Thursday, February 10th we awoke to a little bit of a breeze and moderate temperatures. After lunch we drove into Blythe, California, just across the river, to do some shopping at Kmart and Albertsons. We were also scouting a laundromat because we have a bunch of laundry to do and don’t want to spend all day in the small laundry at the RV park. After we finished our shopping we went home where I finished “redecorating” the coach. When we cleaned out our storage unit in Indio back in December we kept a few pictures and art stuff the Jackie wanted to use in the coach. We had been making a few changes over the last few weeks and today I finished changing the pictures around so the place looks a little different.
Around cocktail hour we went out behind our coaches on the grass and watched the sun go down over the river. Doug and Linda joined us and the Bullocks and we sat outside for about an hour until it got too chilly.
The day was good, just slightly cool, but as soon as the sun goes down it gets cold. We went into Peggy and Vernon’s rig and Peggy cooked up a meal of pasta and salad for the six of us. It was great and we had a good time until about 8:30 when everyone wandered off to their own coaches for the rest of the night.Friday, February 11th we decided that it was time to do some laundry. We packed everything in the car and headed across the river into Blythe. Our first stop was Garcia’s Restaurant on Hobsonway and 2nd street. Peggy and Vernon had eaten there on Thursday and said the food was good. The restaurant is very small, but the food was excellent. I had a red chili burro and it was one of the best I have had. The service was also good and the prices reasonable. I would highly recommend the place. When we walked into the restaurant it was lunch time and the place was packed. I didn’t think we would get a seat until we noticed that our friends Linda and Doug were already there. They had just ordered, so we sat down and had lunch with them.
After lunch we went to a pretty decent coin laundry and spent a couple hours getting all of our clothes, towels and bed linens washed and dried. We then headed home and relaxed outside in the nice weather until sundown. At about 7:00 p.m. we went over to the recreation center here at the park for karaoke.
We had been here last year and gone to the Friday night karaoke and it was a lot of fun. The park bought the equipment and it is pretty good stuff. The rotation of singers was fairly short, although nearly all were very good singers. Because of the short rotation I got to do about seven or eight songs, so we had a very good time. We didn’t quit until the place closed up about 10:30 at which time we headed back to the coach and went to bed.Saturday, February 12th was another caching day with Peggy and Vernon. After lunch we drove over into California in search of some more First To Find (FTF) caches. When I checked the Blythe area I found two caches that had just been placed within the last week and neither showed any finds yet.
The first cache was about 23 miles from the park, South of Blythe, and was out in a flat desert area that appears to have been used as a dumping ground for the last 50 years. There were hundreds of acres that just glistened with broken glass and trash. You could tell that a lot of it was old, for instance there were numerous rusty beer cans with holes in the top made by an old fashioned church key opener. I mean, how long has it been since beer cans were steel or tin? The coordinates took us to a point in the dump and then it was up to us to figure out where the cache might be. It turned out to be very clever and we searched for about 20 minutes before I finally spotted it. There was an old refrigerator lying on the ground, on its back with the door open. It was full of bullet holes from people doing target practice. I finally spotted a bolt screwed into one of the holes in the bottom of the fridge. When I took it out of the hole I saw a tiny version of the geocaching symbol printed on the head. The bolt came apart and inside was the log! And - we WERE the first to find! Yea! The cache was called “Wasteland” and it certainly was.After that find we continued South, heading into the hilly desert at the North end of the Imperial Dunes area. We drove about eight miles on a desert Jeep trail to an area where rockhounds looked for a type of rock called Pastolite, a pastel colored granite. This was where the other FTF cache was supposed to be.
We found the cache, however, someone else had beat us to it earlier in the day, so we missed getting the FTF. On the way back we spotted one of the wild burros that inhabit the area. After that cache we did a bunch of caches in the Blythe area, ending up with a total of ten finds for the afternoon. After we got home the four of us went over to Doug and Linda’s coach for dinner. Linda had made a batch of spaghetti, along with both a meat and sausage red sauce, and a shrimp white sauce. Both were excellent. We had a great meal, chatted for a couple of hours and enjoyed the evening. After dinner we went back to our coach for the rest of the night.Sunday, February 13th was a day of leisure. Other than going outside around sunset for an hour or so of evening cocktails with the Bullocks, we didn’t go anywhere. Monday was Valentine’s Day and again we decided on a quiet day at home. Jackie and I exchanged cards and had a very pleasant day. Jackie was watching the Emmy awards on TV when Barbra Streisand came on singing her song “Evergreen,” which was one of our first romantic songs from back in the seventies when we first met. We had a very nice romantic dance in the kitchen of the motor home as Barbra sang. Later Jackie played a song called “Connected at the Heart” by a group called Ricochet, which was one of our later romantic songs. Once again we danced. We concluded the day with a nice steak dinner on the BBQ with just the two of us. All in all, it was a very quiet, romantic day.
Tuesday, February 15th, we went out with the Bullocks after lunch to do some geocaching in the Blythe area. The caches were pretty far apart, and some were difficult to get to, so we only ended up finding five caches, along with one DNF, for the afternoon. One of the caches took us to the California side of the river, right across from our RV park.
After our caching we went into downtown Blythe to try and visit the Elks Lodge there. By way of background, we have been trying to get into the Blythe Elks Lodge for the last five years. We have never been able to find it open, or even figure out conclusively when it is open. Our Elks travel book, which is a couple of years old, says it is open on Tuesday evenings before Lodge meetings, and on Friday evenings for meals. We figured that it would open about five or so on Tuesdays, but nope. Closed, even at 5:30 p.m. We will try one more time on Friday evening to see if we can get in for a visit. After our attempt at the Elks we headed back to the park for cocktails, dinner and relaxing the rest of the night.Wednesday, February 16th we woke up to cloudy skies and brisk winds. The weather forecast called for a chance of showers and wind all day, so we decided not to try and go out to do any caching. I spent a couple of hours doing our taxes and cleaning up the records for 2010. For the first time in a couple of years we don’t have to pay any additional Federal tax. Yea! Late in the afternoon we started making dinner for the group. We had picked up a couple packages of chicken at the store a few days ago and decided that this was the day we would do a BBQ for everyone. In addition to the Bullocks and the Stoudts, our friends Dave and Karen were coming over. We met Dave and Karen last month at Quartzsite during our campout with Peggy and Vernon’s friends. After Quartzsite Dave and Karen had gone to Yuma, Parker and Lake Havasu, and had just arrived here in Ehrenberg today. We had some snacks with cocktails and then I BBQed the chicken for dinner. Jackie also made a batch of wasabi cole slaw and some broccoli. All eight of us ate inside our coach because it was too cool outside. It was a tight fit, but we got it done. Dinner was great and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. For desert we had ice cream and some of the strawberries that we had gotten direct from the field in Santa Maria back in June of last year. We froze them fresh and they kept great. After everyone left we watched TV the rest of the night.
Thursday, February 17th we stayed around the coach for the day. I spent some time getting five new travel bugs ready for distribution the next time we go caching. Jackie spent a few hours with Peggy doing some sewing and clothing alterations. At 4:00 p.m. the four of us went down to the clubhouse to listen to Doug and Linda give their travelog talk for Fantasy RV Tours. You may recall we met Doug and Linda when they were the “tailgunners” for our Alaska tour in 2009. A few years back Fantasy was bought out from Western Horizons by the employees and Doug and Linda are now among the owners as well as employees of the company. The talk they gave this afternoon was about the 45 day Mexico Yucatan tour, which looked pretty interesting. Although I would not want to do it for a couple of years yet, that is one Mexico tour I might be convinced to embark on. We will see how things go in Mexico. After cocktail hour all of us gathered in Dave and Karen’s rig for dinner. She fixed pork steaks with sauerkraut, mashed potatoes and salad. The dinner was wonderful and we all hung around and chatted until about 8:30 when everyone headed off to their own coaches for the night.
Friday, February 18th we went out after lunch to do some geocaching. Peggy and Vernon took Dave and Karen, who are fairly new to caching, in their Jeep and Jackie and I went out in ours. We took a route South down the Arizona side of the Colorado river to do a series of caches that are hidden along that route. The levee road we were on was gravel, but it was fairly smooth. Ultimately, we ended going about 25 miles or so South of Ehrenberg, as far as the town of Cibola and the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, and ended up finding nine caches for the afternoon. One of the caches was Dave and Karen’s 200th milestone cache.
We also discovered that there is an old one lane bridge across the Colorado that is still in service just North of Cibola. This is also a place where the course of the Colorado River has changed and there is a small piece of ground, a few square miles perhaps, that is on the West side of the river, but is part of the State of Arizona. There is a county park over there, so there is a La Paz County park on the West side of the Colorado. There was a cache right by the old bridge and while we were looking for it we saw a La Paz County Ranger come across the bridge from the park. A nice piece of trivia to use in a bar game sometime.After caching we went back to the RV park for a quick dinner and then went over to the clubhouse at the park for karaoke.
While we were out caching two of the other couples we met at our outing in quartzsite arrived at the park. Curt and Sharon, and Ray and Del were parked just across the road from us. All of us ended up at the karaoke and Sharon, who you may recall is a former professional singer, sang a couple of songs. 
The rotation was a little longer tonight than it had been last week, but I still got in about six songs for the night. Sang and danced until about 10:30 when we headed home for bed. While we were in karaoke the rain we have been expecting came in and the ground was already a little wet.Saturday, February 19th started out as a very wet day. It rained the entire night, sometimes fairly heavy. Sometime in the early morning hours there was even a thunderstorm that rolled through. I had my window open just a little so I could hear the thunder, and the rolling echoes off of the mountains to the East. I only saw slight flashes of lightning, so the storm was not directly over us, but I enjoyed listening to the show for a while. It continued to rain hard until shortly after lunch when the skies started to clear. Because it was still pretty cool, and the ground was very wet, we didn’t try to go out and do anything today. In the early evening we went over to Peggy and Vernon’s coach for dinner, along with the rest of group. We had a total of ten people. She fixed a pork roast, stuffed with greens, along with rice and beans and it was wonderful. We stayed over visiting with them after dinner until about 10:30 when we went home and went to bed.
Sunday we stayed at home all day because I wanted to watch the Daytona 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race. This is the first race of the season for the Cup cars and is usually a pretty good race. Today’s was no exception. The race was won by a rookie driver named Trevor Bayne who had just turned 20 the day before. This was only his second Cup race start and he is the youngest driver ever to win at Daytona. Great race! My favorite, Mark Martin finished in the top ten and had a good day too. We had afternoon cocktails outdoors again now that the wet weather has passed. For dinner we got a couple of pizzas from a little lunch trailer that is parked inside of the RV park. For evening entertainment we went over to Doug and Linda’s coach, along with Peggy and Sharon, to play some cards. We played Hand and Foot, which I haven’t played for over 20 years. My ex and I used to play with my parents a couple times a month when I lived back in Phoenix. It took a couple rounds to remember the game, but Jackie and I came in second. Had a very enjoyable evening.
Monday, February 21st promised to be a nice day, so we decided to do a final day of caching in the Blythe area. When I downloaded the results of my query for the day’s caching I noticed that two days prior someone had put out seven new caches along Highway 95, just North of Blythe. As of the time the query ran no one had logged them yet, so there were seven potential First To Finds (FTF) out there! We also decided that we wanted to have lunch one more time at Garcia’s Mexican restaurant in Blythe, the great little restaurant we found the first week we were here. We went out as a crew, with Doug and Linda in our car, and Karen and Dave with Peggy and Vernon in their Jeep. We all met at Garcia’s, along with Curt and Sharon who just wanted to try the restaurant. After lunch, which was once again great, Curt and Sharon went off to do some errands, while the other four couples headed North to try and catch the FTF’s. When we reached the first one we were disappointed to find that two other caching teams had hit the cache at about 8:30 in the morning, thus earning the FTF. Oh well, at least we got the cache. All seven of the new caches were along about a six mile stretch of the highway and they were all very easy caches. After all four of our teams had found the seven new caches we split up. Peggy and Vernon took Karen and Dave to some caches in the area that were new to Karen and Dave, although Peggy and Vernon, and us, had already found them. This was to help Karen and Dave get their numbers up. Meanwhile, we, along with Doug and Linda, headed Northwest of Blythe along Midland road to some caches about 20 miles away that were new to us.
We had never been up in this area before and we found that the paved road out of Blythe ended in the foothills of the mountains about 20 miles or so Northwest of Blythe at what used to be the community of Midland. From 1925 to the late 1960's Midland was a U. S. Gypsum company town. It was started as a tent city with miners in the middle of the Mojave desert digging gypsum out of the Little Maria Mountains to meet the demands of movie studios. All the winter scenes during the golden age of Hollywood were filmed with “snowflakes” from Midland. The population was approximately one thousand and there were approximately three hundred and thirteen houses. The gypsum plant was leveled in the 1970’s and the houses were sold and moved to Blythe, California and Parker, Arizona. All that is left of the town are some cement foundations left from houses, tennis courts, and some of the mining buildings, and the tallest thing in the area is the elementary school smoke stack. The cache was placed by a woman who’s family lived in Midland most of the time the town was in existence. She was the one who provided most of this history.
After our caching, which netted us ten finds, we went back to the RV park for cocktails and dinner. Dinner tonight was served by Ray and Del in their 5th Wheel and was salad and scratch made lasagna.
The lasagna was wonderful. We also played about an hour of a game called “Catch Phrase”, which is kind of like the old “Password” TV show. Give hints to try to get your team guess the phrase you are trying to convey. We had some really good laughs, especially when Doug used the hint “oral sex” to try and get us to guess “Sodom and Gomorrah”. By the way, once he added “biblical cities” I got the answer! After dinner we headed home for the rest of the night.Tuesday, February 22nd we spent the afternoon getting ready to leave on Wednesday. We did our laundry at the park’s laundry and then I spent a couple hours packing up the outside decorations. We had our usual happy hour on the grass behind the coaches watching the river roll by.
We were surprised to find that Darrel Larson had come to the park yesterday. We had met Darrel last April when we were here in Ehrenberg. He was a couple coaches down from us and we had cocktails with him and several other couples almost every night. He is a single traveler who used to be a commercial fisherman in Alaska. When his last boat sank in a storm he decided to retire and travel in warmer climes. We knew he was in town because he is now caching and he picked up one of our travel bugs. We get notified when someone moves a bug we own, and on the log he mentioned that he met us last year here in Ehrenberg. We asked him to come to happy hour and he did. It seems that back in April we talked so much about geocaching that he got interested and became hooked. He already has over a thousand finds. We got another convert! Yea us.After happy hour we all went over to Curt and Sharon’s coach for dinner. They have a Knight like ours but a year newer. The twelve of us had a pot luck dinner that was very good. Around 9:00 or so we called it a night and headed back to our coach.
Wednesday, February 23rd was another travel day. We packed up the coach and left Ehrenberg about 10:00 a.m. on our way to the Yuma area. We are actually going to Pilot Knob, one of our membership parks, which is located about nine miles West of Yuma on the California side of the border,
in a town called Winterhaven. We have been to Pilot Knob many times in the past and we really like the Yuma, Arizona area. The trip was about 110 miles South on U.S. 95 and took us a couple of hours. We arrived at Pilot Knob around noon and managed to get two very nice North-facing spots side by side with the Bullocks, who moved down to Winterhaven with us. We will be here for two weeks.With our arrival here in the Yuma, Arizona area I will close this episode out and get it on line. Thanks for reading our story and until the next Chapter, stay happy, be safe, and enjoy every moment of life.
