are during the five day period we will be parked here. I think this is the first time we will have been parked at an Elks Lodge and not been able to go in and visit the lodge. Sadly, it also means no lodge pin for our banner. Poop. Time for a little history of the area. In 1867, Anthony Easterby purchased land in what is now the San Joaquin Valley for farming. Unable to grow wheat for lack of water, he hired a local contractor in 1871 to build an irrigation canal. This formed the basis for the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company, a predecessor of the Fresno Irrigation District.
In 1872, the Central Pacific Railroad established a station near Easterby's farm for its new Southern Pacific line. Soon there was a store and around the station and the store grew the town of Fresno Station, later called Fresno. Fresno became an incorporated city in 1885. Two years after the station was established, county residents voted to move the county seat to Fresno. The population of Fresno proper soared in the second half of the 20th century. It entered the ranks of the 100 largest United States cities in 1960 with a population of 134,000. The current population is just over 510,000. Fresno has a diverse population, including one of the largest Armenian populations in California. The Armenian population in Fresno today is estimated at 30,000.
One interesting piece of trivia I found has to do with the beginnings of our “credit nation” and it’s ties to Fresno. In September 1958, Bank of America launched a new product in Fresno called BankAmericard. After a troubled gestation during which its creator resigned, BankAmericard went on to become the first successful credit card; that is, a financial instrument which was usable across a large number of merchants and also allowed cardholders to revolve a balance. In 1976, BankAmericard was renamed and spun off into a separate company known today as Visa Inc.
Thursday, November 24th, Happy Thanksgiving. We figured that today would be a good day to do some local geocaching since most everyone would be busy with family and Thanksgiving dinner. We were planning our own little Thanksgiving dinner in the coach since the only two families we know in the area, Jackie’s niece and an old high school pal of Jackie’s, were both out of town. We went out after lunch and were able to find a total of fourteen new caches in just about three and a half hours. We also got two DNFs, but it was still fun.
One of the caches was inside an old English telephone booth in front of a real estate agency. We have never cached in Fresno and there are tons of caches in the area. We never got more than a couple miles from the coach for our finds today. There was almost no traffic and nearly all of the local businesses were closed for the day. We probably looked a little suspicious wandering around in empty parking lots looking under bushes, but no one bothered us.After caching we went back home and Jackie made a wonderful turkey dinner with all the trimmings, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and asparagus. It was wonderful. The turkey was just a breast and she cooked it in the crock pot so it could cook all afternoon while we cached.
Friday, November 25th, the infamous “Black Friday” first shopping day before Christmas. I told Jackie I had absolutely no desire to go out and fight the crowds for some perceived bargain that we really didn’t even need. I spent most of the afternoon trying to fix the leak in our living room slide. I had to take off the decorative fascia in order to get at the seam that I thought was leaking. It was not as big a job as I thought, but I still ended up having to take two trips to the local Home Depot before I had everything I needed to put a silicon bead along the seam. It was really hard to get to and I had to do it with a mirror since I couldn’t get my head in the space to look directly at what I was doing. I got the seam in and I hope it was, A) the right seam that was leaking, and B) a good silicone seam that works. Once I got it seamed I let it set up a while and then put the fascia back on. Now I just have to wait until the next time it rains and keep my fingers crossed. Other than that, we didn’t do anything outside of the coach.
Saturday, November 26th, we woke up to heavy fog. We couldn’t even see the quarter mile or so across the little lake in front of our coach. The fog lifted after a few hours and by the time we left to go do some caching it was clear and nice. We did ten new caches, with a couple of DNFs thrown in, in a few hours. Later in the afternoon we drove to Jackie’s cousin’s house to visit with her family. Stephanie and her husband Ron have three kids and live in a very nice residential tract in northeast Fresno, only about five miles from where we are parked. Jackie and I attended their wedding in Redondo Beach in 1998, shortly after I moved to Indio. That was my first introduction to Jackie’s family. Their oldest is now in high school. They moved to Fresno less than a year ago from the Long Beach, California area, but seem to like the town. Ron is an electrician and seems to be doing OK on work despite the harsh economic times.
We had a very nice visit with them, catching up on their family and also talking about geocaching. Stephanie and Ron are very into spending time with their kids and they seemed to be really interested in geocaching as a family activity. They were so interested that we talked about coming over tomorrow to spend some time in the afternoon caching with them to give them a bit of an introduction. After a couple hours we decided to head for home, where we spent the rest of the evening.
Sunday, November 27th, I put together a new batch of caches in the area of Ron and Stephanie’s home and loaded them into our GPS devices. After an early lunch we drove to their place and they were ready to go caching. Ron had loaded a caching app on his Iphone and had done some
reading about caching on the web. The first two caches we sought were within walking distance of their house, along a bikeway, so we all walked up there. The very first cache was found in just a minute or so by their eight year old daughter, Madison. The second cache was a much more difficult find. I finally found it hidden in a phony light fixture after about ten minutes of searching.We then got in our cars and went out to find more caches. By the end of the afternoon we had found a total of 15 caches, all of which were new to us, and we didn’t have any DNFs. I am pretty certain that Ron and Stephanie, and at least the two younger kids, are hooked on caching.
Tyler, their 16 year old son found one of the caches, another phony light fixture, but didn’t seem to be as excited about the sport as the rest. Bryce, their eleven year old son, and Madison, really got into the searching and were really excited by the caches that had “bling” in them. After caching we went back to their house for a little while and visited, then they took us out to 
a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. We left there after a nice dinner with everyone and headed home for the rest of the night. We had a very nice day and I think added a new team to the caching community.Monday, November 28th, was another moving day. We packed up the coach and left the Fresno Elks about 10:00, heading north on Highway 99 towards Carmichael, California, a suburb of Sacramento. It was 175 miles and we arrived at the Carmichael Elks Lodge about 1:30 or so. The trip was pretty uneventful except for the horrible roads. There were stretches of the highway that were just terrible, all potholes and bumps. Surprised we didn’t have stuff falling off the walls. We have stayed at this lodge several times in the past as they have a nice RV park. The sites have water and 50 amp electric, but no sewer. After we got settled in we spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out in the coach. We will be here for five days and come up here primarily to visit with an old friend of Jackie’s, Kathy and her daughter Julie. Julie also has a three year old named Bella Bliss whom Jackie just adores.
Tuesday, November 29th, we woke up to heavy fog. We couldn’t see the other end of the parking lot and it was quite cool, 51 degrees. Since Kathy and her husband Bill already had commitments for today, and couldn’t get together with us, we decided to go out and do our laundry. There was a laundromat just around the corner and we got our work done by about 1:30, so we decided to go out and do some geocaching in the area. We managed to get nine new finds, along with a couple of DNFs, before it started getting too dark to cache. With that we headed home and stayed in for the rest of the night. One of the caches was very cute.
It was called “Here’s looking at you” and it was a fairly large rubber lizard, about a foot long, attached to a large piece of bark. When the bark was lying on the ground you could just see the head of the lizard peaking out at you. It was very realistic. The cache was in a film canister stuck inside the hollow belly of the fake lizard. One of our favorites.Wednesday, November 30th, the fog was gone, but now the wind was blowing. With all the trees losing their leaves, it looked like a leaf storm outside. If the wind keeps up whatever leaves are left on the trees will be on the ground by nightfall. After lunch we went out for some provisions. We had to hit both Costco and Walmart and luckily, they were side by side not too far up the road from us in the community of Citrus Heights. After our shopping trip we went back home and unloaded the groceries and got everything put away.
Around 6:00 we left the coach again headed for Julie Yarbrough’s house for dinner. Julie is Jackie’s friend Kathy’s daughter and she lives in West Sacramento, about a half hour away, with her
significant other Kevin and daughter Isabella Bliss. They are both in the mortgage business and seem to be doing OK despite the economy. They have a very nice home in an upscale neighborhood not too far from the Sacramento River. Bill and Kathy were also at the house and we spent a couple hours catching up with the whole family and playing with
Bella, who warmed up to Jackie and I pretty quickly. She is quite a delightful child, always smiling and happy and she seemed to also be quite bright for a three year old. They have her in a very good preschool and it seems to be having a good effect.Julie served a very nice dinner of stuffed pork chops and trimmings that was excellent. After dinner we had desert and sat and talked until nearly 10:00 p.m. when we decided that we needed to get to bed. I was tired, Bella seemed to still be going strong. Ah, youth! We drove home and watched TV for a little while before heading off to bed about 11:15, the latest we have been up and about in a while.
Thursday, December 1st, where has the year gone? Already into the last month of 2011! The wind was blowing about 30 mph and it was very cool so we decided that we needed a stay at home day, so we did. We spent the day just catching up on computer stuff and TV. About 5:30 or so we went over to the Elks Lodge for cocktails and dinner with our friends. Kathy and Bill were going to meet us there for dinner. We had noticed that the lodge was having pork ribs for their Thursday night dinner and we like ribs. We also invited two other friends, Curt and Sharon Minard, who had surprised us by leaving their card in the door of our coach last night. Curt and Sharon were some of the camping friends of Peggy and Vernon Bullock that we spent a week with in Quartzsite last January. Regular readers will remember Peggy and Vernon as the couple we met on our Alaska tour in 2009 that we have remained close friends with. We really enjoyed Curt and Sharon, and already have plans to be with them in Quartzsite again this coming January.
However, we had forgotten that Curt and Sharon live in Carmichael. We also didn’t know that they were members of the Carmichael Elks. It seems that Curt and Sharon were in the lodge last night for dinner and as they were leaving they saw our coach in the parking lot. Curt was almost positive that he remembered it as our coach, even though they had no idea we were in Carmichael, so he left his card in the door. We called them this morning and invited them to join us at the lodge for dinner tonight.
When we got into the lodge both Kathy and Bill and Curt and Sharon were in the bar. Although they are both members of the lodge, they didn’t know each other except by name. We introduced everyone and sat down for a cocktail. Julie and Bella were also supposed to join us for dinner, but Julie got held up at work and was running late. At 6:00 we went into the dining room for dinner and continued our visit with our friends. We had not seen Curt and Sharon since we were with them in February in Arizona, so we had a lot of catching up to do. After dinner we all went over to our coach for a nightcap.
Julie never made it for dinner, but did get to the lodge in time to visit with us in the coach. I gave Bella the Minnie Mouse stuffed animal that we had on the couch and she was really excited. We have had the thing since way before we sold the house and Jackie has said in the past that she was ready to get rid of them from the coach. I had noticed that Bella had a lot
of Disney stuff in her room when we were there on Wednesday, and she is all excited about getting to go to Disneyland around Christmas with her family. I think I made her happy with an old, used Minnie. After an hour or so of visiting everyone left to go home and we just relaxed the rest of the evening.Friday, December 2nd the winds that we have had the last couple of days appear to have finally died down. According to the news all of Southern California had been having really bad winds, with trees getting blown over and lots of power outages. Since it appeared to be a pretty nice day, we went out after lunch for some more geocaching in the area. We got our ten finds, with a couple of DNFs thrown in for good measure, in a few hours. Around 5:00 we drove over to Kathy and Bill’s house in Citrus Heights, an adjacent community, for dinner. Kathy had a made a very nice meatloaf and all the trimmings. We had a couple of cocktails and visited for a while, then had a very good dinner. We ended up leaving about 9:30 or so and heading home.
Saturday, December 3rd, another moving day. We packed up the coach and, after a visit to the dump station to empty our tanks, left Carmichael and headed south for an exhausting 45 mile drive to Lodi, California. It took about an hour to get to the Lodi Elks Lodge where we quickly settled into a nice spot. We have stayed at this lodge in the past as we traveled through the area. The sites overlook a big expanse of grass and are right next door to a beautiful country club golf course. We have some friends, Fern and Andy Lenardini, who live here in Lodi. I first met them shortly after I moved to Indio in 1998. They were friends with our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen and they had a home in the country club in Palm Desert where I had gotten a job working security. They only stay in the desert during the winter months and they haven’t been down there for the last two winters because of issues with the family. The bottom line is that we haven’t seen them for a couple of years and wanted to visit them while we were in the area.
After we got settled in to the spot, where we will be for three days, we took a quick drive to a Christmas craft sale that Jackie had heard about from Kathy last night. It was called “Christmas in the Barn” and was held at a local vineyard in their yard. It was very cold and windy, so it was a little uncomfortable walking around the half dozen booths outside of the barn. The barn had another dozen craft booths crowded inside. We were only there about a half hour, but Jackie did buy a silk flower arrangement that she liked. After that we went for a late lunch at the local In and Out burger place and then back to the Elks where we hung around the coach for the rest of the afternoon. About 4:30 we took a drive over to the Lodi Moose Lodge, which was only about a mile from the Elks. This was our first visit to this Moose lodge since I hadn’t been a member of the order the last time we were through here. The lodge just built a brand new building on a big piece of land. Although the clubroom was a little stark, it’s just a big room with the bar on one end and some pool tables on the other end, it was nice. There were a lot of people in the bar and they were all very welcoming and friendly. We had a couple of drinks there and then left and went into the Elks Lodge for a cocktail. Again, the people were welcoming and friendly and we had a great time. We finally got out of there and back to the coach about 7:00 and we stayed in the rest of the night.
Sunday, December 4th, I went out at 8:00 a.m. to get a Sunday paper at the market and the thermometer in the car said it was 36 degrees. I know it was cold because there was frost on the windshield. We stayed around the coach most of the day, Jackie wanted to get some things done, and we knew that we were going to be going out for the evening with our friends Fern and Andy. About 5:00 we drove over to their house, which is out in the country west of Lodi. They have a very pretty, turn of the century, farm house nestled in the surrounding vineyards. They don’t have a winery, they grow Zinfandel grapes which they wholesale to wine makers. Andy was born in Lodi and has lived here much of his life. We had not seen them for about two years, so we spent some time sitting in their living room having cocktails and catching up. They have a very pretty bar in their house and Andy is a collector of liquor bottles. He has hundreds of very unique bottles of all kinds of liquor, most of them still sealed. Oddly, he doesn’t collect wine bottles and they really don’t drink much wine, considering they live in wine country and grow wine grapes.
After about ninety minutes of conversation we got in their car and they drove us into Stockton, about ten miles south of Lodi, to a wonderful Chinese restaurant called Dave Wong’s. It is a fairly new restaurant located on March Road, just off the I-5 in Stockton. Although it was a Sunday night the place was packed. It is a very elegant place with a good menu, although not as extensive as some menu Chinese restaurants. However, the food was superb, some of the best Chinese cuisine that I have had. We had a great meal and continued our conversation, catching up on what we have been doing since we last met. Fern has had a couple of tough years with a series of deaths in her family and I think it perked her up a little to have company. After dinner we drove back to Lodi where we said our goodbyes for the night and headed back to the coach. It was great to see Andy and Fern again and we hope that they will be able to get down to the Coachella Valley this winter to their home there so we can see them again.
Monday, December 5th, another morning in the 30's. We have never been up in this part of the state this late in the year and didn’t know it got this chilly. After lunch we went out to do some geocaching in the Lodi area. We have cached here before, but it has been a couple years, so there were lots of caches yet to find. Many of the caches
were located around the many vineyards in the area. We had a good afternoon and in the course of less than three hours we captured 15 new finds with no DNFs. Yea! We even had time to walk around downtown Lodi and window shop for an hour or so. Later in the afternoon, about 5:30, we walked over to the Elks lodge to have a cocktail. It was there Monday Night Football party, so the place was pretty full. They were serving hamburgers and chips fairly cheap, but we decided to just have a couple drinks and then go home and make our own dinner. We have been eating out a lot lately.Tuesday, December 6th, we packed up the buggy and departed Lodi about 10:00 headed south on U.S. 99 back to Fresno and the Fresno Elks. The ride only took about three hours and we got settled into a nice spot right next to the one we occupied a week ago. Highway 99 is a HORRIBLE road, especially the section that goes through Modesto. The road is the old style concrete and it is broken up and patched and bumpy as hell. One of the sun shades came loose and an access panel on the back of the TV fell off. We felt lucky that only two parts fell off. We will be here for three days this stop before moving on towards the Coachella Valley. After we got settled in we just stayed in the rest of the day and chilled.
Wednesday, December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. Seventy years ago today, wow! We left the coach after lunch to go do some exploring in nearby Clovis, California. Clovis, a suburb of Fresno with a population of a little under 100,000, was founded in 1890 as a freight stop on the new San Joaquin Railroad line. The railroad was constructed to serve the emerging agricultural industries in the San Joaquin Valley. Clovis has a very nicely maintained Old Town with a reputation for a lot of antique stores. We like to browse antique stores, so we decided to go do some caching in Clovis, along with some wandering in Old Town. We spent the afternoon walking around antique stores and other shops, as well as doing a few caches. We got five new finds, with one DNF. About 4:00 we went to the Clovis Elks Lodge, which is located right in the old downtown area, for a cocktail. The lodge is fairly recent, having been chartered in 1972 and is located in what appears to be an old restaurant building in Clovis. We were the first and only customers in the bar, since they only open at 4:00, but the bartender was very welcoming and personable. She was a member of the lodge and told us a lot about the lodge and the city of Clovis. We have never been in this lodge so we got a pin for our banner.
After visiting Clovis we went back to the Fresno Elks Lodge and lo and behold, we found the lodge open! The lodge building here looks wonderful from the outside, and the RV park is great. However, it is not open very often. We were here for five days a week or so ago and the lodge was not open at all. Tonight was dinner and bingo, so it was finally open and we were able to go in and check out the inside of the lodge. The building is quite new, only a few years old from what we have been told, and is very nice. There is a big dining room and a very large lounge with a nice bar. There were quite a number of people in the bar, waiting for dinner to be served. The bartender was very nice and we had one drink. We didn’t need to ask for a pin since we had gotten one last week from the campground host. They were having a holiday sale, mostly desserts and stuff, but we did buy a cookbook put together by the Emblem Club, their ladies group. We have had great success in the past getting good recipes out of Elks cookbooks from other lodges. After out cocktail we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Thursday, December 8th, our last day in Fresno. After lunch we went out to do another afternoon of caching in northeast Fresno and Clovis. In a few hours we were able to add another dozen finds to our stats, along with one DNF. Once we were done caching we went to the mall for an hour or so of shopping. About 5:30 we drove over to Jackie’s niece’s house for dinner. We stopped on the way to pick up some pizzas. We wanted to provide dinner since Ron and Stephanie had bought us dinner when we were here the week before. We picked up pizzas from a place called Me & Ed’s, which Stephanie had indicated was the kid’s favorite place. They have a dozen different stores in the area and seemed to be really busy.
We brought the pizza over, along with a bottle of wine, and had an informal dinner with Stephanie and two of the kids. Ron and Bryce were at soccer practice and didn’t get back until almost 7:30, but there was plenty of pizza left. We had a really nice visit and finally left their house about 8:30 and went back to the coach for the rest of the night. We were really happy that our travels brought us back through Fresno so we could see Ron and Stephanie and the family one more time.
Friday, December 9th, we left Fresno and started south on Highway 99 again, this time headed for Bakersfield. We have reservations in the Coachella Valley starting on Monday at a resort near the Salton Sea. Our original plan was to spend two days in Bakersfield and one in Hesperia as we worked our way down from the high desert. However, I had been watching the weather and noted that there was a winter storm moving into Southern California on Sunday night and the weather is supposed to be pretty bad for a couple of days after. With that in mind we decided to get down into the Coachella Valley on Sunday, a day early, so we would beat the storm and not have to drive in bad weather. Plus, from Bakersfield to Hesperia we had to cross the Tehachepi Summit as well as the Cajon Summit from Hesperia down into the San Bernardino basin. Both of these passes are over 4,000 feet in elevation and can get snow when storms come through. I don’t care for driving the coach in the rain, much less the snow.
We got into Bakersfield and went to the same RV park that we had stayed in when we came through here in November on our way to the coast. It worked out well because we got a discount for our Good Sam plus a discount for being a repeat customer. Ended up costing only $24 for a full hookup pull through site. We didn’t even unhook the car and just stayed in the coach for the afternoon and evening. The next morning we got up and left Bakersfield about 10:00 and went east over the Tehachepi Summit and into Hesperia, California, on I-15 in the San Bernardino Mountains. Our original plan was to stay at an RV park that we have used before, but upon checking the Elks camping book we noticed that the Hesperia Elks Lodge had RV parking and that we had checked it out a few years ago when we came through the area. We changed our destination and went to the Lodge, which was only about three miles off the freeway and got a spot there. It had 30 amp and water, which was fine for a one night stay. Again, we didn’t even unhook the car. Just put out the slides and relaxed for the rest of the day.
Sunday morning we got up and left Hesperia about 10:00 and started down the big hill over Cajon Pass on our last leg back to the Coachella Valley, our old home ground. We arrived at the Oasis Palms RV Resort, south of Indio on Highway 86, just after noon. At first we thought that we would stay at the Indio Elks for one night since our reservation at the RV park didn’t start until Monday, however, I had called the resort and they said they had plenty of room and to go ahead and come in one day early. This is a Passport America park with almost no restrictions on use, so we are able to stay here for 15 days, during the peak camping season in the desert, for $15 a night. We got into a nice pull through spot with 50 amp and full hookups and got setup. Since we are going to be here through Christmas, we also put up all our Christmas decorations. We look very festive.
This is a nice park, set in an old citrus orchard, but it does have some road noise from Highway 86 which is right adjacent. Oddly, we had never noticed this park before despite having traveled up and down Highway 86 dozens of times over the years. We found it when we were looking for somewhere close to the Indio area to stay since our membership park, Indian Waters, was sold. It is now very difficult to get a spot at Indian Waters, but this park will work. The only down side is that it is a 20 mile drive to Indio, but we have stayed further away. It really is about the same distance from Indio as is the park in Desert Hot Springs, just in the other direction.
This seems like a very good spot to take a break and get this chapter of our story on the web. We will be here for two weeks, so look for another update about that time. Until the next time, stay warm, enjoy the spirit of Christmas, and enjoy every day. Bye.
