Wednesday, December 30th we stuck around home, doing laundry and some other chores. Later that evening we walked over to Peggy and Vernon’s coach for dinner. Peggy made a great pasta bake with a nice salad. Vernon fixed up some of the Canadian escargot that we both came back with after our trip last year. I don’t eat the snails, but the garlic-butter sauce is great and I ate a bunch of sourdough bread dipped in the stuff. We had a great time playing with their new puppy, Bell, who is only a couple months old. She is a mini Australian Shepard and really cute and friendly.
Thursday we went out after lunch with Peggy and Vernon to do some geocaching. We had first introduced them to the sport back during our trip to Alaska. We took them with us a number of times since then and they seemed to be really interested. Then in August Peggy got a new GPS receiver, the same type that Jackie uses, and they got started on their own. They are now up to over a hundred. The four of us did caching in Palm Desert and we managed to find a dozen in a matter of about three hours. As a side note, some of the caches were in the area of El Paseo Avenue, a ritzy shopping district in Palm Desert that people call the Rodeo Drive of the Desert. One would not know there was a recession going on based on the number of people shopping in that area. I was really surprised. Even though there is a lot of money in the Coachella Valley, I still didn’t expect that many people out shopping after Christmas. After caching we just went back home and relaxed the rest of the day.
Friday, December 31st - New Year’s Eve! The end of 2010 has arrived. I will say that we generally had a pretty good year. Jackie’s mom passed away in March which was sad, but we didn’t lose any other family or friends over the year. We had some great travels and are looking forward to a wonderful 2011. Our normal New Year’s Eve in the past has been spent at home with friends, and this year was no exception. The past four years we have spent with our friends Barry and Colleen, and occasionally another couple or two. However, this year they are up in Sacramento with their daughter and her family. Fortunately, we have Peggy and Vernon here and they have the same attitude towards the night as we do - quiet time at home with friends. Early in the day Jackie and Peggy went out to do some end of the year bargain shopping at the mall. Later in the afternoon Peggy and Vernon came over to our coach and we had a nice evening. Jackie made up some sushi for happy hour snacks. Peggy made a great antipasto salad and I put a nice tri-tip on the BBQ. We had a wonderful dinner and watched the ball drop in New York City at 9:00 p.m. California time. Having access to the East coast network channels on our satellite is great! By 10:30 Peggy and Vernon left and we went to bed. I didn’t even hear the midnight gunfire that normally goes on in this part of Indio on New Years.
Saturday, January 1, 2011, or 1111 as I was reminded in a couple of emails. We left the park with Peggy and Vernon around 10:00 a.m. and drove over to Palm Desert for the College of the Desert weekend street fair. We had just been there last weekend, but Peggy and Vernon had never been so we told them we would take them over. We walked around and shopped until about 1:00 then started back towards home. We stopped at La Casita for lunch because we wanted to show Peggy and Vernon one of our favorite Mexican places. Vernon and I went out to try and get some RV parts, but found that all of the stores were closed on New Years. Duh! We spent the rest of the day hanging out at home.
Sunday, January 2nd we were up early again and with Peggy and Vernon in the car drove West on the freeway headed for Silent Valley, South of Banning. Regular readers will recall that Silent Valley is a large ownership RV park in the San Jacinto Mountains. We normally spend a month or two there in the Spring. Two of our friends, Gary and Ramona Wilson and Ray and Suzie Babcock, are staying up there. We have traveled quite a bit with both these couples over the last couple of years. Gary and Ramona were in Albuquerque with us at the
Balloon Fiesta last year. We wanted to show Peggy and Vernon Silent Valley and since they also know the other two couples well we thought we would visit today. We arrived about 11:00 or so and found it cloudy, grey and VERY cold. We don’t normally come up to Silent Valley, which sits at about 4,000 feet elevation, in the winter for that reason. The temperature was in the low thirties and Ray told us that they had freezing temps for the last week at night. There was a lot of ice on the ground around the campground, but no snow. The eight of us visited for a while, catching up on our various travels since the last time we were together. We then left Silent Valley and continued South into the mountains to the community of Idyllwild, about ten miles South of Silent Valley, and about 2,500 feet higher. We all went into Jo Ann’s restaurant in the Idyllwild town square for lunch. Jo Ann’s is our favorite restaurant up there and we go to it almost every time we go to Idyllwild. The town was another new experience for Peggy and Vernon, who are Californians, but from the Northen part of the state.
There was quite a bit of snow on the ground in Idyllwild, but the roads were clear and dry for the most part. While we were in the restaurant we noticed that it had started to snow. By the time we finished it was snowing pretty hard, although the temperatures were not quite low enough for it to start to stick on the roads yet. We led Peggy and Vernon to one geocache in the town square area that we were aware of, just so they would have at least one cache in the area. We had originally planned to spend a couple hours in town shopping and caching, but decided with the snow coming down and the temperatures dropping that we should get off the mountain when we can. I am not a real experienced snow and ice driver, so I didn’t want to get practice on mountain roads. We drove back to the Coachella Valley through the back way, coming back to the valley on Highway 74. This was not only a new route for Peggy and Vernon to see, but also let us avoid being on the freeway on a holiday weekend Sunday afternoon. Interstate 10 has a nasty habit of ending up closed because of accidents on busy holiday weekends. Once we dropped back down to under 5,000 feet the snow stopped, so we had a pleasant drive back and even stopped to get one geocache alongside the road. Once back in the desert we headed home and stayed in for the rest of the day.Monday, January 3rd I left the coach early, about 9:30 and drove over to our storage unit to do some badly needed cleaning. When we sold the house in 2005 we gave away or sold most of the big stuff, the furniture and a lot of clothes, but there was still a lot of stuff that we weren’t yet sure of what we wanted to do with. We rented a fairly large 10X12 storage unit and pretty much filled it up with boxes of clothes, pictures, and personal stuff. Sometime around 2007 we managed to clean out a lot of stuff, again giving most of it to charity or friends, and “downsized” to a 5X5 unit. Over time, this unit has been pretty much filled to capacity with “stuff” and we have determined that we need to try to eliminate the need for a storage unit, or, failing that, at least cut down on the amount of stuff we have to look at when we go there. I spent a couple of hours there, taking one big load of stuff over to a charity thrift store in Indio, and bringing a few things back to the coach to try and sell at the park’s “yard sale” later in the week. One thing I brought back was two boxes of music CD’s that we had in the house. I had copied all of the music to digital format before we left the house and we have determined that we no longer need to keep all of the original CD’s. I left them with Peggy and Vernon first to pick through, and then the rest are going up for sale on the yard sale. Later in the afternoon I drove Jackie over to Rancho Mirage for her annual mammogram.
After the doctor’s appointment we drove back to Indio and went to Cactus Jack’s to meet with Barry and Colleen Cohen who had driven back from Sacramento today. They left early in the morning and we were afraid that they might get caught in the bad weather. Before I left the coach in the morning I had seen on TV that the Grapevine, the pass on Interstate 5 North of Los Angeles that is notorious for being snowed in, was closed because of snow and ice. I knew that Barry liked to leave REAL early (like 5 a.m.) when he travels, so I was afraid that they might not know the pass was closed. When I called him about 9:00 a.m. he said he did know about the closure and that they were taking the “back way” down the coast on Highway 101. They made it with only about an extra hour or so of travel time. We wanted to meet them for dinner because we missed them, but also because today is Colleen’s birthday! Happy birthday Colleen. We spent the rest of the evening there celebrating her birthday with dinner and drinks. After Cactus Jack’s we went home and to bed.
Tuesday, January 4th Jackie and I both went over to the storage unit after lunch and started going through stuff, sorting what we wanted to try and sell at the yard sale and what we could just get rid of. We loaded the car with boxes of pictures, glassware and crystal, a lot of knick knacks and brought it over to the coach for the yard sale. We spent some sorting stuff and then just relaxed the rest of the day.
Wednesday I got up and went outside about 8:00 a.m. to get our stuff set up for the big yard sale. We had all kinds of stuff out there, my old framed photos, my golf clubs, Jackie’s collection of old vinyl records, a couple hundred music CDs, knick knacks and other stuff. The sale went for three hours and the only thing that sold were the CDs. We sold one or two other small things, but mostly CDs. We ended up making $37. Whoopee! Oh well, a bottle of Absolute. That is how we tend to value things. For instance, eliminating our storage unit is worth 25 bottles of Absolute per year. Not too bad! After the sale we cleaned up and went to the doctor’s office for some routine medical stuff. We both needed prescriptions renewed and since my melanoma scare a couple years ago I always have the doc check my back and front for suspicious stuff. He did end up burning something off of my back with nitrogen. Later that evening we went over to Peggy and Vernon’s coach for cocktails and dinner. She had a wonderful curried chicken dish that I thought was great. Jackie also fixed another batch of escargot for the snail eaters. I just dipped bread in the sauce. A great meal, great company and great evening.
Thursday, January 6th I drove over to the storage unit in the morning and picked up most of the remaining stuff, which was primarily a couple of boxes of framed family pictures that we once had hanging in the hallway of our house, and a big box of old papers and books. I went though all of the pictures, removed them from the frames so we could keep them, and putting the frames aside to take to the thrift store. Jackie and I sorted the box of papers, which was mostly old tax records, and kept only a few souvenir things and tax records from the last seven years. I then spent a couple of hours shredding the old tax records. As of Thursday the only thing left in our storage unit is the metal shelving unit, which we are going to take to Vicki’s house, some framed art work that Jackie is not sure what to do with yet, and some luggage. If we can find room in Vicki’s garage for the luggage and art we will keep it there, otherwise it’s off to the thrift store. It looks like we will make our goal of eliminating the storage unit. Yea!
After our work on our “stuff elimination” project we went to Cactus Jack’s for dinner. We took Peggy and Vernon with us and met another couple, Jerry and Beverly King. Although we had crossed paths in the past, we really got to know Beverly and Jerry at the FMCA rally in Redmond, Oregon this past summer. Jerry is a retired Los Angeles firefighter. Beverly took the job as the Secretary of the new Veteran’s Chapter of FMCA. They are pretty good friends with the Babcocks and the Wilsons and we got to hang out with them quite a bit at the rally. They have a place at Desert Shores, an upscale RV resort here in Indio, and are here for the Western Area Rally which starts next week. The six of us had a great dinner, although the service was pretty lousy. That is unusual for Cactus Jack’s and could have been because the place was busy. In addition to the pending RV rally the big dog show is also in town, so the place was packed. Our waitress just seemed like she didn’t want to be there and didn’t want to be serving us. I had the beef ribs (again!) And took part of it home for lunch. Yum!
Friday, January 7th we again went to the storage unit after lunch and disassemble the shelving and took it, along with my gold clubs and a couple other items, to Vicki’s house. I am giving the golf clubs to Vicki’s brother Larry and Vicki is taking the shelving for her garage. About 5:00 p.m. we went to one of the local night clubs, The Jackalope Ranch, for dinner with Jay and Donna Blumenthal. We have known Jay and Donna for several years. Jay used to be the Area Vice President of the International Area of FMCA, which is the area in which nearly all the Chapters we belong to are chartered. We usually only run into Jay and Donna a couple times a year, usually at rallies. They are staying here in Indio for three months. We spent a couple of hours catching up and having a nice dinner and a couple of drinks. After dinner we made a stop at Cactus Jacks for a drink before heading home for the night.
Saturday, January 8th will be known as the day we became true full time RVers! I took a drive over to the storage unit in the morning and took the last items out. I took some luggage we wanted to keep over to Vicki’s and a few pictures to the thrift store. Before I left the storage place I stopped in the office and told them we had vacated! We finally got rid of our left over stuff - and saved $600. Yea! After lunch we went out with Peggy and Vernon for some geocaching. We managed to find a dozen caches in just a couple of hours. Peggy and Vernon even had a couple more on their list that we had previously found. Later on in the afternoon we went over to the Motorcoach Country Club to visit with Barry and Colleen. We took Peggy and Vernon with us. They had met Barry and Colleen briefly last year, but had never been to the Country Club. We wanted to show them how the “other half” of the RV world lived. We took them on a short driving tour of the Country Club and they were impressed. Amazing what having a little money will do for you. We then spent a couple hours with Barry and Colleen having cocktails and chatting. On the way home we stopped at the pizza place and picked up a large pizza. We had dinner at Peggy and Vernon’s coach with pizza and beer. All in all a busy, productive and friendly day.
Sunday, January 9th we stayed around the coach relaxing until about 3:00 p.m. when we went over to the clubhouse here at Indian Waters for a social gathering of the Full Timer’s Chapter of FMCA. The FMCA Western Area rally starts next week here in Indio at the fairgrounds so there are a lot of FMCA members staying in the area, including several right here at Indian Waters. Pat and Jim Goetzinger are members of the Full Timer’s Chapter, as are we, and they decided to have a small get together of as many members of the Chapter as possible. We ended up with probably fourteen people at the social. We had snacks and cocktails and had a great time catching up with old friends and acquaintances.
One interesting development was a reunion with an old acquaintance from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix. I worked for MCSO for 22 years and retired in 1992. While we were sitting there visiting a couple walked in and I thought I recognized the man from somewhere. I assumed that we had met at some rally or gathering until Jim Goetzinger introduced him and said “you and Tom worked together.” When Tom said his name was Tom Stroup I remembered him as a Lieutenant with the Sheriff’s Office that I had worked with for years. We were not close friends, Tom was a Detention Officer working in the jail system while I was a sworn Deputy sheriff. However, we did know each other and for a couple years had offices just a few yards apart. We had a great time catching up. It turns out that Tom and his wife had been on an RV caravan with the Goetzingers this past summer in the Canadian Maritimes and they happened to both be here at Indian Waters. The Stroup’s are not here for FMCA because they own a 5th Wheel (only motorhomes are allowed in FMCA), but they are full timers and have been since 2003. I always marvel at the way RVing can bring old friends together as well as make new friends. After the social gathering Jackie and I headed over to Cactus Jacks for dinner. I had learned that George, the owner, had put chicken and dumplings back on the specials menu for Sundays and I loved the chicken and dumplings. Back when we had a house here we used to go there nearly every Sunday for the special. It was off the menu for many years, but it still tasted the same and was great.
Monday, January 10th Jackie went out to lunch with Peggy and several other women friends from here in the Desert. I stayed at home and took care of some chores. I had to find “hiding places” for some of the stuff from the storage unit that we couldn’t part with. It was mostly family pictures and personal memorabilia, so fortunately it doesn’t take up too much room. It has a new home under the bed. Other than Jackie’s luncheon with the girls this was the first day in a couple weeks when we didn’t have plans, so I enjoyed the quiet opportunity to get a few little things done around the coach.
Tuesday, January 11th we left mid morning to go do laundry. After our laundry duties we drove into Palm Desert to a jewelry store. We had some old gold and silver jewelry we don’t use or need anymore and Jackie had some work that needed to be done on some diamond rings she has. We ended up getting a pretty good sum for a handful of old gold and silver stuff plus Jackie was able to trade two small diamonds for a larger one to put in her wedding ring and also get a small chip replaced in one of her other rings. While we were waiting for the rings to be fixed we went to the mall and walked around for a while. Bought a couple of little things, but generally just killed time. After picking up the jewelry we went back to the coach for happy hour with Peggy and Vernon. They moved over to the fairgrounds for the rally today. We will be going to the rally on daily passes but staying here at Indian Waters. Peggy and Vernon were lucky enough to get good handicap parking right in the middle of all the activities. We had been able to do the same thing a couple years ago when I had my surgery on my back.
Wednesday, January 12th we drove over to the Date Festival grounds, AKA the Riverside County Fairgrounds, to the FMCA Western Area Motorcoach rally. Today was the first day of any activities and we had agreed to help a couple of
our Chapters with the Chapter Fair. Most rallies have a Chapter Fair the first day to allow the Chapters for that area to set up a table and try to recruit new members. Jackie helped with the table for the Fulltimers Chapter and I helped at the table for the Veteran’s Chapter. The fair went for two hours and the Veteran’s Chapter was able to sign up about six new members. After the Chapter Fair we went back to Indian Waters for a couple hours before going to Cactus Jacks for dinner. Jackie had set up a dinner for some friends after Dick Conrad, our friend from the Desert Hot Springs Elks Lodge had said he wanted to get together for beef ribs at Jacks one evening. They brought their coach down from DHS and are staying on the fairgrounds. The dinner sort of snowballed from that and we ended up with a reservation for 16 people. Dick and Ginger, Barry and Colleen, Jack and Gail, our other friends from DHS, Peggy and Vernon, some friends of theirs Sharon and Curt, Bev and Jerry King, and a couple that Jackie met at the Chapter Fair and invited for dinner. They were Barbara and Jim and she invited them because they wanted to get involved with a local Elks Lodge travel group. She wanted to introduce them to Dick and Ginger. The dinner went very well. We had a great waitress, George, the owner of the place, came over and visited with everyone, and the food was wonderful. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and even with that many people there didn’t seem to be any problem with conversations. We stayed for a couple of hours before finally heading home fed and happy.
Thursday, January 13th we had another pretty busy day scheduled. About 11:30 a.m. we drove over to the Desert Shores RV Resort where Bev and Jerry King live. They were having a luncheon for the Veteran’s Chapter of FMCA and had asked us to come a little early to help set up. Desert Shores is another very upscale RV
resort, along the lines of the Motorcoach Country Club where Barry and Colleen live. The big difference is that at Desert Shores you are allowed to have an actual house on your lot, and all of the lots seem to have them. Bev and Jerry’s was very nice with a big kitchen, living room and office, or bedroom if you would prefer. They also have a lake behind their place, but unlike at Barry’s, there are no boats on this one.About two dozen people came to the social and we had a very nice time visiting. Bev put out a good spread of sandwiches and snacks, and they had wine and beer. The social lasted about
two hours, after which we went back to the coach briefly before going back over to the fairgrounds for some rally activities. We spent about an hour walking around the vendor area, just to get an idea which vendors were there. One of the vendors on site was Chuck and June McCubbins, who are good friends of ours. We first met them eight or ten years ago through Barry and Colleen. Chuck and June have a business selling plaques and plaque holders for the ladders of RVs. We have six of them on our coach. We have not seen Chuck and June for over a year and it was nice to see them again. Hopefully we will have a chance to spend a little more time with them after the rally since they are pretty busy while the rally is going on.After browsing the vendors we went out to where Peggy and Vernon’s coach was parked and set out our chairs to watch the parade. The Western Area rally always has a parade based on the theme of the rally. Last year it was movies,
this year is the old west. Different chapters of the Western Area put together floats and matching displays and they all parade down the middle of the fairgrounds. It is always a lot of fun and usually lasts about an hour. This year’s parade was very entertaining with a lot of different varieties of “horseback” riders walking around. Lots of dancing girls too!After the parade we hurried off the fairgrounds, went back to the coach so Jackie could change clothes, and immediately left again to go to La Quinta and a restaurant called the Sandbar. The Sandbar was the first place the Jackie and I went out to dinner at when we reunited in 1998. We sat at the same two stools
in the bar and reminisced about our reunion nearly 13 years ago. The reason we were at the Sandbar however, was that we were celebrating Jackie’s girlfriend Nancy’s 80th birthday. Nancy’s daughter Vicki had told Nancy that she and her son ShaneRyan were taking her out to dinner at the Sandbar because it is one of Nancy’s favorite places. What she didn’t tell her was that Jackie and I, and Nancy’s other girlfriend Jackie Sparks, were also going to be there. We were waiting in the bar when Vicki,
Nancy and Shane walked in and she was very surprised, and happy, to see us. We had a wonderful dinner, which included a visit by Harpo the clown. Jackie tells me that Harpo has been a fixture at Desert restaurants for twenty years or more. 
He is in full clown regalia, never speaks, and just works for tips. We got some pictures of Nancy with Harpo. After dinner we went back to the coach and crashed for the evening.Friday, January 14th we had lunch at the coach and then drove over to the fairgrounds and the rally for shopping. We met Barry and Colleen there and spent a couple hours walking around the vendors and then looking at the coaches they had in the coach display. Most of the coaches were used, but there were a couple of new models on display. One was a Winnebago Tour model that was a big 42 footer with a tag axle and a floor plan that we all liked. Not that either of us are in the market for a new coach, but it was a nice model to consider if we hit the lottery. After spending some time at the rally the four of us went over to Cactus Jack’s for a cocktail. After one drink we went home and crashed. We had reached the point where we were wore out and just wanted to chill the rest of the night, which we did.
Saturday we went out after lunch to do some shopping at Costco and Walmart. Next week we are leaving the Desert and heading into Arizona and will not be around major stores for about five weeks. We are working on getting our major shopping done before we have to leave. In the early evening Peggy and Vernon and Ray and Suzie came over for dinner. Ray and Suzie had just arrived yesterday at Indian Waters from Menefee, California, about 90 miles Southwest of Palm Springs. We fired up the BBQ and cooked steaks. Jackie made some broccoli and some yams for us and we just had a great dinner. After a few hours of eating, drinking and talking the other couples headed for their coaches and we relaxed the rest of the night. Peggy and Vernon, who are staying over at the rally on the grounds, have to leave the fairgrounds on Sunday and are going to the Thousand Trails RV park on I-10 near Palm Desert for a couple of days before heading to Quartzsite on Tuesday. We will be joining them in Quartzsite on Thursday and it appears that Ray and Suzie will be heading to the same area, also on Thursday.
Sunday, January 16th we finally had a day when we could relax. We hung around the coach the entire day, doing minor chores, playing computer games and just relaxing. At 6:00 p.m. we did drive down to Cactus Jack’s to meet our friends Pat and Jim Goetzinger for dinner. We know Pat and Jim from both the Full Timers and old 100%ers Chapters of FMCA and we cross paths with them at various times over the year. Pat wanted some good prime rib so we told her you can’t beat Cactus Jacks. We had a very nice dinner with just the four of us. It was nice to have a small group for a change so we could have real conversation. After dinner we headed home for the rest of the night.
Monday we did some major shopping in preparation for our departure for the Coachella Valley on Thursday. Once we leave the Desert we will be five weeks pretty much in the boonies, no where near a Costco, Sam’s Club or even a Walmart. There are a lot of good, valid reasons to dislike Walmart, but one cannot get around the fact that overall you can save about 25 percent on food and general household goods. When you are on a fixed income (how many years did I hate THAT phrase!) it makes a difference. There are times I get frustrated over their “our way or the highway” attitude with manufacturers and suppliers that results in sometimes limited choices. I understand what they can do to small local groceries and home goods stores, but we have to stretch our budget and Walmart is the best way to do it. Anyway, we needed to stock up on can goods and household products for our month-plus long foray into the Arizona wilderness. We filled the freezer and the cabinets and are now ready. OK, we aren’t really going to be in the wilderness, this time of year Quartzsite has a couple hundred thousand people, but we won’t be close to any big grocery stores. After shopping we chilled for the rest of the day.
Tuesday, January 18th we went to lunch at one of the Taqueria Guerrero restaurants in Indio. We are acquainted with the owner, Jose Guerrero, from Cactus Jack’s and he now has three locations in the valley. We always try to eat at one of them least once each time we visit the valley because the food is great. They are true taquerias catering to the Hispanic population, so the food is not fancy or sauced up. It is just good, authentic Mexican food. We enjoyed the lunch. After lunch we ran a couple of errands, then went back to the park to do some laundry. We wanted to get our laundry done since in a couple of days we are leaving Indio and will be dry camping in the desert for a week. We spent the rest of the day relaxing.
Wednesday, January 19th was an interesting day in that for some reason Jackie and I both became convinced at some point that we were leaving Indian Waters for Quartzsite on Thursday, tomorrow. When discussing our departure with friends I always said we were leaving on the 21st, our calender showed we were leaving on the 21st. Friday is the 21st, but for some reason we got it in our heads we were leaving Thursday, going by day of week rather than date, I guess. Anyway, Jackie left after lunch to go to one of the local casinos with Colleen for the afternoon. I began my process of packing things up outside the coach in preparation for what we thought was our departure. A couple hours of work and I had everything outside packed away. I then took a walk down to the office in the early afternoon to remind them to have someone read the electric meter so we could pay our electric bill either today or early Thursday morning. I am talking to the lady at the desk and she said, “we have a note to read the meter Thursday morning and the bill will be ready Thursday afternoon.” I then said, “but we are leaving tomorrow morning. I don’t want to wait until afternoon.” She pulled out the book and proceeded to tell me that we were scheduled to leave on the 21st, to which I replied “yes.” That was when she said that the 21st was Friday and I looked over her shoulder at the calender on the wall which clearly showed the 21st as Friday. Great Big DUH!
I then went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the afternoon because I now had an extra day. Sort of yea! I also called Peggy, who is already in Quartzsite with the folks that we are going to join when we leave here. I told her that despite what we had told her, we weren’t coming tomorrow (Thursday) but one day later. She just laughed and said no problem. Jackie came home from the casino late in the afternoon and also had a good laugh over our misconception of our schedule. We just stayed in the rest of the day.
Thursday, January 20th we relaxed most of the day. Around 5:00 p.m. we drove over to Cactus Jacks for a going away dinner with Barry and Colleen. We had a great dinner with our good friends, whom we will not see for a couple months. Friday morning we got up and packed up the coach for our 125 mile trip East from Indio to Quartzsite. We got out around 9:30 a.m., but as soon as we
crossed the Arizona border at Blythe we lost an hour as went into Mountain time. We still arrived in Quartzsite fairly early, about 2:00 p.m. and drove to our camping spot about three miles North of town on Highway 95. We are camped in a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) camping area called “Hi Jolly” after the U.S. Army camel driver from the 1800's. The area we will be in is a free area where camping is restricted to 14 days. There are a number of BLM sites, some like this one for transient campers, and others for long term camping. The long term area is still desert dry camping, but they provide trash containers and porta potties scattered around. It is still cheap, only $40 per month, but you have to pay to have your tanks dumped (actually pumped) and to buy more fresh water for your rig. We arrived to find five other rigs, including Peggy and Vernon, already parked in a big square with an opening just for us. We wiggled in, closed the square, and spent a couple hours getting set up for our six day stay.
Other than Peggy and Vernon we had met only one of the other couples, Sharon and Curt. We met them in Indio because they were at the rally there. The other couples were Barbara and Ernie, Dave and Karen, and Ray and Del. Ray is Curt’s brother and they are all friends from Northern California in the same area that Peggy and Vernon live, near Sacramento. They were all very nice people and welcomed
us to their annual Quartzsite outing. Curt and Sharon have a Monaco Knight like ours, a year newer but with the same floor plan. Dave has an older Class A motor home and the other two couples have fifth wheels. Inside of the big square formed by the parked rigs was a big fire ring with lots of wood and lots of space around for sitting and visiting.This group had a unique meal plan, unlike any we had come across in any of our many other group outings. Most groups have pot luck type meals, where everyone brings something, for group meals and then eats out sometimes. This group had one couple responsible for the entire meal for the whole group each evening. This way one only had to cook once every six days, which just happened to be the amount of time we were going to be there. Friday’s meal was tacos with all the fixings, including beans and rice. We built a nice big fire, had dinner and visited until it got too chilly to stay out, about 8:00 or so. There was an agreement among the campers that we would run generators only from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. except for emergencies. Since we had no power hook up we had to run the generator for about three hours in the morning and about four hours in the evening to keep the batteries charged up. We have done this several times in the past, so I know what to watch and how to handle the dry camping routine. It is not our favorite way to camp, but we do it for a few days every year, usually at rallies and in Quartzsite.
Saturday, January 22nd, we went out after lunch to do some geocaching. We took Dave and Karen in our car and Peggy and Vernon took Ray and Del with them. Dave and Karen have just started geocaching and have about a hundred finds.
Ray and Del were just curious and wanted to see what the sport was all about. We went out and did four nearby caches before heading back to the campsite. About 5:00 p.m. my brother Ken and his wife Susan arrived from Goodyear, Arizona, near Phoenix. We were expecting them, having talked about a few weeks prior. They wanted to just drive out and visit for a day. It’s only about a two hour drive from their house to Quartzsite. It wasn’t a big inconvenience for the group since they were going to sleep in our coach and there was no group meal scheduled for tonight. Most of the women were going into town for bingo, and the other men were going to a local auction house for the night action. Peggy and Vernon, who have met Ken and Susan in the past, stayed and the six of us did a nice BBQ with some beef and chicken carne asada. We had a great visit with Ken and Susan until we hit the sack for the night.The next morning, Sunday, we went out fairly early for more geocaching. This time Ken and Susan were with us and Dave and his wife were with Peggy and Vernon. The eight of us found about seven caches before lunch. Peggy and Vernon and Dave and his wife went off to so some chores and we, with Ken and Susan, went to a local restaurant for lunch. After lunch the four of us continued caching and ended up getting a total of 16 finds for the day, with one DNF.
The DNF was not our fault. We had found this cache last year and knew were it was, but it was gone. Someone had taken it, or “muggled it” in the parlance of geocaching. After caching we headed back to the coach where we sat around and talked until sundown, when Ken and Susan headed back to Phoenix. Dinner that night was at Curt and Sharon’s place and we had bacon wrapped filets along with all the fixings. It was windy and cold so we ate inside of their coach. It was a little tight, but we found eating space for everyone and had a great meal.Monday, January 24th we went out after lunch to do our first day of Quartzsite shopping. For those who don’t know what quartzsite is all about, it originally started as just a place for snowbirds with RVs to go for part or all of the winter. Quartzsite is a town of a few thousand full time residents that swells to a hundred thousand or more in the winter months, December through February. There are a lot of RV parks in town, but the majority of winter campers just stay out in the desert. Most of the desert around the town is fairly flat, hard surface terrain, ideal for dry camping RVers. Quartzsite also has several “shows” that go on during the winter. There is a gem and mineral show that goes on most of December and January because Quartzsite is considered the rock hound capital of the country. In mid January there is a nine day RV show that takes place. The actual RV show takes place in and around a big circus sized tent, but there are hundreds of other vendors that set up booths at various places around town. The bottom line is that there are hours of shopping to be had in the area. Today was our day to visit “the tent” as it is known. Because it is set up for the RV show, many of the vendors in the tent had also been in Indio at the FMCA rally. There were some other RV related sellers there too and we spent most of the afternoon walking around shopping. We only bought a couple of small items this time, although in past years we have spent quite a bit in the big tent. Because we have been on the road for over five years now, we have bought most of the big gadgets we need.
After shopping we went back to the campsite so Jackie could finish preparations for her dinner on Tuesday night. She had worked on her Halibut chowder in the morning and wanted to fix some sushi tonight. She likes to make both the chowder and the sushi the day before so it gets some flavor soaked in. Later we had evening cocktails and a campfire with lots of chatting about what everyone bought at the vendors. Barbara and Ernie had dinner that night and she made an excellent batch of cabbage rolls with mashed potatoes and corn. We had a great evening and stayed up with the fire again until about 8:00.
Tuesday, January 25th we went before lunch to shop at Tyson’s Wells, which is a large open air shopping area across the street from the big tent. There are several hundred booths in the place and it is essentially a big street fair.
We spent several hours wandering around and looking at stuff and had a little lunch from one of the vendors. Again, we didn’t buy much, but we had a good time looking. We went back to the campsite early afternoon so we could get set up for dinner. I had told everyone that we would set up the karaoke stuff on the night we did dinner, so I spent a couple hours getting everything ready and Jackie worked on dinner. We started karaoke about sundown and had dinner a little later. Dinner, the chowder and the sushi, was wonderful and everyone enjoyed it very much. We also had Doug and Linda Stout come over for dinner. Regular readers may recall Doug and Linda as the “tail gunners” from our Alaska trip back in 2009. We have stayed in contact with them since. They happened to be working the big tent on behalf of Fantasy RV Caravans, so we invited them to dinner. After dinner
we did more karaoke until about 8:30 at night. Most of the singing was done by me and Sharon. Sharon had been a singer with a band in the past and had a great voice. There was also a gal named Paula who was there as a guest of Curt and Sharon’s who sang a couple of songs. Del sang one song, but Sharon and I did the most. It was a great night and we even had a couple of visitors from other camps around us.Wednesday we went out after lunch with Peggy and Vernon for some last minute shopping at some of the areas that we hadn’t hit yet. Peggy and Vernon are having problems with the satellite dome on the top of their rig so they wanted to buy an inexpensive outside dish that they could use until they got the dome fixed. Vernon had borrowed one for this trip from Dave and it worked good, so he wanted one of his own. We managed to find a nearly new dish that he got for $12, a real bargain. He had to pay $30 for a tripod, but less than $50 for a complete setup is still a real good deal. We got back to the campsite and I spent a little bit of time putting things away since we will be leaving Quartzsite on Thursday. Dinner was early and Del made pulled pork sandwiches, beans and potato salad which was very good. Most of the rest of the folks left for bingo and the auction again, so we and Peggy and Vernon spent the evening visiting.
Thursday, January 27th we packed up the coach and pulled out of the desert, heading Northeast to Salome, Arizona. It was only about a 40 mile drive so I drove the coach and Jackie drove the car. Peggy and Vernon had pulled out of the campsite early to get some minor repairs done on their coach, but we got a call from them later that they still got to the RV park before us.
They told us there was a spot right near them and they were expecting us. We pulled in and got the spot right behind where Peggy and Vernon are parked, and only a couple down from where we were last year when we stayed in this park. This is one of our membership parks so it is very inexpensive for us to stay here. Peggy and Vernon will be traveling with us for our next three stops. We will all be here in Salome, at the Desert Vista RV Resort, for 13 days. We are kind of out in the middle of nowhere, but we are looking forward to some geocaching and also some days of just relaxing after a busy month and a half.With our arrival here in Salome we will close this episode. I will post again when we move on down the road. Until then, stay happy, live healthy and enjoy every moment of your life!
