We got to Indio in the early afternoon and checked into the Indian Waters RV Resort. We got a really nice corner site right near the clubhouse this time. Indian Waters is one of our Western Horizon’s membership parks and is located only about a mile and a half from our old house in Indian Palms Country Club. After getting everything set up we headed over to the Motorcoach Country Club, just a couple miles away, where our best friends Barry and Colleen live. You may remember we had last seen them when they came up to Pahrump to spend a few days with us in
October. We had a nice visit with them and went up to their clubhouse for a cocktail and some dinner. Jackie’s “niece” Vicki is the food and beverage manager at that club. Vicki is the daughter of one of Jackie’s oldest friends and the mother of Jackie’s godson, Shane. Shane has always called her “Aunt Jackie”. Jackie had a chance to visit briefly with Vicki as she was working when we went up to the clubhouse. We had a great evening with everyone.Sunday I dug our Christmas decorations out of the storage bay and we decorated for the holiday. We already had our Christmas tree up because we had bought a new one in San Diego, but I had to get the outside decorations up. We don’t have a lot of stuff, only a couple of strings of rope lights and some garland, and we put Santa
hats on our mirrors, but it is enough to make the coach look festive. Sunday evening we headed over to the Indio Elks Lodge for the Lodge’s RV Club, the Desert Drifters, Christmas party. Jackie and I both joined the Order of Elks in Indio and we were members of the Indio Lodge up until we changed our residency to Nevada. At that time we transferred our membership to the Pahrump Lodge. However, we had been members of the Desert Drifters since joining the Elks and had continued our membership with them even after we changed lodges. There were probably 70 people at the party, many of them old friends we have known for years, including Barry and Colleen. The food was very good, lobster and prime rib, and the only thing we had to pay for were the drinks. After dinner we had the traditional blind gift exchange. The Drifters have been doing this for as long as we have been members. Everyone brings a gift worth $10 or so and after drawing numbers start selecting gifts to open. A person can get an unopened gift from the table, or “steal” one from someone who has already opened a gift. This evening’s gift exchange was fairly calm, with only a couple of gifts meriting stealing. In past years the gift stealing could get pretty wild and funny, depending on what was up for grabs. The party was a lot of fun and it was great to see some of our friends that we haven’t seen in a year or so.
Monday, December 21st we met Jackie’s old friend Nancy for lunch. Nancy is Vicki’s mother and Jackie has known her since the 60's when they worked together in the L.A. area. We went to Cactus Jack’s Bar and Grill for lunch. CJ’s was our hangout when we lived in Indio, although the place has changed quite a bit over the years. It is no longer the local’s hangout as much as it is the wealthy snowbird’s hangout. Nonetheless, we still enjoy the place. We always run into people we know there and the food and drinks are great, although a little more expensive now. When we walked in we also ran into Colleen’s sister Janet and her husband John having lunch. They also live in Indio and we had not seen them since last year. We had a very nice lunch and visit with Nancy. After lunch we took a drive through the Indian Palms Country Club where we used to live. Our old house still looks exactly the same, although the trees and shrubs have become more overgrown. We know that the people who bought it from us lost it when the recession hit and it sat vacant for almost two years. Someone bought it again about 18 months ago. The rest of the country club looks pretty much the same as it did last year when we drove through. This was also the last place I worked before I retired in 2005. I was the homeowners association manager for most of the homes in the place, about 3,000 homes. I can’t say I miss working and I certainly don’t miss that job!
Tuesday we went out to lunch again, this time with Vicki and Shane. We had lunch at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, La Casita. It is actually a local chain, they have about 8 or so all over the Coachella Valley, but the food is the same at all of them and it is great! I can highly recommend La Casita for anyone visiting the Coachella Valley. Shane is now 15 years old and a freshman in high school. Jackie is amazed at how big he has gotten, only a couple inches shy of six feet now. He will probably hit over six feet when he is fully grown because his mom is fairly tall and his dad is well over six feet. He is a typical modern teenager, not very talkative or outgoing with adults. We did have a nice visit though. After lunch we did some shopping and then headed home for the rest of the day.
Wednesday, December 23rd we headed out after lunch to do some geocaching with friends. When we had arrived at Indian Waters on Saturday we had noted that some of our “road buddies”, other RVers we have met in our travels, were also staying in the park. Jay and Donna Blumenthal are originally from New York and have been full timers for many years. They have both been highly involved in Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) activities for many years. Most recently Jay was the Area Vice President for the International Area of FMCA, one of 10 areas in the organization. Most of the FMCA Chapters we belong to are part of the International Area. We first met Jay and Donna several years ago at a rally and we usually cross paths with them several times each year at various FMCA functions. We usually see them around the holidays in Indio because, like us, they come out here most every December. Jay and Donna are also geocachers, although they don’t go out as often as we do, so when we talked to them after arriving in Indio we made plans to go geocaching one afternoon. The four of us went out in our car and had a great time. We never went more than about five miles from Indian Waters and we managed to find 12 caches in about three hours. We also had a very nice visit afterwards over cocktails. It was nice to be able to catch up with them about the last year.
Thursday, December 24th, Christmas Eve. When we had checked into Indian Waters on Saturday the office staff told us that the park was having a Christmas Dinner on the 24th. They decided that was easier than trying to do it on Christmas Day when some of the people staying in the park might be out with family or other friends. Since we didn’t have any Christmas dinner plans, we bought tickets. The dinner actually
started at 3 in the afternoon and was attended by at least 100 people. They had turkey and all the fixings and the food was wonderful. It was not a pot luck, the park provided everything, and I guess it was all cooked in the kitchen at the park by volunteers. We met some really nice people at our table who had been full timers for about 10 years but had just bought a house in Utah. That is the nice thing about going to these activities and dinners at the RV parks - you meet some really nice people and automatically have something in common, RV travel. Makes for very comfortable dinner conversation even with strangers.Friday, December 25th- Merry Christmas! Woke up on Christmas day and decided we really didn’t have anything to do. We have never bought presents for each other, our theory being that either of us can get pretty much anything we want (and can afford, of course) any time of the year. There is no need to have “special” presents for birthdays or Christmas. Our friends Barry and Colleen are out of town with their kids, Nancy, Vicki, Shane and the rest of their family are going out to one of the fancy Christmas buffets at a local country club. We did go to church for the Christmas day service at 10:00, an early start for us. Their weren’t too many people at the service - the church had held a Christmas Eve mass too, but there were a few of our old church friends there.
I will take a couple paragraphs to go off on a tangent about our church. When I first moved out to the Coachella Valley in 1998 to be with Jackie she was very involved in a group known as Pathfinder. Pathfinder at that time was a group that held spiritual retreats several times a year at a ranch in the mountains South of the Coachella Valley. The group got its name from the ranch, which was called the Pathfinder Ranch. The retreats ran from a Friday evening through the following Sunday afternoon and was a very powerful serious of talks, small group sharing, and other activities to help someone deal with various types of personal issues. The activities were organized and led by a team of volunteers and Jackie had been on the team for a number of years. The Pathfinder movement was founded and headed by a Catholic priest by the name of Ned Reidy. Father Ned was a priest at the Newman Center, a small Roman Catholic church located in Palm Desert near the campus of the College of the Desert Community College. This was, of course, Jackie’s church as well. Although I was not a particularly religious person, I did go to church regularly with Jackie and got involved with the Pathfinder group, first as a participant and later as a member of the team.
Sometime around 2003 or so Father Ned had a falling out with the Roman Catholic church because of his liberal beliefs, primarily with regard the church’s treatment of the gay community and the function of women in the church. As a result, the Catholic church removed him from the Newman Center as was going to send him somewhere else in the country. Father Ned gave up his position with the Roman Catholic priest and became affiliated with a group of other disenfranchised Roman Catholics who had formed a “new” denomination called the Ecumenical Catholic Church. They practiced most Roman Catholic rituals and sacraments, but were much more liberal, allowing priests to marry and have children, ordaining women as priests, and being very inclusive of all lifestyles. Ned also continued the Pathfinder movement since it had not been officially a part of the church.
Ned started his own congregation as part of the Ecumenical Catholic movement in Palm Desert and immediately drew several dozen congregants, most part of his Pathfinder group. Within a year one of Jackie’s best friends, Kathy McCarthy was ordained in the Ecumenical Church and joined Father Ned in his church. The Church has grown over the last few years and now has its own property and building. Since the Pathfinder movement was still active the Church is now called the Pathfinder Community of the Risen Christ and is doing fairly well. While we don’t go to church much, this is what we still consider to be our church and we always try to go at least a couple times when we are in the Coachella Valley. After church we stopped in Cactus Jack’s restaurant for brunch and then went home for the rest of the day.
Saturday we decided to do some geocaching. We didn’t want to go shopping because we figured the stores would be packed with after Christmas shoppers and we really didn’t need anything anyway. We went out after lunch and managed to find eleven caches in a few hours. Sunday, the 27th we did go to the mall just to walk around and get some exercise. The mall was still pretty busy though. We spent most of the afternoon there and on the way home stopped at a couple of geocaches which were on our way. We found two and had one that we couldn’t find.
Monday was an errands day. We drove over to Cathedral City on the West end of the valley for lunch at a little place called Boy’s Restaurant. I worked in Cathedral City for seven years at a country club just a mile or so from Boy’s and used to eat lunch there a lot. I still believe that they have the best pastrami sandwich in the country. Their hamburgers and other stuff are good too, but their pastrami is so good that I tell Jackie that I have to go there at least once each time we come to the Coachella Valley so I can get a pastrami sandwich. I cannot recommend Boy’s too highly for a great lunch spot. It is not a fancy place at all, but the food is great. It’s on the corner of Landau and Ramon in Cathedral City, California.
After lunch we took the car over to our friend Barry’s transmission shop which is also in Cathedral City, just down the street from Boy’s. Although the car is still running fine I wanted to have Barry put the analyzer on it just to see if anything was coding in the car that might indicate a problem. The car got a clean bill of health. Yea! From there we ran a couple of other errands, including taking a set of old sterling silver flatware into a metal trader for an estimate. Jackie has had this flatware, which had been her mother’s, for years and almost never used it. She has not yet decided if she wants to sell it to the metals trader, but she has not had any luck selling it on the open market. We also stopped at Westkin Property where Jackie used to work and visited with her old boss Carol. Carol is one of our loyal readers, so HI CAROL! We had a nice visit and talked about our trip to Alaska. After a couple other errands we headed home, again stopping on the way and picking up a geocache find.
When we got back to the coach we noticed that the floor near the refrigerator was wet. Since the only water supply near that area is the line for the ice maker I figured that had to be leaking. I quickly found a pinhole lead in the plastic line and shut off the water until I could fix it. I replaced that same line about three and a half years ago for the same reason. I think the heat in the compartment at the back of the refrigerator weakens the line over time until it develops a leak. We put a fan down to dry out the carpet and area under the refrigerator.
Tuesday, December 29th was our “doctor day” and we both had appointments in the afternoon for general physicals. I went out in the morning and got the tubing I needed to fix the ice maker line. It is not a lot of work, it took longer to drive to Home Depot than it did to replace the tubing, but it is still a pain. Our afternoon physicals went fairly well. The doctor didn’t find anything wrong with me this year. Last year at this time he found the small melanoma on my back, but the only thing I came out with this time was a mild prescription for slightly elevated blood pressure. Jackie also got an almost clean bill of health. She does have to have a followup mammogram in four months because the one she had in November showed an “irregularity” but the doctor was not too concerned. She is prone to cysts and could be that or it could just be a shadow on the film. Nothing to panic about now. Tuesday night we went over to the Elks Lodge for the monthly meeting of the Desert Drifters, our old RV camping club from the Lodge. There were not a lot of people there because of the holidays, but we did see a few people we hadn’t seen in a while. After the meeting we headed over to Cactus Jack’s for a late dinner and then home.
Wednesday we just did some shopping and spent most of the day around the coach. Thursday, December 31st - New Year’s Eve! We planned to spend the end of 2009 much the same way we spent the end of 2008, a small party with Barry and Colleen. This year we went over to their lot at Outdoor Resorts. We spent a couple of hours in the afternoon geocaching before going over to the Cohen’s. We were able to add a final eight finds to our 2009 totals. We got over to Barry and Colleen’s about 4 p.m. and had a great evening. There was only one other couple there for the night’s celebrations, Chuck and June. We have known Chuck and June for many years and they used to be part time residents of the Coachella Valley. They also had a home near
Reno and Lake Tahoe. A few years ago they started a company that makes plaques that one puts on the ladder of their RV and they now travel around the country going to rallies selling their plaques. The plaques can be for different RV clubs, RV brands, or just decorations. We have seven on the back of our coach, one for the Elks, one for the Marine Corps and several for various chapters we belong to. Last year they sold their house in Reno and are now officially full timers like us. We pretty much just hung around Barry and Colleen’s coach eating and drinking and watching the various new year’s celebrations across the country. We actually left their place about a quarter to twelve because I wanted to be back in our RV park before the midnight hour to avoid any problems with drunks. We got into our coach at the stroke of midnight and then listened to ten minutes of gunfire from the surrounding neighborhood. Luckily, nothing came down on top of us. I have never been sure where the dummies that shoot guns in the air think the bullets are going to go. Sooner or later they have to come down.Friday, January 1, 2010! A new year and a new decade. It seems like just a few years ago we were worried about Y2K and all our computers shutting down. Now it’s 10 years later. Yikes. We didn’t have any big plans for the day. I did get out in the early afternoon and took down all of the outside decorations because we have to leave on Saturday to go over to the Elks Lodge for a couple days before the rally. Our time at Indian Waters is nearly over. Saturday morning we got out of Indian Waters about 10 a.m. and headed over to the Elks Lodge. The Indio Elks has a large RV lot in back with about 56 spaces. They are usually quite full this time of the year, but people move in and out everyday so we were lucky to get a spot. It’s only water and electric, but we will only be here for a couple of days before heading over to the fairgrounds and the FMCA rally. Jackie drove the car over to the Lodge to get a spot for us and I had to take a short side trip to the service station to get some propane. I knew that we were going to be doing a lot of dry camping in the next month and would need a full propane tank. Once we got the coach parked we headed out and did some shopping. Our intent was to relax the rest of the day but we got a call from Barry to come over to Cactus Jack’s about 2 p.m. for a drink. Barry and Chuck had been golfing and they always stop at CJ’s for a drink after. The six of us had a drink at CJ”s then went back over to Barry and Colleen’s place again. Barry and Colleen’s lot is on the little waterway that runs through the
country club and they have a nice electric party boat. The six of us loaded up in the boat and took a nice ride through the park. While we were “cruising” we stopped at the clubhouse and went up for a drink. While there we had a chance to talk to the bartender, Gary, who is Shane Ryan’s dad. Shane is Jackie’s godson. Shane’s mom is the food and beverage manager for the club at Outdoor Resorts and Gary works part time as a bartender. After a couple of drinks we headed back to the coach for the evening.Sunday, January 3rd we went into the lodge for the big Sunday breakfast. It really wasn’t breakfast for us since we went in about 11 a.m. and ate with the volunteer crew that put on the breakfast. Back when we owned our house in Indio we used to do a lot of volunteer work at the lodge, including the Sunday breakfasts. After that we went to the coach to spend a well deserved “veg” day. We really need to dry out - it seems that all we have been doing the last week is partying and drinking! Chuck and June are parked right behind us at the Lodge so we did have them over for one cocktail at happy hour, but other than that we just read and played on the computers.
Monday our friend Nancy came over to the coach for lunch. Jackie wanted to cook some of the escargots that she got in Canada. She and Nancy used to go to a restaurant here in the Indio area called The Nest for escargots. Jackie had also made a big batch of her Halibut chowder. We had a very nice lunch (no snails for me, thank you) and visit. After Nancy left we went out and did our laundry. Monday evening we went into the Elks Lodge for taco night. The place was absolutely packed. That was not too surprising since the RV park at the Lodge was completely full and there were hundreds of people at the fairgrounds, many of whom were probably Elks. Nonetheless, it was fun to see that many people in the Lodge for a dinner. Barry and Colleen, who are also Elks and members of the Indio Lodge, came over and joined us for cocktails and tacos.
Tuesday morning we got up early and packed up the coach for the arduous two mile trek from the Elks Lodge to the Riverside County Fairgrounds where the FMCA Western
Area rally was being held. We got in around 10 a.m. and were parked within about a half hour. We were very surprised to find that we had some electricity available in the parking lot. It is only 20 amps, basically a house-type plug, but with the mild weather it would be more than enough to keep the batteries charged and run the TV’s and computers.With our arrival at the rally I am going to close out this chapter of our travels. The next chapter will deal with our experiences at the Indio rally and our travels to Quartzsite, Arizona. Until the next time, have a wonderful life!
