed east. Our ultimate destination is Casa Grande, Arizona, however, we like to travel at a leisurely rate and Casa Grande was close to 350 miles from Indio. We decided to make an overnight stop in Tonopah, Arizona, which is just under 200 miles from Indio. The trip was very windy, but fortunately it was, for the most part, from behind us, so it didn’t push the coach around too much. It was very dusty and hazy though. We arrived in Tonopah, which really is just a post office, an RV park and a couple of truck stops, about 2:30 and checked into the Saddle Mountain RV park. We have stayed here before on trips across the Arizona desert, it is conveniently located just off the freeway and, as a Passport America park, half price to members. We paid $15 for a full hook-up, 50 amp pull through site. The PPA rate is only good for one night, but we only stay here one night because it is just a waypoint for us on our travels.

After we got to the site and hooked up, we unattached the car and went out to get a couple of geocaches nearby. Normally we would have just left the car hooked up and stayed in, especially since it was still very windy and cold. However, this was one of the days we needed to get a cache in our effort to fill in the grid on our statistics page that shows the days of the year we have cached. We are working to get the grid filled in this year. We found three caches in about a half hour, including one that had a new travel bug for trading. After the three caches, which completes March 6th in our grid, we went back to the coach and stayed in the rest of the night.

Wednesday, March 7th, we left the RV park about 9:30 and made a quick stop before leaving the park to fill up with propane. We will be going to a rally in a few weeks and will be dry camping. I like to have the propane tank close to full when we dry camp and this was a good place to get it. We then left the park and drove to a fuel station just before the freeway entrance and fueled up the coach. The “low fuel” light had come on just as we were pulling into the park last night. I wasn’t worried because I know we can still get close to 100 miles when the light comes on. I knew we would have enough to get to our first stop in Arizona when we left Indio yesterday and I knew I didn’t want to fill up before getting into Arizona. We paid $4.11 per gallon for diesel in Tonopah, which is at least 25 or 30 cents per gallon cheaper than in California. When you are putting in 70 gallons or so, that makes a big difference.

Once we had fuel we got on the freeway and started east agin for the last 120 miles to Casa Grande. We arrived at Desert Shadows RV Resort in Casa Grande about 1:30 and got checked in. We have stayed in this park many times in the past and up until about three months ago it was one of our Western Horizons membership parks. However, it was recently sold to the same guy that bought Indian Waters last year and is now a privately owned RV park open to the public. Fortunately for us, they are still honoring Western Horizon memberships, as is Indian Waters, so we were able to get in at our usual $6 per night cost. Yea!

We got settled into a nice site and got everything hooked up and all the outside decorations put up. We will be here for 13 days before moving on to Phoenix and another rally. There are a lot of geocaches in the area, and other things to do as well, so we are looking forward to our stay.

With our arrival in this new park I will close out this episode of the blog and get it published. I will publish again in a couple weeks before we go to the rally in Phoenix. Until the next time, remember the words of Margaret Lee Runbeck, “Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” Travel happy ya’ll.

A Few Weeks in San Diego

Greetings readers, glad you came back. Our last chapter concluded on Saturday, February 11th, when we arrived at the Sante Fe RV park in San Diego, California. We came to beautiful San Diego from Winterhaven, California, near Yuma, Arizona, after a very windy drive west on Interstate 8. After our arrival we got set up and just relaxed for the rest of the evening. This is the first time we have been traveling without being accompanied by friends since late December. Although we will miss our friends, with whom we had great times, it is also nice to have a little quiet, “us time” too.

For those readers who may not be familiar with the history of this area, San Diego was originally a part of the Spanish Empire, having been "discovered" in 1542 by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo. Cabrillo claimed the bay for the Spanish Empire and named the site 'San Miguel'. In 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno was sent to map the California coast. He arrived aboard his flagship San Diego, surveyed the harbor and what are now Mission Bay and Point Loma, and named the area for the Catholic Saint Didacus, a Spaniard more commonly known as San Diego de Alcalá. When Mexico gained it's independence from Spain in 1821 San Diego was a part of the Mexican State of Alta. In 1848 the State of Alta, including San Diego of course, was ceded to the United States as part of the settlement of the Mexican-American War.

Today San Diego is the second largest city in California and the eighth largest city in the United States, with a population of over 1.3 million. There are over 3 million people living in the metropolitan area, which encompasses all of San Diego county.

Sunday, February 12th, we woke up to wet grounds. It had rained on and off all night and everything around us was wet. This was the first real wet weather we have had in weeks and it was kind of refreshing. Especially since we have had the toppers fixed so we don’t have to worry so much about water intrusion into the coach. We decided that today was going to be an “at home” day. I spent most of the afternoon cleaning out the space under our bed. We have a very large storage space there which has become a bit of a collector’s corner. It was time to get rid of a bunch of stuff we didn’t need or haven’t used in a while. I ended up loading the back seat with stuff to be donated and probably dropped our weight by a couple hundred pounds. I also got the blog chapter covering the last couple weeks posted and did some other administrative things.

About 5:30 Jackie’s brother Dennis, who lives here in San Diego, came over for a visit. We generally only see him once a year when we come down here, although Jackie talks to him every couple days on the phone. We had a very nice visit and watched the east coast feed of the Grammy Awards Show together. We all like, and know quite a bit about, music, so we had a good time. About 9:00 he left and we spent the rest of the evening watching TV.

We learned a lot about Dennis’s new professional activities working for a real estate investment group. He goes out to find new investors for their company, Blue Sky Capital, which is then used to buy foreclosed residential properties here in the San Diego area. The properties are then fixed up and resold at a profit. Sounds like he is doing quite well for himself and his investors and we were happy to hear he was doing good.

Monday, February 13th, it was still cool and cloudy when we woke up. After lunch we went out to do some geocaching in the Pacific Beach area, just west of the RV park. We first made a quick stop at the Goodwill store to drop off all the stuff I cleaned out of the bedroom the other day. It took a couple of hours to get six new geocache finds, mostly because they were spread out and parking can be hard in this area. About 3:30 we decided to quit caching and get our shopping done so we went to the local Walmart store.

One of the things I did was get my first new prescriptions filled under my Medicare drug supplement. I had to mail new prescriptions to my new mail order pharmacy, and I needed to fill 30 day prescriptions to tide me over until the new ones come in the mail. After Walmart we had to stop at Von’s because there are no local super Walmart stores. I guess the folks in San Diego don’t want Wally World competing head to head in the grocery business. We then went back to the coach for the rest of the night. It sprinkled on and off all day and the weather forecast says it will be this way for the rest of the week. Boo! We came here for sun, not rain!

Tuesday, February 14th, Happy Valentine’s Day and also Happy Birthday to my granddaughter Courtney Valentine Fitzgerald. We decided to celebrate Valentine’s by going out to lunch at a restaurant that we found yesterday while we were geocaching in nearby Pacific Beach. It was a Greek restaurant called Café Athena and one of the caches that we found was right in front of the place. It is in a strip mall and looked like a very nice place. We had picked up a menu and found several items that looked pretty good. Jackie loves Greek food and I can usually find something even though I am not fond of lamb.

We found that the food and service at this place was wonderful. We had a calamari appetizer and then I had a sirloin wrap that was excellent. Large chunks of grilled, rare and very tender sirloin along with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, some spices and a light oil dressing. Jackie had a wrap with egg plant and lamb that she said was also very good. I can give this place an excellent recommendation. It is the Café Athena and is located about a mile west of Interstate 5 on Garnett Avenue in Pacific Beach. You may have to use a GPS as it is hard to see from the street, hiding behind a large Chinese place. The address is 1846 Garnett. They have a web site, www.cafeathena.com where you can get a menu.

After lunch we set out to do some more caching and ended up just north in La Jolla. We were again only able to get six caches in a couple of hours because of traffic and parking issues. We also had two new DNFs, both on caches that have not been found in several months and may very well not be there any more. One interesting thing we found is the Mount Soledad Veteran’s Memorial. Mount Soledad is one of the highest peaks in the San Diego area and is where a lot of the TV stations have antennas. On the highest peak there is a park and a huge white cross. When we drove up to the top we found that the cross was surrounded by granite walls with information on San Diego area veteran’s inscribed. Most included photos etched into the plaque as well. It was a very moving tribute to our veterans and as many times as I have been to San Diego I had no idea it was there. Another great side find from our caching hobby. About 3:30 Jackie decided it was too cold and windy so we headed back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, February 15th, we left the RV park after lunch and headed north on Interstate 5 for San Marcos. San Marcos is a community in what is known to San Diegans as “North County” and is where Jackie’s mom lived for many years. Jackie and I used to drive down there from Indio frequently to visit her and Jackie’s brother Dennis who live there as well. We were headed to San Marcos because that is where the nearest Camping World camping specialty store is located. We wanted to get some particular folding tables that we knew could only be found at Camping World.

We got into San Marcos around 1:00 or so and did some geocaching before going to the store. We managed to get six new caches in an hour or so of caching and then it started to rain. Since caching in the rain is not particularly pleasant, we stopped and went to the store. By the time we got out of Camping World it was pouring down rain. We started south on Interstate 15 back towards San Diego and for a while it was raining so hard it was difficult to see. Californians, being the fearless folks they are, didn’t slow down though. Everyone was still zipping by at five over the speed limit. Once we got into San Diego proper the rain had slackened and by the time we got to Costco, near our RV park, it was nearly stopped. We spent an hour or so in Costco stocking up and then went back to the coach for the rest of the evening. Smokey the Cat cannot resist a box and took up temporary residence in one of the boxes from Costco when we put it on his chair.

Thursday, February 16th, we woke up to clear skies, although it was in the forties early in the morning. We decided to go out caching again, this time a little closer to home, so after lunch we went to an area just a few miles to the north and east, near Montgomery Field, a small airfield for private planes. It was built in 1937 and is operated by the City of San Diego as a public airfield. It is only a few miles south of the Mirimar Marine Corps Air Station, so pilots have to share the local airspace with warplanes from the base. One famous incident tied to Montgomery Field occurred in September 1978 when a single engine Cessna took off on a training flight to do a practice Instrument Landing System approach to San Diego’s commercial airport, Lindbergh field. The Cessna flew into the landing pattern for the airport for it’s practice approach without contacting the tower or any other aircraft in the area. The Cessna was overtaken and hit by a Boeing 727 from PSA airlines which was also on approach to Lindbergh and both aircraft crashed, killing all on board. I clearly remember this incident because of the famous photo of PSA Flight 182 going down in flames over San Diego. This photo made the cover of Time Magazine. In addition to the 135 on the airliner and the two on the Cessna seven people on the ground were killed when the 727 crashed into a residential neighborhood. Twenty two homes on the ground were destroyed in the crash. This crash prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to create Terminal Control Areas (TSA) around all major commercial airports in the country. These TSA provide positive airspace control in the area surrounding the airport in order to prevent these types of midair collisions.

We spent a couple of hours caching in the area just south of Montgomery Field and managed to find ten new caches. We also ended up with one DNF. After caching we went to a couple of stores and then home for the rest of the evening.

Friday, February 17th, another nice morning. By the time we left the coach, just after noon, the temperatures were close to 70 degrees and we didn’t even have to put on jackets. Yea! We did some more caching up in the area of Montgomery Field and ended up getting another ten new finds, along with two DNFs. Several of the caches were quite ingenious, including one that was a hollowed piece of wood with a film canister stuck in it. We like finding the difficult ones like that. Several of our finds were rated three out of five on the difficulty scale. After caching we hit a Dollar Tree to buy some more little blue plastic policemen. I like to leave them in caches, assuming there is room, as our contribution to the bling that goes in caches. I can get 48 in a bag for a buck and I bought five bags. That will keep me in policemen for a while. After that we headed back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Saturday, February 18th, we awoke to a clear day with a strong, cool wind coming out of the north. We had decided a few days ago that today was going to be a stay at home day. After lunch we did our laundry right here at the park. This park has a very nice, large laundry facility and it is only steps from our coach. We also did a few small chores around the house, but not too much. It was a very relaxing day. Late in the afternoon I even went over to the hot tub, also close to the coach, for a half hour soak. Very nice.

Sunday, February 19th, we had a pretty full day. The weather was nice, although still a little cool. We had lunch at the coach and then about 2:00 or so we left and drove to downtown San Diego to do some caching and to visit Horton Plaza, the big mall which is right on Broadway in downtown. We did two virtual caches, caches with no physical container, first. One was a flagpole in Balboa Park put up by the Masonic Order back during WW-I and the other was at the San Diego Fire Department headquarters building downtown. We then tried to do a couple of regular caches and just had all kinds of problems. The ones in the heart of downtown were impossible to pin down because the tall buildings threw off the GPS readings. The ones around the edges we couldn’t find parking for and ended up just giving up on caching downtown. Parking is unbelievable anywhere near downtown or along the waterfront. Every available space was taken, even on a Sunday when no one was working downtown. There are so many condos and apartments in the area that parking is a super premium.

After our caching efforts we went into Horton Plaza and parked. Besides liking malls in general, the reason we came to Horton Plaza is that we had tickets to the Mad House Comedy Club, which is located on the top floor of the mall. About a month ago or so we had free Showtime on our Direct TV for a weekend. Among the things we recorded was an hour standup comedy special by a comedian named Sebastian Maniscalo. We had never heard of the guy, but we found him to be hysterically funny. A week or so later I was looking at Sebastian’s website and lo and behold, he was appearing in San Diego during the time we were going to be there. I immediately got on line and bought tickets for the show.

We got into Horton Plaza a little after three and the club was not scheduled to open until 6:30, so we had some time to kill. We wandered around the mall window shopping for a while until Jackie’s brother Dennis met us. She had told him we were going to the mall and he doesn’t live too far away so he said he would meet us there. We shopped with him for a while and then went for a little walk across the street to the U.S. Grant Hotel. The hotel was built just after the turn of the century and had, like many urban hotels, fallen into some disrepair and hard times. A few years ago one of the local Indian tribes, the Sycuan, used some of their casino revenues and bought the hotel and did a top to bottom remodel. Dennis told us that the irony was, the land the hotel sits on was originally Sycuan land, not reservation land, just trust land. When the hotel was built they sold the land. Now they own the whole kit and caboodle again. We walked through the lobby, had some lemonade, and sat and chatted for while. The remodel of the hotel was quite impressive and it appears to be a five star property now.

After a little while we went back to the mall where Dennis went on his way. We got in the car and left the parking lot because they only give you three hours of comp parking for shopping in the mall and then they charge $2 for every 15 minutes thereafter, with no top limit. One can run up a pretty good parking bill at those rates. We drove around downtown for about 15 minutes and then went back into the parking structure and started over. We did a little more shopping and then just before 6:30 went up to the comedy club and got in line, actually, started the line. We were first at the door. They didn’t open the door until about 6:45, but we finally got in and got seated in the second row, good seats. The club was very nice, open and modern looking, not the dreary or industrial look you sometimes get in comedy clubs.

The club has a full restaurant and a wine and beer bar, so we ordered some drinks and dinner. Jackie had a hamburger, which she said was good, but nothing spectacular. I had one of their specialty sandwiches, a grilled cheese with crabmeat. It was outstanding. They serve it with a cup of tomato soup, which was also quite good, and the full combination was very nice. The show started a little after 8:00 and there were three comics on the bill. The first, the opener, was a younger guy whose name I didn’t catch. He was pretty funny, but you could tell he wasn’t at the point where he was real confident. He did about ten minutes of material. The second guy, the featured comic, was Eric Knowles. He did about a half hour and was very funny, headliner material as far as I was concerned. He was a former Marine and even did some really funny stuff about his time in the Corps. He brought on Sebastian, who was the Headliner act. He did a full hour of material and was just as hysterical as he was on the Showtime special. He is a very visual comic, lots of movements, gestures and facial expressions, and he has great control over his voice. The full package is a very, very funny act. We recognized a few bits, and parts of bits, from the TV show, but I would say ninety percent of what we saw tonight was stuff that was not on the TV show. We were very happy to have had the opportunity to see him in person. He even singled us out in one bit about marriage as the “old married couple” in the audience. We were close enough for him to see us. He caught Jackie off guard when he leaned over and asked her how long we had been together and when she tried to say something a few seconds later he told her, “never mind, we’re not a team act.” Pretty funny comeback.

After the show we got the car out of the parking lot, again for free because the club gives four hours of free parking, and drove home. A mile or so from the RV park I spotted an old van parked on a dark street and actually turned around and went back. Jackie hadn’t spotted it because she was looking at her phone at the time. It was an old white van that had all kinds of crap glued to the sides and a huge model of Cinderella’s castle on the top. There were also a Minnie and Mickey glued to the back doors. One of the oddest things we have ever seen. We managed to get a picture of most of it. After that we went home and into bed. We were out until 11:00 p.m. which is very unusual for us.

Monday, February 20th, Happy Presidents Day. Nope, Happy Washington’s Birthday, but not on Washington’s birthday. Leave it to Washington (DC, not the man) to screw things up. There is no Presidents Day. The 1968 Unified Monday Holiday Act decrees that the third Monday of February is celebrated as Washington’s Birthday. I remember as a young kid in Arizona when the State celebrated both Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays, ON their actual birthdays. Now, with the new Monday mandate the geniuses in DC managed to declare a holiday as a day that can never, mathematically, actually fall on Washington’s real birthday. Go figure.

Anyway, the day was clear and cool, as most of the days down here have been so far, so we decided to go out and do some holiday caching. Even though Washington’s Birthday/Presidents day is a Federal holiday many everyday folks and businesses don’t take the day off. Nonetheless, we brought up a bunch of caches in an area of nearby Mira Mesa that was mostly business parks and commercial properties. We left the coach about 12:30 and by 3:30 we had managed to get 20 new finds for the day, along with a DNF or two. About half of the office buildings did appear to be pretty empty and we have found that in these business parks with the huge office buildings scattered around, that there usually weren’t a lot of “muggles” out and about anyway. They are all inside working. After caching we made a quick stop at Wally World and then headed home for the rest of the night.

Tuesday, February 21st, Happy Fat Tuesday. Of course, Fat Tuesday, better known as Mardi Gras, is usually associated with New Orleans, but it tends to be celebrated most anywhere there is a party atmosphere. San Diego is no exception. San Diego has an area between the downtown business district and the bay called The Gaslamp District. In most places it would be called Old Town, but San Diego has one of those too, located further north, where the Spanish explorers settled. The Gaslamp is more the 19th century center of town, an area that was “downtown” in the 1800's and has now been restored as an entertainment district. There are dozens of bars, clubs and restaurants in a ten or so block area and it is very popular. Tonight they are having their “Mardi Gras in San Diego” celebration, with music and dancing and a parade. We had planned to try to go, but then we learned that they wanted $25 a person for tickets and we decided we didn’t want to have that much fun.

Fat Tuesday has it’s roots in the Christian Church where it is the last day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, when one is supposed to behave. During Lent, which continues to Easter Sunday, the faithful are supposed to commit to fasting or giving up certain types of luxury as a form of penitence. So basically, Fat Tuesday is the last day to party until Easter.

We decided to go out after lunch for some more San Diego geocaching. This time we centered our efforts on the Mission Valley area of town. Mission valley is generally along Interstate 8 from the beach to about five miles inland and is an area many hotels and shopping areas. We picked this area because parking would probably be easier than in the more residential areas or downtown. We managed to get ten new finds in the course of a couple hours of searching with no new DNFs. After caching we went back home for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, February 22nd, we left the RV park about 11:00 and drove north on I-5 to the city of Carlsbad for lunch. We had lunch at a place called BJ’s Brew House, located just off the freeway, across the street from the Carlsbad Outlet Mall. We were meeting an acquaintance, Michael Reminger, for lunch and he had suggested this restaurant when we mentioned we were coming up to Carlsbad. Michael is a financial consultant and an acquaintance of Jackie’s brother Dennis. He had been working with us on some financial matters over the last couple years and we wanted to buy him lunch since we were going to be in the area. The food at BJ’s was pretty good, nothing outstanding, but OK, if a little pricey. We had a nice lunch and a nice chat with Michael.

After lunch we did some geocaching right in the Carlsbad area, managing to get ten new finds in the course of a couple of hours. Several of them were right off the beach, including one that was actually in the Carlsbad State Beach Campground. This was actually the first time we had been on, or even close, to the beach since we got to San Diego nearly two weeks ago. The weather was great, warm with a slight breeze off the ocean. After our caching we spent an hour or so in the outlet mall doing some shopping. Jackie got a new pair of shoes and I got a couple of nice shirts at a steal of a price. After that we got back on the interstate and headed south to the coach, where we stayed in the rest of the evening.

Thursday, February 23rd, we had another very nice morning with the promise of a warm, San Diego day. We decided to do one last day of caching here in San Diego before we leave on Saturday. We especially wanted to get to the milestone of 3,600 finds before we left and we only needed six to get to that mark. We left the coach after lunch and went to an area east of downtown, along El Cajon Boulevard, coincidentally a neighborhood known as “The Boulevard.” Our very first cache was supposed to be an easy find, a small container hidden in one of the crevasses of a sign in front of a strip mall. The base of the sign was made up of stacked flagstone, which left lots of cracks and crevasses to look into. Shortly after we started looking a security guard came up and asked what we were doing. He was suspicious, but not nasty about it. Jackie was explaining geocaching to him - he had no clue - and after a minute I chimed in and tried to help. Then his supervisor came up, and he didn’t know about it either, and then the representative of the property management company came up and she was in the dark too. We really wanted to find the container so we could show them what we were looking for, unfortunately, we couldn’t and ended up taking a DNF for the find. The people we were talking to asked us to post something for the owner about the fact that this was private property and they didn’t want people (like us) poking around looking for things on their property. Not the first time we have had to explain caching to security guards or cops, and probably won’t be the last.

Moving on we started to have better luck and managed to get ten new finds in the course of a couple hours. Of course, one of the them was our number 3,600 so we took a picture. Yea! We also garnered one additional DNF, making two for the day. Oh well, keeps us humble. After finding our ten caches we went to a coffee house in the nearby University District and had a cup of coffee with Jackie’s brother Dennis. He came down just to spend a little time with us since we were leaving in a couple of days. About 5:00 we headed back to the RV park and stayed in for the rest of the night.

Friday, February 24th, we elected to stay at the coach for the day, getting some cleaning done and getting ready to leave San Diego tomorrow for Indio. I spent some time getting all the decorations and other outside stuff taken down and packed away. After lunch we did our laundry again since the park’s laundry facility is so handy. Later in the afternoon I spent some time in the hot tub just relaxing. Jackie got the inside of the coach cleaned and vacuumed, so we are all ready to go.

Saturday, February 25th, a travel day. We are leaving San Diego and driving 160 miles to the northeast to Indio. We left San Diego right at 10:00 and the trip was pretty much uneventful. Traffic was fairly light, as we hoped, and there were no major problems. We arrived at the Indian Waters RV Resort about 1:15 and got parked in our spot shortly thereafter. I spent an hour or so getting set up, putting up the sun screens and putting out some decorations. After we got set up we made a quick run to Walmart for some supplies and then just relaxed around the coach the rest of the evening.

This will put the close to this chapter of our story. We will be here in Indio for ten days before moving on to Arizona. Until we meet again, enjoy today. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present. Bye bye.

Fun and Friends Around Yuma, Arizona

Hi there, welcome back to our story. We published the last chapter after our arrival in Winterhaven, California on Saturday, January 28th. We came to Winterhaven from Quartzsite, Arizona, about 100 miles to the north, after spending a week dry camping in the desert. We are staying at the Pilot Knob RV Resort, one of our membership parks, here in Winterhaven. Winterhaven is a very small farming community located just west of the Colorado River along Interstate. The current population of the town is less than 400. Pilot Knob is ten miles west of the state line, and although in California, and technically a part of the Pacific Time Zone, the resort stays on Arizona Time because the nearest large city is Yuma, Arizona, just across the Colorado River.

Although the area was populated by native Americans for centuries, the first real European settlement of the area began after the Mexican American war in 1848 with the founding of Fort Yuma. The area was an important transhipment area between California and what was then the New Mexico Territory because the area around what is now the City of Yuma offered a relatively easy crossing for the Colorado River. At that time the Colorado was free flowing and quite a wild river at times and, what became known as Yuma Crossing, was critical for the emigrants going to California. Yuma also has a history of being a river boat port prior to the building of the dams along the Colorado which have reduced it’s current state to a mere trickle as it approaches the Sea of Cortez to the south.

Yuma was incorporated in 1914 and it’s current population is just under 100,000. This population probably triples in the winter as Yuma has become a favorite of the “snowbird” set, travelers who come into the area in the winter months, usually in an RV of some sort. There are hundreds of RV parks in Yuma and the surrounding area. One of Yuma’s most famous sites is the old Yuma Territorial Prison. The prison accepted its first inmate on July 1, 1876. For the next 33 years 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, served sentences there for crimes ranging from murder to polygamy. The prison was under continuous construction with labor provided by the prisoners. Many of the cells were simply caves dug into the rocky hillside with steel bars across the front. They were not even enclosed in a building. Since temperatures in the area can climb to 120 degrees in the summer, it was not the most comfortable place to be imprisoned. In 1909, the last prisoner left the Territorial Prison for the newly constructed Arizona State Prison Complex located in Florence, Arizona. The prison is site is a historic site and Arizona State Park today, as is the Yuma Quartermaster Depot, a part of the Army’s old Fort Yuma.

We spent the first day in Pilot Knob getting setup and relaxing. We had traveled here with our friends Peggy and Vernon Bullock, and they were parked in the spot next to ours. We got together for happy hour and cooked some steaks on the BBQ for dinner.

Sunday, January 29th, we made a quick run into Yuma to Sam’s Club for some supplies. Other than that we didn’t do too much except relax around the coach. Monday we went out after an early lunch to some geocaching with the Bullocks. Although both of us have cached extensively around the Yuma area in the past, which normally would limit the number of caches which we had not yet found, this is a very active caching area. There are a lot of cachers who live and visit this area, and they are always putting out new caches. We found that there were a couple of sets of caches not too far from Pilot Knob, out in the desert. We headed out in the Bullock’s “real” Jeep (a Wrangler) and were able to capture 23 new caches in the course of about three hours. A pretty good day of caching. After we got home we had cocktails and then Peggy made up a batch of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

Tuesday, January 31st, we left Pilot Knob fairly early, about 10:30, and we and the Bullocks drove into Yuma to do some geocaching and shopping. We did a few caches first and then drove to old downtown Yuma for the street fair and farmer’s market that is there every Tuesday. We spent an hour or so walking the market and looking in local stores. After our shopping we headed to a place called Penny’s Diner for a late lunch. Penny’s is a shiny, chrome old style diner located not too far from the main shopping area of Yuma. The food was very 60's drive-inn, burgers, fries and shakes, but they also served breakfast. Although moderately priced, the food was nothing out of the ordinary, just OK. Not a place I would recommend to anyone.

After lunch we drove down to the Marine Corps Air Station located adjacent to the Yuma Airport. We wanted to go into the pass office there to get our passes for the Goldwater bombing range, which is located along the south edge of Yuma County. Although this is a restricted military area, some parts of which are still active for bombing and gunnery practice, much of the range is open to the public so long as they obtain a free permit from the Marine base. They require the permit just so they can warn you of the dangers of being on the range. There are hundreds of geocaches out on the range, so that is why we wanted to get our passes. We have cached there in the past and went out there last year with the Bullocks.

Unfortunately, we got to the base at 3:04 p.m. and the pass office closes at 3:00, so no passes today. We went out and did a few more caches before deciding to quit and go to Walmart for some shopping. We ended up with six new caches for the day and one DNF. After Walmart we went back to Pilot Knob. Jackie and I went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em at 7:00. The Bullocks don’t play, so they stayed home. Jackie pretty much broke even over the two hours we played and I only lost a couple bucks. Had a good time and got to play with some of our Canadian friends that we frequently run across during the winter months.

Wednesday, February 1st, MEDICARE DAY! YEA! Today is the day my medicare starts and I now have complete medical coverage at a reasonable cost. I no longer have to pay nearly $700 a month for an insurance policy that doesn’t cover much of anything. Unfortunately, Jackie woke up feeling sick today. Pretty ironic when you think about it. She spent the entire day sleeping, so I just hung around the coach and relaxed. Hopefully, she will feel better tomorrow. I think it is just a head cold, but we will see.

Thursday, February 2nd, Jackie was feeling better, but still not 100 percent. We decided to have a light day, so we didn’t do anything major. After lunch Jackie and I drove into Yuma to take her to an urgent care. She was hoping to get an allergy shot like she got in Albuquerque back in October. She got to see someone pretty quickly and they put her on a different type of antibiotic and some allergy meds. Hopefully, this will help her to feel better. We also did some errands, the bank, Walmart, and went by to “fix” the DNF cache we had the other day.

Yesterday Peggy and Vernon had gone into town for some errands and they went by the cache and looked again, finding it this time. This prompted us to get out there and find it too. We like to fix DNFs. After shopping we went back to the park. We got together with the Bullocks for happy hour and then Jackie served dinner in our coach, one of her wonderful Chili Reallno casseroles. We had a great time and spent the rest of the night in the coach.

Friday, February 3rd, we left the coach early, about 9:30, and drove to Algodones, Mexico. Regular readers will know that Algadones is a small town just across the border from Winterhaven that is almost exclusively a medical town. Dentists, optometrists, pharmacies, and some light shopping. Ninety percent of the visitors you see are senior citizens down there getting something fixed. I was there to get a tooth pulled. Eeks! I had an old post crown come off a few months ago and when I went to a dentist to get it glued back on he told me the tooth was cracked and the post would no longer work. I waited until we got here to have it pulled out because it is far less expensive. We have been using the same dentist here for four years, so I had no problem letting him do the work. Within 20 minutes I was done and ready to go back to the states. The doc told me that there was quite a bit of infection so he cleaned it out good and put a couple of stitches in. I stopped at one of the pharmacies to fill a prescription for antibiotic and waited an hour to get through the border station back into the states.

We had taken two cars down to the border, so Vernon took me home while Peggy and Jackie stayed down in Mexico shopping for another couple hours. Jackie also had to get here teeth cleaning done. I was worried that my mouth would hurt after the anesthetic wore off, but I was surprised to find it didn’t. I remember the same thing happening after I had my surgery three years ago to remove the melanoma from my back. I should have been in quite a bit of pain, but the medications I take for facial neuralgia seems to block most deep tissue pain. By the time Jackie got home I was doing OK and even the bleeding had stopped completely. We spent the rest of the night just relaxing.

Saturday, February 4th, we left the coach early, about 10:00, with Peggy and Vernon and drove into Yuma to the Arizona Marketplace, a large outdoor swap meet on the east end of town. The Marketplace has several hundred booths, most of which are under steel shelters which keep the sun out, selling most everything you can think of. Vernon made the comment that it was like the Quartzsite swap meet without the sand and sun. We spent several hours walking around the booths and also had lunch out there. We ended up buying some shirts, a new mat for outside the door of the coach, some flags and some other odds and ends.

After our shopping we drove back to the RV park for the rest of the afternoon. We had happy hour with the Bullocks and Gary and Ramona Wilson stopped over as well. They are staying about five miles east at a different RV park. Later on we and the Bullocks had dinner together with Jackie making stuffed green peppers. A friend of Peggy’s, Sylvia, who is staying in Yuma for a week or so getting some dental work done in Algodones, also came to our place for dinner. After dinner we chatted for a while before everyone left and we just relaxed for the rest of the night.

Sunday, February 5th, my 65th birthday. We and the Bullocks left the RV park early, about 10:30, to go out and do a slew of geocaches that were scattered along a stretch of desert just a few miles from the RV park. We went out and did thirteen caches before coming back to the park for lunch. After lunch we went out again and cached until about 4:00. We ended up with 31 new finds and no DNFs for the day, a new all time daily record for us. Yea! Later on in the evening the four us drove into Yuma to the Outback Steakhouse for a birthday dinner. We had some cocktails and good food and conversation. It was a really nice way to celebrate my birthday and I really enjoyed it. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Monday, February 6th we had lunch at the coach and then packed up our laundry and drove into Yuma. We had gone two weeks and it was time to either do laundry or start recycling underwear. We chose laundry. It took us several hours to do our all laundry before we headed back to the coach for the rest of the day. We had happy hour with the Bullocks and I cooked up a big pot of chili for the four of us for dinner.

Tuesday, February 7th, our 8th wedding anniversary! Yea us! We awoke to a chilly and cloudy morning. The weather said there was a chance of rain today and tonight with temperatures in the low 70's. That would be comfortable except there was a brisk breeze blowing that cooled things off even more. We and the Bullocks packed picnic lunches and we headed out in out Jeep about 10:30 a.m. for a day of geocaching. A couple days ago we set a personal single day best total of 31 caches and we were determined to better that today. This area has a plethora of new caches and we wanted to take advantage.

We drove to an area about ten miles northwest of the RV park where there was a series of 31 caches put out along about ten miles of desert road. There were also a number of other single caches in the area. We cached for five hours and we ended with a total of 47 new finds without a single DNF! A new record total for both us and the Bullocks. We had lunch in the desert and had taken the Bullock’s dog Belle with us so she had some good exercise running in the desert. Not only did we set a daily record, we hit our 3,500th cache in the afternoon and the last cache we did put the bullocks at 1,000 finds. Great milestones for all of us.

After caching we went back to the RV park and had happy hour. We were pleased to find that our friends Ray and Del, and Karen and Dave, had arrived at the park while we were out. They are two of the couples we boondocked with in Quartzsite a week or so ago. Tomorrow Curt and Sharon, one of the other couples we were with, will also get to Pilot Knob. Karen and Dave were at the casino, so we didn’t see them, but we did do happy hour with Ray and Del, and the Bullocks. We were all pooped from the day of caching, so after cocktails we just went back into our coach for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, February 8th, our reunion anniversary. On this day in 1998 I got back in touch with Jackie after not having been in contact since 1977. We didn’t go anywhere today because we are doing a little group party tonight and we had some things to do to get ready. We have a very nice area between our coach and the Bullock’s coach which we are going to use for a karaoke party. I spent several hours in the afternoon putting out some rope lights and our light-up palm tree that we haven’t used in quite some time. I also put out our portable fire pit. I set up all the karaoke equipment and we got ready to party. Curt and Sharon came in to the park in the afternoon and got the site right next to the Bullocks, just two down from us.

Jackie spent time in the afternoon putting together some jalapeno poppers for the party, which was actually a pot luck event. At 5:00 everyone came over and we started the music, the drinking and the eating. In addition to the group we were with in Quartzsite, the Wilson’s came over from their park down the road, and our caching friends Russ and Nellie came over. Sometime during the evening we even had visitors we didn’t know from our park come over and sit and listen to the music. For the most part it was only Sharon and I who sang. Del came over and did a couple of songs, but most of it was we two. We had a great party which went on until almost 9:00 when everyone packed up and headed for their own RVs.

Thursday, February 9th I spent a little time in the morning cleaning up from the party the night before. About 9:30 we drove back down to the border and went into Algodones, Mexico. Karen, Dave and Sharon all went along since they had not yet gone down there. We had appointments at 10:00 with the eye doctor to get new glasses, and after our exams and picking out our frames, the five of us went to lunch at our favorite restaurant down there, the El Ranchito. The food and beer were excellent and we had a great lunch. We spent the next couple of hours walking around Algodones shopping while waiting for our glasses to be finished.

About 2:00 we went back and picked up our new glasses. Both Jackie and I got two pairs of glasses, one regular and one tinted for sunglasses, all four for $500. This is less than half what they would have been in the States. We got back across the border and drove into Yuma to Sam’s Club to get some liquor. We were running low and they had the best price in town on vodka. After Sam’s we went back to the park for the rest of the night. No one was really hungry after our big lunch, so we just had happy hour with the group and then went down to the clubhouse to play Texas Hold’em. I lost two dollars in the game, but Jackie was the big winner in the room. She cashed out over $12, which was a $7 win on the night. Yea! After poker we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Friday, February 10th, most of the gang left the park in the morning to go to the Arizona Market Place swap meet. We didn’t need to go again, so we had lunch and then went to the nearby Quechan Casino. Since we were members of their players club they sent me a $10 free play certificate for my birthday. I played my $10 gift and then another $20 without winning anything big. Jackie hit a Royal Flush on the machine next to me and ended up cashing out $100. Yea, we left with more than we came in with.

After we got back I spent several hours putting away our outside decorations and stuff, getting ready for our departure tomorrow. I also did some cleaning and rearranging in the cargo bays. This is something that needs to be done periodically to keep things neat and tidy. Later in the afternoon Jackie spent some time with Sharon working on crafts. We had happy hour with the group, but had dinner only with the Bullocks. We got together and did some carne asada on the BBQ and had it, along with all the other Mexican goodies. We had a great dinner and spent another couple hours just chatting until it was time for everyone to head off to bed.

Saturday, February 11th, another travel day for us. We left Pilot Knob about 10:00 and actually headed east first. We drove the ten miles back to Yuma to get fuel for the coach and the car. Diesel fuel in Arizona was $3.82 per gallon whereas in California it is closer to $4.50 per gallon. This was enough of a difference, particularly when buying 60 or 70 gallons, to make it worthwhile to go out of our way a little bit. After fueling the vehicles we hooked up the car and started west on I-8 towards San Diego, about 175 miles away. There was not a lot of traffic until we got to the outskirts of San Diego, but the wind was horrible for the first two thirds of the trip. The wind had to be gusting to 40 mph and I was struggling to keep the motorhome between the lines.

We arrived at the Sante Fe RV park, just off of I-5 near Mission Bay Park, about 2:30 and parked in our space shortly after. We have stayed in this park every year for the last four years and have been in this space before. I was pleased to see that they had trimmed all of the huge trees that cover the park. In the past we could not get any space where our roof top satellite dish would work and I had trouble even finding a place for the portable dish to get a signal. This time, no problem, the roof antenna locked right in. It was cool and cloudy when we got into town and by the time we got set up it really looked like it might rain.

We spent the rest of the afternoon getting settled in for our two week stay here in San Diego. This also seemed like the ideal place to close out this episode of our story and get it published. We will publish again in a couple weeks when we leave here. Until the next time, stay happy and healthy and enjoy every wonderful day. See ya.

Hanging With Friends in the Desert

Hello readers, welcome back. We concluded our last chapter on Monday, January 9th, when we left the Indian Waters RV Resort in Indio, California, and drove into the FMCA Western Area rally at the Riverside County fairgrounds, also in Indio.

Tuesday, January 10th, was essentially a free day for us. Nothing really starts at the rally until Wednesday. We left the fairgrounds after lunch and went out to do some geocaching with the Bullocks. In the course of a few hours we had managed to garner ten new finds, with one additional DNF for our stats. About 5:00 we drove over to the handicap parking area of the rally where most of our friends ended up. The Bullocks, the Wilsons, and the Babcocks are all parked much nearer to the “action” of the rally in handicap. We had cocktails and then Ray Babcock treated everyone to his signature taco salad dinner. It is a relatively simple dinner but very tasty. Ray has served it to us several times over the years at various events and it has become a bit of a tradition for the group when we get together. After dinner we chatted for a while and then packed up our chairs and went back to our coach for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, January 11th, we went over to the rally auditorium to participate in the Chapter Fair. Most FMCA rallies hold a Chapter fair early in the schedule which allows the various Chapters to set up tables to try and recruit new members. Today I was going to represent the Full Timers Chapter at their table. I am the Vice President of the Chapter and the President could not be at this rally. Jackie also helped at the table. We talked to a few potential members, but didn’t have anyone sign up today. The fair went for two hours and after the fair we went out to do some shopping at Walmart.

After our shopping we drove to a nearby pizza place in La Quinta for a get together for Monaco coach owners. There are two Monaco coach chat groups on Yahoo and I belong to both of them. Some of the Monaco owners suggested that we have a “meet and greet” so one of the members set up a pizza party at the Lamplighters Pizza place. The owner was very nice and offered a 20 percent discount for our members. Since the Bullocks, the Wilsons, the Babcocks and the Minards all own Monacos as well, they all came too. There were probably fifty people there so I think the place made money, even with the discount. We had a very nice time and the pizza was good too. After the get together we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Thursday, January 12th, was the first day of the rally during which they held seminars and meetings, and the first day the commercial vendors were open for business. We had committed to helping with a luncheon put on by Bev and Jerry King for the Military Veterans’s Chapter, so we left about 10:00 to go to the King’s house, only a mile or so from the fairgrounds, to help get things set up. The King’s live in a luxury RV resort community called Desert Shores. The lots have small houses built alongside pads sufficient to park a very large RV on. Since they have this nice place to put their RV when they are in Indio, they are not parked at the rally site. They also own a regular home in San Dimas, California.

We helped Bev and Jerry set up the party and about 11:30 the guests arrived. We ended up with about fifty people and everyone had a great time. The Military Veteran’s Chapter is one of the larger chapters of FMCA and is a very popular one. We had a very nice time and stayed until the party was over so we could help clean up. By 2:00 we were back at the rally doing some window shopping in the vendor area. We didn’t buy anything, but we still like to look at all the stuff they have for sale. There are also a lot of RV resorts with booths, and they like to give away free nights, so we watch for those kinds of bargains too. We did pick up a free seven night stay in El Mirage, Arizona, a northwest suburb of Phoenix, where we plan to stay in March. Free is good, very, very good!

About 3:30 we went over to where our friends are parked and set our chairs up along the rally parade route. One of the traditions of the Western Area rally is they always have a parade on the first full day of the rally featuring a lot of the Western Area chapters. Every rally year is a different theme, this year’s being “Pirate Adventure.” Last year was a frontier theme. A number of the chapters build fairly elaborate floats for the parade and they end up with a couple hundred people participating in the parade. It is a lot of fun to watch and the participants really get into the theme. Lots of pirates and wenches to watch. Yea! After the parade we had cocktails with the group until it got too chilly to sit outside. We then went back to our coach for the rest of the night.

Friday, January 13th, yikes, Friday the thirteenth! Oh well, we ain’t afraid. We headed to the main area of the rally about 11:00 so we could have lunch on the midway. One of the things the rally does for participants is include a $4 food vendor voucher for each person. Of course, the food booths on the midway charge an arm and a leg, maybe even an ear or two, for their food. Nonetheless, we got lunch on the midway. After lunch Jackie headed off to a seminar on microwave cooking while I just browsed the vendor area and the coach sales area. Still couldn’t find anything to buy from the vendors. I did find a coach I really liked, a 2007 Monaco Signature, their top of the line coach. It had been a custom build and the interior was all black leather and charcoal colors. The outside was red and black. A very nice coach that I would probably love to have. However, even at a reasonable $325,000, it is unaffordable to us. The coach sold new for $700,000. We would still have to give our coach and probably another $250,000 to get it and that is not going to happen, especially for a coach only two years newer than ours.

Jackie left the seminar early because it was boring and the two of us looked at coaches for about an hour or so and then spent another hour in the vendors before deciding to go back to the coach to rest. About 6:00 we left and drove down to La Quinta to the Sand Bar restaurant for dinner. Regular readers may remember that one of Jackie’s oldest and best friends, Nancy Heinrich, died suddenly a few months ago. Today was Nancy’s birthday and her daughter Vicky had set up a sort of remembrance dinner for close friends and family at the Sand Bar, which was Nancy’s favorite place to eat. We had celebrated Nancy’s 80th birthday with her here last year.

When we arrived Vicky and her son Shane, Jackie’s Godson, were there along with three other friends of Nancy’s. Ultimately there were eight of us at the dinner and several other people came up and talked to the group. The piano player was quite good and played a couple of songs requested by the group in memory of Nancy. Towards the end of the evening I got up and sang Sinatra’s Summerwind with the entertainer. In his defense, the place was pretty much empty by the time he invited me up. Dinner was pretty good, although the service was very poor. I would have expected much better from what is considered to be a high end restaurant. I certainly would never recommend the place to anyone despite it being one of the oldest restaurants in La Quinta. After dinner we said our goodbyes and went back to the fairgrounds and the coach for the rest of the night.

Saturday, January 14th, we woke up and were surprised to see an overcast sky. The clouds were high and light, and the forecast didn’t call for rain, so we weren’t too worried. This was the last day of the rally and everything would end this afternoon. I headed down to the fairgrounds about 11:30 to attend a seminar on writing. Actually it was more of a workshop put on by an author who recently self published a book. It was a very enjoyable and helpful session and revitalized my interest in writing. My problem is I’m sort of naturally lazy, I enjoy being relaxed, so I sometimes have difficulty driving myself to write, whether it be this blog, a newsletter article, or the novel I have been working on forever.

Jackie came down to the rally just as my session was getting out. She was down for a craft seminar, something about creating a commemorative plate. Not sure why we need more plates, we don’t use the one’s we have very much, but she thought it would be fun. Turns out the lady who was to put on the session was sick. She gave the few who showed up for the session their money back (they had to pay for supplies) and cancelled the class. Oh well, no plate for us.

Jackie and I then decided to just wander around and shop for the last afternoon of the rally. We spent a couple of hours in the vendor area and I bought a couple of things, including a toy. I finally bought myself a radio control helicopter. I have wanted one of these things since they first came on the market a few years ago. The prices have finally come down to where I could get a fairly big RC chopper for less than a hundred dollars, so I did it. I have always liked helicopters and back in the 80's when I was with the Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time flying in them when I commanded the Aviation Division. I just hope I don’t wreck the thing the first time I try to fly it.

The vendors started to pack things up about 3:00 so we quit shopping and went back to the coach for a little rest. About 6:00 we drove over and picked up the Bullocks and went to Cactus Jack’s restaurant for one last dinner in Indio before we left. We had a great dinner and great conversation with our good friends. After dinner we dropped Peggy and Vernon off at their coach and we went back to ours for the rest of the evening.

Sunday, January 15th, dawned another cloudy day, this time darker with a forecast calling for a chance of rain. Oh goody, the rain arrives on moving day. We packed up the coach and prepared for our drive from Indio to Ehrenberg, Arizona, just across the Colorado River from Blythe, California. The trip is only a hundred miles, and we had reservations, so we weren’t in too big a hurry to get out of the fairgrounds. Some folks sure were, I heard some of the big diesel engines firing up as early as 7:00 a.m. We finally pulled out of the parking lot at 10:30 and started east on Interstate 10.

There is not a lot to see along I-10 once you climb the long hill out of Indio and get up on the flatlands of the southern Mojave Desert. Jackie was reading and I was left with my thoughts as we cruised along at fifty-five. I was taken back to my early teen years by the occasional glimpses of what is left of old U.S. 60, the highway between Phoenix and Los Angeles before the interstates were built. My family moved to Phoenix from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1960 when I was thirteen. Sometime in the summer of 1961 we made the first of many trips from Phoenix to California in the family car. This first trip we were headed for Long Beach, California. My stepdad was in the Naval Reserve and each summer he would have to go for his two week active duty training. Since he was a Corpsman, the military version of a Physician’s Assistant, he usually did his training at a Naval Hospital facility. In 1961 he was assigned to the Naval Hospital at Long Beach Naval Base.

We were clipping along U.S. 60 in the 55' Ford that we brought from Wisconsin on a toasty July afternoon with the “450" air conditioning running at full blast. The cooling was obtained by driving 50 miles per hour with four windows down. We had climbed the hill out of Blythe, California and were crossing the Mojave Desert and I remember looking at the black stripe of two lane blacktop vanishing to infinity straight out in front of us, shimmering in the summer heat. The memory that sticks with me, and was kicked to the front of my mind by today’s drive, was of the dozens, perhaps scores, of small bridges crossing they myriad of desert washes. Each one of them adorned on each side by a three foot high, brightly whitewashed wooden guard rail. As you drive along the Interstate today you can still catch glimpses of these now faded white rails where sections of the old road survive alongside the freeway which supplanted it.

The real bout of nostalgia was triggered by the remains of a gas station about halfway between Blythe and Desert Center. All that’s left now is the empty hulk of a rusty steel building and the skeleton of the sign in front of the building. The station sits adjacent to the crumbling blacktop road with it’s faded yellow line. Just west of the old station is a small wash, with a small bridge lined by the wooden guardrails and their checkered white paint. I remember stopping at this station on that first trip to California to get gas, cool down and get a cold drink to drive off the heat of the desert.

The nostalgic mood was broken when we hit the outskirts of Blythe and realized that the day’s journey was almost over. We crossed over the Colorado into Arizona and took the first exit to our destination, the Colorado River Oasis Resort. This is one of our membership parks and we have stayed here many times. We checked in and as we were completing the process our friends the Babcocks and the Wilsons pulled into the parking lot. They will also be here all week before moving on to Quartzsite. We all got spots close together and got our coaches settled in. It will be nice to have full power and sewer after living in a parking lot for a week.

Once we got settled in and the interior of the coach back in order we relaxed and found we were more tired than we thought. We had considered going to play Texas Hold’em at the rec center tonight, but decided we were just going to take advantage of the opportunity to just veg in front of the TV. We “lost” an hour when we crossed into Arizona, so the clocks said it was an hour later than our bodies told us it was. We would have had to rush to make it in time and we just didn’t feel like hurrying. We will probably feel an hour behind for a few days. We ended up just staying in for the rest of the night.

I did spend several hours getting familiar with our new automotive GPS device. Our old Lowrance GPS, purchased in Florida in 2006, had finally given up the ghost last week. The new one I ordered online was waiting for us in the office here in Ehrenberg when we checked in. We got a nice Garmin Nuvi unit that, in addition to being a great GPS, will also accept the type of files we use in geocaching. This will help us by letting us preload our cache sets into the car GPS instead of having to enter them one at a time while we cache.

Monday, January 16th, I was initially a little shocked when I got up just before 8:00 a.m. and saw the sun just coming up over the horizon. We have been in California since the end of daylight savings time and have gotten used to the sun coming up before 7:00 and it being dark by 5:00 in the afternoon. I quickly figured out that our location here on the Colorado River puts us at the very western edge of the Mountain Time Zone. The sun comes up later and it stays light until about 6:00 at night. I like that much better. The wind was blowing pretty good, signifying the departure of the weak storm front from the day before. I was also surprised to discover that it was Martin Luther King Day, a Federal holiday. I know that MLK day comes around this time in January every year, but it is still not a holiday that springs to mind like Labor Day or Memorial Day.

After lunch we set out to do some geocaching. This is another area where we have done a lot of geocaching in the past, so it gets more difficult to get a list of caches that we haven’t already found within a reasonable distance. Fortunately, people are always putting out new caches, so we did manage to get a decent list. We had a number of potential First To Find (FTF) caches on the list, caches that did not indicate anyone had made the first find yet. However, the closest one eluded us despite a half hour of searching. We hate DNFs, but we really don’t like going to a brand new cache and having to log a DNF. Oh well, keeps us humble. The other FTF caches were about 15 miles south of Ehrenberg on a dirt road that runs parallel with the river. The wind was blowing very hard and whipping the sand and dirt around, so we decided to let those go until a more favorable weather day.

We still managed to find ten caches in a few hours, although we got one additional DNF in the process. Fortunately, a local cacher had put out a new series of caches along Highway 95 running north from Blythe along the west side of the river. The caches were only a few miles apart, so we gathered them up pretty fast. One of the caches had a travel bug in it that had to be one of the largest I have ever seen actually left at a cache to be taken. For those not familiar with caching, travel bugs are another part of the sport wherein items can be provided with an individual tracking number. It can be done by attaching a serialized dog tag to some trinket, or it can be a custom made coin with a unique serial number. These items are left in caches to be found, picked up, and then moved to another cache and left. Each of these travel bugs or travel coins are tracked individually on the geocaching website.

Most travel bugs are relatively small. There are some exceptions, most notably that one can get a travel bug decal with a serial number that you put on your car. However, since you won’t leave your vehicle for someone else to take, these types of travel bugs can only be “discovered” by cachers, that is, they log that they saw it at a certain location. However, at one of the caches today we found a full size, 14" car tire with a chain and a travel bug dog tag attached! Since we had no desire to haul around a car tire until we found another cache suitable to leave it at, we just discovered it. Nonetheless, when Jackie logged it later in the evening she found that it has already gone a number of miles from cache to cache. The cache we saw it at was very remote, so it was possible to leave it lying on the ground with little chance of accidental discovery by someone not a cacher. It would be difficult to find another cache nearby with the same characteristics.

After caching we made a quick stop at the store and then went back to the RV park for dinner. At 6:30 we went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em. This was another of the two hour, five dollar buy in games. There were a number of people there with whom we have played at other parks, including some of our Canadian friends that we played with a couple weeks ago in Desert Hot Springs. Neither of us had a winning night, we lost nine dollars between us, but we had a lot of fun. After poker we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.

Tuesday, January 17th, we decided that we needed a “chillax” day, just hanging around the house doing some light chores and relaxing. In the early afternoon I took my new helicopter out on the lawn for some practice flying. I know not to rush something like flying an RC plane, so I just worked on getting it up into a hover a few feet off the ground. After a few false starts and some adjustments I got to where I could bring it up into a hover without it spinning. Then I noticed it would start to crab sideways after it lifted off. I finally noticed that a breeze had come up which was pushing the chopper. It is very light weight, so it is easily affected by wind. I know that eventually I will have the skill and confidence to fly it in a light breeze, but for now I stopped practicing to ensure that I didn’t fly it into an obstacle and break it before I had a chance to really learn how to use it.

Other than that I did some housekeeping and administrative things and Jackie did some light housekeeping in addition to just watching TV and chilling out. At happy hour we got together with the Babcocks and the Wilsons for cocktails on the lawn. Later we all went into Ray and Suzie’s coach for dinner. Suzie had made a nice salad and a big bowl of bean and ham soup. We had a great dinner and finally went back to our coach about 8:00 where we stayed the rest of the night.

Wednesday, January 18th, we again spent most of the day around the house. Jackie was making dinner for everyone tonight, so she needed to be home in the early afternoon and I had made an appointment for an awning guy to come out and measure our slide topper awnings for replacement. As it turns out, it’s a good thing we didn’t go out because the awning guy came by early, around 2:00. I gave the go ahead for him to order the awnings and he said they should be in tomorrow. Pretty quick service.

About 4:30 we had happy hour again with the Babcocks and the Wilsons and later everyone came into our coach for dinner. Jackie made chicken enchiladas with all the fixings and everyone really liked it. After dinner we played a stand up comedy show we had saved on the DVR. We recorded this comic, Sebastian Maniscalco, when he had a Showtime special a few weeks ago. We had never heard of him before, but he was so funny we saved the show. I laughed just as hard this second time as I did the first time, and everyone else really enjoyed him too. He tells stories that are hystericaly funny and very relatable to real life. We have to watch for this guy to come to one of the casinos because I would love to see him in person. After the show finished everyone packed up and headed back to their coaches for the rest of the night.
Thursday, January 19th, we decided that we needed to get out and do some geocaching. The weather was cool but clear with no wind, so pretty ideal caching weather. As I have alluded to earlier, caches that are new to us in this area are getting few and far between, so we knew we were not likely to get a lot of caches for the day. We left before lunch and drove west on I-10 about 20 miles west of Blythe to Wiley’s Well Road. There is a large California State Prison complex about five miles south of the interstate on this road. One can just see the complex from the highway, although without the signs advising not to pick up hitchhikers you wouldn’t know what it was. We found three caches along an eleven or twelve mile stretch of Wiley’s Well Road. That pretty much exhausted the caches in that area, so we drove back into Blythe for lunch at Denny’s.

After we finished lunch we decided to make an effort to get one of the caches south of town that still had not been found by anyone. They were still potential FTF caches even after having been out there for a week. The caches were on the Arizona side of the river and would have required a 20 mile drive on a gravel road if approached from the Arizona side, likely the reason the caches have still not been found. However, I remembered from caching in this area last February that there was a single lane bridge across the river not too far from the small Arizona town of Cibola, which just happened to be only a couple miles from the cache we wanted to grab. We pointed the Jeep south out of Blythe and started towards the cache. We finally located the bridge and were just about to cross into Arizona when the awning guy called me and said he was at the park. He didn’t need to get into the coach in order to install the topper awnings, so I told him we would be there in a half hour or so and we continued on to the cache site.

We crossed the river on the old concrete bridge and quickly found the cache location on the levee road just north of the bridge. However, it took me about a half hour of searching in a rock and brush covered gully before I found the actual cache. But, I was rewarded with an FTF because there were no other cachers logged on the paper log. Yea, I would have really been bummed to go through all that trouble just to find that someone had beat me to the FTF. After we found the cache we crossed back into California and scurried back to the coach. We arrived back at the coach about an hour after the guy called and he was just finishing up. I got there just in time to review the work and pay him. Yea, new toppers. Hopefully I don’t have to worry about water intrusion from the slides the next time it rains.

Later in the afternoon we went to Gary and Ramona Wilson’s coach for happy hour and a dinner of heavy hors d'oeuvre. We had little pigs in blankets and little chicken wings and little shrimp. Lots of good nibbles in small forms. We ate and chatted until about 7:30 when everyone went back to their own coaches for the rest of the night.

Friday, January 20th, we left the coach about 10:30 or so and drove across the river to Blythe to attend the 25th Annual Blythe Bluegrass Festival at the fairgrounds. Although not my absolute favorite genre of music, I do enjoy listening to bluegrass from time to time. However, I think the last time I went to an actual bluegrass festival was in Wickenburg, Arizona back in the 80's. Gary and Ramona Wilson are big fans and they come to the Blythe event almost every year. We don’t go out of our way to be here when the festival is going on, but this year the timing was right and it was this weekend, so we went for the day.

The event is not too large, area wise. There were two stages set up along with a row of food vendors and another row of merchandise vendors. We wandered through the vendor booths for a while and then sat at one of the stages and listened to a group called Lonesome Otis. They were quite good and we enjoyed the show. When they stopped to change bands we went over to the food area to get some lunch and met up with the Wilsons and the Babcocks. The Wilsons bought the three day pass, but the Babcocks were in just for the day as we were.

We all sat down and had lunch. Unlike the fairgrounds in Indio, where the FMCA rally was, the food here was reasonably priced and actually quite good. I had a Philly cheese that was actually better than the one I had at Denny’s yesterday. I was waiting for a screen printed tee shirt I bought to be made, so Jackie and I sat and listened to some more music for an hour or so. When it began to look like the shirt guy wasn’t going to get the thing made today we left. Gary will be here tomorrow and can pick it up for me.

We went back to the coach for the rest of the afternoon and got together with the rest of the group at 5:00 for cocktails. We didn’t do any dinner because we had a big, late lunch at the festival. At 7:00 Jackie and I went over to the clubhouse for karaoke. They
have a good turnout for karaoke here at this park and they have a pretty good sound system too. They had a big rotation of about a dozen singers, but I did get to do four songs during the evening. Most of the singers were good, so we enjoyed the music and even did a little dancing. All in all, a very fun evening. After karaoke we went back to the coach and off to bed.

Saturday, January 21st, we awoke to a very cloudy day with a lot of wind. The weather forecast gave a ten percent chance of rain and high winds all day long. We decided that the weather was not conducive to caching, and we really didn’t have anything else we wanted to do, so we just stayed in. Jackie touched up her hair color and we did a few other chores, but mostly just relaxed. We did hear from some friends that the big tent in Quartzsite, where the RV vendors set up shop for the January show, had been closed because of the high winds. Yikes. Gary Wilson did stop by in the afternoon with my shirt from the bluegrass festival. I guess they finally got their machine fixed. Other than that it was a quiet day around the coach.

Sunday, January 22nd, we left the park after lunch and went over into Blythe do some last minute stuff before our move to Quartzsite tomorrow. We did our laundry and then went to the grocery store for some last minute items. There are no big stores in Quartzsite, so we needed to make sure we had everything we would need for the next week.

After our chores we went back to the coach for the rest of the day. At about 5:00 we had happy hour with the Wilsons and the Babcocks. Later they headed off for dinner out and we went back into the coach where we relaxed the rest of the night.

Monday morning we got up and started packing the coach up for travel. We only have to go 24 miles, but the packing is the same whether it’s 24 miles or 240. We left the park about 11:00 and drove east to Quartzsite, Arizona. We will be dry camping in the desert here for the next five days with the same group of people we were here with last January. We drove a couple miles north of town to a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) camping area known as Hi Jolly Campsite. Our group was camped about a half mile east of the paved road. Some of them have been here over a week already, while some have only been here a couple of days. The one’s that were here with us last year are Curt and Sharon, Curt’s brother Ray and his wife Del, Dave and Karen , and Vernon and Peggy. There were two other rigs parked in the circle with some folks that we have met in passing but do not know well. Ernie and Andi, and Ron and Pam. There was another couple who had been parked with them, but had trouble with their batteries and had to move to town. They are Bob and Ann and will still be part of the evening group events at the campsite. No one was around when we got to the campsite, they were all in town shopping, however, we found a spot in the circle and got the coach parked and set up.

After we got set up we drove into Quartzsite to visit what is known to most everyone as “The Big Tent.” Technically, it’s the Quartzsite RV Show, but it’s in a big white circus sized tent so that’s what everyone calls it. The tent is filled with vendor booths selling or promoting all variety of RV related stuff, from cooking items to RV maintenance and repair, to campgrounds and resorts, to just stuff for RVs. The first thing we did was grab some lunch at one of the food booths. Then we started the tour. There were probably a couple hundred booths, including a row of them outside the tent, so we spent the next couple hours wandering around looking at stuff. I think the only thing we bought was a new remote control for our Direct TV receiver. My old one was getting sticky buttons.

After our shopping time we headed back to the campsite where we visited with folks for the rest of the afternoon. At 5:30 the entire group, sixteen people in all, went into Curt and Sharon’s motorhome for dinner. She served chicken cordon bleu and pasta, and it was great. Surprisingly, there was room enough for all those people to eat. Curt and Sharon have basically the same coach as ours, same model and floor plan, just a year newer, but we got everyone in and fed. After dinner we stayed and chatted until about 8:00 when we went back to our own coach for the rest of the night. When we walked between the coaches we found that the rain we had been waiting for all day had finally arrived. It was drizzling a little bit and it rained on and off most of the night.

Tuesday, January 24th, the rain and clouds were gone, but now the wind was blowing as the storm front moved out. It was also a little on the cold side. The weather forecast said it wasn’t going to get any warmer than the mid 60's today. We had lunch at the coach and then drove into Quartzsite to visit the giant swap meet that is always set up during the Winter season here. Actually, the whole town is a series of swap meets, with booths selling most anything you could think of. However, the largest one is called Tyson Wells and is not too far from where they put up the big tent for the RV show. We spent several hours walking around Tyson Wells, but ended up only buying a couple of little things. As is usually the case with us at these events, we really don’t need too much new stuff anymore. We have most everything we need or want, or at least what we can afford, so we just walk around and look at stuff.

We finally headed back to the campsite about 3:00 or so. Happy hour with the group was about 4:30 and about 6:00 we all gathered for dinner again. This time Del and Ray were primarily responsible for dinner and we had a very nice pork roast, along with scalloped potatoes and a couple of salads. After dinner we all went outside and sat around a big campfire for a couple hours just talking. Around 8:30 everyone headed to their own coaches for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, January 25th promised to be a very nice day, low seventies with just a little breeze. Our intent was to go out geocaching before lunch, however, we had a lot of geocachers in the group, along with some folks who wanted to see what it was all about, so it took until about 12:30 before we got everyone herded together and ready to go. Dave and Karen, who have been caching about a year and had a little under 300 finds, went with us in our Jeep. Peggy and Vernon, who are our biggest caching buddies, went with Bob and Ann in their big pickup truck, along with Sharon Minard. Sharon had never cached and was just curious. Bob and Ann want to cache and are just learning.

With the two vehicles in caravan we set out to do a series of caches along a gravel road known as the Old Yuma Road. On the way to the first cache we happened to see the most remarkable RV parked in one of the BLM camping areas. It was unlike anything I have ever seen before. Sitting in the middle of the desert was an art deco work of art doubling as a motor coach. It was mostly polished aluminum with a very nautical theme, including, believe it or not, an open, flying bridge just like on a big boat. The rig could be driven from the flying bridge or the cab, but the steering wheel today was up on top. A set of stairs descended down the back spine of the coach to the ground. The windows on the side of the rig looked like portholes and what wasn’t polished was a lovely turquoise color.

Several of the folks on the caching trip had Ipads and immediately looked up what we learned was called the “DecoLiner” motor coach. It is a completely hand built coach built on a 1973 GMC motorhome chassis and using the cab from a 1955 White truck for part of the structure. The artist is Randy Grubb and his company is called Blastolene. They have made a number of art pieces that were also motor vehicles. The vision for this coach started out as what Buck Rogers would have driven, but it ultimately migrated to the more nautical theme. It was only finished late last year and it is for sale, according to the sign on the coach. No price was quoted, but I can guess it would be high. This is a vehicle that is destined to live on the car show circuit.

Once we started caching we really knocked out the finds. By the end of the afternoon we had gotten twenty four new finds for our total, only a couple of finds shy or our all time high of twenty five. After caching we all went back to the campsite and sat around for happy hour. No group dinner tonight, several of the guys were going to an auction in town and most of the ladies were going to bingo. We and Peggy and Vernon headed back into town for dinner at the Grubstake, which is a very well known bar and restaurant on the north end of town. They are famous for their fish and chips, and during the season the place is always crowded. Some people that have reviewed the place on the internet gripe about the service being slow, but it is not a large place and with the number of people they put through there you have to go in expecting not to get served quickly. We had a couple of drinks and relaxed and had a marvelous meal. After dinner we went back to the campsite and into our coaches for the rest of the night.

Thursday, January 26th, Jackie and I left after an early lunch to some more shopping. We went to the big tent and walked through all the vendor booths again. I bought a tee shirt and a couple little odds and ends, as did Jackie. Nothing major. I had planned on buying a new satellite dish for use on my tripod since my old one is falling apart. However, earlier this morning Vernon told me that there was a guy just across the road from where we are camped that was selling a couple of satellite dishes. I looked at them and one was just what I wanted and only $20 instead of the $35 they wanted for a new one. Yea, scored one dish. We have a built-in dish on the roof of the coach, but I have always kept a regular dish and tripod in the bay for those times when we end up parked under trees and the roof mounted dish is blocked. The old one I had was used when I bought it six years ago and it was falling apart. Now I’m ready for another six years. We also walked through some of the other outside swap meet areas that we had missed on our previous visits, but didn’t find anything worthwhile.

After shopping we picked up a couple of geocaches on the way back to the coach. Today was Jackie’s day to cook for the group, along with Peggy. Jackie made a Chinese chicken salad. I was supposed to cook a pot of chili, but several of the group left this morning, so we would have had too much food had I made up the chili. I will save that for when we are all together again in Yuma in a couple weeks. While Jackie was preparing the salad I got out the karaoke stuff and started setting up for a karaoke night.

When we were here in Quartzsite with this same group last year we did a karaoke night and it was a big hit. Sharon Minard used to be a drummer and singer with a country band some years back and has a very nice voice. Around sundown everyone got together outside for dinner. This was the first night since we joined the group which was nice enough for everyone to eat outside. There was no wind and the temperature was very pleasant. Peggy made a ham and we had that with Jackie’s salad and some other side dishes.

After dinner we built a big campfire and started singing. Most of the songs were done by either me or Sharon, however, Ann joined in the singing after about a half hour. We sang and had a great time until almost 10:00 which is considered quiet time in the desert. We sang the last song, “Wonderful World” and packed up the audio equipment for the night.

Friday, January 27th, we decided to do some geocaching with Peggy and Vernon. The four of us loaded in our car and headed out about 10:30. We found three caches and then went into town to a pizza parlor called Silly Al’s. We have eaten at Silly Al’s for years, every time we come to Quartzsite. A couple years back Jackie was looking at the pictures on the walls of the owner and realized that it was a guy she dated back in the 60's. Unfortunately, we learned that he has passed away and the kids are running the place now. We had lunch at Silly Al’s with both the Minards and enjoyed the camaraderie.

After lunch we headed out for more caching. We found what is called a Power Trail located on a power line road about ten miles south of Quartzsite. A power trail is a series of caches that are put out pretty much in a line, with each cache only two or three tenths of a mile apart. This trail was small, only 20 caches, but we were able to snag them all in about 90 minutes. The nice thing about these power trails is that they let you build your numbers up on you stats. After the power trail we did a few more caches and we closed the afternoon with 26 new finds, a new daily record for us. Previously 25 was the most we had done in one day. We also found our 3,400 cache along the power trail. We had to take a picture with a sign commemorating the milestone.

After caching we headed back to the campsite. At happy hour everyone sat around the campfire and chatted. Since everyone had eaten a big, late lunch, we didn’t even put out any food. We ended up sitting around the campfire and talking until about 8:30 or so. We then went back to the coach and stayed in the rest of the night.

Saturday, January 28th, was moving day. We packed up the coach for the 95 mile trip south from Quartzsite to Winterhaven, California, just across the border from Yuma, Arizona on Interstate 8. We have stayed at this park, Pilot Knob, nearly every year since we have been traveling. We caravanned from Quartzsite to Pilot Knob with Peggy and Vernon who are also going to be staying there for two weeks. The Minards are headed for the Parker, Arizona area and also left the campsite today.

The ride to Winterhaven was pretty uneventful until we got about 30 miles north of Yuma and the wind picked up. By the time we hit I-8 through Yuma the wind was blowing 40 mph and it was really tough driving. We managed to get into the park about 12:30 and registered for our sites. We got side by side sites with the Bullocks and spent the afternoon getting set up and doing some house cleaning. A week in the dusty desert needed to be cleaned up.

We had happy hour outside with the Bullocks and it was very nice. The wind stopped blowing and we sat and chatted and watched the sun set, which was very pretty. Later we cooked some steaks and had dinner in the Bullock’s coach. Peggy made a pasta side dish that was delicious. We had dinner chatted until about 8:30 when we headed back to our coach for the rest of the night. It is nice to have a spot again with water, sewer and electric hookups. Dry camping in the desert is fun for short periods, but I like having the luxury of the hookups.

This is also the ideal spot to close this chapter of our story. We will be here in Winterhaven for two weeks. Until the next time, stay happy and enjoy every minute of your life. See ya.