Thursday, March 10th, we had to drive to Palm Desert because I had a doctor’s appointment. It was a follow-up on some blood work that I had done back in January. My appointment was at 1:00, so we decided to drive into Indio first and stop at Cactus Jack’s, our favorite Indio hangout, for lunch. We said hi to our friend Kevin, the daytime bartender, and had a nice lunch. Ironically, Kevin lives in Desert Hot Springs. We can probably see the lights of his house from where we are staying. After lunch we drove over to the doctor. My appointment only took about a half hour. The doctor gave me some medications for high cholesterol and a slightly elevated thyroid function. More pills. We then went over to Best Buy just to browse around. Jackie’s laptop, which we bought back in 2007, is starting to act up and I suspect may not have too much time left. We wanted to get a feel for what was available in laptops.
After our brief shopping trip we went over to the Motorcoach Country Club to visit with our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen. Barry has owned a transmission repair shop in Cathedral City for twenty years or so. He has been working on retirement and he has finally been able to sell his business. He is still working a few days a week and has told the owner he would do so for a year, but he is no longer the boss and doesn’t have the headaches that go with it. We are very happy for him. Now all they have to do is sell their property at the resort and they can retire fully and go on the road like us. We had some cocktails and spent a couple hours catching up on things. We last saw them when we left the valley back in January. At sunset we left and drove back to DHS where we relaxed the rest of the night.
Friday, March 11th, I needed a stay at home day to do some repairs to the coach. I did a couple of minor things, but the big deal was to repair some water leaks in the “wet bay” of the coach. The wet bay is where all the water utilities are hooked up and controlled. Fresh water connections and sewer connections. I have has a couple of small, but annoying leaks, in the bay for several months. I have put off fixing them because in order to get to the pipes and connections I have to take off the front panel of the bay, which is a major undertaking. I finally decided that the nice weather and the fact that we have no commitments scheduled for the weekend, gave me the opportunity to finally tackle this job. It took me about an hour and a half to get the panel off and another hour to diagnose the problems. Another hour spent going to the local hardware store and RV supply store for parts. Finally, I fixed all the issues, but decided to wait a day to put the panel back on just to make sure that the leaks were truly fixed. Jackie did some chores around the house while I worked and caught up on some of her television shows. We spent the rest of the evening watching TV and relaxing.
Saturday, March 12th was another stay at home day. In the morning I went out and checked the status of my work in the wet bay from yesterday. Still dry as a bone. Yea, problem fixed! I then spent an hour putting the panel back on and getting everything buttoned up the way it was supposed to be. A little later in the afternoon I decided to go to the pool area for a while. Desert Pools has one of the nicest pool and spa setups of any of the resorts we frequent. It is set up villa style, with a patio inside of an area enclosed on three sides by various rooms. The side of the patio to the North without rooms has a six foot block wall. This design shields the large pool from most of the wind that is endemic in Desert Hot Springs. The pool is kept at a nice warm temperature in the winter. They have three hot tubs filled with natural hot spring water. One is kept at 98, one at 100 and one at 104. The hot tubs are under an overhang and are completely sheltered from the wind, weather and sun. They also had a DJ playing light rock music. There were a lot of people enjoying the patio. I spent some time in the pool and in the hot tub. Very relaxing. We spent the rest of the day just relaxing around the coach, enjoying the day.
Sunday, March 13th, my son’s birthday! Happy Birthday Roy! We awoke to a beautiful late winter desert day, temperatures predicted for the low 80's, no clouds and no wind. We decided to go out after lunch and do some geocaching up in the Morongo Valley area. Morongo Valley is a small community North of the Eastern end of the Coachella Valley in the foothills of the Little San Bernardino Mountains. The community is located on Highway 62, which runs Northeast from I-10 up into the hills to the towns of Yucca Valley and Twenty-Nine Palms. The Morongo Valley is in San Bernardino County, just across the county line with Riverside County, and has about 2,000 people or so. It has an elevation of about 2,500 feet, so it is usually about five or ten degrees cooler than the lower desert, although it is still considered a “high desert” environment.
We have never cached in the area before, which is why we chose it for today’s adventure. We have cached so much in Desert Hot Springs that it is getting hard to find new caches. We ended up getting a total of 17 new finds for the afternoon. Unfortunately, we also had two DNF’s, which we hate, but, we are convinced that both of those caches had been “muggled.” Caching uses the term muggle, from the Harry Potter stories, to mean non-cachers. In Harry Potter muggles were non-wizards. After our caching we cruised back down the hill to the RV park and enjoyed the rest of the evening at home.
Monday, March 14th , is apparently Pi-day. My son posted this on Facebook and it took me a little bit to figure it out. The standard stated value of Pi for most calculations is 3.14. Ergo, March 14th is Pi day. Turns out, it’s also Albert Einstein’s birthday. We needed to do some shopping, so we decided to go down into Cathedral City and go to our favorite Mexican restaurant, La Casita, for lunch. When I worked at the Desert Princess in Cathedral City I used to go there at least once, sometimes twice a week for lunch. Greatest taco salad ever! Jackie called her old boss Carol and asked her to join us for lunch. Most of the time I worked at the Desert Princess, Jackie worked for the company that handled the Indian land leases for most of the condos at Desert Princess. Her office was also in Cathedral City and we car pooled most days. Carol did join us and we had a great lunch catching up.
After lunch we headed for Costco in Palm Desert for some things. We then headed back to Cathedral City to our friend Barry’s old shop to pick up a UPS package. Although Barry sold the business, he is still working there a few days a week, so we can still use it as a local mail drop. A couple months ago the turntable plate in our microwave oven broke. We had a terrible time locating one. There were several places online that sold them, but they all bought from one supplier and they were back ordered. Fortunately, last week Jackie called one of them and they said the plates had just come in, so we ordered one and had it delivered to Barry’s shop. Yea, no more paper plates in the microwave. We then went to Walmart in Palm Springs to finish our shopping and head back to Desert Hot Springs. Later on in the evening we went up to the clubhouse for some Texas Hold’Em. Jim and Lorraine, two of our Canadian friends, had just come into the park today and they were there. Our other friends Marc and Shannon, who were supposed to come to DHS, had to go to Casa Grande because of a friend’s death there, so they were not going to make it. Jackie had a good night and ended up ahead. I didn’t do so well and lost about seven dollars.
Tuesday, March 15th we left after lunch to do some geocaching. This time we stayed in the general area right around the RV park. We had noticed that one of the more active local cachers, whose handle is “WheelerDealers”, had hidden a bunch of new caches back in February. Because they were all fairly close together, and not too difficult to locate, we managed to get 17 finds in just
a few hours of caching. We did have one DNF also. We also noticed that several of the caches appeared to be in locations where we had previously found caches. Since caching rules require at least 500 feet separation between caches, we surmise that the old caches were archived, or removed, and the new caches placed to give local cachers something new to look for. The new caches were not in the exact same places, but very near, sometimes only a few feet away, from where the old cache was. Nonetheless, it gives us new things to look for and ups the numbers for us.We finally quit at 3:30 because it was getting hot. Just a few weeks ago we were complaining about cold, now it’s getting too hot. It was overcast and humid, which made it worse. We went home and relaxed. At happy hour our friends Jim and Lorraine came over for cocktails and we sat for a couple hours and chatted. They told us a lot about the rules surrounding Canadian visitors that we didn’t know. To him them talk its almost as if the U.S., or at least the Customs and Immigration folks, don’t want them to visit. As much money as our Canadian visitors spend down here each year I would think they would welcome them with open arms. They told us there are very complicated rules regarding how many days they can stay in the states, and if the border agents decide they have violated them they can just turn them back and can actually ban them from entering the U.S. for any period of time. After Jim and Lorraine left we had dinner and watched TV the rest of the night.
Wednesday, March 16th, we went for lunch to the Desert Hot Springs VFW post. A couple of years ago we learned that the VFW had a great taco lunch on Wednesdays during the snowbird season. We have not been there recently, and decided to go by and try it again. I had a burrito and a couple of tacos and Jackie had a nice taco salad, and the whole bill came to ten dollars. Not a bad deal and the food was decent too. It was a little too windy to go geocaching, so we just spent the afternoon at the coach. I went back to the pool complex and spent some time in the spa. After dinner we went up to the clubhouse at the park for karaoke. There was a volunteer couple with a modest karaoke setup putting on the show, but the equipment was OK and the sound was good. There were quite a few people there watching, but only a couple of singers besides me. I ended up doing a half dozen songs in a couple of hours and had a great time.
Thursday, March 17th, faith and begorra it’s St. Patty’s day! After lunch we went out to do some geocaching not too far from the RV park. We went West a few miles to what is generally called North Palm Springs, although there really isn’t any kind of organized community there. We were able to bag an even dozen caches in about two hours, despite the fact that it was windy. When we were last in Desert Hot Springs back in December we had tried to do some caching in this area one day and the wind was just howling. The sand was blowing so hard it hurt, so we turned around and went back home. Today the wind was fairly mild, and it wasn’t cold, so we stuck it out. About 5:00 we went to the Desert Hot Springs Elks Lodge for their St. Patrick’s Day party. We met with Dick and Ginger Conrad, who are members of that lodge, as well as a couple of other people that we know from the DHS Elks RV club. Although we are members of the Pahrump Elks Lodge now, we maintain membership in the RV clubs of both the Indio and DHS lodges. Before we sold the house we traveled quite a bit with both clubs and we still try to get out with them from time to time on an outing. We had a couple of drinks and then had dinner with Dick and Ginger. They had, of course, corned beef and cabbage, and it was pretty good. I was certainly satisfied when we left about 8:00 and headed back to the coach. Friday morning we woke to a very windy day. It was too cool and windy for caching so we decided to just hang around the coach and do chores. We did get our laundry done.
Saturday, March 19th we drove down to Palm Desert to meet Nancy, Jackie’s girlfriend, for lunch at Casey’s restaurant. The bartender at Casey’s on the weekend is a guy named Duffy who is about 80 years old and used to work at a bar in Marina Del Rey back in the 70's when Jackie was a cocktail waitress there. We had a nice lunch and spent a couple hours catching up with
Nancy. After lunch we drove over to Nancy’s daughter’s house to visit with Vicki and her son Shane. Jackie is Shane’s Godmother and she likes to keep up with him when she can. He has been battling juvenile diabetes for about eight years now, but seems to be doing fairly well health wise. We spent about an hour visiting Vicki and Shane and then left to do some shopping. About 3:00 we drove over to the Motorcoach Country Club to spend the rest of the day and evening with our friends Barry and Colleen. Before the sun went down the four of us took the electric pontoon boat out on the waterway and spent an hour or so enjoying the nice weather and just talking. Later the girls went into their coach and started playing cards while Barry and I sat outside and talked, and watched the TV coverage of the problems over in Libya. Colleen fixed a nice brisket dinner for us which was wonderful. After dinner it was more cards for Jackie and Colleen and more talking and TV for Barry and I. They ended up playing cards until about 11:00 or so and outlasted Barry and I both. Barry headed off to bed and I fell asleep on the couch. We ended up spending the night on their pull-out couch.
Sunday, March 20th, Barry’s birthday! Happy Birthday Barry! After everyone woke up and got to moving around we drove over to Cactus Jack’s in Indio for brunch. We had a good lunch and afterwards we drove back to Desert Hot Springs and our coach. We were kind of beat since we don’t sleep really well when in a strange bed, especially a smallish one, so we just stayed in the coach and relaxed the rest of the day and evening.
Monday, March 21st - the first full day of Spring! Yea, winter is over. Technically, the Vernal Equinox was yesterday at 4:21 p.m. in the Pacific time zone, but who can celebrate a first day of spring that starts late in the afternoon? The only thing that matters is that spring has sprung! It was a
bit windy and chilly so we didn’t do too much during the day. About 6:30 we went over to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’Em. Tonight was a tournament instead of the usual game. Normally you have a five dollar buy in, betting limited to no more than 12 chips, and you play for two hours. At the end of the playing time you cash in your chips and are either up or down from your buy in. You can also buy more chips during the game if you are having a bad night. Tonight, with the tournament, it is a ten dollar buy in, no betting limits, no re-buys, and we play until there are only three players left. The player with the most chips gets first place, next most second place, and least chips gets third place. We played until about a quarter to ten and I won the tournament! I got a $70 payout for first place! Yea! Jackie was one of the first to get knocked out of the game, but she stayed in the room and cheered me on as the game progressed and people got knocked out. Several years ago we were at Palm Creek in Casa Grande for a month. They used to have tournaments every Saturday that we played in. I never won there, in fact I only made it to the final table once. Tuesday, March 22nd we went out after lunch for some final geocaching in the Desert Hot Springs area. We managed to get a dozen more finds in a few hours. We then went back to the coach so I could get stuff put away in preparation for our departure from DHS tomorrow. We spent the rest of the evening in the coach.
Wednesday, March 23rd we got up and packed up the coach for travel. We left DHS about 10:30 a.m. and started West heading for the Silent Valley RV Resort. The trip was only about 38 miles, and the last ten miles are up a winding mountain road, so we didn’t hook the car up. Jackie just drove the Jeep up. Regular readers will remember that Silent Valley is a sort of time share type place where you buy a 1/6800 share of the property. We can stay in the resort for 30 days, then we have to leave for 10 days before we can come back. We can stay for a total of 120 days per year. Although there are annual dues for the membership, there is no charge when we go into the park. All the sites have water, sewer and 50 amp electric. Since the park is at 4,000 feet elevation, we expect it to
be a little chilly for the first few weeks. This is the park we were in back in 2006 when the forest fire went thought the area, trapping us in the park for two days with fire all around us. We got into the park and found a very nice site close to the village center where the bar, restaurant, office and rec center are. I spent the next couple of hours setting up. We will be here in Silent Valley for a little over three weeks. Our arrival here at Silent Valley will mark the end of this episode of our travels. I will publish again in a couple of weeks. Until then, love, laugh and live life large!
