We did caching on a number of afternoons, usually only going out for an hour or two and doing a few caches because it was still very hot. Most of the caches in the Pahrump area are out in the
desert around town so there was a fair amount of desert hiking involved in locating them. Nonetheless we still found close to 20 during the two weeks we were there. We also played Texas hold-em in the clubhouse twice a week. The games there are always friendly and fun and we really enjoyed playing. There were a number of folks there who were there last November when we stayed at the Winery. On Sunday the 21st we drove over the hill to Vegas to meet with my brother Russ. He is still a pit supervisor at the Golden Nugget and doing quite well. His daughter, Rachel is now a Junior in high school. She wasn’t able to make it to the lunch because she was at a friend’s house after the big homecoming prom the night before. We met Russ at an Applebee’s and had a very nice lunch.On Wednesday, the 24th of September, we bid farewell to Pahrump and headed down I-15 towards Hemet and the Southern California Elks Rally. Wednesday night we stopped in Hesperia for the night and then left early so we could arrive in Hemet early. We got there about 11:30 in
the morning, found our spot and got set up for the rally. It was great seeing all our old friends from the Desert Drifters, the Indio Elks Lodge RV group. We were parked with them at the rally. Those there included the Montez’s, the Tweedy’s, the Purscell’s, the Baron’s, the Argue’s, and the Daley’s. There were also several newer members of the club who seemed very nice. There were a total of 13 rigs from Indio at the rally, including us. It’s good to see the club having good turnouts at their outings again after what seemed to be several years of decline. We also met up with our friends from the Fullerton Lodge, including David and Marianne Conner, who were parked a couple rows over from us.The Elks rally was fun, as it always is, but it was HOT! Since most of the booths and activities were outside in the sun, it got pretty uncomfortable in the afternoons. I think the charity fund-
raising suffered this year because of the weather conditions. We ate all our evening meals in the clubhouse and the food was quite good this year. They also finally have the serving down pat, because there were no delays or long lines and they never appeared to run out of anything. On Friday the Indio group took up a collection and bid on one of the “pigs” for Saturday’s pig races. These are similar to the “horse races” they have on cruise ships where you have wooden pigs that move across the floor according to the rolls of a set of dice. There were six pigs and most of them sold for around $350, which is what Indio paid for theirs. It could have been a good investment because the owners of the pig who wins the most races of the six held got 25% of the total income from selling all the pigs, and the owners of the pig that wins the last race gets 50% of the
total. Unfortunately, our pig didn’t win any races and the San Bernardino Lodge’s pig won three of the six, including the last one. They ended up splitting about $1,800 among their “investors”! We had a good time though. I made up a bunch of cheering signs and passed them out amongst our group during the races, so we had a great time cheering on our #5 pig, Shady Lady. Saturday afternoon they had the Commanding General from the 29 Palms Marine Corps Base speak to the crowd, and afterwards the Marine Corps Band from the base played a brief concert. It was a very patriotic afternoon.On Sunday the rally ended and we headed up the road 26 miles to the Yucaipa Regional Park in Yucaipa. We have stayed in this park a number of times in the past with the Indio Elks group, as well as last Spring with our 100%ers Chapter rally. It’s a very nice park with full hookups for less than $25 a day. When I made our reservations some months ago, I blindly selected a site number - in the past we have not found any “bad” sites - and we found that the site I picked was in the new part of the park, just added in the last year. Unfortunately, the new section has GFI type circuit breakers installed on the power pedestals, including the 50 and 30 amp services. Apparently this is a new code requirement. At any rate, we found that the power to the coach would not stay on unless I turned off the inverter in the coach. All of the outlets in the coach go through the inverter so if the power to the inverter is off, everything in the coach plugged into an outlet is running off of the batteries. This meant I had to run the generator for a couple hours in the morning and again at night to keep the batteries charged. The air conditioners, refrigerator, and hot water heater worked off of the 50 amp shore power just fine, but I couldn’t have power going to the inverter/charger without popping the breaker. The park maintenance people tried changing the breaker, but it didn’t help. They said that they have seen the problem with other newer coaches and they think that something with the GFI’s in the coach interferes with the GFI’s in the power pedestal. So if you stay in Yucaipa, don’t accept spaces 24 through 33 - they are the new sites. After three days of problems I finally got them to move us to one of the older sites in the park - without the GFI breakers, and we had no more problems. We did have to move twice because of previous bookings in the park, but at least we didn’t have to worry about power anymore.
While in Yucaipa we didn’t do too much. We did some caching in the area on one day, and went shopping in Banning, San Bernardino, and Redlands various days. We are still preparing for our
cruise next month. On Thursday the 2nd of October we drove down to San Diego to spend the afternoon with Jackie’s mom. She is living in a new assisted living home which seemed very nice. We took her out to lunch at Applebee and then shopping at the mall in National City. She was very pleasant and it was a nice afternoon. We also got to see Jackie’s brother, Dennis, who stopped by to see us at the home before we left. The next day, Friday, we went out to dinner in Banning with David and Marianne Conner. David seems to be doing better than he was when were here in the spring, but he stilled seems very frail. We had a very nice dinner at a local Mexican restaurant and managed to catch up on what was going on in our lives. 
On Monday the 6th we headed up to Silent Valley, our ownership park in the mountains South of Banning. We are at about 3,700 feet here so the weather is cooler, but still very nice. We have a great spot where the satellite TV works, we get internet and the phones work. Spots were all three work well can be hard to find up here because of all the trees and the fact that the park is huge and down in a bowl surrounded by high peaks. We are going to be here the full 30 days allowed. We leave here on November 5th for San Diego and then out on our cruise two days later.
That’s pretty much it in our life for now. Talk to you again soon.
