Thursday, May 3rd, we had a stay at home and relax day. We did a few chores around the house, including, of course, my publishing the last chapter of the blog. All the while we were relaxing there was a nice four pound corn beef boiling in a pot on the stove. About 5:00 the Babcocks came over to our house for cocktails and about 6:00 we served up the corn beef and cabbage, along with carrots, and some dinner rolls. A very simple, but very delicious meal. All four of us love corn beef and cabbage and everyone seemed to like tonight’s version.
After dinner we cleaned off the table and played some cards. We played a game called Phase Ten, which actually takes quite a while to play. We were only about a third of the way through the entire game when it was getting close to 9:00 and the Babcocks had to go home to let the dog out. We saved the scores and will pick up again, maybe tomorrow. After the Ray and Suzie left we watched TV for a while and then off to bed.
Friday, May 4th, we needed a geocache find for the day for our “days of the year” grid on our stats page. We didn’t want to drive all the way down the hill to Banning since we are going down there tomorrow for some events, so we decided to revisit a couple of caches right near the RV park which we had already found. Since we are “training” Ray and Suzie Babcock to be geocachers we figured this was a good excuse for us to go back to caches we had found before. We loaded Ray and Suzie up in the car and went out to get a couple of caches. The first one we found was right outside the entrance to the park and was a very clever cache. It took them a little while to find it, but they finally did. We went ahead and signed the log again too, thus giving us a cache for the day. We then drove to the little village of Poppet Flats, just down the road from the park, to find another that was supposed to have some travel bugs in it. Unfortunately, the four of us were unable to find it, even though we had found it about 18 months ago. I remember the location in general, but did not remember exactly where the cache was hidden and we couldn’t find it again. Sad to get a DNF on a cache you have found once. Oh well.
After finding our cache we went back to the coach and played cards with the Babcocks. We finished the game from the night before and played another game of Phase 10. Ray won both games. We then had cocktail hour after which the Babcocks went home and we just relaxed the rest of the evening.
Saturday, May 5th, Happy Cinco De Mayo! Arriba! While not an “official” holiday in the United States, May 5th is widely celebrated and enjoyed, especially in the western part of the country. Many Americans think it is Mexican Independence Day, their equivalent of the 4th of July. Actually it celebrates the 1862 victory of the Mexican army over a French invasion force. The day is not really a big deal in Mexico and is generally only celebrated regionally in the State of Puebla where the battle actually took place. In the U.S. it is considered an excellent excuse to eat Mexican food and drink beer. If everyone in the U.S. is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, they are Mexican on Cinco De Mayo.
We and the Babcocks were up early and in the car by 8:30, headed down the hill to Banning to attend a geocaching event. Jackie and I had attended this same event last year when we were here. It is only a one hour “meet and greet,”
We arrived at the event, which was easy to find since the big red truck was parked in a lot just off the main street. We had coffee and cookies and talked to about two dozen other geocachers for about 90 minutes. Several
After the street fair we went to a restaurant called Gramma’s in Banning for brunch. Gramma’s has been around for a long time and has a great reputation. The Babcocks have eaten there several times, but this was our first time. The food was quite good and you get plenty of it, so it’s a good value. After lunch we did some geocaching, getting the Babcocks their first official geocaches. Although they have been caching with us for the last week or so, they weren’t official cachers and were not signing the logs or logging the finds. Today they are official. Welcome to the hobby Ray and Suzie! We got seven finds, with one DNF, before deciding that we had enough for one day.
We drove back up the hill and relaxed around the coach until 5:00 when we went over to the Babcocks for happy hour. About 6:30 the four of us walked over to the restaurant at the RV park for the special Cinco De Mayo dinner. The bar and restaurant here at Silent Valley have been closed for the winter and this was the first time they were open. The food was cooked by volunteers and was a very limited menu, just some typical Mexican specialties. I had tacos and the girls had taquitos. Ray first ordered the green chili dinner, but the chili was so hot he couldn’t eat it, and he likes hot food. Jackie and I both tried a bite and declared it too hot to eat too. Ray had them take it back and bring him a couple of tacos also. After dinner we went back to our respective coaches for the rest of the night.
Sunday, May 6th, we planned a stay at home day. About 10:00 the Babcocks came over to say goodbye. They are leaving Silent Valley and heading home for a few days, then off to the California coast around Ventura. We may see them again next month in Texas. They are talking about trying to get to San Antonio the same time we are there. I spent a few hours doing travel planning for our summer trip, filling in details and fine tuning the itinerary. We have decided not to go to Connecticut but rather stay in the south central and Midwest parts of the country. This will cut about a thousand miles off our total travels which should save us some fuel money. It will also enable us to slow down and spend more time at various destinations in the south. We are now planning to drive the Natchez Trace Parkway all the way from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. People have told us it’s a great drive and now we will have the time to appreciate the area. Other than a couple other minor chores that’s pretty much all I did today.
Monday, May 7th, a beautiful day at Silent Valley. The morning fog is gone and we expect temps in the 80's today. I spent a little more time doing travel planning, including making some reservations at state parks along the Natchez Trace. I was not aware that Mississippi had such a good State parks system. Almost all of their State parks have RV parks with at least water and 50 amp electric. One of the parks, the one near Tupelo, even has sewer hookups. Most of the sites are only $18 a night, although the one with sewer is $24. We will be spending a total of 20 nights in parks along the Natchez Trace Parkway. Should be fun.
After lunch we did our laundry in the park’s laundry facility. It has been two weeks, which is about the extent of our clean underwear supply. After laundry we just relaxed in the coach the rest of the evening.
Tuesday, May 8th, we left the coach before lunch and drove down the hill and then east to Palm Springs. We had to pick up our mail at the UPS office near the airport. Our official mailing address is a UPS store in Pahrump and about every two weeks or so we have them bundle up and send our mail to us. Silent Valley doesn’t allow any mail or package delivery, so we have to have it sent to the nearest customer service center. After we picked up our mail we went to a little restaurant in Cathedral City called Boys. I used to eat there quite often when I worked at the Desert Princess Country Club, which is only a mile or so up the street. They have the best pastrami sandwich anywhere and I like to eat there from time to time. Since we were going to be close by I thought today was a good day.
After lunch we fueled up the Jeep, diesel is about a quarter cheaper per gallon in the Coachella Valley than it is in Banning, and stopped by our friend Barry Cohen’s shop to say hi. After a brief visit with Barry we got back on the freeway and headed back to Banning, back up the hill, and to the coach for the rest of the night.
Wednesday, May 9th, Jackie woke up feeling really bad, her allergies are kicking up again. Runny nose, sore throat, headache, itchy eyes, all the classic symptoms. She spent the day on the coach watching TV and I spent most of the day in the back of the coach in my den. Did a little housecleaning and administrative stuff, but not much else. Thursday was more of the same for Jackie. Again, I did a few chores, some maintenance on the coach, but mostly just played with the computer while Jackie rested and tried to feel better.
Friday, May 11th, we left the coach after lunch and drove east towards Palm Desert. Jackie had managed to get an appointment with her doctor for late in the afternoon so he could confirm that she had allergies and give her an allergy shot. First we stopped at Best Buy and did some shopping. We have been considering buying a tablet computer for a while now and finally got one. We bought the newest Asus Transformer EEE 10.1 inch tablet with the latest Android software. It got great reviews in the computer magazines and is way less expensive than the new Ipads.
While we were buying the new tablet we were talking to the Verizon phone reps in the store and they were having a special where we could upgrade our MiFi, which is how we get our wireless internet, to the new 4G system at no cost except for the sales tax. Although 4G is not available everywhere, where you can get it the speed is greatly increased. So, we went ahead and did the upgrade. We finally got finished at Best Buy just in time to get Jackie to here appointment on time. She got a quick check and it was confirmed that she had allergies, not a cold or the flu, and she got an allergy shot. I also got a shot that I was supposed to have gotten back in February during my physical. At that time they were out of the vaccine, so I got the shot today. We then drove back to the coach, after picking up some KFC for dinner, and relaxed the rest of the night.
Saturday, May 12th, Jackie was still not feeling very well, so we had another stay at home day. I spent a good part of the day setting up and playing with the new tablet. I also redid our calendar and migrated from the old Palm system that I have been using for years to the Google calendar. The Google calendar doesn’t make especially pretty printed calendars, but the big upside is it is maintained online so it is available from any of our computers, the tablet and even Jackie’s phone. Getting it set up on Jackie’s phone, which is a Blackberry, took the longest time. Google and Blackberry don’t play well together. I finally got it done though. Other than that, we just hung around the coach all day.
Sunday, May 13th, we left the coach about 11:30 and drove down to Beaumont for lunch and to do some shopping. We went to La Casita, one of our favorite local Mexican chains, and had lunch. The place was pretty busy, being Mother’s day and all. After lunch we went out and found one quick geocache. We needed a find for today to help us fill in our “days of the year” grid, but Jackie still is not feeling all that well, so we didn’t want to do a lot of caching. After our quick find we went to Walmart for groceries.
On the way back home we stopped in Banning and gathered some information we would need to solve some puzzle caches. Puzzle geocaches require the solution of some sort of puzzle to get the actual coordinates for the cache location. It can be a word puzzle, a math puzzle, trivia, or some other type of challenge. This particular set of caches, there are three, require you to go to four different murals painted on buildings in the City of Banning, and answer questions about the murals. Things like, how many men in the picture, how many birds, and so on. Once you get those numbers then you had do some math problems with the answers to get the coordinates. We gathered all the information and I solved the math problems later in the day. We have to cache again on Wednesday, so we will look for the actual cache containers for this series then. After we got home we put the groceries away and relaxed for the rest of the day.
Monday, May 14th, another glorious, sunny day in Silent Valley. We decided to just stay around the coach for another day and only did a few chores. Mostly we just relaxed and hoped that Jackie would get over the worst of her allergies soon.
Tuesday, May 15th, Happy Birthday to the love of my life, my wife Jackie! She woke up feeling slightly better than the last few days, but we decided to lay low for another day to give her a chance to continue to improve. I did spent a couple of hours getting all our outside stuff taken down and put away in preparation for our departure on Thursday from Silent Valley. Thursday will mark the official start of our summer travels for 2012, which will ultimately take us too Indiana for the FMCA rally. Major stops along the way include Apache Junction, and Tucson, Arizona, El Paso, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi, Texas, New Orleans, the entire length of the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, and Louisville, Kentucky. All together, out and back, we are looking at just under 6,000 miles.
Wednesday, May 16th, our last full day in Silent Valley. Again the weather was beautiful, sunny and warm. We had to have some caches for today to fill a blank spot in our days of the year grid, so we left the coach about 11:30 and went down the hill into Banning-Beaumont. Jackie was feeling a little better and had not coughed as much last night as she had been. Since we didn’t go out to eat on her birthday I let Jackie pick a place for lunch. We went to a Chinese place in Beaumont called First Dynasty Chinese Restaurant. Jackie said the place had excellent reviews on Trip Advisor.
We got there just after noon and were surprised to find only a couple of people in the restaurant. By the time we got done eating we were the only ones there besides staff. The restaurant was big and very nicely decorated. I told Jackie it reminded me of the old Chinese restaurants my parents went to back in Milwaukee when I was very young. The food was very good, the lunch choices plentiful, and you got a lot of food for the cost. I really don’t understand why it doesn’t do a better business. Although it’s on the main street of Beaumont, it is near the old downtown, which is a couple miles from the current center of commerce. The location may have something to do with the lack of people. If you are in Beaumont, check it out if you like Chinese. No buffet, just great menu food. After lunch we did a little caching and were able to get six new finds, along with one DNF. After caching we headed back up the mountain and relaxed for the rest of the night.
Thursday, May 17th, a travel day. We left Silent Valley about 10:00 and started east towards Arizona. We were headed for an overnight stay in Ehrenberg, Arizona, just across the Colorado from Blythe, California. There is a Western Horizons Resort there and we can stay overnight for only $6 with full hookups. On the way across the desert between Indio and Blythe we did something we have never done before. We stopped to get a couple of geocaches while we were traveling in the motor home. Normally we wouldn’t cache while traveling, but we needed to get a cache today to fill a hole in our days of the year grid. We are determined to fill the grid this year. So last evening I did some research and found five caches that were hidden just off the freeway near off ramps. They
We crossed the river into Arizona and pulled into the Western Horizons park about 1:30 and got parked. It was pretty hot, well over 100 degrees, so we just stayed in and sat in the A/C resting. We didn’t even unhook the car since we are only here one night.
Our arrival here in Arizona will mark the end of this chapter of our story. We will be in Arizona for about two weeks, so I will publish again after we leave Arizona and head into New Mexico and Texas. Until we meet again, keep the faith, stay happy and love life and everything it has to offer. See Ya.
