Tuesday, November 27th, we decided to stay up on the mountain and do our laundry. They have a very nice facility here so we washed our clothes and played some Skipbo while we waited. After laundry we went back to the coach and just relaxed the rest of the day and evening. A very nice, quiet day on the mountain. Wednesday was a little more active day. We left the coach about noon and drove down to a great little Thai restaurant in Banning called Zen. We had discovered this place when we were up in Silent Valley in the Spring of this year.
After a great lunch we did some geocaching. Since we have done a lot of caching in this area in the past, the caches that we haven’t already found are kind of scattered far and wide. It takes longer to get to them, meaning we were only able to get eight new finds, along with a new DNF, in a couple of hours. After caching we stopped at the Kohls in Beaumont and did a little shopping. We both got a couple of new shirts. We then went back up the mountain and relaxed in the coach the rest of the day.
Thursday, November 29th, the rain finally arrived at Silent Valley. The weather gurus have been talking about a “rain event” for a couple days now, and last night it got to us. Not a lot of rain, just a few sprinkles, but this morning it was cold and foggy up here in the valley. Everything was wet and it was not a real pleasant day. We stayed around the house until about 2:00 when we drove down the mountain. We needed to do some shopping and then we were going to the Elks Lodge in Beaumont to meet our friend Marianne Conner, who lives locally.
Our first stop was Home Depot to get some things for some repairs and work to the coach. I still needed some hardware to fix the bed frame and we needed to buy some lightweight material we can fasten to the underside of the dash to keep the cat out. It is just too much trouble to use the rugs, pillows and towels we have under there now. Benji is more comfortable with the coach, but I still fear that if we reopen access he will run and hide up under the dash again if he gets spooked. I got some light plastic mesh that I think will work. I also got the stuff to fix the bed and some caulk for a small, but persistent leak in one of the slides. One thing about a motorhome, there is always something to fix.
After our trip to Home Depot we stopped at Walmart for some groceries, most important of which was cat food. With two cats we are now going through food at twice the pace and since we don’t want to be eaten in the middle of the night we figured we needed to ensure we didn’t run low. After Walmart we drove over to the Elks Lodge. We had a cocktail and waited for Marianne to arrive at 5:00. Marianne Conner is an old friend from when we still lived in Indio. Marianne and her husband David had a house in Bermuda Dunes, near Indio, and both were also members of the Indio Elks Lodge, our lodge at the time. In 2005, the same year we sold our house and went out full time, David and Marianne also sold their house and went out on the road in a motorhome full time. In 2006 we met up with them a couple of times and ended up spending a total of about three months traveling with them, both back East and in the Northwest. They only stayed on the road for about two years before David got too sick to travel all the time, so they bought a house in Highland Springs, a golf community north of Beaumont. David died a couple of years ago, but we stay in touch with Marianne and try to see here when we are in the area.
We had a couple of drinks and then sat down for dinner at the Lodge. This was hamburger night and they have some pretty good burgers. We ate, drank and visited with Marianne for a couple of hours before we finally started back up the hill to the coach. It gets dark about 5:00 this time of year, but going up the mountain in the dark is not as scary as doing it in the fog, and there can often be fog on the mountain in this kind of weather. Fortunately, we only hit fog on the very last part of the trip as we started down into the actual valley the park lies in, and it was only for about a quarter mile. After we got back to the coach we unloaded the groceries and then relaxed the rest of the evening.
Friday, November 30th, the skies were still dark and wet when we woke up. When I first got up around 7:00, the entire valley was filled with fog and mist and you couldn’t see 100 yards in the distance. It gradually cleared, but the forecast was for drizzle all day. We decided to just stay in and we got a few chores done. One of the main ones I completed was getting the plastic screening installed under the passenger side of the dashboard so Benji couldn’t get up there any more. Looks a lot better than the pile of pillows we had stuffed in there before. Jackie got some cupboards cleaned out and some cleaning done. Just another relaxing day at Silent Valley.
Saturday, December 1st, the first day of the last month of 2012. There were a few brief periods of sunshine, Northern California is getting a lot worse storm than Southern, but it still was cloudy and cool most of the day. We thought about going down to Banning to see Flight, the new Denzil Washington movie, but decided that Saturday would probably be too busy. We just stayed around the coach again, and I finished my project to seal off the underside of the coach’s dashboard to keep the new cat from getting up under the dash. It took a couple of hours, but it is now blocked off with mesh, so the cat can’t get in, but air still can.
Of course, within twenty minutes Benji was under the dash area, checking my work, but he didn’t get in. Yea! Jackie got some more cupboards cleaned out so we had a good chores day. Other than that, we were on the computers, and watching TV all day. Nice day in the Valley. By the way, Smokey and Benji are best friends now, play fighting half the day and sleeping close together the other half.
Sunday, December 2nd, we left the coach about 11:00 for a day with friends. We drove down the mountain and then southwest to the Menifee area to visit with our friends Ray and Suzie Babcock at their house. Regular readers will remember that we traveled for several months this summer with Ray and Suzie and had a great time. Although we talk on the phone, we last saw them in early September when we parted company in Kansas.
We arrived at their house in Menifee about 12:30 and spent a couple hours talking and catching up. They have a very nice home and even have space to park their coach next to the house in the side yard. Even their dog Casey was happy to see us. About 3:00 we all went to a nearby Mexican restaurant called Carnitas Express. We had made arrangements to meet Larry and Renate Mitchell at the restaurant. Larry and Renate are friends we met through Ray and Suzie, and with whom we spent some time on Thanksgiving when they were camping up at Silent Valley, just a few spaces away from us. They live in the same general area of Menifee as Ray and Suzie. When we arrived at the restaurant Ray and Larry noticed that another couple, Jim and Sally, were already there just starting to eat. They also live in the neighborhood and Jim is also a retired Los Angeles firefighter. The restaurant set up a table for eight and we all had dinner together.
Although the name Carnitas Express might give the impression of a Taqueria or fast food place, the restaurant is very nice, has an extensive menu, and the food is very good. We had eaten here once before last year and enjoyed the food. I had the Chili Colorado and it was excellent. Jackie had chicken fajitas and she said they were great too. We had a really nice dinner and then all eight of us drove over to Larry and Renate’s house just down the street. They also have a lovely home and Renate is a great decorator. The place looked like a model home. I did have to chuckle when I later, on the way home, admitted to Jackie that, although both couples had great houses, when I looked around all I saw was work. I don’t think either of us ever wants the hassle of a house again. Our little 40 foot condo is fine for us.
We had some coconut cream pie and chatted for a little while with everyone before we hit the road for the drive back to Silent Valley. It was about 45 miles and most of it was freeway. There wasn’t too much traffic, so even in the dark it was a fairly easy drive. Until we started up the mountain. About halfway up the 11 mile drive we hit fog, and it got really heavy and a little scary. The road is narrow and curvy and a little intimidating when you can’t see a hundred feet in front of the hood. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic and we made it safely to Silent Valley, albeit a little slower than ususal. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing, watching TV and the cats playing.
Monday, December 3rd, we were awakened by something new, at least for the last week, sunshine coming in the windows. The weather gurus said that today was the last of the rain for Southern California for a while, and our skies seemed to be upholding that promise. Since everything was still wet, it was a little icky for caching, so we decided to just relax for the day. We stayed in the coach all day, playing and watching TV and just enjoying the quiet.
Tuesday we finally said goodbye to the wet weather. We left the coach after lunch, about 1:00 or so, and drove down to Beaumont for the day. We stopped at Kohls and did some shopping first, then drove over to Banning to catch a movie. It has been quite a while since we saw a movie at the theater. I am pretty sure that the last one was Unstoppable, the previous Denzel Washington movie, but neither of us can remember where or when we saw it. But we do enjoy going to the movies when we can and when there is something playing we want to see.
Today we saw Flight, with Denzel Washington. We had heard it was a pretty good movie, but I had not heard a lot about the plot, except that it revolved around a plane crash. It was an excellent movie with Washington playing a veteran airline pilot who crash lands a stricken airliner using unorthodox methods, saving all but six of the more than 100 passengers and crew on the plane. However, he is an alcoholic and a drug addict and the rest of the movie deals with him working with these demons. A very powerful movie.
After the movie we went to the Beaumont Elks Lodge for their spaghetti dinner. We had told our friend Marianne Conner that we would meet her there, although we would not be there at 5:00 when they start serving. We got there about 6:15 and Marianne was still there, sitting with a bunch of her friends from Highland Springs, the country club in which she lives. Although she had already eaten she and another friend of hers came and sat with us for a little while as we waited to be served. Dinner was very good and by the time we finished we were pretty much the only people left in the bar. This group eats early and leaves early. After dinner we drove back up the mountain, without the fog this time, and settled into the coach for the rest of the evening.
Wednesday, December 5th, we stayed in for the day again. After lunch I tackled the problem with the bed again, this time using bolts to keep everything together. This time it worked and now the bed goes up and down properly. The entire structure of the bed still needs to be rebuilt by professionals, one of the projects on our list of things to have done with the coach when we go to Oregon next summer. Other than that we just relaxed and enjoyed a very nice day in Silent Valley. The cats are doing fine, a lot of wrestling, but no anger. Benji now jumps up on our laps from time to time when we are watching TV, wanting some pets and loving. He has not made any effort to defeat my blockade of the bottom of the dash, so that makes me happy. All is well at the Holt house. Yea!
Thursday, December 6th, we left the coach about 11:30 on a beautiful, sunny but cool morning and drove south about 16 miles to the mountain community of Idyllwild. We always try to get to Idyllwild at least once during any stay at Silent Valley, just to spend an afternoon enjoying the town. We stopped first for lunch at The Greek Place, a small restaurant on the main square of town. We have seen this place a number of times over the years but never eaten there. We are usually up here with friends, so we generally end up at JoAnn’s, the big hamburger joint in the middle of the square. The food is OK there, but nothing special.
The Greek Place had a decent menu, but we were surprised to find that they had no Gyros on the menu that had the traditional Greek lamb and beef combo meat. They only had one lamb dish, a very pricey kabob, everything else was beef or chicken. Although I don’t care for lamb, Jackie loves it and to me you really can’t call yourself a Greek restaurant if you don’t at least have real Gyros. I had a beef Gyro that was excellent. The meat was well spiced and the sauce, the tzatsiki sauce, the standard cucumber yogurt stuff, was very good. Jackie wanted Mousaka, the egg plant dish, but they were out of it, so she got Loucaniko an orange flavored Greek sausage, that was pretty decent. Some of the dinner items were pretty pricey, but overall this was a decent place for lunch.
After lunch we wandered around the town square and shopped for an hour or so before starting to do a little geocaching in the area. We bought some LED Christmas lights and I got a new hat that was on sale at one of the shops. Jackie got a really nice turquoise scarf too.
Today was a day we had to get a cache to fill the date on our days of the year challenge, but there are not too many caches left in the Idyllwild area that we haven’t gotten, at least not caches that don’t require heading out on one of the many hiking trails in the area. We did manage to get four caches in an hour or so, after which we started back towards Silent Valley. Once home we settled in for the rest of the evening. A very nice day in the mountains.
Friday, December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. We decided that we would just stay in today and relax, do a few chores and enjoy the nice day up in Silent Valley. So we did. Saturday we noticed started out a bit cooler, it was in the mid-40's when I got up. Good thing we only have a couple more days up here on the mountain. We decided to take one last day for caching in the Banning area and drove down the mountain after lunch. We had a pretty good afternoon, getting a total of 13 new finds in a couple of hours. Most of them were part of a fairly new series of caches along an abandoned road by the Cabazon Outlet Mall. They were all placed along old Route 99, which still runs along the south edge of the I-10 freeway, but is no longer maintained as a roadway, although most of the pavement is still there. We also got two new DNFs, and one cache that was an unusual sort of in-between.
One of the caches in the series was a small, plastic bison tube that had been dropped down into an old tubular piece of fence tubing. The tube had a metal ring on the top and the way you got it out was to use a magnetic probe, which we have as one of our TOTTs (Tools Of The Trade) in our caching bag. We got that one. A few caches later, in the same series, there was a similar hide, except that whoever found it last put it in the pipe in such a way as it was jammed in and too far down for the length of our magnetic probe. I could see the cache with a flashlight, but couldn’t reach it. This really wasn’t a DNF, since we did “find” it, but we couldn’t take it as a find because we couldn’t retrieve it and sign the log. So we didn’t do either. We just wrote a note on the site for the owner of the cache, telling him that it was not currently reachable and needed to be attended to. After our caching we headed back up the mountain and relaxed the rest of the day.
Sunday, December 9th, our last full day in Silent Valley. I spent an hour or so in the morning taking down all the outside decorations, mats and so forth. After lunch Jackie and I went down to the laundry center and did our clothes and linens. That will hold us for a week or so. Other than spending part of the day doing chores and getting ready for travel tomorrow, we just watched TV and enjoyed the weather.
Monday, December 10th, we had the coach buttoned up and ready for travel by about 10:00 and then departed Silent Valley. The ride down the hill in the coach is always exciting, but went off without a hitch. We only had 40 miles to travel today, so we didn’t even hook up the car. Jackie just followed along behind.
Since this was Benji’s first time traveling in the coach, and since I was going to be alone in the coach, we decided to put him in his carrier for the trip. He didn’t seem to mind, and just settled in and laid down for the whole trip. I never heard a peep out of him. An ironically, Smokey, who doesn’t travel well and spends a lot of time meowing and walking around when there is a lot of road noise and such, also just laid down next to Benji’s carrier and he never said a peep. I guess they worked off each other and were soothed. Pretty cool.
We arrived at the Desert Pools RV Resort about 11:30 and were parked and completely set up by about 1:00. This is one of our Western Horizons membership resorts and we will be here for two weeks before moving on to Indio. After we got set up we drove into Palm Springs to the Walmart store for some grocery shopping. After shopping we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the day. It is about 10 degrees warmer here than up on the mountain, so the weather is very nice. Not shorts weather, but certainly not jacket weather either.
Our move down off the mountain marks a great time to put this chapter of our story to bed. We will be here two weeks, so the next episode can be expected in about two weeks. Of course, if the Mayan’s were correct, this will be the last episode of ours, and everyone else’s story, so if that’s case, it was nice knowing you. If we make it past the 21st unscathed, we will continue to enjoy each day as it comes along. See ya soon - I hope!
