By the Sea Shore, The Salton Sea Shore

Hello again, welcome back to the story. Our last chapter concluded on Sunday, December 11th, with our arrival back to old home grounds, the Coachella Valley of California. We arrived at the Oasis Palms RV Resort, located near the north end of the Salton Sea, about 20 miles south of Indio on Highway 86. We have never stayed at this resort before, but are looking forward to being here for two weeks. Many of our friends who live in the Coachella Valley, and our friends who travel and come here frequently in the winter months, understand that it gets more and more difficult to find affordable locations in this area in which to spend time during the winter season.

The RV parks in the major cities of the valley, Indio, Palm Desert, La Quinta, Palm Springs and others, continue to raise their rates. They do it because they can, this is where people want to come when it’s cold in the other two thirds of the country. But it makes it tough for those of us who live on a fixed income. (I know, I HATE that phrase too, but it fits here. Sorry) Our only membership park in the east part of the valley, Indian Waters in Indio, was sold last year and it is nearly impossible to get reservations there under any of the membership programs. They still have a few spaces available to membership folks, but they go fast and you have to be lucky when you call. All of this to explain why we are spending our first two weeks here, 20 miles south of Indio, and the next two weeks in Desert Hot Springs, 20 miles west of Indio. It’s simple economics. When we arrived on Sunday we just stayed around all day getting setup, including putting up all our Christmas decorations. We came a day early to beat a winter storm that was working it’s way into Southern California.

Monday, December 12th, we woke up to clouds and by lunch time the rain had come. It was not raining especially hard, but it was steady and it was cold too. We decided that since we weren’t going to be able to do any geocaching for a few days that we would use today to do our chores. We packed up our laundry and drove north to Indio to a very nice laundromat that we use when we are in the area. We washed clothes and played cards while we waited. After our laundry was done we made a quick stop at nearby Cactus Jacks Bar and Grill, our old hang out when we lived here in Indio. We wanted to say hi to Kevin, the daytime bartender and a friend of ours. We were glad we stopped today because he told us he was leaving tomorrow for Utah for a week of skiing.

After one drink and chatting with Kevin we went down to Walmart to restock the grocery cabinets. By the time we got done it was after five and nearly dark, so we headed back home. It had rained most of the day and was still cold.

Tuesday, December 13th, we again left after lunch under cloudy skies and drove back north, this time to Palm Desert, for doctor’s appointments for the both of us. Nothing serious, just medication updates for the most part. I especially needed to get new prescriptions written for all my meds because in a month I will be on Medicare and need them for my new prescription plan. YEA Medicare! After our doctor’s appointments we made a stop at Jackie’s “adopted” niece’s house to see her Godson Shane Ryan. Shane’s grandmother Nancy was one of Jackie’s closest and oldest friends and she died a few months ago. This was the first time that Jackie has been able to see Shane since Nancy’s death. Vickie, Shane’s mom, was working, but Shane was home and we had a nice visit with him.

After visiting Shane we did a little shopping to kill some time before going over to visit our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen. Regular readers will remember them as our dear friends who are also full time RVers, in that they have lived solely in their 40 foot coach a couple years longer than we have lived in ours. However, Barry is still working, so they don’t travel much. They live in the Motor Coach Country Club, which is a very nice, upscale RV resort in Indio. Barry just recently sold his transmission repair business and they are in the process of trying to sell their property at the resort so they can get out and travel like us.

We went over to the Cohen’s about 4:00, after Barry got home from work. We had a couple of drinks with them on the patio as we caught up. We last saw them back in August in Sante Fe, New Mexico. We crossed paths with them for two days as they were returning from visiting their daughter in Denver. After chatting with them for a while the four of us went to Cactus Jacks for dinner. After dinner we headed home for the rest of the night. It is nice to be back with friends again.

Wednesday, December 14th, we decided to just stay in for the day. The day was sunny, but still cold and the ground was still damp from the rain. This would make caching in this rural area messy, so we elected to wait a day or two before going out again. I spent a big part of the afternoon roughing out plans for our summer travels. Up to today we only had definite plans up to the Good Sam Rally in Phoenix in March. We finally settled on a “big circle” summer that will have us taking the southern route, I-10 mostly, east to New Orleans. We will then go north to see Jackie’s girlfriend Helen in Massachusetts, and then into Indiana for the rally circuit in August. After the rallies we will head back to Pahrump via the northern route, I-80. Still a lot of details to work on, but at least now we have the framework for the summer. Fun, fun, fun.

Thursday, December 15th, appeared to be a great day for caching. Sunny but cool, with just a little wind. We left the coach after lunch to try to do some caching in the general area. I say general area because there are actually very few caches close by to where we are staying. This was confirmed when we were about ninety minutes into caching and only had two finds! We had been to four caches, but one of the we couldn’t find, our only DNF for the day. Another turned out to be a half mile walk into the desert after we got to the coordinates. That one was a ten minute drive east of Mecca in the wilderness. We finally struck pay dirt when we started on a series of caches that run along an off-road trail south of Lake Cahilla in La Quinta. It is a fairly decent SUV trail that runs south into the foothills of the mountains south of the desert and the caches are located every five or six hundred feet. Once we got on this trail we quickly got eight more finds, including number 3,200! Yea! A couple of them required climbing hills, which I did but Jackie skipped. She is not real good with hills, especially those with loose rocks. We finally quit at ten finds, about half way through the trail, when it started to get dark. We wanted to be back on the paved roads before it got completely dark. We headed home for the rest of the night. We will come back another day to finish the SUV trail series.

Friday, December 16th dawned with skies that appeared to be planning for rain. We had heard brief periods of rain overnight, but it was only cloudy when we got up. We had made plans to meet friends for dinner at the Indio Elks Lodge tonight, so we decided to do some caching up in town in the afternoon, weather permitting. This would put us Indio come dinner time. We were able to find ten new caches, along with logging one new DNF, in a few hours of caching. After caching we went to the Indio Elks Lodge for cocktails and dinner. Many of our friends and other regular readers will remember that both Jackie and I joined the Elks through the Indio Lodge and were members there until we changed our residency to Nevada back in 2007. At that time we demitted (Elk for transferred our membership) to the Pahrump, Nevada lodge. The bar was pretty full and there were a couple of people in there that we knew from our “previous” life here in Indio. Among them were Pat and Monty Montez, the couple that we crossed paths with in Amarillo, Texas back in August of this year.

About 5:30 our dinner companions, Bev and Jerry King, came into the lodge and we headed into the dining room. Bev and Jerry are a couple that are fellow coach travelers that we met on the road several years ago at a Monaco International rally and have crossed paths with many times since. They are not full timers, but are on the road quite a lot. They have a home near Pomona, but also have a lot in Desert Shores, a very exclusive RV community here in Indio. Bev is the secretary for the Military Veteran’s Chapter of FMCA and we are charter members of that chapter and have been to a lot of their events. They are staying in the valley for a while and called us to arrange to have dinner.

We had a very nice dinner and chatted with the King’s. We last saw them in Farmington, New Mexico back in October at the Rocky Mountain Area rally. Dinner was quite good, the Elks in Indio has a pretty good Friday night dinner menu. One of the chefs in the kitchen was an old friend of ours, Big Willy. Jackie has known Willy since the 80' when she met him through her work in the personal finance industry. Willy is a great cook and has had a couple of restaurants here in the valley serving mostly Southern cooking. Like many small restaurant business’, he couldn’t make a go of them, but he does still have a successful catering business in the desert and likes to help out at the Elks. He is a member of the Indio lodge. We had a very nice dinner and were able to catch up with the Kings, which was great. We will probably see them a few more times during our stay here in the Coachella Valley. After dinner we headed back to the RV park for the rest of the night.

Saturday, December 17th, we had another cloudy morning that looked a little like rain might be in the forecast. We decided that we would go up into Palm Desert early today to go to the College of the Desert (COD) street fair. The COD street fair has been going on every weekend since well before I came to the Desert in 1998. It has several hundred vendors, many of them selling fairly high end stuff. Pretty much what you would expect from a street fair in an affluent area. We enjoy walking around looking at the stuff. We rarely buy much, but enjoy the exercise and experience. About the only thing we did do at the street fair was drop a couple of pieces of jewelry off with a jeweler for repair. Normally we wouldn’t do that, but it turns out that he and Jackie had several friends in common, which legitimized him for us.

We had initially thought of having lunch at the street fair, they have a fairly extensive food court, but decided to have a late lunch at one of our favorite local Mexican restaurants, La Casita. In my estimation they have one of the best taco salads anywhere and we always manage to have a couple when we come to the Desert. After lunch we went out to do a little caching before it got too dark. We managed to find five in about an hour. We then stopped at Costco for supplies before heading back to the RV park for the night.

Sunday, December 18th, we had a nice relaxing day at the coach. Jackie caught up on some of the TV shows she had on the DVR and I did some work on the computer. I also spent a little time in the park’s hot tub, which really felt good. Monday we decided to do some caching near the west shore of the Salton Sea, to the south of the RV park. We cached primarily in Salton Sea Beach and Salton City, two communities along the northern part of the Salton Sea on the west side. When talking about the Coachella Valley to non-Californian’s I am often asked where and/or what is the Salton Sea, so I will digress for a little lesson in the geology, geography and history of the Salton Sea.

The geological depression, or valley, that includes both the Gulf of Mexico, also known as the Sea of Cortez, and the Salton Sea were once part of a single, long ocean gulf. About three million years ago the Colorado River delta created a large dam which cut off the Sea of Cortez from the valley where the Salton Sea currently lies. Where it not for this dam the Sea of Cortez would actually go all the way up to Indio. Ocean front property would probably have been a big boost to the eastern end of the Coachella Valley. As a result, the Salton Sink or Salton Basin has been alternately a fresh water lake or a dry desert basin, depending on random river flows and the balance between inflow and evaporative loss. Several rivers feed into the lake, but there is no natural outflow point, the water is trapped in the basin. A lake would exist only when it was replenished by the river and rainfall, a cycle that repeated itself countless times over hundreds of thousands of years. The last of the ancient lakes to occupy the basin is known as Lake Cahuilla by geologists. This lake disappeared as part of the cycle several thousand years ago.

The creation of the what is now the Salton Sea was a complete accident. In 1905 heavy rainfall and snow melt caused the Colorado River to swell, overrunning a set of gates for the Alamo Canal, a local irrigation project. The resulting flood poured down the canal and breached an Imperial Valley dike, eroding two watercourses, the New River in the west, and the Alamo River in the east, each about 60 miles long. Over a period of approximately two years these two newly created rivers sporadically carried the entire volume of the Colorado River into the Salton Sink. The sudden influx of water and the lack of any drainage from the basin resulted in the formation of the Salton Sea, the largest lake in California.

In the 1920s, the Salton Sea developed into a tourist attraction, because of its water recreation, and waterfowl attracted to the area. The Salton Sea has had some success as a resort area, with Salton City, Salton Sea Beach, and Desert Shores on the western shore and Desert Beach, North Shore, and Bombay Beach built on the eastern shore in the 1950s. In the 50's and 60's the Salton Sea was a well known area for water recreation, such as boat races, water skiing, and fishing, and the communities along the lake shore envisioned tremendous growth. Speculative land sales boomed in the area. However, the lack of an outflow means that the Salton Sea collects everything that flows into it. It soon became apparent that sea was becoming increasingly saline and polluted from the agricultural runoff flowing into it. There were also a series of floods in the 1960's which inundated many of the shoreline communities.

The lake is now so saline, more so than the Great Salt Lake of Utah, and polluted, that most sea life has gone. The lake still supports a population of Tilapia, a hardy freshwater fish, as well as huge flocks of migrating waterfowl. Scientists believe that even the Tilapia will be gone in a few years unless something changes. Although the lake was accidentally created, environmentalists are united in a desire to “save” the lake by finding a way to reduce the pollution and salinity. Restrictions have been imposed on local agriculture to try and reduce the amount of junk coming into the lake and millions have been spent on developing some type of plan to save the lake.

A lot of the communities that sprung up during the mid century heyday of the lake still have residents, but their numbers are greatly reduced and the towns are littered with abandoned buildings and mobile homes. Salton City has hundreds of miles of streets which were built and lots laid out which were never utilized. While we were caching we found many of the caches hidden near abandoned properties. Most of Salton Sea Beach looked like the set from some sort of apocalypse movie. Since there were a lot of caches in the area we were able to find 14 new caches, with one DNF, in just a few hours. After caching we headed back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Tuesday, December 20, Happy Hanukkah to all our Hebrew friends. One of my first tasks of the day was to call my best friend Barry Cohen and wish him a Happy Hanukkah. I have to call him on all of the Jewish holidays lest he forget. Great guy, but not an especially observant Jew. We left the coach about 11:30 and started towards the eastern side of the Salton Sea to an area where we used to hang out. There is a cluster of RV resorts on the east side of the lake, up in the foothills of the nearby mountains, in an area that is well known for their extensive natural hot springs. The area is about 30 miles south of Indio, near the communities of Bombay Beach and Niland. Back before we sold the house and went out on the road full time we used to camp with the Indio Elks RV club at one of the resorts called Imperial Spa. It was a pretty rugged desert park, but they had great facilities, including wonderful hot spring water baths.

In the spring of 2007, our first full year of full timing we spent two months parked at Imperial Spa. While we were there we got to know a lot of the regular winter visitors who stayed at the Spa most of the season. They were a very social group and we really got to know the one’s who enjoyed karaoke because I ended up running the karaoke on Friday nights. Among the people we got to know well, and have stayed in touch with over the years, were Russ and Darlene Haberman, who lived in Grants Pass, Oregon during the summer. Russ and Darlene have been battling health problems for the last couple years, so we never we able to get together with them during our visits to Oregon. When we found out that they were down in the desert again this winter we made arrangements to get with them today. They are now staying at another RV resort called Bashford’s, which is across the street from the old Imperial Spa. Imperial was sold a couple years ago and became a KOA which no longer courted annual lot rentals and long term winter visitors.

When we arrived we were pleased to see that Russ and Darlene looked well and had a nice place at the new resort. Also there was another old friend from our time at the Spa, Jim Anderson. Jim, who goes by the nickname “No Fish”, was the guy who was supposed to do the karaoke at the Spa back in 2007, but his equipment broke and had to be repaired. That is how I ended up doing the karaoke for two months. We have also stayed in touch with Jim over the years, and actually visited him at his house in White Salmon, Washington, back in the summer of 2007 when we were up in the area. We had a great time catching up with our friends and were very happy to hear that Darlene is recovering well from surgery for lung cancer last summer. The five of us went to lunch at one of the other nearby resorts and continued our visit. We finally left Russ and Darlene’s place about 3:00 and took an hour or so to do some caching on the east side of the lake.

In the course of an hour we were able to add five new finds to our total. One of them should have been a First To Find (FTF) and would have been had we taken the time to look for it prior to going to Russ and Darlene’s house. Friends come first though, and by the time we got to it another cacher had found it and claimed the FTF. After caching we went back to our coach for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, December 21st, we awoke to another beautiful desert winter morning. Clear skies with lots of sunshine and a little on the cool side, upper 40's. Of course, to folks in Oklahoma who are under three feet of snow the upper 40's would seem balmy at the least. We left the coach about 1:30 or so and headed north into town to meet with some friends of ours who are staying at Indian Waters RV Resort in Indio. Jay and Donna Blumenthal are also full time motor home travelers that we met several years ago as a result of our participation in FMCA rallies and activities. At that time Jay was the President of the International Area of FMCA and one of the members of FMCA’s Board of Directors. We have remained friends and cross paths with them frequently, many times here in the Coachella Valley where they try to spend their winters now that Jay does not hold an FMCA executive position and no longer has to travel all the time. They are from New York and usually spend their summers back in the east.

On the way to meet with Jay and Donna we took a drive through the nearby Indian Palms Country Club, where we used to have our house before we sold it in 2005. We like to drive through once a year or so to see what, if any, changes have been made in the neighborhood and to our house. Essentially, the house looks the same today as it did when we sold it with the exception of the landscaping. The new residents took out some of the bushes and trees we had in the front, and painted the wood trim on the house. The neighborhood did not appear to have changed at all. We look at the house, but neither of us looks back on our decision with anything other than satisfaction that we did the right thing. We don’t miss having a house and love our lifestyle.

We then drove over to Indian Waters RV Park and took a drive through there prior to going to Jay and Donna’s site. Indian Waters used to be a Western Horizon’s park and part of our membership package with the company. We used to stay at Indian Waters at least once per year, sometimes more. However, last year Western Horizon’s sold the property to a private company that has turned it into a public RV resort. We have heard a lot of stories about the changes they were making to the park and wanted to have a look for ourselves. We also wanted to check into whether we would still have some privileges here based on our Western Horizon’s membership. We have heard lots of stories about that also, some saying no, some saying yes. A few weeks ago I had tried to make reservations through Western Horizon’s central reservations and, although they said they were handling reservations for the park, told us that there were no sites available.

We drove around the park and noted that they have resurfaced the streets, cleaned up the landscaping and built a new pool and “pickle ball” court. We also noticed that the park was less than 25 percent occupied, which was confusing considering I had been told that there were no sites available. I decided to go into the office and check for myself what, if any, ability we would have to stay there in the future. What I found was that just in the last week the park has opened up the entire park to Western Horizons members at greatly reduced rates. To the public sites are priced anywhere from $48 up to the $70's, depending on the location in the park. For us the sites were $11 to $15 per night. Not a bad deal, especially when you consider that even under our WHR membership we had to pay $6 a night facilities surcharge. We were originally going to leave the park we are currently in on December 26th and go to the WHR park in Desert Hot Springs. Desert Hot Springs is as far to the north and west from Indio as where we are now is south, so we were still going to be a long way off from where we like to be during the holidays. With the new information I decided to make the reservation at Indian Waters for our next two week stay and cancelled our reservation in Desert Hot Springs. This will give us two weeks right in Indio instead of having to commute like we are now.

Once we finished our tour of the park we went to see Jay and Donna. They have a very nice site overlooking a pond and fountain, and have a nice patio area set up since they are going to be in the same place until April. We sat outside and talked and caught up on what we each have been doing since the last time we saw them, which was actually last January here in Indio. About 5:00 or so we left to go to dinner in La Quinta, the next town over from Indio. We went to a restaurant called Hog’s Breath which is located in downtown La Quinta. The original Hog’s Breath Bar and Grill was in Carmel, California and was opened by Clint Eastwood back in the 70's. There are now restaurants with the name here in La Quinta, as well as Florida, although Eastwood no longer owns them.

Even on a Wednesday night the place was pretty full for happy hour and we ended up sitting at the bar for dinner. One of the reasons Jay wanted to come here was that the piano player was apparently one of the original members of the 60's rock group, The Turtles. I don’t know his name, or if he was really with the Turtles, but we were at the restaurant for nearly two hours and he never stopped playing 60's and 70's tunes on the piano. He really was fun to listen to, although it would have been better had he not been stuck in a corner of the bar so people could see him and sing along. The food was quite good and we finally left about 7:00 or so to head back to home.

This is normally where I would close the tale of the day by saying we went back to the coach for the rest of the night. However, this evening we had a very scary experience. The drive from La Quinta back our RV park was just over 20 miles, almost all of it on two lane farm roads. Of course, by this time in the winter it is very dark and the streets are not lit. We were driving east on Avenue 52, approaching the town of Coachella, when we were very nearly hit head on. I saw a line of four or five cars coming our way when the second or third car in line suddenly came out of line into my lane, probably a couple hundred yards in front of us. At first I though it was someone making a dumb passing move and that they would pull back in line, or at least stay on the road. I slowed a little and pulled to the right, off the pavement onto the shoulder. I then realized that the car was not only coming into my lane, it was actually moving even further to the left, my right, onto the shoulder. I took a quick look around and saw that I had an escape path to my right up a two foot dirt berm into a farm field. I just got up onto the berm, now about eight or ten feet off the road, and slowed down when I saw the car out of the corner of my eye go by us and heard a loud crash. At first I though the guy had actually hit us a glancing blow as he went by, but when I stopped and got out I saw that he had missed us by about six inches and mowed down a traffic sign that was on the shoulder of the road right next to where we had stopped. Had I not reacted as quickly we would have been hit head on and probably not escaped without serious injury. I guess my years of driving police cars and the training we received still pays off. I also taught pursuit driving for a while back I the 80's and still remember most of that also. After we caught our breath we continued on to the coach. By the way, the guy hit the sign and never even slowed down. He just kept on going, as did all the other cars that were on the road too. I would have thought someone would have at least stopped to see if we had been hit. Drunks. Hate em’.

Thursday, December 22nd, the day was nice and clear, but the winds came up again. Not as bad as they were a few weeks ago, when we were up in Fresno, but still a little too harsh to go caching. We decided we needed a down day, so we just stayed home for the entire day.

Friday, December 23rd, we left the coach after lunch and went back up to Palm Desert and the COD street fair. We needed to pick up the two pieces of jewelry we had left for repair. Although only two days before Christmas, there were only about half the normal number of vendors set up, and very few customers. We got our jewelry, nicely repaired and cleaned, and walked around until they closed up shop at 2:00. We then spent an hour or so doing some geocaching. We were only able to add four new finds to our total, along with one new DNF. After caching we stopped at Walmart to get some groceries, especially our turkey breast for Christmas dinner, and then went back to the coach for the rest of the evening. Saturday was another relaxation day. The only time I left the coach was to go to the hot tub for about twenty minutes.

Sunday, December 25th, Merry Christmas! We decided that since we were so far away from town, and celebrating Christmas without being around family or friends, that we would spend the afternoon in our favorite pastime, geocaching. We drove a few miles south to the Salton City area again and cached for several hours, adding another dozen finds to our tally. We had a great afternoon, with mild weather and no traffic or “muggles” wandering around. After caching we went back to the coach and had our very own Christmas feast. Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberries and green beans. Had a very pleasant Christmas. As always, Jackie and I exchanged only cards and our love. Neither of us goes without during the year, so we have never seen much point in stressing out trying to find gifts for each other on birthdays or holidays. Might not work for everyone, but it sure is right for us. Merry Christmas from the Salton Sea!

Monday, December 26th, we were up and packing up the Christmas decorations and other stuff in the coach getting ready for our relocation to Indio. We had 25 miles to go, so Jackie just drove the car. We stopped on the way for fuel for both the car and coach, as well as to fill up the propane in the coach. This is in preparation for our dry camping stints at the rally in Indio and in Quartzsite later in January. We left Oasis about 10:30 and by noon we were in Indio at the newly remodeled and renovated Indian Waters RV Resort. We have a very nice site next to a pond with a fountain. Although we are in the newer section of the park, which is all gravel, we are adjacent to a green space with a nice lawn. We also found out that the Bullocks, who are coming tomorrow, will be right next to us. Yea! Our friends the Blumenthals are just down the street. Once we got the coach settled in we gathered up our two weeks worth of dirty laundry and headed to the Laundromat.

We had thought that being a Monday the laundromat would not be busy. We forgot that since Christmas was on a Sunday this year, the actual Federal holiday is today. The place was packed with people doing their laundry on their day off. Oh well, we got washers and dryers and put up with the screaming kids and trash all over the floor, for a couple hours and got the work done. After that we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening. Jay and Donna Blumenthal came over for a quick visit in the late afternoon when they saw that we had moved in just a few sites away.

With our arrival in Indio I will close this chapter of our story and get it online. We will be here for two weeks and I will publish again before we head into the rally. Until the next time, have a safe New Years and stay happy. Bye.

Central California Adventures, Part Duex

Welcome back to our story. Our previous chapter concluded on Wednesday, November 23rd with our arrival in Fresno, California at the Fresno Elks RV park. Wednesday we didn’t go anywhere after we got set up in our nice site. They have eight sites here and the setting is very park-like, with a large lagoon right in front of the parking area. Unfortunately, the Elks Lodge is only open a few days per month, and none of them are during the five day period we will be parked here. I think this is the first time we will have been parked at an Elks Lodge and not been able to go in and visit the lodge. Sadly, it also means no lodge pin for our banner. Poop.

Time for a little history of the area. In 1867, Anthony Easterby purchased land in what is now the San Joaquin Valley for farming. Unable to grow wheat for lack of water, he hired a local contractor in 1871 to build an irrigation canal. This formed the basis for the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company, a predecessor of the Fresno Irrigation District.

In 1872, the Central Pacific Railroad established a station near Easterby's farm for its new Southern Pacific line. Soon there was a store and around the station and the store grew the town of Fresno Station, later called Fresno. Fresno became an incorporated city in 1885. Two years after the station was established, county residents voted to move the county seat to Fresno. The population of Fresno proper soared in the second half of the 20th century. It entered the ranks of the 100 largest United States cities in 1960 with a population of 134,000. The current population is just over 510,000. Fresno has a diverse population, including one of the largest Armenian populations in California. The Armenian population in Fresno today is estimated at 30,000.

One interesting piece of trivia I found has to do with the beginnings of our “credit nation” and it’s ties to Fresno. In September 1958, Bank of America launched a new product in Fresno called BankAmericard. After a troubled gestation during which its creator resigned, BankAmericard went on to become the first successful credit card; that is, a financial instrument which was usable across a large number of merchants and also allowed cardholders to revolve a balance. In 1976, BankAmericard was renamed and spun off into a separate company known today as Visa Inc.

Thursday, November 24th, Happy Thanksgiving. We figured that today would be a good day to do some local geocaching since most everyone would be busy with family and Thanksgiving dinner. We were planning our own little Thanksgiving dinner in the coach since the only two families we know in the area, Jackie’s niece and an old high school pal of Jackie’s, were both out of town. We went out after lunch and were able to find a total of fourteen new caches in just about three and a half hours. We also got two DNFs, but it was still fun. One of the caches was inside an old English telephone booth in front of a real estate agency. We have never cached in Fresno and there are tons of caches in the area. We never got more than a couple miles from the coach for our finds today. There was almost no traffic and nearly all of the local businesses were closed for the day. We probably looked a little suspicious wandering around in empty parking lots looking under bushes, but no one bothered us.

After caching we went back home and Jackie made a wonderful turkey dinner with all the trimmings, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and asparagus. It was wonderful. The turkey was just a breast and she cooked it in the crock pot so it could cook all afternoon while we cached.

Friday, November 25th, the infamous “Black Friday” first shopping day before Christmas. I told Jackie I had absolutely no desire to go out and fight the crowds for some perceived bargain that we really didn’t even need. I spent most of the afternoon trying to fix the leak in our living room slide. I had to take off the decorative fascia in order to get at the seam that I thought was leaking. It was not as big a job as I thought, but I still ended up having to take two trips to the local Home Depot before I had everything I needed to put a silicon bead along the seam. It was really hard to get to and I had to do it with a mirror since I couldn’t get my head in the space to look directly at what I was doing. I got the seam in and I hope it was, A) the right seam that was leaking, and B) a good silicone seam that works. Once I got it seamed I let it set up a while and then put the fascia back on. Now I just have to wait until the next time it rains and keep my fingers crossed. Other than that, we didn’t do anything outside of the coach.

Saturday, November 26th, we woke up to heavy fog. We couldn’t even see the quarter mile or so across the little lake in front of our coach. The fog lifted after a few hours and by the time we left to go do some caching it was clear and nice. We did ten new caches, with a couple of DNFs thrown in, in a few hours. Later in the afternoon we drove to Jackie’s cousin’s house to visit with her family. Stephanie and her husband Ron have three kids and live in a very nice residential tract in northeast Fresno, only about five miles from where we are parked. Jackie and I attended their wedding in Redondo Beach in 1998, shortly after I moved to Indio. That was my first introduction to Jackie’s family. Their oldest is now in high school. They moved to Fresno less than a year ago from the Long Beach, California area, but seem to like the town. Ron is an electrician and seems to be doing OK on work despite the harsh economic times.

We had a very nice visit with them, catching up on their family and also talking about geocaching. Stephanie and Ron are very into spending time with their kids and they seemed to be really interested in geocaching as a family activity. They were so interested that we talked about coming over tomorrow to spend some time in the afternoon caching with them to give them a bit of an introduction. After a couple hours we decided to head for home, where we spent the rest of the evening.

Sunday, November 27th, I put together a new batch of caches in the area of Ron and Stephanie’s home and loaded them into our GPS devices. After an early lunch we drove to their place and they were ready to go caching. Ron had loaded a caching app on his Iphone and had done some reading about caching on the web. The first two caches we sought were within walking distance of their house, along a bikeway, so we all walked up there. The very first cache was found in just a minute or so by their eight year old daughter, Madison. The second cache was a much more difficult find. I finally found it hidden in a phony light fixture after about ten minutes of searching.

We then got in our cars and went out to find more caches. By the end of the afternoon we had found a total of 15 caches, all of which were new to us, and we didn’t have any DNFs. I am pretty certain that Ron and Stephanie, and at least the two younger kids, are hooked on caching. Tyler, their 16 year old son found one of the caches, another phony light fixture, but didn’t seem to be as excited about the sport as the rest. Bryce, their eleven year old son, and Madison, really got into the searching and were really excited by the caches that had “bling” in them. After caching we went back to their house for a little while and visited, then they took us out to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. We left there after a nice dinner with everyone and headed home for the rest of the night. We had a very nice day and I think added a new team to the caching community.

Monday, November 28th, was another moving day. We packed up the coach and left the Fresno Elks about 10:00, heading north on Highway 99 towards Carmichael, California, a suburb of Sacramento. It was 175 miles and we arrived at the Carmichael Elks Lodge about 1:30 or so. The trip was pretty uneventful except for the horrible roads. There were stretches of the highway that were just terrible, all potholes and bumps. Surprised we didn’t have stuff falling off the walls. We have stayed at this lodge several times in the past as they have a nice RV park. The sites have water and 50 amp electric, but no sewer. After we got settled in we spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out in the coach. We will be here for five days and come up here primarily to visit with an old friend of Jackie’s, Kathy and her daughter Julie. Julie also has a three year old named Bella Bliss whom Jackie just adores.

Tuesday, November 29th, we woke up to heavy fog. We couldn’t see the other end of the parking lot and it was quite cool, 51 degrees. Since Kathy and her husband Bill already had commitments for today, and couldn’t get together with us, we decided to go out and do our laundry. There was a laundromat just around the corner and we got our work done by about 1:30, so we decided to go out and do some geocaching in the area. We managed to get nine new finds, along with a couple of DNFs, before it started getting too dark to cache. With that we headed home and stayed in for the rest of the night. One of the caches was very cute. It was called “Here’s looking at you” and it was a fairly large rubber lizard, about a foot long, attached to a large piece of bark. When the bark was lying on the ground you could just see the head of the lizard peaking out at you. It was very realistic. The cache was in a film canister stuck inside the hollow belly of the fake lizard. One of our favorites.

Wednesday, November 30th, the fog was gone, but now the wind was blowing. With all the trees losing their leaves, it looked like a leaf storm outside. If the wind keeps up whatever leaves are left on the trees will be on the ground by nightfall. After lunch we went out for some provisions. We had to hit both Costco and Walmart and luckily, they were side by side not too far up the road from us in the community of Citrus Heights. After our shopping trip we went back home and unloaded the groceries and got everything put away.

Around 6:00 we left the coach again headed for Julie Yarbrough’s house for dinner. Julie is Jackie’s friend Kathy’s daughter and she lives in West Sacramento, about a half hour away, with her significant other Kevin and daughter Isabella Bliss. They are both in the mortgage business and seem to be doing OK despite the economy. They have a very nice home in an upscale neighborhood not too far from the Sacramento River. Bill and Kathy were also at the house and we spent a couple hours catching up with the whole family and playing with Bella, who warmed up to Jackie and I pretty quickly. She is quite a delightful child, always smiling and happy and she seemed to also be quite bright for a three year old. They have her in a very good preschool and it seems to be having a good effect.

Julie served a very nice dinner of stuffed pork chops and trimmings that was excellent. After dinner we had desert and sat and talked until nearly 10:00 p.m. when we decided that we needed to get to bed. I was tired, Bella seemed to still be going strong. Ah, youth! We drove home and watched TV for a little while before heading off to bed about 11:15, the latest we have been up and about in a while.

Thursday, December 1st, where has the year gone? Already into the last month of 2011! The wind was blowing about 30 mph and it was very cool so we decided that we needed a stay at home day, so we did. We spent the day just catching up on computer stuff and TV. About 5:30 or so we went over to the Elks Lodge for cocktails and dinner with our friends. Kathy and Bill were going to meet us there for dinner. We had noticed that the lodge was having pork ribs for their Thursday night dinner and we like ribs. We also invited two other friends, Curt and Sharon Minard, who had surprised us by leaving their card in the door of our coach last night. Curt and Sharon were some of the camping friends of Peggy and Vernon Bullock that we spent a week with in Quartzsite last January. Regular readers will remember Peggy and Vernon as the couple we met on our Alaska tour in 2009 that we have remained close friends with. We really enjoyed Curt and Sharon, and already have plans to be with them in Quartzsite again this coming January.

However, we had forgotten that Curt and Sharon live in Carmichael. We also didn’t know that they were members of the Carmichael Elks. It seems that Curt and Sharon were in the lodge last night for dinner and as they were leaving they saw our coach in the parking lot. Curt was almost positive that he remembered it as our coach, even though they had no idea we were in Carmichael, so he left his card in the door. We called them this morning and invited them to join us at the lodge for dinner tonight.

When we got into the lodge both Kathy and Bill and Curt and Sharon were in the bar. Although they are both members of the lodge, they didn’t know each other except by name. We introduced everyone and sat down for a cocktail. Julie and Bella were also supposed to join us for dinner, but Julie got held up at work and was running late. At 6:00 we went into the dining room for dinner and continued our visit with our friends. We had not seen Curt and Sharon since we were with them in February in Arizona, so we had a lot of catching up to do. After dinner we all went over to our coach for a nightcap.

Julie never made it for dinner, but did get to the lodge in time to visit with us in the coach. I gave Bella the Minnie Mouse stuffed animal that we had on the couch and she was really excited. We have had the thing since way before we sold the house and Jackie has said in the past that she was ready to get rid of them from the coach. I had noticed that Bella had a lot of Disney stuff in her room when we were there on Wednesday, and she is all excited about getting to go to Disneyland around Christmas with her family. I think I made her happy with an old, used Minnie. After an hour or so of visiting everyone left to go home and we just relaxed the rest of the evening.

Friday, December 2nd the winds that we have had the last couple of days appear to have finally died down. According to the news all of Southern California had been having really bad winds, with trees getting blown over and lots of power outages. Since it appeared to be a pretty nice day, we went out after lunch for some more geocaching in the area. We got our ten finds, with a couple of DNFs thrown in for good measure, in a few hours. Around 5:00 we drove over to Kathy and Bill’s house in Citrus Heights, an adjacent community, for dinner. Kathy had a made a very nice meatloaf and all the trimmings. We had a couple of cocktails and visited for a while, then had a very good dinner. We ended up leaving about 9:30 or so and heading home.

Saturday, December 3rd, another moving day. We packed up the coach and, after a visit to the dump station to empty our tanks, left Carmichael and headed south for an exhausting 45 mile drive to Lodi, California. It took about an hour to get to the Lodi Elks Lodge where we quickly settled into a nice spot. We have stayed at this lodge in the past as we traveled through the area. The sites overlook a big expanse of grass and are right next door to a beautiful country club golf course. We have some friends, Fern and Andy Lenardini, who live here in Lodi. I first met them shortly after I moved to Indio in 1998. They were friends with our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen and they had a home in the country club in Palm Desert where I had gotten a job working security. They only stay in the desert during the winter months and they haven’t been down there for the last two winters because of issues with the family. The bottom line is that we haven’t seen them for a couple of years and wanted to visit them while we were in the area.

After we got settled in to the spot, where we will be for three days, we took a quick drive to a Christmas craft sale that Jackie had heard about from Kathy last night. It was called “Christmas in the Barn” and was held at a local vineyard in their yard. It was very cold and windy, so it was a little uncomfortable walking around the half dozen booths outside of the barn. The barn had another dozen craft booths crowded inside. We were only there about a half hour, but Jackie did buy a silk flower arrangement that she liked. After that we went for a late lunch at the local In and Out burger place and then back to the Elks where we hung around the coach for the rest of the afternoon. About 4:30 we took a drive over to the Lodi Moose Lodge, which was only about a mile from the Elks. This was our first visit to this Moose lodge since I hadn’t been a member of the order the last time we were through here. The lodge just built a brand new building on a big piece of land. Although the clubroom was a little stark, it’s just a big room with the bar on one end and some pool tables on the other end, it was nice. There were a lot of people in the bar and they were all very welcoming and friendly. We had a couple of drinks there and then left and went into the Elks Lodge for a cocktail. Again, the people were welcoming and friendly and we had a great time. We finally got out of there and back to the coach about 7:00 and we stayed in the rest of the night.

Sunday, December 4th, I went out at 8:00 a.m. to get a Sunday paper at the market and the thermometer in the car said it was 36 degrees. I know it was cold because there was frost on the windshield. We stayed around the coach most of the day, Jackie wanted to get some things done, and we knew that we were going to be going out for the evening with our friends Fern and Andy. About 5:00 we drove over to their house, which is out in the country west of Lodi. They have a very pretty, turn of the century, farm house nestled in the surrounding vineyards. They don’t have a winery, they grow Zinfandel grapes which they wholesale to wine makers. Andy was born in Lodi and has lived here much of his life. We had not seen them for about two years, so we spent some time sitting in their living room having cocktails and catching up. They have a very pretty bar in their house and Andy is a collector of liquor bottles. He has hundreds of very unique bottles of all kinds of liquor, most of them still sealed. Oddly, he doesn’t collect wine bottles and they really don’t drink much wine, considering they live in wine country and grow wine grapes.

After about ninety minutes of conversation we got in their car and they drove us into Stockton, about ten miles south of Lodi, to a wonderful Chinese restaurant called Dave Wong’s. It is a fairly new restaurant located on March Road, just off the I-5 in Stockton. Although it was a Sunday night the place was packed. It is a very elegant place with a good menu, although not as extensive as some menu Chinese restaurants. However, the food was superb, some of the best Chinese cuisine that I have had. We had a great meal and continued our conversation, catching up on what we have been doing since we last met. Fern has had a couple of tough years with a series of deaths in her family and I think it perked her up a little to have company. After dinner we drove back to Lodi where we said our goodbyes for the night and headed back to the coach. It was great to see Andy and Fern again and we hope that they will be able to get down to the Coachella Valley this winter to their home there so we can see them again.

Monday, December 5th, another morning in the 30's. We have never been up in this part of the state this late in the year and didn’t know it got this chilly. After lunch we went out to do some geocaching in the Lodi area. We have cached here before, but it has been a couple years, so there were lots of caches yet to find. Many of the caches were located around the many vineyards in the area. We had a good afternoon and in the course of less than three hours we captured 15 new finds with no DNFs. Yea! We even had time to walk around downtown Lodi and window shop for an hour or so. Later in the afternoon, about 5:30, we walked over to the Elks lodge to have a cocktail. It was there Monday Night Football party, so the place was pretty full. They were serving hamburgers and chips fairly cheap, but we decided to just have a couple drinks and then go home and make our own dinner. We have been eating out a lot lately.

Tuesday, December 6th, we packed up the buggy and departed Lodi about 10:00 headed south on U.S. 99 back to Fresno and the Fresno Elks. The ride only took about three hours and we got settled into a nice spot right next to the one we occupied a week ago. Highway 99 is a HORRIBLE road, especially the section that goes through Modesto. The road is the old style concrete and it is broken up and patched and bumpy as hell. One of the sun shades came loose and an access panel on the back of the TV fell off. We felt lucky that only two parts fell off. We will be here for three days this stop before moving on towards the Coachella Valley. After we got settled in we just stayed in the rest of the day and chilled.

Wednesday, December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. Seventy years ago today, wow! We left the coach after lunch to go do some exploring in nearby Clovis, California. Clovis, a suburb of Fresno with a population of a little under 100,000, was founded in 1890 as a freight stop on the new San Joaquin Railroad line. The railroad was constructed to serve the emerging agricultural industries in the San Joaquin Valley. Clovis has a very nicely maintained Old Town with a reputation for a lot of antique stores. We like to browse antique stores, so we decided to go do some caching in Clovis, along with some wandering in Old Town. We spent the afternoon walking around antique stores and other shops, as well as doing a few caches. We got five new finds, with one DNF. About 4:00 we went to the Clovis Elks Lodge, which is located right in the old downtown area, for a cocktail. The lodge is fairly recent, having been chartered in 1972 and is located in what appears to be an old restaurant building in Clovis. We were the first and only customers in the bar, since they only open at 4:00, but the bartender was very welcoming and personable. She was a member of the lodge and told us a lot about the lodge and the city of Clovis. We have never been in this lodge so we got a pin for our banner.

After visiting Clovis we went back to the Fresno Elks Lodge and lo and behold, we found the lodge open! The lodge building here looks wonderful from the outside, and the RV park is great. However, it is not open very often. We were here for five days a week or so ago and the lodge was not open at all. Tonight was dinner and bingo, so it was finally open and we were able to go in and check out the inside of the lodge. The building is quite new, only a few years old from what we have been told, and is very nice. There is a big dining room and a very large lounge with a nice bar. There were quite a number of people in the bar, waiting for dinner to be served. The bartender was very nice and we had one drink. We didn’t need to ask for a pin since we had gotten one last week from the campground host. They were having a holiday sale, mostly desserts and stuff, but we did buy a cookbook put together by the Emblem Club, their ladies group. We have had great success in the past getting good recipes out of Elks cookbooks from other lodges. After out cocktail we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Thursday, December 8th, our last day in Fresno. After lunch we went out to do another afternoon of caching in northeast Fresno and Clovis. In a few hours we were able to add another dozen finds to our stats, along with one DNF. Once we were done caching we went to the mall for an hour or so of shopping. About 5:30 we drove over to Jackie’s niece’s house for dinner. We stopped on the way to pick up some pizzas. We wanted to provide dinner since Ron and Stephanie had bought us dinner when we were here the week before. We picked up pizzas from a place called Me & Ed’s, which Stephanie had indicated was the kid’s favorite place. They have a dozen different stores in the area and seemed to be really busy.

We brought the pizza over, along with a bottle of wine, and had an informal dinner with Stephanie and two of the kids. Ron and Bryce were at soccer practice and didn’t get back until almost 7:30, but there was plenty of pizza left. We had a really nice visit and finally left their house about 8:30 and went back to the coach for the rest of the night. We were really happy that our travels brought us back through Fresno so we could see Ron and Stephanie and the family one more time.

Friday, December 9th, we left Fresno and started south on Highway 99 again, this time headed for Bakersfield. We have reservations in the Coachella Valley starting on Monday at a resort near the Salton Sea. Our original plan was to spend two days in Bakersfield and one in Hesperia as we worked our way down from the high desert. However, I had been watching the weather and noted that there was a winter storm moving into Southern California on Sunday night and the weather is supposed to be pretty bad for a couple of days after. With that in mind we decided to get down into the Coachella Valley on Sunday, a day early, so we would beat the storm and not have to drive in bad weather. Plus, from Bakersfield to Hesperia we had to cross the Tehachepi Summit as well as the Cajon Summit from Hesperia down into the San Bernardino basin. Both of these passes are over 4,000 feet in elevation and can get snow when storms come through. I don’t care for driving the coach in the rain, much less the snow.

We got into Bakersfield and went to the same RV park that we had stayed in when we came through here in November on our way to the coast. It worked out well because we got a discount for our Good Sam plus a discount for being a repeat customer. Ended up costing only $24 for a full hookup pull through site. We didn’t even unhook the car and just stayed in the coach for the afternoon and evening. The next morning we got up and left Bakersfield about 10:00 and went east over the Tehachepi Summit and into Hesperia, California, on I-15 in the San Bernardino Mountains. Our original plan was to stay at an RV park that we have used before, but upon checking the Elks camping book we noticed that the Hesperia Elks Lodge had RV parking and that we had checked it out a few years ago when we came through the area. We changed our destination and went to the Lodge, which was only about three miles off the freeway and got a spot there. It had 30 amp and water, which was fine for a one night stay. Again, we didn’t even unhook the car. Just put out the slides and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Sunday morning we got up and left Hesperia about 10:00 and started down the big hill over Cajon Pass on our last leg back to the Coachella Valley, our old home ground. We arrived at the Oasis Palms RV Resort, south of Indio on Highway 86, just after noon. At first we thought that we would stay at the Indio Elks for one night since our reservation at the RV park didn’t start until Monday, however, I had called the resort and they said they had plenty of room and to go ahead and come in one day early. This is a Passport America park with almost no restrictions on use, so we are able to stay here for 15 days, during the peak camping season in the desert, for $15 a night. We got into a nice pull through spot with 50 amp and full hookups and got setup. Since we are going to be here through Christmas, we also put up all our Christmas decorations. We look very festive.

This is a nice park, set in an old citrus orchard, but it does have some road noise from Highway 86 which is right adjacent. Oddly, we had never noticed this park before despite having traveled up and down Highway 86 dozens of times over the years. We found it when we were looking for somewhere close to the Indio area to stay since our membership park, Indian Waters, was sold. It is now very difficult to get a spot at Indian Waters, but this park will work. The only down side is that it is a 20 mile drive to Indio, but we have stayed further away. It really is about the same distance from Indio as is the park in Desert Hot Springs, just in the other direction.

This seems like a very good spot to take a break and get this chapter of our story on the web. We will be here for two weeks, so look for another update about that time. Until the next time, stay warm, enjoy the spirit of Christmas, and enjoy every day. Bye.

Central California Adventures

Hi friends, welcome back to our story. Our last chapter closed on Tuesday, November 8th, when we left Pahrump, Nevada, headed for the California coast. Our first stop was in Barstow, California at the Desert Springs RV park. The park is actually in the little town of Dagget, just east of Barstow proper, and located just outside the front gate of the Marine Corps Logistics Base Annex. The Marine Corps western logistics (supply) command is located in Barstow and they have two facilities, the main Barstow base and the one near us, which is called the Yermo Annex. After we got settled into the RV park we just stayed in for the rest of the day.

Wednesday, November 9th, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching in the Barstow area. We have never cached here before and there are a lot of caches around the area. We were able to get 15 new finds, with no DNFs, within a few hours and never more than a few miles from the RV park. After caching we drove over to the outlet mall, but only went into a couple of the stores. We drove into downtown Barstow and toured around a little before heading over to the Elks Lodge. Unfortunately, when we got to the lodge we found it closed up, with a “for sale” sign in front. We called the phone number we had in the Elks travel book and found it was disconnected. It appears that the lodge may have gone under. Too bad. We then just headed back to the coach where we stayed the rest of the evening.

Thursday, November 10th, Happy 236th Birthday United States Marine Corps. Unfortunately, it is a travel day, so I will be unable to fly my Marine Corps Flag today. We left Barstow about 9:30 or so and started west towards Bakersfield, California, about 135 miles away. We were on Highway 58 which runs between Barstow and Bakersfield, crossing the Tehachepi Pass at nearly 4,000 feet. The road was pretty good and there wasn’t too much traffic. We arrived in Bakersfield just after noon and got settled into the Bakersfield Palms RV resort. Since we will be here for three days, we decided to just stay in and relax for the rest of today.

Friday, November 11th, Veterans Day. Thanks to all those who serve and those who have served in the past. Today is also the only day in this century which can be written as 11-11-11. The news has been saying that hundreds of couples around the country have selected today to get married so they will never forget their wedding date. We also noticed on the geocaching web site and newsletter that there are numerous geocaching events going on today in commemoration of the oddity of the date. One of them is being held right here in Bakersfield, only a few miles from where we are staying. The event is scheduled to start at 1:11 p.m. on 11-11-11. Since it’s Veterans Day, they are holding the event in a park, near a war memorial. It all comes together.

We left the coach after lunch and headed for the event, arriving just as the organizers were starting to put stuff out. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing pretty hard and it was sprinkling on and off, making an outside event in a park a little uncomfortable. At least it was fairly warm, in the low 70's. We introduced ourselves to some of the local cachers and had some nice conversations. The organizers gave us one of their unactivated travel coins, I guess as a reward for being the only out of towners at the event. They also passed out sheets with the location information for eleven new caches. They local caching group that planned the event had different cachers in the area put out the eleven new caches, each with eleven items in the cache to start. The event was only a “meet and greet” which took about a half hour. They took a picture of the group, which ended up being a couple dozen people, and the attendees disbanded and, I would guess, headed out to try and be the “first to find” on one or more of the new caches. FTF is a little side game of caching. Some people really get into the FTF, putting alert apps on their phones so they get a notification as soon as a new cache is published within X number of miles of their home. Our motorhome friends, John and Rita Ham, who have an RV lot in Yuma, are that way. John has hundreds of FTFs to his credit. We have about six, most of which we found by luck. Since we are not early risers, we don’t usually catch the FTFs.

We decided this day that we were going to make an effort to get an FTF, so I looked over the caches that we had picked up at the event. One of them was a puzzle cache and I was pretty sure I knew the solution to the puzzle. Puzzle caches are put out and published with false coordinates on the web site. To get the real coordinates you have to solve some type of puzzle. In this case the name of the cache was “11111111111111111" and the only hint was that the last three numbers in the longitude and latitude were abc and def, based on the title of the cache. Since geocaching is a digital sport, I deduced that the title was a binary number, seventeen digits long. I got out the calculator and quickly figured out the base ten value of the number. It was six digits long, just what I needed for the coordinates.

With that information we set out to locate the cache. We got to the coordinates and within seconds had found the cache under a bush. Yea! I got the answer right! We were, indeed, the first to find and got a nice 1921 silver dollar as the FTF prize. Most cachers put something in the cache when they place it as a prize for the first to find. When we put out our caches in Pahrump earlier this month I put a dollar bill in each cache for the FTF. After finding the cache we put the coordinates in for one of the other new caches, hoping that we might get another FTF. This one was a few miles away and we found the location pretty quickly. The information indicated that the cache, dedicated to the Apollo Eleven moon mission, was located up in a large tree alongside the road. We looked and looked, but couldn’t figure out where it might be. Just as we were about to give up, one of the other cachers who had been at the event arrived. He was a young kid, so he climbed the tree and found the cache way up out of reach. Once he got the cache down we told him that he earned the FTF, but when we opened the cache we found that there had already been three others there. Oh well, can’t win them all.

Since it was still rainy and windy, we decided that was enough caching, so we set out to do some shopping errands. First stop was the local Camping World store. Camping World is Nirvana for many RVers. There is not much in the way of RV supplies or goodies that you can’t get at camping world. What I originally wanted to get were some new mats for our outside steps, but I ended up with about $100 worth of stuff. Pretty hard to get out of Camping World without at least a hundred dollars of stuff. Fortunately, we only get to one a couple times a year. After camping world we hit Walmart and then Costco for groceries and goodies. Once we had all our supplies we headed home for the rest of the night.

Ironically, when Jackie sat down at the computer to log our cache finds into the web site, she found that neither of the caches we found had been published yet. Until they are published they don’t have an official cache number and can’t be logged. We will have to wait, probably until tomorrow, before we can log and get credit for our finds. We decided that since there were so many events scheduled for today that the people that reviewed and published new cache requests were probably way behind. We will eventually get credit for the finds.

Saturday, November 12th, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching. Although it is cool and overcast, there is little wind and it doesn’t look like rain. We cached for several hours around mostly east Bakersfield and finally quit at a dozen new finds. It was a bit of a rough afternoon though, we ended up with four new DNFs too. I think two of them were just gone, but two may have been there and we just couldn’t find them. Oh well, Jackie says it keeps us humble.

After caching we went to the Bakersfield Elks Lodge. This is an old lodge, Lodge 288, chartered back in the 1890's. They have a very large building, but it has a commercial restaurant in the front that is a lease from them, and a couple of large ballrooms that they rent out. Their actual clubroom is fairly small. There were half a dozen people in the bar and they were quite friendly. We have never visited Bakersfield before, so we got a lodge pin for our banner. We had a couple drinks and visited with folks for about an hour before heading home for dinner and TV.

Sunday, November 13th, was another travel day. We left Bakersfield and started southwest towards Oceano, California, on the coast. I took Route 166 across the coastal range of mountains between I-5 and the coast. The trucker’s atlas shows it as an authorized commercial truck route, one of two that comes out of the Central Coast to the Central Valley. I have been on the other one, the one that comes out of Paso Robles, many times, but I have never been on this one. This one has some fairly steep grades and curvy sections, but it wasn’t too bad. Just had to concentrate a little more. I always like to stay on roads are designated truck routes with the coach to avoid surprises, like low clearances or super tight turns.

One thing that occurred is just after we got started I was going from one freeway to another in Bakersfield on a tight cloverleaf interchange and the crock pot that Jackie had on the stove with our dinner cooking slid off onto the floor. I was driving and couldn’t see the mess, but I could hear Jackie behind me swearing for fifteen minutes while she cleaned up the mess. Fortunately, the roast we had in the pot didn’t come out and she was able to rescue most of the veggies, so we will still have dinner when we get to Oceano.

We pulled into the Pacific Dunes RV Ranch a little after 1:00 and got our spot. We have never been to this park before, didn’t even know it existed until we joined the membership program that has it on it’s list. We usually stay at Elks Lodges when we are in this area, but we can get this park for $23 a night and have 50 amp full hookups where the Elks have 30 amp and no sewer for $20. This way we can stay the whole ten days we are going to be here in one spot instead of having to move periodically to dump the tanks. The park is great, we are about a half mile from the ocean and have a great view of the dunes. We can’t see the ocean, but we are sure getting the breeze. After we got parked we set up and just stayed in the rest of the day.

Monday, November 14th, we awoke to a nice, cool Pacific beach day. After lunch we headed out to do some local caching. We had one cache that had come up on my query as new, so we headed for that one first with hopes of getting the FTF (first to find) for the cache. The cache was in Arroyo Grande, close to the RV park, near an old bridge across a creek that runs through town. Unfortunately, we were unable to find the cache. The information for the cache, as well as the hint, would lead one to believe that the cache was somewhere near or on the bridge, or the creek, but the coordinates on both of our GPS receivers were taking us in a different location. We looked for a while but finally gave up.

After our unsuccessful efforts at the FTF, we drove to nearby Grover Beach and picked up Jackie’s cousin, Pia. Jackie had talked to her this morning, to let her know we had arrived in town, and when she mentioned we were going caching Pia said she would like to go with us. She follows our Facebook entries as well as our blog, so she knows how much we like caching. She said it intrigued her and she wanted to see what it was all about. We picked her up and headed out for some caching. We ended up finding ten new caches in a couple of hours and Pia spotted at least four of them before we even did. She displays a natural talent for caching and we encouraged her to consider getting a GPS and getting into the hobby.

We then dropped Pia off at her house and drove to Pismo Beach to visit with Jackie’s aunt Donna. Donna and her late husband Barkey have lived in Pismo Beach since the early 70's and built one of the first houses on the hill overlooking the town and the beach. They subsequently built a number of houses in town and Donna was big in real estate in the area for many years. Barkey, who was Jackie’s uncle on her mother’s side, died a couple of years ago, but Donna still lives in one of the houses they built overlooking the beach. Donna, who is in her eighties, has her grandson Corey living with her, helping her with day to day living. We had a very nice visit with Donna and Corey, along with Corey’s girlfriend, and we set up a sort of “schedule” of things we would like to do with Donna and the rest of the family over the rest of the week we will be here.

Just after sunset we left Donna’s and drove back to our coach, stopping at the Oceano Elks Lodge on the way. Had we not joined the RV park membership that gave us access to the park we are staying in, we probably would have stayed at the Oceano Elks. They have a large RV park right next to lodge and we have stayed there many times in the past. As I said earlier, however, they charge $20 for a site with 30 amp and no sewer, while we are getting a full hookup 50 amp site for $23. Kind of a no brainer. We had one cocktail at the lodge, looked at their schedule to see what was going on, and then headed to our RV park. We are staying only a mile or so from the lodge.

Tuesday, November 15th, we decided that this would be a “chores” day. I had a fairly large to-do list and wanted to get some of it done. I changed all the water filters, repaired a sewer valve, put on new step covers, and did all my periodic maintenance checks on the coach. I was done by mid-afternoon and had a very productive day. Jackie got some of her “to-do’s” done today as well.

Wednesday we left the coach after lunch and drove into Grover Beach to do our laundry. After laundry we spent an hour or so walking around the Pismo Beach outlet mall. We then went back to the coach for an hour or so before heading to the Oceano Elks Lodge for spaghetti night. From past visits here we knew that the Oceano lodge has all you can eat spaghetti every Wednesday night, and it is yummy. In the past the place has always been packed, so we went about an hour early to have a cocktail and get a table for our group. Jackie’s aunt Donna and cousin Pia, and Donna’s grandson Corey and his girlfriend Wanda, are all coming to have dinner with us. As it turned out, really needn’t have come early because there were only a few dozen people for tonight’s dinner. In the past we have always been here in this area in the spring or early summer. We learned that the winter crowds are much smaller. Nonetheless, the food was still great and I ate way too much. We had a great time visiting with all of Jackie’s kin, and had a great dinner too. After dinner we drove back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Thursday, November 17th, we left the RV park right after lunch and drove about 15 miles north to San Luis Obispo. San Luis Obispo, or SLO as it is known locally, was first settled by the Spanish explorers who traveled up the coast from what is now Mexico. The mission, the fifth established on the California mission trail, was founded in 1772. The city was incorporated in 1856 and is the county seat of San Luis Obispo County. The city is home to California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly. We spent several hours doing some geocaching in the SLO area, getting seven new finds with one DNF. After caching we spent an hour or so walking around the downtown area window shopping.

Every Thursday night there is a farmers market/street fair held on the main street through downtown SLO. We have been to this event on past visits to the area and found it quite a lot of fun. They close the street down at 5:30 and the fair starts around 6:00 p.m. Just before six we went into Mother’s Tavern, one of the local restaurants, for dinner. I had fish and chips and Jackie had one of their burgers. We had a very enjoyable dinner and a couple of drinks before leaving the restaurant and spending another hour or so walking the street fair. We had a very enjoyable day and evening. After finishing the fair we stopped at a grocery for some supplies and then drove back to the RV park for the rest of the night.

Friday, November 18th, another beautiful coastal day. It was cool and breezy, and there were clouds on the horizon foretelling the possibility of rain, but it was still nice. Jackie spent a couple hours in the morning preparing her signature Halibut chowder for Saturday’s dinner with her aunt and the rest of the family. She always like to make the chowder the day before so it has time to set. After lunch we went out to do some local caching. We managed to get seven new finds, with one DNF, in the course of a few hours. In the process we discovered a very tiny park in Arroyo Grande where the old, early 1900's jail, was located. Aptly, the park was called Hoosegow Park. We also got a cache with a difficulty rating of 4, which is pretty high. They are rated 1 - 5 in both difficulty (finding) and terrain (location). The cache was very tiny and actually out in plain sight, just very well camouflaged. We have never seen a cache quite like this one before. It was made to look like the common wire and lead seals that you see on utility meters and boxes. Very clever.

After caching we went to Jackie’s cousin Pia’s house for a little while just to visit. I helped out with some computer stuff and showed her how to get some really neat games to download. After our visit there we went to the Pismo Beach Moose lodge for a cocktail. The Moose lodge in Pismo is located only a couple hundred yards from the beach, right in the downtown area. They have a real premium piece of real estate. The clubroom was small but nice. The bartender could have been a little friendlier, but some of the people at the bar talked to us. We had a couple of drinks and then headed for home, picking up a pizza for dinner while on the way.

Saturday, November 19th, we just stayed around the coach until about 3:30 when we packed up the Halibut chowder and sundry supplies and went over to Donna’s house. We had a wonderful visit with Jackie’s family and a great dinner of chowder. Pia put together a salad and between that and the rolls we had everything we needed. After dinner we spent about 90 minutes playing a game called “Catch Phrase” with the family. This is an electronic game that we bought a year or so ago after playing it with a group of friends at an RV park. The game brings up a random or word or phrase and then you have to give hints to the other players to get them to guess it. It is a cross between password and charades since you can give verbal as well as physical cues. Some of the words a phrases are very obscure and we had a good time. There are a lot of laughs from a game like this. About 8:30 we left Donna’s and went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Sunday was an interesting day in some respects. It had started raining in the middle of the night, sometime right around midnight. Off and on it was raining really hard and the wind was blowing pretty good too. About 4:30 or so I got up to use the bathroom and while I was up I went out into the living room to check for any obvious signs of leaks. Leaking water is the bane of every RVers existence, and we have had a few in the past. While we were in Pahrump we had some water leaking out of a ceiling light in one of the living room slides. I thought at that time that it might have been caused by the guy that washed the coach using his power washer and forcing water into an area that it would not normally go. Unfortunately, I found that the same fixture was again leaking water onto the coach. Not a lot of water, but enough to be a concern. It was clear that the slide had a leak somewhere. I took out the light fixture to avoid any electrical issues, and put a towel under the leak to soak up the water. I then went back to bed.

When I got up later, about 7:30, it was still raining and it was still leaking from the slide. I had to remove the second light fixture in the same slide because it too was leaking a little. When Jackie got up, and the rain had stopped for a while, we pulled the slide in. It can’t leak if it’s not out in the rain. I tried to examine the caulking on the seam along the top of the slide, the one I suspect has developed a hole, but I can’t get to it without dismantling the whole decorative fascia on the interior of the slide. I decided we would wait until we get to Fresno later in the week for that job. Fortunately, none of the other areas that have leaked in the past were wet, so my fixes on those areas are still holding.

The rain went on and off all day. We had originally planned to go to the big swap meet in nearby Nipomo, but with the wet ground, cold wind and continuing rain we decided to just stay in for the day. We spent the day playing games and catching up on TV shows.

Monday, November 21st, we had an early lunch and then went out to do some more caching in the local area. Today we were able to get an additional seven new finds, one of which was our 3,100 find, a new milestone. We also got a cache that we had tried to get last year when we here but couldn’t figure out a way to get into where the cache was. Today we stuck to it, found the right way in, and got the cache. After caching we stopped at the store for some supplies before heading back to the RV park.

One of the other places we stopped today was the Pismo State Beach Butterfly Grove. This grove, located just off the beach on Highway 1, is one of many Southern California Monarch Butterfly wintering sites. Every winter hundreds of thousands of Monarchs leave their winter homes in the north and migrate south to wintering sites in the southern U.S. and Mexico. The migration actually spans several generations of butterflies and the ones that leave the wintering site in the Spring will not be back. Nonetheless, every year they flock to the same places as their ancestors. Scientists are still trying to figure out how and why the Monarchs come back to the same places every year. In the past, when we have come to Pismo Beach in the Spring or Summer there were no butterflies. This is the first time we have been here in the Fall, when the butterflies are coming in. They hang in the trees in huge groups. Tourists flock to the site when the butterflies are in residence. This was the first time we have been able to see the phenomenon. Pretty cool.

About 4:30 we left again en route to Jocko’s Steak House in Nipomo, a small town about 10 miles south of the RV park. We have been to Jocko’s on a couple of other visits to this area and it remains my favorite, all time steak house. The steaks here are better than any I have had, anywhere. We met Jackie’s family there, including Pia, Donna, Corey and Wanda, along with Rod, a friend of Pia’s. I had a ribeye and Jackie had lamb chops. They cook all their meat on an open BBQ fueled with only oak wood and the flavors are to die for. The meat is all prime and is super tender. The guys that work the grill also really know how to cook the meat. Jackie likes her meat charred rare, and she is more often than not disappointed. Never here. I like mine blue, which is basically raw with just a little browning on the outside. Along with your meat you get salad, potato, beans, dessert and coffee if you want it. Jackie’s complete dinner, which was so big she took half of it home, was $20, my 20 oz. Ribeye was $27 and I took half of it home too.

Jocko’s is on Thompson Street in Nipomo, California, just a little bit north of Santa Maria off highway 101. There is no finer steak place and I highly recommend it to anyone who is in the area looking for a good meal. After dinner we drove over to Donna’s house where we visited with the family until about 9:30 when we finally went back to the coach for the night.

Tuesday, November 22nd dawned a cool but clear day. I spent a little time in the morning cleaning up stuff outside the coach in preparation for a travel day on Wednesday. Mid afternoon Jackie’s Aunt Donna and Cousin Pia came over to the coach for a visit. They had some family issues to talk about, so I just stayed in the back on my computer while they visited in the front. Later in the evening we all had dinner in the coach. Jackie fixed chicken enchiladas and all the other Mexican side dishes. It was great. After dinner we visited some more with Jackie’s family until about 8:00 when they left to go home.

Wednesday, November 23rd, our stay in Oceano has come to an end. We packed up the coach and left about 10:00 to head northeast about 160 miles to Fresno, California. Jackie has a niece that lives there with her husband and kids. The drive was uneventful, although there was quite a bit of traffic on the road because it is the day before Thanksgiving. We arrived at the Fresno Elks Lodge about 2:00 and got set up in their RV lot. We have a very nice grass site overlooking a small lake. Pretty nice view. The sites have 30 amp and water, no sewer, but we are only going to be here for five nights, so we can handle the lack of sewer.

It has been a couple of weeks since I published a chapter, so this seems like a good spot to break it off and get it on line. The next chapter will be another couple weeks. Until the next time, stay happy and smile. A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you're at home. See ya!