Spring in Silent Valley

Hello loyal friends and followers, welcome back to our story. Our last chapter ended on April 30th with our arrival at the Silent Valley Club, in the mountains South of Banning, California. We arrived in Silent Valley after an enjoyable two week stay in Indio. After we got parked and settled we stayed in for the rest of the day. The temperatures are certainly a lot lower than we experienced last week in Indio, about 65 degrees and breezy, but the skies are clear. We have a nice site and are looking forward to a good month.

Sunday, May 1st, Happy May Day everyone. We stayed around the coach today so we could do our laundry. Silent Valley has a very nice, large laundry facility so we decided to wait until we got up here again to do our laundry. We did clothes, played cards and just enjoyed the day. Later on in the evening we heard the news that Osama Bin Laden had been found and killed. Great news, if a little long in coming. Not the end of the war on terror by any means, but a noteworthy accomplishment nonetheless. The Old Marine says well done Seals, Go Navy!

Monday we decided to skip the wind, which was blowing pretty good, and just stay in for the day. Got a couple of little chores done, but mostly just played and relaxed. Played cards with Jackie and got my butt kicked two games in a row. She was getting even for Sunday when I did the same to her.

Tuesday, May 3rd the weather promised to be nice so we left Silent Valley after lunch to do some caching in Banning. Because we have done so much caching in this area picking caches that we have not found is getting more difficult, but we still managed to get ten new finds for our stats. Two of the finds were caches that we had DNFed in the past, so that always makes us feel good. Unfortunately, we still had two other DNFs, one on a new cache and one on a cache that we couldn’t find last month and STILL couldn’t find. Poop!

After caching we went over to the Banning/Beaumont Elks Lodge for cocktails and their spaghetti dinner. Our friend Marianne Conner met us there, along with a group of people from her Highland Springs Country Club. We had a nice visit with Marianne and a nice dinner before heading back up the hill to Silent Valley.

Wednesday, May 4th was a wonderful day in Silent Valley. We decided that, since we are going to be up here for a month, that we would, for the most part, alternate relaxation days with “doing something” days. For that reason we stayed at Silent Valley for the day. The skies were clear and blue, the surroundings green, a little breeze and 80 degrees. We spent a little time sitting outside reading and getting some rays. Jackie used her hammock for the first time in ages and enjoyed that. Later in the afternoon I went to the pool and spent some time in both the pool and hot tub. All in all it was a very nice, relaxing day. I also got a couple of little chores done.

Buenos días estimados lectores, hoy es el Cinco De Mayo, así que usted sabe lo que eso significa. Más Tequila y la cerveza! Ole! That will be your Spanish lesson for the day. Our plan for the day had us leaving the Coach about noon after an early lunch headed for the movie theater in Banning. We wanted to see “Water for Elephants” and, according to what I read on the theater’s website, the first showing was at 12:30. However, when we got there we found that the place was closed and the first showing wasn’t until 3:30. Oh well, we planned to go shopping after the movie anyway, so we just went early. Stopped at a couple different places for computer supplies, a couple new lawn chairs and groceries at Wally World. After three hours of shopping we finally headed back up the hill to the coach. I prepared a nice Cinco De Mayo dinner of chili colorado, fajita burrito, and rice and beans. One must celebrate multi-cultural holidays properly.

Friday, May 6th was another day of leisure at Silent Valley. Again spent an hour or so at the pool and some time sitting outside enjoying the warm sun and reading. Didn’t go anywhere outside of the park, nor did we do much besides enjoy the day.

Saturday we got up early and left Silent Valley about 8:30 a.m. (which for those who know us well can attest IS early) and headed down the hill to Banning for a geocaching “meet and greet” event. Banning was holding its annual Art Hop street festival today and in conjunction with the street fair a group of local cachers set up an hour long event for cachers to just get together, get to know each other and chat. We met a number of the local cachers whose names we have seen on cache logs over the last couple of months. We had a wonderful time. One of the local cachers who organized the event goes by the name of Active Fire. He is a retired firefighter and a collector of fire trucks. He had one of his trucks, a 50's model Mack engine, at the event. It was pretty cool. They had coffee and donuts at the event and we traded a couple of travel bugs too.

After the event we spent another 90 minutes or so walking around the street fair. It wasn’t very big, but it was still interesting. We did buy a bunch of $1.00 paperback books. We then went to the local IHOP for lunch. After lunch we went out to do some caching. Normally when a group of cachers is putting on a caching event they put out a bunch of new caches in the area. Today was no exception, the local cachers put out about 50 new caches. I had downloaded a bunch of the new ones before we left in the morning, so we had all new caches to look for. We had a great time and managed to bag a total of fourteen new caches in a few hours of searching, and no new DNFs! After caching we headed back up the hill to the coach where we sat outside and enjoyed cocktails. About 7:00 we headed over to the restaurant at the park’s Village Center for dinner. The staff of Silent Valley Club had prepared a special Cinco De Mayo menu (albeit a couple days late) and we like Mexican food. The dinner was OK, nothing special, but we had a margarita with it, which always makes Mexican taste better. After dinner we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.

Sunday, May 8th we woke up to a foggy, overcast morning. The weather called for a good chance of rain so we decided to just stay in. The wind blew all day, but we never got any rain. Just watched TV and played games. We did watch “The King’s Speech” on DVD. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy the movie, but I found that I did. The acting was superb, the actors were well deserving of the accolades that were given. I did have a little problem understanding the English (with a capital E) they were speaking, but that is always a risk in period English films. I also thought that the editing of the movie could have been better. There were times I wasn’t sure what was going on, or when in time it was happening. All in all, a good film.

Monday morning we woke up to another cold, damp morning. It had rained overnight and the ground was wet, but it hadn’t rained very much. The weather said it was still going to be cold and windy, so we again just stayed in the coach all day.

Tuesday, May 10th the weather was nicer, cool but at least clear skies. We went back down the hill around lunch time and went to Applebee’s in Beaumont to have lunch with some friends of ours, Bill and Karen Swart. Bill and Karen have been full time RVers for about 25 years now and were a couple we met at our second FMCA rally in Charlotte, NC in August of 2006. He convinced us to join the 100%ers Chapter and then convinced me to be the Vice President of the Chapter. This is the Chapter that unfortunately folded for lack of members last summer. Bill has a form of polio that makes it necessary for him to use a walker to get around, but they still are full timers. They did tell us at lunch that they think they will go off the road next summer, although they will keep the motorhome and travel occasionally. We had a good lunch and caught up on what we have been doing. Although we email frequently, we haven’t actually seen them for over a year.

After lunch we did some shopping and captured one geocache near the stores in Beaumont that had been a DNF last month. We learned that the cache had been moved, so we went to the new location, a couple dozen feet from the original, and there it was. We love “fixing” DNFs. After shopping we headed up the hill for the rest of the evening.

Wednesday, May 11th the weather was perfect for caching, mild and clear with only a little wind. We went down the hill after lunch for an afternoon of caching in the Beaumont area. In about three hours or so we managed to add another dozen finds to our list, including another “fixed” DNF from a few weeks back. Unfortunately, we garnered a new DNF in our searching. There is one caching team here in the Pass area, as the Banning/Beaumont area is called, called Causey 7 with whom we have had more DNFs than with any other single caching team. Their caches are very clever, because we have found a few of them, but seem to be far harder than those of other clever cache makers that we are familiar with. Jackie says it keeps us humble. Bah, humblebug! I hate DNFs. We will keep coming back to those that we missed and eventually we will vanquish you Causey! After caching we headed back up the hill and stayed in the rest of the evening.

Thursday, May 12th another great day, predicted to be in the 80's down in Banning. We decided to go down the hill again after lunch and finish up the caching in the same general area as yesterday. In about three hours or so we had another dozen new finds. Unfortunately, we also gained two more DNFs, one them another Causey 7 cache that we just couldn’t find. We still considered it a great afternoon and we had a lot of fun. After caching we did a quick stop at the Wally World and then went back up the hill. When we pulled into our spot we noticed that the people next door, whom we had briefly met earlier in the week, had a number of people sitting on the patio, so we went over to say hi. We ended up sitting with the group for about an hour chatting and enjoying happy hour. The whole crowd was just folks staying at the park, many of whom are from Hemet, which is not too far down the road from Banning. Made for a nice afternoon cocktail hour.

Friday, May 13th - vewy scawy! We decided to just stay home today. Nothing related to the date, nope, not us. I spent a little time in the pool, although it started getting cloudy and breezy, so it got a little chilly towards the end. A little later in the afternoon Don, one of the guys we met yesterday at the neighbor’s coach, came over with an application for the Loyal Order of the Moose. Jackie and I have talked on and off over the last few years about maybe joining the Moose because they have nice lodges all over the country that might be fun to visit, and some of their lodges, like the Elks, have RV parking. It turned out yesterday when we were chatting that Don is the membership chair at the Downey Moose Lodge. He brought an application, I gave him a check for $70 and the filled in app and he said I would be a Moose in a few weeks. Unlike the Elks, the Moose have given up the ritual initiation rites and the like. Now you fill out an application, give them the dues, and you are in. Just gives us one more alternative on our travels. Don tells us that a lot of the Moose lodges in the Eastern part of the U.S. have RV parking, not so much in the West. This is just the opposite of the Elks, so it might work out well.

Later on in the evening we went over to the restaurant at the village here in Silent Valley for dinner. Had a very nice relaxing dinner and then went into the bar to see if there was going to be any karaoke. It appeared that they had all the equipment put away, so we decided to just go back to the coach for an after dinner drink.

Saturday, May 14th we went down the hill after lunch to the Banning/Beaumont Elks Lodge to check out the car show. We got there a little early, before the show was scheduled to start, so there were only a couple of cars there. We had a chance to talk to Marianne who was there working one of the raffle booths for the lodge. We had our mail sent to Marianne’s house the other day (Silent Valley will not accept mail or packages) and she had brought it to lodge for us. Since the car show was not in full gear yet we drove down the street to the Beaumont swap meet. It was pretty much the same cheap crap you see at swap meets everywhere, but we walked around for an hour or so before heading back over to the car show.

When we got back to the show their were probably a dozen cars there, including several that we had seen last week in Banning at the Art Hop festival. Two of my favorites were the 1934 Chrysler Airflow, which is an extremely rare car since they only made it for one year, and the 1947 Packard luxury sedan. Both cars were extremely well restored and were completely stock. Most of the rest of the cars in the show were modified street rods, mostly Fords. One guy that we talked to for a little bit had a 1940 Ford pickup that he had bought new in 1941. It has been completely restored and was very pretty. He was also a Former Marine and the truck had Marine stickers all over it.

After spending a little time looking at cars we went out for a couple hours of geocaching in the area. We only got five before it started approaching cocktail hour, but we had a good time. After caching we headed back up the hill for dinner and spent the rest of the evening in the coach.

Sunday, May 15th - Jackie’s birthday. Happy Birthday Baby! Jackie doesn’t get excited about birthday’s anymore, in fact, she would like to ignore them. We woke up to rain and cold, so we decided to just stay in for the day. Spent the day on the computer and watching movies. Monday was laundry day, we had gone a little over two weeks which is pretty close to our limit. We did laundry, played some cards and just hung out all day at the park. Tuesday was still another rainy day, actually the weather forecast for Banning said that there was a 100% chance of rain. We decided to just stay in one more day.

Wednesday, May 18th we woke up to fog and wet ground because it had rained on and off all night. However, the weather forecast called for clearing later in the day, so we decided we needed to get out of the house for the first time in several days. After lunch we drove down the hill and did some shopping in Beaumont. After shopping we went into Banning to go to the movies. We went to see Bridesmaids, which was advertised (or at least talked about) as the female version of The Hangover, which was a movie we found to be hysterical. Bridesmaids also starred two alum of Saturday Night Live, Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph. Kristen Wiig is one of our favorite SNL cast members since the original cast of the 70's, so we knew we couldn’t miss the movie. The movie was very funny. It was not as consistently funny as The Hangover, but then it was more of a formula romantic comedy, whereas Hangover was just slapstick humor. The funny parts were exceptionally funny. If you like romantic comedies with just a touch of slapstick, go see Bridesmaids. After the movie we headed back up the hill for dinner and TV.

Thursday, May 19th we drove down the hill early, around 11:00, and headed to Indio and Cactus Jacks for lunch with Nancy. We spent a couple of hours having a nice leisurely lunch and catching up with one of our best friends. Jackie likes to go to Jacks on Thursday because they have lamb. I had the beef ribs, which is one of my favorite Jacks items. After lunch we headed to Costco and did some bulk shopping before heading back up the hill for the evening. Cute pic of Smokey playing in the boxes from Costco. He has never seen a box he didn't want to explore. Friday was a day of rest and relaxation at the coach.

Saturday, May 21st we decided to do one last day of caching before the end of the world. After lunch we drove down the hill and headed for the city of Redlands, which is West of Beaumont but East of San Bernardino, on I-10, about 20 miles or so from Banning. We have never cached this area before, so we had lots of new caches to look for. We found a dozen new caches in about three hours, but got two DNFs as well. After caching we drove over to the Redlands Elks Lodge for a quick visit. We have never been to this lodge before, making it the first “new” lodge we have been to in quite some time. I think the last time we went to a lodge for the first time was in Tucson back in October. The Redlands lodge was a very nice building near downtown. We got there close to closing time, but the bartender/club manager was very nice and chatted with us about the lodge. She said they only had about 270 members but were working to build the membership back up. After a cocktail and picking up a lodge pin we stopped at KFC to pick up a quick dinner and then drove back up the hill to enjoy it in the coach. We had a good evening despite having to cancel our big “End of the World” party.

Sunday, May 22nd we left the coach after lunch and headed for the Pathfinder Ranch in Garner Valley. Garner Valley is a tiny community in the mountains South of the Coachella Valley and Pathfinder Ranch is a charitable kids camp nestled in the valley. The place is about an hour Southeast of Silent Valley and we had to drive through Idyllwild to get there. The Pathfinder Ranch is where our church holds it’s Pathfinder retreats, which I discussed in some detail in the previous chapter of our story. The group had held a retreat this weekend and we were going up for the closing ceremonies. Basically the closing consists of a mass starting at 1:00 followed by the participants in the weekend sharing any thoughts they may have regarding the weekend. This group was very small, only 18 candidates and eight team members. Back when I first got involved as part of the team around 2000, we had some weekends with nearly a hundred people. There were a couple of good friends from the old team on this weekend and it was nice to see them again. Around 3:00 the ceremonies ended and we drove back through Idyllwild to Silent Valley for the rest of the evening.

With that, I am going to close this chapter of our story. It has been about three weeks, so it’s time to get the story out on the wire, as they say. We will be here in Silent Valley for one more week before kicking off our 2011 summer travels. We leave here and head for Arizona, spending a week in the Phoenix area. I will publish again in a couple of weeks. Until then, don’t worry, be happy. After all, we dodged the End of the World, didn’t we?

Back to Indio for a Little Heat

Welcome back readers. Our last episode ended on Saturday, March 9th while we were in the Silent Valley RV Resort South of Banning. We had just finished nearly a week of cold, rainy weather that even included some evening snow. However, on Sunday we finally had a clear, if still a little cool day. We decided to just stay in for one more day to let it warm up a little. A watched the NASCAR race and then got some chores done around the house. Jackie also did a few little things, but we generally just relaxed for the day.

Monday, April 11th we headed down the hill after lunch to do some geocaching in Banning. It had warmed up to the high 60's and there was no wind, so it was comfortable. We found ten caches in a few hours, but also had three DNF’s, which is the most we have had in a while. One of them we are convinced is just gone, it was in some landscaping that had clearly been modified and we suspect the cache was hidden in a climbing plant that was no longer on the wall. The other two, no excuse, we just couldn’t find them. Among the caches we did find, however, were two that we had taken DNF’s on in the past. One last week, one last year. We like fixed DNF’s, even though there is no statistical category for them on the web site. After caching we went to Walmart and then went back up to Silent Valley for the night.

Tuesday, April 12th the weather appeared to be cooperating. Although the temperature at Silent Valley, which sits at nearly 4,000 feet, was in the mid 40's in the morning, the forecast for the lower elevations were promising. After an early lunch we drove down the mountain and started East on I-10 towards the Coachella Valley. We had our mail shipped from Pahrump last week to our friend Barry Cohen’s shop in Cathedral City and it had been delivered. Although Barry sold the business last month, he still works there three days a week and said it was OK for us to use it as a UPS drop. We are not allowed to get mail or package deliveries at Silent Valley. On the way to the shop we did some caching, and then continued caching after stopping to see Barry and get our mail. We ended up getting a dozen caches for the afternoon, along with another DNF. After caching we went to Costco and then back up to Silent Valley for the night.

Wednesday morning there was no rain, but it was again overcast, windy and cold, so we decided to just make it a stay at home day. Got a bunch of “administrative” stuff done, correspondence, bills, research on new tires for the Jeep, that kind of thing.

Thursday, April 14th we went down the hill after lunch for some caching. We cached right around in the Banning area again and got ten for the afternoon. These were further out in the boonies, and some were pretty hard. As a result, it took longer to find the ones we did. We also garnered four DNFs in the process. Yikes. Oh well, it keeps us humble, as Jackie says. The recent rains had also made some of the dirt roads we were traveling on a little rutted, as the photo shows. After caching we went back up the hill and spent the rest of the evening in the coach.

Friday was a stay at home and get ready to travel day. I spent a couple hours in the morning cleaning up the outside decorations in preparation for our morning departure from Silent Valley. In the afternoon we did our laundry. Today was April 15th, the day on which we celebrate our cat’s birthday. Smokey is 11 years old today, Happy Birthday Smokey! We gave him a new catnip mouse to play with. We don’t really know exactly when his birthday is, he was a feral cat I found at work. We know roughly how old he was when we found him, and calculating back it was close to the middle of April, so Tax Day seemed pretty easy to remember.

We also had the opportunity to make a final decision and then order a new laptop computer for Jackie. The Acer she has now is nearly four years old and is having some problems with the cooling fan. It makes a lot of noise and occasionally lets the computer overheat and then shutdown unexpectedly. Rather than wait until it crashes for keeps we decided to buy a new one. Costco had a great online sale and we were able to get a good Dell laptop with a big screen, lots of memory and hard drive space and a good process for about $600, so we ordered it. We will be in Indian Waters long enough for it to get there, so we won’t have to have it forwarded from Pahrump.

Saturday, April 16th we left Silent Valley about 9:30 a.m. and drove down the mountain and then East on I-10 back to Indio, California and the Indian Waters RV Resort. It was only a 55 mile drive, so Jackie just followed me in the car. Remember the cold weather we had on the hill? It was 99 in Indio today! Needless to say I didn’t spent too much time putting up stuff outside. We did get settled into a nice spot. We will be here for two weeks before heading back up to Silent Valley again. In all of the previous posts about Indian Waters I have referred to it as one of our Western Horizons membership parks. A couple months ago Western Horizons sold the park. It is no longer a WHR park, although for the near future they will be honoring WHR members like us at the same terms as before. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the future. If we can no longer come here as WHR members we will have to find another place to stay when we come back to the Coachella Valley in the winter. Bummer. After getting set up we just stayed in out of the heat for the rest of the day.

Sunday, April 17th we left the coach about noon and went over to the Motorcoach Country Club a couple miles away to spend the day with our dear friends Barry and Colleen Cohen. We made a quick stop at Costco so Jackie could get some lamb chops for her and Colleen. They both love lamb, neither Barry nor I do. Barry told me he had made some of his famous pasta sauce for us. We had a great day. The girls spent most of the day in the coach playing cards. Barry and I sat out on their patio and watched the Lakers lose a playoff game. We then watched a great old movie about Buddy Holly. The movie was made in 1978 and starred Gary Busie (pre-accident) as Buddy Holly. Learned a lot of things I didn’t know, like Buddy Holly and the Crickets picked their name because there was a cricket in their practice garage. They were the first white group to ever play the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and their first big hit record, “That’s Be The Day”, was released by Surf records by accident, before they ever had a contract with them, or had even talked to them. We had a great dinner, the girls loved their lamb and Barry’s sauce was excellent, and we finally left about 8:00. Barry seems to be adapting well to his new three day a week schedule which he started when he sold his transmission business. He agreed to stay on for a year for the new guy, but only three days a week.

Monday, April 18th - this year’s official Tax Day. We mailed ours a few weeks back, so just another day for us. Sometime in the middle of the night the winds came up, as they so often do in the Coachella Valley, and when we woke up there were 35 MPH winds with gusts even higher. The dust was real bad so we decided to just stay in for the day. Jackie did take a drive over to the Cohen’s to help Colleen set up her online access to Medicare. I just stayed in the coach, watched the recorded NASCAR race from Sunday, and relaxed. Later we had a pizza for dinner and listened to the wind blow. From time to time it actually rocked the coach, even on the jacks.

Tuesday the settled a little bit and, although the temperatures were still in the high 80's, it was dry and not too uncomfortable. We went out after lunch to do some caching in the Indio area. We found a total of ten new caches in a couple of hours, along with one DNF. Around 2:30 we went back to the coach and Jackie’s friend Nancy stopped over for a visit. While Nancy was there a guy from the medical supply company that supplied Jackie’s sleep apnea equipment came over to pick up the devices. Jackie was never able to adapt to sleeping with the machine and it was actually aggravating her daytime tiredness instead of helping it. Since the first of the year she hasn’t used the machine, so she finally decided to just have them pick it up rather than keep charging Medicare for something she wasn’t using, and wasn’t going to use. Not too much later an awning contractor came by to get information to order a new slide topper awning for our motorhome. Our coach has four slideouts and each is covered with a fabric awning, called a topper, which keeps debris off the top of the slide while it is out. The one on the front right slide has torn and come loose from the coach and needs to be replaced. It will be about $300, but he can order it and get it installed this week, before we leave Indio, which is good. After Nancy left we relaxed the rest of the day in the coach.

Wednesday, April 20th, was another nice day, although still a little warm at 88 for the predicted high. Nonetheless, we went out after lunch for some more local caching. We located a total of ten caches for the afternoon, with one more DNF. After caching we stopped at Walmart for some shopping and then headed home for the rest of the day.

Thursday we went out for lunch at Cactus Jack’s here in Indio. Jackie likes to go there on Thursdays because they have lamb shanks on special. Since they also have their famous beef ribs on special, it works for me too. We had a great lunch, said hi to our bud Kevin, the daytime bartender, and enjoyed the food. After lunch we drove over to the mall in Palm Desert to do some shopping and other errands. We have some pre-1964 coins, which are 90% silver, unlike newer coins that are only copper-nickle, which we thought we might sell. None of them are collector quality, the majority being early 1960's vintage. My research shows that the “melt value” of the coins, the value of the actual silver content, was over $300 on coins with a face value of about $10. However, the most any of the gold and silver buyers in the mall would give was less than $100, so we just decided to hang onto them for a while. I don’t see the price of silver doing anything but going up anyway. We did some shopping at the mall and then headed back to the coach for the rest of the day.

Friday, April 22nd I got up early and headed out to Sam’s Club to get new tires for the Jeep. We are down to the wear bars on the current tires, which were the original equipment, and don’t like to push the envelope when it comes to tires. Because the Jeep is fitted with the optional 18 inch wheels the tires were pretty pricy, about $200 each, but I got some nice Goodyears that I hope will last for four or five years. Later in the afternoon Jackie’s new computer was delivered to the park by UPS and I spent the rest of the day getting it all set up for her. It is a nice Dell with a big 17.5 inch screen. That should make it easier for her to play her hidden object games. It took me most of the day and evening to get all the programs installed and configured, but the computer is now up and running. I will try to fix her old one by replacing the cooling fan. If it works, I can use it for navigation purposes.

Saturday we went out after lunch to do some more geocaching. We were able to get a dozen new finds, with no DNF’s, in about three hours. Most of these caches were in the desert area Northeast of Indio. Several of them were in an old, abandoned citrus ranch. Pretty spooky area, not one I would want to do night caching in. One of the caches was named "El Crappola" and near the cache was an old toilet. Couldn't resist a little rest time. After caching we went home for the rest of the day.

Sunday, April 24th, Happy Easter. One of the reasons we decided to go full time RVing was to avoid the Easter bunny. I mean, what in the world is endearing about a mutant egg laying burglar rabbit? I have seen him in malls, he is HUGE! Once a year he goes around breaking into homes in the middle of the night laying brightly colored eggs in all the nooks and crannies of the house. Ever had one that went unfound - for two months - in the Arizona heat? I have, and it’s not a pretty memory. As far as I know the platypus is the only egg laying mammal, and he has no criminal record that I am aware of. Anyway, we evaded the giant rabbit once again, finding no evidence of entry and no colored eggs in the coach. Whew!

We left early to go to church. We joke about being “C&E Christians” in that we usually go to church on Christmas and Easter, and not too often otherwise. We do pray at every dinner, but we are not generally church goers. The church we go to here in Indio is the Pathfinder Church of the Risen Christ and both the church and our involvement make an interesting story. When I first moved to the Coachella Valley in September of 1998 to be with Jackie I knew that she was pretty involved with a church group. I didn’t know too much about it, and wasn’t really interested either, having never been a particularly religious person, at least as far as mainstream organized religion. At that time Jackie was going to church most every Sunday to a small Roman Catholic church in Palm Desert called Christ of the Desert. The church was one of the Newman Center churches, which were established near college campuses all over the country. I remember one just off the campus of Arizona State University when I went there. This one was just down the street from the College of the Desert, the only college in the valley at the time.

I went with Jackie one Sunday not too long after I moved there, not reluctantly, but not enthusiastically either. I found a small congregation of very interesting and friendly people, most of whom knew Jackie and welcomed me. I also met the parish priest, Father Ned Reidy. Father Ned was a classic Irish priest, born and raised in Chicago, educated and ordained at Notre Dame. He only lacked an Irish brogue. I took a liking to his easy, nonrestrictive take on religion and spirituality. I actually started enjoying going to church each week, both because of the people of the parish and Father Ned.

I also found out that the group that Jackie was involved with was something called the Pathfinder Movement and she told me she was part of the “team” that was the core of the group. Pathfinder put on weekend long spiritual retreats at a camp up in the mountains near Idyllwild, about fifty miles from Indio. The movement was created by Father Ned, with the help of Kathy McCarthy, a good friend of Jackie’s who also lived in the Indian Palms Country Club where we lived. Kathy was a nurse and a former Catholic nun who left the order and married a former Catholic priest. At that time they were doing three Pathfinder retreats per year. The retreats started on Friday night, about 7:00 p.m., to give everyone attending time to get up to the camp. It ran through Sunday afternoon. Jackie described the retreat as intensely spiritual, without being religious, especially with regard to an allegiance to any specific denomination. In other words, it wasn’t a Roman Catholic retreat. Jackie was a part of the team that organized and put on the retreats, as were many of the people in the parish that I had come to like. Jackie suggested that I attend the next retreat, and although I was a little apprehensive about what to expect I agreed to attend. I was somewhat shocked to find out how powerful a spiritual uplifting the weekend was. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but suffice to say it completely changed the way that I viewed religious spirituality.

I attended another retreat as a candidate and enjoyed the second one as well. After that second retreat I was invited by Father Ned to become a member of the team. I went to a couple more retreats as a team member and “family leader” which meant I was assigned to a small group of candidates to serve as a moderator and discussion leader. Then the guy who had been providing the music and other audio support for the retreats had to bow out because of a job change. Since they knew that I was into karaoke and music, and had good audio equipment, they asked me to take over the sound support function. The retreats use a lot of music and dance in the course of the weekend, so the job was intensive. We continued to attend retreats regularly up until we sold the house in 2005 with Jackie and I serving in the support functions.

During the time we were involved with Pathfinder, Father Ned was finding himself in trouble with the local Roman Catholic establishment and the Bishop of the Diocese. Ned was, and is, extremely liberal and was at odds with many of the Roman Catholic dictates. He always had a women, chosen from the congregation, in a robe behind the alter with him at mass, serving as an ad hoc “assistant priest” he called the “Lady at the Alter.” He welcomed, even sought out, divorced Catholics, gay and lesbian Catholics, married ex priests, and other “types” of people who are traditionally shunned by the Roman Catholic establishment. Over the first five years that I attended the Christ of the Desert Church, Father Ned became less and less popular with the Diocese and sometime around 2003 he was removed from the parish by the Bishop and told he was going to reassigned somewhere back East. He refused and left the Church and was later formally excommunicated from the Roman Catholic order by the local Bishop.

We continued to attend the same church, along with most of the same folks. The new priest, Father Jack, was another little Irishman, this time with a brogue. Meanwhile, Father Ned found a new calling with an organization called the “Ecumenical Catholic Church” which was, for lack of a better term, a renegade Catholic church group. The Bishop was an ex Roman Catholic priest who had left the church and married. They had several churches, most in Southern California, all led by ex, and sometimes excommunicated, Roman Catholics. The ECC used all of the Roman Catholic traditional rituals, including the way mass was celebrated, but rejected all the Roman Catholic exclusionary rules, including the one against women priests. Ned and Kathy teamed up and started a local parish of the ECC in the Coachella Valley with Ned as the parish priest. Being a priest had always been one of Kathy McCarthy’s dreams, even as a nun, and she saw this as her opportunity. She started her religious education and in 2004 she was ordained as a priest in the ECC. Ned and Kathy took their new church, the Pathfinder Church of the Risen Christ, through several different buildings around the valley until they were given some property in Bermuda Dunes for the church. They converted the large house there into a church, which is still being used by the church. It was Father Ned and Reverend Kathy who officiated at our wedding in 2004, although we had it at the Elks Lodge, not the church.

We attended this year’s Easter mass outdoors on the patio of the church. We saw probably a dozen old friends, most of whom had been on the Pathfinder team with us when we were active. We had a very nice mass, with Father Ned and Reverend Kathy officiating. The ECC has expanded to include several dozen parishes all over the country. Ned told us today that they are starting to expand into Europe as well. Whenever anyone asks us what denomination we are, we tell them we are Catholics, but not Roman Catholics. Sometimes we call ourselves renegade Catholics. Usually makes for an interesting discussion. After Church we stopped at Cactus Jacks for a nice lunch and then headed home for the rest of the day.

Monday, April 25th we finally had a day free from wind. We went out after lunch to do some geocaching in Palm Desert. Over the last week we have pretty much cleaned out the Indio area of caches, so we had to head West a little for some caches that we haven’t found yet. We found a dozen caches in about three hours, again with no DNF’s. One of the caches was our 2,400 milestone find! Yea! After caching we headed home for the rest of the evening.

Tuesday showed promise of a nice spring day in the desert, temperatures in the low 90's and just a little wind. Jackie had a doctor’s appointment early in the afternoon in Palm Desert so we drove there and then back home. Nothing major, just some followup things. A little later in the afternoon Jackie’s niece Vicki came over to the coach for a visit. She and Jackie talked for a couple hours and had a nice visit. Then, about 6:00 p.m. we drove back over to Palm Desert to Casey’s restaurant to meet some friends of ours from church for dinner. Joni Miller was a member of the Pathfinder Team that I talked about early in this chapter back when we were still on the team. She is still very involved with the church and actually lives on the church property. We talked to her and her partner Michele at church and made arrangements to meet for dinner so we could catch up. We had a very nice dinner and talked for about three hours, catching up on what was going on. Joni told us that she is working on becoming ordained as a priest in the ECC which is pretty exciting. After dinner we drove home for the rest of the night. This was the first time we were out driving after 9:00 p.m. in quite some time. I guess we have become old fogies.
Wednesday, April 27th was another nice day. Today we went out to lunch at the Elephant Bar in Palm Desert and met two more friends from church, this time the two priests, Ned and Kathy. We talked them briefly at church on Easter, but didn’t really have the time to catch up with them. We had a very nice lunch and talked about what we are doing, what they are doing and how the church and the Pathfinder movement are going. They are doing well with the church and nearly have the property paid off. Pathfinder has a whole new team, but Ned says it is doing well. There is a Pathfinder retreat next month and, since we will be fairly close in Silent Valley, we will probably go to the Sunday afternoon closing ceremony. After lunch we stopped at Walmart to do some shopping and then headed home for the rest of the day.

Thursday, April 28th we went out after lunch to get some groceries and then came back home and spent some time cleaning house. About 5:00 Barry and Colleen came over for dinner. Barry and I sat outside for a while talking while the girls played cards inside the coach. We had a BBQ with just hamburgers and some side fixings, then Barry and I went in the back of the coach and did karaoke for a couple hours while the ladies continued their card games. They left about 8:00 because Barry had to go to work in the morning. Since he sold the business he is only supposed to be working three days a week, but he said it got really busy at the shop so he decided to work an extra day this week.

Friday, April 29th we decided to go out after lunch to do some geocaching. Our original travel plans had us leaving Indio today to drive the coach over to Torrence, California, near Los Angeles, to spend a few days touring around looking at Jackie’s old childhood and young adulthood haunts. She was also going to get together with some old friends and some of her cousins and her brother while we there. Barry and Colleen were also going to drive up for a couple days because he and Jackie went to the same high school back in the late 50's, Dorsey High, although they didn’t know each other then, they did know a lot of the same people. However, the plans started to come apart when one by one the folks she wanted to meet with started cancelling for various reasons. We finally decided it probably wasn’t meant to be and just cancelled the trip to be rescheduled for later in the year when we come back to California after our summer travels.

We did some caching in the Indio area and managed to get ten finds in a couple of hours. We also went back to one DNF we had earlier in the week to try again, however, we still couldn’t find it. Damn! After caching we went home for a little while, then drove over to visit Barry and Colleen one last time before we left to go back to Silent Valley. We went up to the club at the resort where they live. Every Friday during season they have a drawing and give away $500 to one of the owners there at the Motorcoach Country Club. Barry has never won, but they keep trying. We had a couple drinks and chatted with some of Barry and Colleen’s friends from the resort. I also had a chance to talk to Kay Ladner, the HOA manager for the resort. I knew Kay from back before I retired when I was in the HOA and community management field here in the Coachella Valley. After the drawing, which Barry still didn’t win, we went back to their coach and had dinner. Colleen made a great soup and some chicken parm that was excellent. While we were relaxing after dinner some friends of the Cohen's stopped by and they had their dog with them, a minnie Australian Shepard just like Peggy and Vernon's dog Belle. We got a preview of what Belle might look like grown up. About 9:00 we left and headed back home for the rest of the night.

Saturday, April 30th we packed up the coach and left Indio, headed back the 56 miles to Silent Valley up in the mountains. The drive was uneventful, although the wind was terrible and I had to fight to keep the coach in the right lane. We got into Silent Valley before noon and found a pretty nice place. We are a little farther from the Village Center, where the restaurant, bar and office are, but only about a hundred yards or so. We still get good internet and have a nice view. I took a few hours to get set up and then we just relaxed for the rest of the day. We will be up here until the end of May, our full 30 days.

With our arrival back here at Silent Valley, where the weather is cool but still a lot warmer than it was two weeks ago, we will close this episode of the blog. We will publish again in a few weeks. Until we meet again, remember that you only get one shot at this life, so enjoy every minute to the fullest.