Sunday, February 26th, had every promise of being a very nice desert winter day, temperatures in the low 80's and lots of sun. We decided that we were going to spend the afternoon at the Riverside Country International Date Festival, being held at the nearby fairgrounds in Indio. Despite it’s rather auspicious title, it is really just the Riverside County Fair. The name goes back to the time in the mid 1900's when Indio was truly the “Date Capital of the World” and date groves covered the desert landscape. They still grow a lot of dates in the far south valley, down by the Salton Sea, but it no where near the capital anymore. When we lived in Indio we used to go to the fair every year, but we hadn’t been to one since we sold the house in 2005 and went on the road. We just never seemed to be in Indio at the end of February anymore. Today was the last day of the fair, so if we were going to go it had to be today.
We left the RV park about noon and went to Cactus Jacks Restaurant for lunch. We were meeting our friends Bev and Jerry King, who have a house near Pomona, but also have an RV and an RV lot here in Indio. They are Monaco owners and we met them at a Monaco rally some years ago. They are also heavily involved with the Military Veteran’s Chapter and we have helped them with chapter fairs and parties for that Chapter. We had a very nice lunch with the Kings and also delivered a huge bouquet of paper flowers to Bev. She had asked Jackie to pick up a bunch in Algodones, Mexico when we were there because the Kings were having some sort of Mexican themed party at their RV resort next weekend. Jackie had bought the flowers and for the last month we have had this huge bunch of brightly colored flowers in the back of the coach.
After lunch we walked from Cactus Jacks over to the fairgrounds, which was just a block away. It was convenient to leave the car at the restaurant because fair parking is expensive. After standing in line for 20 minutes to get tickets and go through the screening, we got into the fair. Because of fear of gang activities and violence issues people going into the fair go through screening just like in the airport, everything out of your pockets, walk through the metal detector.
We spent the next couple hours walking around the fair and discovering that not much had changed in the six years since we had been to one. The most interesting part was the youth art building where there were big displays of artwork from school kids around the county. There are some pretty talented kids out there. After the fair we walked back to Jacks, got the car and returned to the RV park for the rest of the evening. We were pretty whipped from all the walking and the heat, it was over 80 degrees and the sun was really hot.
Monday, February 27th, we left the RV park after lunch and drove over to the Rancho Mirage area of the Coachella Valley, a few miles to the west of Indio. Our first stop was at a Supercuts shop. Both of us needed haircuts. Jackie, who has been growing her hair out for several years, decided she wanted a shorter hairdo again, so she had a lot of hair cut off. I just had about four inches or so cut off and still have a fairly long pony tail, still down below my shoulders. After our haircuts we made a quick Walmart stop and then did some caching in the Rancho Mirage area. As with the other day, our very first effort turned out to be a DNF, we just couldn’t find the cache. However, things improved after that and we were able to get ten new finds in less than two hours. We were also able to trade four travel bugs, trackable items, which is unusual when we are caching in urban areas. Usually the caches are too small for trackable items. After caching we headed back to the coach for cocktail hour.
While we were having cocktails our friends Jay and Donna Blumenthal came over to the coach for a visit. They are parked just a few sites down from us and have been here at Indian Waters since before Christmas. They are spending the entire winter here. We chatted for a while and when they left we had dinner and then went over to the clubhouse at the RV park for Texas Hold’em. The game had a $5 buy in and I ended up 55 cents ahead after the two hours of playing. Jackie lost about $3. Pretty cheap entertainment. We then went home and watched TV for a little while before turning in for the night.
Tuesday, February 28th, Happy Birthday to my brother Russ, the Las Vegas branch of the family. Today was doctor day for me. Having just turned 65, and hence now a recipient of that governmental largess known as Medicare (as if I hadn’t paid for it all my life), I was eligible for a “Welcome to Medicare” physical. I left the coach after lunch and drove to my doctor’s office in Palm Desert and submitted myself to his inspection. Turns out I’m not doing too badly. A few dozen pounds overweight, but my blood pressure was normal, as were my temperature and pulse. My prostrate is fine, although my dignity is dented, and he didn’t find any other issues. I got a pneumonia shot and would have gotten a tetnus, but they were out of them. I also got a referral for a colonoscopy (talk about lack of dignity) and for a dermatologist to check me for anymore potential melanomas. I didn’t get back to the coach until nearly cocktail hour, so we just stayed in the rest of the night.
Wednesday, February 29th, Happy Leap Day! For geocachers this is a big day because it comes around only once every four years. One of the “goals” for dedicated geocachers is to try and get your statistical page to the point where you can say you have found a geocache on every day of the year. There is a grid on the stats page that shows how many caches you have found on each of the calendar days. Not just for the current year, but over your entire caching history. The idea is to “fill the grid” so there is at least one find in each box. Obviously, one can only get a number in the February 29 box when that date comes up. For that reason there are a lot of caching events, where a group of cachers get together for a little meet and greet, scheduled all over the country. We had found that there was one right here in Palm Desert this afternoon and we had planned to go.
We left the coach about noon and went out for lunch to La Casita, one of our favorite Mexican restaurants here in the valley. After lunch we did a couple quick geocaches and then quit to attend the caching event. We had found two caches, and got one DNF, before quitting and heading to Civic Park in Palm Desert, near the College
of the Desert. When we arrived at the event site Jackie spotted an old friend, Sherry Grana. Jackie and Sherry had been very close friends for many years before I moved to the desert in 1998 and I met her as a result of her involvement with the church group we belonged to. Although we haven’t seen Sherry in several years, she and Jackie stay in touch through Facebook and it was an post on Facebook that brought Sherry to the park. She had spotted Jackie’s post about the event and Sherry works nearby, so she took a late lunch just so she could wait for us to arrive. Very cool. We had a very nice, although brief, reunion in the parking lot. After Sherry left to go back to work we went over to the caching event. We have done a lot of caching in the Coachella Valley and know a lot of the names of local cachers from seeing them on caches, but we haven’t met too many of them. The only local
caching event we have been able to attend was in Banning last year. There were probably twenty people at the event, and a number of them were folks that we knew by name. We had a very good time, exchanged a lot of travel bugs, and got to know even more of the local caching crowd. The event was specifically for Leap Day and was scheduled to start at 2:29 p.m. on 2/29. The group finally broke up about 3:30 and everyone went their separate ways. We did a couple more caches that were right in the park before heading home. We managed to get four new finds today, which will fill the hole in our grid for February 29th. Yea!We went back to the coach for a while and about 6:30 or so we went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em again. This time I had a good night, cashing out over ten dollars from my five dollar investment. I more than doubled my money and had fun too. Jackie lost her five dollars, but had fun anyway. It is good, cheap entertainment and we meet some very nice people. After poker we went back to the coach for a little TV and then bed.
Thursday, March 1st, another new month already. We had lunch at the coach and then went over to Costco to do a payday liquor run. Need to stock up the vodka cellar. After Costco we drove over to the Motorcoach Country Club to spend the afternoon with our best buds Barry and Colleen Cohen. We got there about 2:00 or so and spent some time talking and catching up. We last saw them when we were here in January. They are still trying to sell their lot at the resort so they can get out on the road like us. Barry said they had several lookers, but no offers on the table yet. He did say that sales of lots at the resort have picked up this season and that a half dozen have sold in the last couple months. He is still hopeful for this season, which has about another month to run.
After a little while we took their electric boat out for a ride on the lakes around the resort. The weather was very nice, low 70's with a little bit of a breeze. We were out about an hour and then the wind started getting a little stronger, so we decided to go in. Jackie and Colleen went in to the coach to play cards while Barry and
I just sat out on the patio and talked. We were going to cook dinner on the BBQ, but we kind of let time get away from us and by the time we decided to start cooking it was getting late. We ended up getting in our cars and driving over to nearby Cactus Jacks restaurant for dinner. We had a very nice dinner, Jackie had lamb and I had beef ribs, my favorite. George, the owner of the place was in, so we had a chance to say hi to him. After dinner we went back to our coach and the Cohen’s went home to theirs. Friday, March 2nd, we woke up with the wind still blowing, not that this condition should come as a surprise to those who have lived in the Coachella Valley. It’s almost always breezy, if not down right windy, here. The two mountain ranges to the west of the valley create a funnel effect that makes the wind blow right down the path of the freeway. Fortunately, these same mountain ranges form a barrier that keeps most rain and bad weather out of the valley as well. Everything comes with a cost.
After lunch we went out to do a couple of quick caches not too far from the coach. We needed to get at least one cache today to fill in the March 2 date on our grid. We had never had a cache on this date before. We did get two, so now we have filled one more of the squares. We then went home and did a little light housekeeping and some chores. About 3:30 or so Barry and Colleen came over to our coach bearing foodstuffs. They brought over the stuff that we were supposed to have eaten at their house last night. Once again the girls were in the coach playing cards while Barry and I sat outside and talked.
When it got a little too chilly to sit outside Barry and I went into the back of the coach to do some karaoke singing. Barry loves to sing, but he won’t do it in public. He will only sing when it is just family and friends. About 6:00 we fired up the BBQ and had dinner. Jackie and Colleen had lamb chops and Barry and I had nice burgers. Neither of us cares for lamb. We also had some sauteed asparagus and corn on the cob, fixed in the microwave, if you can believe it, and it was great. After dinner we did some more singing and the girls played cards until 9:30 or so when the Cohen’s left for home. A very nice evening with our very good friends, nothing is better.
Saturday, March 3rd, we left the RV park after lunch to do some more geocaching. In the course of a few hours we managed to add ten more finds to our stats page. We didn’t have any DNFs, and even managed to fix one of our DNFs from a few days ago. While looking for that one we came upon two other teams of cachers looking for the same cache. After caching we went back to the coach for a brief rest.
About 5:00 we left again and went over to the Motorcoach Country Club and our friends
Barry and Colleen. We came over for dinner and to see our friends from Lodi, California, Andy and Fern. Regular readers will remember that we met them for dinner back in December when we were up in the Lodi area. Also at the Cohen’s for dinner
were Colleen’s sister Janet and her husband John. Barry made one of his signature Italian meat sauces and we had spaghetti, meat sauce and bread, along with copious amounts of liquor of course. Actually I only had two, less than the previous two nights. About 9:00 everyone got tired and the party broke up. We went back to the coach for the rest of the night. It was very nice to see our friends again, especially Fern and Andy and Janet and John, who we don’t get to see too often.Sunday, March 4th, we stayed at home for most of the day. About 5:00 we left the coach and went to the Jackalope Ranch, a nice local restaurant, to meet some friends for dinner. We got to the restaurant and had a nice dinner and a couple of drinks with Jay and Donna Blumenthal. They are also staying at Indian Waters, but they have been here for a couple months and will be staying through the middle of April. They used to be movers and shakers with FMCA, holding one of the main national officer positions for many years. As a result they had to travel all the time, back and forth across the country to attend different FMCA events. Now that they are out of the governance end of FMCA they are enjoying staying in one place.
They talked quite a bit about the BNP Tennis Classic that is starting in Indian Wells, just down the street, this coming week. This two week tennis tournament is fifth in the world in importance, only behind the for National Opens, the U.S., French, Australian and Wimbledon. The Blumenthals are tennis fanatics and they are volunteers for the tennis match here. They will be working most of the next two weeks at the tennis gardens, being ushers and watching the world’s best players. Pretty cool if you’re into tennis. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Monday, March 5th, our last full day here in Indio. It was overcast and cool, about ten degrees cooler than it has been. We decided that we would do lunch at a local taqueria called Guerrero’s, which is owned by a guy named Jose Guerrero, with whom we are acquainted from hanging out at Cactus Jacks. Jose started with one taqueria and now has four around the desert, along with a Mexican market. The place has excellent food for a reasonable price and we like to do lunch there. We are often the only gringos in the place because it is a favorite of the local Hispanic community. After lunch we did some shopping at Walmart and Winco, and then went back to the coach for the rest of the day. I spent a couple hours getting things packed up in preparation for our travels tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 6th, we woke to clear skies, but cool temperatures and a fairly stiff breeze. We packed up the coach and departed Indian Waters right about 10:00 and hit Interstate 10 headed east. Our ultimate destination is Casa Grande, Arizona, however, we like to travel at a leisurely rate and Casa Grande was close to 350 miles from Indio. We decided to make an overnight stop in Tonopah, Arizona, which is
just under 200 miles from Indio. The trip was very windy, but fortunately it was, for the most part, from behind us, so it didn’t push the coach around too much. It was very dusty and hazy though. We arrived in Tonopah, which really is just a post office, an RV park and a couple of truck stops, about 2:30 and checked into the Saddle Mountain RV park. We have stayed here before on trips across the Arizona desert, it is conveniently located just off the freeway and, as a Passport America park, half price to members. We paid $15 for a full hook-up, 50 amp pull through site. The PPA rate is only good for one night, but we only stay here one night because it is just a waypoint for us on our travels.After we got to the site and hooked up, we unattached the car and went out to get a couple of geocaches nearby. Normally we would have just left the car hooked up and stayed in, especially since it was still very windy and cold. However, this was one of the days we needed to get a cache in our effort to fill in the grid on our statistics page that shows the days of the year we have cached. We are working to get the grid filled in this year. We found three caches in about a half hour, including one that had a new travel bug for trading. After the three caches, which completes March 6th in our grid, we went back to the coach and stayed in the rest of the night.
Wednesday, March 7th, we left the RV park about 9:30 and made a quick stop before leaving the park to fill up with propane. We will be going to a rally in a few weeks and will be dry camping. I like to have the propane tank close to full when we dry camp and this was a good place to get it. We then left the park and drove to a fuel station just before the freeway entrance and fueled up the coach. The “low fuel” light had come on just as we were pulling into the park last night. I wasn’t worried because I know we can still get close to 100 miles when the light comes on. I knew we would have enough to get to our first stop in Arizona when we left Indio yesterday and I knew I didn’t want to fill up before getting into Arizona. We paid $4.11 per gallon for diesel in Tonopah, which is at least 25 or 30 cents per gallon cheaper than in California. When you are putting in 70 gallons or so, that makes a big difference.
Once we had fuel we got on the freeway and started east agin for the last 120 miles to Casa Grande. We arrived at Desert Shadows RV Resort in Casa Grande about 1:30 and got checked in. We have stayed in this park many times in the past and up until about three months ago it was one of our Western Horizons membership parks. However, it was recently sold to the same guy that bought Indian Waters last year and is now a privately owned RV park open to the public. Fortunately for us, they are still honoring Western Horizon memberships, as is Indian Waters, so we were able to get in at our usual $6 per night cost. Yea!
We got settled into a nice site and got everything hooked up and all the outside decorations put up. We will be here for 13 days before moving on to Phoenix and another rally. There are a lot of geocaches in the area, and other things to do as well, so we are looking forward to our stay.
With our arrival in this new park I will close out this episode of the blog and get it published. I will publish again in a couple weeks before we go to the rally in Phoenix. Until the next time, remember the words of Margaret Lee Runbeck, “Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” Travel happy ya’ll.
