Wednesday, December 8th, our first full day back in the Coachella Valley, or the “Desert” as it is known to the locals (or former locals) like us. After lunch we drove down into Indio, got the car washed, did a little shopping, and made a stop at our old hangout, Cactus Jack’s Bar and Grill. When we lived in Indio we spent a lot of time here. We had one cocktail, said hi to Kevin, the bartender for many years and a guy I used to play golf with from time to time, and George, the owner of the place. Late in the afternoon we drove over to the Motorcoach Country Club (former Outdoor Resorts Indio) where our great friends Barry and Colleen Cohen live. We have written a lot about Barry and Colleen on this blog in the past, so I won’t repeat a lot, but they have been wonderful friends over the years. Barry was my first friend here after I moved to Indio in 1998, and has been my best friend ever since.
We had last seen them back in September when they came up to Pahrump to visit with us. We had a wonderful time catching up. Barry, who is a great Italian cook, made a batch of meatballs that were wonderful. Colleen and Jackie played cards and Barry and I just watched TV and talked. It was a great visit. We didn’t stay too long, only about 8:00 p.m., because Barry still works and gets up early in the morning to take care of his transmission repair shop. We drove back to Desert Hot Springs and home.
Thursday, December 9th was a chores day. I spent some time in the morning paying bills and taking care of stuff that came in our mail delivery on Wednesday. I then spent an hour or so putting up our Christmas decorations.
We don’t have too much, a couple of decorations and some light strings for the front of the coach. We also have a cute little Christmas tree for our front table. After lunch we drove into Desert Hot Springs to do our laundry. We were going to do it at the RV park laundry, which is just a few steps from our coach, but the office didn’t have any quarters and we didn’t have enough to do it all. Poor customer service Desert Pools! Around 5:00 p.m. we made a quick trip to another resort just down the street to visit with Tom and Dorothy Warren, some friends of ours from FMCA rallies. Tom used to be the president of Elks International, one of the Chapters we belong to, and Dorothy is secretary/treasurer of another. I needed to give her a check for next year’s dues for that Chapter. We visited with them for a few minutes, but they were going down to Palm Springs for the street fair, so we didn’t stay long. We went back to our park, had dinner, and then went over to the recreation center to play Texas Hold’em. We ended up playing with the same Canadian friends that we met in Pilot Knob a couple weeks ago and played several times with. They are very nice, friendly and funny folks to play cards with. We had a great time, although we both lost our five dollar stake.
Friday, December 10th we left home after lunch to do some geocaching in Desert Hot Springs. Although we have cached several times here over the last two and a half years, there are a couple of active cachers in the area that keep putting out new caches. We were able to find twelve new caches within a couple of hours and within a couple of miles of our RV park. One of the caches was or 2,000th find! A major milestone in geocaching, and we did it in the same town in which we started. Our first find was March 18, 2008 just about a half mile from where we found our 2,000th cache. Since that first cache we have found caches in three countries, 20 states and four Canadian provinces. This has proven to be a great hobby/sport for us.
After our caching we headed over to the Desert Hot Springs Elks Lodge for a cocktail and to try to meet up with some of our Elk friends in the area. We have been members of the DHS Elks Lodge RV Club, the Desert Roadrunners, since before we sold our house. We used to go on one or two outings a year with them back then. We got to the Lodge about 3:30 and met the bartender going in who told us that they didn’t open until 4:00 p.m. Just to kill some time we went out and found two more caches close by the Elks Lodge. We also looked for a third, but couldn’t find it. This brought our total for the day up to 14 finds. We went back to the Elks, which was now open, and went in to find our friends Jack and Gail Little sitting at the bar. Jackie had called them earlier and left a message on their phone that we were going to the Lodge, but we hadn’t heard back from them.
They only live a mile from the Lodge. We had met Jack and Gail when we went on our first outing with the Desert Roadrunners back in 2001 and became good friends, although we no longer see them as much as we would like. We had a nice visit and caught up on things since the last time we saw them, over a year ago. A couple of other acquaintances came into the Lodge while we were there too. Although they were having dinner at the Lodge, there wasn’t anything on the menu we wanted, so we left after a couple drinks and went back to our coach for dinner. Saturday, December 11th we left the park about 10:00 a.m. and drove down to Palm Desert and the College of the Desert (COD) street fair. The COD street fair has been going on for many years and now has over 300 vendors that set up every weekend. It is a shopping extravaganza and it doesn’t have any “junk” or used stuff. Lots of trinkets, jewelry, art and the usual street fair merchandise. We shopped for about three hours, with a break for lunch at one of the food booths, and managed to view every booth. Jackie bought a sushi maker set and I got a tee shirt, so we didn’t spend much money, but we did have a good time.
After our shopping we drove to Indio and visited the Indio Elks Lodge. This was the Lodge in which both of us were initiated, and was our home Lodge until we moved our residency to Pahrump. We had a drink in the bar and ran into a couple of people we knew, but there were not too many people there this time of the day. About 3:00 we drove over to the Motorcoach Country Club to spend another evening with our friends Barry and Colleen. Barry and I took the electric boat out for a little “cruise” on the lake before the sun went down. The weather was perfect, just a slight breeze and temperatures in the high 70's. We cruised around until sunset and then went back and just listened to music and chatted while the girls played cards. Later we had a brisket dinner that Colleen had cooked, and it was wonderful. About 8:30 we started back for Desert Hot Springs. Its hard to stay late at the Cohen’s when we are in DHS because it’s about a 25 mile drive back to the RV park on some pretty dark roads. Once we move down to Indio, and are only a couple miles away, we will have longer nights with them.
Sunday, December 12th was what we call “a couch day”, meaning we didn’t go anywhere or do anything important. I did try out the hot tubs here at the resort for the first time. They have natural hot springs in this area (hence the name Desert Hot Springs, duh) and the park has three hot tubs fed by the natural water. Lots of sodium and sulphur so it stains the tubs and pool brown, but the water felt good. They had three tubs with three temperatures, mild (98), medium (100), and “caliente” (104). I tried them all. I love hot baths, so the hot one was my favorite, but you can only take about 10 minutes of that heat. Other than that we just watched TV, played games, and relaxed.
Monday we stayed around the coach most of the day again. Late afternoon a mobile service technician came by to give an estimate for replacement of the “topper” awnings on the coach. The toppers are the awnings that come out over the slides when they are extended. They are intended to keep debris off the tops of the slides and help keep water out. After five years the sun has deteriorated the awnings to the point where one has already torn and is nearly off of the side of the coach. Being full timers, our slides are out 99.9% of the time and always in the sun. Five years is about the best you can expect. About 5:00 p.m. we drove over to the DHS Elks Lodge for their Monday Night Football hamburger dinner. We met our friends Jack and Gail Little and had a couple of very good cheeseburgers and watched the first half of the Houston-Baltimore game. Five bucks for a cheeseburger and fries is a pretty good deal. After the first half we headed back home for the rest of the night.
Tuesday, December 14th we did some grocery shopping after lunch. Jackie wanted to get the stuff she needs to do some sushi with the new kit that she bought at the COD street fair. Late afternoon we drove up to the Mission Lakes Country Club in Northwest DHS for dinner at Jack and Gail Little’s house. She had a couple of other dinner guests, other members of the Elks’ RV club. They were both guys who were “bacheloring it” for a while. One’s wife is in the hospital and the other’s was back East visiting her kids. Gail made a great meatloaf and potatoes dinner. We had a couple of drinks, great food and conversation, and had a nice visit. We left around 8:00 and went back to our coach.
Wednesday we woke up to cloudy skies and high winds. We had listened to the wind blow the awnings and flags around all night and it wasn’t any better in the morning. It appears that the warm, calm weather we have enjoyed since our arrival here last Tuesday are history. In the morning Jackie made up a batch of sushi with her new kit. She made some tuna, some crab and some avocado. The sushi was quite good even though it was not yet refrigerated. After lunch we decided to go out and try some geocaching. When we got to the first cache site we could hardly get out of the car because the wind was blowing so hard. We spent a couple minutes trying to look for the cache, but the wind was blowing at least 40 mph and the sand particles hitting your face felt like little pieces of glass. We finally said the Hell with it and went back home where we stayed for the rest of the day. We had the cold sushi as part of dinner, and it was wonderful. I have to admit that the new kit is a good idea. It gives us new choices for pot luck dinners too.
Thursday, December 16th was another grey morning and another decision to stay in for the day. Actually had a slight bit of rain, just enough to get the vehicles dirty. Spent the day on the computers and Jackie watched a couple of movies. After dinner we walked over to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em. For the first time since we have been here I won a couple bucks. Had some pretty good hands, including four of a kind which got me a nice pot. Our new Canadian friends were there, but they are leaving on Monday. We will cross paths again with them in Quartzsite in January.
Friday, December 17th we left Desert Pools about 11:30 a.m. and drove down to Cathedral City for lunch. Both Jackie and I had worked in Cathedral City prior to our retirement in 2005. I have been craving a good Italian sub sandwich for a while and there is a restaurant in Cathedral City called Nicolino’s where we used to have lunch from time to time back when we worked. Jackie had Eggplant Parmesan, and I had a great Italian sub. Nicolino’s is not a fancy place, and for some weird reason they were playing bluegrass music in the dining room, but the food is good and you get plenty of it for the money. They also have a shop in Palm Springs with the same menu. The Cathedral City location is on Date Palm, about a half mile North of Highway 111.
After lunch we went to Walmart for a few things and then on to Eisenhower Hospital in Rancho Mirage so Jackie could have a followup sonogram on the site of the biopsy she had earlier this year. The doctor had seen something questionable on a mammogram and they did a biopsy of one of the lymph nodes in her armpit. The biopsy was clean, but they wanted to do a six month followup. The followup today was also good. Yea! After the hospital visit we drove East to Indio and stopped to visit with Barry and Colleen at the Motorcoach Country Club. We went with them up to their club for a couple of drinks and chatted with some other people that we have met over the years we have been visiting the Cohen’s. About 7:00 p.m. we headed home because it was a long drive and I didn’t want to drink anymore. We have seen news reports that the local police are starting their holiday DUI enforcement activities, including roadblocks, and I don’t want any problems.
Saturday, December 19th we stayed around the coach under dreary skies yet again. The weather indicates that this current stormy, unsettled weather, will persist through the middle of next week. I guess we will have to get used to it. We didn’t go anywhere until about 5:00 when we headed down to the DHS Elks Lodge for a
Christmas party with the Elks RV club. We got there and found about 40 people from the club and we recognized about a third of them from previous outings with the group. Several of the folks we had not seen for a year or more, so we had a nice time catching up.
The dinner was a nice steak and baked potato combination that was excellent. The steaks were very tender and cooked perfectly medium rare, despite the fact that the cook was trying to do over 40 at one time. I even took the time to go outside and thank the BBQ cook for his good work. Note the picture of the Elks Lodge's somewhat unique Christmas Tree. The party broke up about 7:30 and we went back to the RV park for the rest of the night.Sunday brought another dreary grey morning, but still no rain despite the fact that the Los Angeles basin just fifty miles to the West has been deluged over the last few days by one of the “Pineapple Express” storm systems that come out of the warm waters of the mid Pacific. Of course, the Coachella Valley is in the Northwestern-most portion of the Sonoran Desert and is protected by the “rain shadow” formed by the San Jacinto and Little San Bernardino Mountain ranges to the West of the Valley. The mountains keep most of the rain out, but also cause the wind that we seem to have most of the time. Since it had not started raining yet, but the forecasts were showing the possibility for several days, I decided to take advantage of the dry spell and take down all the outside decorations and amenities in preparation for our move down to Indio on Tuesday. Figured it was better to take them down and store them dry than get wet on Monday or Tuesday morning trying to clean everything up. I also spent a little more time in the hot tubs in the afternoon, but other than that, we didn’t do anything except just veg around the house.
Since we are leaving Desert Hot Springs soon and the general lack of substantive activity our part due to bad weather has left me little to write about, I will provide a little history of Desert Hot Springs. DHS is nestled in the foothills of the Little San Bernardino Mountains, almost due North of Palm Springs and is the Northernmost city in the Coachella Valley. In 1913 the first homesteader in the area was Cabot Yerxa, who discovered hot water on Miracle Hill. Due to the San Andreas Fault bisecting the hill, one side has cold water, the other has hot. His large adobe, hand built by Yerxa over 20 years, is now one of the oldest adobe structures in Riverside County, and houses Cabot's Pueblo Museum, designated a state historical site after his death in 1965. The town was founded by L. W. Coffee on July 12, 1941. The original town site was centered at the intersection of Palm Drive and Pierson Boulevard and was only one square mile. Coffee chose the name Desert Hot Springs because of the area's natural hot springs.
Desert Hot Springs became a tourist destination in the 1950s because of its small spa hotels and boutique hotels. By the late 50's relators arrived to speculate, and thousands of lots and streets were laid out over a six square mile area. Some homes were bought by retirees and the area incorporated as a city in 1963, with 1,000 residents. Desert Hot Springs experienced periods of significant growth in the 1980s and 1990s, when most of the vacant lots were filled with new houses and duplex apartments. The city's population doubled in the 1980s and increased to over 16,500 by 2000. The city relies heavily on tourism and retirees with dozens of mobile home and RV parks scattered around the area. It is also one of the more affordable places in the Coachella Valley and has a large Hispanic population.
Unfortunately, DHS also has one of the higher per capita crime rates in Southern California and has been plagued by gang violence over the last ten years. Recent efforts on the part of law enforcement and prosecution authorities have begun to reduce overall crime in the area. Our RV park is outside of the city limits of DHS and in an area made up almost exclusively of RV parks and small retirement communities, so there is little crime in the immediate area. Most people in this area tend to avoid central DHS during the night time hours.
Monday, December 20th - another rainy day. Current weather forecasts show rain pretty much for the next week. Boo! After lunch we drove into Desert Hot Springs and did our laundry. That was the extent of our activities for the day.
Tuesday, December 21st, the first day of Winter. Last night was the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, and also a full lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, even if I had wanted to stay up until 2:00 a.m. to see it, I wouldn’t have because it rained all night long. No moon to see, eclipsed or otherwise. Today is moving day, we moving from DHS down to Indio, a full 26 mile journey. We managed to get out about 9:45 a.m. in a drizzly rain and drove to Indio with only a quick fuel stop. I was about out of fuel and I always like to have enough on board to at least run the generator for a while in case of power outages. Got to Indian Waters Resort in Indio, one of our Western Horizon parks, and settled into a nice spot just down from the recreation center. Since it was still raining I didn’t do anything other then the absolute necessary outside connections, settled the inside of the coach, and watched the rain for the rest of the day. We will be here for a full month, Normally Western Horizons lets you stay for two weeks (three in the off season) for each stay, but we bought a month here rather than use our free days. It cost us $570, but we don’t have to move for a full month and will be here over the holidays and during the FMCA rally in Indio.
Wednesday, December 22nd we woke up to more rain and, for the first time here in Indio as far as I remember, the weather alert radio going off at 7:30 in the morning! It was a flash flood warning for major parts of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Fortunately, we are not in a flood zone and no where near any major washes or rivers, so we should be safe.
We did catch a nice rainbow at one point during the storm. We decided we needed to get out of the house despite the rain and went out to lunch at La Casita, which is our favorite Mexican restaurant in the Coachella Valley. They are a local chain and have numerous places in the various cities of the Desert. This time we ate at the one in Indio which is located right on Highway 111, just East of Arabia Street. It is in a building which looks like a medieval castle and has housed a lot of different things over the years. La Casita used to be in an older building closer to downtown Indio, but moved to the “castle” a couple years ago. We have been to most of the other locations, but this was our first visit to this shop. The food was the same and was great. The service, kind of so-so. Part of it was the wait staff didn’t speak English very well and didn’t really listen when you asked for things. Still had a great lunch. After lunch we went shopping at Costco and Walmart, our two “go to” stores. Once we got home we stayed in for the rest of the day.Thursday, December 23rd we finally woke up to clear skies and bright sun! Yea! In the morning I spent some time outside putting up the Christmas decorations I didn’t want out when it was raining, as well as our normal outside items like the flagpole and the BBQ. Jackie spent some time preparing a pot of Halibut chowder for
Christmas day. We are going over to her niece Vickie’s house for Christmas dinner and Jackie is taking chowder and sushi. Around 5:15 we left the coach and went to Cactus Jack’s, our old Indio hangout, to meet Barry and Colleen for dinner. They are leaving Christmas Eve day to drive up to Sacramento for Christmas and New Year’s with their daughter and her family. We wanted to have a nice dinner with them before they left. Jackie was happy it was Thursday because Jack’s always has lamb shanks on the special menu on Thursday. They also had their beef ribs, which are the best, on the menu. We had a couple of drinks and a very nice dinner with our best friends for the holidays. After dinner we went back to the park and stayed in the rest of the night.Friday, Christmas Eve, we finally took advantage of the nice weather to do some geocaching. We went out after lunch and managed to get ten finds in a couple of hours of searching. It has been the two weeks since we have been caching and we were missing the search. After caching we went home until about 5:00 when we left to go to Christmas Eve mass at our old church, the Pathfinder Church of the Risen Christ. Father Ned Reidy and Reverend Kathy McCarthy were the two who married us back in 2004 and Jackie has been close friends with Kathy and Ned most of the time she lived in the Desert. There were only a couple of other people at the service that we knew, but it was still nice to go back to our old church. After mass we stopped at Cactus Jack’s for a bite to eat before heading back to the coach to wait for Santa to fly over.
Saturday, December 25th, Merry Christmas everyone! Christmas day in Indio dawned bright and clear with temperatures predicted in the high 60's. Not the white Christmas promised in the Eastern states, but a whole lot warmer. In the early afternoon we drove over to Palm Desert to Jackie’s “adopted” niece Vicki’s house for Christmas celebration and dinner. Vicki is the daughter of Nancy,
one of Jackie’s oldest and best friends since the 60's. Vicki has a son Shane and Jackie is Shane’s Godmother. Shane just turned 16 and is a sophomore in high school. He is already six feet tall and will probably get bigger. Those who follow the blog
may recall that Shane was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes about eight years ago. Vicki was cooking a big Christmas dinner for everyone and we brought the Halibut chowder and sushi that Jackie made. Nancy was there with another friend, also named Jackie, as well as Nancy’s son Larry, who lives in San Clemente, and Shane’s dad, Gary.
We spent a very pleasant afternoon talking and catching up with everyone, playing ping pong, and generally having a great time. Later in the afternoon we had a superb dinner with turkey, ham and all the fixings. After dinner we were joined by Gary’s brother Dan and his family who stopped by for a visit. I was acquainted with Dan from my days as a
Homeowner Association manger because at the time he was also in the industry here in the Coachella Valley. We finally left around sunset and went back to the coach for the rest of the day. It was a great Christmas with great friends who are like family to us, and we enjoyed it very much.Sunday, December 26th, the day after Christmas. To read the paper one would be led to believe that one has a social responsibility to go out and shop. We decided to reject that premise and we just stayed home and relaxed, stayed out of way of those who felt the need to shop, and enjoyed our own, more relaxed, social construct. In other words, we were lazy and just stayed home all day.
Monday we decided to do some more geocaching after lunch. This time we went West a little bit to Palm Desert because Jackie had to make a quick stop at her doctor’s office to pick up some paperwork. We had a good afternoon, finding fourteen caches in just a few hours. We then went back to the coach until later in the evening when we went up to the clubhouse for some Texas Hold’em. This would be the first time that played at this park. Their play style here is a little different, they have a five dollar buy in and play for two hours, like most other parks. However, here they use the use the chips regular denomination according to color, nickel, dime and quarter, rather than just assign each chip a five cent value regardless of color. Didn’t change the play any, just had to think a little more when betting. I had an OK night, lost less than a dollar. Jackie could do no wrong. She was winning hand after hand, and usually with pretty good cards. She ended up being eight dollars ahead at the end of the night. That is almost two gallons of fuel for the car! Yea!
Tuesday, December 28th I got up early and drove over to Cathedral City on the other end of the Coachella Valley, to the Jeep dealer to get the car serviced. Unfortunately, with the diesel engine in the car I can’t just go to the local Jiffy Lube to get the oil and filter changed, I have to go to the dealer. A couple hours and a couple hundred dollars later the car was good for another 6,000 miles. I stopped at a lunch restaurant called “Boys” in Cathedral City for lunch. Boys was one of my regular lunch haunts when I worked in Cathedral City and they have the best pastrami sandwich in the valley. I always have to get at least one Boys pastrami sandwiches when we are in the valley.
After lunch I drove back home and found that our friends Vernon and Peggy Bullock had arrived. We knew that they were going to be here today and were looking forward to their arrival. The last time we saw them was in Redmond, Oregon back in August at the FMCA rally. They still have a place in Northern California, near Redding, and they spent most of the fall there. We first met Vernon and Peggy on our Alaska trip in 2009 and we have been fast friends since. They will be traveling with us for the next couple months. We always have a great time with them. We introduced them to geocaching and they are another of our success stories, having gotten really involved in the hobby.
After they got settled in to their site here at Indian Waters they came over for cocktails. We had a great time catching up on the last couple months. We also talked to them about coming to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta in October of 2011. We just yesterday got notice that Monaco International was going to sponsor the rally again, and the rally masters wanted our help again. We are planning on going and I think we have Peggy and Vernon talked into it as well. A little later in the evening we went over to the Indio Elks Lodge so we could attend the meeting of the Lodge’s RV club, which we have belonged to since 2001 when I first joined the Elks. Peggy and Vernon also went and attended the meeting as our guests. The meeting was well attended and we saw a lot of our old friends from the days when we had a house here in Indio and this was our “home” Elks Lodge. After the meeting the four of us stopped at Cactus Jacks for a quick dinner. This was the first time that Peggy and Vernon had been to Cactus Jacks and they seemed to like the place. We had a nice dinner with some more great conversation.
With the end of this busy day I am going to close this episode of the blog. It has been three weeks since I published, and we will be here in Indian Waters in Indio for another three weeks, so this seems like a good time to start a new chapter and get this one in print. Until the next time, have a safe and enjoyable New Year’s and be happy.
