About 2:00 we left the fairgrounds and drove back over to Indian Waters to pick up Ray and Suzie Babcock. Both Ray and Jackie had appointments at about the same time with our dermatologist in Rancho Mirage. Jackie needed to have a small cyst removed from her cheek and Ray needed a couple of potential skin cancers checked and removed. Jackie came out with a small incision and a couple of stitches, but it is not very noticeable. Ray had a few things done and also had several bandages. After finishing at the doctor we drove back to Indian Waters and dropped off Ray and Suzie before going back over to the fairgrounds where we relaxed in the coach the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Tuesday, January 8th, I walked over to the rally headquarters in the morning to pick up our rally bag with the detailed schedules, rally pins and other items of interest regarding the rally. After lunch we did our shopping runs as today is likely the last day that we don’t have anything going on at the rally that we need to work around. We did a Walmart run and then a Costco run. Costco was important since once we leave the Coachella Valley we won’t be near another Costco for almost two months. There is a Sam’s Club in Yuma, which is almost as good, but no Costco. After we got finished shopping we went back to the coach, put away our groceries and then relaxed the rest of the evening.
Wednesday, January 9th, the first official day of the rally. I walked over to the rally area about noon to help out with the Chapter Fair for the Military Veterans Chapter.
The Chapter Fair allows various FMCA chapters to set up tables to try and recruit new members. We hung around the auditorium from about noon to 3:00 helping some with the Veterans chapter and also wandering around looking at other chapter booths.
We took everything down at 3:00 at the end of the fair time and Jackie and I went out to find at least one geocache because we needed one on this date for our days of the year challenge. We got one cache and then went back to the coach to relax for a while. About 5:30 we left again and drove over to Cactus Jacks where we met our friends Gary and Ramona Wilson for dinner. Gary and Ramona had spent the summer on an RV caravan that went down the east coast from Maine to Florida. Our other friends Peggy and Vernon Bullock were on the same caravan, but they stayed back in Florida for the winter. We hadn’t had a chance to talk to Gary and Ramona about their trip.
We had a great dinner and heard some great stories about Gary and Ramona’s trip. We finally finished dinner and left the restaurant about 8:00. Gary and Ramona are not staying at the rally, they are still in Indian Waters. We went back to our coach and relaxed the rest of the night.
Thursday, January 10th, we left the coach about 10:30 and drove over to Bev and Jerry King’s house to help with a social gathering of the Military Veterans Chapter.
After helping get everything cleaned up we went back to the rally grounds to walk through the vendor area, which opened for the first time today. I bought one LED light bulb and Jackie bought a couple of small things, but we didn’t get much. There were far fewer vendors than in previous years. I don’t think FMCA is treating their vendors very well because they are getting fewer and fewer at the various rallies. We were going to stay and watch the rally parade at 4:00, but we learned it had been rescheduled for Saturday because of the bad weather. We went back to the coach and had a quick bite to eat before coming back for the evening entertainment.
In past years they haven’t had any entertainment at the Western Area rallies that we had much interest in, however, this year they have a couple of acts that looked interesting. Tonight’s was a Doo Wop group called The Alley Cats. It is a foursome that has been singing together since college, starting in 1987, and they sing completely acapella. No instruments other than their voices and a tambourine for rhythm. They did about a 90 minute show and it was fantastic. They did a whole bunch of 50's and early 60's songs, all of which we knew, and they did them well. They also had some good comedy bits in the act. A very good act and we are glad we came. After the show we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Friday, January 11th, we had lunch at the coach and then went out to try and get a geocache or two. We needed a find for this date and we ended up getting two new finds that were fairly close together. After caching we went back to the rally and parked so we could take another shot at the vendor area. Spent an hour or so walking around, but still didn’t get anything. After shopping we went back to the coach to rest for a bit before dinner.
At abut 5:30 we left to drive to the Indio Elks Lodge for dinner. The entertainment for tonight didn’t look interesting to us, so we decided to visit our old lodge with some friends. We invited the Babcocks and Wilsons, along with some friends of the Babcocks, Larry and Renate, and a couple that we met at Indian Waters when we were there, George and Mary Marasco. The lodge was packed, but we managed to put together a table for ten in the bar, so we sat there and had a drink and then dinner.
When I joined the Elks in 2000, and Jackie in 2002, we were living in Indio, so the Indio Elks was our lodge at the time. When we went full time in the coach and moved our address to Pahrump, we transferred our membership up there. We were hoping to see some of our old friends at the lodge, but we only saw two people we knew. There were a hundred people in the dining room and bar, but no one else we knew. Oh well, it’s been seven years since we spent any real time at this lodge, so everything changes.
Dinner was great. Half the table had the liver and onions, which was wonderful, and everyone enjoyed their meal. We sat and chatted with everyone until about 8:00 when the party broke up and everyone headed for home. We spent the rest of the night in the coach relaxing.
Saturday, January 12th, a clear, but very cold morning. Temps in the low 30's this morning and expected for the next few days. It’s 70 on the east coast and 50 during the day here in the desert. The weather is upside down. Jackie went down to the rally grounds just before noon for a craft class and I stayed at the coach and did some administrative stuff. My desktop computer in the bedroom crashed last week and I have been working to restore it. Windows quit completely and I had to reload a new copy of windows and rebuild everything from scratch. Fortunately, I had backed everything up so I didn’t lose any data or pictures in the crash.
We left the fairgrounds after Jackie’s class and went out again to get a geocache because we needed one for this date. We ended up with two again because they were very close to each other. After caching we went back to the fairgrounds and the vendors again. Jackie bought a scarf, but other than that, no purchases. We just don’t need anything that anyone here was selling.
About 3:00 most of the vendors were putting stuff away since this was the last day of the rally. We went out and set up our lawn chairs on the parade route. The Western Area
One of the more interesting entries was a large elephant costume which held two people, at least judging by the number of legs sticking out the bottom. Every fifty feet
After the parade we went home for a quick cocktail before coming back down to the auditorium for the evening’s entertainment. Tonight was a tribute act featuring two guys, one trying to imitate Elton John, and the other Billy Joel. They had two pianos on the stage, along with a full band and some backup singers. The show was supposed to have been one of the top lounge shows in Vegas.
The Elton John imitator was awful. A lot of people got up and left while he and the band were performing. He didn’t look or sound like Elton John, and he didn’t really do justice to the songs either. The Billy Joel imitator was much better. The second half of the act was very good, and was well received by what remained of the audience. After the show we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Sunday, January 13th, another travel day. I heard coaches starting up as early as 6:30, but we didn’t get everything packed up and ready to travel until about 10:00. We got our of the fairgrounds and started east on I-10 towards Ehrenberg, Arizona, a trip of a
Monday, January 14th, we had a little trouble adjusting to the time change. We both ended up sleeping in until after 8:00 because the sun doesn’t come up until about 8:00 here at the western edge of the Mountain Time Zone. It also doesn’t go down until about 6:30 or so, which is a welcome change from California.
We decided to just stay in today and rest. It is very cold, in the 50's, and very windy, so a good day to stay indoors. We just caught up on chores and TV watching. After dinner, about 7:00 or so, we went over to the clubhouse at the resort for a sock hop. There weren’t a lot of people there, a couple of dozen or so, but for the first hour there was some dancing and nice 50's tunes. About 8:00 a lot of the audience drifted out to go home, so the DJ, who also does karaoke at a bar in Quartzsite, changed over to karaoke.
Tuesday, January 15th, we another night of nearly freezing temperatures here in the desert. It actually went a few degrees below freezing just before sunrise, but not long enough, or low enough, to freeze the water supply hose. But it was still cold, and very windy which made the wind chill even colder.
We left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching despite the cold and wind. We needed to get at least one cache today for our days of the year challenge, so we braved the cold. We actually ended up getting eight new finds in about 90 minutes. It was cold, but we persevered. After our caching we drove back into Blythe and went to the grocery store for a few items before going back across the river to home. We spent the rest of the evening in the coach relaxing with the TV.
Wednesday, January 16th, it is finally warming up a bit. It was up to a balmy 37 degrees this morning when I got up. We left the coach about 12:30 and picked up our friends Sharon and Curt Minard who are also here at the RV park. We have known Sharon and Curt, whom we met through the Bullocks, for about three years now. They are part time RVers who live in the Sacramento area.
The four of us went to Garcia’s, a very nice little Mexican place in downtown Blythe that we have been to before. We had a great meal and some nice conversation with our friends. After lunch we went back to the coach and relaxed for the afternoon. About 7:00 or so we walked down to the clubhouse for a night of karaoke.
Curt and Sharon also came down. Curt doesn’t sing, but Sharon used to sing professionally with a country band years ago and has a great voice. There were a number of great singers
Thursday, January 17th, we left the coach after lunch and drove the 20 miles to Quartzsite, Arizona for a geocaching event. Quartzsite is the town in Western Arizona where thousands of RVers come for part, or even all, of the winter months. Towards the end of January there is always a big RV show in town, what they call “the big tent,” where all kinds of vendors set up and sell stuff for two weeks. For the last four or five years we have stopped in Quartzsite during the RV show and stayed for a week or so. The past two years we camped in the desert with the Minards, the Bullocks and some of their friends.
This year, with the Bullocks spending the winter in Florida and Curt and Sharon being the only one’s of the group coming, the boondocking thing didn’t sound like much fun. We were pretty burned out on Quartzsite anyway, so we decided to just skip it this year. However, when we learned that there was a geocaching event at the town activities center today we decided to drive in for the day. We also had to get a geocache for this date for our days of the year challenge, so it seemed like a good day for caching too.
We stopped and picked up one cache just a block from the activities center before we went to the event. We got to the event, put on by some local cachers, just before 1:00 and were surprised at the number of people in attendance. There appeared to about 100 people or so at the event. They had the two hour event set up sort of like a “speed dating” room in that you were assigned to a table and then every 20 or 30 minutes you would switch to another table. That way you would have new people to talk to. There were a couple of cachers there that we already knew, but most we hadn’t, so the table switching was fun. They had a lot of drawings for prizes, but we didn’t win anything. It was a great event and we met a lot of nice people with the same hobby as us.
After the caching event we drove over to the big swap meet that is set up every year and spent a couple of hours walking through the various vendors. We bought a few little things, mostly caching stuff. They shut the vendors down about 4:00 or so and we left there and went out to get a couple more caches before it got dark. We found two more caches in the desert at the edge of town.
After our caching we drove to the north end of town to the Grubstake Restaurant, one of our favorite places to eat in Quartzsite. The Grubstake is best know for their fish and chips. It is kind of a rustic bar and grill and we have been there a number of times over the years. This time we noticed that the service was very slow and the waitress told us that there were only two servers for the whole place, and she was new, having been there only three days. She also said the kitchen was short staffed and there was a trainee in there too. It took over an hour to get our fish and chips dinner out. The food was still excellent, but the service left a lot to desire. What we found out when we left is that the place has changed hands, the guys who used to run it have left. It appears that the new owners don’t have a handle on the place yet. I hope they get there act together, because we really like the place. By the time we got out of dinner it was dark, but the way back to the RV park was mostly freeway, so the drive was no big deal. We got home about 7:30 and just relaxed the rest of the night watching TV.
Friday, January 18th, our last full day in Ehrenberg. We went out after lunch to the laundry facility here at the RV park and did all of our laundry. Once we had our clothes done, about 2:00 or so, we drove into Blythe to collect a geocache for the day. We needed at least one today for our challenge. We got the one and then headed back to the RV park. We got our clothes put away and relaxed for the remainder of the afternoon.
A little before 7:00 we walked down to the clubhouse for another night of karaoke fun. There were about nine people in the rotation and a number of them were very good singers. Our friends
Saturday, January 19th, moving day. Because the big RV show in Quartzsite starts today we couldn’t get our normal two week stay here in Ehrenberg. I didn’t call early enough to beat the rush, so we were only able to get six days. We packed up the coach and got ready to move south to Winterhaven, California, a very small town just across the Colorado Rive from Yuma, Arizona. We have stayed at the Pilot Knob RV Resort almost every year since we have been traveling.
We stopped on the way out of the RV park to fill up the propane tank. We filled up when we arrived in Pahrump back in late October, but we have had a lot of cold weather, so we have burned through quite a bit of gas. After we got our propane we started south and the 83 mile trip to Winterhaven.
We got into Pilot Knob about noon, got a nice spot and spent the rest of the day getting set up and just relaxing. We are going to be here for a full two weeks before moving about 20 miles east into Yuma proper for a month long stay. We really enjoy Yuma and are looking forward to our six weeks here in the area.
Our arrival here in the Yuma area marks a great place to close this chapter. We will publish again in a couple of weeks. Until next time, stay well, be happy and enjoy every day life gives you. Bye.
