It was in the 90's when we got into Indian Waters, so I didn’t do much outside beyond the necessities, utilities, sunshades and leveling. We did want to go out and get at least one geocache since we needed one for the 17th on our “days of the year” grid. After lunch we went out with information on three caches which were fairly close to the RV park. It was well into the nineties, but at least it was dry and not too uncomfortable if you didn’t spend a lot of time in the sun. We were unable to find the first cache we went to. If it was there it was hidden in some dry, scratchy bushes, and we couldn’t see it. I didn’t want to wade into the brush in shorts and I was already sweating, so we just did a DNF on the cache. We found the second cache, which gave us our find for the day, so we said good enough and headed back to the coach and the A/C.
Our friends Jay and Donna Blumenthal, who have been at Indian Waters all winter and are parked a couple of spaces down, came over for happy hour. We sat and chatted for an hour or so before they left to go to dinner. We had dinner in and spent the rest of the night in the coach trying to stay cool.
Wednesday, April 18th, I had a doctor’s appointment in Rancho Mirage, over on the east side of the valley, at 2:30. We got over there and I got in to see the doctor fairly quickly. This appointment was with a dermatologist and was primarily to get a skin check as a followup to my melanoma scare three years ago. Now that I am on Medicare it is not cost prohibitive to get the medical attention that I should be getting. With my previous insurance we really couldn’t afford to go to specialists unless it was a bona fide urgent need. The doctor looked me over and didn’t find any new spots of concern to him as far as skin cancer. He did cut off a whole bunch of moles and skin tags that I have had for years, including one on the back of my neck that I called my second head. It was pretty big. I now have a clean bill of health for my skin for another year.
After we got done at the doctor we did a few geocaches over in Rancho Mirage. Again, we needed at least one on this date for our stats page. Although it was still hot, in the nineties again, it was not too uncomfortable. We were able to find five new caches in the course of an hour, along with one DNF. We decided that was enough for the day, given the weather. We then drove over to Palm Desert to visit with ShaneRyan, Jackie’s Godson. We had wanted to visit his mom too, but she was working. We spent about an hour catching up with Shane, who is now 17 and almost 6'4" tall. We didn’t want to spend too much time there because he had some friends over, but we did have a nice visit.
After talking to Shane we went to the nearby Casey’s restaurant and bar to meet another of our friends in the area, Ed Cosak. Ed and Jackie were business partners years ago, before I came out to the Coachella Valley, and remain friends. He met us at Casey’s and we had a couple of drinks and chatted for about 90 minutes. He had to leave to get to a concert at one of the local casinos, and we left to head for home. On the way we decided it was too late to go home for dinner, so we stopped at Cactus Jack’s Bar and Grill, our old hangout when we lived here, and had dinner there. I had the beef ribs, which are to die for. Only place I ever eat beef ribs. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Thursday, April 19th, we left the coach and went back to Cactus Jack’s again for lunch. Jackie likes to go there on Thursdays because they always have lamb shanks on special on Thursday. She had the lamb and I had what they call on the menu the “Giant Fish Sandwich.” Yes indeed, it is big. At least a pound of fried fish overflowing the bun. Way too big to eat like a sandwich, you have to just cut it up and eat it open faced. Pretty tasty though.
After lunch we drove to another doctor’s appointment, this time with a gastroenterologist in La Quinta. As part of my Medicare welcome physical my doctor told me it was time for the old colonoscopy. Yikes. Anyway, I talked to the guy who will do it, got the prescription for the pre op cleanse, and scheduled my ride on the Silver Stallion for April 30. Happy Happy Joy Joy! After the fairly quick doctor’s appointment we did our shopping at both Walmart and Costco. Once we were done with that we headed back to the coach to get out of the heat. It was close to 100 today and is supposed to just keep getting hotter. It will be good to get to Silent Valley, which is at 4,000 feet and at least a few degrees cooler than here in the desert. We spent the rest of the evening in the coach.
Friday, April 20th, we didn’t have anything scheduled to do. After lunch I decided that I would go to the local urgent care about my left ear again. I have been having problems with it being stopped up and occasionally painful, for more than two months now. A month ago, in Casa Grande, I had gone to urgent care and they did a cleanse to get rid of wax, but it didn’t seem to help the overall problem. I got in and saw the Physician’s Assistant (PA) and she decided that I most likely had a fungal infection that was causing a discharge that was blocking the ear. She gave me a prescription for an anti-fungal drops and I was on my way.
I went to Walmart to get the prescription and ran into a series of snafus that made for a frustrating afternoon. They didn’t have the exact medicine that was on the prescription and they missed the mention in the remarks section where the PA had said what could be substituted. I ended up having to drive back to the doctor, get another prescription, and then back to Walmart, where they discovered their mistake. Oppsie! One would think that a pharmacist would read more closely. Anyway, they filled the prescription and then didn’t charge me because of the mistake. OK, I’m mollified. After that I went back home, after a three hour medical adventure, and we stayed in the rest of the night.
Saturday, April 21st, we left the coach about 11:30 and drove over to pick up Jackie’s Godson Shane for lunch. He had some friends that had spent the night, but he said they would be fine without him and he wanted to go to lunch with us. They had all been to Huntington Beach yesterday swimming and got back late, so they just stayed over. The three of us went to La Casita, a local Mexican chain that has very good food. I had my usual large taco salad, which is the best ever. Jackie and Shane split a variety platter dinner for two. We all ate well and had some very nice conversation. Shane is very polite and has an open manner that makes him very easy to talk to. Much different than a most other 17 year olds these days. After lunch we dropped him back off at his house and we went back to the coach. The temperatures were to be well into the 100's today and the car was already registering 104 on the dash thermometer. Yikes!
About 4:30 we left the coach again and drove over to the Motor Coach Country Club, a couple miles away from our park, to spent the evening with our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen. We sat outside on their nice semi-covered patio and had cocktails and chatted. Later the girls went into their coach and played cards while Barry and I just sat outside and talked. Barry and I can talk for hours. Later Barry put together a pizza for dinner which was quite good. He did a homemade Italian sausage for a topping and it was like a rich spaghetti sauce on pizza dough. After dinner the girls played another card game and we talked more, enjoying the cooler evening. We finally left about 9:30 and went back to our coach for the rest of the night.
Sunday, April 22nd, another moving day, and with the heat the way it has been down here in the valley I am glad we are heading for the mountains. We got everything packed up and left Indian Waters about 10:00 and started on the 55 mile drive west to Banning and then south, up the hill to Silent Valley Club. Regular readers will know that Silent Valley is a very large private RV park that is up in the mountains at about 4,000 feet. There are eleven miles of winding, uphill road to get there, but the road is good enough for me to get the coach up without any major issues. The park is private and is sort of like a time share where we own a undivided interest in the lease from the Forest Service and all the improvements. We can stay there for up to 120 days a year, although to date we have not managed more than 60 with all our traveling.
Once we got to Banning we stopped and unhooked the car because it was very hot and I didn’t want the coach to overheat on the final climb to the park. We also took the time to get a nearby geocache because we needed to have one on this date for our stats and didn’t want to have to go out looking for one later. We did find the cache and then started up the hill. Once we got to the top and into the park we found a nice site and got settled in. Although it was still warm, in the mid 80's, it was way better than down in Indio. We are parked only a few hundred feet away from our friends Ray and Suzie Babcock, who are also owners here. They have been up here since last Tuesday and knew we were coming up. We stay in contact with them and regular readers will remember that we frequently cross paths with them on our travels and spend time with them. We were last with them in El Mirage, Arizona, after the Good Sam Rally.
We are going to be here for nearly a month, so I spent more than the usual amount of time getting our outside set up. I put
Monday, April 23rd, we awoke to a very foggy and cool morning. The entire valley was cloaked in clouds and it stayed that way for the entire day. Since we didn’t have any plans to go off the mountain anyway, it really didn’t matter. After lunch we packed up our laundry and went down to the laundry facility at the activities center. The park has a very nice laundry with a dozen machines. There was only one other person in the place at the time, so we were able to get enough machines to do all our laundry at one time. We played some cards while the wash was working and were done in about two hours. Yea, clean clothes for another couple weeks.
After laundry we just chilled in the coach for the rest of the afternoon. We went over to the Babcocks for happy hour and then about 6:30 retired to our own coach for dinner and TV the rest of the night. A very nice, cool, relaxing day.
Tuesday, April 24th, my granddaughter Kayla’s birthday! Happy Birthday Kayla! This morning the mists and fog from yesterday were gone and we woke up to sunshine again. However, because it was never able to heat up yesterday it was cold this morning, 47 degrees when I woke up at 7:30. We continued the theme of relaxation today and didn’t go anywhere. We stayed around the coach all day alternating between playing games and getting some minor chores done. I did a couple of small repairs that I have been putting off and Jackie worked on catching up her daily diary.
Wednesday, April 25th, We hung around the coach until after lunch when we headed down the mountain for the drive to Rancho Mirage for a doctor’s appointment. This time it was an opportunity for me to visit the neurologist that first treated me in 2008 when I was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, or TGN. The condition is also known as tic douloureux or prosopalgia, and is a neuropathic disorder characterized by episodes of intense pain in the face, originating from the trigeminal nerve. It has been described as among the most painful conditions known to mankind. It is estimated that 1 in 15,000 people suffer from TGN, although the actual figure may be significantly higher due to frequent mis-diagnosis. In a majority of cases, TGN symptoms begin appearing after the age of 50, although there have been cases with patients being as young as three years of age. There is no known cure for the condition, although in extreme cases there are surgical remedies with drastic side effects, such as face paralysis. In most cases the only treatment is pain management with drugs. In my case the pain is controlled to a great extent by the use of gabapentin, a drug used for the treatment of seizure conditions such as epilepsy. I just wanted to touch base with the doctor to see if there were any new or different drugs or treatment options available. We had a nice visit and I learned that there is nothing new on the disease. He confirmed by current treatment and I was on my way.
After the doctor’s appointment we headed back west to Beaumont for a shopping stop at Walmart. Once we had our supplies we headed back south, up the hill to Silent Valley. We did make a stop for one geocache to fill a date on our days of the year grid. Although the weather said it was going to rain, the skies were still mostly clear. We stayed around the coach the rest of the evening.
Thursday, April 26th, we had been expecting the rain and it didn’t disappoint. About 1:00 a.m. the rain started in earnest and it rained off and on all night. Certainly not enough to cause any flooding concerns, but enough to be able to know it was raining. When we got up it was still raining and it rained on and off most of the day. Around mid-afternoon it finally started to clear up a bit and the rain finally came to a stop. Since we knew we weren’t going anywhere today we just relaxed, played games, did inside chores and had a quiet day in the coach.
Friday, April 27th, a bright, sunny day! After lunch we drove down the mountain to the Banning-Beaumont area to do some geocaching in the great, mild weather. We first made a stop so Jackie could get a haircut and then we went over to the Kohl’s store because they had a big sale and Jackie needed a new pair of jeans. I ended up with a couple of new tees and Jackie got her capri jeans. Once all these errands were done we started caching and in a couple of hours had garnered ten new finds, along with a couple of DNFs. One very interesting event happened while we were looking for a cache behind a commercial building in Banning.
We believed the cache to be hidden amongst the electrical service boxes on the building and we were checking them out. We kept hearing this strange sloshing and thumping noise. At first we thought it was coming from inside the building and I suggested maybe a washing machine? I finally realized that it was coming from a large plastic trash can behind the building and about ten feet away from where we were standing. The can was about four feet tall and didn’t have a lid and I thought maybe a rat or a racoon was inside thrashing about. I cautiously moved over and peeked over the edge and saw a gray squirrel inside the can. There was about six inches of water in the bottom of the can from the recent rains and the squirrel was soaked. He (or she) was jumping up the side, but couldn’t reach the top of the can to pull itself over and out. I think the big fluffy tail, soaked with water, was weighing it down. I told Jackie what it was and told her to stand back. I then slowly tipped the can over until the squirrel could scamper up and out. He immediately headed for cover around the corner of the building without even a thank you or “here, have a nut.” Anyway, I did my good deed for the day because I have no doubt he wouldn’t have gotten out and the cold night probably would have killed him.
After caching we drove back up the mountain to the RV park and happy hour. We went over to the Babcock’s with our cocktails and some snacks and chatted for a while. Then Ray served up a nice batch of beef stew and garlic bread that really hit the spot. We ended up finally leaving about 9:00 and going back to our coach for the rest of the night.
Saturday, April 28th, again promised to be a beautiful spring day. I left the coach a little before 10:00 a.m. and walked over to the RV park’s community building for a meeting of the Board of Directors for the resort. Since this is a nonprofit membership resort with a deeded interest for owners, they are required to have an active, elected board manage their affairs. Ray Babcock, who is also an owner, went with me. We sat through most of the meeting and, as usual, the outlook for the park is not good. Even before the economic crash six years ago the park was having problems as aging owners started defaulting on their dues when they stopped RVing. The financial problems for the park have only gotten worse over the years and their current cash flow projections show them in the red by the end of this year barring any changes. I anticipate a dues increase, up at least $100 from the current $600, and maybe even a special assessment of several hundred dollars. We like coming here and would probably not default on our membership, but a raise in rates is not a thing to look forward to.
After the meeting we went back to the coach and gathered up the girls and the four of us headed south to Idyllwild for a day of caching and fun. The Babcocks are aware of what geocaching is from having been around us, the Wilsons and the Bullocks, who all cache. However, they have never actually done it, so we asked if they wanted to go caching with us today just to see what it amounted to and they said yes.
Our first stop in Idyllwild was Jo Ann’s Café for lunch. Although there are several other restaurants in Idyllwild, a tourist town in the mountains east of Hemet, we usually end up at Jo Ann’s when we go up there for lunch. We had a very nice lunch and then set out to do some caching in the Idyllwild area. The very first cache we stopped at with the Babcocks turned out to be a DNF for us. Great demonstrators we are! We then set out to do a series of caches set out on a
After doing the ten caches on the fire road we did two more easy ones along the main road in Idyllwild and then started back to Silent Valley. We had happy hour with the Babcocks at our house before heading off to our individual coaches for the rest of the night. The Babcocks said they had a great time and would like to do it again. I don’t really see them becoming avid cachers on their own, but I think they would enjoy getting out with friends every now and then just for the fun of it. We had a great day.
Sunday, April 29th, another great day, but we will be staying at home. Today is the prep day for my colonoscopy which is scheduled for tomorrow. Today I have to be on a clear liquid diet for the entire day and take the “colon blow” preparation in the evening. Not going to be a pleasant day. We did leave the coach for a few minutes in the morning to go over to the Babcock’s and meet their son Mike, who had come up for the weekend. Other than that, I just sat around and played games and got hungry. The evening was the worst. I won’t go into great detail, but suffice to say I didn’t venture far from the potty.
Monday, April 30th, we left the coach about 9:30 and started the fifty mile drive to Rancho Mirage and the outpatient surgery center at Eisenhower Hospital. My colonoscopy was scheduled for 10:45 a.m. We arrived and I got checked in and within about ten minutes I was ushered into the pre-op area and prepped for the procedure. By 11:00 I was taken to the OR and was lying on my side with my butt hanging out, talking to the anaesthesiologist. He pushed the plunger on his little IV syringe, he got a little fuzzy and then I woke up back in the pre-op area none the less for wear. Didn’t remember a thing, didn’t feel a thing, didn’t hear a thing.
Other than some gas pains from the air they pump into you during the exam, I had no discomfort. I asked the nurse what they gave me and she told me it was propothol. No wonder Michael Jackson liked the stuff! Instant out, instant awake, and I could moonwalk. Well, not really. The surgeon found no polyps and no other major issues, so I got a clean bill of health and don’t have to go through this again until 2022. Yea! After I got dressed Jackie drove us back up to Silent Valley where I vegged for the rest of the day. It was nice to be able to eat and drink again.
Tuesday, May 1st, May Day, May Day! May Day (two words) is a primarily northern European holiday related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan festivals and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations.
As Europe became Christianized, the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either changed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were merged with or replaced by new Christian holidays as with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and All Saint's Day. In the twentieth and continuing into the twenty-first century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival again.
On the other hand, the term Mayday (one word) is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications. It derives from the French “venez m'aider,” meaning "come help me."
We needed to have a geocaching find for today to fill a hole in our “days of the year” grid, so after lunch we headed down the mountain into Banning to do a few caches. When we awoke this morning the park was hidden in thick fog and it hadn’t lightened much when we left to go to town. However, once we cleared the valley that the park is nestled in and got on the north side of the mountains the fog cleared up. It was still pretty windy and chilly, even at the lower altitude of Banning, so we only did five caches before going into Beaumont to do some shopping.
Our first stop was Best Buy where I picked up a new DVD/surround sound system for the coach. The one that came with the coach burned out several months ago, so we have been without the ability to play DVDs or use the surround sound system in the coach. I finally decided to buy a new one and found a nice Sony system at Best Buy that would do everything we needed for just over $200. This system had much better reviews than the slightly cheaper RCA systems that Walmart had on their shelves. Our old system was an RCA, so I opted to spend a few more dollars for hopefully a better system.
After Best Buy we went to Kohls where I bought a couple new shirts and Jackie got some new jeans and a top. After Kohls it was off to Walmart for some groceries and then back up the hill to the RV park. We went over to the Babcocks for happy hour and then stayed for a nice lasagna dinner. Their other friends, Larry and Ranatta, were also there. We brought over a big pan of garlic bread to go with the lasagna and salad that Ray and Suzie had fixed. We stayed there and chatted until about 8:30 when we went back to our coach for the rest of the night.
Wednesday, May 2nd, we were greeted with more morning fog. I spent a couple of hours in the morning getting the new DVD and surround sound system installed. I had to do some jury-rigging and splicing to get everything to work together, but I got it done and now we have sound and a DVD again. Yea! We had decided to go caching today in Banning again and the Babcocks wanted to go as well. Looks like we might be getting another disciple interested in the hobby.
We left about 12:30 and went down the mountain for our first stop at a Thai-Japanese restaurant called Zen, which is on the main street of Banning. We had spotted this place on Friday while we were geocaching. There happened to be a cache in the parking lot behind the restaurant and it looked interesting to us. The online reviews of the place were all positive as well. We had mentioned it to the Babcocks, who also like Thai food, and we decided to try it for lunch today. We were not disappointed. The restaurant is located in an old house and is very nice inside. The menu was huge, incorporating both traditional Thai dishes as well as sushi and sashimi. Two of our group ordered yellow curry, I had sweet and sour chicken, and Suzie had a dragon roll, which is one of the sashimi dishes. All of the food was excellent. Ray was stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam war and said the food was very authentic. Everything we had was great and the prices were reasonable. The service was a little slow, but it was very busy for lunch, so it was understandable. I can highly recommend Zen Thai restaurant, which is located on Ramsey Street, just west of 8th Street, in Banning, California.
After lunch we set out to do some caching. In the course of a couple hours we were able to garner a dozen new finds, along with one DNF. Unfortunately, the DNF was a cache that we had been unable to find last year when we were here. Even with two more sets of eyes we were unable to find the cache. Poop. After caching we made a couple of shopping stops, one at Kohls and one at Walmart. The Babcocks had heard about our bargains from the big sale at Kohls and wanted in on it too. We also stopped at Walmart for some groceries before heading back up the hill to the park.
Ray came over for a few minutes at cocktail hour, but Suzie was too bushed from the busy day. We didn’t have any dinner either because everyone was still full from the great lunch. We just relaxed and watched TV, with our new surround sound, for the rest of the night.
It has been a little over two weeks since we published the blog, so this seems like a good place to stop and get this online. We will be here for another two weeks before we begin our summer travels. I will publish again once we leave Silent Valley. Until the next time, keep the faith, have fun and stay happy. See ya.
