Silent Valley Club - Relaxation in the Mountains, Part 2

Welcome back readers. Our last chapter concluded on Sunday, October 26^th while we were parked at the Silent Valley Club RV Resort in the mountains south of Banning, California. We are about half way through our month long stay here.

Monday, October 27^th, we had a leisure day at home. The park is now about two thirds empty and much quieter than it was over the Halloween weekend. We did a few chores, including taking down the Halloween decorations. Even though the actual holiday isn't until this coming Friday, it is over up here. We won't have any trick or treaters on the 31^st. Tuesday was also a stay at home day.

Wednesday, October 29^th, we left the coach about 11:30 and drove down the hill and headed east towards Palm Springs. We stopped first at the UPS service center near the Palm Springs Airport to pick up our mail. After getting our mail in hand we continued east to the Cactus Jack's restaurant in Palm Desert to meet with our friend Barry Cohen. Barry and his wife Colleen were our closest friends when we lived in Indio. Colleen died a little over a year ago and we have been worried about Barry living alone. They were high school sweethearts and had been married for close to 50 years when Colleen died.

Regular readers will know that Barry and Colleen have actually lived full time in an RV longer than us, however, they seldom traveled. Up until a couple years ago Barry worked full time running his transmission repair shop and they had a beautiful lot at the Motor Coach Country Club in Indio. Barry finally sold his shop and just before Colleen died they sold their big lot and got a smaller lot in the same resort. We were worried that Barry wouldn't want to go out on the road without Colleen, but we were pleased when he went out this past summer and traveled for several months. He went to Denver and spent a month or so with his daughter, then drove up to Idaho and Washington State to meet with friends. He only got back to the resort in Indio a few weeks ago. We had talked to him on the phone a couple times over the summer, but this was the first time we were able to meet with him and talk about his experiences.

We had a great lunch and talked about his travels and his family. He really seemed to enjoy traveling with his friends from the resort and I think he will probably continue to try to get out of the desert during the hot summer months. After lunch with Barry we stopped at the mall and shopped for a while before heading back to Silent Valley for the rest of the night.

Thursday, October 30^th, was another stay at home day. About 1:00 or so we had a visit from an old acquaintance of mine from my Maricopa County Sheriff's Office days. Bob McCullum and his wife Lola had just arrived in Silent Valley in their RV and had come over to visit. I have a lot of people from the Sheriff's Office on my Facebook page, including Bob and he had sent me a message a few days ago that they were going to be up here and would come by to see me.

Bob and Lola just started full timing in their trailer back in June of this year. They are not members of Silent Valley, but are up here on one of the affiliate programs for a week. I did not know Bob well back in the 1970's, he had started a couple of years before me and he worked mostly on the east side of the county, Mesa, Chandler, that area, while I worked on the far west side of the county. Back in those days it was almost like two different Sheriff's Offices, not of lot of interaction between the patrol divisions on opposite sides of the county. The substations were sixty miles apart and unless you worked downtown you never ran into someone from the “other side” of the county. Bob also retired nine years before me, so I had probably crossed paths with him two or three times in the early part of my career.

Nonetheless, we knew all the same people and had a good time playing “where are they now” with a lot of folks I know. Jackie and Nola talked about their efforts to go out full time in their RV and what some of their future plans were. After a couple hours of pleasant conversation they left to go back to their trailer. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in the coach.

Friday, October 31^st, Happy Halloween. We left the coach after lunch and went down to Banning to do some geocaching. We had a good afternoon of caching, getting 13 new finds and one DNF. After caching we stopped at Walmart for some supplies before heading back up the hill for the rest of the day. No trick or treaters up in Silent Valley tonight, no one walking around at all.

Saturday, November 1^st, was another stay at home day. It had started raining pretty hard about 3:30 in the morning and it rained on and off for most of the morning. Our passenger side slide leak came back again, dripping water into the kitchen. Not a drenching, but enough to be concerning and using up a lot of towels. We played some cards and watched a couple of movies we had taped. A good day to stay indoors.

Sunday, November 2^nd we got an extra hour to sleep thanks to daylight savings time and going back an hour. We wanted to get off the hill today, but thanks to yesterday's rain it was too wet to geocache, so after lunch we drove down the hill to Banning and went to the small theater in town for a movie matinee. We saw Ouija, a horror flick starring no one you would know. It was pretty generic and typical, but it did have a number of “jump” moments and an interesting plot line with a twist I didn't see coming. At least it was a horror movie with no slasher moments, no nudity and not much foul language. It has been a while since we saw a movie and although this was not Oscar material, we still enjoyed the afternoon. After the movie we stopped at the grocery store for a newspaper and a few other things and then headed up the hill for the rest of the day. Monday was another stay at home day.

Tuesday, November 4^th, Happy Election Day. We already voted in Nevada by absentee ballot, so we decided to take a drive to Idyllwild, a small mountain community about 16 miles south of Silent Valley. They have a number of nice restaurants and shops there and we like to visit at least once during each stay at Silent Valley. We had lunch at a place we had not visited before, the Mile High Cafe. It had pretty good Yelp reviews so we thought we would give it a try. It was interesting in that it seems to be owned by a Korean family, so there is Asian food as well as the usual American food on the menu. I had a Reuben sandwich that was very good. Jackie had a veggie omelet breakfast that she also said was good. The portions were not very large and the prices were a bit higher than we would normally expect for what we ate, but the service was good and the food was very tasty.

After lunch we did a little bit of geocaching. We have cached up here in Idyllwild a lot, so there are not a lot of caches close in town for us to go for. We struck out on our first two efforts, getting DNFs for both caches. On the third try we finally found one. Yea! Since we were running out of daylight we settled for the one find and went into town to walk around a couple of shops. We spent an hour or so shopping, but didn't buy anything. About 3:45 we headed back to Silent Valley since it now gets dark up here by 5:00 or so with the loss of daylight savings. We stayed in and watched TV the rest of the evening.

Wednesday, November 5^th, we left the coach a little before 11:00 and drove down the hill to visit with a friend ours who lives in the north part of Beaumont at the Highland Springs Country Club. Marianne Conner and her late husband David were friends of ours in Indio when we lived there and they also went full time in their RV in 2005. We traveled on and off with them for a couple years before David got sick and they had to buy a house and get off the road. David died about four or five years ago but we still try to see Marianne whenever we can.

We drove to her house and visited for a few minutes and then the three of us went to a restaurant in the nearby community of Cherry Valley for lunch. We went to Flo's, a place that is fairly new to this area, but has had a place in Chino for fifty years. It is a breakfast and lunch place that has very good reviews. The service was good and Jackie's chicken fried steak breakfast was enough for two people. She said it was very good. I was not as happy with my beef dip, which was small and a little light on meat. When we checked in on Yelp we got a free piece of pie, which was apple and very good as a closer for the meal. After we ate we sat and talked for an hour or so before we went our separate ways. We made a stop at Home Depot for some lights and then went back up the hill for the rest of the day.

Thursday was another stay at home day. Did a few things around the coach and spent some time in the hot tub. My old work acquaintance Bob and his wife left this morning for one of their parks on the Colorado River.

Friday, November 7^th, we left the coach about 11:30 and started down the hill enroute to Moreno Valley to meet our friends Gary and Ramona Wilson for lunch. We had arranged to meet them at the Olive Garden near the mall. We arrived about the same time they did and went into the restaurant for lunch. The last time we had seen the Wilson's was back in April, the last time we were up here in Silent Valley. We do stay in touch by email and Facebook, but it is still nice to meet in person from time to time.

We had a very nice time chatting with the Wilson's about everything going on with them. They had quit full timing a couple years ago, and had sold their motor home, but now they were getting the urge to get back into the lifestyle. Their health issues were somewhat resolved and they told us they are shopping for another motor home as we speak. I hope they can find something and get back on the road because we always enjoyed traveling with them.

The meal at the Olive Garden, where we met for lunch, was not so great. I was disappointed and dismayed. We were seated quickly and a server was right there and overall service was not bad, with one exception, unexpected and, in my mind, covert up-selling. We ordered drinks and the server brought an order of bread sticks, as always. She then asked if we would like some marinara or Alfredo sauce for the sticks. I didn't think anything of the offer, thinking it was just Olive Garden being the old Olive Garden I remember. We said, sure bring some of each. It wasn't until we got the bill at the end of the meal that I saw they charged $3.79 for each sauce! The waitress never mentioned there was an extra charge and I don't recall seeing it on the menu. To top it off, the marinara wasn't even very good. It was more like a weak tomato basil than a thick, rich marinara I expect from a restaurant claiming to be authentic Italian. I ordered the seafood Alfredo and it was OK, except that the bay shrimp and bay scallops in it were very tiny and there were not many of them. The portion was also much smaller than I remember, even for the lunch portion. I was very disappointed in both the quality and quantity of the meal.

I have heard rumors that the stockholders of the Darden company, the owners of both Olive Garden and Red Lobster, have been unhappy with the performance of the company and that some major stockholders, finance people, not restaurant people, have been visiting the restaurants and then passing on "ideas" to the restaurant management people regarding how to cut back on expenses and increase profits. I saw a lot of this going on today, compared to the last time I visited an Olive Garden, about a year ago. One small, but telling example is there is no longer any fresh ground pepper offered. That is a small, personal touch but clearly some bean counter decided it was not profit generating, so dump it. Olive garden used to be one of my favorite places to go for a good meal, no more. I will not be back and watch people who no nothing of food try to run what was a fine restaurant chain.

After a long chat with Gary and Ramona we left the restaurant and made a couple stops at stores in Moreno Valley. This is the center of retail shopping in the Inland Empire and they have just about everything you could want. After shopping we headed back up the hill and relaxed win the coach the rest of the night. Saturday we stayed in Silent Valley. We went down to the Village Center after lunch and did our laundry. We didn't have much competition for the laundry facility as there are probably only thirty or forty RVs in the entire park, which has over 850 spaces. We wanted to get our laundry done now as we head down to Indio on Monday and didn't want to have to do laundry down there right as we settled in.

Sunday, November 9^th, we stayed around the coach, cleaning house and putting stuff away in preparation for moving tomorrow. Monday, November 10^th, Happy 239^th birthday to the United States Marine Corps. We were packed up and leaving Silent valley about 11:30 enroute to Indio, about 50 miles east. Since we only had a short distance we didn't hook up the car and Jackie drove behind me for the trip. We arrived at the Indian Waters RV Resort about 1:00 or so and quickly registered and were led to our site. We are going to be here in Indian Waters for two months, one of our longest stays since we moved to full timing in 2005. We got the basics set up, utilities, slides out, TVs working, that kind of thing before heading to the nearby Cactus Jack's Restaurant for a late lunch, early dinner. We called our friend Barry Cohen, who only lives a mile or so west, and he met us so we could chat. We had a great lunch and a good time talking to Barry.

We then went back to the coach and did a little more settling in. I wanted to get the sun screens up since it is still in the 80's here in the desert. After we got settled in we just relaxed for the rest of the evening. Our departure from Silent Valley after a month marks a good point to get this episode of the blog published. We will update the blog from time to time during our stay here, every couple weeks or so. Until the next time, remember the words of journalist Franklin Jones, “Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.” See ya next time.