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?
