Central California Adventures

Hi friends, welcome back to our story. Our last chapter closed on Tuesday, November 8th, when we left Pahrump, Nevada, headed for the California coast. Our first stop was in Barstow, California at the Desert Springs RV park. The park is actually in the little town of Dagget, just east of Barstow proper, and located just outside the front gate of the Marine Corps Logistics Base Annex. The Marine Corps western logistics (supply) command is located in Barstow and they have two facilities, the main Barstow base and the one near us, which is called the Yermo Annex. After we got settled into the RV park we just stayed in for the rest of the day.

Wednesday, November 9th, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching in the Barstow area. We have never cached here before and there are a lot of caches around the area. We were able to get 15 new finds, with no DNFs, within a few hours and never more than a few miles from the RV park. After caching we drove over to the outlet mall, but only went into a couple of the stores. We drove into downtown Barstow and toured around a little before heading over to the Elks Lodge. Unfortunately, when we got to the lodge we found it closed up, with a “for sale” sign in front. We called the phone number we had in the Elks travel book and found it was disconnected. It appears that the lodge may have gone under. Too bad. We then just headed back to the coach where we stayed the rest of the evening.

Thursday, November 10th, Happy 236th Birthday United States Marine Corps. Unfortunately, it is a travel day, so I will be unable to fly my Marine Corps Flag today. We left Barstow about 9:30 or so and started west towards Bakersfield, California, about 135 miles away. We were on Highway 58 which runs between Barstow and Bakersfield, crossing the Tehachepi Pass at nearly 4,000 feet. The road was pretty good and there wasn’t too much traffic. We arrived in Bakersfield just after noon and got settled into the Bakersfield Palms RV resort. Since we will be here for three days, we decided to just stay in and relax for the rest of today.

Friday, November 11th, Veterans Day. Thanks to all those who serve and those who have served in the past. Today is also the only day in this century which can be written as 11-11-11. The news has been saying that hundreds of couples around the country have selected today to get married so they will never forget their wedding date. We also noticed on the geocaching web site and newsletter that there are numerous geocaching events going on today in commemoration of the oddity of the date. One of them is being held right here in Bakersfield, only a few miles from where we are staying. The event is scheduled to start at 1:11 p.m. on 11-11-11. Since it’s Veterans Day, they are holding the event in a park, near a war memorial. It all comes together.

We left the coach after lunch and headed for the event, arriving just as the organizers were starting to put stuff out. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing pretty hard and it was sprinkling on and off, making an outside event in a park a little uncomfortable. At least it was fairly warm, in the low 70's. We introduced ourselves to some of the local cachers and had some nice conversations. The organizers gave us one of their unactivated travel coins, I guess as a reward for being the only out of towners at the event. They also passed out sheets with the location information for eleven new caches. They local caching group that planned the event had different cachers in the area put out the eleven new caches, each with eleven items in the cache to start. The event was only a “meet and greet” which took about a half hour. They took a picture of the group, which ended up being a couple dozen people, and the attendees disbanded and, I would guess, headed out to try and be the “first to find” on one or more of the new caches. FTF is a little side game of caching. Some people really get into the FTF, putting alert apps on their phones so they get a notification as soon as a new cache is published within X number of miles of their home. Our motorhome friends, John and Rita Ham, who have an RV lot in Yuma, are that way. John has hundreds of FTFs to his credit. We have about six, most of which we found by luck. Since we are not early risers, we don’t usually catch the FTFs.

We decided this day that we were going to make an effort to get an FTF, so I looked over the caches that we had picked up at the event. One of them was a puzzle cache and I was pretty sure I knew the solution to the puzzle. Puzzle caches are put out and published with false coordinates on the web site. To get the real coordinates you have to solve some type of puzzle. In this case the name of the cache was “11111111111111111" and the only hint was that the last three numbers in the longitude and latitude were abc and def, based on the title of the cache. Since geocaching is a digital sport, I deduced that the title was a binary number, seventeen digits long. I got out the calculator and quickly figured out the base ten value of the number. It was six digits long, just what I needed for the coordinates.

With that information we set out to locate the cache. We got to the coordinates and within seconds had found the cache under a bush. Yea! I got the answer right! We were, indeed, the first to find and got a nice 1921 silver dollar as the FTF prize. Most cachers put something in the cache when they place it as a prize for the first to find. When we put out our caches in Pahrump earlier this month I put a dollar bill in each cache for the FTF. After finding the cache we put the coordinates in for one of the other new caches, hoping that we might get another FTF. This one was a few miles away and we found the location pretty quickly. The information indicated that the cache, dedicated to the Apollo Eleven moon mission, was located up in a large tree alongside the road. We looked and looked, but couldn’t figure out where it might be. Just as we were about to give up, one of the other cachers who had been at the event arrived. He was a young kid, so he climbed the tree and found the cache way up out of reach. Once he got the cache down we told him that he earned the FTF, but when we opened the cache we found that there had already been three others there. Oh well, can’t win them all.

Since it was still rainy and windy, we decided that was enough caching, so we set out to do some shopping errands. First stop was the local Camping World store. Camping World is Nirvana for many RVers. There is not much in the way of RV supplies or goodies that you can’t get at camping world. What I originally wanted to get were some new mats for our outside steps, but I ended up with about $100 worth of stuff. Pretty hard to get out of Camping World without at least a hundred dollars of stuff. Fortunately, we only get to one a couple times a year. After camping world we hit Walmart and then Costco for groceries and goodies. Once we had all our supplies we headed home for the rest of the night.

Ironically, when Jackie sat down at the computer to log our cache finds into the web site, she found that neither of the caches we found had been published yet. Until they are published they don’t have an official cache number and can’t be logged. We will have to wait, probably until tomorrow, before we can log and get credit for our finds. We decided that since there were so many events scheduled for today that the people that reviewed and published new cache requests were probably way behind. We will eventually get credit for the finds.

Saturday, November 12th, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching. Although it is cool and overcast, there is little wind and it doesn’t look like rain. We cached for several hours around mostly east Bakersfield and finally quit at a dozen new finds. It was a bit of a rough afternoon though, we ended up with four new DNFs too. I think two of them were just gone, but two may have been there and we just couldn’t find them. Oh well, Jackie says it keeps us humble.

After caching we went to the Bakersfield Elks Lodge. This is an old lodge, Lodge 288, chartered back in the 1890's. They have a very large building, but it has a commercial restaurant in the front that is a lease from them, and a couple of large ballrooms that they rent out. Their actual clubroom is fairly small. There were half a dozen people in the bar and they were quite friendly. We have never visited Bakersfield before, so we got a lodge pin for our banner. We had a couple drinks and visited with folks for about an hour before heading home for dinner and TV.

Sunday, November 13th, was another travel day. We left Bakersfield and started southwest towards Oceano, California, on the coast. I took Route 166 across the coastal range of mountains between I-5 and the coast. The trucker’s atlas shows it as an authorized commercial truck route, one of two that comes out of the Central Coast to the Central Valley. I have been on the other one, the one that comes out of Paso Robles, many times, but I have never been on this one. This one has some fairly steep grades and curvy sections, but it wasn’t too bad. Just had to concentrate a little more. I always like to stay on roads are designated truck routes with the coach to avoid surprises, like low clearances or super tight turns.

One thing that occurred is just after we got started I was going from one freeway to another in Bakersfield on a tight cloverleaf interchange and the crock pot that Jackie had on the stove with our dinner cooking slid off onto the floor. I was driving and couldn’t see the mess, but I could hear Jackie behind me swearing for fifteen minutes while she cleaned up the mess. Fortunately, the roast we had in the pot didn’t come out and she was able to rescue most of the veggies, so we will still have dinner when we get to Oceano.

We pulled into the Pacific Dunes RV Ranch a little after 1:00 and got our spot. We have never been to this park before, didn’t even know it existed until we joined the membership program that has it on it’s list. We usually stay at Elks Lodges when we are in this area, but we can get this park for $23 a night and have 50 amp full hookups where the Elks have 30 amp and no sewer for $20. This way we can stay the whole ten days we are going to be here in one spot instead of having to move periodically to dump the tanks. The park is great, we are about a half mile from the ocean and have a great view of the dunes. We can’t see the ocean, but we are sure getting the breeze. After we got parked we set up and just stayed in the rest of the day.

Monday, November 14th, we awoke to a nice, cool Pacific beach day. After lunch we headed out to do some local caching. We had one cache that had come up on my query as new, so we headed for that one first with hopes of getting the FTF (first to find) for the cache. The cache was in Arroyo Grande, close to the RV park, near an old bridge across a creek that runs through town. Unfortunately, we were unable to find the cache. The information for the cache, as well as the hint, would lead one to believe that the cache was somewhere near or on the bridge, or the creek, but the coordinates on both of our GPS receivers were taking us in a different location. We looked for a while but finally gave up.

After our unsuccessful efforts at the FTF, we drove to nearby Grover Beach and picked up Jackie’s cousin, Pia. Jackie had talked to her this morning, to let her know we had arrived in town, and when she mentioned we were going caching Pia said she would like to go with us. She follows our Facebook entries as well as our blog, so she knows how much we like caching. She said it intrigued her and she wanted to see what it was all about. We picked her up and headed out for some caching. We ended up finding ten new caches in a couple of hours and Pia spotted at least four of them before we even did. She displays a natural talent for caching and we encouraged her to consider getting a GPS and getting into the hobby.

We then dropped Pia off at her house and drove to Pismo Beach to visit with Jackie’s aunt Donna. Donna and her late husband Barkey have lived in Pismo Beach since the early 70's and built one of the first houses on the hill overlooking the town and the beach. They subsequently built a number of houses in town and Donna was big in real estate in the area for many years. Barkey, who was Jackie’s uncle on her mother’s side, died a couple of years ago, but Donna still lives in one of the houses they built overlooking the beach. Donna, who is in her eighties, has her grandson Corey living with her, helping her with day to day living. We had a very nice visit with Donna and Corey, along with Corey’s girlfriend, and we set up a sort of “schedule” of things we would like to do with Donna and the rest of the family over the rest of the week we will be here.

Just after sunset we left Donna’s and drove back to our coach, stopping at the Oceano Elks Lodge on the way. Had we not joined the RV park membership that gave us access to the park we are staying in, we probably would have stayed at the Oceano Elks. They have a large RV park right next to lodge and we have stayed there many times in the past. As I said earlier, however, they charge $20 for a site with 30 amp and no sewer, while we are getting a full hookup 50 amp site for $23. Kind of a no brainer. We had one cocktail at the lodge, looked at their schedule to see what was going on, and then headed to our RV park. We are staying only a mile or so from the lodge.

Tuesday, November 15th, we decided that this would be a “chores” day. I had a fairly large to-do list and wanted to get some of it done. I changed all the water filters, repaired a sewer valve, put on new step covers, and did all my periodic maintenance checks on the coach. I was done by mid-afternoon and had a very productive day. Jackie got some of her “to-do’s” done today as well.

Wednesday we left the coach after lunch and drove into Grover Beach to do our laundry. After laundry we spent an hour or so walking around the Pismo Beach outlet mall. We then went back to the coach for an hour or so before heading to the Oceano Elks Lodge for spaghetti night. From past visits here we knew that the Oceano lodge has all you can eat spaghetti every Wednesday night, and it is yummy. In the past the place has always been packed, so we went about an hour early to have a cocktail and get a table for our group. Jackie’s aunt Donna and cousin Pia, and Donna’s grandson Corey and his girlfriend Wanda, are all coming to have dinner with us. As it turned out, really needn’t have come early because there were only a few dozen people for tonight’s dinner. In the past we have always been here in this area in the spring or early summer. We learned that the winter crowds are much smaller. Nonetheless, the food was still great and I ate way too much. We had a great time visiting with all of Jackie’s kin, and had a great dinner too. After dinner we drove back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Thursday, November 17th, we left the RV park right after lunch and drove about 15 miles north to San Luis Obispo. San Luis Obispo, or SLO as it is known locally, was first settled by the Spanish explorers who traveled up the coast from what is now Mexico. The mission, the fifth established on the California mission trail, was founded in 1772. The city was incorporated in 1856 and is the county seat of San Luis Obispo County. The city is home to California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly. We spent several hours doing some geocaching in the SLO area, getting seven new finds with one DNF. After caching we spent an hour or so walking around the downtown area window shopping.

Every Thursday night there is a farmers market/street fair held on the main street through downtown SLO. We have been to this event on past visits to the area and found it quite a lot of fun. They close the street down at 5:30 and the fair starts around 6:00 p.m. Just before six we went into Mother’s Tavern, one of the local restaurants, for dinner. I had fish and chips and Jackie had one of their burgers. We had a very enjoyable dinner and a couple of drinks before leaving the restaurant and spending another hour or so walking the street fair. We had a very enjoyable day and evening. After finishing the fair we stopped at a grocery for some supplies and then drove back to the RV park for the rest of the night.

Friday, November 18th, another beautiful coastal day. It was cool and breezy, and there were clouds on the horizon foretelling the possibility of rain, but it was still nice. Jackie spent a couple hours in the morning preparing her signature Halibut chowder for Saturday’s dinner with her aunt and the rest of the family. She always like to make the chowder the day before so it has time to set. After lunch we went out to do some local caching. We managed to get seven new finds, with one DNF, in the course of a few hours. In the process we discovered a very tiny park in Arroyo Grande where the old, early 1900's jail, was located. Aptly, the park was called Hoosegow Park. We also got a cache with a difficulty rating of 4, which is pretty high. They are rated 1 - 5 in both difficulty (finding) and terrain (location). The cache was very tiny and actually out in plain sight, just very well camouflaged. We have never seen a cache quite like this one before. It was made to look like the common wire and lead seals that you see on utility meters and boxes. Very clever.

After caching we went to Jackie’s cousin Pia’s house for a little while just to visit. I helped out with some computer stuff and showed her how to get some really neat games to download. After our visit there we went to the Pismo Beach Moose lodge for a cocktail. The Moose lodge in Pismo is located only a couple hundred yards from the beach, right in the downtown area. They have a real premium piece of real estate. The clubroom was small but nice. The bartender could have been a little friendlier, but some of the people at the bar talked to us. We had a couple of drinks and then headed for home, picking up a pizza for dinner while on the way.

Saturday, November 19th, we just stayed around the coach until about 3:30 when we packed up the Halibut chowder and sundry supplies and went over to Donna’s house. We had a wonderful visit with Jackie’s family and a great dinner of chowder. Pia put together a salad and between that and the rolls we had everything we needed. After dinner we spent about 90 minutes playing a game called “Catch Phrase” with the family. This is an electronic game that we bought a year or so ago after playing it with a group of friends at an RV park. The game brings up a random or word or phrase and then you have to give hints to the other players to get them to guess it. It is a cross between password and charades since you can give verbal as well as physical cues. Some of the words a phrases are very obscure and we had a good time. There are a lot of laughs from a game like this. About 8:30 we left Donna’s and went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Sunday was an interesting day in some respects. It had started raining in the middle of the night, sometime right around midnight. Off and on it was raining really hard and the wind was blowing pretty good too. About 4:30 or so I got up to use the bathroom and while I was up I went out into the living room to check for any obvious signs of leaks. Leaking water is the bane of every RVers existence, and we have had a few in the past. While we were in Pahrump we had some water leaking out of a ceiling light in one of the living room slides. I thought at that time that it might have been caused by the guy that washed the coach using his power washer and forcing water into an area that it would not normally go. Unfortunately, I found that the same fixture was again leaking water onto the coach. Not a lot of water, but enough to be a concern. It was clear that the slide had a leak somewhere. I took out the light fixture to avoid any electrical issues, and put a towel under the leak to soak up the water. I then went back to bed.

When I got up later, about 7:30, it was still raining and it was still leaking from the slide. I had to remove the second light fixture in the same slide because it too was leaking a little. When Jackie got up, and the rain had stopped for a while, we pulled the slide in. It can’t leak if it’s not out in the rain. I tried to examine the caulking on the seam along the top of the slide, the one I suspect has developed a hole, but I can’t get to it without dismantling the whole decorative fascia on the interior of the slide. I decided we would wait until we get to Fresno later in the week for that job. Fortunately, none of the other areas that have leaked in the past were wet, so my fixes on those areas are still holding.

The rain went on and off all day. We had originally planned to go to the big swap meet in nearby Nipomo, but with the wet ground, cold wind and continuing rain we decided to just stay in for the day. We spent the day playing games and catching up on TV shows.

Monday, November 21st, we had an early lunch and then went out to do some more caching in the local area. Today we were able to get an additional seven new finds, one of which was our 3,100 find, a new milestone. We also got a cache that we had tried to get last year when we here but couldn’t figure out a way to get into where the cache was. Today we stuck to it, found the right way in, and got the cache. After caching we stopped at the store for some supplies before heading back to the RV park.

One of the other places we stopped today was the Pismo State Beach Butterfly Grove. This grove, located just off the beach on Highway 1, is one of many Southern California Monarch Butterfly wintering sites. Every winter hundreds of thousands of Monarchs leave their winter homes in the north and migrate south to wintering sites in the southern U.S. and Mexico. The migration actually spans several generations of butterflies and the ones that leave the wintering site in the Spring will not be back. Nonetheless, every year they flock to the same places as their ancestors. Scientists are still trying to figure out how and why the Monarchs come back to the same places every year. In the past, when we have come to Pismo Beach in the Spring or Summer there were no butterflies. This is the first time we have been here in the Fall, when the butterflies are coming in. They hang in the trees in huge groups. Tourists flock to the site when the butterflies are in residence. This was the first time we have been able to see the phenomenon. Pretty cool.

About 4:30 we left again en route to Jocko’s Steak House in Nipomo, a small town about 10 miles south of the RV park. We have been to Jocko’s on a couple of other visits to this area and it remains my favorite, all time steak house. The steaks here are better than any I have had, anywhere. We met Jackie’s family there, including Pia, Donna, Corey and Wanda, along with Rod, a friend of Pia’s. I had a ribeye and Jackie had lamb chops. They cook all their meat on an open BBQ fueled with only oak wood and the flavors are to die for. The meat is all prime and is super tender. The guys that work the grill also really know how to cook the meat. Jackie likes her meat charred rare, and she is more often than not disappointed. Never here. I like mine blue, which is basically raw with just a little browning on the outside. Along with your meat you get salad, potato, beans, dessert and coffee if you want it. Jackie’s complete dinner, which was so big she took half of it home, was $20, my 20 oz. Ribeye was $27 and I took half of it home too.

Jocko’s is on Thompson Street in Nipomo, California, just a little bit north of Santa Maria off highway 101. There is no finer steak place and I highly recommend it to anyone who is in the area looking for a good meal. After dinner we drove over to Donna’s house where we visited with the family until about 9:30 when we finally went back to the coach for the night.

Tuesday, November 22nd dawned a cool but clear day. I spent a little time in the morning cleaning up stuff outside the coach in preparation for a travel day on Wednesday. Mid afternoon Jackie’s Aunt Donna and Cousin Pia came over to the coach for a visit. They had some family issues to talk about, so I just stayed in the back on my computer while they visited in the front. Later in the evening we all had dinner in the coach. Jackie fixed chicken enchiladas and all the other Mexican side dishes. It was great. After dinner we visited some more with Jackie’s family until about 8:00 when they left to go home.

Wednesday, November 23rd, our stay in Oceano has come to an end. We packed up the coach and left about 10:00 to head northeast about 160 miles to Fresno, California. Jackie has a niece that lives there with her husband and kids. The drive was uneventful, although there was quite a bit of traffic on the road because it is the day before Thanksgiving. We arrived at the Fresno Elks Lodge about 2:00 and got set up in their RV lot. We have a very nice grass site overlooking a small lake. Pretty nice view. The sites have 30 amp and water, no sewer, but we are only going to be here for five nights, so we can handle the lack of sewer.

It has been a couple of weeks since I published a chapter, so this seems like a good spot to break it off and get it on line. The next chapter will be another couple weeks. Until the next time, stay happy and smile. A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you're at home. See ya!

At Home in Pahrump

Welcome back readers. Our last episode concluded on Tuesday, October 25th, with our arrival at the Charleston Peak RV Resort in Pahrump, Nevada. Regular readers will know that Pahrump is technically our “home,” since we maintain our mailing address at a UPS private mailbox store here in town. Having a physical mailing address here makes us Nevada residents, which means no state income tax. Yea!

We arrived here about 1:30 or so and got checked into the resort. This resort used to be a part of the Western Horizons Resorts membership RV group (WHR), however, earlier this year we learned that the company lost the park through foreclosure. This was confirmed when we checked in and were given a notice that the park was now owned by City Bank. We learned that if this was your home park, the park where you originally bought your WHR membership, that they had bought the contracts and would continue to honor them. However, if it was not your home park, and ours in Arizona, WHR members would be allowed to use the park only through the end of 2012. This was disappointing in that Charleston Peak was our favorite WHR resort. Now we will have to make other arrangements when we come to Pahrump.

We were only able to get a site with 30 amp power, but that shouldn’t be a problem because it is late enough in the year that we won’t have to be running two A/Cs. Normally we are here earlier in the year and it is not as crowded. There were only a handful of empty spots and all the 50 amp were taken. We got settled in, I put up the outside gear, and then we just stayed around the coach for the rest of the evening relaxing.

Wednesday, October 26th, we left the coach after lunch and drove down to the UPS store to pick up our mail in person. The manager, Machelle, was happy and surprised to see us. We talk to her all the time through the year when we call to have mail sent, but we only see her when we are staying in Pahrump. After getting our mail we headed to the laundromat. We haven’t done laundry in over two weeks because we have been busy, so we had a lot of stuff to do. Once we got our laundry done we went back to the coach.

I spent some time locating a supplier for a control panel for our inverter. As we were getting ready to leave Needles on Tuesday we noticed that the control panel inside the coach for the inverter system was going crazy, flashing and giving weird messages. A little trouble shooting indicated that the inverter itself was working fine, just the control panel was bad. The list price on the part was about $250, but I found an online supplier that had the part I needed for $142 and could get it to me in a couple days. Yea!

About 6:00 we went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em. We really like playing poker at some of the RV parks we frequent. This particular park has a lot of regulars and we knew a number of the people who were in the clubhouse for the game. Since the park is nearly full, there were a lot of players and we filled three tables. The buy in for the game is $5 and they play until 8:00, about two hours. Between Jackie and I we lost 80 cents for the evening. We probably won’t starve with those levels of gambling losses.

Thursday, October 27th, we decided to go out after lunch and do some geocaching. We have done a lot of geocaching in this area, since we are here every year, so finding caches we haven’t done is getting more difficult. Nonetheless, we did find some and went out for an afternoon of mostly desert caching. Because the caches were widely separated, and most were out in the desert, requiring driving on gravel roads and trails, and even walking a few hundred yards, it took a while to get from cache to cache. We managed to find ten caches in about three and a half hours and decided that was enough. After caching we went to Walmart for some groceries and then home for the rest of the night.

Friday, October 28th, I left the coach about 8:30 to meet an instructor for my annual qualification shoot for my concealed weapons permit. As a retired peace officer, I qualify for a Federal permit that basically trumps most state laws regarding carrying a concealed weapon and weapons possession. This is handy for full time RVers since we occasionally go to states like Massachusetts and New York where they frown upon ordinary people having guns. Criminals have guns, just not regular people. Anyway, one of the requirements of the Federal law is that the retired officer has to qualify with the weapon at least once per year. I have a guy here who takes me to the desert, lets me shoot for qualification and then signs off my paperwork for $30. I met him at 9:00 and was signed off and done by 9:15. I went by the Sheriff’s Office in Pahrump to drop off the paperwork and get my new permit issued, but they were closed. Seems that they are celebrating “Nevada Day” and the offices are closed. Nevada day is actually October 31st, which is Monday, but they decided to celebrate on Friday instead. Go figure. By the way, Nevada was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864.

After I got back to the coach and had lunch, we went out to something related to geocaching, but not finding caches, HIDING caches! Obviously, in order for people to find caches, other players have to hide them. Since geocaching is primarily a participant driven sport, there are some rules for hiding caches, among them that they expect people to limit their hides to a reasonable distance from their residence. This is because the cache owner is responsible for maintaining the cache, keeping new logs in it, making sure it’s dry, that sort of thing. We finally decided that we wanted some caches out there with our name on them, so we made up three caches and took them out and hid them. We can do that here in Pahrump, because that is our “home” address on the caching website.

We did one cache in a tree just outside the RV park and Winery where we are staying. We did one desert cache, a coffee can under some yucca plants just north of the RV park, and one light post cache (LPC) which is a simple cache hidden under the metal box that sits on most parking lot light posts. We named the LPC Smokey’s Cache in honor of our cat. After we hid the caches we came back to the coach and submitted new caches to the website. You have to hide the cache first because you need the GPS coordinates to submit the cache. Once the caches are submitted they are sent to volunteer reviewers who just check to see that you got all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted properly.

While we were out doing the caches we picked up our mail and my control panel for the inverter had been delivered. When we got home I plugged it in and it worked great. It is even the same size as the one I replaced, so I didn’t have to do any modifications. I programmed the new remote and now everything is fine again. Yea!

About 5:30 we went down to the Pahrump Elks Lodge for cocktails and dinner. We had a drink and sat at the bar playing nickle slots for a while and then went into dinner. Tonight was a costume party, although we only wore our Halloween shirts that we had bought for the Farmington rally. Dinner was supposed to be just finger foods, but it was actually quite good. They had chicken strips, fries, meatballs, sausage and sauce and several other tasty dishes. The party only had probably 30 people, and only a dozen or so were actually in costume. We sat with a couple that was originally from Wisconsin, which gave us something in common. The guy was also a former Marine and they had a son who was still in the Marine Corps, which gave us plenty to talk about. We had dinner, a couple of drinks, and stayed until they judged the costume contest, at which time the party pretty much broke up. We were home in the coach by 7:30 and just relaxed the rest of the evening.

Saturday, October 29th, we decided to take a drive to Shoshone, California, to see what was going on with their annual Old West Days celebration, which was being held this weekend. We actually had two choices, Beatty Days, in Beatty, Nevada, or Shoshone’s festival. Beatty is about 65 miles north of Pahrump and has a pretty neat annual festival. We were there back in 2007 and had a good time. One of the highlights of their Beatty Days celebration are the bed races. Kids push hospital beds down the street in a race. They have to change the sheets twice during the race. Pretty funny to watch. This morning I looked up the schedule for this year and found that the bed races were scheduled for 12:30 today and we could not get there in time. We decided to try the Shoshone Days instead. Shoshone is only 27 miles from Pahrump, across the border into California. Shoshone is the southern gateway to Death Valley and is a very small town, almost a village. We past a half dozen old cars coming out of Shoshone on the way there, so we figured we missed whatever car show they might have had. We did find a sort of craft fair going on with a couple dozen booths, so we spent an hour or so wandering around the fair. We also visited the Shoshone museum, which was actually very interesting.

After the fair we did some geocaching. A couple of the first caches we looked for were right outside of town in an area that goes by the name Dublin Gulch. It is a canyon that goes west from town and along the rock walls on the sides the old pioneers in the 1800's cut a bunch of caves into the rock, put wooden doors on the front, wooden floors down, and lived in them. Several of them even had stove pipes coming out of the roof. The rock was some kind of very soft sedimentary material which would have been fairly easy to cut into. One section of the wall looked like an old motel. One of the more interesting things I have seen, and certainly not something I have seen before. We had three caches in the canyon and we found all three thanks to our Geo-Jeep’s ability to handle rough desert trails. We also did a cache that was located next to the old roadbed from the railroad that used to go through the area. The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, ran through remote reaches of the Mojave Desert from the Santa Fe Railway railhead at Ludlow, California, through Death Valley and Amargosa Valley, terminating at the Mining towns of Tonopah and Goldfield in the Great Basin Desert of Nevada. The railroad was listed as a common carrier, however it was built by Francis Smith the "Borax King" and his Pacific Coast Borax Company primarily to transport borax to processing and market.

Grading began on the T&T line in 1905 and completed in 1907, with the T&T tracks ending at Gold Center, Nevada. The line also shared tracks with other local railroads to service other mining towns in the area, including Beatty and Rhyolite. Once the mining boom ended, the railroad struggled to survive, as borax shipping came to comprise the majority of its business. After the borax mining and operations were moved from the Death Valley region to the Boron, California mine and facilities in 1927, the line relied upon whatever traffic could be found. Over most of its existence, U.S. Borax (USB) had made up the losses from the railroad's operations. By 1940 the entire line was out of service and in 1942 scrapping of the line began at Beatty and terminated a year later at Ludlow. All that remains of the line are the eroding rail beds cutting across the desert.

We only cached for an hour or so and ended up with five new finds and one DNF. After we got back to Pahrump we went to the Pahrump Moose Lodge for a cocktail. We have never been to this Moose, since I only joined the Moose last fall. They have a pretty nice lodge building not too far from the center of town and the place had quite a few people at the bar. They have a handful of slot machines, which, of course, we were obligated to try. We both lost our $5 and called it good enough. We had a couple of drinks and talked to a number of people. They were very friendly at the bar. They are big on karaoke and have it several nights a week, so we are planning on coming back later in the week. After visiting the Moose we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Sunday, October 30th, we just decided to have a stay at home day. We both got a few chores done and simply relaxed for the entire day. Monday I got up early and went to the medical lab for my quarterly blood test. Rather appropriate to have blood taken on Halloween After lunch we went out to do some chores around town. I took my concealed weapons paperwork to the sheriff’s office and got my new permit, we picked up mail, and I went in and got a haircut. The last time I got it cut was when I had my long braid cut off in Yuma back in February. I like the pony tail, but I don’t want the long braid again, so I plan on getting it cut at least once a year from now on. She took off about four inches and still left me with a nice pony tail.

After we completed our errands we stopped at two of the three big casinos in Pahrump where we have player cards. We stopped at the Pahrump Nugget first and played for about an hour before deciding we had lost enough. We both lost about twenty bucks. We then went across the street to Terrible’s and lost another ten, though again, we played for an hour before giving up on winning. After our gambling foray, we went home for a little while before going down to the clubhouse at the RV park for Texas Hold’em. I won big tonight, winning about three dollars over two hours in the game. For a five dollar buy in, that’s not too bad. However, I also won the $10 prize for the highest winning hand of the night. About three or four hands in I got a straight flush, second highest hand in poker. I had a little scare right at the very end of the evening when there was a possibility on the board of someone having a straight flush one card higher than mine, but it didn’t pan out. Jackie lost part of her stake, but we still ended up about seven bucks up for the night. Yea!

Tuesday, November 1st, I got up early and took the car into the local Jeep dealership to have the oil changed. Unfortunately, I got turned away because I hadn’t made an appointment and they didn’t have time to do it today. I made an appointment for Wednesday and went back home. We were going to go out and do some geocaching today, but the wind came up and was blowing about 20 mph, with gusts in the 30's, which makes desert caching too uncomfortable. You end up getting sandblasted. We spent the rest of the day in the coach, listening to the wind and playing on our computers. At 7:00 an insurance agent drove up from Vegas to talk to us about medicare supplement and drug policies for me since I start Medicare in February. I ended up signing up with United Healthcare through AARP since it was the least expensive policy that covered all deductibles and copays that Medicare doesn’t. I went with the Humana Walmart prescription plan. I calculate that come February I will be saving over $400 per month on health insurance. Yippee! After the insurance lady left we watched TV until bedtime.

Wednesday, November 3rd, Jackie got up early this time and went in for her blood tests. About 12:30 we took the car over to the local Jeep dealership and dropped it off for it’s oil change. We then walked across the street to Romero’s, our favorite Mexican restaurant here in Pahrump. We had a nice lunch and went back to the dealership, but the car wasn’t quite done. About 1:30 the car was finished and we went out to do some geocaching. We end up having to drive about 25 miles out of town to cache, but we still had some fun. We managed to get nine new finds, including one that was just across the border between California and Nevada on a little highway out of Death Valley. As is usual with Nevada, there was a small hotel and casino right on the border and, for whatever reason, there was a giant cow statue in front of the hotel. We even took a picture.

After caching we scurried back to Pahrump just in time to go down to the clubhouse for cards. For the third time I came out ahead, this time I won about $4.00. Not enough to keep food on the table, but still better than losing. After cards we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Thursday, November 4th, we went out after lunch to some more geocaching in the Pahrump area. As I mentioned earlier, we are having to go further and further out of town to find caches that are new to us. Today we cached to the north of town, out in the desert. Although we were not truly “four-wheeling” we were certainly on roads that you wouldn’t take your dad’s Buick on. We ended up getting only four caches in about three hours, mostly because of travel time. It took nearly an hour to get from one cache to another over the rugged gravel roads. We also got out into a dusty desert area where we had trouble finding our way out. We were within fifty feet of the main, paved road, but couldn’t get there because there was a six foot deep wash between our dirt road and the main highway. Finally found the right dirt road that led us out of the area. The car was so coated in dust and dirt that I had to take it to a quicky wash to get most of the crap off.

After dinner we went over to Moose lodge to check out their karaoke. There were a lot of people there, mostly singing country music. One or two of them were pretty good. It appeared to be a crowd that comes every Thursday and the rotation was very long. It took almost an hour for my name to come up. I sang the one song and then we left. I really didn’t want to sit there through another hour of rotation just for another song. We went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Friday, November 4th dawned as a cloudy, cool morning with a promise of some rain. This was a little disappointing in that the guy that was washing and waxing our rig was only half done. We usually get it waxed once a year when we are here in Pahrump by a guy named Scott. He does a lot of rigs here at Charleston Peak and plays in the Texas Hold’em games. He charges six dollars a foot, which is about average, to do a wash and complete hand wax. In the middle of the afternoon I took all of our karaoke stuff down to the clubhouse so I could get set up. We volunteered to do karaoke tonight after the happy hour. We have done it here numerous times on our various visits, sometimes it is a busy, fun night, other times it sort of flops. Scott also got the coach finished while I was setting up and it looks great. We have a very pretty coach when it is all shiny and clean.

I got everything set up and working just before the happy hour started at 4:00. It is a pot luck, but most of the stuff that was there was snacks. About 5:30 we started the karaoke and I was surprised and pleased to see that there were about eight singers in the rotation and all of them had multiple songs selected. Not only that, most were pretty good karaoke singers. We didn’t have anyone sing who was bad or way off key. We had a great time and sang until about 8:30 when most of the folks packed up and headed for home. It took me another half hour or so to get everything torn down and packed into the car so we could go home too. A very fun night.

Saturday, November 5th was another really cold morning with the promise of some rain. We didn’t do too much except go to the store for supplies. We hit both the Walmart and the local Smith’s. Sunday we left the coach shortly after noon and drove down to Sherri’s Ranch for lunch. Now Sherri’s is one of the two Pahrump brothels, both of which are southwest of town. The other is the Chicken Ranch. Now, as we understand it, the Chicken Ranch is just your run of the mill, legal Nevada whorehouse. Sherri’s, however, has a bar and restaurant, a hotel and spa that are on the property but not connected to the brothel in a business sense. And, believe it our not, they give tours. Sherri’s is a very high-end brothel according to everything that we have heard. We have talked about coming for lunch and the tour for several years, but just never got around to doing it. Today we did.

We went in the bar, which was pretty standard sports bar with some booths scattered around the outside edge. The lunch menu was basic sandwich fare, hamburgers, fries, that sort of thing. I had a Philly steak and Jackie had a hamburger, both of which were good. The only thing that gave away where we were was that there were several very attractive women in lingerie sitting around the bar. While we were eating a well dressed, middle aged woman with a distinctly German accent came over and asked us if this was our first time here. When we said yes she offered the guided tour after we finished our lunch. This lady was clearly the boss of the place.

After lunch the manager introduced us to “Logan” who was a very attractive, tall blonde who then took us on a brief tour. We saw the public rooms, the lounge where the clients pick out their “date” and some of the more exotic rooms. She also showed us pictures of some of the bungalows that they have on the property, each of which has an individual theme, such as Romance Room, or Animal Room. She showed us a couple of hot tub rooms, as well as one that was the bubble room with a big bubble bath. She also showed us the bondage room, which was pretty interesting. No photos allowed, but stone walls, cages, chains on the walls, the whole bondage and S&M vibe going on.

Logan also gave us the general background of how the girls were all independent contractors who came to the brothel, and rented a place to live and work. They negotiated their own rates with the clients within certain parameters, and were given medical exams weekly. She also said that once they entered the property they were not allowed to leave for at least the rest of the week. She wasn’t allowed to discuss how much the girls charged, or how much she made. She told us she had been in the business for nine years, seven of which have been at Sherri’s. After the tour we tipped Logan, visited the gift shop (yes, there is a gift shop) and then left. A very interesting experience, and educational too.

After our visit to the brothel we stopped at the nearby Terrible’s casino for some gaming. We played about two hours and I managed to lose ten dollars. Jackie, on the other hand, came out $70 ahead. Yea! We then went into town and did our laundry. By the time we got done it was 5:00 and already getting dark. We changed off of daylight savings time last night, which means really early sunsets. We then headed home for the rest of the night.

Monday, November 7th, my brother Russ and his wife Zen came up from Las Vegas to spend the afternoon with us. They arrived about 1:00 or so and we spent the first couple hours just chatting and catching up. We normally only see Russ and Zen when we come to Pahrump, so it’s usually once a year. He is a craps pit boss at the Golden Nugget in downtown Vegas. We introduced Russ to geocaching several years ago and he and Zen have really gotten into it. Normally we would go out and do a lot of geocaching with them, but the weather was really cold and windy. In addition, we have done most of the caches around the immediate area. We did go out with them for about an hour so he could pick up our three new caches that we put out last week. He also got four others in the area that were fairly close to our caches.

After caching we went back to the coach for a little while and talked some more before going to the China Wok Chinese food buffet for dinner. We have eaten at this place before and the food is very good and very reasonable. We all ate way too much, but it was good. It is located behind the Walmart store on Highway 160, just south of Basin, for those who may find themselves in Pahrump looking for good Chinese. After dinner we went back to the coach and talked until they left about 7:30 or so.

Tuesday, November 8th, believe it or not our two week stay in Pahrump is over. The time seemed to just fly by. We got out between 9:30 and 10:00 and, after topping off the fuel tanks at the Smith’s store, we headed southwest towards Barstow, California. Even though I needed less than a quarter tank in the coach, we wanted to leave Nevada with full tanks because diesel is about seventy cents more expensive per gallon in California. Yikes. We went out the “back way” from Pahrump, the route that heads toward Death Valley before turning south and picking up Interstate 15 in Baker, California. This is a much shorter and faster route than going back to Vegas and taking the 15 from there. We stopped for lunch in Baker at the Mad Greek Café, one of Jackie’s favorite restaurants. We also were trying to connect with our friends Ray and Suzie Babcock. We knew that they were headed for Pahrump today and we had tried to get them to come a couple of days earlier, but they couldn’t. They also like the Mad Greek, and we figured that since they left from the Hemet area and were coming up the 15 that we would both end up in Baker pretty close to the same time and could get to see them at least for a few minutes.

We got to the restaurant just before noon and were almost done eating when they got there about 12:30. We sat with them until a little after 1:00 when we got back in the coach and finished the trip to Barstow. We settled into an RV park about ten miles east of Barstow, right outside the gate to the Marine Corps Logistic Base here in the Barstow area. We are on our way to the California coast near Pismo Beach and will only be here in Barstow for two nights.

Since this is the end of our two week stint in Pahrump it seemed like the ideal place to close this chapter of the blog and get it published. I will get another chapter out in a couple weeks or so. Until the next time, remember the words of Henry David Thoreau. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” We are!