None of the activities of the rally started until Wednesday, so we didn’t have too much to do on Tuesday. We were originally going to go to a late lunch with a friend of Jackie’s from church, but about an hour before we were supposed to meet she called and cancelled because she didn’t feel well. Since we hadn’t had any lunch we left the fairgrounds and went down the street to one of our favorite Mexican places, Taqueria Gurerro.. Jose Guerrero is an acquaintance of Jackie’s and he has several taquerias in Indio, as well as a Mexican market. The food is simple, but very good and very authentic. Guerrero’s is always one of the restaurants on our list of “must visits” when we come to the Coachella Valley. The newest one, and the one closest to the fairgrounds is at 48th Ave and Jackson, in a strip mall. When we go there we are usually the only non-Mexicans in the place, always a good sign for a Mexican restaurant. I would highly recommend Guerrero’s to anyone looking for good, fast and authentic Mexican. After lunch we spent the rest of the day hanging out at the coach.
Wednesday afternoon we headed into the fairgrounds for the first of the rally activities, a chapter fair. Chapter fairs are often held at rallies to give the various chapters an opportunity to set up a table and “sell” themselves to the attendees. Almost all of the chapters at this fair would be affiliated with the
Western Area of FMCA, which is basically California and Nevada. There were several dozen chapters set up in the hall and we walked around and talked to several. We also ran into a lot of people we hadn’t seen in about a year. We have gotten to know a lot of people from our attendance at various rallies over the years and many of them were here. Most of them we had not seen for nearly a year since we didn’t do any rallies this past year. Our last rally was this same Western Area rally last January. It was enjoyable catching up with many of our friends and acquaintances.After the chapter fair we walked over to the coach sales area to check out the coaches for sale. They don’t have as many coaches at these area rallies as they do at the big FMCA conventions, but there were probably 30 or 40 coaches to look at. At the conventions there may be hundreds to look at. We spent a couple hours looking at coaches and, as usual, didn’t find anything that made us really want to give up our current house for a new one. After looking at coaches we went back to the coach for the night.
Thursday, January 7th was the day the seminars started and the vendor area opened up for shopping. I walked over for a seminar on tire pressure monitoring systems in the morning. I have been wanting to get some sort of a system for a while now and decided that I was going to get one at this rally. I wanted to do a little research to find the best system. Essentially, the purpose of the systems are to enable you to watch the pressure in all of your tires, coach and tow car, while driving. This way if you have a tire going down you can stop before it gets low enough to blow out and cause damage or an accident. They all work pretty much the same way, there is a sensor that goes on each tire or wheel which transmits a wireless signal to the receiver up in the drivers area. Different systems have different types of sensors, but they all do pretty much the same thing. After the seminar I had pretty much
made up my mind which one I wanted and later on during the rally I bought one. The total cost was $500 but I will feel a lot safer while driving knowing what the tire pressures are and having the alarm features letting me know when a problem is developing. After lunch Jackie and I both went over and spent several hours walking through the vendor area. After the vendors and seminars quit for the day we stayed to watch the parade. The Western Area rally always features a parade on the first full day of the rally.
Various chapters put together costumes and floats reflecting the theme of the rally for the year. This year’s theme was “Glorious Days of the Silver Screen” and there were some great costumes presenting characters from various movies. The Wizard of Oz was a popular one, there were at least three chapters that did the Wizard. The parade was a lot of fun. After the parade we headed over to Barry and Colleen’s for a quick visit and cocktail.Friday afternoon we walked around the rally area just meeting people and enjoying the various activities. Friday was the day I bought my tire pressure monitoring system and Jackie also bought a central vacuum system for the coach. She has wanted one of those for a while as well. Friday evening we headed over to Cactus Jack’s for dinner. W e had made arrangements with a number of our friends to have dinner at Jack’s that night and we had a table for 10 reserved. Barry and Colleen were there, as were Dick and Ginger, some friends of ours from Desert Hot Springs. We also had Ray and Suzie and Gary and Ramona, some of our full timer friends. Ray is the vice president of the 100%ers Chapter that I am the president of. We had a great dinner with a lot of nice conversation.
Saturday afternoon we went back over to the activities area and met Barry and Colleen who had come over on a day pass just to do some shopping and look at the new coaches. We spent the afternoon with them, looking at coaches and walking through the vendor area. Barry ended up buying a tire pressure system too, the same one I got. Later we went to Cactus Jack’s for a happy hour cocktail. That night I went out and picked up a Round Table pizza for dinner. Round Table is still our favorite pizza joint.
Sunday was the end of the rally and I heard coaches starting up and leaving at about 6 a.m. We weren’t in that big a hurry and waited until about 10 before we pulled out. We got on the freeway and headed East towards Arizona and our next stop, Brenda, Arizona. We had about 140 miles or so to drive and ended up getting to the RV park in Brenda by mid afternoon. We are staying at the Black Rock RV Resort for a week. Brenda is about 20 miles East of Quartzsite, Arizona, so we will be close enough to go into Quartzsite for some shopping. Quartzsite in January is the scene of several big “shows” including the RV show and the rock and mineral show. There are hundreds of vendors that set up and there are generally close to 100,000 RVs of various types parked in and around Quartzsite. It is really quite a “happening” for anyone who enjoys the RV lifestyle. Black Rock is a full service RV park so we have 50 amp with water and sewer for the week. After our week here we will head into Quartzsite proper for the International Area rally. At this rally we will be dry camping (no hookups), so we wanted to have a nice comfortable week prior. My tire pressure system worked well on the trip over. I was surprised by how much the pressure in the tires rose as a result of driving. The Coach tires went up nearly 20 pounds in pressure and the car tires about 12 pounds. That was driving in pretty cool weather at 55 miles per hour. I can only imagine how high the pressure can get in the middle of summer, in the desert, at 65 or 70, speeds I have seen some idiot motor home drivers doing. Scary!
Monday we decided to take a drive into Quartzsite after lunch just to see what was going on. We stopped at Tyson Wells which is the BIG outdoor shopping area on the South side of the freeway. During the shows (RV and rock) there are hundreds of vendors set up in this area. Since the RV show doesn’t open until later this week most of the vendors were still setting up their booths. We did walk around and look at the couple of dozen that were already set up. We also stopped at the RV supply store and hardware store for some minor maintenance stuff we needed. After shopping we headed back to Brenda and stopped in at the Desert Gold RV park, right across the highway from our RV park, and visited with Bob and Bette Thomas. Bob and Bette are the Secretary and Treasurer of the 100%ers Chapter of FMCA, of which I am the President. We have known them since our first rally in 2005 and cross paths with them several times each year. They are getting on in years, Bob is in his 80's, but they still travel full time, going back and forth across the country every year. They are originally from New Jersey and go back there every summer, then back out to the Western part of the country in the winter.
Tuesday, January 12th was a leisure day. I did spend an hour installing Jackie’s new central vac system, but other than that we just relaxed and hung around the coach. Wednesday we went out after lunch to do some geocaching. We were able to find eight caches in a couple of hours. We also had time to stop and do some shopping in Quartzsite in between caches. We also met another caching couple at one of the caches in Quartzsite. As long as we have been caching, nearly two years now, we find we rarely run into other cachers in the field. This couple is probably only the fourth or fifth we have met. We were at a cache when they drove by and stopped to talk to us. They figured we must have been cachers because they had just found the cache earlier in the day and saw us standing near it, out in the middle of the desert trying to look inconspicuous. Anyway, we had a nice chat with them and promised to come visit them later in the week. They are dry camping in the desert South of Quartzsite with a bunch of other people from Oregon. They are Russ and Nellie and are from Grants Pass, Oregon. They seem like very interesting people. Among other things, Russ is a hot air balloon pilot and they have their own balloon. Since we to the Grants Pass area frequently I see a possible hot air balloon ride in our future. After we got back to the coach we went to the Black Rock Café, which is in the same building as the office for our RV park, and had dinner. They had liver and onions on the special and we both love liver. The dinner was great. We have eaten at this café in the past and they always have great food.
Thursday we decided to be a little more adventurous in our caching. Most of our caching recently has been urban or fairly easy desert caching. Today we put our sights on a couple of caches that were true desert caches. One was in the mountains about 15 miles Northwest of Brenda, called the Yuma Mine Cache. When I lived in Arizona years ago I used to enjoy going out and exploring old ghost towns and mining sites, so I wanted to give this one a try. The cache was about 7 miles off the
nearest paved road, but except for a couple of rough spots, was a fairly reasonable gravel road. There were a couple of places where I had to go very slow over some very rocky areas - don’t want to break our nice new Jeep! We finally got to the place and found a true abandoned mine site. There were a number of shafts in the area, both vertical and horizontal, as well as an old mill structure and “residence”, which was really an old dilapidated trailer and shack. We found the cache and then decided that this was a good place to do some target shooting. I have a very nice old Colt 1903 hammerless .32 Cal. automatic that I had gotten from my dad when he died. Although I didn’t get the entire story, I remember him telling me that he had gotten the pistol from some criminal he had arrested back in the 50's when he was a cop with the Milwaukee Police Department. He said back in those days the courts would give you guns that you seized after the court
proceedings were complete. I have done some research on these weapons and found that, according to the serial number, the one I own was made in 1920. This particular weapon was very popular with criminals and gangsters back in the 20's, 30's and 40's because it was small and light and easy to carry. In fact, it is referred to as a “pocket pistol” in the literature. All of the famous gangsters, Capone, Dillinger, and others were said to have carried one of these Colt automatics in their pocket as a “spare” gun.I have had the gun in storage since my dad died in 2002, but I decided that, since I now had my Federal concealed weapons permit, I would get it out and carry it in the car. I already have a 9mm that I keep in the coach. I got the old .32 out of storage in January, but I hadn’t had a chance to shoot it yet. Frankly, I wasn’t even positive it worked. It does. We shot up a few dozen rounds just to make sure
everything was working right and it performed very well for a 90 year old! Even Jackie got to shoot. She had never shot a gun before and was very excited to be able to shoot a few rounds at a stick. Since the gun is a small caliber, .32, it doesn’t have too much of a kick, so it’s easy to handle. Now that I know the weapon works I will feel more confident with it in the glove box of the car.After driving out of the desert from that cache we went out to another desert cache that required us to drive about 3 miles out into the desert and then walk another quarter mile. We found this cache also. So for the whole afternoon we only got two caches, but we had a great time and saw some wonderful scenery. By the way, the car (which regular readers will remember had its problems early on) performed flawlessly. Yea!!
Friday, January 15th we headed back into Quartzsite after lunch to do some shopping at Tyson Wells which was now fully opened. We also had plans for dinner with Doug and Linda Stoudt, some friends from our Alaska caravan this past summer. Doug and Linda were the “tailgunners” on that trip. The tailgunners are the caravan staff that leave a campground last and make sure that nobody gets left behind or has problems on the road that go undetected. We hit it off really well with them on the caravan and, although we have been in email contact, have not seen them since the caravan ended in British Columbia back in August. After about two hours of walking around looking at stuff, we met up with Doug and Linda, and some friends of theirs from another caravan they had worked. Allen and Tina are from Calgary, Alberta and had gone with Doug and Linda on a caravan to Mexico. The six of us then went to a great restaurant called Grubstake, which is located about a mile North of Quartzsite on Hwy 95. I wrote about this place last January as having the BEST fish and chips I have ever tasted. Friday is all you can eat fish night, although the portions they give at the beginning don’t usually necessitate having to ask for seconds. The only problem is that the place is packed every night, but especially on Fridays. We got there early and were lucky to get a table quickly, but it still took over an hour to get our food. This was not a problem, however, because we had drinks and had a great chance to talk and catch up with Doug and Linda and to get to know Allen and Tina. As it turns out, all three of us had the same model of motor home, the Monaco Knight. Doug and Linda have the same floor plan we have, but theirs is an 06. Allen and Tina have an 05 like ours, but a different floor plan. Small world. After a very nice dinner we headed back the 20 miles to Brenda and settled in for the night.
Saturday was a chores day. We did our laundry for the first time in two weeks. Having clean clothes is not the problem, we have enough clothes for six weeks. The problem is having a place to put all the dirty clothes. After two weeks the corner of the bedroom we lovingly call our hamper gets pretty full. We know its time to wash when the dirty clothes start to approach the edge of the bed. We also put all of our outside stuff away in preparation for our move to Quartzsite on Sunday.
Sunday, January 17th we left Brenda and headed 20 miles to the Southeast to Quartzsite. We will be going into a rally on Monday and we had wanted to stay one more day in Brenda, but the park just couldn’t find a space for us Sunday night. We left Brenda about 10:00 a.m. and it only took about 30 minutes to get to Quartzsite where we found a dry camping spot in the same RV park where the rally will be held. Since we will be dry camping (no water, electric or sewer connections) it didn’t take too long to set up. Park, put out the slides and level the coach. Done!
After getting set up we headed to the “big tent” and the Quartzsite RV show. The annual RV show had started on Friday and the “big tent” is just that, a huge tent in which all of the RV related vendors set up shop. The show runs for two weeks. We spent several hours walking the tent and looking at all the vendors. Some of them had also been in Indio the week before, so we saw some of the same stuff. One of the repeat vendors was the guy I bought the tire pressure monitoring system from, which was nice because I had found that one of the sensors in my set was leaking. The leak was very minor, but was a problem nonetheless. I took the sensor with me and when I mentioned it to the guy he immediately took it and gave me a new one. Good customer service. After our shopping trip we went back to the coach and relaxed for the rest of the night.Monday, January 18th was the first day of preparation for the International Area Rally for FMCA. The rally is being advertised as a “back to basics” rally, which essentially means that most everyone will be dry camping in a big empty lot and the activities will be held in a big temporary tent. The actual rally activities don’t start until Wednesday afternoon, but the rally organizers have asked Jackie and I to help out as volunteers. I will be handling the making and placing of the various signs for the rally. This includes directional signs on the roads coming into the rally area and the various signs needed in and around the tent. I will also be the sound man for various activities and the MC of the talent show. They also want me to do karaoke one night. These are pretty much the same things I did for the International Area Rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin back in the summer of 2008.
I got busy making and putting out the directional signs, which kept me busy most of the day. The tent company came out and worked on putting up the tent and the rally parking crew was out marking the parking areas for the coaches. They are expecting about 400 coaches at the rally, so it will be busy. The major problem for the day is that some of the rally participants are coming in while the rally organizers are still trying to get organized. Normally, the various volunteer groups get to come in several days before the rally participants so that everything gets set up before the “customers” start to show up. This time, because of some contractual glitches with the RV park owner, the first day of early parking for the rally participants is Monday, the first day that any of the organizers can get in to start getting ready. Needless to say, it was a very confusing and sometimes frustrating day as coaches starting coming in looking for someone to help get them parked before the parking crew even had the parking laid out. Yikes.
The next day, Tuesday, I had pretty much completed my sign work so we took the afternoon off and headed back into the shopping areas to do walk around and do some more shopping. Later on that evening the rally had a hot dog and hamburger dinner for the volunteers in the tent. Unfortunately, late Tuesday (actually early Wednesday morning) we were awakened by a phone call from the lady who runs the nursing home in San Diego where Jackie’s mom Beverly is living. She told Jackie that on Monday Beverly had fallen while trying to walk without her walker. She didn’t seem to be in too much distress, so they didn’t call for medical assistance. On Tuesday morning when Beverly woke up she found she couldn’t get out of bed. The paramedics came and took her to the hospital where they found she had broken her hip. The lady at the nursing home said that she had trouble finding Jackie’s phone number, so that is why the call was so late.
Wednesday morning Jackie went over to the information booth for her volunteer duties. Later on she called the hospital to check on her mom and found that she was resting comfortably and in no immediate danger or distress. Since we will be going back to the Coachella Valley on Sunday, and had already planned to go down and visit Jackie’s mom on Monday, we decided that no immediate changes in our plans were needed.
Wednesday was the first “official” rally day and the registration and information booth was pretty busy. Later on that afternoon the wind came up pretty heavy and I had to spend some time running around repairing my directional signs on the roads. The wind would knock them down and I had to go out and nail them back up again. Thankfully, by Wednesday night most everyone who was going to come to the rally would be there and I wouldn’t have to worry about the signage on the roads anymore. That afternoon it started raining, but it wasn’t too bad. The grounds we are on are fairly flat with quite a bit of rock, so the mud is not too bad. Unfortunately, the tent doesn’t have a floor, so the inside of the tent was a wet and muddy as the outside because the water just runs under the sides of the tent. It wasn’t bad enough to stop the evening bingo session, however. Jackie and I both played, but didn’t win anything. For the coverall game one of the RV dealerships had donated a $500 prize which would have been nice to win.
Thursday, January 21st we woke up to rain. It had rained on and off most of the night and was still raining. I had to get up and out early, about 7:30, because I had to set up the sound system in the tent for the Frustrated Maestros. The Maestros are a chapter of FMCA that is comprised of people who like to sing and/or play instruments. They entertain at the various FMCA rallies. The International Area rallies always provide a breakfast in the morning and the Maestros play and
sing for an hour as entertainment. I was the sound guy for the show. Not too long after breakfast the rains really picked up and by 1:00 p.m. it was a deluge. We were experiencing the same severe storm system that had hit Los Angeles the day before. The rally had several evening events scheduled, including a hot dog cookout for all rally
attendees, and a chapter fair, talent show and karaoke session, which I was going to MC and host. However, the rain never let up and only got worse. About 3:00 p.m. or so the rally organizers decided that they needed to cancel all the events for Thursday evening. The water was six inches deep in the tent and the rain was coming down so hard we could hardly see the tent, and we were only parked about 100 feet away from it! All of the activities were rescheduled to Saturday afternoon and we had the evening off. Not that we were going to go anywhere in the terrible storm. The wind was
blowing 50 mph and the rain was coming in sheets. We had a very nice little river running right through the parking lot in front of our coach. We had also heard from some friends who were working a booth in the “big tent” at the RV show that the tent had been evacuated and the show closed because of the storm. The water was coming in a flooding the floor and they tent was blowing around so bad they didn’t think it was safe to keep it open.Some time in the middle of the night the rains slowed and then stopped. Although the wind was still blowing pretty strong, it was not 50 or 60 mph anymore. We woke up Friday morning to overcast but dry skies. I had to get up and get the sound system going for the Maestros again at 7:30 a.m., but at least the grounds had dried somewhat. There was still some mud, but most of the standing water had gone. The breakfast and morning entertainment went off without a hitch. By 9:00 or so the sun was actually peeking out from time to time and the skies were only partly cloudy. Once I was done with the Maestros in the morning I didn’t have any more duties for the day. Jackie had a ladies luncheon at 1:00 p.m., but I just hung around the coach playing on the computer. Friday evening we headed into Quartzsite to eat at Silly Al’s, a pizza joint that we go to whenever we are in Quartzsite for a few days. Like everything in Quartzsite this time of year, the place is packed. We made arrangements to meet three other couples there for dinner, Ray and Suzie and Gary and Ramona, who are our Monaco friends. They have been mentioned in the blog before. Also invited were Doug and Linda, our friends from the Alaska caravan who were the tailgunners for the trip. We waited about an hour for a table and then had some pretty good pizza. We got the gigantic size for us so that we would have some leftovers. The pizza was not as good as it has been in the past. They seem to have cut down on the ingredients and it shows in the taste. Not too much topping and very little sauce. May be the last time we do Silly Al’s.
After dinner we headed back to the coach and noticed that the evening’s entertainment was still going on. The entertainment was The Rivoli’s, a husband and wife singing act. We missed most of the first hour, but caught the second half of the act and found them very entertaining. They are full-time motorhome people and did a lot of parody songs about the RV lifestyle. I would describe them as very Branson-like entertainers, and, in fact, they have played Branson several times.
Saturday, January 23rd, was to be a busy day. First I had my 7:30 a.m. call to action to provide the sound equipment for the morning Maestro’s performance. Then we had all the activities that we were supposed to do on Thursday night scheduled
for Saturday afternoon. At 1:00 p.m. I had set up all my equipment to do the talent show and karaoke, as well as be the MC for the Chapter Fair. We had a very poor turnout for the talent show - I suspect it would have been better in the evening had it not been rained out.
However, we did have a couple of singers and even one guy who came up and played a couple of songs on his mandolin. I was able to do a couple of songs as well. Later on I was judged as one of the top three performances and got a $50 WalMart shopping card. Yea! Free groceries. After everything wrapped up about 4:00 p.m. I tore down all my stuff and stored it away again.Saturday night we had left over pizza for dinner and then went to the entertainment about 6:30. The Rivoli’s were playing again and this was their night for their Patriotic Show. They sang a lot of patriotic and American songs and did a tribute to the veterans in the group. Again, they were very entertaining and it was a worthwhile show to attend. After the show we headed back to the coach to rest and get ready for the next day’s travels.
Sunday, January 24th was our next travel day. We packed up and headed out of Quartzsite about 10:00 a.m., headed West on I-10, back to the Coachella Valley. This time we were headed for a Western Horizon’s park in Desert Hot Springs on the West end of the valley. It was only about 140 miles and we gained an hour when we
crossed into California and the Pacific time zone, so we got to the park about 11:30 a.m. Because of the recent storms all of the mountains surrounding the Coachella Valley were covered in snow. As you come into the Valley from the East and go down the Chiraco Summit grade you get a great view of the valley. With all the snow it was very pretty. Once we got to the park we quickly checked in and got our spot, a nice corner space with lots of room. We are going to be here for two full weeks, so I spent some time putting out a lot of our outside decorations, like our flagpole and patio rug. After the travels and the setting up I was pretty bushed, so we just stayed in the rest of the day.We are now in Desert Hot Springs and finished with the first two of our 2010 motorhome rallies. With that I will end this chapter of our blog. We will be in Desert Hot Springs for two weeks, and then head back down to Winterhaven, California, Near Yuma, Arizona, for another two weeks. I will probably publish another chapter of our lives in a few weeks. Until then, be happy, stay safe and enjoy life.
