I believe our previous episode left us relaxing at the Desert Pools RV park in Desert Hot Springs, California. We had intended this two week stay to be relatively quiet, and for the most part, it
was. We did some caching on Friday the 13th of March (can’t scare us!) and found seven. This also happened to be my son, Roy Jr.’s birthday. My youngest turned 35 - yikes! On Saturday Barry and Colleen came over for an early St. Patrick’s Day celebration. We had a very nice corned beef and cabbage dinner, Barry and I did some karaoke while the girls played cards. Had a very nice afternoon and evening. On Monday we went back out caching in the Desert Hot Springs area and found 12 more caches. When we talk about caching with folks who are not familiar, one of the things we mention is that it tends to take us to places we wouldn’t have gone had it not been for the search. On Monday we found an historical park in Desert Hot Springs with a 50 foot tall wooden Indian statue. We also ended up on top of hill on the North end of town with a killer view. The hill has been subdivided into house lots and the one on top of the hill is listed for $1.9 million. And this is with no paved road or utilities.On Tuesday, the 17th we went out and found another 12 caches then went to the Desert Hot Springs Elks Lodge for a couple drinks and to meet up with our friends Jack and Gail Little. They
live in DHS and belong to the RV group at the Elks Lodge. We have been camping with them on numerous occasions and really enjoy their company. The next few days were pretty quiet and we stayed around the coach. On Friday, the 20th of March, we drove down to Indio for a party at the Cohen’s. It was Barry’s birthday on Friday, and their anniversary a couple of days later. Both of Barry and Colleen’s daughters were in town along with their significant others and the Cohen’s granddaughter, Zoe. She is now 4 and this was the first time we had met Zoe in person. A very cute, very bright kid. Jackie had a lot of fun interacting with her. We had a great time at the party.Saturday evening we went back to the DHS Elks Lodge for dinner with Gail and Jack, as well as several other members of the RV group. We also met with Tom Warren, the past president of Elks International, the FMCA Chapter for Elks. Tom and his wife Dorothy have a place in DHS, just down the street from the Western Horizon’s park we stay in. We were to meet both Tom and Dorothy for dinner, but Dorothy had to work late and couldn’t make it. We had a very nice dinner and visit with old friends.
Sunday morning, March 22nd, was our day to move from DHS up to Silent Valley, our ownership park in the mountains above Banning, California. We woke up to very dark, threatening skies and pretty high winds. We only had about 35 miles to drive, but were still a little anxious about the weather. Once I got on the freeway headed West, the wind, although strong, was blowing straight at us so it wasn’t making it too difficult to keep the coach straight. Once we reached the head of the Banning pass near Cabazon the rain started. At one point it was raining so hard you could barely see the road - thank goodness everyone on the freeway used some common sense and all traffic slowed to about 30 miles per hour or so until the rain let up. Fortunately, the weather let up for the last nine miles of the trip, which is the two-lane winding uphill run out of Banning to Silent Valley. Once we got to Silent Valley we found a nice campsite close to the village center and got set up. No rain, although it was windy and very cold. We actually thought we might wake up Monday morning to some snow, but that didn’t come to pass. The next few days we pretty much stayed in the coach because it was cold and windy in Silent Valley.
Finally, on Wednesday, the 25th the weather cleared up some and we were able to go out. We drove to Cathedral City to pick up our mail from Barry’s shop. We have it forwarded there when we are in Silent Valley because the park will not accept mail or packages. We also stopped at the property management company where Jackie used to work. We had a nice visit with Carol, her old boss. When we got back to the Banning area we did some caching and found 14. On Friday we went back down the hill for some more caching and found another 16 caches in the Beaumont area. That evening we went to the restaurant at Silent Valley for dinner and then to the bar for drinks and karaoke. Had a great dinner and a lot of fun in the bar. That is one of the nice things about Silent Valley, they have a good restaurant, nice bar and a little store. No need to leave the park.
On Saturday morning Jackie woke up with the beginnings of a cold, so we stayed in for a couple days. It was really too cold to do much outside anyway. I don’t think the temperature ever got above 60 for our whole stay. Last year at this time is was a little warmer and more enjoyable up there. On Monday, the 30th, Jackie was feeling a little better so we set off down the hill for some caching and found 20! This is our highest single day total ever! Yea! On Wednesday we went to Beaumont and met Marianne Conner for lunch. You may recall that her husband, our good friend David Conner, died late last year. Marianne is very upbeat and doing well - she has even learned to drive their big 40 foot coach and plans some trips this summer. After lunch we did some caching, finding 10 more. Sunday we drove down to San Diego to spend some time with Jackie’s mom. We took her to lunch and then some shopping at the mall. She is in good spirits and we had an enjoyable visit.
We spent the next few days taking care of chores, laundry and shopping, getting ready to leave Silent Valley. We were originally planning on spending 30 days in Silent Valley. However, we
learned that our Indio Elks RV club was going to Borrego Springs for a three day outing and then the Palm Springs/DHS Elks RV club was going to Chula Vista, near San Diego, just a few days later on an outing. We decided that we wanted to go on these outings rather than just sit another two weeks in the cold in Silent Valley. So, on Sunday, the 5th of April, we headed down out of Silent Valley and drove to Borrego Springs, a nice little town in the Eastern foothills of the inland range. Although the town is in San Diego County, it is really a lot closer to the Salton Sea and Coachella Valley than it is to San Diego. The outing was at a very nice new resort in Borrego. We got to the park early in the afternoon and relaxed the rest of the day. There were 15 rigs on the outing so we got to spend time with a lot of our old friends from the Indio Elks Lodge. After a nice pot luck we spent several hours sitting on the patio around our portable campfire chatting with friends.The next day, Monday, we had a “free” day (the golfers were out on the course at the resort) so we did some caching. We found 9 caches and also found a whole series of life-size metal
sculptures of prehistoric animals that Ricardo Breceda, an artist from Perris, California, has placed in the desert area around Borrego Springs. There are several dozen scattered around in life-like tableaus. The animals include mammoths, saber tooth cats, and early horses and camels. If you are in the Borrego Springs area you need to go find them. More information on the art can be found at www.galletameadows.com. Monday night we had a steak BBQ with all the fixen’s at the resort. Our wagon masters, Bill and Lynette, bought huge T-bones for the group as well as some of the biggest baking potatoes I have ever seen! After dinner I set up the karaoke and we had a couple hours of great fun. A lot of the group got up to sing and everyone seemed to really enjoy the evening.Tuesday our wagon masters had a Mexican potluck brunch which was wonderful. Jackie and I are not morning people, but this was scheduled for 10:00 which was perfect for us. We had a
great meal and visited for a while. In the afternoon we went out and did some more local caching, finding another 8 in the area. That night the wagon masters had a hot dog and fixen’s dinner and a number of us sat around our little portable fire pit for a couple hours, drinking, talking and telling jokes. Wednesday morning we packed up and headed back up to Indio. We didn’t want to go all the way up to Silent Valley for just six days, so we went to our membership park in Indio, Indian Waters. We had a nice spot there and relaxed the rest of the day. On Thursday we did some caching in the Indio area and found 6.Friday Jackie went to the doctor for some tests. In the late afternoon we headed over to the Aqua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage because we had tickets for the Chelsea Handler show. Chelsea is a comedian who has her own talk show on the cable network, “E” which we watch almost every night. The show was in the brand new show room at the casino which is a fabulous venue, especially compared to what they have at the two Indio casinos. We gambled for a little while (only lost about $60 between us) and then had a real nice dinner at one of the casino restaurants. The show was wonderful, and a bit raunchy, but we expected that having been exposed to here TV show, which has a lot of “bleeps” even for a cable show. We really enjoyed the evening.
On Saturday, the 11th of April, we met Tom and Lynn Gilliam for lunch. Lynn was the General Manager and my boss when I was the Association Manager at the Desert Princess Country Club. I worked for her for almost seven years. She is now the General Manager for the new Sun City Shadow Hills development in Indio. Tom has had some major health problems recently, including a spontaneous subdural hematoma which could have killed him had the doctors not diagnosed it properly. He didn’t hit his head or anything, he just had a blood vessel burst in his skull. That was a couple months ago and he is doing pretty well now. He seemed to be in good spirits, although he has not been able to return to work yet. After lunch we did some shopping for our trip to Chula Vista with the Palm Springs Elks RV group next week.
Sunday, the 12th, was Easter and we went to our old church, the Pathfinder Church of the Risen Christ. Father Ned and Rev. Kathy are long time friends and we used to be really involved with the church and their retreats when we lived and worked in Indio. I used to do all the music and sound for the retreats and Jackie was also a member of the team. Most of the people at the
Easter service were new to us, but it was nice to see Ned and Kathy again. After the service we went over to the Motorcoach Country Club where Barry and Colleen Cohen live to spend the afternoon with them. This will probably be the last time we see them before we leave for our summer travels. We stopped in at the Country Club’s restaurant to see Shane Ryan, Jackie’s Godson and his family. Vicki, Shane’s mom, is the food and beverage manager at the Club and she had the family up there for Easter brunch. We got to see Shane’s mom Vicki, his dad Gary, his uncle, Larry and his grandmother, Nancy. After we visited with them for a bit, we headed over to Barry and Colleen’s for some fun. Jackie brought over some lamb chops for she and Colleen - Barry and I don’t care for lamb. We had a couple drinks and a nice boat ride on the private lake. It was a great afternoon. The girls had their lamb and Barry and I had some pasta with some of Barry’s great sauce. It was a very nice way to spend Easter.Tuesday morning, the 14th, we packed up the coach and headed to San Diego for the outing with the Palm Springs/Desert Hot Springs Elks RV group. We arrived in the early afternoon at the Chula Vista Elks Lodge, which has a 27 space RV park in their parking lot. They have full hookup sites, including sewer and cable at each site. There are 10 rigs at this outing. Tuesday afternoon we had a nice happy hour and met a lot of newer members of the group we had not known before. They are a very friendly group and we had a nice time chatting. We had dinner in the Chula Vista lodge. It was “taco night” but the food was much more than just the crunchy hamburger tacos you get at most lodges. They had about four choices of filling along with rice and beans and it tasted great. The next day, Wednesday, we took Jackie’s mom out to lunch, then some shopping and finally to her hair and nails appointment. Normally, we don’t get to spend that much time with her because we usually visit when we are staying up in the Coachella Valley. That means we have to leave San Diego by mid afternoon to miss the rush hour traffic. This time we are staying only about six miles away so it was easy to take our time. She seemed to enjoy the visit. Wednesday evening we had a wonderful pot luck dinner with the group in the RV park. We played a couple of games after dinner and visited. This is a great group to be around. Today (April 15th) is also the day we designated as our cat Smokey’s birthday. We got him in May of 2000 and figured he was about five weeks old, so we decided that April 15th was an easy date to remember (tax day) and was probably pretty close to his real birthday. He is nine today, which is 52 in human years according to a web site we checked. Happy Birthday Smokey and welcome to middle age! Jackie said he looked depressed today, I’m not so sure.
Thursday morning we went out and did some caching in the Chula Vista area. We only got eight, but one of them was our 600th cache! Considering we have only been doing this about a year, we are doing pretty good. Tonight we have dinner at the Galley Restaurant, over at the Chula Vista Marina. We used to go to the RV park with both the Palm Springs and the Indio Elks Rv clubs. The Galley has great food and we are looking forward to dinner.
Well gang, that catches us up to the minute. We are here in Chula Vista until Sunday the 19th when we start our journey North! Our winter is almost over and our grand summer adventure to Canada and Alaska starts in just a few days. I will try to be a little more timely with my updates to our little news blog as we travel North. Until the next time, have a happy life and remember that life’s a journey, not a destination, so enjoy the trip!
