Hello again, welcome back to our story.
Our last episode concluded on Saturday, December 26th, after having
been in our old home town of Indio, California for about three weeks.
Sunday was a stay at home day as it was cold and windy and we didn't
feel like going out.
Monday, December 28th our good friends
Peggy and Vernon Bullock arrived at the RV park. We last saw them
last March before we started our trip to the Midwest. They are going
to be traveling with us for the next three months and we were really
happy to see them again. They got parked in a spot right next to us.
After they got setup we had happy hour together and then Jackie
served what has become the Bullock Welcome dinner, her chili relleno
casserole. We had a great dinner and spent a couple of hours talking
and catching up. After they left to go back to their coach we
watched TV for a while.
Tuesday, December 29th, we went out
after lunch to do some geocaching with the Bullocks. We got them
interested in caching several years ago and they enjoy doing it with
us. We had a great afternoon, getting 17 new finds in a few hours.
One of them was another milestone for us, find number 7,600. After
caching we went back to the coach to relax for a while. About 5:30
the four of us left and drove to Cactus Jack's for dinner. Peggy and
Vernon love CJs and wanted to go there. The food was as good as
always, but the service was not up to par. The waitress was not very
efficient and the busboy was useless. We still enjoyed dinner
though, because we had great food and great company. After dinner we
went back and had a night cap with the Bullocks before heading to our
coach for the night.
Wednesday, December 30th, we left the
coach about 12:30 and drove to a deli in Indio called TKB for lunch
with some friends. We had lunch with Roy Skultin and Darcy Quimby,
who are local geocachers that we have known for a couple of years
now. We had a great lunch, talking caching and also giving them
information on Alaska. They are going up to Alaska in their little
A-frame travel trailer and spending three months touring Canada and
Alaska. It will be a lot different than our trip in a 40 foot motor
coach, but they will have a great time. After lunch we went to
Kohl's for some after Christmas sales. Bought a couple of things at
huge discounts and then went back to the coach.
We had cocktails with the Bullocks in
their coach. We didn't want a big dinner, so after we got back to
our place we fixed the leftovers from yesterday at Cactus Jack's and
that was our dinner. We watched TV until bedtime.
Thursday, December 31st, we had lunch
and then left the coach to take in a movie. Peggy and Vernon were
waiting for their grandson Troy and his wife Makayla to come up for a
visit. Troy is the Marine stationed in Yuma and he got a couple days
off and decided to come up and spend New Years with Peggy and Vernon.
This was the first year in about four
years that I wasn't committed to working the New Year's Eve party at
the RV park. We switched parks this year, so I don't have to spend
the afternoon getting set up. We went to see the movie Joy, which is
a true story about Joy Mangano, the housewife who invented the
Miracle Mop and presented it herself on the then-new shopping network
QVC. She went on to become an inventor and very successful
entrepreneur, as well as a well known spokesperson on the other
shopping network, HSN. Jennifer Lawrence played Joy and the
supporting cast was great also. It was a well acted movie, although
there were parts where I got a little lost when they moved back and
forth in time without a lot of hints as to what time period they were
portraying. After the movie we stopped and picked up a couple of
geocaches because we wanted to get the souvenir Groundspeak was
giving out for the last day of the year, “Goodbye 2015. They also
have one for tomorrow called “Hello 2016,” and we will get that
one because we are attending a small caching event tomorrow.
We had cocktails at 5:00 with the the
four Bullocks, catching up on what has been going on with Troy and
Makayla the last year. We haven't seen them since last March when we
left Yuma. We then left so they could have a family dinner and we
went back to our coach and celebrated the New Year on New York time,
in bed and asleep by 11:00.
Friday, January 1, 2016, Happy New
Year! The beginning of another great year. We left the coach about
1:30 and drove to La Quinta for a geocaching event. This was mostly
the local caching group and we knew the majority of people who were
there. The theme of the event was a travel bug race and we were
entering a TB in the race ourselves. We had a great time visiting
with friends and other cachers. We left there about 3:30 and after a
stop at Walmart we headed back to the coach.
We had cocktails with Peggy and Vernon
about 5:00. Troy and Makayla had left this morning to head back to
Yuma. After cocktails we had rice and black eyed pea soup with ham.
Peggy had read somewhere that it was good luck to have black eyed
peas on New Years day, so she made up a big batch. Vernon made some
of his corn bread too, and together we had a great first meal of
2016. We stayed and talked until about 8:00 when we went back to our
place for the rest of the night.
Saturday, January 2nd, we left the
coach after lunch to do some geocaching. We were originally going to
go earlier and take Peggy and Vernon with us, but their little dog
Belle was not feeling well this morning and they didn't want to leave
her. We drove to Desert Hot Springs to cache, mostly because we
wanted to get some caches by WheelerDealers, some caching
acquaintances of ours. When we first started caching in 2008 there
were a lot of caches by these owners in the Coachella valley and they
were some of the most innovative and fun caches to find. They are
“Junk” builders, using all kinds of old, rusty junk to make very
interesting cache containers. A few years ago they kind of lost
interest in caching and no longer put out new caches. This past year
they became acquainted with the local group, Coachella Valley
Geocachers, and it perked their interest back up and they have
started putting out new hides again. Yea!
We ended up getting 13 new finds in a
couple of hours of caching and nine of them were WheelerDealer
caches. One of them was right up to their old standards. The cache
was a paint can which was five feet down inside an old rusty pipe
sticking up out of the ground in the middle of the desert. I think
it was an old well pipe. You have to assemble a line and hook out of
some shower curtain hooks and old wire (all lying in and around the
cache) and pull the can out of the pipe. We had a great time,
retrieved the cache and got some trackables from it.
After caching we headed back towards
Indio, stopping for fuel and then at the Palm Desert Cactus Jack's to
see Kevin, the evening bartender who Jackie has known since the early
90's. He was the night bartender at the original, and only at the
time, location in Indio up until they opened the new place in Palm
Desert. He moved over there because it was quite a bit closer to his
home. We try to drop in and say hi at least once during any visit to
the Coachella Valley. We had one drink, talked to Kevin a little,
and then went back to the RV park. We had cocktails with Peggy and
Vernon at happy hour and then the four of us did a steak BBQ. We had
a great meal and talked for a couple of hours. Belle was over her
sickies and seemed to be her old self again. After dinner we went
back to our place for the rest of the night.
Sunday, January 3rd, we had a stay at
home day for the most part. I spent some time putting stuff away in
preparation for our leaving tomorrow to go to the fairgrounds in
Indio for the FMCA Western Area Rally. Jackie and Peggy went out and
did a Walmart run while I stayed home and took care of a few things.
In the afternoon we had three more of our friends come into the RV
park, Ray and Suzie Babcock, Gary and Ramona Wilson, and Larry and
Renate Mitchell. They are all coming into the park for one night and
then in the morning we will all go to the rally together. That way
we end up parked near each other at the rally. At 5:00 we had happy
hour with all five couples in the Bullock's coach and then the ten of
us managed to all eat together in the coach as well. It was a little
tight, but we made it work. Peggy made a big ham and everyone else
brought something, so we had potatoes, veggies, bread and salad,
along with the ham and desert too. Everyone had a good time talking
and we all went back to our own places about 7:30 or so.
Monday, January 4th, we were packed up
and ready to leave the RV park by 10:00. We only had about four
miles to drive this morning, over to the Indio Fairgrounds for the
FMCA Western Area Rally. Since we are always in the area we have
been to every Western Area rally since 2007. The other four couples
also left the RV park as we did and we all arrived at the rally by
10:30 and were parked and set up by 11:30. We are all close together
on the fairgrounds so we will have a great time. The rally doesn't
start until Wednesday, so we have a couple of days of relaxation
first.
About 2:00 we went to Costco and the
Bullocks went with us. After Costco we were back at the coach for
the afternoon. We had happy hour at the Bullock's coach at 5:00.
The Mitchell's didn't come because they were tired, but the rest of
us had a good time. About 6:00 the Wilson's and Babcock's left to go
have Italian food. We had leftover black eyed pea soup, salad and
bread with Peggy and Vernon. By 8:00 we headed back to our coach and
relaxed with the TV the rest of the night.
Tuesday, January 5th, while we are
parked at the fair- grounds, the rally hasn't officially started yet.
Jackie and Peggy went out shopping about noon and I stayed to wait
for the oil change mechanic. He arrived a little before 1:00 and did
the annual oil change, filters and lube on the motor home. As he was
doing the work it started sprinkling and by the time he was finished
an hour later is was raining pretty hard. It rained pretty good
until about 5:30 or so and big areas of the grass field we are parked
in were under an inch of water. We had cocktails at our place at
5:00. Everyone was there except for the Mitchell's. A little after
six the eight of us went into downtown Indio to one of our favorite
Chinese places, China Bistro. This is menu Chinese, not a buffet,
and it is very good. We all ordered one of the family style dinners,
so we got lots of food, soup, appetizers, the works. We had a great
time with the eight of us around a big round table with a big
turntable in the center to move the food around the table. Just like
I remember Chinese restaurants when I was a kid. We finally finished
about 8:00 and everyone went home to their coaches for the rest of
the night.
Wednesday, January 6th, the first
actual day of activity at the rally. We left the coach about 11:30
and met Peggy and Vernon at the TKB Deli for lunch. We have been to
this sandwich shop several times and it is great. After lunch we
went over to Rancho Mirage for Jackie's annual mammogram. After that
we drove around and stopped at a couple of thrift stores to kill time
before our appointments with our regular doctor. January is when we
do our annual physicals and get our prescriptions renewed. Both of
us visited with the doctor and reviewed our labs. There were no big
red flags for either of us, other than my triglycerides were
elevated. The other cholesterol numbers were OK, just the one. The
doctor gave us new prescriptions and we were done for another year.
We headed back to the fairgrounds and had cocktails with the group,
this time in Ray and Suzie's place. No one felt like going out for
dinner, so we went back to our coach and watched TV until bedtime.
Thursday, January 7th, we went over to
the events area of the fairgrounds about 10:30 so we could help with
the Full Timing Seminar. A couple of years ago we were able to get
the seminar put on the regular agenda for the Western Area rally.
Normally this seminar is only done at the big FMCA rallies. Jackie
and I did it the last couple of years, but since Mike Neighbours is
the new President of the Chapter, it fell to him to do the seminar.
Jackie and I helped by talking about a couple of the topics. We also
had a bunch of handouts leftover from the FMCA rally in Pomona last
year, so we brought those. After the seminar we went back to the
coach for a quick lunch and then back to the events area to do some
shopping in the vendor area.
We didn't buy too much. I got a couple
of shirts and some filters for the coach. I did explore the cost of
a pair of tires for the front of the coach. Our tires are aged out
at seven years and getting pretty cracked on the outside. We can
wait until Yuma to get the rears, but I will feel better with good
steer tires before we go any more miles. About 4:00 we set up our
chairs for the parade. This rally has a parade every year set around
the theme for the year. This year is “Call of the Wild.”
Everyone was in animal costumes and jungle was the theme for most
floats. The parade was a lot smaller this year because the rain kept
a lot of people from making floats.
After the parade we went back to the
coach and had cocktails with the group, this time in Gary and
Ramona's coach. About 6:30 we went back to the entertainment area
for the evening show. The group tonight was an acapella group called
the Alley Cats that we have seen before. They put on a wonderful
show, singing a lot of old 50's songs with no instrumental backing.
The place was packed and everyone seemed to really enjoy the show.
After that we went back to the coach until bedtime.
Friday, January 8th, I went down to the
vendor tent in the morning and setup the replacement of our front
tires on Saturday morning. $1,300 and change for two tires. Yikes.
About 11:30 the group split up and I took the other other four guys
and we all drove to Cathedral City to a restaurant called Boys that I
used to frequent when I worked out that way. They have a killer
pastrami sandwich that I have raved about with Ray and Vernon, and
everyone wanted to try it. We had a great lunch with just the guys
and everyone liked the pastrami. The girls went out to lunch
together and then several of them went to the ladies tea at the
fairgrounds.
About 4:00 Jackie and I walked over to
an area where another RV Club, the Overland Trailblazers, was having
a happy hour. They have about 80 members, so it was a large group.
We know a number of their members from our travels and we are
considering joining the group. After visiting with them for a half
hour or so we went back to our coach. About 6:00 we left with Peggy
and Vernon for a dinner with the four of us at Cactus Jack's. Dinner
and drinks there were, as always, very nice, although it was a busy
Friday night and a little noisy. After dinner we dropped Peggy and
Vernon off and went back to our coach and watched TV until bedtime.
Saturday, January 9th, the tire people
came about 9:30 and replaced the two front tires on the coach. It
only took the guy about an hour to do both tires. Now I feel more
comfortable traveling to Yuma, where we will replace the other four
tires. After lunch we went down to the vendor area to meet our
friend Barry Cohen and his lady friend Cathy. We also ran into
several other friends including George Bishop, the owner of Cactus
Jack's, and some RV couples that we know that we somehow have missed
seeing over the last week. About 3:00 we left the fairgrounds and
Jackie got a haircut. We then went to Winco to stock up on some
things for our time in Ehrenberg and Quartzsite, Arizona. There are
not a lot of big grocery stores around the area, especially
Quartzsite.
We had cocktails with Peggy and Vernon
about 5:00. The other three couples went to the casino for the
seafood buffet. Peggy had some chili colorado she had made up and we
had that along with some refried beans for a very nice dinner. We
talked until about 8:00 when the powerball lottery drawing came on
TV. The five couples in our group had all pooled money and bought 50
tickets. Nobody won, including us. Well, we did win $4.00, which
was an 80 cent return on everyone's twenty dollar buy in. After the
drawing we went back to our coach and watched TV until bedtime.
Sunday, January 10th, another travel
day. We packed up the coach and by 10:30 we were hooked up and on
the road, heading east 100 miles to Ehrenberg, Arizona, just across
the river from Blythe, California. The Bullock's and Wilson's
trailed us down Interstate 10 as they are also going to Ehrenberg,
and continuing to travel with us through the end of March. The
Babcock's and Mitchell's left the fairgrounds and went back to the
Indian Wells RV park in Indio for one night. After that the
Mitchell's are heading home and the Babcocks are heading to Indian
Waters in Indio for a week. We will meet up with Ray and Suzie in
Quartzsite and they will then be with the group through March.
We arrived in Ehrenberg at the Arizona
Oasis RV park about 1:30 or so local time. We lost an hour crossing
into Arizona. We got set up at the RV park, which had been one of
our Western Horizons resorts until it was sold a couple years ago.
We had cocktails with the Bullocks and then Peggy made her wonderful
penne pasta dinner for the six of us. We also had salad and bread,
so it was a complete meal. After dinner we talked a bit and then
everyone went back to their coaches for the rest of the night. We
have eleven days here in Ehrenberg before we move on to Quartzsite.
Monday, January 11th, we left the coach
after lunch and drove into Blythe to do our laundry. That took a big
part of the afternoon, after which we went back to the coach. Before
we left Jackie got a call from the breast center in Rancho Mirage
that they had found a spot on the mammogram from last week and that
she needed to come in for a follow-up ultrasound exam. We agreed
that we shouldn't put that off until we got to Yuma, we decided to
drive back into the Coachella Valley tomorrow for the test.
We had cocktails with the group at 5:00
and then we did a BBQ at our house, some burgers on the grill and a
bunch of side dishes. We had a great time talking and about 8:00
everyone headed back to their own coaches and we relaxed the rest of
the night.
Tuesday, January 12th, we left the
coach about 10:30 and drove the 115 miles back to Rancho Mirage and
Eisenhower Hospital. It only took about 90 minutes to get back to
the valley, so we stopped at the mall and had lunch. We also did a
little shopping before heading over for the test. The ultrasound
took about a half hour, after which it was determined that there was
some sort of small mass in the left breast and that she needed to
have a needle biopsy done. We went ahead and scheduled that for
tomorrow. I figured the quicker we got this stuff out of the way the
quicker we could get on with life without having to worry. We then
drove back to Ehrenberg, arriving about 5:30 local time, another
ninety minute drive. We had cocktails with the group and Peggy
served a dinner of beans and ham soup with salad and corn bread.
Another great meal with friends. We stayed until about 7:30 before
heading back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Wednesday, January 13th we were on the
road again about 10:30. It was again about an hour and a half to the
valley where we had a quick lunch before going to Jackie's 1:00
appointment. The procedure took about an hour and we were on the
road heading back to Ehrenberg. The results from the biopsy should
come on Friday or Monday at the latest. We got back to the coach
about 5:00, but decided that we were pretty tired from all the
activity and that we were just going to stay in for the night. We
had a light dinner and relaxed with the TV the rest of the night.
Thursday, January 14th we decided we
needed a stay at home day after two days of non-stop travel. I got a
few chores done, as did Jackie, but mostly we just stayed in the
coach and rested. We had cocktails at our place with the group and
then Jackie served chili relleno for dinner, along with some rice and
beans. Jackie was only a little uncomfortable because of the
incision from yesterday, but overall said she felt good. After
dinner we talked and watched the Republican Debate until about 8:30
when everyone left to go back to their own places.
Friday, January 15th, Jackie got a call
from the breast center that the biopsy indicated that the lump was
benign, no cancer! YEA! The still want her to have the cyst or
whatever it is removed, but it can wait until we get to Yuma in a few
weeks. We hung around the coach until about 3:00 when the six of us
drove into Quartzsite to do some exploring and attend a vendor party.
We first stopped at an RV supply place called “The Gambler” in
Quartzsite. They didn't have the parts I was looking for, I need a
new kit for our bathroom exhaust fan. After that we drove out into
the desert a few miles to the encampment for the Escapees Boomers RV
Club. The Boomers come out here every year during the Quartzsite RV
show. We are not members of the Boomers, but we know several people
that are. One of them happened to be in the encampment and we
chatted briefly before leaving and heading back into town. We are
not too big on boondocking in the desert, but the fact that the
Boomers go five miles out on desert gravel roads adds even more to
the idea that we probably won't ever be with them.
After visiting the Escapees en- campment
we drove through the RV park in Quartzsite where we will be going to
stay on Thursday. We have never been to the place, we learned about
it through our friends the Minard's, and we wanted to see what we are
getting into. It really wasn't too bad a place, full hookups and way
better than out in the desert. We then drove to the area where the
big tent for the RV show is set up to attend a vendor party put on by
Redlands Truck and RV. This is a repair facility in Redlands,
California, near San Bernardino, that is a big sponsor at the Indio
FMCA rally and also sets up a presence in Quartzsite in the winter to
cater to the RVs out there.
We learned while we in Indio at the
rally that Redlands was putting on a big customer party and they were
giving away wrist bands at the rally for the party. All of us picked
up some and decided that we would come and see how the party was.
There were probably three or four hundred people there. They had a
full bar with pretty good booze, and a BBQ catering company out of
Hesperia, California. The whole event was free, the only thing we
spent was five bucks for fifty-fifty tickets. The booze was great
and the food was outstanding. We saw a couple of people we knew, but
mostly it was just the six of us sitting together and having a good
time.
We finally left the party about 7:30
and drove back to the RV park. Jackie and I went down to the
clubhouse to catch the end of the karaoke show. I got to sing a
couple of songs before we headed back to the coach for the rest of
the night. Peggy and Vernon came down and listened for a while too.
Saturday, January 16th, we left the
coach around noon and drove into Blythe to have lunch at Popeye's
Chicken. We have been wanting to try Popeye's fried chicken for a
while now, after hearing their ads on TV for “Louisiana Good”
chicken. After trying their food, both spicy and regular, our
opinion is, it's OK. I don't think it is as good as the Colonel and
won't change my loyalties. It is no where near as good as the real
southern fried chicken we had in Memphis last summer. After lunch we
went to Kmart for a couple of things and then met up with the
Bullock's to do a few caches.
We went with them to a cache along the
banks of the Colorado on the California side. They had tried to find
it a couple of days ago with the Wilson's, but struck out. We had
found this cache almost two years ago and they hoped we would
remember about where it was. We went there, but the area had
changed, a lot of the bushes removed and the road graded. It hasn't
been found in over a year and we couldn't find it again, so I think
it is gone. After that miss we drove a few miles into the desert
looking for a different cache on the Arizona side of the river, but
gave up on that one when we couldn't find a decent path into the
cache area. Two tries, two strikes. Maybe next time.
We then went back to the RV park and
relaxed for a while. About 5:00 we had cocktails with the group over
at Peggy and Vernon's coach. Everyone went back to have dinner on
their own about 6:30 or so and to have a quiet night.
It has now been about three weeks since
we last published, so this marks a good place to close this chapter
of our story. We will be here in Ehrenberg for another few days,
then in Quartzsite for a couple weeks before heading to Yuma for two
months. Until the next time, remember the words of Albert Einstein;
“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is
a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” See
ya next time.
