On Sunday, the 7th of December we left Ramona and headed across the desert to the Pilot Knob RV Resort in Winterhaven, California. Winterhaven doesn’t amount to much, but the park is actually about 9 miles West of the Arizona border and Yuma, Arizona. We have stayed at Pilot Knob several times before and find that we really enjoy the Yuma area. The Yuma Elks Lodge is a great lodge with meals and activities nearly every night. The first couple days at Pilot Knob we did some local geocaching and visited the Elks Lodge to get a schedule for the two weeks we were going to be in town. On Thursday, the 11th, we went down into Algodones, Mexico to get our teeth cleaned. We have written about Algodones before, primarily a town dedicated to snow birds consisting mostly of dentists, eye doctors, pharmacies and liquor stores. Neither of us needed new glasses this year so our visit was pretty much just getting our teeth cleaned, having lunch and coming back home. We did manage to find two geocaches within the town, so we now have our first two Mexican caches. One of the Mexican caches was also the number 300 find for us.
Unfortunately, on December 17th we learned that our good friend Jim Hanson had passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. We knew Jimmie as a fellow Elk and avid Rv’er. We
had been at a number of Elks RV outings and rallies with Jim and his wife Lynn. We also knew him from his days as a bartender at Cactus Jack’s in Indio where he worked for 20 years. Like Roy, Jim was also a former Marine. The next day we learned that another great friend, David Connor, had also died on the 17th. David had been fighting kidney failure for a number of years. We first met David and Marianne while we still lived in Indio when they joined the Indio Elks Lodge RV group. They were both very good friends of ours and we enjoyed their company often. David and Marianne sold their home in Bermuda Dunes and bought a motorhome similar to ours about the same time we did in 2005. Like us, their intentions were to travel full time. We spent a lot of time traveling with them off and on over the next year and a half, meeting up with them in the summer of 05 in the Dakotas and spending 
two weeks in Yellowstone Park and Idaho. In the summer of 06 we met them in Branson, Missouri for a rally and later spent over a month traveling across Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York with them. Unfortunately, David’s health did not allow them to continue the full-time life style, so they bought a new house in Cherry Valley, near Beaumont and settled down to part time Rving again. Our hearts and prayers go out to Marianne, Lynn and the families and friends of both these fine men. They will be missed.While we were in Pilot Knob we spent quite a bit of our time meeting up with friends we had made in the RV community over the last couple of years. Among them were John and Rita Ham whom we knew primarily from their participation in several of the FMCA chapters which we belong to, including Monaco International, Elks International and MIME. We learned that John and Rita actually had a permanent RV pad in the Foothills area East of Yuma. They invited us over for lunch one afternoon and we were impressed with the development in which they lived. They have their RV parked on a nice pad and they built a large casita with a big living room, kitchen, bath and huge enclosed patio. The Casita has no bedroom so they sleep in the coach, but that also means the casita is not officially a “house” so it is taxed by the county as a storage shed. It was a very impressive setup and the entire development around them consists of similar large RV lots. We were impressed with the concept and might consider a similar setup if we ever get tired of being on the road all the time. We also learned that the Ham’s were avid geocachers and four-wheelers. Since Yuma sits in the middle of the desert, the four-wheeling possibilities are endless. John invited us to go on a four-wheeling geocaching trip down to the Marine Corps
bombing range which borders the area where their house is. We learned that the bombing range is several hundred square miles with much of it open to the public with a permit from the Marine Corps base in Yuma. It seems that only a few parts of the range are actually in use for bombing practice and are off limits. A search of the geocache web site showed dozens of caches hidden within the confines of the range.We went to the base and got our free range access permits the next day. Basically, you sign a paper that says you give up your right to complain if you get blown up or lasered, and that if you get lost, break down or die in the desert, you understand you are on your own. Other than that, have fun. We were originally going to go out with the group on Wednesday, the 17th but a
really bad storm blew through the area and we rescheduled for Friday the 19th. We headed into the range with four other geocachers in two other Jeeps about nine in the morning. We had a great time, actually did some four-wheeling with our Jeep for the first time, and traveled across some pretty rugged desert. We visited an old mine from the early 1900's and also found 13 caches. We left the range about 4 that afternoon after having a great time. The next day we went back to the Ham’s home for a Christmas party. All of their four-wheeling and Rving friends from the area were there and we had a great potluck dinner and gift exchange that was a lot of fun. We met some very nice people and are considering joining the four-wheeler chapter of FMCA.On the 21st we left Pilot Knob and headed up to Indio to the Indian Waters RV park. This is another of our membership parks located right in downtown Indio near all our old haunts. It is actually only about a mile from the country club where our old house is located. On the 23rd I went to see the oncologist and the information he gave me was pretty much the same as what I had learned through my internet research. My melanoma was very small, caught early and in the category of extremely curable. He indicated, as I expected, that I needed to have additional surgery to excise a larger area around the site of the melanoma. He was not sure at the time whether or not they would have to explore any nearby lymph nodes because he wanted to examine the original mole himself to determine the thickness. If it actually was a thin as the original pathology indicated, he would not need to do any lymph node removal, only the additional excision around the original site. I was scheduled for surgery on Monday, the 5th of January. While the doctor never specifically notified me, I did learn a few days after my first visit, when I went in for my preoperative tests, that the only surgery scheduled was the excision, so he must have verified that it was a very thin melanoma. Yea! Although I was not really looking forward to the surgery, at least it is the minimum amount of treatment and I will not require any type of chemo or other cancer treatments for this particular problem.
We spent Christmas day with Jackie’s godson Shane Ryan and his family. Jackie has known Nancy, Shane’s grandmother since the 60's, and was present when Shane was born. It was a very nice family dinner with Shane, his mother Vicki, Nancy, Shane’s dad Gary, Vicki’s brother Larry and other friends of the family. Shane, who is 14, got a Wii system for Christmas and he and I spent a couple of hours playing various games. I was very impressed with the Wii - I think I will ask Santa for one next year!! The week between Christmas and New Year’s were spent
primarily relaxing and doing some local geocaching in the Indio area. New Year’s Eve Barry and Colleen Cohen, who live in their motorhome at the Outdoor Resort Country Club about two miles down the street, moved their motorhome over to Indian Waters. You may recall that they visited us in Pahrump in September at the Western Horizons park there and ended up joining Western Horizons, which also includes Indian Waters among their resorts. By bringing their coach over to Indian Waters we were able to spend New Years Eve, and the following couple of days, with them, having a great grand party without having to worry about driving anywhere. We had a wonderful New Years Eve with the guys doing karaoke in the back and the girls playing cards. On New Years day the guys watched the football games and later we had a wonderful turkey dinner to celebrate the new year. It made for a great way to bring in the new year with friends.On Sunday, the 4th, we left Indian Waters and drove 1.4 miles to the Indio Date Festival Fairgrounds for the Western Area FMCA motorhome rally. Although the rally doesn’t really start until Thursday, they allow early parking and we wanted to get in and settled before my
surgery on Monday. As we were going in Jackie mentioned to one of the parking crew that I was having surgery on the next day and would it be possible to get parked in the handicap area where we had easier access to the rally activities. The parking crew indicated there was no problem so we ended up being parked right on the grounds near everything. We also have minimal electric service, enough to run our basic needs and keep the batteries charged without having to run the generator.On Monday, the 5th I went over to the outpatient surgery center at Desert Regional Hospital for my surgery. They wanted me there at 11:00, but I ended up not going into the operating room until almost 1:30. The wait was the worst. Once I got into the OR they put me out and the next thing I knew it was 4:30 and they were waking me up in the recovery room. Jackie and Colleen, who had come along to keep Jackie company, took me home and let me complete my recovery in the coach. I was pretty groggy and out of it most of the night, but not in any real pain. The worst part of the process is that because they dig out a pretty good chunk of skin, they have to install a drain to pull the fluid out of the hole for a while. Since it is on my back it is not very convenient to clean. Jackie has proven to be quite the nurse and taking very good care of me. Fortunately, I have not needed to take any of the pain medication that they prescribed for me. The surgical site is very uncomfortable - it actually feels more like someone beat me with a stick rather than cut into me. The swelling and muscle soreness is the worst, but there is no real pain. A couple of days after the surgery we noticed that the amount of drainage from the surgery site had dropped way off, so we made an appointment to go into the doctor on Thursday to see if the drain could be removed early. On Wednesday night the sealed bandage sprung a leak and I woke up at three in the morning in a little pool of blood. Yucky. Jackie, who has no great love of the sight of blood did great, she patched the hole and cleaned up the mess. The next morning the doctor changed the old dressing and removed the drain. I got a first look at the wound - looks like a badly planned railroad route, but the bleeding has pretty much stopped and the dressing are now simple bandages that Jackie can handle changing. Without the drain I am MUCH more comfortable.
Thursday was also the first day of the actual rally activities, so we spent some time in the vendor exhibits and also watched the parade put on by various chapters of the Western Area of FMCA. The parade was an absolute hoot. The theme of the rally is Ancient Egypt and some of the float decorations and costumes were very inventive and entertaining. The evening entertainment was a country group called Legends of Country. They did a kind of musical country music history lesson with songs from the early country artists like Hank Williams, Marty Robbins and George Jones. It was a great show. We will be here at the rally until next Sunday, the 11th and then we are headed over to the Indio Elks Lodge for a week. We will be hosting the RV park which gives us a place to park for a week and gives me a chance to recover from the surgery. Barry is going to come over to the fairgrounds on Sunday and move the motorhome to the Elks Lodge for us. That way I don’t have to try to drive. With the surgery being right in the middle of my back, I am not supposed to do any driving or any other kind of upper body exertion for a while.
That ends this episode of Travels with Roy and Jackie. I will try to update again while we are in Casa Grande, Arizona later in January. Until then, happy travels and have a great life.
