Travels with Roy and Jackie

Fun and Friends Around Yuma, Arizona

2012-02-12T15:33:00.000-08:00

Hi there, welcome back to our story. We published the last chapter after our arrival in Winterhaven, California on Saturday, January 28th. We came to Winterhaven from Quartzsite, Arizona, about 100 miles to the north, after spending a week dry camping in the desert. We are staying at the Pilot Knob RV Resort, one of our membership parks, here in Winterhaven. Winterhaven is a very small farming community located just west of the Colorado River along Interstate. The current population of the town is less than 400. Pilot Knob is ten miles west of the state line, and although in California, and technically a part of the Pacific Time Zone, the resort stays on Arizona Time because the nearest large city is Yuma, Arizona, just across the Colorado River.

Although the area was populated by native Americans for centuries, the first real European settlement of the area began after the Mexican American war in 1848 with the founding of Fort Yuma. The area was an important transhipment area between California and what was then the New Mexico Territory because the area around what is now the City of Yuma offered a relatively easy crossing for the Colorado River. At that time the Colorado was free flowing and quite a wild river at times and, what became known as Yuma Crossing, was critical for the emigrants going to California. Yuma also has a history of being a river boat port prior to the building of the dams along the Colorado which have reduced it’s current state to a mere trickle as it approaches the Sea of Cortez to the south.

Yuma was incorporated in 1914 and it’s current population is just under 100,000. This population probably triples in the winter as Yuma has become a favorite of the “snowbird” set, travelers who come into the area in the winter months, usually in an RV of some sort. There are hundreds of RV parks in Yuma and the surrounding area. One of Yuma’s most famous sites is the old Yuma Territorial Prison. The prison accepted its first inmate on July 1, 1876. For the next 33 years 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, served sentences there for crimes ranging from murder to polygamy. The prison was under continuous construction with labor provided by the prisoners. Many of the cells were simply caves dug into the rocky hillside with steel bars across the front. They were not even enclosed in a building. Since temperatures in the area can climb to 120 degrees in the summer, it was not the most comfortable place to be imprisoned. In 1909, the last prisoner left the Territorial Prison for the newly constructed Arizona State Prison Complex located in Florence, Arizona. The prison is site is a historic site and Arizona State Park today, as is the Yuma Quartermaster Depot, a part of the Army’s old Fort Yuma.

We spent the first day in Pilot Knob getting setup and relaxing. We had traveled here with our friends Peggy and Vernon Bullock, and they were parked in the spot next to ours. We got together for happy hour and cooked some steaks on the BBQ for dinner.

Sunday, January 29th, we made a quick run into Yuma to Sam’s Club for some supplies. Other than that we didn’t do too much except relax around the coach. Monday we went out after an early lunch to some geocaching with the Bullocks. Although both of us have cached extensively around the Yuma area in the past, which normally would limit the number of caches which we had not yet found, this is a very active caching area. There are a lot of cachers who live and visit this area, and they are always putting out new caches. We found that there were a couple of sets of caches not too far from Pilot Knob, out in the desert. We headed out in the Bullock’s “real” Jeep (a Wrangler) and were able to capture 23 new caches in the course of about three hours. A pretty good day of caching. After we got home we had cocktails and then Peggy made up a batch of spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

Tuesday, January 31st, we left Pilot Knob fairly early, about 10:30, and we and the Bullocks drove into Yuma to do some geocaching and shopping. We did a few caches first and then drove to old downtown Yuma for the street fair and farmer’s market that is there every Tuesday. We spent an hour or so walking the market and looking in local stores. After our shopping we headed to a place called Penny’s Diner for a late lunch. Penny’s is a shiny, chrome old style diner located not too far from the main shopping area of Yuma. The food was very 60's drive-inn, burgers, fries and shakes, but they also served breakfast. Although moderately priced, the food was nothing out of the ordinary, just OK. Not a place I would recommend to anyone.

After lunch we drove down to the Marine Corps Air Station located adjacent to the Yuma Airport. We wanted to go into the pass office there to get our passes for the Goldwater bombing range, which is located along the south edge of Yuma County. Although this is a restricted military area, some parts of which are still active for bombing and gunnery practice, much of the range is open to the public so long as they obtain a free permit from the Marine base. They require the permit just so they can warn you of the dangers of being on the range. There are hundreds of geocaches out on the range, so that is why we wanted to get our passes. We have cached there in the past and went out there last year with the Bullocks.

Unfortunately, we got to the base at 3:04 p.m. and the pass office closes at 3:00, so no passes today. We went out and did a few more caches before deciding to quit and go to Walmart for some shopping. We ended up with six new caches for the day and one DNF. After Walmart we went back to Pilot Knob. Jackie and I went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em at 7:00. The Bullocks don’t play, so they stayed home. Jackie pretty much broke even over the two hours we played and I only lost a couple bucks. Had a good time and got to play with some of our Canadian friends that we frequently run across during the winter months.

Wednesday, February 1st, MEDICARE DAY! YEA! Today is the day my medicare starts and I now have complete medical coverage at a reasonable cost. I no longer have to pay nearly $700 a month for an insurance policy that doesn’t cover much of anything. Unfortunately, Jackie woke up feeling sick today. Pretty ironic when you think about it. She spent the entire day sleeping, so I just hung around the coach and relaxed. Hopefully, she will feel better tomorrow. I think it is just a head cold, but we will see.

Thursday, February 2nd, Jackie was feeling better, but still not 100 percent. We decided to have a light day, so we didn’t do anything major. After lunch Jackie and I drove into Yuma to take her to an urgent care. She was hoping to get an allergy shot like she got in Albuquerque back in October. She got to see someone pretty quickly and they put her on a different type of antibiotic and some allergy meds. Hopefully, this will help her to feel better. We also did some errands, the bank, Walmart, and went by to “fix” the DNF cache we had the other day.

Yesterday Peggy and Vernon had gone into town for some errands and they went by the cache and looked again, finding it this time. This prompted us to get out there and find it too. We like to fix DNFs. After shopping we went back to the park. We got together with the Bullocks for happy hour and then Jackie served dinner in our coach, one of her wonderful Chili Reallno casseroles. We had a great time and spent the rest of the night in the coach.

Friday, February 3rd, we left the coach early, about 9:30, and drove to Algodones, Mexico. Regular readers will know that Algadones is a small town just across the border from Winterhaven that is almost exclusively a medical town. Dentists, optometrists, pharmacies, and some light shopping. Ninety percent of the visitors you see are senior citizens down there getting something fixed. I was there to get a tooth pulled. Eeks! I had an old post crown come off a few months ago and when I went to a dentist to get it glued back on he told me the tooth was cracked and the post would no longer work. I waited until we got here to have it pulled out because it is far less expensive. We have been using the same dentist here for four years, so I had no problem letting him do the work. Within 20 minutes I was done and ready to go back to the states. The doc told me that there was quite a bit of infection so he cleaned it out good and put a couple of stitches in. I stopped at one of the pharmacies to fill a prescription for antibiotic and waited an hour to get through the border station back into the states.

We had taken two cars down to the border, so Vernon took me home while Peggy and Jackie stayed down in Mexico shopping for another couple hours. Jackie also had to get here teeth cleaning done. I was worried that my mouth would hurt after the anesthetic wore off, but I was surprised to find it didn’t. I remember the same thing happening after I had my surgery three years ago to remove the melanoma from my back. I should have been in quite a bit of pain, but the medications I take for facial neuralgia seems to block most deep tissue pain. By the time Jackie got home I was doing OK and even the bleeding had stopped completely. We spent the rest of the night just relaxing.

Saturday, February 4th, we left the coach early, about 10:00, with Peggy and Vernon and drove into Yuma to the Arizona Marketplace, a large outdoor swap meet on the east end of town. The Marketplace has several hundred booths, most of which are under steel shelters which keep the sun out, selling most everything you can think of. Vernon made the comment that it was like the Quartzsite swap meet without the sand and sun. We spent several hours walking around the booths and also had lunch out there. We ended up buying some shirts, a new mat for outside the door of the coach, some flags and some other odds and ends.

After our shopping we drove back to the RV park for the rest of the afternoon. We had happy hour with the Bullocks and Gary and Ramona Wilson stopped over as well. They are staying about five miles east at a different RV park. Later on we and the Bullocks had dinner together with Jackie making stuffed green peppers. A friend of Peggy’s, Sylvia, who is staying in Yuma for a week or so getting some dental work done in Algodones, also came to our place for dinner. After dinner we chatted for a while before everyone left and we just relaxed for the rest of the night.

Sunday, February 5th, my 65th birthday. We and the Bullocks left the RV park early, about 10:30, to go out and do a slew of geocaches that were scattered along a stretch of desert just a few miles from the RV park. We went out and did thirteen caches before coming back to the park for lunch. After lunch we went out again and cached until about 4:00. We ended up with 31 new finds and no DNFs for the day, a new all time daily record for us. Yea! Later on in the evening the four us drove into Yuma to the Outback Steakhouse for a birthday dinner. We had some cocktails and good food and conversation. It was a really nice way to celebrate my birthday and I really enjoyed it. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Monday, February 6th we had lunch at the coach and then packed up our laundry and drove into Yuma. We had gone two weeks and it was time to either do laundry or start recycling underwear. We chose laundry. It took us several hours to do our all laundry before we headed back to the coach for the rest of the day. We had happy hour with the Bullocks and I cooked up a big pot of chili for the four of us for dinner.

Tuesday, February 7th, our 8th wedding anniversary! Yea us! We awoke to a chilly and cloudy morning. The weather said there was a chance of rain today and tonight with temperatures in the low 70's. That would be comfortable except there was a brisk breeze blowing that cooled things off even more. We and the Bullocks packed picnic lunches and we headed out in out Jeep about 10:30 a.m. for a day of geocaching. A couple days ago we set a personal single day best total of 31 caches and we were determined to better that today. This area has a plethora of new caches and we wanted to take advantage.

We drove to an area about ten miles northwest of the RV park where there was a series of 31 caches put out along about ten miles of desert road. There were also a number of other single caches in the area. We cached for five hours and we ended with a total of 47 new finds without a single DNF! A new record total for both us and the Bullocks. We had lunch in the desert and had taken the Bullock’s dog Belle with us so she had some good exercise running in the desert. Not only did we set a daily record, we hit our 3,500th cache in the afternoon and the last cache we did put the bullocks at 1,000 finds. Great milestones for all of us.

After caching we went back to the RV park and had happy hour. We were pleased to find that our friends Ray and Del, and Karen and Dave, had arrived at the park while we were out. They are two of the couples we boondocked with in Quartzsite a week or so ago. Tomorrow Curt and Sharon, one of the other couples we were with, will also get to Pilot Knob. Karen and Dave were at the casino, so we didn’t see them, but we did do happy hour with Ray and Del, and the Bullocks. We were all pooped from the day of caching, so after cocktails we just went back into our coach for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, February 8th, our reunion anniversary. On this day in 1998 I got back in touch with Jackie after not having been in contact since 1977. We didn’t go anywhere today because we are doing a little group party tonight and we had some things to do to get ready. We have a very nice area between our coach and the Bullock’s coach which we are going to use for a karaoke party. I spent several hours in the afternoon putting out some rope lights and our light-up palm tree that we haven’t used in quite some time. I also put out our portable fire pit. I set up all the karaoke equipment and we got ready to party. Curt and Sharon came in to the park in the afternoon and got the site right next to the Bullocks, just two down from us.

Jackie spent time in the afternoon putting together some jalapeno poppers for the party, which was actually a pot luck event. At 5:00 everyone came over and we started the music, the drinking and the eating. In addition to the group we were with in Quartzsite, the Wilson’s came over from their park down the road, and our caching friends Russ and Nellie came over. Sometime during the evening we even had visitors we didn’t know from our park come over and sit and listen to the music. For the most part it was only Sharon and I who sang. Del came over and did a couple of songs, but most of it was we two. We had a great party which went on until almost 9:00 when everyone packed up and headed for their own RVs.

Thursday, February 9th I spent a little time in the morning cleaning up from the party the night before. About 9:30 we drove back down to the border and went into Algodones, Mexico. Karen, Dave and Sharon all went along since they had not yet gone down there. We had appointments at 10:00 with the eye doctor to get new glasses, and after our exams and picking out our frames, the five of us went to lunch at our favorite restaurant down there, the El Ranchito. The food and beer were excellent and we had a great lunch. We spent the next couple of hours walking around Algodones shopping while waiting for our glasses to be finished.

About 2:00 we went back and picked up our new glasses. Both Jackie and I got two pairs of glasses, one regular and one tinted for sunglasses, all four for $500. This is less than half what they would have been in the States. We got back across the border and drove into Yuma to Sam’s Club to get some liquor. We were running low and they had the best price in town on vodka. After Sam’s we went back to the park for the rest of the night. No one was really hungry after our big lunch, so we just had happy hour with the group and then went down to the clubhouse to play Texas Hold’em. I lost two dollars in the game, but Jackie was the big winner in the room. She cashed out over $12, which was a $7 win on the night. Yea! After poker we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Friday, February 10th, most of the gang left the park in the morning to go to the Arizona Market Place swap meet. We didn’t need to go again, so we had lunch and then went to the nearby Quechan Casino. Since we were members of their players club they sent me a $10 free play certificate for my birthday. I played my $10 gift and then another $20 without winning anything big. Jackie hit a Royal Flush on the machine next to me and ended up cashing out $100. Yea, we left with more than we came in with.

After we got back I spent several hours putting away our outside decorations and stuff, getting ready for our departure tomorrow. I also did some cleaning and rearranging in the cargo bays. This is something that needs to be done periodically to keep things neat and tidy. Later in the afternoon Jackie spent some time with Sharon working on crafts. We had happy hour with the group, but had dinner only with the Bullocks. We got together and did some carne asada on the BBQ and had it, along with all the other Mexican goodies. We had a great dinner and spent another couple hours just chatting until it was time for everyone to head off to bed.

Saturday, February 11th, another travel day for us. We left Pilot Knob about 10:00 and actually headed east first. We drove the ten miles back to Yuma to get fuel for the coach and the car. Diesel fuel in Arizona was $3.82 per gallon whereas in California it is closer to $4.50 per gallon. This was enough of a difference, particularly when buying 60 or 70 gallons, to make it worthwhile to go out of our way a little bit. After fueling the vehicles we hooked up the car and started west on I-8 towards San Diego, about 175 miles away. There was not a lot of traffic until we got to the outskirts of San Diego, but the wind was horrible for the first two thirds of the trip. The wind had to be gusting to 40 mph and I was struggling to keep the motorhome between the lines.

We arrived at the Sante Fe RV park, just off of I-5 near Mission Bay Park, about 2:30 and parked in our space shortly after. We have stayed in this park every year for the last four years and have been in this space before. I was pleased to see that they had trimmed all of the huge trees that cover the park. In the past we could not get any space where our roof top satellite dish would work and I had trouble even finding a place for the portable dish to get a signal. This time, no problem, the roof antenna locked right in. It was cool and cloudy when we got into town and by the time we got set up it really looked like it might rain.

We spent the rest of the afternoon getting settled in for our two week stay here in San Diego. This also seemed like the ideal place to close out this episode of our story and get it published. We will publish again in a couple weeks when we leave here. Until the next time, stay happy and healthy and enjoy every wonderful day. See ya.

Hanging With Friends in the Desert

2012-01-30T14:43:00.000-08:00

Hello readers, welcome back. We concluded our last chapter on Monday, January 9th, when we left the Indian Waters RV Resort in Indio, California, and drove into the FMCA Western Area rally at the Riverside County fairgrounds, also in Indio.

Tuesday, January 10th, was essentially a free day for us. Nothing really starts at the rally until Wednesday. We left the fairgrounds after lunch and went out to do some geocaching with the Bullocks. In the course of a few hours we had managed to garner ten new finds, with one additional DNF for our stats. About 5:00 we drove over to the handicap parking area of the rally where most of our friends ended up. The Bullocks, the Wilsons, and the Babcocks are all parked much nearer to the “action” of the rally in handicap. We had cocktails and then Ray Babcock treated everyone to his signature taco salad dinner. It is a relatively simple dinner but very tasty. Ray has served it to us several times over the years at various events and it has become a bit of a tradition for the group when we get together. After dinner we chatted for a while and then packed up our chairs and went back to our coach for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, January 11th, we went over to the rally auditorium to participate in the Chapter Fair. Most FMCA rallies hold a Chapter fair early in the schedule which allows the various Chapters to set up tables to try and recruit new members. Today I was going to represent the Full Timers Chapter at their table. I am the Vice President of the Chapter and the President could not be at this rally. Jackie also helped at the table. We talked to a few potential members, but didn’t have anyone sign up today. The fair went for two hours and after the fair we went out to do some shopping at Walmart.

After our shopping we drove to a nearby pizza place in La Quinta for a get together for Monaco coach owners. There are two Monaco coach chat groups on Yahoo and I belong to both of them. Some of the Monaco owners suggested that we have a “meet and greet” so one of the members set up a pizza party at the Lamplighters Pizza place. The owner was very nice and offered a 20 percent discount for our members. Since the Bullocks, the Wilsons, the Babcocks and the Minards all own Monacos as well, they all came too. There were probably fifty people there so I think the place made money, even with the discount. We had a very nice time and the pizza was good too. After the get together we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Thursday, January 12th, was the first day of the rally during which they held seminars and meetings, and the first day the commercial vendors were open for business. We had committed to helping with a luncheon put on by Bev and Jerry King for the Military Veterans’s Chapter, so we left about 10:00 to go to the King’s house, only a mile or so from the fairgrounds, to help get things set up. The King’s live in a luxury RV resort community called Desert Shores. The lots have small houses built alongside pads sufficient to park a very large RV on. Since they have this nice place to put their RV when they are in Indio, they are not parked at the rally site. They also own a regular home in San Dimas, California.

We helped Bev and Jerry set up the party and about 11:30 the guests arrived. We ended up with about fifty people and everyone had a great time. The Military Veteran’s Chapter is one of the larger chapters of FMCA and is a very popular one. We had a very nice time and stayed until the party was over so we could help clean up. By 2:00 we were back at the rally doing some window shopping in the vendor area. We didn’t buy anything, but we still like to look at all the stuff they have for sale. There are also a lot of RV resorts with booths, and they like to give away free nights, so we watch for those kinds of bargains too. We did pick up a free seven night stay in El Mirage, Arizona, a northwest suburb of Phoenix, where we plan to stay in March. Free is good, very, very good!

About 3:30 we went over to where our friends are parked and set our chairs up along the rally parade route. One of the traditions of the Western Area rally is they always have a parade on the first full day of the rally featuring a lot of the Western Area chapters. Every rally year is a different theme, this year’s being “Pirate Adventure.” Last year was a frontier theme. A number of the chapters build fairly elaborate floats for the parade and they end up with a couple hundred people participating in the parade. It is a lot of fun to watch and the participants really get into the theme. Lots of pirates and wenches to watch. Yea! After the parade we had cocktails with the group until it got too chilly to sit outside. We then went back to our coach for the rest of the night.

Friday, January 13th, yikes, Friday the thirteenth! Oh well, we ain’t afraid. We headed to the main area of the rally about 11:00 so we could have lunch on the midway. One of the things the rally does for participants is include a $4 food vendor voucher for each person. Of course, the food booths on the midway charge an arm and a leg, maybe even an ear or two, for their food. Nonetheless, we got lunch on the midway. After lunch Jackie headed off to a seminar on microwave cooking while I just browsed the vendor area and the coach sales area. Still couldn’t find anything to buy from the vendors. I did find a coach I really liked, a 2007 Monaco Signature, their top of the line coach. It had been a custom build and the interior was all black leather and charcoal colors. The outside was red and black. A very nice coach that I would probably love to have. However, even at a reasonable $325,000, it is unaffordable to us. The coach sold new for $700,000. We would still have to give our coach and probably another $250,000 to get it and that is not going to happen, especially for a coach only two years newer than ours.

Jackie left the seminar early because it was boring and the two of us looked at coaches for about an hour or so and then spent another hour in the vendors before deciding to go back to the coach to rest. About 6:00 we left and drove down to La Quinta to the Sand Bar restaurant for dinner. Regular readers may remember that one of Jackie’s oldest and best friends, Nancy Heinrich, died suddenly a few months ago. Today was Nancy’s birthday and her daughter Vicky had set up a sort of remembrance dinner for close friends and family at the Sand Bar, which was Nancy’s favorite place to eat. We had celebrated Nancy’s 80th birthday with her here last year.

When we arrived Vicky and her son Shane, Jackie’s Godson, were there along with three other friends of Nancy’s. Ultimately there were eight of us at the dinner and several other people came up and talked to the group. The piano player was quite good and played a couple of songs requested by the group in memory of Nancy. Towards the end of the evening I got up and sang Sinatra’s Summerwind with the entertainer. In his defense, the place was pretty much empty by the time he invited me up. Dinner was pretty good, although the service was very poor. I would have expected much better from what is considered to be a high end restaurant. I certainly would never recommend the place to anyone despite it being one of the oldest restaurants in La Quinta. After dinner we said our goodbyes and went back to the fairgrounds and the coach for the rest of the night.

Saturday, January 14th, we woke up and were surprised to see an overcast sky. The clouds were high and light, and the forecast didn’t call for rain, so we weren’t too worried. This was the last day of the rally and everything would end this afternoon. I headed down to the fairgrounds about 11:30 to attend a seminar on writing. Actually it was more of a workshop put on by an author who recently self published a book. It was a very enjoyable and helpful session and revitalized my interest in writing. My problem is I’m sort of naturally lazy, I enjoy being relaxed, so I sometimes have difficulty driving myself to write, whether it be this blog, a newsletter article, or the novel I have been working on forever.

Jackie came down to the rally just as my session was getting out. She was down for a craft seminar, something about creating a commemorative plate. Not sure why we need more plates, we don’t use the one’s we have very much, but she thought it would be fun. Turns out the lady who was to put on the session was sick. She gave the few who showed up for the session their money back (they had to pay for supplies) and cancelled the class. Oh well, no plate for us.

Jackie and I then decided to just wander around and shop for the last afternoon of the rally. We spent a couple of hours in the vendor area and I bought a couple of things, including a toy. I finally bought myself a radio control helicopter. I have wanted one of these things since they first came on the market a few years ago. The prices have finally come down to where I could get a fairly big RC chopper for less than a hundred dollars, so I did it. I have always liked helicopters and back in the 80's when I was with the Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time flying in them when I commanded the Aviation Division. I just hope I don’t wreck the thing the first time I try to fly it.

The vendors started to pack things up about 3:00 so we quit shopping and went back to the coach for a little rest. About 6:00 we drove over and picked up the Bullocks and went to Cactus Jack’s restaurant for one last dinner in Indio before we left. We had a great dinner and great conversation with our good friends. After dinner we dropped Peggy and Vernon off at their coach and we went back to ours for the rest of the evening.

Sunday, January 15th, dawned another cloudy day, this time darker with a forecast calling for a chance of rain. Oh goody, the rain arrives on moving day. We packed up the coach and prepared for our drive from Indio to Ehrenberg, Arizona, just across the Colorado River from Blythe, California. The trip is only a hundred miles, and we had reservations, so we weren’t in too big a hurry to get out of the fairgrounds. Some folks sure were, I heard some of the big diesel engines firing up as early as 7:00 a.m. We finally pulled out of the parking lot at 10:30 and started east on Interstate 10.

There is not a lot to see along I-10 once you climb the long hill out of Indio and get up on the flatlands of the southern Mojave Desert. Jackie was reading and I was left with my thoughts as we cruised along at fifty-five. I was taken back to my early teen years by the occasional glimpses of what is left of old U.S. 60, the highway between Phoenix and Los Angeles before the interstates were built. My family moved to Phoenix from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1960 when I was thirteen. Sometime in the summer of 1961 we made the first of many trips from Phoenix to California in the family car. This first trip we were headed for Long Beach, California. My stepdad was in the Naval Reserve and each summer he would have to go for his two week active duty training. Since he was a Corpsman, the military version of a Physician’s Assistant, he usually did his training at a Naval Hospital facility. In 1961 he was assigned to the Naval Hospital at Long Beach Naval Base.

We were clipping along U.S. 60 in the 55' Ford that we brought from Wisconsin on a toasty July afternoon with the “450" air conditioning running at full blast. The cooling was obtained by driving 50 miles per hour with four windows down. We had climbed the hill out of Blythe, California and were crossing the Mojave Desert and I remember looking at the black stripe of two lane blacktop vanishing to infinity straight out in front of us, shimmering in the summer heat. The memory that sticks with me, and was kicked to the front of my mind by today’s drive, was of the dozens, perhaps scores, of small bridges crossing they myriad of desert washes. Each one of them adorned on each side by a three foot high, brightly whitewashed wooden guard rail. As you drive along the Interstate today you can still catch glimpses of these now faded white rails where sections of the old road survive alongside the freeway which supplanted it.

The real bout of nostalgia was triggered by the remains of a gas station about halfway between Blythe and Desert Center. All that’s left now is the empty hulk of a rusty steel building and the skeleton of the sign in front of the building. The station sits adjacent to the crumbling blacktop road with it’s faded yellow line. Just west of the old station is a small wash, with a small bridge lined by the wooden guardrails and their checkered white paint. I remember stopping at this station on that first trip to California to get gas, cool down and get a cold drink to drive off the heat of the desert.

The nostalgic mood was broken when we hit the outskirts of Blythe and realized that the day’s journey was almost over. We crossed over the Colorado into Arizona and took the first exit to our destination, the Colorado River Oasis Resort. This is one of our membership parks and we have stayed here many times. We checked in and as we were completing the process our friends the Babcocks and the Wilsons pulled into the parking lot. They will also be here all week before moving on to Quartzsite. We all got spots close together and got our coaches settled in. It will be nice to have full power and sewer after living in a parking lot for a week.

Once we got settled in and the interior of the coach back in order we relaxed and found we were more tired than we thought. We had considered going to play Texas Hold’em at the rec center tonight, but decided we were just going to take advantage of the opportunity to just veg in front of the TV. We “lost” an hour when we crossed into Arizona, so the clocks said it was an hour later than our bodies told us it was. We would have had to rush to make it in time and we just didn’t feel like hurrying. We will probably feel an hour behind for a few days. We ended up just staying in for the rest of the night.

I did spend several hours getting familiar with our new automotive GPS device. Our old Lowrance GPS, purchased in Florida in 2006, had finally given up the ghost last week. The new one I ordered online was waiting for us in the office here in Ehrenberg when we checked in. We got a nice Garmin Nuvi unit that, in addition to being a great GPS, will also accept the type of files we use in geocaching. This will help us by letting us preload our cache sets into the car GPS instead of having to enter them one at a time while we cache.

Monday, January 16th, I was initially a little shocked when I got up just before 8:00 a.m. and saw the sun just coming up over the horizon. We have been in California since the end of daylight savings time and have gotten used to the sun coming up before 7:00 and it being dark by 5:00 in the afternoon. I quickly figured out that our location here on the Colorado River puts us at the very western edge of the Mountain Time Zone. The sun comes up later and it stays light until about 6:00 at night. I like that much better. The wind was blowing pretty good, signifying the departure of the weak storm front from the day before. I was also surprised to discover that it was Martin Luther King Day, a Federal holiday. I know that MLK day comes around this time in January every year, but it is still not a holiday that springs to mind like Labor Day or Memorial Day.

After lunch we set out to do some geocaching. This is another area where we have done a lot of geocaching in the past, so it gets more difficult to get a list of caches that we haven’t already found within a reasonable distance. Fortunately, people are always putting out new caches, so we did manage to get a decent list. We had a number of potential First To Find (FTF) caches on the list, caches that did not indicate anyone had made the first find yet. However, the closest one eluded us despite a half hour of searching. We hate DNFs, but we really don’t like going to a brand new cache and having to log a DNF. Oh well, keeps us humble. The other FTF caches were about 15 miles south of Ehrenberg on a dirt road that runs parallel with the river. The wind was blowing very hard and whipping the sand and dirt around, so we decided to let those go until a more favorable weather day.

We still managed to find ten caches in a few hours, although we got one additional DNF in the process. Fortunately, a local cacher had put out a new series of caches along Highway 95 running north from Blythe along the west side of the river. The caches were only a few miles apart, so we gathered them up pretty fast. One of the caches had a travel bug in it that had to be one of the largest I have ever seen actually left at a cache to be taken. For those not familiar with caching, travel bugs are another part of the sport wherein items can be provided with an individual tracking number. It can be done by attaching a serialized dog tag to some trinket, or it can be a custom made coin with a unique serial number. These items are left in caches to be found, picked up, and then moved to another cache and left. Each of these travel bugs or travel coins are tracked individually on the geocaching website.

Most travel bugs are relatively small. There are some exceptions, most notably that one can get a travel bug decal with a serial number that you put on your car. However, since you won’t leave your vehicle for someone else to take, these types of travel bugs can only be “discovered” by cachers, that is, they log that they saw it at a certain location. However, at one of the caches today we found a full size, 14" car tire with a chain and a travel bug dog tag attached! Since we had no desire to haul around a car tire until we found another cache suitable to leave it at, we just discovered it. Nonetheless, when Jackie logged it later in the evening she found that it has already gone a number of miles from cache to cache. The cache we saw it at was very remote, so it was possible to leave it lying on the ground with little chance of accidental discovery by someone not a cacher. It would be difficult to find another cache nearby with the same characteristics.

After caching we made a quick stop at the store and then went back to the RV park for dinner. At 6:30 we went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em. This was another of the two hour, five dollar buy in games. There were a number of people there with whom we have played at other parks, including some of our Canadian friends that we played with a couple weeks ago in Desert Hot Springs. Neither of us had a winning night, we lost nine dollars between us, but we had a lot of fun. After poker we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the night.

Tuesday, January 17th, we decided that we needed a “chillax” day, just hanging around the house doing some light chores and relaxing. In the early afternoon I took my new helicopter out on the lawn for some practice flying. I know not to rush something like flying an RC plane, so I just worked on getting it up into a hover a few feet off the ground. After a few false starts and some adjustments I got to where I could bring it up into a hover without it spinning. Then I noticed it would start to crab sideways after it lifted off. I finally noticed that a breeze had come up which was pushing the chopper. It is very light weight, so it is easily affected by wind. I know that eventually I will have the skill and confidence to fly it in a light breeze, but for now I stopped practicing to ensure that I didn’t fly it into an obstacle and break it before I had a chance to really learn how to use it.

Other than that I did some housekeeping and administrative things and Jackie did some light housekeeping in addition to just watching TV and chilling out. At happy hour we got together with the Babcocks and the Wilsons for cocktails on the lawn. Later we all went into Ray and Suzie’s coach for dinner. Suzie had made a nice salad and a big bowl of bean and ham soup. We had a great dinner and finally went back to our coach about 8:00 where we stayed the rest of the night.

Wednesday, January 18th, we again spent most of the day around the house. Jackie was making dinner for everyone tonight, so she needed to be home in the early afternoon and I had made an appointment for an awning guy to come out and measure our slide topper awnings for replacement. As it turns out, it’s a good thing we didn’t go out because the awning guy came by early, around 2:00. I gave the go ahead for him to order the awnings and he said they should be in tomorrow. Pretty quick service.

About 4:30 we had happy hour again with the Babcocks and the Wilsons and later everyone came into our coach for dinner. Jackie made chicken enchiladas with all the fixings and everyone really liked it. After dinner we played a stand up comedy show we had saved on the DVR. We recorded this comic, Sebastian Maniscalco, when he had a Showtime special a few weeks ago. We had never heard of him before, but he was so funny we saved the show. I laughed just as hard this second time as I did the first time, and everyone else really enjoyed him too. He tells stories that are hystericaly funny and very relatable to real life. We have to watch for this guy to come to one of the casinos because I would love to see him in person. After the show finished everyone packed up and headed back to their coaches for the rest of the night.
Thursday, January 19th, we decided that we needed to get out and do some geocaching. The weather was cool but clear with no wind, so pretty ideal caching weather. As I have alluded to earlier, caches that are new to us in this area are getting few and far between, so we knew we were not likely to get a lot of caches for the day. We left before lunch and drove west on I-10 about 20 miles west of Blythe to Wiley’s Well Road. There is a large California State Prison complex about five miles south of the interstate on this road. One can just see the complex from the highway, although without the signs advising not to pick up hitchhikers you wouldn’t know what it was. We found three caches along an eleven or twelve mile stretch of Wiley’s Well Road. That pretty much exhausted the caches in that area, so we drove back into Blythe for lunch at Denny’s.

After we finished lunch we decided to make an effort to get one of the caches south of town that still had not been found by anyone. They were still potential FTF caches even after having been out there for a week. The caches were on the Arizona side of the river and would have required a 20 mile drive on a gravel road if approached from the Arizona side, likely the reason the caches have still not been found. However, I remembered from caching in this area last February that there was a single lane bridge across the river not too far from the small Arizona town of Cibola, which just happened to be only a couple miles from the cache we wanted to grab. We pointed the Jeep south out of Blythe and started towards the cache. We finally located the bridge and were just about to cross into Arizona when the awning guy called me and said he was at the park. He didn’t need to get into the coach in order to install the topper awnings, so I told him we would be there in a half hour or so and we continued on to the cache site.

We crossed the river on the old concrete bridge and quickly found the cache location on the levee road just north of the bridge. However, it took me about a half hour of searching in a rock and brush covered gully before I found the actual cache. But, I was rewarded with an FTF because there were no other cachers logged on the paper log. Yea, I would have really been bummed to go through all that trouble just to find that someone had beat me to the FTF. After we found the cache we crossed back into California and scurried back to the coach. We arrived back at the coach about an hour after the guy called and he was just finishing up. I got there just in time to review the work and pay him. Yea, new toppers. Hopefully I don’t have to worry about water intrusion from the slides the next time it rains.

Later in the afternoon we went to Gary and Ramona Wilson’s coach for happy hour and a dinner of heavy hors d'oeuvre. We had little pigs in blankets and little chicken wings and little shrimp. Lots of good nibbles in small forms. We ate and chatted until about 7:30 when everyone went back to their own coaches for the rest of the night.

Friday, January 20th, we left the coach about 10:30 or so and drove across the river to Blythe to attend the 25th Annual Blythe Bluegrass Festival at the fairgrounds. Although not my absolute favorite genre of music, I do enjoy listening to bluegrass from time to time. However, I think the last time I went to an actual bluegrass festival was in Wickenburg, Arizona back in the 80's. Gary and Ramona Wilson are big fans and they come to the Blythe event almost every year. We don’t go out of our way to be here when the festival is going on, but this year the timing was right and it was this weekend, so we went for the day.

The event is not too large, area wise. There were two stages set up along with a row of food vendors and another row of merchandise vendors. We wandered through the vendor booths for a while and then sat at one of the stages and listened to a group called Lonesome Otis. They were quite good and we enjoyed the show. When they stopped to change bands we went over to the food area to get some lunch and met up with the Wilsons and the Babcocks. The Wilsons bought the three day pass, but the Babcocks were in just for the day as we were.

We all sat down and had lunch. Unlike the fairgrounds in Indio, where the FMCA rally was, the food here was reasonably priced and actually quite good. I had a Philly cheese that was actually better than the one I had at Denny’s yesterday. I was waiting for a screen printed tee shirt I bought to be made, so Jackie and I sat and listened to some more music for an hour or so. When it began to look like the shirt guy wasn’t going to get the thing made today we left. Gary will be here tomorrow and can pick it up for me.

We went back to the coach for the rest of the afternoon and got together with the rest of the group at 5:00 for cocktails. We didn’t do any dinner because we had a big, late lunch at the festival. At 7:00 Jackie and I went over to the clubhouse for karaoke. They
have a good turnout for karaoke here at this park and they have a pretty good sound system too. They had a big rotation of about a dozen singers, but I did get to do four songs during the evening. Most of the singers were good, so we enjoyed the music and even did a little dancing. All in all, a very fun evening. After karaoke we went back to the coach and off to bed.

Saturday, January 21st, we awoke to a very cloudy day with a lot of wind. The weather forecast gave a ten percent chance of rain and high winds all day long. We decided that the weather was not conducive to caching, and we really didn’t have anything else we wanted to do, so we just stayed in. Jackie touched up her hair color and we did a few other chores, but mostly just relaxed. We did hear from some friends that the big tent in Quartzsite, where the RV vendors set up shop for the January show, had been closed because of the high winds. Yikes. Gary Wilson did stop by in the afternoon with my shirt from the bluegrass festival. I guess they finally got their machine fixed. Other than that it was a quiet day around the coach.

Sunday, January 22nd, we left the park after lunch and went over into Blythe do some last minute stuff before our move to Quartzsite tomorrow. We did our laundry and then went to the grocery store for some last minute items. There are no big stores in Quartzsite, so we needed to make sure we had everything we would need for the next week.

After our chores we went back to the coach for the rest of the day. At about 5:00 we had happy hour with the Wilsons and the Babcocks. Later they headed off for dinner out and we went back into the coach where we relaxed the rest of the night.

Monday morning we got up and started packing the coach up for travel. We only have to go 24 miles, but the packing is the same whether it’s 24 miles or 240. We left the park about 11:00 and drove east to Quartzsite, Arizona. We will be dry camping in the desert here for the next five days with the same group of people we were here with last January. We drove a couple miles north of town to a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) camping area known as Hi Jolly Campsite. Our group was camped about a half mile east of the paved road. Some of them have been here over a week already, while some have only been here a couple of days. The one’s that were here with us last year are Curt and Sharon, Curt’s brother Ray and his wife Del, Dave and Karen , and Vernon and Peggy. There were two other rigs parked in the circle with some folks that we have met in passing but do not know well. Ernie and Andi, and Ron and Pam. There was another couple who had been parked with them, but had trouble with their batteries and had to move to town. They are Bob and Ann and will still be part of the evening group events at the campsite. No one was around when we got to the campsite, they were all in town shopping, however, we found a spot in the circle and got the coach parked and set up.

After we got set up we drove into Quartzsite to visit what is known to most everyone as “The Big Tent.” Technically, it’s the Quartzsite RV Show, but it’s in a big white circus sized tent so that’s what everyone calls it. The tent is filled with vendor booths selling or promoting all variety of RV related stuff, from cooking items to RV maintenance and repair, to campgrounds and resorts, to just stuff for RVs. The first thing we did was grab some lunch at one of the food booths. Then we started the tour. There were probably a couple hundred booths, including a row of them outside the tent, so we spent the next couple hours wandering around looking at stuff. I think the only thing we bought was a new remote control for our Direct TV receiver. My old one was getting sticky buttons.

After our shopping time we headed back to the campsite where we visited with folks for the rest of the afternoon. At 5:30 the entire group, sixteen people in all, went into Curt and Sharon’s motorhome for dinner. She served chicken cordon bleu and pasta, and it was great. Surprisingly, there was room enough for all those people to eat. Curt and Sharon have basically the same coach as ours, same model and floor plan, just a year newer, but we got everyone in and fed. After dinner we stayed and chatted until about 8:00 when we went back to our own coach for the rest of the night. When we walked between the coaches we found that the rain we had been waiting for all day had finally arrived. It was drizzling a little bit and it rained on and off most of the night.

Tuesday, January 24th, the rain and clouds were gone, but now the wind was blowing as the storm front moved out. It was also a little on the cold side. The weather forecast said it wasn’t going to get any warmer than the mid 60's today. We had lunch at the coach and then drove into Quartzsite to visit the giant swap meet that is always set up during the Winter season here. Actually, the whole town is a series of swap meets, with booths selling most anything you could think of. However, the largest one is called Tyson Wells and is not too far from where they put up the big tent for the RV show. We spent several hours walking around Tyson Wells, but ended up only buying a couple of little things. As is usually the case with us at these events, we really don’t need too much new stuff anymore. We have most everything we need or want, or at least what we can afford, so we just walk around and look at stuff.

We finally headed back to the campsite about 3:00 or so. Happy hour with the group was about 4:30 and about 6:00 we all gathered for dinner again. This time Del and Ray were primarily responsible for dinner and we had a very nice pork roast, along with scalloped potatoes and a couple of salads. After dinner we all went outside and sat around a big campfire for a couple hours just talking. Around 8:30 everyone headed to their own coaches for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, January 25th promised to be a very nice day, low seventies with just a little breeze. Our intent was to go out geocaching before lunch, however, we had a lot of geocachers in the group, along with some folks who wanted to see what it was all about, so it took until about 12:30 before we got everyone herded together and ready to go. Dave and Karen, who have been caching about a year and had a little under 300 finds, went with us in our Jeep. Peggy and Vernon, who are our biggest caching buddies, went with Bob and Ann in their big pickup truck, along with Sharon Minard. Sharon had never cached and was just curious. Bob and Ann want to cache and are just learning.

With the two vehicles in caravan we set out to do a series of caches along a gravel road known as the Old Yuma Road. On the way to the first cache we happened to see the most remarkable RV parked in one of the BLM camping areas. It was unlike anything I have ever seen before. Sitting in the middle of the desert was an art deco work of art doubling as a motor coach. It was mostly polished aluminum with a very nautical theme, including, believe it or not, an open, flying bridge just like on a big boat. The rig could be driven from the flying bridge or the cab, but the steering wheel today was up on top. A set of stairs descended down the back spine of the coach to the ground. The windows on the side of the rig looked like portholes and what wasn’t polished was a lovely turquoise color.

Several of the folks on the caching trip had Ipads and immediately looked up what we learned was called the “DecoLiner” motor coach. It is a completely hand built coach built on a 1973 GMC motorhome chassis and using the cab from a 1955 White truck for part of the structure. The artist is Randy Grubb and his company is called Blastolene. They have made a number of art pieces that were also motor vehicles. The vision for this coach started out as what Buck Rogers would have driven, but it ultimately migrated to the more nautical theme. It was only finished late last year and it is for sale, according to the sign on the coach. No price was quoted, but I can guess it would be high. This is a vehicle that is destined to live on the car show circuit.

Once we started caching we really knocked out the finds. By the end of the afternoon we had gotten twenty four new finds for our total, only a couple of finds shy or our all time high of twenty five. After caching we all went back to the campsite and sat around for happy hour. No group dinner tonight, several of the guys were going to an auction in town and most of the ladies were going to bingo. We and Peggy and Vernon headed back into town for dinner at the Grubstake, which is a very well known bar and restaurant on the north end of town. They are famous for their fish and chips, and during the season the place is always crowded. Some people that have reviewed the place on the internet gripe about the service being slow, but it is not a large place and with the number of people they put through there you have to go in expecting not to get served quickly. We had a couple of drinks and relaxed and had a marvelous meal. After dinner we went back to the campsite and into our coaches for the rest of the night.

Thursday, January 26th, Jackie and I left after an early lunch to some more shopping. We went to the big tent and walked through all the vendor booths again. I bought a tee shirt and a couple little odds and ends, as did Jackie. Nothing major. I had planned on buying a new satellite dish for use on my tripod since my old one is falling apart. However, earlier this morning Vernon told me that there was a guy just across the road from where we are camped that was selling a couple of satellite dishes. I looked at them and one was just what I wanted and only $20 instead of the $35 they wanted for a new one. Yea, scored one dish. We have a built-in dish on the roof of the coach, but I have always kept a regular dish and tripod in the bay for those times when we end up parked under trees and the roof mounted dish is blocked. The old one I had was used when I bought it six years ago and it was falling apart. Now I’m ready for another six years. We also walked through some of the other outside swap meet areas that we had missed on our previous visits, but didn’t find anything worthwhile.

After shopping we picked up a couple of geocaches on the way back to the coach. Today was Jackie’s day to cook for the group, along with Peggy. Jackie made a Chinese chicken salad. I was supposed to cook a pot of chili, but several of the group left this morning, so we would have had too much food had I made up the chili. I will save that for when we are all together again in Yuma in a couple weeks. While Jackie was preparing the salad I got out the karaoke stuff and started setting up for a karaoke night.

When we were here in Quartzsite with this same group last year we did a karaoke night and it was a big hit. Sharon Minard used to be a drummer and singer with a country band some years back and has a very nice voice. Around sundown everyone got together outside for dinner. This was the first night since we joined the group which was nice enough for everyone to eat outside. There was no wind and the temperature was very pleasant. Peggy made a ham and we had that with Jackie’s salad and some other side dishes.

After dinner we built a big campfire and started singing. Most of the songs were done by either me or Sharon, however, Ann joined in the singing after about a half hour. We sang and had a great time until almost 10:00 which is considered quiet time in the desert. We sang the last song, “Wonderful World” and packed up the audio equipment for the night.

Friday, January 27th, we decided to do some geocaching with Peggy and Vernon. The four of us loaded in our car and headed out about 10:30. We found three caches and then went into town to a pizza parlor called Silly Al’s. We have eaten at Silly Al’s for years, every time we come to Quartzsite. A couple years back Jackie was looking at the pictures on the walls of the owner and realized that it was a guy she dated back in the 60's. Unfortunately, we learned that he has passed away and the kids are running the place now. We had lunch at Silly Al’s with both the Minards and enjoyed the camaraderie.

After lunch we headed out for more caching. We found what is called a Power Trail located on a power line road about ten miles south of Quartzsite. A power trail is a series of caches that are put out pretty much in a line, with each cache only two or three tenths of a mile apart. This trail was small, only 20 caches, but we were able to snag them all in about 90 minutes. The nice thing about these power trails is that they let you build your numbers up on you stats. After the power trail we did a few more caches and we closed the afternoon with 26 new finds, a new daily record for us. Previously 25 was the most we had done in one day. We also found our 3,400 cache along the power trail. We had to take a picture with a sign commemorating the milestone.

After caching we headed back to the campsite. At happy hour everyone sat around the campfire and chatted. Since everyone had eaten a big, late lunch, we didn’t even put out any food. We ended up sitting around the campfire and talking until about 8:30 or so. We then went back to the coach and stayed in the rest of the night.

Saturday, January 28th, was moving day. We packed up the coach for the 95 mile trip south from Quartzsite to Winterhaven, California, just across the border from Yuma, Arizona on Interstate 8. We have stayed at this park, Pilot Knob, nearly every year since we have been traveling. We caravanned from Quartzsite to Pilot Knob with Peggy and Vernon who are also going to be staying there for two weeks. The Minards are headed for the Parker, Arizona area and also left the campsite today.

The ride to Winterhaven was pretty uneventful until we got about 30 miles north of Yuma and the wind picked up. By the time we hit I-8 through Yuma the wind was blowing 40 mph and it was really tough driving. We managed to get into the park about 12:30 and registered for our sites. We got side by side sites with the Bullocks and spent the afternoon getting set up and doing some house cleaning. A week in the dusty desert needed to be cleaned up.

We had happy hour outside with the Bullocks and it was very nice. The wind stopped blowing and we sat and chatted and watched the sun set, which was very pretty. Later we cooked some steaks and had dinner in the Bullock’s coach. Peggy made a pasta side dish that was delicious. We had dinner chatted until about 8:30 when we headed back to our coach for the rest of the night. It is nice to have a spot again with water, sewer and electric hookups. Dry camping in the desert is fun for short periods, but I like having the luxury of the hookups.

This is also the ideal spot to close this chapter of our story. We will be here in Winterhaven for two weeks. Until the next time, stay happy and enjoy every minute of your life. See ya.

Back in Indio Again

2012-01-11T09:49:00.000-08:00

Greetings again loyal readers and newcomers alike. Our last episode concluded on the day after Christmas with our departure from the Salton Sea area and our arrival in Indio, California, at the Indian Waters RV Resort. We were originally going to be in Desert Hot Springs at the Western Horizons (WHR) park, but recently discovered that we could into Indian Waters at a very good rate. Until this year Indian Waters was also one of our WHR membership parks, but this year the company sold the park to a private investor who converted it to a public RV park. However, they are still offering very good rates, as low as $11 a night, to WHR members, so we took advantage of the opportunity. As most of you know, we had a house here in Indio until we sold it and went full time in the coach in 2005. We have been in Indian Waters every New Years Eve since 2007, so we were glad to be able to get back in this year.

Tuesday, December 27th, we left the coach after lunch to go do some geocaching. Since we started geocaching in the Spring of 2008 we have been in and out of the Coachella Valley many times. As a result, there are fewer caches for us to find if we want to look for those that we have never found. None the less, local cachers are always putting out a few new caches, so we were able to pull up a list of caches we haven’t yet found. In a few hours we were able to get nine new finds, along with one new DNF. We sort of made up for the DNF, however, by finding a cache that we had to DNF last week. We went back for another look and found it this trip. Yea! We like “fixing” our old DNFs.

When we got back to the RV park we found that our good friends, Peggy and Vernon Bullock, had arrived at the park and moved into the spot next to us. We last saw Peggy and Vernon back in Farmington, New Mexico in October at the Rocky Mountain Area Rally. After the rally they headed back to their home base near Redding, California. Peggy is still recovering from surgery on her knee, but they had planned to be here for the New Years and will be traveling with us off and on for the next couple months. We were glad to see them and we spent the rest of the evening catching up with each other. Although we stay in touch through email and phone, it is still nice to catch up face to face. We put a quick dinner of grilled steaks together and had a great time.

Wednesday, December 28th, we decided to have a stay at home day to get some chores done. I did a couple of minor repairs around the coach and spent some time cleaning out my closets. I have a tendency to collect too many clothes, which is not good in a motorhome with minimal storage capacity. I cleaned out a bunch of shirts and pants and bagged them up for donation to a local thrift store. While we were working in the coach we were visited by the activities director for the RV park asking if I would do the music for the park’s New Years Eve party. When we had checked in on Monday I had let the office know that I would be willing to be the DJ, provided it wasn’t a late night party. We will start the music at 7:30, do a New York City celebration, and close down by 10:00.

About 5:00 or so we left the coach and drove to a nearby neighborhood to a holiday party hosted by Pat and Monty Montez. Pat and Monty are old friends from the Indio Elks Lodge and the Elks RV club. Regular readers may recall that we crossed paths with them back in August when we were in Amarillo, Texas. We had dinner with them one night as they were passing through town on their way back east. It was not a large party and there were only two other couples there that we already knew, Tom and Joan Bolares, and Bob and Gloria Baron. Both of those couples were also in the Elks Lodge RV club when we were active with the group. There were a number of other folks at the party also that were friends of Pat and Monty from other activities. They had a lot a great food, including some wonderful paella and sauteed calamari that Monty had made. He is Basque Spanish and loves to cook Basque food. We had a great time and stayed until about 8:30 or so when we left and went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Thursday, December 29th, we went out after lunch to do some more geocaching, this time with Peggy and Vernon. They have really become avid cachers since we introduced them to the hobby a year or so ago. We went out in our Jeep and did a series of caches set along an off-road trail south of La Quinta, not too far from the RV park. We had done the first third or so of the caches on the trail a couple weeks ago, but we went back and finished the series with the Bullocks. Before we headed home at dusk we had 13 new finds with no DNFs and the Bullocks, who also did the one’s that we had already found on the trail, ended up with 20 new finds, a really good day for them. One of the caches we went to, that was not on the SUV trail, was at a very old cemetery in a farming area. It appears to be used by migrant farm workers and some of the graves look like they go back to the turn of the century. Most of the graves looked like they were actually above ground and many had only worn wooden crosses for markers. Some of the other graves had all kinds of trinkets and decorations on them. Very spooky place, even in the daytime.

After we got home the four of us had cocktails on the lawn as the sun set and were joined later by Jay and Donna Blumenthal, who are only a few sites down the road from us. We then had a very nice dinner in the Bullocks’ coach with the main dish being a tomato and basil pasta dish that Peggy makes and we love. She had made it for us once before and I had raved about how good it was, so she wanted to make it again. I am a true, blue “meat and potatoes” guy, but this dish has no meat in it and I still love it. After dinner we chatted for a bit and then went back to our coach for the rest of the evening.

Friday, December 30th, shows the potential to be an excellent desert winter day, blue skies and temperatures in the mid to high 70's. I actually put on shorts for the day, the first time in quite a while. After lunch we had to go out and do some shopping. After an afternoon in the stores we came back to the park in time for a 4:00 p.m. happy hour on the patio by the pool. There were probably a dozen or so people there having nibbles and cocktails. Jay Blumenthal brought his keyboard over and he was playing accompaniment for a guitar player, providing music for the group. I don’t recall the name of the guy on the guitar, but I remember that he was in Pahrump back in October when we were there and came to karaoke night. He has a good voice and sings mostly country music. I hung around with the musicians and tried to sing a few songs, although I am lyrically challenged if I don’t have the words in front of me. Never have had a good memory for musical lyrics, no matter how many times I have done a song.

The happy hour lasted until about 6:00 when we and the Bullocks adjourned the party to our coach. Jackie fixed her taquito-based enchilada casserole for dinner and we had a great time. The Bullocks left for their coach about 8:30 or so and we just relaxed and watched TV for the rest of the evening.

Saturday, December 31st, another New Year’s Eve at Indian Waters. We didn’t stray too far from home today, other than a quick trip to the store to pick up a couple things we forgot yesterday and that Jackie needed to make a particular recipe. I spent a little time in the afternoon gathering all of my music gear, speakers, amp, wires, etc., from their various hiding spots and getting them ready for transport to the clubhouse for tonight. About 5:00 the park sent a guy with a golf cart by the coach to tote the gear down and I went down and spent an hour or so getting everything set up for the party. It took a little longer than usual because I was having trouble with my mixer amp. I couldn’t get both speaker outputs to work. I finally got that fixed and went back to the coach to change clothes for the party.

The party started at 7:00, so I went down and started playing some music. Most of the people had drifted in by 7:30 or so and I was trying everything I could to get people interested in the music. I did 50's, 60's, country music, big band, nothing was getting anyone to pay the least bit of attention. Finally at 8:00 I asked if anyone wanted to do karaoke and the party was off and running. We did nothing but karaoke the rest of the night and the party went on past 10:00. We did take a brief break at 9:00 to watch the New York City midnight celebration. We had told everyone we were going to do a “New York” New Year’s, which is what most everyone in the park did anyway.

We had about seven people who sang, most of them pretty good singers. There were probably sixty people at the party and the vast majority hung in there until we shut the music down at 10:00. We felt this was a really good turnout considering that the party was not even on the activity schedule for the park. As I mentioned earlier, the activity for the park didn’t even ask us to DJ the party until Wednesday. Jackie had her make up a bunch of flyers and we went around the park this morning and either talked to people we found at home, or left flyers on coaches, for the party tonight. I think our great turnout was, at least in part, a result of our work this morning.

We had a very good party, got a good buzz on, and were able to walk home. No DUI checkpoints for us! After we got home we stayed up until midnight just so we could listen to the guns going off all around Indio at midnight. Sounded like a war zone, just with smaller caliber guns. These idiots never learn that shooting in the air is not a good thing. Fortunately, we dodged the bullet, literally, again this year and nothing came down on the coach or car.

Sunday, January 1st, 2012, Happy New Year! I went over to the clubhouse after the morning church service to pack up my equipment from last night’s party. After lunch Jackie and Peggy went out to do a couple of geocaches, just so they could document that they cached on New Year’s Day. I stayed at the coach and put my stuff away. I was also waiting to hear from my buddy Barry Cohen, who had told me that they were going to come over today. Barry and Colleen finally came over around 3:30 or so, after Peggy and Jackie had finished caching. I think Jackie got two new finds and one DNF for her efforts.

The three girls played cards while Barry, Vernon and I sat and talked and watched some football. We later had a little pot luck dinner with the six of us. We had a very nice meal with a casserole that Jackie made, a nice salad, and a lemon meringue pie from Peggy. We all sat and talked, and had some cocktails, until about 8:00 when everyone left to go home. A very nice New Year’s Day with friends.

Monday, January 2nd, showed the promise of being a very nice, sunny day. After an early lunch we went out with the Bullocks to do some geocaching in nearby Palm Desert. Since today was the “official” holiday for New Years, we anticipated that there wouldn’t be as many people on the roads and many businesses might be closed. This always makes caching easier, with less traffic and fewer muggles to worry about. One of the caches was a rubber rat under a tree with the cache container in it's belly. Vernon liked that one. In the course of a few hours we were able to get fifteen new finds on our tally, including fixing one previous DNF. We had no new DNF caches, which is always a good thing. After caching we came home and did some hamburgers on the BBQ with the Bullocks.

Tuesday, January 3rd, we left again after lunch and went out caching, this time in Desert Hot Springs. We were with the Bullocks again, although they were in their own car this time. There were a lot of new caches put out in Desert Hot Springs since the last time we cached there, so we were able to get eleven new finds in a few hours of caching. We also got one new DNF. One of the last caches of the day was our 3,300th find! Yea us! After the sun went down we all went to the Desert Hot Springs Elks Lodge for a cocktail. We have been there many times in the past, but Peggy and Vernon had never been in the lodge. There weren’t a lot of people in the bar because they were having bingo, but we had one cocktail.

The Bullocks then left to go home and we drove over to the nearby Desert Pools RV Resort, which is one of our Western Horizons membership parks. We were originally supposed to be at Desert Pools, but we cancelled our reservation when Indian Waters became available. However, a number of our Canadian acquaintances were in Desert Pools and had been disappointed that we weren’t going to be there when they were there. We told them we would come up and visit one evening and play Texas Hold’em with them. We got in on the game and had a wonderful time visiting with our friends and catching up. Both of us lost in cards, Jackie about eleven dollars and me about four, but we still had a good time. The card game lasted until 9:00 and it was almost ten by the time we got back to the coach in Indio.

Wednesday, January 4th, I went out in the morning and did some errands, including getting the car washed. Later, Jackie and I left the coach after an early lunch and headed to Rancho Mirage and the Eisenhower Hospital there for Jackie’s annual mammogram. We got to the hospital early, so we did a few caches before her appointment time. We ended up with three new finds. Jackie then had her exam and we went back to Palm Desert and took her to the urgent care at our regular doctor’s office. She has been having bad sinus problems for the last couple weeks and finally decided to go to the doctor. We got a couple prescriptions, stopped by and filled those, and then headed for home for the rest of the evening.

While we had been busy for the day the Bullocks had driven down to Borrego Springs, a small town about fifty miles south of Indio, to explore and do some caching. They got back just before dark and joined us for happy hour before we all retired to our coaches for the rest of the night.

Thursday, January 5th, we once again were faced with a beautiful, sunny and warm day. Times are tough in SoCal. We went out after lunch with the Bullocks for some more caching, five straight days so far. We stuck around the Indio area this time, starting with the desert area to the north of town. Unfortunately, we were having trouble figuring out how to get to some of the caches on the trails, so we only found a couple before deciding to go down into town for some urban caches. We finally ended up with eleven new finds and no DNFs for the afternoon, a respectable number.

When we got back to the RV park we discovered that our friends Ray and Suzie Babcock had arrived and were parked only a couple spots down from us. Regular readers will know Ray and Suzie as friends we met five years ago during our travels and have stayed in contact with since. We frequently cross paths with them, especially around various rallies. They will be going into the Western Area FMCA rally on Sunday, along with the Bullocks and several other friends of ours. We will be going in on Monday. About 5:30 or so the we and the Bullocks drove over to Cactus Jack’s for dinner. Peggy was itching to get some prime rib, and Jack’s has some of the best in town. We picked today because on Thursday Jack’s has the beef ribs on the special board. Both Vernon and I really go for the ribs. Normally Jackie has lamb, but this time she got a seafood pasta dish that looked good too. We had a very nice dinner and finally finished about 8:00 when we headed back to the RV park for the night.

Friday, January 6th, we left the coach after lunch and did a Costco run. Among other things I wanted to look at the car GPS units they had on sale since Tabby, as we called our old unit, finally gave up the ghost. The touch screen stopped working and since it had no buttons, no touchy means no worky. We bought Tabby in Florida back in early 2006, so I think we got our money’s worth out of her. It turns out that the best deal for a new Garmin unit is at Costco Online, so we just did our regular Costco shopping and then headed home. We stayed in for the rest of the afternoon.

At about 5:00 we had happy hour for us, the Bullocks and the Babcocks on the grass behind our coach. Later we all cooked whatever we wanted on the BBQ and all gathered in our coach to eat dinner. It was a very nice dinner with good conversation with our friends. About 8:00 everyone split up and went back to the their coaches for the rest of the night.

Saturday, January 7th, we greeted another nice 72 degree desert day. The six of us all left the park about 11:00 and went to the Pac Inn, a Chinese restaurant here in Indio, for lunch. They have great food and you get huge portions for a very modest price. After lunch we ran the leftovers, we ALL had leftovers, back to the coaches and then we all went to Palm Desert for the COD street fair. We only had an hour or so to shop, they close up the fair at 2:00, but we and the Bullocks were there for specific items. Jackie wanted some lipstick from a vendor that she has purchased from for years, and Peggy wanted some synthetic ice packs.

After a little bit of shopping we and the Bullocks went off to do some geocaching. The Babcocks are not cachers, so they went off on their own. The four of us managed to get a dozen new finds before we finally lost daylight around 4:30 or so. We headed back to the RV park for happy hour with the group and then we all adjourned to our individual coaches for a dinner of leftovers.

Sunday, January 8th, the Bullocks and the Babcocks packed up and moved from Indian Waters to the Indio Fair Grounds, about a half mile east, for the FMCA Western Area Rally. We are also going to the rally, but we won’t go in until Monday. The other members of our group wanted to go in on the first day of parking because they get handicap parking and wanted to get decent spots. We are in general parking and know that we will be in the parking lot, so we can wait a day before going in.

After lunch we went to the grocery store to stock up on stuff we will need once we leave the valley after the rally. We will be going to Ehrenberg, Arizona, near Blythe, California, for a week and then to Quartzsite, Arizona for a week. Neither of these places has a Walmart or Costco anywhere near them. After shopping we just hung around the coach for the rest of the day. I got things outside cleaned up for our move tomorrow, but we didn’t have much out, so it only took a half hour or so.

Monday, January 9th, moving day. We packed up the coach, pulled in the slides, and I drove alone for the long half mile trip from the RV resort to the Indio Fairgrounds. We were in the parking area by 10:00 and got parked in the parking lot. It took us an hour or so to get setup and then we drove over to Cactus Jack’s to meet our friends for lunch. We met the Bullocks and the Babcocks, along with Curt and Sharon Minard. Curt and Sharon are the couple we met last year in Quartzsite and that we had dinner with a month ago in Carmichael. Our friends Gary and Ramona Wilson were there. The Wilsons were with us in Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta in October. There was also one other couple, friends of the Minards, that joined us. We had a great lunch and caught up with the travels of all our friends.

After lunch everyone went their own way. We went next door to the laundromat and did our two weeks worth of laundry. After laundry we went back to the coach and relaxed. The area we are parked in is supposed to have 30 amp electric, however, when we parked they had not yet set up the generators. When we got home from the laundry we found that they had turned on the 20 amp outlets for temporary power, so we got plugged in and were able to charge our batteries without having to run the generator. The electric we have will not work for A/C or the microwave, but it is enough to run lights, the TVs and other electronics. We chatted a little with our neighbors and just stayed around the coach for the rest of the day.

Our arrival here at the rally marks the end of our two weeks in Indian Waters, and is a perfect place to close this episode. We will be here at the rally for six days and then move on to Ehrenberg, Arizona. Sometime after Ehrenberg we will publish again. Until then, remember that it's always darkest before the dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it. Bye for now.

By the Sea Shore, The Salton Sea Shore

2011-12-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

Hello again, welcome back to the story. Our last chapter concluded on Sunday, December 11th, with our arrival back to old home grounds, the Coachella Valley of California. We arrived at the Oasis Palms RV Resort, located near the north end of the Salton Sea, about 20 miles south of Indio on Highway 86. We have never stayed at this resort before, but are looking forward to being here for two weeks. Many of our friends who live in the Coachella Valley, and our friends who travel and come here frequently in the winter months, understand that it gets more and more difficult to find affordable locations in this area in which to spend time during the winter season.

The RV parks in the major cities of the valley, Indio, Palm Desert, La Quinta, Palm Springs and others, continue to raise their rates. They do it because they can, this is where people want to come when it’s cold in the other two thirds of the country. But it makes it tough for those of us who live on a fixed income. (I know, I HATE that phrase too, but it fits here. Sorry) Our only membership park in the east part of the valley, Indian Waters in Indio, was sold last year and it is nearly impossible to get reservations there under any of the membership programs. They still have a few spaces available to membership folks, but they go fast and you have to be lucky when you call. All of this to explain why we are spending our first two weeks here, 20 miles south of Indio, and the next two weeks in Desert Hot Springs, 20 miles west of Indio. It’s simple economics. When we arrived on Sunday we just stayed around all day getting setup, including putting up all our Christmas decorations. We came a day early to beat a winter storm that was working it’s way into Southern California.

Monday, December 12th, we woke up to clouds and by lunch time the rain had come. It was not raining especially hard, but it was steady and it was cold too. We decided that since we weren’t going to be able to do any geocaching for a few days that we would use today to do our chores. We packed up our laundry and drove north to Indio to a very nice laundromat that we use when we are in the area. We washed clothes and played cards while we waited. After our laundry was done we made a quick stop at nearby Cactus Jacks Bar and Grill, our old hang out when we lived here in Indio. We wanted to say hi to Kevin, the daytime bartender and a friend of ours. We were glad we stopped today because he told us he was leaving tomorrow for Utah for a week of skiing.

After one drink and chatting with Kevin we went down to Walmart to restock the grocery cabinets. By the time we got done it was after five and nearly dark, so we headed back home. It had rained most of the day and was still cold.

Tuesday, December 13th, we again left after lunch under cloudy skies and drove back north, this time to Palm Desert, for doctor’s appointments for the both of us. Nothing serious, just medication updates for the most part. I especially needed to get new prescriptions written for all my meds because in a month I will be on Medicare and need them for my new prescription plan. YEA Medicare! After our doctor’s appointments we made a stop at Jackie’s “adopted” niece’s house to see her Godson Shane Ryan. Shane’s grandmother Nancy was one of Jackie’s closest and oldest friends and she died a few months ago. This was the first time that Jackie has been able to see Shane since Nancy’s death. Vickie, Shane’s mom, was working, but Shane was home and we had a nice visit with him.

After visiting Shane we did a little shopping to kill some time before going over to visit our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen. Regular readers will remember them as our dear friends who are also full time RVers, in that they have lived solely in their 40 foot coach a couple years longer than we have lived in ours. However, Barry is still working, so they don’t travel much. They live in the Motor Coach Country Club, which is a very nice, upscale RV resort in Indio. Barry just recently sold his transmission repair business and they are in the process of trying to sell their property at the resort so they can get out and travel like us.

We went over to the Cohen’s about 4:00, after Barry got home from work. We had a couple of drinks with them on the patio as we caught up. We last saw them back in August in Sante Fe, New Mexico. We crossed paths with them for two days as they were returning from visiting their daughter in Denver. After chatting with them for a while the four of us went to Cactus Jacks for dinner. After dinner we headed home for the rest of the night. It is nice to be back with friends again.

Wednesday, December 14th, we decided to just stay in for the day. The day was sunny, but still cold and the ground was still damp from the rain. This would make caching in this rural area messy, so we elected to wait a day or two before going out again. I spent a big part of the afternoon roughing out plans for our summer travels. Up to today we only had definite plans up to the Good Sam Rally in Phoenix in March. We finally settled on a “big circle” summer that will have us taking the southern route, I-10 mostly, east to New Orleans. We will then go north to see Jackie’s girlfriend Helen in Massachusetts, and then into Indiana for the rally circuit in August. After the rallies we will head back to Pahrump via the northern route, I-80. Still a lot of details to work on, but at least now we have the framework for the summer. Fun, fun, fun.

Thursday, December 15th, appeared to be a great day for caching. Sunny but cool, with just a little wind. We left the coach after lunch to try to do some caching in the general area. I say general area because there are actually very few caches close by to where we are staying. This was confirmed when we were about ninety minutes into caching and only had two finds! We had been to four caches, but one of the we couldn’t find, our only DNF for the day. Another turned out to be a half mile walk into the desert after we got to the coordinates. That one was a ten minute drive east of Mecca in the wilderness. We finally struck pay dirt when we started on a series of caches that run along an off-road trail south of Lake Cahilla in La Quinta. It is a fairly decent SUV trail that runs south into the foothills of the mountains south of the desert and the caches are located every five or six hundred feet. Once we got on this trail we quickly got eight more finds, including number 3,200! Yea! A couple of them required climbing hills, which I did but Jackie skipped. She is not real good with hills, especially those with loose rocks. We finally quit at ten finds, about half way through the trail, when it started to get dark. We wanted to be back on the paved roads before it got completely dark. We headed home for the rest of the night. We will come back another day to finish the SUV trail series.

Friday, December 16th dawned with skies that appeared to be planning for rain. We had heard brief periods of rain overnight, but it was only cloudy when we got up. We had made plans to meet friends for dinner at the Indio Elks Lodge tonight, so we decided to do some caching up in town in the afternoon, weather permitting. This would put us Indio come dinner time. We were able to find ten new caches, along with logging one new DNF, in a few hours of caching. After caching we went to the Indio Elks Lodge for cocktails and dinner. Many of our friends and other regular readers will remember that both Jackie and I joined the Elks through the Indio Lodge and were members there until we changed our residency to Nevada back in 2007. At that time we demitted (Elk for transferred our membership) to the Pahrump, Nevada lodge. The bar was pretty full and there were a couple of people in there that we knew from our “previous” life here in Indio. Among them were Pat and Monty Montez, the couple that we crossed paths with in Amarillo, Texas back in August of this year.

About 5:30 our dinner companions, Bev and Jerry King, came into the lodge and we headed into the dining room. Bev and Jerry are a couple that are fellow coach travelers that we met on the road several years ago at a Monaco International rally and have crossed paths with many times since. They are not full timers, but are on the road quite a lot. They have a home near Pomona, but also have a lot in Desert Shores, a very exclusive RV community here in Indio. Bev is the secretary for the Military Veteran’s Chapter of FMCA and we are charter members of that chapter and have been to a lot of their events. They are staying in the valley for a while and called us to arrange to have dinner.

We had a very nice dinner and chatted with the King’s. We last saw them in Farmington, New Mexico back in October at the Rocky Mountain Area rally. Dinner was quite good, the Elks in Indio has a pretty good Friday night dinner menu. One of the chefs in the kitchen was an old friend of ours, Big Willy. Jackie has known Willy since the 80' when she met him through her work in the personal finance industry. Willy is a great cook and has had a couple of restaurants here in the valley serving mostly Southern cooking. Like many small restaurant business’, he couldn’t make a go of them, but he does still have a successful catering business in the desert and likes to help out at the Elks. He is a member of the Indio lodge. We had a very nice dinner and were able to catch up with the Kings, which was great. We will probably see them a few more times during our stay here in the Coachella Valley. After dinner we headed back to the RV park for the rest of the night.

Saturday, December 17th, we had another cloudy morning that looked a little like rain might be in the forecast. We decided that we would go up into Palm Desert early today to go to the College of the Desert (COD) street fair. The COD street fair has been going on every weekend since well before I came to the Desert in 1998. It has several hundred vendors, many of them selling fairly high end stuff. Pretty much what you would expect from a street fair in an affluent area. We enjoy walking around looking at the stuff. We rarely buy much, but enjoy the exercise and experience. About the only thing we did do at the street fair was drop a couple of pieces of jewelry off with a jeweler for repair. Normally we wouldn’t do that, but it turns out that he and Jackie had several friends in common, which legitimized him for us.

We had initially thought of having lunch at the street fair, they have a fairly extensive food court, but decided to have a late lunch at one of our favorite local Mexican restaurants, La Casita. In my estimation they have one of the best taco salads anywhere and we always manage to have a couple when we come to the Desert. After lunch we went out to do a little caching before it got too dark. We managed to find five in about an hour. We then stopped at Costco for supplies before heading back to the RV park for the night.

Sunday, December 18th, we had a nice relaxing day at the coach. Jackie caught up on some of the TV shows she had on the DVR and I did some work on the computer. I also spent a little time in the park’s hot tub, which really felt good. Monday we decided to do some caching near the west shore of the Salton Sea, to the south of the RV park. We cached primarily in Salton Sea Beach and Salton City, two communities along the northern part of the Salton Sea on the west side. When talking about the Coachella Valley to non-Californian’s I am often asked where and/or what is the Salton Sea, so I will digress for a little lesson in the geology, geography and history of the Salton Sea.

The geological depression, or valley, that includes both the Gulf of Mexico, also known as the Sea of Cortez, and the Salton Sea were once part of a single, long ocean gulf. About three million years ago the Colorado River delta created a large dam which cut off the Sea of Cortez from the valley where the Salton Sea currently lies. Where it not for this dam the Sea of Cortez would actually go all the way up to Indio. Ocean front property would probably have been a big boost to the eastern end of the Coachella Valley. As a result, the Salton Sink or Salton Basin has been alternately a fresh water lake or a dry desert basin, depending on random river flows and the balance between inflow and evaporative loss. Several rivers feed into the lake, but there is no natural outflow point, the water is trapped in the basin. A lake would exist only when it was replenished by the river and rainfall, a cycle that repeated itself countless times over hundreds of thousands of years. The last of the ancient lakes to occupy the basin is known as Lake Cahuilla by geologists. This lake disappeared as part of the cycle several thousand years ago.

The creation of the what is now the Salton Sea was a complete accident. In 1905 heavy rainfall and snow melt caused the Colorado River to swell, overrunning a set of gates for the Alamo Canal, a local irrigation project. The resulting flood poured down the canal and breached an Imperial Valley dike, eroding two watercourses, the New River in the west, and the Alamo River in the east, each about 60 miles long. Over a period of approximately two years these two newly created rivers sporadically carried the entire volume of the Colorado River into the Salton Sink. The sudden influx of water and the lack of any drainage from the basin resulted in the formation of the Salton Sea, the largest lake in California.

In the 1920s, the Salton Sea developed into a tourist attraction, because of its water recreation, and waterfowl attracted to the area. The Salton Sea has had some success as a resort area, with Salton City, Salton Sea Beach, and Desert Shores on the western shore and Desert Beach, North Shore, and Bombay Beach built on the eastern shore in the 1950s. In the 50's and 60's the Salton Sea was a well known area for water recreation, such as boat races, water skiing, and fishing, and the communities along the lake shore envisioned tremendous growth. Speculative land sales boomed in the area. However, the lack of an outflow means that the Salton Sea collects everything that flows into it. It soon became apparent that sea was becoming increasingly saline and polluted from the agricultural runoff flowing into it. There were also a series of floods in the 1960's which inundated many of the shoreline communities.

The lake is now so saline, more so than the Great Salt Lake of Utah, and polluted, that most sea life has gone. The lake still supports a population of Tilapia, a hardy freshwater fish, as well as huge flocks of migrating waterfowl. Scientists believe that even the Tilapia will be gone in a few years unless something changes. Although the lake was accidentally created, environmentalists are united in a desire to “save” the lake by finding a way to reduce the pollution and salinity. Restrictions have been imposed on local agriculture to try and reduce the amount of junk coming into the lake and millions have been spent on developing some type of plan to save the lake.

A lot of the communities that sprung up during the mid century heyday of the lake still have residents, but their numbers are greatly reduced and the towns are littered with abandoned buildings and mobile homes. Salton City has hundreds of miles of streets which were built and lots laid out which were never utilized. While we were caching we found many of the caches hidden near abandoned properties. Most of Salton Sea Beach looked like the set from some sort of apocalypse movie. Since there were a lot of caches in the area we were able to find 14 new caches, with one DNF, in just a few hours. After caching we headed back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Tuesday, December 20, Happy Hanukkah to all our Hebrew friends. One of my first tasks of the day was to call my best friend Barry Cohen and wish him a Happy Hanukkah. I have to call him on all of the Jewish holidays lest he forget. Great guy, but not an especially observant Jew. We left the coach about 11:30 and started towards the eastern side of the Salton Sea to an area where we used to hang out. There is a cluster of RV resorts on the east side of the lake, up in the foothills of the nearby mountains, in an area that is well known for their extensive natural hot springs. The area is about 30 miles south of Indio, near the communities of Bombay Beach and Niland. Back before we sold the house and went out on the road full time we used to camp with the Indio Elks RV club at one of the resorts called Imperial Spa. It was a pretty rugged desert park, but they had great facilities, including wonderful hot spring water baths.

In the spring of 2007, our first full year of full timing we spent two months parked at Imperial Spa. While we were there we got to know a lot of the regular winter visitors who stayed at the Spa most of the season. They were a very social group and we really got to know the one’s who enjoyed karaoke because I ended up running the karaoke on Friday nights. Among the people we got to know well, and have stayed in touch with over the years, were Russ and Darlene Haberman, who lived in Grants Pass, Oregon during the summer. Russ and Darlene have been battling health problems for the last couple years, so we never we able to get together with them during our visits to Oregon. When we found out that they were down in the desert again this winter we made arrangements to get with them today. They are now staying at another RV resort called Bashford’s, which is across the street from the old Imperial Spa. Imperial was sold a couple years ago and became a KOA which no longer courted annual lot rentals and long term winter visitors.

When we arrived we were pleased to see that Russ and Darlene looked well and had a nice place at the new resort. Also there was another old friend from our time at the Spa, Jim Anderson. Jim, who goes by the nickname “No Fish”, was the guy who was supposed to do the karaoke at the Spa back in 2007, but his equipment broke and had to be repaired. That is how I ended up doing the karaoke for two months. We have also stayed in touch with Jim over the years, and actually visited him at his house in White Salmon, Washington, back in the summer of 2007 when we were up in the area. We had a great time catching up with our friends and were very happy to hear that Darlene is recovering well from surgery for lung cancer last summer. The five of us went to lunch at one of the other nearby resorts and continued our visit. We finally left Russ and Darlene’s place about 3:00 and took an hour or so to do some caching on the east side of the lake.

In the course of an hour we were able to add five new finds to our total. One of them should have been a First To Find (FTF) and would have been had we taken the time to look for it prior to going to Russ and Darlene’s house. Friends come first though, and by the time we got to it another cacher had found it and claimed the FTF. After caching we went back to our coach for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, December 21st, we awoke to another beautiful desert winter morning. Clear skies with lots of sunshine and a little on the cool side, upper 40's. Of course, to folks in Oklahoma who are under three feet of snow the upper 40's would seem balmy at the least. We left the coach about 1:30 or so and headed north into town to meet with some friends of ours who are staying at Indian Waters RV Resort in Indio. Jay and Donna Blumenthal are also full time motor home travelers that we met several years ago as a result of our participation in FMCA rallies and activities. At that time Jay was the President of the International Area of FMCA and one of the members of FMCA’s Board of Directors. We have remained friends and cross paths with them frequently, many times here in the Coachella Valley where they try to spend their winters now that Jay does not hold an FMCA executive position and no longer has to travel all the time. They are from New York and usually spend their summers back in the east.

On the way to meet with Jay and Donna we took a drive through the nearby Indian Palms Country Club, where we used to have our house before we sold it in 2005. We like to drive through once a year or so to see what, if any, changes have been made in the neighborhood and to our house. Essentially, the house looks the same today as it did when we sold it with the exception of the landscaping. The new residents took out some of the bushes and trees we had in the front, and painted the wood trim on the house. The neighborhood did not appear to have changed at all. We look at the house, but neither of us looks back on our decision with anything other than satisfaction that we did the right thing. We don’t miss having a house and love our lifestyle.

We then drove over to Indian Waters RV Park and took a drive through there prior to going to Jay and Donna’s site. Indian Waters used to be a Western Horizon’s park and part of our membership package with the company. We used to stay at Indian Waters at least once per year, sometimes more. However, last year Western Horizon’s sold the property to a private company that has turned it into a public RV resort. We have heard a lot of stories about the changes they were making to the park and wanted to have a look for ourselves. We also wanted to check into whether we would still have some privileges here based on our Western Horizon’s membership. We have heard lots of stories about that also, some saying no, some saying yes. A few weeks ago I had tried to make reservations through Western Horizon’s central reservations and, although they said they were handling reservations for the park, told us that there were no sites available.

We drove around the park and noted that they have resurfaced the streets, cleaned up the landscaping and built a new pool and “pickle ball” court. We also noticed that the park was less than 25 percent occupied, which was confusing considering I had been told that there were no sites available. I decided to go into the office and check for myself what, if any, ability we would have to stay there in the future. What I found was that just in the last week the park has opened up the entire park to Western Horizons members at greatly reduced rates. To the public sites are priced anywhere from $48 up to the $70's, depending on the location in the park. For us the sites were $11 to $15 per night. Not a bad deal, especially when you consider that even under our WHR membership we had to pay $6 a night facilities surcharge. We were originally going to leave the park we are currently in on December 26th and go to the WHR park in Desert Hot Springs. Desert Hot Springs is as far to the north and west from Indio as where we are now is south, so we were still going to be a long way off from where we like to be during the holidays. With the new information I decided to make the reservation at Indian Waters for our next two week stay and cancelled our reservation in Desert Hot Springs. This will give us two weeks right in Indio instead of having to commute like we are now.

Once we finished our tour of the park we went to see Jay and Donna. They have a very nice site overlooking a pond and fountain, and have a nice patio area set up since they are going to be in the same place until April. We sat outside and talked and caught up on what we each have been doing since the last time we saw them, which was actually last January here in Indio. About 5:00 or so we left to go to dinner in La Quinta, the next town over from Indio. We went to a restaurant called Hog’s Breath which is located in downtown La Quinta. The original Hog’s Breath Bar and Grill was in Carmel, California and was opened by Clint Eastwood back in the 70's. There are now restaurants with the name here in La Quinta, as well as Florida, although Eastwood no longer owns them.

Even on a Wednesday night the place was pretty full for happy hour and we ended up sitting at the bar for dinner. One of the reasons Jay wanted to come here was that the piano player was apparently one of the original members of the 60's rock group, The Turtles. I don’t know his name, or if he was really with the Turtles, but we were at the restaurant for nearly two hours and he never stopped playing 60's and 70's tunes on the piano. He really was fun to listen to, although it would have been better had he not been stuck in a corner of the bar so people could see him and sing along. The food was quite good and we finally left about 7:00 or so to head back to home.

This is normally where I would close the tale of the day by saying we went back to the coach for the rest of the night. However, this evening we had a very scary experience. The drive from La Quinta back our RV park was just over 20 miles, almost all of it on two lane farm roads. Of course, by this time in the winter it is very dark and the streets are not lit. We were driving east on Avenue 52, approaching the town of Coachella, when we were very nearly hit head on. I saw a line of four or five cars coming our way when the second or third car in line suddenly came out of line into my lane, probably a couple hundred yards in front of us. At first I though it was someone making a dumb passing move and that they would pull back in line, or at least stay on the road. I slowed a little and pulled to the right, off the pavement onto the shoulder. I then realized that the car was not only coming into my lane, it was actually moving even further to the left, my right, onto the shoulder. I took a quick look around and saw that I had an escape path to my right up a two foot dirt berm into a farm field. I just got up onto the berm, now about eight or ten feet off the road, and slowed down when I saw the car out of the corner of my eye go by us and heard a loud crash. At first I though the guy had actually hit us a glancing blow as he went by, but when I stopped and got out I saw that he had missed us by about six inches and mowed down a traffic sign that was on the shoulder of the road right next to where we had stopped. Had I not reacted as quickly we would have been hit head on and probably not escaped without serious injury. I guess my years of driving police cars and the training we received still pays off. I also taught pursuit driving for a while back I the 80's and still remember most of that also. After we caught our breath we continued on to the coach. By the way, the guy hit the sign and never even slowed down. He just kept on going, as did all the other cars that were on the road too. I would have thought someone would have at least stopped to see if we had been hit. Drunks. Hate em’.

Thursday, December 22nd, the day was nice and clear, but the winds came up again. Not as bad as they were a few weeks ago, when we were up in Fresno, but still a little too harsh to go caching. We decided we needed a down day, so we just stayed home for the entire day.

Friday, December 23rd, we left the coach after lunch and went back up to Palm Desert and the COD street fair. We needed to pick up the two pieces of jewelry we had left for repair. Although only two days before Christmas, there were only about half the normal number of vendors set up, and very few customers. We got our jewelry, nicely repaired and cleaned, and walked around until they closed up shop at 2:00. We then spent an hour or so doing some geocaching. We were only able to add four new finds to our total, along with one new DNF. After caching we stopped at Walmart to get some groceries, especially our turkey breast for Christmas dinner, and then went back to the coach for the rest of the evening. Saturday was another relaxation day. The only time I left the coach was to go to the hot tub for about twenty minutes.

Sunday, December 25th, Merry Christmas! We decided that since we were so far away from town, and celebrating Christmas without being around family or friends, that we would spend the afternoon in our favorite pastime, geocaching. We drove a few miles south to the Salton City area again and cached for several hours, adding another dozen finds to our tally. We had a great afternoon, with mild weather and no traffic or “muggles” wandering around. After caching we went back to the coach and had our very own Christmas feast. Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberries and green beans. Had a very pleasant Christmas. As always, Jackie and I exchanged only cards and our love. Neither of us goes without during the year, so we have never seen much point in stressing out trying to find gifts for each other on birthdays or holidays. Might not work for everyone, but it sure is right for us. Merry Christmas from the Salton Sea!

Monday, December 26th, we were up and packing up the Christmas decorations and other stuff in the coach getting ready for our relocation to Indio. We had 25 miles to go, so Jackie just drove the car. We stopped on the way for fuel for both the car and coach, as well as to fill up the propane in the coach. This is in preparation for our dry camping stints at the rally in Indio and in Quartzsite later in January. We left Oasis about 10:30 and by noon we were in Indio at the newly remodeled and renovated Indian Waters RV Resort. We have a very nice site next to a pond with a fountain. Although we are in the newer section of the park, which is all gravel, we are adjacent to a green space with a nice lawn. We also found out that the Bullocks, who are coming tomorrow, will be right next to us. Yea! Our friends the Blumenthals are just down the street. Once we got the coach settled in we gathered up our two weeks worth of dirty laundry and headed to the Laundromat.

We had thought that being a Monday the laundromat would not be busy. We forgot that since Christmas was on a Sunday this year, the actual Federal holiday is today. The place was packed with people doing their laundry on their day off. Oh well, we got washers and dryers and put up with the screaming kids and trash all over the floor, for a couple hours and got the work done. After that we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening. Jay and Donna Blumenthal came over for a quick visit in the late afternoon when they saw that we had moved in just a few sites away.

With our arrival in Indio I will close this chapter of our story and get it online. We will be here for two weeks and I will publish again before we head into the rally. Until the next time, have a safe New Years and stay happy. Bye.

Central California Adventures, Part Duex

2011-12-13T09:47:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to our story. Our previous chapter concluded on Wednesday, November 23rd with our arrival in Fresno, California at the Fresno Elks RV park. Wednesday we didn’t go anywhere after we got set up in our nice site. They have eight sites here and the setting is very park-like, with a large lagoon right in front of the parking area. Unfortunately, the Elks Lodge is only open a few days per month, and none of them are during the five day period we will be parked here. I think this is the first time we will have been parked at an Elks Lodge and not been able to go in and visit the lodge. Sadly, it also means no lodge pin for our banner. Poop.

Time for a little history of the area. In 1867, Anthony Easterby purchased land in what is now the San Joaquin Valley for farming. Unable to grow wheat for lack of water, he hired a local contractor in 1871 to build an irrigation canal. This formed the basis for the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company, a predecessor of the Fresno Irrigation District.

In 1872, the Central Pacific Railroad established a station near Easterby's farm for its new Southern Pacific line. Soon there was a store and around the station and the store grew the town of Fresno Station, later called Fresno. Fresno became an incorporated city in 1885. Two years after the station was established, county residents voted to move the county seat to Fresno. The population of Fresno proper soared in the second half of the 20th century. It entered the ranks of the 100 largest United States cities in 1960 with a population of 134,000. The current population is just over 510,000. Fresno has a diverse population, including one of the largest Armenian populations in California. The Armenian population in Fresno today is estimated at 30,000.

One interesting piece of trivia I found has to do with the beginnings of our “credit nation” and it’s ties to Fresno. In September 1958, Bank of America launched a new product in Fresno called BankAmericard. After a troubled gestation during which its creator resigned, BankAmericard went on to become the first successful credit card; that is, a financial instrument which was usable across a large number of merchants and also allowed cardholders to revolve a balance. In 1976, BankAmericard was renamed and spun off into a separate company known today as Visa Inc.

Thursday, November 24th, Happy Thanksgiving. We figured that today would be a good day to do some local geocaching since most everyone would be busy with family and Thanksgiving dinner. We were planning our own little Thanksgiving dinner in the coach since the only two families we know in the area, Jackie’s niece and an old high school pal of Jackie’s, were both out of town. We went out after lunch and were able to find a total of fourteen new caches in just about three and a half hours. We also got two DNFs, but it was still fun. One of the caches was inside an old English telephone booth in front of a real estate agency. We have never cached in Fresno and there are tons of caches in the area. We never got more than a couple miles from the coach for our finds today. There was almost no traffic and nearly all of the local businesses were closed for the day. We probably looked a little suspicious wandering around in empty parking lots looking under bushes, but no one bothered us.

After caching we went back home and Jackie made a wonderful turkey dinner with all the trimmings, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and asparagus. It was wonderful. The turkey was just a breast and she cooked it in the crock pot so it could cook all afternoon while we cached.

Friday, November 25th, the infamous “Black Friday” first shopping day before Christmas. I told Jackie I had absolutely no desire to go out and fight the crowds for some perceived bargain that we really didn’t even need. I spent most of the afternoon trying to fix the leak in our living room slide. I had to take off the decorative fascia in order to get at the seam that I thought was leaking. It was not as big a job as I thought, but I still ended up having to take two trips to the local Home Depot before I had everything I needed to put a silicon bead along the seam. It was really hard to get to and I had to do it with a mirror since I couldn’t get my head in the space to look directly at what I was doing. I got the seam in and I hope it was, A) the right seam that was leaking, and B) a good silicone seam that works. Once I got it seamed I let it set up a while and then put the fascia back on. Now I just have to wait until the next time it rains and keep my fingers crossed. Other than that, we didn’t do anything outside of the coach.

Saturday, November 26th, we woke up to heavy fog. We couldn’t even see the quarter mile or so across the little lake in front of our coach. The fog lifted after a few hours and by the time we left to go do some caching it was clear and nice. We did ten new caches, with a couple of DNFs thrown in, in a few hours. Later in the afternoon we drove to Jackie’s cousin’s house to visit with her family. Stephanie and her husband Ron have three kids and live in a very nice residential tract in northeast Fresno, only about five miles from where we are parked. Jackie and I attended their wedding in Redondo Beach in 1998, shortly after I moved to Indio. That was my first introduction to Jackie’s family. Their oldest is now in high school. They moved to Fresno less than a year ago from the Long Beach, California area, but seem to like the town. Ron is an electrician and seems to be doing OK on work despite the harsh economic times.

We had a very nice visit with them, catching up on their family and also talking about geocaching. Stephanie and Ron are very into spending time with their kids and they seemed to be really interested in geocaching as a family activity. They were so interested that we talked about coming over tomorrow to spend some time in the afternoon caching with them to give them a bit of an introduction. After a couple hours we decided to head for home, where we spent the rest of the evening.

Sunday, November 27th, I put together a new batch of caches in the area of Ron and Stephanie’s home and loaded them into our GPS devices. After an early lunch we drove to their place and they were ready to go caching. Ron had loaded a caching app on his Iphone and had done some reading about caching on the web. The first two caches we sought were within walking distance of their house, along a bikeway, so we all walked up there. The very first cache was found in just a minute or so by their eight year old daughter, Madison. The second cache was a much more difficult find. I finally found it hidden in a phony light fixture after about ten minutes of searching.

We then got in our cars and went out to find more caches. By the end of the afternoon we had found a total of 15 caches, all of which were new to us, and we didn’t have any DNFs. I am pretty certain that Ron and Stephanie, and at least the two younger kids, are hooked on caching. Tyler, their 16 year old son found one of the caches, another phony light fixture, but didn’t seem to be as excited about the sport as the rest. Bryce, their eleven year old son, and Madison, really got into the searching and were really excited by the caches that had “bling” in them. After caching we went back to their house for a little while and visited, then they took us out to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. We left there after a nice dinner with everyone and headed home for the rest of the night. We had a very nice day and I think added a new team to the caching community.

Monday, November 28th, was another moving day. We packed up the coach and left the Fresno Elks about 10:00, heading north on Highway 99 towards Carmichael, California, a suburb of Sacramento. It was 175 miles and we arrived at the Carmichael Elks Lodge about 1:30 or so. The trip was pretty uneventful except for the horrible roads. There were stretches of the highway that were just terrible, all potholes and bumps. Surprised we didn’t have stuff falling off the walls. We have stayed at this lodge several times in the past as they have a nice RV park. The sites have water and 50 amp electric, but no sewer. After we got settled in we spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out in the coach. We will be here for five days and come up here primarily to visit with an old friend of Jackie’s, Kathy and her daughter Julie. Julie also has a three year old named Bella Bliss whom Jackie just adores.

Tuesday, November 29th, we woke up to heavy fog. We couldn’t see the other end of the parking lot and it was quite cool, 51 degrees. Since Kathy and her husband Bill already had commitments for today, and couldn’t get together with us, we decided to go out and do our laundry. There was a laundromat just around the corner and we got our work done by about 1:30, so we decided to go out and do some geocaching in the area. We managed to get nine new finds, along with a couple of DNFs, before it started getting too dark to cache. With that we headed home and stayed in for the rest of the night. One of the caches was very cute. It was called “Here’s looking at you” and it was a fairly large rubber lizard, about a foot long, attached to a large piece of bark. When the bark was lying on the ground you could just see the head of the lizard peaking out at you. It was very realistic. The cache was in a film canister stuck inside the hollow belly of the fake lizard. One of our favorites.

Wednesday, November 30th, the fog was gone, but now the wind was blowing. With all the trees losing their leaves, it looked like a leaf storm outside. If the wind keeps up whatever leaves are left on the trees will be on the ground by nightfall. After lunch we went out for some provisions. We had to hit both Costco and Walmart and luckily, they were side by side not too far up the road from us in the community of Citrus Heights. After our shopping trip we went back home and unloaded the groceries and got everything put away.

Around 6:00 we left the coach again headed for Julie Yarbrough’s house for dinner. Julie is Jackie’s friend Kathy’s daughter and she lives in West Sacramento, about a half hour away, with her significant other Kevin and daughter Isabella Bliss. They are both in the mortgage business and seem to be doing OK despite the economy. They have a very nice home in an upscale neighborhood not too far from the Sacramento River. Bill and Kathy were also at the house and we spent a couple hours catching up with the whole family and playing with Bella, who warmed up to Jackie and I pretty quickly. She is quite a delightful child, always smiling and happy and she seemed to also be quite bright for a three year old. They have her in a very good preschool and it seems to be having a good effect.

Julie served a very nice dinner of stuffed pork chops and trimmings that was excellent. After dinner we had desert and sat and talked until nearly 10:00 p.m. when we decided that we needed to get to bed. I was tired, Bella seemed to still be going strong. Ah, youth! We drove home and watched TV for a little while before heading off to bed about 11:15, the latest we have been up and about in a while.

Thursday, December 1st, where has the year gone? Already into the last month of 2011! The wind was blowing about 30 mph and it was very cool so we decided that we needed a stay at home day, so we did. We spent the day just catching up on computer stuff and TV. About 5:30 or so we went over to the Elks Lodge for cocktails and dinner with our friends. Kathy and Bill were going to meet us there for dinner. We had noticed that the lodge was having pork ribs for their Thursday night dinner and we like ribs. We also invited two other friends, Curt and Sharon Minard, who had surprised us by leaving their card in the door of our coach last night. Curt and Sharon were some of the camping friends of Peggy and Vernon Bullock that we spent a week with in Quartzsite last January. Regular readers will remember Peggy and Vernon as the couple we met on our Alaska tour in 2009 that we have remained close friends with. We really enjoyed Curt and Sharon, and already have plans to be with them in Quartzsite again this coming January.

However, we had forgotten that Curt and Sharon live in Carmichael. We also didn’t know that they were members of the Carmichael Elks. It seems that Curt and Sharon were in the lodge last night for dinner and as they were leaving they saw our coach in the parking lot. Curt was almost positive that he remembered it as our coach, even though they had no idea we were in Carmichael, so he left his card in the door. We called them this morning and invited them to join us at the lodge for dinner tonight.

When we got into the lodge both Kathy and Bill and Curt and Sharon were in the bar. Although they are both members of the lodge, they didn’t know each other except by name. We introduced everyone and sat down for a cocktail. Julie and Bella were also supposed to join us for dinner, but Julie got held up at work and was running late. At 6:00 we went into the dining room for dinner and continued our visit with our friends. We had not seen Curt and Sharon since we were with them in February in Arizona, so we had a lot of catching up to do. After dinner we all went over to our coach for a nightcap.

Julie never made it for dinner, but did get to the lodge in time to visit with us in the coach. I gave Bella the Minnie Mouse stuffed animal that we had on the couch and she was really excited. We have had the thing since way before we sold the house and Jackie has said in the past that she was ready to get rid of them from the coach. I had noticed that Bella had a lot of Disney stuff in her room when we were there on Wednesday, and she is all excited about getting to go to Disneyland around Christmas with her family. I think I made her happy with an old, used Minnie. After an hour or so of visiting everyone left to go home and we just relaxed the rest of the evening.

Friday, December 2nd the winds that we have had the last couple of days appear to have finally died down. According to the news all of Southern California had been having really bad winds, with trees getting blown over and lots of power outages. Since it appeared to be a pretty nice day, we went out after lunch for some more geocaching in the area. We got our ten finds, with a couple of DNFs thrown in for good measure, in a few hours. Around 5:00 we drove over to Kathy and Bill’s house in Citrus Heights, an adjacent community, for dinner. Kathy had a made a very nice meatloaf and all the trimmings. We had a couple of cocktails and visited for a while, then had a very good dinner. We ended up leaving about 9:30 or so and heading home.

Saturday, December 3rd, another moving day. We packed up the coach and, after a visit to the dump station to empty our tanks, left Carmichael and headed south for an exhausting 45 mile drive to Lodi, California. It took about an hour to get to the Lodi Elks Lodge where we quickly settled into a nice spot. We have stayed at this lodge in the past as we traveled through the area. The sites overlook a big expanse of grass and are right next door to a beautiful country club golf course. We have some friends, Fern and Andy Lenardini, who live here in Lodi. I first met them shortly after I moved to Indio in 1998. They were friends with our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen and they had a home in the country club in Palm Desert where I had gotten a job working security. They only stay in the desert during the winter months and they haven’t been down there for the last two winters because of issues with the family. The bottom line is that we haven’t seen them for a couple of years and wanted to visit them while we were in the area.

After we got settled in to the spot, where we will be for three days, we took a quick drive to a Christmas craft sale that Jackie had heard about from Kathy last night. It was called “Christmas in the Barn” and was held at a local vineyard in their yard. It was very cold and windy, so it was a little uncomfortable walking around the half dozen booths outside of the barn. The barn had another dozen craft booths crowded inside. We were only there about a half hour, but Jackie did buy a silk flower arrangement that she liked. After that we went for a late lunch at the local In and Out burger place and then back to the Elks where we hung around the coach for the rest of the afternoon. About 4:30 we took a drive over to the Lodi Moose Lodge, which was only about a mile from the Elks. This was our first visit to this Moose lodge since I hadn’t been a member of the order the last time we were through here. The lodge just built a brand new building on a big piece of land. Although the clubroom was a little stark, it’s just a big room with the bar on one end and some pool tables on the other end, it was nice. There were a lot of people in the bar and they were all very welcoming and friendly. We had a couple of drinks there and then left and went into the Elks Lodge for a cocktail. Again, the people were welcoming and friendly and we had a great time. We finally got out of there and back to the coach about 7:00 and we stayed in the rest of the night.

Sunday, December 4th, I went out at 8:00 a.m. to get a Sunday paper at the market and the thermometer in the car said it was 36 degrees. I know it was cold because there was frost on the windshield. We stayed around the coach most of the day, Jackie wanted to get some things done, and we knew that we were going to be going out for the evening with our friends Fern and Andy. About 5:00 we drove over to their house, which is out in the country west of Lodi. They have a very pretty, turn of the century, farm house nestled in the surrounding vineyards. They don’t have a winery, they grow Zinfandel grapes which they wholesale to wine makers. Andy was born in Lodi and has lived here much of his life. We had not seen them for about two years, so we spent some time sitting in their living room having cocktails and catching up. They have a very pretty bar in their house and Andy is a collector of liquor bottles. He has hundreds of very unique bottles of all kinds of liquor, most of them still sealed. Oddly, he doesn’t collect wine bottles and they really don’t drink much wine, considering they live in wine country and grow wine grapes.

After about ninety minutes of conversation we got in their car and they drove us into Stockton, about ten miles south of Lodi, to a wonderful Chinese restaurant called Dave Wong’s. It is a fairly new restaurant located on March Road, just off the I-5 in Stockton. Although it was a Sunday night the place was packed. It is a very elegant place with a good menu, although not as extensive as some menu Chinese restaurants. However, the food was superb, some of the best Chinese cuisine that I have had. We had a great meal and continued our conversation, catching up on what we have been doing since we last met. Fern has had a couple of tough years with a series of deaths in her family and I think it perked her up a little to have company. After dinner we drove back to Lodi where we said our goodbyes for the night and headed back to the coach. It was great to see Andy and Fern again and we hope that they will be able to get down to the Coachella Valley this winter to their home there so we can see them again.

Monday, December 5th, another morning in the 30's. We have never been up in this part of the state this late in the year and didn’t know it got this chilly. After lunch we went out to do some geocaching in the Lodi area. We have cached here before, but it has been a couple years, so there were lots of caches yet to find. Many of the caches were located around the many vineyards in the area. We had a good afternoon and in the course of less than three hours we captured 15 new finds with no DNFs. Yea! We even had time to walk around downtown Lodi and window shop for an hour or so. Later in the afternoon, about 5:30, we walked over to the Elks lodge to have a cocktail. It was there Monday Night Football party, so the place was pretty full. They were serving hamburgers and chips fairly cheap, but we decided to just have a couple drinks and then go home and make our own dinner. We have been eating out a lot lately.

Tuesday, December 6th, we packed up the buggy and departed Lodi about 10:00 headed south on U.S. 99 back to Fresno and the Fresno Elks. The ride only took about three hours and we got settled into a nice spot right next to the one we occupied a week ago. Highway 99 is a HORRIBLE road, especially the section that goes through Modesto. The road is the old style concrete and it is broken up and patched and bumpy as hell. One of the sun shades came loose and an access panel on the back of the TV fell off. We felt lucky that only two parts fell off. We will be here for three days this stop before moving on towards the Coachella Valley. After we got settled in we just stayed in the rest of the day and chilled.

Wednesday, December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. Seventy years ago today, wow! We left the coach after lunch to go do some exploring in nearby Clovis, California. Clovis, a suburb of Fresno with a population of a little under 100,000, was founded in 1890 as a freight stop on the new San Joaquin Railroad line. The railroad was constructed to serve the emerging agricultural industries in the San Joaquin Valley. Clovis has a very nicely maintained Old Town with a reputation for a lot of antique stores. We like to browse antique stores, so we decided to go do some caching in Clovis, along with some wandering in Old Town. We spent the afternoon walking around antique stores and other shops, as well as doing a few caches. We got five new finds, with one DNF. About 4:00 we went to the Clovis Elks Lodge, which is located right in the old downtown area, for a cocktail. The lodge is fairly recent, having been chartered in 1972 and is located in what appears to be an old restaurant building in Clovis. We were the first and only customers in the bar, since they only open at 4:00, but the bartender was very welcoming and personable. She was a member of the lodge and told us a lot about the lodge and the city of Clovis. We have never been in this lodge so we got a pin for our banner.

After visiting Clovis we went back to the Fresno Elks Lodge and lo and behold, we found the lodge open! The lodge building here looks wonderful from the outside, and the RV park is great. However, it is not open very often. We were here for five days a week or so ago and the lodge was not open at all. Tonight was dinner and bingo, so it was finally open and we were able to go in and check out the inside of the lodge. The building is quite new, only a few years old from what we have been told, and is very nice. There is a big dining room and a very large lounge with a nice bar. There were quite a number of people in the bar, waiting for dinner to be served. The bartender was very nice and we had one drink. We didn’t need to ask for a pin since we had gotten one last week from the campground host. They were having a holiday sale, mostly desserts and stuff, but we did buy a cookbook put together by the Emblem Club, their ladies group. We have had great success in the past getting good recipes out of Elks cookbooks from other lodges. After out cocktail we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Thursday, December 8th, our last day in Fresno. After lunch we went out to do another afternoon of caching in northeast Fresno and Clovis. In a few hours we were able to add another dozen finds to our stats, along with one DNF. Once we were done caching we went to the mall for an hour or so of shopping. About 5:30 we drove over to Jackie’s niece’s house for dinner. We stopped on the way to pick up some pizzas. We wanted to provide dinner since Ron and Stephanie had bought us dinner when we were here the week before. We picked up pizzas from a place called Me & Ed’s, which Stephanie had indicated was the kid’s favorite place. They have a dozen different stores in the area and seemed to be really busy.

We brought the pizza over, along with a bottle of wine, and had an informal dinner with Stephanie and two of the kids. Ron and Bryce were at soccer practice and didn’t get back until almost 7:30, but there was plenty of pizza left. We had a really nice visit and finally left their house about 8:30 and went back to the coach for the rest of the night. We were really happy that our travels brought us back through Fresno so we could see Ron and Stephanie and the family one more time.

Friday, December 9th, we left Fresno and started south on Highway 99 again, this time headed for Bakersfield. We have reservations in the Coachella Valley starting on Monday at a resort near the Salton Sea. Our original plan was to spend two days in Bakersfield and one in Hesperia as we worked our way down from the high desert. However, I had been watching the weather and noted that there was a winter storm moving into Southern California on Sunday night and the weather is supposed to be pretty bad for a couple of days after. With that in mind we decided to get down into the Coachella Valley on Sunday, a day early, so we would beat the storm and not have to drive in bad weather. Plus, from Bakersfield to Hesperia we had to cross the Tehachepi Summit as well as the Cajon Summit from Hesperia down into the San Bernardino basin. Both of these passes are over 4,000 feet in elevation and can get snow when storms come through. I don’t care for driving the coach in the rain, much less the snow.

We got into Bakersfield and went to the same RV park that we had stayed in when we came through here in November on our way to the coast. It worked out well because we got a discount for our Good Sam plus a discount for being a repeat customer. Ended up costing only $24 for a full hookup pull through site. We didn’t even unhook the car and just stayed in the coach for the afternoon and evening. The next morning we got up and left Bakersfield about 10:00 and went east over the Tehachepi Summit and into Hesperia, California, on I-15 in the San Bernardino Mountains. Our original plan was to stay at an RV park that we have used before, but upon checking the Elks camping book we noticed that the Hesperia Elks Lodge had RV parking and that we had checked it out a few years ago when we came through the area. We changed our destination and went to the Lodge, which was only about three miles off the freeway and got a spot there. It had 30 amp and water, which was fine for a one night stay. Again, we didn’t even unhook the car. Just put out the slides and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Sunday morning we got up and left Hesperia about 10:00 and started down the big hill over Cajon Pass on our last leg back to the Coachella Valley, our old home ground. We arrived at the Oasis Palms RV Resort, south of Indio on Highway 86, just after noon. At first we thought that we would stay at the Indio Elks for one night since our reservation at the RV park didn’t start until Monday, however, I had called the resort and they said they had plenty of room and to go ahead and come in one day early. This is a Passport America park with almost no restrictions on use, so we are able to stay here for 15 days, during the peak camping season in the desert, for $15 a night. We got into a nice pull through spot with 50 amp and full hookups and got setup. Since we are going to be here through Christmas, we also put up all our Christmas decorations. We look very festive.

This is a nice park, set in an old citrus orchard, but it does have some road noise from Highway 86 which is right adjacent. Oddly, we had never noticed this park before despite having traveled up and down Highway 86 dozens of times over the years. We found it when we were looking for somewhere close to the Indio area to stay since our membership park, Indian Waters, was sold. It is now very difficult to get a spot at Indian Waters, but this park will work. The only down side is that it is a 20 mile drive to Indio, but we have stayed further away. It really is about the same distance from Indio as is the park in Desert Hot Springs, just in the other direction.

This seems like a very good spot to take a break and get this chapter of our story on the web. We will be here for two weeks, so look for another update about that time. Until the next time, stay warm, enjoy the spirit of Christmas, and enjoy every day. Bye.

Central California Adventures

2011-11-24T10:58:00.000-08:00

Hi friends, welcome back to our story. Our last chapter closed on Tuesday, November 8th, when we left Pahrump, Nevada, headed for the California coast. Our first stop was in Barstow, California at the Desert Springs RV park. The park is actually in the little town of Dagget, just east of Barstow proper, and located just outside the front gate of the Marine Corps Logistics Base Annex. The Marine Corps western logistics (supply) command is located in Barstow and they have two facilities, the main Barstow base and the one near us, which is called the Yermo Annex. After we got settled into the RV park we just stayed in for the rest of the day.

Wednesday, November 9th, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching in the Barstow area. We have never cached here before and there are a lot of caches around the area. We were able to get 15 new finds, with no DNFs, within a few hours and never more than a few miles from the RV park. After caching we drove over to the outlet mall, but only went into a couple of the stores. We drove into downtown Barstow and toured around a little before heading over to the Elks Lodge. Unfortunately, when we got to the lodge we found it closed up, with a “for sale” sign in front. We called the phone number we had in the Elks travel book and found it was disconnected. It appears that the lodge may have gone under. Too bad. We then just headed back to the coach where we stayed the rest of the evening.

Thursday, November 10th, Happy 236th Birthday United States Marine Corps. Unfortunately, it is a travel day, so I will be unable to fly my Marine Corps Flag today. We left Barstow about 9:30 or so and started west towards Bakersfield, California, about 135 miles away. We were on Highway 58 which runs between Barstow and Bakersfield, crossing the Tehachepi Pass at nearly 4,000 feet. The road was pretty good and there wasn’t too much traffic. We arrived in Bakersfield just after noon and got settled into the Bakersfield Palms RV resort. Since we will be here for three days, we decided to just stay in and relax for the rest of today.

Friday, November 11th, Veterans Day. Thanks to all those who serve and those who have served in the past. Today is also the only day in this century which can be written as 11-11-11. The news has been saying that hundreds of couples around the country have selected today to get married so they will never forget their wedding date. We also noticed on the geocaching web site and newsletter that there are numerous geocaching events going on today in commemoration of the oddity of the date. One of them is being held right here in Bakersfield, only a few miles from where we are staying. The event is scheduled to start at 1:11 p.m. on 11-11-11. Since it’s Veterans Day, they are holding the event in a park, near a war memorial. It all comes together.

We left the coach after lunch and headed for the event, arriving just as the organizers were starting to put stuff out. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing pretty hard and it was sprinkling on and off, making an outside event in a park a little uncomfortable. At least it was fairly warm, in the low 70's. We introduced ourselves to some of the local cachers and had some nice conversations. The organizers gave us one of their unactivated travel coins, I guess as a reward for being the only out of towners at the event. They also passed out sheets with the location information for eleven new caches. They local caching group that planned the event had different cachers in the area put out the eleven new caches, each with eleven items in the cache to start. The event was only a “meet and greet” which took about a half hour. They took a picture of the group, which ended up being a couple dozen people, and the attendees disbanded and, I would guess, headed out to try and be the “first to find” on one or more of the new caches. FTF is a little side game of caching. Some people really get into the FTF, putting alert apps on their phones so they get a notification as soon as a new cache is published within X number of miles of their home. Our motorhome friends, John and Rita Ham, who have an RV lot in Yuma, are that way. John has hundreds of FTFs to his credit. We have about six, most of which we found by luck. Since we are not early risers, we don’t usually catch the FTFs.

We decided this day that we were going to make an effort to get an FTF, so I looked over the caches that we had picked up at the event. One of them was a puzzle cache and I was pretty sure I knew the solution to the puzzle. Puzzle caches are put out and published with false coordinates on the web site. To get the real coordinates you have to solve some type of puzzle. In this case the name of the cache was “11111111111111111" and the only hint was that the last three numbers in the longitude and latitude were abc and def, based on the title of the cache. Since geocaching is a digital sport, I deduced that the title was a binary number, seventeen digits long. I got out the calculator and quickly figured out the base ten value of the number. It was six digits long, just what I needed for the coordinates.

With that information we set out to locate the cache. We got to the coordinates and within seconds had found the cache under a bush. Yea! I got the answer right! We were, indeed, the first to find and got a nice 1921 silver dollar as the FTF prize. Most cachers put something in the cache when they place it as a prize for the first to find. When we put out our caches in Pahrump earlier this month I put a dollar bill in each cache for the FTF. After finding the cache we put the coordinates in for one of the other new caches, hoping that we might get another FTF. This one was a few miles away and we found the location pretty quickly. The information indicated that the cache, dedicated to the Apollo Eleven moon mission, was located up in a large tree alongside the road. We looked and looked, but couldn’t figure out where it might be. Just as we were about to give up, one of the other cachers who had been at the event arrived. He was a young kid, so he climbed the tree and found the cache way up out of reach. Once he got the cache down we told him that he earned the FTF, but when we opened the cache we found that there had already been three others there. Oh well, can’t win them all.

Since it was still rainy and windy, we decided that was enough caching, so we set out to do some shopping errands. First stop was the local Camping World store. Camping World is Nirvana for many RVers. There is not much in the way of RV supplies or goodies that you can’t get at camping world. What I originally wanted to get were some new mats for our outside steps, but I ended up with about $100 worth of stuff. Pretty hard to get out of Camping World without at least a hundred dollars of stuff. Fortunately, we only get to one a couple times a year. After camping world we hit Walmart and then Costco for groceries and goodies. Once we had all our supplies we headed home for the rest of the night.

Ironically, when Jackie sat down at the computer to log our cache finds into the web site, she found that neither of the caches we found had been published yet. Until they are published they don’t have an official cache number and can’t be logged. We will have to wait, probably until tomorrow, before we can log and get credit for our finds. We decided that since there were so many events scheduled for today that the people that reviewed and published new cache requests were probably way behind. We will eventually get credit for the finds.

Saturday, November 12th, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching. Although it is cool and overcast, there is little wind and it doesn’t look like rain. We cached for several hours around mostly east Bakersfield and finally quit at a dozen new finds. It was a bit of a rough afternoon though, we ended up with four new DNFs too. I think two of them were just gone, but two may have been there and we just couldn’t find them. Oh well, Jackie says it keeps us humble.

After caching we went to the Bakersfield Elks Lodge. This is an old lodge, Lodge 288, chartered back in the 1890's. They have a very large building, but it has a commercial restaurant in the front that is a lease from them, and a couple of large ballrooms that they rent out. Their actual clubroom is fairly small. There were half a dozen people in the bar and they were quite friendly. We have never visited Bakersfield before, so we got a lodge pin for our banner. We had a couple drinks and visited with folks for about an hour before heading home for dinner and TV.

Sunday, November 13th, was another travel day. We left Bakersfield and started southwest towards Oceano, California, on the coast. I took Route 166 across the coastal range of mountains between I-5 and the coast. The trucker’s atlas shows it as an authorized commercial truck route, one of two that comes out of the Central Coast to the Central Valley. I have been on the other one, the one that comes out of Paso Robles, many times, but I have never been on this one. This one has some fairly steep grades and curvy sections, but it wasn’t too bad. Just had to concentrate a little more. I always like to stay on roads are designated truck routes with the coach to avoid surprises, like low clearances or super tight turns.

One thing that occurred is just after we got started I was going from one freeway to another in Bakersfield on a tight cloverleaf interchange and the crock pot that Jackie had on the stove with our dinner cooking slid off onto the floor. I was driving and couldn’t see the mess, but I could hear Jackie behind me swearing for fifteen minutes while she cleaned up the mess. Fortunately, the roast we had in the pot didn’t come out and she was able to rescue most of the veggies, so we will still have dinner when we get to Oceano.

We pulled into the Pacific Dunes RV Ranch a little after 1:00 and got our spot. We have never been to this park before, didn’t even know it existed until we joined the membership program that has it on it’s list. We usually stay at Elks Lodges when we are in this area, but we can get this park for $23 a night and have 50 amp full hookups where the Elks have 30 amp and no sewer for $20. This way we can stay the whole ten days we are going to be here in one spot instead of having to move periodically to dump the tanks. The park is great, we are about a half mile from the ocean and have a great view of the dunes. We can’t see the ocean, but we are sure getting the breeze. After we got parked we set up and just stayed in the rest of the day.

Monday, November 14th, we awoke to a nice, cool Pacific beach day. After lunch we headed out to do some local caching. We had one cache that had come up on my query as new, so we headed for that one first with hopes of getting the FTF (first to find) for the cache. The cache was in Arroyo Grande, close to the RV park, near an old bridge across a creek that runs through town. Unfortunately, we were unable to find the cache. The information for the cache, as well as the hint, would lead one to believe that the cache was somewhere near or on the bridge, or the creek, but the coordinates on both of our GPS receivers were taking us in a different location. We looked for a while but finally gave up.

After our unsuccessful efforts at the FTF, we drove to nearby Grover Beach and picked up Jackie’s cousin, Pia. Jackie had talked to her this morning, to let her know we had arrived in town, and when she mentioned we were going caching Pia said she would like to go with us. She follows our Facebook entries as well as our blog, so she knows how much we like caching. She said it intrigued her and she wanted to see what it was all about. We picked her up and headed out for some caching. We ended up finding ten new caches in a couple of hours and Pia spotted at least four of them before we even did. She displays a natural talent for caching and we encouraged her to consider getting a GPS and getting into the hobby.

We then dropped Pia off at her house and drove to Pismo Beach to visit with Jackie’s aunt Donna. Donna and her late husband Barkey have lived in Pismo Beach since the early 70's and built one of the first houses on the hill overlooking the town and the beach. They subsequently built a number of houses in town and Donna was big in real estate in the area for many years. Barkey, who was Jackie’s uncle on her mother’s side, died a couple of years ago, but Donna still lives in one of the houses they built overlooking the beach. Donna, who is in her eighties, has her grandson Corey living with her, helping her with day to day living. We had a very nice visit with Donna and Corey, along with Corey’s girlfriend, and we set up a sort of “schedule” of things we would like to do with Donna and the rest of the family over the rest of the week we will be here.

Just after sunset we left Donna’s and drove back to our coach, stopping at the Oceano Elks Lodge on the way. Had we not joined the RV park membership that gave us access to the park we are staying in, we probably would have stayed at the Oceano Elks. They have a large RV park right next to lodge and we have stayed there many times in the past. As I said earlier, however, they charge $20 for a site with 30 amp and no sewer, while we are getting a full hookup 50 amp site for $23. Kind of a no brainer. We had one cocktail at the lodge, looked at their schedule to see what was going on, and then headed to our RV park. We are staying only a mile or so from the lodge.

Tuesday, November 15th, we decided that this would be a “chores” day. I had a fairly large to-do list and wanted to get some of it done. I changed all the water filters, repaired a sewer valve, put on new step covers, and did all my periodic maintenance checks on the coach. I was done by mid-afternoon and had a very productive day. Jackie got some of her “to-do’s” done today as well.

Wednesday we left the coach after lunch and drove into Grover Beach to do our laundry. After laundry we spent an hour or so walking around the Pismo Beach outlet mall. We then went back to the coach for an hour or so before heading to the Oceano Elks Lodge for spaghetti night. From past visits here we knew that the Oceano lodge has all you can eat spaghetti every Wednesday night, and it is yummy. In the past the place has always been packed, so we went about an hour early to have a cocktail and get a table for our group. Jackie’s aunt Donna and cousin Pia, and Donna’s grandson Corey and his girlfriend Wanda, are all coming to have dinner with us. As it turned out, really needn’t have come early because there were only a few dozen people for tonight’s dinner. In the past we have always been here in this area in the spring or early summer. We learned that the winter crowds are much smaller. Nonetheless, the food was still great and I ate way too much. We had a great time visiting with all of Jackie’s kin, and had a great dinner too. After dinner we drove back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Thursday, November 17th, we left the RV park right after lunch and drove about 15 miles north to San Luis Obispo. San Luis Obispo, or SLO as it is known locally, was first settled by the Spanish explorers who traveled up the coast from what is now Mexico. The mission, the fifth established on the California mission trail, was founded in 1772. The city was incorporated in 1856 and is the county seat of San Luis Obispo County. The city is home to California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly. We spent several hours doing some geocaching in the SLO area, getting seven new finds with one DNF. After caching we spent an hour or so walking around the downtown area window shopping.

Every Thursday night there is a farmers market/street fair held on the main street through downtown SLO. We have been to this event on past visits to the area and found it quite a lot of fun. They close the street down at 5:30 and the fair starts around 6:00 p.m. Just before six we went into Mother’s Tavern, one of the local restaurants, for dinner. I had fish and chips and Jackie had one of their burgers. We had a very enjoyable dinner and a couple of drinks before leaving the restaurant and spending another hour or so walking the street fair. We had a very enjoyable day and evening. After finishing the fair we stopped at a grocery for some supplies and then drove back to the RV park for the rest of the night.

Friday, November 18th, another beautiful coastal day. It was cool and breezy, and there were clouds on the horizon foretelling the possibility of rain, but it was still nice. Jackie spent a couple hours in the morning preparing her signature Halibut chowder for Saturday’s dinner with her aunt and the rest of the family. She always like to make the chowder the day before so it has time to set. After lunch we went out to do some local caching. We managed to get seven new finds, with one DNF, in the course of a few hours. In the process we discovered a very tiny park in Arroyo Grande where the old, early 1900's jail, was located. Aptly, the park was called Hoosegow Park. We also got a cache with a difficulty rating of 4, which is pretty high. They are rated 1 - 5 in both difficulty (finding) and terrain (location). The cache was very tiny and actually out in plain sight, just very well camouflaged. We have never seen a cache quite like this one before. It was made to look like the common wire and lead seals that you see on utility meters and boxes. Very clever.

After caching we went to Jackie’s cousin Pia’s house for a little while just to visit. I helped out with some computer stuff and showed her how to get some really neat games to download. After our visit there we went to the Pismo Beach Moose lodge for a cocktail. The Moose lodge in Pismo is located only a couple hundred yards from the beach, right in the downtown area. They have a real premium piece of real estate. The clubroom was small but nice. The bartender could have been a little friendlier, but some of the people at the bar talked to us. We had a couple of drinks and then headed for home, picking up a pizza for dinner while on the way.

Saturday, November 19th, we just stayed around the coach until about 3:30 when we packed up the Halibut chowder and sundry supplies and went over to Donna’s house. We had a wonderful visit with Jackie’s family and a great dinner of chowder. Pia put together a salad and between that and the rolls we had everything we needed. After dinner we spent about 90 minutes playing a game called “Catch Phrase” with the family. This is an electronic game that we bought a year or so ago after playing it with a group of friends at an RV park. The game brings up a random or word or phrase and then you have to give hints to the other players to get them to guess it. It is a cross between password and charades since you can give verbal as well as physical cues. Some of the words a phrases are very obscure and we had a good time. There are a lot of laughs from a game like this. About 8:30 we left Donna’s and went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Sunday was an interesting day in some respects. It had started raining in the middle of the night, sometime right around midnight. Off and on it was raining really hard and the wind was blowing pretty good too. About 4:30 or so I got up to use the bathroom and while I was up I went out into the living room to check for any obvious signs of leaks. Leaking water is the bane of every RVers existence, and we have had a few in the past. While we were in Pahrump we had some water leaking out of a ceiling light in one of the living room slides. I thought at that time that it might have been caused by the guy that washed the coach using his power washer and forcing water into an area that it would not normally go. Unfortunately, I found that the same fixture was again leaking water onto the coach. Not a lot of water, but enough to be a concern. It was clear that the slide had a leak somewhere. I took out the light fixture to avoid any electrical issues, and put a towel under the leak to soak up the water. I then went back to bed.

When I got up later, about 7:30, it was still raining and it was still leaking from the slide. I had to remove the second light fixture in the same slide because it too was leaking a little. When Jackie got up, and the rain had stopped for a while, we pulled the slide in. It can’t leak if it’s not out in the rain. I tried to examine the caulking on the seam along the top of the slide, the one I suspect has developed a hole, but I can’t get to it without dismantling the whole decorative fascia on the interior of the slide. I decided we would wait until we get to Fresno later in the week for that job. Fortunately, none of the other areas that have leaked in the past were wet, so my fixes on those areas are still holding.

The rain went on and off all day. We had originally planned to go to the big swap meet in nearby Nipomo, but with the wet ground, cold wind and continuing rain we decided to just stay in for the day. We spent the day playing games and catching up on TV shows.

Monday, November 21st, we had an early lunch and then went out to do some more caching in the local area. Today we were able to get an additional seven new finds, one of which was our 3,100 find, a new milestone. We also got a cache that we had tried to get last year when we here but couldn’t figure out a way to get into where the cache was. Today we stuck to it, found the right way in, and got the cache. After caching we stopped at the store for some supplies before heading back to the RV park.

One of the other places we stopped today was the Pismo State Beach Butterfly Grove. This grove, located just off the beach on Highway 1, is one of many Southern California Monarch Butterfly wintering sites. Every winter hundreds of thousands of Monarchs leave their winter homes in the north and migrate south to wintering sites in the southern U.S. and Mexico. The migration actually spans several generations of butterflies and the ones that leave the wintering site in the Spring will not be back. Nonetheless, every year they flock to the same places as their ancestors. Scientists are still trying to figure out how and why the Monarchs come back to the same places every year. In the past, when we have come to Pismo Beach in the Spring or Summer there were no butterflies. This is the first time we have been here in the Fall, when the butterflies are coming in. They hang in the trees in huge groups. Tourists flock to the site when the butterflies are in residence. This was the first time we have been able to see the phenomenon. Pretty cool.

About 4:30 we left again en route to Jocko’s Steak House in Nipomo, a small town about 10 miles south of the RV park. We have been to Jocko’s on a couple of other visits to this area and it remains my favorite, all time steak house. The steaks here are better than any I have had, anywhere. We met Jackie’s family there, including Pia, Donna, Corey and Wanda, along with Rod, a friend of Pia’s. I had a ribeye and Jackie had lamb chops. They cook all their meat on an open BBQ fueled with only oak wood and the flavors are to die for. The meat is all prime and is super tender. The guys that work the grill also really know how to cook the meat. Jackie likes her meat charred rare, and she is more often than not disappointed. Never here. I like mine blue, which is basically raw with just a little browning on the outside. Along with your meat you get salad, potato, beans, dessert and coffee if you want it. Jackie’s complete dinner, which was so big she took half of it home, was $20, my 20 oz. Ribeye was $27 and I took half of it home too.

Jocko’s is on Thompson Street in Nipomo, California, just a little bit north of Santa Maria off highway 101. There is no finer steak place and I highly recommend it to anyone who is in the area looking for a good meal. After dinner we drove over to Donna’s house where we visited with the family until about 9:30 when we finally went back to the coach for the night.

Tuesday, November 22nd dawned a cool but clear day. I spent a little time in the morning cleaning up stuff outside the coach in preparation for a travel day on Wednesday. Mid afternoon Jackie’s Aunt Donna and Cousin Pia came over to the coach for a visit. They had some family issues to talk about, so I just stayed in the back on my computer while they visited in the front. Later in the evening we all had dinner in the coach. Jackie fixed chicken enchiladas and all the other Mexican side dishes. It was great. After dinner we visited some more with Jackie’s family until about 8:00 when they left to go home.

Wednesday, November 23rd, our stay in Oceano has come to an end. We packed up the coach and left about 10:00 to head northeast about 160 miles to Fresno, California. Jackie has a niece that lives there with her husband and kids. The drive was uneventful, although there was quite a bit of traffic on the road because it is the day before Thanksgiving. We arrived at the Fresno Elks Lodge about 2:00 and got set up in their RV lot. We have a very nice grass site overlooking a small lake. Pretty nice view. The sites have 30 amp and water, no sewer, but we are only going to be here for five nights, so we can handle the lack of sewer.

It has been a couple of weeks since I published a chapter, so this seems like a good spot to break it off and get it on line. The next chapter will be another couple weeks. Until the next time, stay happy and smile. A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you're at home. See ya!

At Home in Pahrump

2011-11-09T10:10:00.001-08:00

Welcome back readers. Our last episode concluded on Tuesday, October 25th, with our arrival at the Charleston Peak RV Resort in Pahrump, Nevada. Regular readers will know that Pahrump is technically our “home,” since we maintain our mailing address at a UPS private mailbox store here in town. Having a physical mailing address here makes us Nevada residents, which means no state income tax. Yea!

We arrived here about 1:30 or so and got checked into the resort. This resort used to be a part of the Western Horizons Resorts membership RV group (WHR), however, earlier this year we learned that the company lost the park through foreclosure. This was confirmed when we checked in and were given a notice that the park was now owned by City Bank. We learned that if this was your home park, the park where you originally bought your WHR membership, that they had bought the contracts and would continue to honor them. However, if it was not your home park, and ours in Arizona, WHR members would be allowed to use the park only through the end of 2012. This was disappointing in that Charleston Peak was our favorite WHR resort. Now we will have to make other arrangements when we come to Pahrump.

We were only able to get a site with 30 amp power, but that shouldn’t be a problem because it is late enough in the year that we won’t have to be running two A/Cs. Normally we are here earlier in the year and it is not as crowded. There were only a handful of empty spots and all the 50 amp were taken. We got settled in, I put up the outside gear, and then we just stayed around the coach for the rest of the evening relaxing.

Wednesday, October 26th, we left the coach after lunch and drove down to the UPS store to pick up our mail in person. The manager, Machelle, was happy and surprised to see us. We talk to her all the time through the year when we call to have mail sent, but we only see her when we are staying in Pahrump. After getting our mail we headed to the laundromat. We haven’t done laundry in over two weeks because we have been busy, so we had a lot of stuff to do. Once we got our laundry done we went back to the coach.

I spent some time locating a supplier for a control panel for our inverter. As we were getting ready to leave Needles on Tuesday we noticed that the control panel inside the coach for the inverter system was going crazy, flashing and giving weird messages. A little trouble shooting indicated that the inverter itself was working fine, just the control panel was bad. The list price on the part was about $250, but I found an online supplier that had the part I needed for $142 and could get it to me in a couple days. Yea!

About 6:00 we went down to the clubhouse for Texas Hold’em. We really like playing poker at some of the RV parks we frequent. This particular park has a lot of regulars and we knew a number of the people who were in the clubhouse for the game. Since the park is nearly full, there were a lot of players and we filled three tables. The buy in for the game is $5 and they play until 8:00, about two hours. Between Jackie and I we lost 80 cents for the evening. We probably won’t starve with those levels of gambling losses.

Thursday, October 27th, we decided to go out after lunch and do some geocaching. We have done a lot of geocaching in this area, since we are here every year, so finding caches we haven’t done is getting more difficult. Nonetheless, we did find some and went out for an afternoon of mostly desert caching. Because the caches were widely separated, and most were out in the desert, requiring driving on gravel roads and trails, and even walking a few hundred yards, it took a while to get from cache to cache. We managed to find ten caches in about three and a half hours and decided that was enough. After caching we went to Walmart for some groceries and then home for the rest of the night.

Friday, October 28th, I left the coach about 8:30 to meet an instructor for my annual qualification shoot for my concealed weapons permit. As a retired peace officer, I qualify for a Federal permit that basically trumps most state laws regarding carrying a concealed weapon and weapons possession. This is handy for full time RVers since we occasionally go to states like Massachusetts and New York where they frown upon ordinary people having guns. Criminals have guns, just not regular people. Anyway, one of the requirements of the Federal law is that the retired officer has to qualify with the weapon at least once per year. I have a guy here who takes me to the desert, lets me shoot for qualification and then signs off my paperwork for $30. I met him at 9:00 and was signed off and done by 9:15. I went by the Sheriff’s Office in Pahrump to drop off the paperwork and get my new permit issued, but they were closed. Seems that they are celebrating “Nevada Day” and the offices are closed. Nevada day is actually October 31st, which is Monday, but they decided to celebrate on Friday instead. Go figure. By the way, Nevada was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864.

After I got back to the coach and had lunch, we went out to something related to geocaching, but not finding caches, HIDING caches! Obviously, in order for people to find caches, other players have to hide them. Since geocaching is primarily a participant driven sport, there are some rules for hiding caches, among them that they expect people to limit their hides to a reasonable distance from their residence. This is because the cache owner is responsible for maintaining the cache, keeping new logs in it, making sure it’s dry, that sort of thing. We finally decided that we wanted some caches out there with our name on them, so we made up three caches and took them out and hid them. We can do that here in Pahrump, because that is our “home” address on the caching website.

We did one cache in a tree just outside the RV park and Winery where we are staying. We did one desert cache, a coffee can under some yucca plants just north of the RV park, and one light post cache (LPC) which is a simple cache hidden under the metal box that sits on most parking lot light posts. We named the LPC Smokey’s Cache in honor of our cat. After we hid the caches we came back to the coach and submitted new caches to the website. You have to hide the cache first because you need the GPS coordinates to submit the cache. Once the caches are submitted they are sent to volunteer reviewers who just check to see that you got all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted properly.

While we were out doing the caches we picked up our mail and my control panel for the inverter had been delivered. When we got home I plugged it in and it worked great. It is even the same size as the one I replaced, so I didn’t have to do any modifications. I programmed the new remote and now everything is fine again. Yea!

About 5:30 we went down to the Pahrump Elks Lodge for cocktails and dinner. We had a drink and sat at the bar playing nickle slots for a while and then went into dinner. Tonight was a costume party, although we only wore our Halloween shirts that we had bought for the Farmington rally. Dinner was supposed to be just finger foods, but it was actually quite good. They had chicken strips, fries, meatballs, sausage and sauce and several other tasty dishes. The party only had probably 30 people, and only a dozen or so were actually in costume. We sat with a couple that was originally from Wisconsin, which gave us something in common. The guy was also a former Marine and they had a son who was still in the Marine Corps, which gave us plenty to talk about. We had dinner, a couple of drinks, and stayed until they judged the costume contest, at which time the party pretty much broke up. We were home in the coach by 7:30 and just relaxed the rest of the evening.

Saturday, October 29th, we decided to take a drive to Shoshone, California, to see what was going on with their annual Old West Days celebration, which was being held this weekend. We actually had two choices, Beatty Days, in Beatty, Nevada, or Shoshone’s festival. Beatty is about 65 miles north of Pahrump and has a pretty neat annual festival. We were there back in 2007 and had a good time. One of the highlights of their Beatty Days celebration are the bed races. Kids push hospital beds down the street in a race. They have to change the sheets twice during the race. Pretty funny to watch. This morning I looked up the schedule for this year and found that the bed races were scheduled for 12:30 today and we could not get there in time. We decided to try the Shoshone Days instead. Shoshone is only 27 miles from Pahrump, across the border into California. Shoshone is the southern gateway to Death Valley and is a very small town, almost a village. We past a half dozen old cars coming out of Shoshone on the way there, so we figured we missed whatever car show they might have had. We did find a sort of craft fair going on with a couple dozen booths, so we spent an hour or so wandering around the fair. We also visited the Shoshone museum, which was actually very interesting.

After the fair we did some geocaching. A couple of the first caches we looked for were right outside of town in an area that goes by the name Dublin Gulch. It is a canyon that goes west from town and along the rock walls on the sides the old pioneers in the 1800's cut a bunch of caves into the rock, put wooden doors on the front, wooden floors down, and lived in them. Several of them even had stove pipes coming out of the roof. The rock was some kind of very soft sedimentary material which would have been fairly easy to cut into. One section of the wall looked like an old motel. One of the more interesting things I have seen, and certainly not something I have seen before. We had three caches in the canyon and we found all three thanks to our Geo-Jeep’s ability to handle rough desert trails. We also did a cache that was located next to the old roadbed from the railroad that used to go through the area. The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, ran through remote reaches of the Mojave Desert from the Santa Fe Railway railhead at Ludlow, California, through Death Valley and Amargosa Valley, terminating at the Mining towns of Tonopah and Goldfield in the Great Basin Desert of Nevada. The railroad was listed as a common carrier, however it was built by Francis Smith the "Borax King" and his Pacific Coast Borax Company primarily to transport borax to processing and market.

Grading began on the T&T line in 1905 and completed in 1907, with the T&T tracks ending at Gold Center, Nevada. The line also shared tracks with other local railroads to service other mining towns in the area, including Beatty and Rhyolite. Once the mining boom ended, the railroad struggled to survive, as borax shipping came to comprise the majority of its business. After the borax mining and operations were moved from the Death Valley region to the Boron, California mine and facilities in 1927, the line relied upon whatever traffic could be found. Over most of its existence, U.S. Borax (USB) had made up the losses from the railroad's operations. By 1940 the entire line was out of service and in 1942 scrapping of the line began at Beatty and terminated a year later at Ludlow. All that remains of the line are the eroding rail beds cutting across the desert.

We only cached for an hour or so and ended up with five new finds and one DNF. After we got back to Pahrump we went to the Pahrump Moose Lodge for a cocktail. We have never been to this Moose, since I only joined the Moose last fall. They have a pretty nice lodge building not too far from the center of town and the place had quite a few people at the bar. They have a handful of slot machines, which, of course, we were obligated to try. We both lost our $5 and called it good enough. We had a couple of drinks and talked to a number of people. They were very friendly at the bar. They are big on karaoke and have it several nights a week, so we are planning on coming back later in the week. After visiting the Moose we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Sunday, October 30th, we just decided to have a stay at home day. We both got a few chores done and simply relaxed for the entire day. Monday I got up early and went to the medical lab for my quarterly blood test. Rather appropriate to have blood taken on Halloween After lunch we went out to do some chores around town. I took my concealed weapons paperwork to the sheriff’s office and got my new permit, we picked up mail, and I went in and got a haircut. The last time I got it cut was when I had my long braid cut off in Yuma back in February. I like the pony tail, but I don’t want the long braid again, so I plan on getting it cut at least once a year from now on. She took off about four inches and still left me with a nice pony tail.

After we completed our errands we stopped at two of the three big casinos in Pahrump where we have player cards. We stopped at the Pahrump Nugget first and played for about an hour before deciding we had lost enough. We both lost about twenty bucks. We then went across the street to Terrible’s and lost another ten, though again, we played for an hour before giving up on winning. After our gambling foray, we went home for a little while before going down to the clubhouse at the RV park for Texas Hold’em. I won big tonight, winning about three dollars over two hours in the game. For a five dollar buy in, that’s not too bad. However, I also won the $10 prize for the highest winning hand of the night. About three or four hands in I got a straight flush, second highest hand in poker. I had a little scare right at the very end of the evening when there was a possibility on the board of someone having a straight flush one card higher than mine, but it didn’t pan out. Jackie lost part of her stake, but we still ended up about seven bucks up for the night. Yea!

Tuesday, November 1st, I got up early and took the car into the local Jeep dealership to have the oil changed. Unfortunately, I got turned away because I hadn’t made an appointment and they didn’t have time to do it today. I made an appointment for Wednesday and went back home. We were going to go out and do some geocaching today, but the wind came up and was blowing about 20 mph, with gusts in the 30's, which makes desert caching too uncomfortable. You end up getting sandblasted. We spent the rest of the day in the coach, listening to the wind and playing on our computers. At 7:00 an insurance agent drove up from Vegas to talk to us about medicare supplement and drug policies for me since I start Medicare in February. I ended up signing up with United Healthcare through AARP since it was the least expensive policy that covered all deductibles and copays that Medicare doesn’t. I went with the Humana Walmart prescription plan. I calculate that come February I will be saving over $400 per month on health insurance. Yippee! After the insurance lady left we watched TV until bedtime.

Wednesday, November 3rd, Jackie got up early this time and went in for her blood tests. About 12:30 we took the car over to the local Jeep dealership and dropped it off for it’s oil change. We then walked across the street to Romero’s, our favorite Mexican restaurant here in Pahrump. We had a nice lunch and went back to the dealership, but the car wasn’t quite done. About 1:30 the car was finished and we went out to do some geocaching. We end up having to drive about 25 miles out of town to cache, but we still had some fun. We managed to get nine new finds, including one that was just across the border between California and Nevada on a little highway out of Death Valley. As is usual with Nevada, there was a small hotel and casino right on the border and, for whatever reason, there was a giant cow statue in front of the hotel. We even took a picture.

After caching we scurried back to Pahrump just in time to go down to the clubhouse for cards. For the third time I came out ahead, this time I won about $4.00. Not enough to keep food on the table, but still better than losing. After cards we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Thursday, November 4th, we went out after lunch to some more geocaching in the Pahrump area. As I mentioned earlier, we are having to go further and further out of town to find caches that are new to us. Today we cached to the north of town, out in the desert. Although we were not truly “four-wheeling” we were certainly on roads that you wouldn’t take your dad’s Buick on. We ended up getting only four caches in about three hours, mostly because of travel time. It took nearly an hour to get from one cache to another over the rugged gravel roads. We also got out into a dusty desert area where we had trouble finding our way out. We were within fifty feet of the main, paved road, but couldn’t get there because there was a six foot deep wash between our dirt road and the main highway. Finally found the right dirt road that led us out of the area. The car was so coated in dust and dirt that I had to take it to a quicky wash to get most of the crap off.

After dinner we went over to Moose lodge to check out their karaoke. There were a lot of people there, mostly singing country music. One or two of them were pretty good. It appeared to be a crowd that comes every Thursday and the rotation was very long. It took almost an hour for my name to come up. I sang the one song and then we left. I really didn’t want to sit there through another hour of rotation just for another song. We went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Friday, November 4th dawned as a cloudy, cool morning with a promise of some rain. This was a little disappointing in that the guy that was washing and waxing our rig was only half done. We usually get it waxed once a year when we are here in Pahrump by a guy named Scott. He does a lot of rigs here at Charleston Peak and plays in the Texas Hold’em games. He charges six dollars a foot, which is about average, to do a wash and complete hand wax. In the middle of the afternoon I took all of our karaoke stuff down to the clubhouse so I could get set up. We volunteered to do karaoke tonight after the happy hour. We have done it here numerous times on our various visits, sometimes it is a busy, fun night, other times it sort of flops. Scott also got the coach finished while I was setting up and it looks great. We have a very pretty coach when it is all shiny and clean.

I got everything set up and working just before the happy hour started at 4:00. It is a pot luck, but most of the stuff that was there was snacks. About 5:30 we started the karaoke and I was surprised and pleased to see that there were about eight singers in the rotation and all of them had multiple songs selected. Not only that, most were pretty good karaoke singers. We didn’t have anyone sing who was bad or way off key. We had a great time and sang until about 8:30 when most of the folks packed up and headed for home. It took me another half hour or so to get everything torn down and packed into the car so we could go home too. A very fun night.

Saturday, November 5th was another really cold morning with the promise of some rain. We didn’t do too much except go to the store for supplies. We hit both the Walmart and the local Smith’s. Sunday we left the coach shortly after noon and drove down to Sherri’s Ranch for lunch. Now Sherri’s is one of the two Pahrump brothels, both of which are southwest of town. The other is the Chicken Ranch. Now, as we understand it, the Chicken Ranch is just your run of the mill, legal Nevada whorehouse. Sherri’s, however, has a bar and restaurant, a hotel and spa that are on the property but not connected to the brothel in a business sense. And, believe it our not, they give tours. Sherri’s is a very high-end brothel according to everything that we have heard. We have talked about coming for lunch and the tour for several years, but just never got around to doing it. Today we did.

We went in the bar, which was pretty standard sports bar with some booths scattered around the outside edge. The lunch menu was basic sandwich fare, hamburgers, fries, that sort of thing. I had a Philly steak and Jackie had a hamburger, both of which were good. The only thing that gave away where we were was that there were several very attractive women in lingerie sitting around the bar. While we were eating a well dressed, middle aged woman with a distinctly German accent came over and asked us if this was our first time here. When we said yes she offered the guided tour after we finished our lunch. This lady was clearly the boss of the place.

After lunch the manager introduced us to “Logan” who was a very attractive, tall blonde who then took us on a brief tour. We saw the public rooms, the lounge where the clients pick out their “date” and some of the more exotic rooms. She also showed us pictures of some of the bungalows that they have on the property, each of which has an individual theme, such as Romance Room, or Animal Room. She showed us a couple of hot tub rooms, as well as one that was the bubble room with a big bubble bath. She also showed us the bondage room, which was pretty interesting. No photos allowed, but stone walls, cages, chains on the walls, the whole bondage and S&M vibe going on.

Logan also gave us the general background of how the girls were all independent contractors who came to the brothel, and rented a place to live and work. They negotiated their own rates with the clients within certain parameters, and were given medical exams weekly. She also said that once they entered the property they were not allowed to leave for at least the rest of the week. She wasn’t allowed to discuss how much the girls charged, or how much she made. She told us she had been in the business for nine years, seven of which have been at Sherri’s. After the tour we tipped Logan, visited the gift shop (yes, there is a gift shop) and then left. A very interesting experience, and educational too.

After our visit to the brothel we stopped at the nearby Terrible’s casino for some gaming. We played about two hours and I managed to lose ten dollars. Jackie, on the other hand, came out $70 ahead. Yea! We then went into town and did our laundry. By the time we got done it was 5:00 and already getting dark. We changed off of daylight savings time last night, which means really early sunsets. We then headed home for the rest of the night.

Monday, November 7th, my brother Russ and his wife Zen came up from Las Vegas to spend the afternoon with us. They arrived about 1:00 or so and we spent the first couple hours just chatting and catching up. We normally only see Russ and Zen when we come to Pahrump, so it’s usually once a year. He is a craps pit boss at the Golden Nugget in downtown Vegas. We introduced Russ to geocaching several years ago and he and Zen have really gotten into it. Normally we would go out and do a lot of geocaching with them, but the weather was really cold and windy. In addition, we have done most of the caches around the immediate area. We did go out with them for about an hour so he could pick up our three new caches that we put out last week. He also got four others in the area that were fairly close to our caches.

After caching we went back to the coach for a little while and talked some more before going to the China Wok Chinese food buffet for dinner. We have eaten at this place before and the food is very good and very reasonable. We all ate way too much, but it was good. It is located behind the Walmart store on Highway 160, just south of Basin, for those who may find themselves in Pahrump looking for good Chinese. After dinner we went back to the coach and talked until they left about 7:30 or so.

Tuesday, November 8th, believe it or not our two week stay in Pahrump is over. The time seemed to just fly by. We got out between 9:30 and 10:00 and, after topping off the fuel tanks at the Smith’s store, we headed southwest towards Barstow, California. Even though I needed less than a quarter tank in the coach, we wanted to leave Nevada with full tanks because diesel is about seventy cents more expensive per gallon in California. Yikes. We went out the “back way” from Pahrump, the route that heads toward Death Valley before turning south and picking up Interstate 15 in Baker, California. This is a much shorter and faster route than going back to Vegas and taking the 15 from there. We stopped for lunch in Baker at the Mad Greek Café, one of Jackie’s favorite restaurants. We also were trying to connect with our friends Ray and Suzie Babcock. We knew that they were headed for Pahrump today and we had tried to get them to come a couple of days earlier, but they couldn’t. They also like the Mad Greek, and we figured that since they left from the Hemet area and were coming up the 15 that we would both end up in Baker pretty close to the same time and could get to see them at least for a few minutes.

We got to the restaurant just before noon and were almost done eating when they got there about 12:30. We sat with them until a little after 1:00 when we got back in the coach and finished the trip to Barstow. We settled into an RV park about ten miles east of Barstow, right outside the gate to the Marine Corps Logistic Base here in the Barstow area. We are on our way to the California coast near Pismo Beach and will only be here in Barstow for two nights.

Since this is the end of our two week stint in Pahrump it seemed like the ideal place to close this chapter of the blog and get it published. I will get another chapter out in a couple weeks or so. Until the next time, remember the words of Henry David Thoreau. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” We are!

Farmington, New Mexico and I-40 Across Arizona

2011-10-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

Hello friends, welcome back to the story. Our last chapter concluded on Sunday, October 9th, with our arrival in Farmington, New Mexico, for the FMCA Rocky Mountain Area Rally. We drove from the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque to Farmington on Sunday afternoon.

Monday, October 10th was a free day. Although we arrived on Sunday, we were part of early parking, meaning we got our spot, but the actual rally doesn’t start until Wednesday. I went out in the morning to the bank and then to get the car washed. After all the rain and stuff from the last couple weeks it was pretty filthy. We then picked up some friends of ours, Bev and Jerry King, and drove into Farmington for lunch. Bev and Jerry have a home in Indio, but we actually know them from FMCA rallies. Bev is the Secretary for the Military Veteran’s Chapter, of which I am a charter member. We went for lunch to a Blake’s Lotaburger drive in. Since we have been running all over New Mexico for most of the summer, we have noticed that there are Blake’s drive ins in every town, usually more than one. We had never been to one and I have wanted to try them. Since this is our last stop in New Mexico, I figured it was now or never, so we went. The food was OK - nothing special, so now I can say I tried it, but won’t be in a big hurry to go back. After lunch we went to Walmart because the King’s needed some supplies for a Vet’s Chapter social they are hosting later in the week. They don’t have a tow car because it got wrecked a couple weeks ago and is still in the shop. After we took the King’s back to their coach we went back into town to do some laundry and more shopping.

After we got home we relaxed at the coach until cocktail hour when we got together with Peggy and Vernon for happy hour. We decided to break out some steaks for dinner, along with some veggies and sweet potatoes, at Peggy and Vernon’s coach. It was a great dinner and afterwards we chatted until about 8:00 when we went back to our coach for the rest of the night.

Tuesday, October 11th, we left with Peggy and Vernon to do some geocaching. After five finds we went to lunch at one of the My Big Fat Greek Restaurant’s locations here in Farmington. Jackie spotted it yesterday while we were driving around and she loves Greek food. We have eaten at the same restaurant in Tucson several times and the food is always good. This one is a new location and has only been open less than a month. Jackie had a Gyro and I had a steak and cheese pita that was very tasty. Peggy had a huge sampler platter that was way too big for one sitting. She took a big part of it home in a box. After lunch did more geocaching, finally ending up with ten new finds and no DNFs. After caching we went back to the coach and had happy hour with the Bullocks. We skipped dinner because we had eaten such a big lunch.

Wednesday we hung around the coach until after lunch when we went down to the events center for a seminar on destination ideas. The seminar was well attended and was basically a round table discussion of great places people have visited with their RVs. About half were places we have been, and we got some good ideas from the other half of the suggestions. After that seminar we spent a little time walking around the vendors. Didn’t buy anything and didn’t spend too much time because there were only about 16 or 17 vendors, not a great turnout.

We then went to the first timers seminar where they told us a little about the history of the Rocky Mountain Area and the rallies. We are first timers at this particular rally, but, of course, we have been to many other rallies, so we didn’t learn much new. We then went to the Chapter Fair, where I helped out with the booth for the Military Veteran’s Chapter. The chapter fair at a rally is an hour long forum where different chapters of FMCA can set up a booth to recruit new members. We got about a half dozen new members for the chapter.

After the chapter fair we headed back to the coach where we had happy hour with Peggy and Vernon. Peggy then cooked us a lasagna dish that her daughter, who is a gourmet chef, had made up and froze for her. It was sinfully delicious. We stayed for a little while after dinner and then went back to our coach for the night.

Thursday, October 13th, the weather just keeps getting better and better. We went down to the activities area about 10:00 for a seminar on geocaching. A friend of ours, Gary Underhill, who, with his wife LuVerne, are very active cachers, was teaching the seminar. We didn’t learn too much new, but enjoyed the session and met several other cachers. After the caching seminar we went back to the coach for lunch before returning for another seminar at 1:00. Jackie and I split up this time with Jackie going to a course on co-pilot training, and me going to a session on the benefits that come with an FMCA membership.

At 2:30 we sat out on the patio area and watched the pet parade. They had about 50 entries, all of which two were dogs. There were two cats that they brought out first. They were leashed trained cats, but being out in the open with lots of people and dogs nearby made them VERY nervous. Jackie and I joked that if we tried that with Smokey he would eat us alive right there. Peggy and Vernon’s dog Belle was in the competition, dressed in a nice orange dress. Unfortunately, she didn’t win any of the prizes, but she was cute. After the pet session we went back to the coach to pick up snacks and headed over to Bev and Jerry King’s coach for the Military Veteran’s Chapter social, which they held at their RV site. There were over 50 people that showed up for the social and we had a good time. We finally got back to the coach about 5:30 to relax for a little while before changing into our Halloween costumes for the party at 7:00. We didn’t really have costumes, we both bought orange Halloween tee shirts at Walmart and goofy wigs. I had a big Afro wig and Jackie got a witch wig with long black hair. We dressed up and went down with Peggy and Vernon to the party, which really wasn’t much. They had a DJ playing music, but he was playing really old country music, 40's stuff, which is not my cup of tea. They had a pumpkin carving contest, but only six people participated. They then had a costume contest, which went better. There were a couple of dozen people who had really elaborate costumes that were fun to look at. Once the contest was over at 8:30 most everyone left, including us. We went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Friday, October 14th we were up early and out of the coach for breakfast at 8:00. The rally provides breakfast for everyone on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, however, we are not normally breakfast eaters and don’t get up early enough for a buffet that ends at 9:00. However, today we did because we are going on a Jeep run with a bunch of people from the rally. Originally, I signed up and planned to take our Jeep, however, on further consideration I decided that we had a little too much of a “Gentleman’s Jeep” to risk a trail ride. We decided to ride along with Peggy and Vernon, who have a “real” Jeep Wrangler. We all met up in the parking lot and there were about 25 Jeeps on the run. We caravanned from the fairgrounds to the area where the trail was, on the northwest side of town. Once we got to the trail start the leaders set up the order of driving so that those who didn’t have a lot of experience were in between some people who were more experienced. Once we started the up hill part of the run I was quite happy that I decided not to bring our Jeep. It might have made it without damage, but there were some really rocky areas and even a couple of rock shelves to climb. Our Jeep has soft suspension and is not trail rated, so I think I will stick to dirt roads and keep off the Jeep trails. That actual run was only a couple of miles long, but it took an hour and a half for everyone to get through it. Some of the more radical Jeeps even took some of the more difficult shortcuts, which was pretty impressive to watch.

After the Jeep run the four of us did some more geocaching up in the north part of Farmington. We got four before deciding to head for home. After we got home we relaxed for a little while and then went up to the Farmington Elks Lodge for some cocktails. We had told several other friends at the rally who we know to be Elks, that we were going up there at 5:00. Besides Jackie and I there were Peggy and Vernon, and two couples who had been at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta with us, including David and Kay Piper, the wagonmasters for the Balloon rally.

After the Elks we went out to eat with Peggy and Vernon. We had thought about eating at the Elks because they had a Friday night dinner. However, we had heard from several different people that the food at the Elks was not so good. We ended up at a steak house in downtown Farmington called Dillon’s. The service was great and my steak was wonderful. Jackie first ordered a Veal Oscar dish, but sent it back because it was very salty. She ended up with veal picata, which she said was excellent. The portions were huge and I ended up taking half my New York home with me, which is rare for me. Jackie took a big portion of her’s home for lunch also. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Saturday, October 15th, the last day of the rally. I got up early and went over to the events area about 9:00 because I had signed up for bean bag baseball, one of the games they play at rallies. I was on the military veteran’s team. Since I was early enough, I stopped in and had a free breakfast. Jackie was still home in her jammies and missed breakfast. I only got to play one game of baseball because we got beat in the first round and were out of the competition. I spent a few minutes looking at the classic cars that had come in for the morning’s car show. My favorite was a 1964 Studebaker Silver Hawk coupe. I always wanted a Studebaker when I was a kid. After I got back to the coach Jackie and I went out geocaching with Peggy for a couple of hours. Vernon didn’t want to go and stayed home with the dog. We managed to get ten new caches in the course of a couple hours, along with one DNF.

We had our happy hour at 5:00 at the coach and then the four of us went back over to the events center for dinner. They only had one dinner at this rally, an optional event, but we all bought tickets for it. They had a choice of pork or chicken and both were OK for buffet food. We didn’t stay for the entertainment, which was a barbershop quartet from Farmington. After dinner we went back to the coaches and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Sunday, October 16th, a travel day again. Peggy and Vernon pulled out early, about 7:30 because they are going to Moab, Utah, which is over 200 miles on some pretty mountainous roads. They will be heading home to northern California in a week or so Peggy can have her second knee replacement. We will see them again in Indio in December. We took our time getting ready and pulled out of the fairgrounds about 10:00. We stopped for fuel in Farmington and then headed southwest to Gallup, New Mexico, about 135 miles. We pulled into Gallup to the USA RV park at just about 1:00 p.m. and got set up. For the first time in nearly two weeks we have full hookups with sewer and everything. Yea! We will be here for three days before continuing west, working our way to Pahrump, Nevada. Jackie was not handling the increase in altitude to 6,500 well, so we just stayed in the rest of the day.

Monday, October 17th, Jackie was still not feeling well, so we just stayed around the coach all day. Tuesday was more of the same. We have pretty much cached this area dry anyway, so we aren’t missing much.

Wednesday, October 19th, we packed up and left Gallup heading West on I-40, 190 miles to Flagstaff, Arizona. Once we crossed the Arizona border we “time traveled” back an hour into what amounts to Pacific time. We got into Flagstaff about 1:00 or so and went into the Black Bart RV park, the same one we stay at anytime we come through Flagstaff. We are only going to be here one day, so we did the minimal amount of hookup. The gal in the office told us it was going to freeze tonight, so I didn’t even hook up the hose. We will just run off what is left in the fresh water tank. After we got set up we went to Sam’s Club and Walmart for supplies. Neither Needles, California nor Pahrump, Nevada have a Sam’s or Costco, so we needed to get some liquor and other bulk items. After shopping we went back to the coach and stayed in the rest of the night.

Thursday, October 20th, we left Flagstaff about 9:00 and were again westbound on I-40, this time going 211 miles to Needles, California. We stopped just prior to going into California to buy fuel. The fuel in Arizona was $3.78 per gallon. 30 miles later, when we got off the freeway in Needles we saw a station selling it for $4.79 per gallon. Holy Moly! Granted, it was probably one of those stations that jacks the price up because they are right off the freeway, but give me a break. Even the California truck stops I checked on line were at $4.19.

We went into the Needles Elks Lodge about 1:00 and got settled into a space. They have six full hookup sites, but no one else was there. They charge $15 a night for 50 amp, water and sewer. Indio Elks only has 30 amp and no sewer at the sites and they charge $25 a night. We will be here for five days, hoping that Jackie will get re-acclimated to the lower altitude. Needles is only a little over 600 feet in elevation. Yea!

Friday, October 21st, we got up and had a leisurely morning, enjoying the mild weather and the thick air. Our plan was to do our laundry today, so we looked for local laundromats on the internet. Nothing found in Needles. Jackie finally called the City of Needles and learned from a woman there that there were no stand alone laundromats in Needles. There was one in a motel in downtown Needles and one in the Marina RV park, both of which were open to the public. We decided to just wait until we got to Pahrump early next week to do laundry.

We then decided to go out after lunch and do some geocaching. One of the caches we found was outside the Needles Chamber of Commerce so after finding the cache we went in and talked to the gal in the office. She confirmed that the only laundromat in Needles went out of business about a year ago. We ended up getting ten finds for the afternoon. Many of the caches were remote, desert caches, so it took us a while to get from cache to cache. A couple required some doubling back to find the right gravel road. We also got one DNF. After caching we headed back home for the rest of the night.

Saturday, October 22nd, my brother David’s birthday. He lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Happy Birthday Dave. We left the coach before lunch and drove forty miles south along the Colorado River to Lake Havasu, Arizona. We had heard yesterday at the Needles Chamber of Commerce that there was a big car show going on this weekend in Lake Havasu. We got down into town and stopped for lunch at a Red Robin. After lunch we went out onto the island, which you get to by driving across the old London Bridge. We found the car show being held at one of the resorts, out on the golf course. It was, by far, the largest car show I have ever seen. It was called Relics and Rods Run to the Sun, and there were more than 700 classic cars and street rods on display. They also had a lot of booths, many with car-related items for sale. We spent about two hours walking around the cars, taking pictures and admiring the vehicles. One of the highlights for me was a car that looked identical to my very first car, a 1954 Chevy convertible, red with a white top and red and white interior. Really brought back memories. I bought the car in 1965, after I graduated from high school, for $285. Probably worth twenty grand now.

We could have spent more time looking at cars, but it was very hot, mid 90's, and we needed to get out of the sun. We went back to the car, cooled off with the A/C, and then did some caching in the Lake Havasu area. We ended up finding ten new caches, with one DNF. One of the caches we found was our 3,000th geocache find! A big milestone for us. A little over three years and we hit 3,000. Yea! After caching we drove back up to Needles and relaxed the rest of the night.

Sunday, October 23rd, we stayed at home for the day. I got a couple of chores completed, including cleaning the radiator on the coach. Our motorhome has a rear radiator, and I have read quite a few articles that say one must clean the radiator from time to time because gunk builds up on the inside of the radiator which restricts the air flow. I have not experienced any real overheating issues, but thought I needed to do it anyway. I bought some Simple Green degreaser and sprayed the radiator good. After letting it sit for a while I hosed it out good and then started the engine to blow the water and soap out. The engine on the coach is in the back and the fan pushes air towards the radiator rather than pulling it in like it does on a car. It was funny watching huge soap bubbles coming out of the back of the coach until the soap was gone. I also cleaned off my batteries and did some other chores before settling in for a relaxing day in the coach.

Monday, October 24th, we left after lunch to do some final day geocaching in the Needles area. Actually, we did all of our caching just east across the Colorado River in Arizona, but still less than 20 miles from Needles. We managed to find ten new caches, with one DNF for our records. Several of the caches were on the Mojave River Indian Reservation, and we only got ten in three hours because the caches were pretty far apart.

After caching we went back to the coach and relaxed for a while before going into the Elks Lodge for cocktails and tacos. Although we are staying in their RV park, this is the first time we have been in the lodge on this trip. We were here a year or so ago for one night and we visited the lodge at that time and got our lodge pin. The calendar said it was Monday Night Football, but all the TV’s had the World Series on. They had tacos for $1.00, so we had dinner for $5.00, along with a couple of cocktails. The lodge bought the first round, so we only had to pay for one. After we finished our drinks and tacos we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Tuesday, October 25th, time to pack up and head north for “home” in Pahrump. We had about 165 miles to go, but the trip takes us right through Las Vegas. As we were packing up Jackie noticed that the control panel for the inverter system was showing erratic readings. The inverter is the device that converts the 12 volt DC power from the coach’s batteries into 120 volt AC for the electric outlets when you are not connected to shore power. I unplugged the control panel and then reconnected it, which usually solves the problem of a crazy display, but this time it didn’t work. The inverter itself seemed to be working fine. It doesn’t require the remote to function, the remote only makes it easier to monitor the inverter from inside the coach. I guess the control panel has gone south and I will need to replace it.

As a result of the time spent trying to determine the problem with the inverter system, we got a late start, not getting out of Needles until about 10:30. The trip was uneventful and we made it through Las Vegas traffic with no problems, arriving in Pahrump about 1:30. We settled into what used to be a Western Horizons membership park, Charleston Peak Resort. Unfortunately, the company lost the park to foreclosure earlier this year and it is now owned by the bank. The operators have said they will honor Western Horizons members through the end of 2012, but after that I guess we will have to find other accommodations when we come to Pahrump. This is a bit of a bummer because this was our favorite Western Horizons park. Unfortunately, the entire WHR system is in trouble, so I think this membership will be out of business in a few years.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon getting set up for our two week stay here in Pahrump. This also seemed like a good time to close this chapter of our tale and get it published. I will probably do another episode when we finish our two week stay here. Until the next time, keep the faith, wear a smile and enjoy every moment of life. See Ya!

Back to Albuquerque for Balloon Fiesta

2011-10-12T10:38:00.000-07:00

Hello again readers, welcome back. Our last chapter concluded on September 28th with our arrival in Trinidad, Colorado after a 150 mile drive south from Monument, Colorado. We arrived in Trinidad about 1:30 and got set up pretty quickly. We are only going to be here for three days, so we didn’t set up anything outside the coach except for utilities. I had noticed that the plastic tubing that provides water to the ice maker inside the refrigerator had sprung a pinhole leak, so I decided that this would be a good time to tackle that job. The heat from the workings in the back of the refrigerator tend to cause the plastic tubing to harden and develop pinhole leaks after about 18 months. This would be the fourth time I have replace the tubing since we bought the coach.

I already had the tubing, but lacked the parts for the ends, so I headed into Trinidad to the hardware store. I thought I had bought the right parts and put everything together pretty quick. It is really a very basic, simple plumbing job. However, as soon as I turned the water supply back on the connection in the back of the refrigerator came loose, spraying water all over the back of the fridge. Shut the water off and found that the connection was very loose. I guess I bought the wrong size connector. I took apart the connector on the old line and reused the pieces, so far so good. About an hour later Jackie came back into the bedroom where I was watching TV in a panic telling me there was water spraying around under the refrigerator. Yikes! Ran outside and shut off the water, but by that time we had quite a little flood around the bottom of the fridge. The connection down there came loose too. Cleaned up the immediate mess, set a fan down to dry that area and let it be for a while. I’ll finish the fix tomorrow after I go back to the hardware store for the right parts. My only concern is to get the water dried up before it has a chance to rot the wood or create mold. It’s always something with a motorhome. After my repair gone wrong adventure, we just stayed in the coach for the rest of the evening.

Thursday, September 29th, we woke to a much cooler and windier day. A fast moving cold front was moving through, stirring up the breezes. Shortly after I got up this morning I yawned, stretched and had a lower back spasm. Now my back hurts like hell. Old age is not for sissies. Took some aspirin, put on a hot patch and just rested for the remainder of the day. I did finish the fix on the ice maker and it appears to be holding this time. We decided that we would just wait until tomorrow before we explore Trinidad and see if my back is better.

Friday morning I woke up and my back was a little better, at least I could get around some. After lunch we set out to do some caching in Trinidad. It is not exactly a hot bed of cachers, there were only a couple of caches right in town, and only a dozen within a 12 mile radius. We ended up getting eight new finds for the afternoon. One of them was at Trinidad Lake State Park, which is just outside of town. Since we were there we checked out the campground at the lake. They have a very nice campground with four full hookup sites and about 50 other sites that all have 50 amp electric. The sites are paved and most are big enough for a coach like ours. Many are right on the lake shore. Problem is, they priced themselves out of the market as far as I am concerned. The full hookup sites are $27 a night, and the electric sites are $20 a night. However, they also make you buy a day use pass every day, which is an additional $7 a day. The sites are nice, but not that nice. We also did three “sprit quest” caches, which are caches near cemeteries. One was the Engleville cemetery which was several miles southeast of town. The area was a ghost town with several ruins around. Another was on a dirt trail above Trinidad Lake that we could not have gotten had we not been in a four wheel drive high clearance car.

After caching we spent some time walking around in the old downtown area. The old town area is very picturesque, with a lot of old turn of the century buildings. On the main streets. Trinidad sprung up in the mid 1800's as a way stop along the Sante Fe Trail. One of the most interesting historical tidbits about the town is much more recent, however. At one time Trinidad was dubbed the "Sex Change Capital of the World", because a local doctor had an international reputation for performing sex reassignment surgery. In the 1960s, Dr. Stanley Biber, a military surgeon returning from Korea, decided to move to Trinidad because he had heard that the town needed a surgeon. In 1969 a local social worker asked him if he would perform the sex change surgery for her, which he learned by consulting diagrams and talking to a New York surgeon. Biber attained a reputation as a good surgeon at a time when very few doctors performed sex reassignment operations. At his peak, Biber was performing roughly four sex change operations a day, and the term "taking a trip to Trinidad" became a euphemism for some seeking the procedures he offered. His surgical practice was taken over in 2003 by Marci Bowers, who has since moved from Trinidad. Biber was featured as a character in an episode of the animated TV show South Park where elementary school teacher Mr. Garrison undergoes a sex change operation.

About 5:00 we went to the Trinidad Elks Lodge, which is in an old three story building just off of the main street in downtown. The Lodge is number 181, which makes it one of the older lodges still in operation. This was a very friendly lodge and the bartender, Dee, made us feel very welcome. It was she who first brought up the story of Dr. Biber and his sex change practice when talking about the history of Trinidad. She also introduced us to several members of the Lodge who came in for cocktails and snacks. The lodge bought the first drink for us and we had a second because we were having such a great time visiting with the locals. One of the trustees took me on a tour of the lodge. They have a dedicated lodge room on the top floor, which was common in the older buildings. They have a large hall and kitchen on the bottom floor. The clubroom is in the middle. The lodge building was built in 1925, after the Lodge’s old building on main street burned down. The lodge was chartered in 1891.

After our cocktails, and getting a lodge pin for our banner, we left the lodge and headed home. Since it was kind of late we stopped at a Mexican restaurant just down the street from our RV park called Tequilas. It is a fairly new place and was recommended by some of the people in the lodge. The food was excellent and the service was good too. We got there about 7:00 and it was very busy. They have an extensive menu with all the favorites, as well as some interesting dishes I have never seen on a Mexican menu. Jackie had a Mexican stir fry which combined typical Asian stir fry veggies with Spanish rice. It was a huge portion and Jackie took half of it home. She said it was exceptional. I had a red chili burrito and taco that was also very good. After dinner we headed home for the rest of the night.

Saturday, October 1st, we packed up the coach and left Trinidad about 9:30 for a 135 mile trip south on I-25, headed for Las Vegas. Las Vegas, New Mexico, that is. We arrived at the KOA just south of town about noon and got settled in. We have a nice site with a great view of the rolling hills. As soon as we got settled in we drove into town to do our laundry. Its been over two weeks and the dirty clothes were threatening to overwhelm the bedroom. We also made a stop at the local Walmart for provisions. After that we just spent the rest of the evening in the coach.
Sunday, October 2nd my back continues to improve and the weather here in northern New Mexico promises to be great today. After lunch we decide to go out and do some caching. Like Trinidad, Las Vegas, New Mexico does not have a lot of caches. I managed to find about a dozen to look for within a twelve mile radius of town. We actually end up getting six new finds, with no DNFs. We didn’t bother to go after some of the more distant caches. One of the caches took us up into the foothills of the mountains to the northwest of Las Vegas. These mountains represent the lower edge of the Rocky Mountains and were named Sangre de Cristo by the Spanish who first came to this area. This means Blood of Christ. The name is said to come from the red color of the range at some sunrises and sunsets, especially when the mountains are covered with snow,

We learned that there are a number of natural hot springs about seven miles north of town around which a number of resorts were built back in the late 1800's. As we were coming up the road we saw this beautiful old brick building on the side of the hill that looked to us like some sort of old resort. As it turns out this was the former Montezuma Resort Hotel which was built in 1886 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad as a luxury hotel for guests wanting to partake of the nearby hot springs. It was a 90,000 square foot, 400 room resort built in the Queen Anne style with a huge turret at one end to be used for viewing. The building was later known as the Montezuma Castle. Montezuma is the name of the small, local community in which the hot springs lie.

Today the castle is used as part of the campus of the Armand Hammer United World College. The existence of this college system was another thing we learned today. The United World College-USA is one of thirteen United World Colleges located all around the world. The one in Montezuma, the only in the U.S., was founded in 1982 by industrialist and philanthropist Armand Hammer. The college is a two-year, independent, coeducational boarding school with about 200 students representing 80-90 countries at any time. The vast majority of these students receive full scholarships, being selected by the 124 National Committees that represent the United World Colleges around the globe.

The school's mission is to teach international understanding by bringing together young men and women of diverse ethnic and social backgrounds, in an environment in which they must work together for success. In addition to offering the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, the school has a strong program in the arts and a significant service program, including mountain search and rescue. Typically, students are between 16 and 19 years old. Graduates are typically accepted at the most competitive colleges and universities around the world. In late 2007, the Wall Street Journal identified United World College - USA as one of the world's top 50 schools for its success in preparing students to enter top American universities.

We always say that geocaching has greatly enhanced our ability to learn new things as we travel around the country. Accept for geocaching, we would probably have never seen either the old hotel or the college. After our caching adventures we made a quick stop at Walmart and then headed back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Monday, October 3rd, we spent the day working around the coach, mostly cleaning and getting things ready for our five days of dry camping at the Balloon Fiesta. I had to check the batteries, fill the fresh water tank and empty the waste tanks. Late in the afternoon the skies darkened and we started getting rain showers. Not real heavy, but enough to clean the dust off the coach and the car. About 4:00 we got in the car and headed to the Las Vegas Elks Lodge for a visit. When we got to the lodge we found it locked. The Elks travel book that I had in the coach said that the lodge was open four to midnight every day except Sunday. However, that book was a 2003 edition so Jackie looked at the 2007 version we have in the car and it said the bar opened at 5:00. We decided to wait and check since we were in town anyway, so we drove to a nearby Beall’s store and did a little shopping. I ended up getting a couple of tee shirts and Jackie got a pair of earrings. About 5:15 we went back to the lodge and it was open. Yippee. We went in and were warmly greeted by the bartender, as well as some of the other people in the bar. We met about a dozen members as the people started coming in. Everyone who came in came over and said hi. We met three Past Exalted Rulers and they were all women. They even rang the bell and introduced us to everyone in the lodge.

Of course, being New Mexico, the lodge had slot machines in their casino room, so we went in to play. Didn’t have any luck, between the two of us we lost $40. Our contribution to the lodge. We had a couple of drinks and got a lodge pin for our banner. This was a very friendly lodge. We learned a little about the demographics of northern New Mexico because nearly everyone in the lodge was Hispanic. We had a great chat with one of the Trustee’s of the lodge who was born and raised in Las Vegas. He said the only time he has been out of town was when he was in the Navy. He told us a lot about the history of the area.

We would have liked to stay a little longer at the lodge because the people were so nice, but we had made reservations for dinner at the RV park. When we checked into the park they told us that they do dinner out back of the office every night. They have mostly hamburgers and sandwiches, but they even had some small steaks on the menu. Since you have to pre-order dinner and pay for it when you buy your “ticket”, we were committed to eating there. We both had the green chili cheeseburgers and they were wonderful. Unfortunately, it was cold and raining, so we didn’t eat in the ramada where they make the food, even though it was covered. We took the meal back to the coach and ate there.

Tuesday, October 4th, was another travel day. Today is the day we go into the Balloon Fiesta grounds for our rally. Most of the group will not be in until Wednesday, but we volunteered to help with the rally, as we did last year, so we get to go in a day early. The Balloon Fiesta is a ten day event, but it is split into two “sessions” of five days each. The schedule of events is very similar for each of the sessions, so this way they can cycle two sets of people through the various campsites around the festival grounds. The rally we are going to is sponsored by the Monaco International Chapter of FMCA, which is the same group we went with last year.

We were told by the wagon masters to arrive about 3:30 in the afternoon and from Las Vegas we were only about 100 miles away, so we didn’t get in too big a hurry packing up. We still ended up leaving the camp site about 10:30. We had to stop at the park to fill the propane tank and then at a truck stop to fill with fuel. I always like to go into a dry camp situation with a full, or nearly full, fuel tank so I can run the generator as much as we need to without worrying about fuel. When we left Las Vegas the skies were just partly cloudy. However, as we drove south on I-25 towards Albuquerque the skies started to darken and by the time we got to Sante Fe, about 50 miles north of Albuquerque the rain started. We had agreed to meet with Peggy and Vernon Bullock, some good friends of ours who are also going to the rally as volunteers, at the Sandia Casino, which is only a couple miles from the fiesta grounds. We arrived at the casino about 1:15, just a few minutes after the Bullocks. We parked in the parking lot and greeted Peggy and Vernon, who we have not seen since March when we were in Yuma. Regular readers may remember that we traveled with the Bullocks for about three months and watched their new puppy Belle grow up. We had wondered whether she would remember us after six months, but as soon as I walked up to her she went nuts and it was pretty clear she knew who I was. Cool.

It was raining on and off while we sat in the casino parking lot waiting until our designated time to go into the rally. We noticed that the casino parking lot was jammed with RVs of every description, despite signs around that said overnight parking was not allowed. Many of the RVs looked like they were in for a long stay. In between rain events we disconnected our cars and got ready to go in to park. About 3:00 we left and went into the grounds. Although it was raining, the rally masters came out and got us parked. Like last year, we got parked in the front row overlooking the balloon field. I think we are in the exact same spot we were last year. The Bullocks got parked right next door.

After getting settled in and leveled, the Bullocks came over to our coach for cocktails and we spent a couple hours catch up. About 5:30 the wagon masters told us that they were going out to dinner, but we had all had late lunches, so we declined and just continued our visit. It was really nice to see Peggy and Vernon again. We enjoy traveling with them. We will only be with them here at this rally and then at the Farmington rally we are attending right after the Fiesta. We will then see them again in Indio in January at the Indio FMCA rally. Peggy and Vernon left about 7:00 or so and we watched TV until we went to bed.

Wednesday, October 5th, we woke to a cool but mostly clear morning. It appeared that the rain was going to stay away today. That is a good thing because today is the day that the rest of the rally attendees are going to arrive and I am part of the parking crew. It would not be pleasant to be out in the rain all day. The first coaches came in about 9:30 and we had a steady stream until mid afternoon. The Monaco group has about 45 coaches attending and we got them all parked without incident. My back, which had been hurting since it spasmed a few days back, was pretty good today. I had put on a back support belt that I had and that helped a lot.

About 4:30 we had our first rally happy hour and everyone came with their lawn chairs to the common area. The rally masters had planned a great meal with hot dogs, chili, nachos and lots of snacks. They also had a margarita machine going which was kind of neat. We chatted with a number of the attendees, including several that we remembered from last year at this same event. Most people hung around until about 6:30 when the sun went down, but then it got cold and we cleaned up the tables and went into our coaches. We went over for cocktails with the Bullocks in their coach until about 8:00 when we went home for the night. We turned in early because at the Balloon Fiesta things get started early, about 6:00 a.m., which is REALLY early for us.

Thursday, October 6th, I awoke about twenty minutes before six and got out of bed to see what was going on with the balloons this morning. We learned last year that the local NBC TV station has a guy that goes down on the balloon field every morning of the Fiesta about four AM and gives up to date information on the Fiesta and the weather. This morning he was telling folks that the wind was too high for the balloons to fly, but that later in the morning they might inflate and just stay tethered so the people who came to the event could at least see something. When I got out of bed the “dawn patrol” balloons were inflated and just setting on the field. The dawn patrol is two to four balloons who go up about 6:00, before daylight, to check the wind conditions. I noticed the flags on the fence in front of the motorhome were flapping pretty good, so I didn’t think there would be any flying. After a half hour or so the dawn patrol balloons deflated without flying, so I knew there would be no flights today.

Around 7:00 or so, when the regular flying normally starts, the field starting filling with balloons inflating. However, none were going to go up, they were just staying tethered. Today was special shapes day, which are all the balloons that are not the normal pear shaped hot air balloons that most people are familiar with. There are all kinds of shapes, including various animals, vehicles, bottles, etc. This morning there was a giant cow, a rocket, a fire truck, and dozens of others that at least inflated so people could see them. It is disappointing that there was no flying on our first full day of the Fiesta, but we can’t control the weather.

About 11:00 we left the balloon grounds for our first group lunch. As with last year, the group went to the Tanoan Country Club for lunch. The club is in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, east of the balloon grounds and is a very exclusive, gated community. The lunch was great, London broil, mashed potatoes and veggies. We spent about 90 minutes at lunch and sat with the Bullocks and another couple from California who knew a number of people that we knew from FMCA. We had a great lunch and afterwards we and the Bullocks decided to do a little geocaching before heading back to the Fiesta grounds. We only had about an hour or so, but we were able to get five new caches, along with one DNF. We then headed back to the coach so Jackie could start her pot of queso dip for the happy hour. That is her “work” assignment for the rally, making queso every night.

At 4:30 we had happy hour along with snacks. Only about half the group showed up because it was overcast, windy and pretty cool. We stayed out for about an hour before going back into the coach and the warmth for the rest of the night.

There was supposed to be a balloon glow tonight, that is when the balloons inflate after dark but stayed tethered down. It is a pretty neat light show when it happens. unfortunately, the wind was blowing pretty hard, too hard for them to inflate the balloons, even tethered. However, at about 7:30 they did have the regularly scheduled fireworks show. We remembered from last year that they have a very nice fireworks performance each night and tonight was no exception. They had a bout fifteen or twenty minutes worth of fireworks, which we were able to see quite nicely from the comfort of the inside of our warm coach. After fireworks we watched a little TV and then headed off to bed.

Friday, October 7th, I woke up about 6:00 or so but was pretty sure that there would be no balloons yet again. It had rained most of the night and it was still raining when I woke up. The dawn patrol didn’t fly at daybreak and at 7:00 the guy on TV said that the morning flights had been cancelled again. This was real disappointing, especially since last year we had perfect weather each day we were here. We felt bad for Peggy and Vernon, and other people who were here for the first time. At 11:00 we went out for our second group lunch, this time at a Mexican restaurant called La Pinta, which was not too far from the Fiesta grounds. This was the same place we came last year. The food was a buffet and was OK, nothing spectacular, but OK. We had a good time sitting with Peggy and Vernon and Gary and Ramona Wilson. Gary and Ramona are our good friends and were the one’s we came with last year to the balloon fiesta. They also liked it so much that they came back this year. After lunch we and Peggy and Vernon went out again for some afternoon caching. We had kind of a rough spell with three DNFs, but we also managed to get five new finds in about 90 minutes.

We got back to the coaches just in time for the rain to start in earnest. It got very cold and the rain was really coming down. They ended up cancelling the happy hour because of the rain. They also cancelled the evening balloon glow again. The Navy Seal jump team did do a skydiving jump onto the field and then did a low level, high speed flyby in their C-130 four engine transport. That was kind of neat. Peggy and Vernon came over for cocktails and we talked until about 8:00 when they left. The four of us did sit in the coach and watch the evening’s fireworks show, which was not cancelled despite the fact that it was raining pretty hard. After they left we watched a little TV and went to bed, hoping for a better day tomorrow.

Saturday, October 8th, we FINALLY woke up to a clear morning. Blue skies, not a cloud to be seen, and very light winds. It was cold, 38 degrees at 7:00, but the TV commentator said that it appeared that they were going to be able to fly and do the mass ascension that was scheduled for today. They delayed the flying from 7:00 to about 8:00, but they did finally inflate the balloons and FLY! We got dressed and went down on the balloon field, which is only a short walk from our coach. As we walked around we watched them inflate balloons, get them ready to fly, and finally take off. Last year all of the morning flights had the balloons taking off south, right over where our coaches were parked. This morning the wind was blowing to the east, so it was a good thing that we went down on the field or we wouldn’t have had the close look at the balloons that we normally do. They ended up flying a couple hundred balloons this morning, which was pretty cool. Because the winds were a little higher than ideal, most of the bigger special shape balloons only inflated and stayed tethered. They didn’t fly because they are more sensitive to wind speed than the smaller, ordinary balloons. After most of the balloons had taken off we spent some time walking around the various vendors that set up tents on the field. We also stopped for a morning drink at the Dos XX Cantina tent. We ended up spending about two hours or so on the field before heading back to the coach.

When we got back to the coach we talked to Peggy and Vernon and decided to go out to lunch at a local restaurant. There was no organized lunch for the group today. Peggy picked out a place from the internet and we left to go find it. It was supposed to be on Central Avenue, near downtown, however, we couldn’t find the place. Peggy finally called them and found that they had gone out of business. We ended up going to another place that we just happened to see, a Mexican place called El Sarape. It turned out to be an excellent choice. The food was very good. The place doesn’t look like much, it is on Central just west of San Mateo. I would recommend the place highly. While we were trying to find a place to eat we saw the Albuquerque version of the “Occupy” protest movement marching up and down Central ave. There were only about forty or fifty people and it looked like almost as many police to try to keep them from blocking traffic during their march. They all looked like typical hippy type war protestors, banging drums and chanting sayings from the sixties. After lunch the four of us did some more geocaching before heading back to the Fiesta grounds. This time we had no DNFs and managed eight new finds. Yea!

The 4:30 happy hour was well attended again due to the nice weather. Everyone stayed out until the sun went down around 6:00 and it started to cool off quite a bit. We went back to the coach and waited for the balloon glow scheduled for 7:00. From our front row vantage point we could watch them inflate balloons, although we could only see a small portion of the field from our parking spot. Once it got fairly dark they started the “glow”, which is accomplished by the announcer on the public address system doing a countdown from five and on the word “glow” all the balloon pilots pull the cord for the burner, lighting up the envelope of the balloon. It is fun to watch, even though the balloons never leave the ground.

About 7:45 most of the balloons had deflated and we waited for the evening’s fireworks show. It went off about eight and was as spectacular as the three we had seen previously. It was very much the same show and lasted about twenty minutes. It is amazing that they have the kind of money it takes to put on these great fireworks shows eight nights. There are four nights of fireworks for each of the two sessions for the Festival. After the fireworks show we watched TV for a little while and hit the bed.

Sunday, October 9th was another great morning for flying. We got up about 6:30 a.m., just before the mass ascension was scheduled to start. The balloons started inflating and unlike yesterday when they were delayed, the flights started right on time at 7:00. I would estimate that there were about 400 balloons that took off and flew within an hour or so - the sky was literally full of balloons in every direction. In addition the “Albuquerque Box” was working this morning. The box is a phenomenon were the surface winds are blowing to the south, which means when the balloons first take off from the field they fly right over our motorhome. Once they get a mile or so south they add hot air and go up a couple hundred feet where they catch a breeze that is blowing back north or northwest and they fly back over the coaches and the field where they take off. Most of the balloons end up west of the field, where they land and their chase vehicles catch up with them. Watching all the balloons is a wonderful experience and the two days of flying that we got more than fixed the funk that most people were feeling when the first couple of days of our outing had the nasty weather. We got what we came to see.

Once the balloons stopped taking off and we had enough pictures of the balloons in the air, it was time to pack up the coach for travel. Today was the end of the Fiesta and it was time to move on to our next destination, the Rocky Mountain Area Rally, an FMCA event being held in Farmington, New Mexico, about 170 miles northwest of Albuquerque. We were a little afraid we would be held up because the parking area was very tight and it would be difficult to back our coach out with all the other coaches in the way. However, by the time we got the coach packed up and ready for travel, several coaches behind us had left, which left us an opening to back up, hook up the car, and head out of the Fiesta grounds. We were on the road by about 11:00 a.m. and headed for Farmington. Peggy and Vernon are also going to the FMCA rally and were right behind us when we left.

We didn’t have any problems on the trip until about the halfway point when I saw heavy black smoke pouring into the sky a few miles ahead of us. I mentioned to Jackie that it looked like a car or other vehicle was on fire. Sure enough, we got to a bend in the road, near where the smoke was coming from, and traffic was stopped. We didn’t go up to look at what was happening, but some people from cars stopped near us did and they came back and told us that a fifth wheel trailer had caught fire and was burning on the side of the road. The owners had been able to disconnect their truck from the trailer before it got too far along, so they saved the truck. The police and fire were holding traffic until they got the fire out because of fear that the propane tank might explode. We were there nearly an hour before they finally let us go by.

We got into the rally about 3:30 and the parking crew did their usual great job of parking us. They led us to the dump station first so we could dump our holding tanks. We were dry camping at the Fiesta, and would also not have sewer here at Farmington, so we needed to empty our tanks. We got parked right next to Peggy and Vernon again, and got set up. At least here we have water and electric service, so we don’t have to run the generator to charge batteries, and running out of water is not an issue.

We will be here at the Farmington rally until next Sunday, so this seems like a good spot to stop writing and publish this chapter of the blog. I will put the next episode up in a week or two. Until the next time, stay happy and healthy and enjoy every moment of this wonderful life. See ya!

In The Shadow Of Pikes Peak

2011-09-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Greetings readers. Welcome back to the story. Our last chapter went to press on Wednesday, September 14th when we arrived in Monument, Colorado, just north of Colorado Springs. The trip from the Denver area to Monument was uneventful and we got settled into the Colorado Heights RV Resort pretty quickly. We had good weather coming down, but shortly after getting hooked up in our site the thunder started and the skies darkened. By mid afternoon the rain had started coming down steady and we knew we weren’t going out for any exploring. The rain continued on and off all the rest of the day and evening. No real storms, the wind wasn’t blowing and the thunder and lightening stayed in the distance, but the rain was steady.

Thursday, September 15th, we woke up truly cold for the first time since early spring. According to the thermometer in the coach it was 45 degrees outside and 54 degrees inside. Brrrrr. The rain had continued all night and this morning the fog had settled in and we couldn’t see more than a few yards. The weather report said it would be this way all day, so we just planned a stay in day and did a few chores. We got our first mail delivery in almost three weeks so we spent a while sorting and catching up on correspondence. By early evening the fog had cleared some, but it stayed cold and damp all day.

Friday morning we woke up to sunshine! Yea! Still cool, but not quite as bad as yesterday morning. After lunch we headed into Monument to do our laundry. We had 16 days worth of clothes and they were starting to plot a mutiny in the back of the coach, so we decided we needed to take care of it. We found a laundromat in a strip mall in the shopping area that passes for downtown Monument. I would say that Monument exists solely as a bedroom community for Colorado Springs. Lots of houses, a post office, and a few shops. We got the laundry done and were able to pass the time with a very nice local lady who came in to wash her big comforter. We ended up talking to her for the entire 90 minutes or so that it took to do the clothes.

After laundry we headed back to the coach and I had a couple of chores to do. I got one job done and went up on the roof to check out a small leak we had found around one of the waste tank vents. I found that I needed to put some caulk on both of them. By the time I got down, got the tools and stuff I needed it had started to sprinkle. I got the caulking job done just before it started raining pretty hard. I guess this time of year it is common to have afternoon and evening rain even when the day is nice. The rain didn’t last too long, but we stayed in the coach the rest of the afternoon and evening anyway.

Saturday, September 17th we woke up to another cool but fairly clear morning. I spent some time in the morning finishing my setup that I couldn’t do when we got here because of the rain. I washed all the windows, put up the shade screens and flagpole, and got the BBQ set up. Now we are ready for a two week stay. After lunch we headed out with our caching gear to do some local caching. We were able to find eight new caches before the afternoon rain showers started. We quit caching, but we spent about an hour driving around Monument, checking out the area. There is a small, but quaint “original” downtown area about a half mile west of the freeway, near the railroad tracks. We also drove around in the hills to the east of the freeway, where most of the new home construction seems to have taken place in the last few years. There are some huge houses in this area, some of which have killer views of the Rockies to the west, including a very pretty, snow covered Pikes Peak. After our tour we went back to the coach.

Monument has a population of 6,800 and sits at an elevation of 7,135 feet. It was founded in 1872 as a railroad stop on the Rio Grande Railroad and incorporated as Henry’s Station in 1879. The name was later changed to Monument, after the nearby Monument Creek. It is a growing town as a bedroom community for Colorado Springs and is mainly homes and small businesses. There are no large companies or industrial areas in the town, which covers only five square miles.

Sunday, September 18th we had another sunny morning. After lunch we drove into Colorado Springs, about 15 miles south, to Costco to do some bulk shopping. We haven’t had a Costco available since we were in Amarillo back in early August. This Costco even had a liquor store and we were able to pick up a couple of bottles of Absolute for the same price we would pay in California. Yea! Colorado is one of those states where spirits can only be sold in a liquor store, but this Costco had a separate entrance for the liquor store, so it met the legal requirements. We have seen this in other states that have similar laws. Oddly, it is illegal to require a membership to buy liquor, so you don’t need your Costco card to get in the liquor store section. After we got home and put away the Costco stuff we went to the local Walmart to do our regular shopping. We then went home for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Monday, September 19th, another great morning. After lunch we left to do some more geocaching right here in Monument. In the course of about two hours we had gotten fifteen new finds. Not a record day, but a pretty good one. After caching we spent another hour or so going through some of the small shops in old town Monument. One of them was a place called Retrospect Dry Goods, and it was one of the coolest little stores I have been seen in a while. It was all retro kitsch, everything from tee shirts with 50's, 60's and 70's stars and groups, Elvis lamps, and Marilyn stuff, to brand new AMT plastic model kits of 60's cars. When I was a kid AMT was the gold standard for model kits. They had a brand new replica pedal car from the 50's that looked just like one my brother Dennis had when he was three or four years old. They even had “action figures” from Dark Shadows, the late 60's Gothic horror TV series. I ended buying a corduroy newsboy hat and some retro gum. Remember Blackjack, Clove and Beeman.s gum? I got a pack of each. Blackjack was my favorite when I was a kid. After our shopping we headed home for the rest of the evening.

Tuesday, September 20th, another great Colorado late summer morning. Today we left the coach after lunch and went a few miles south to the United States Air Force Academy for a tour. The academy is located on the north edge of Colorado Springs, in the foothills of the Rockies. Getting onto the base is fairly easy, they ask to see your driver’s license and ask if you have any weapons. I knew we were visiting the base today, so I had taken my handgun out of the car. The guard lifted the hatch in back and glanced in, then let us onto the base. I guess he just looks in back to see if there are large barrels of fertilizer or something in there. Shortly after entering the base we drove past a static display of a B-52 bomber on a pedestal. This was certainly the largest aircraft I have ever seen mounted on a stick, or actually, two sticks.

We stopped at the visitor’s center and spent about an hour in there. They have a 15 minute movie and some displays about cadet life that you can look at. They also have a huge gift shop which we wandered around in for a while. After the visitor’s center I walked the path from the center to the cadet chapel, which is located in the middle of the campus. Jackie didn’t take the hike, she was feeling a little breathy today and the hike was up over a hill. I got some great pictures of the campus and the chapel. These are really the only two places you can visit on the campus. They don’t have an extensive museum like the Army’s West Point, or the Navy’s Annapolis. Of course, the campus looks much more modern and update than either of the other service academies.

The Air Force only became a separate military service in 1947, splitting off from the Army. The USAFA was approved by congress in 1954 and in 1955 the first class of cadets attended classes at Lawery Air Force Base in Denver, the temporary headquarters for the Academy while the permanent facility was under construction. The current campus opened in 1958 and the architecture on the campus is clearly 1950's modern, especially as compared to the other service academies. There are usually between four and five thousand cadets in the four classes in any given year. I enjoyed the tour and can now say that I have visited all three of the military service academy campuses.

After touring the academy we did some geocaching in the area to the east of the freeway, near the base. This would be the north part of Colorado Springs, is was a large high tech business area. I was surprised to see large office buildings for Oracle, a major software design firm, and Lexis-Nexis, the leading legal and public domain on-line research firm in the world. We found some caches in their parking lots. We only cached for about an hour and a half, but we got seven new finds, along with one new DNF.

After caching we drove a little further south into town and visited the Colorado Springs Elks Lodge. This lodge, #309, is an old one, having been chartered in 1896, only a few years after the founding the organization itself. Their current building was opened in 1963 and is a large split level building with a lot of open ballroom space. The lodge has a swimming pool out back, along with RV parking with 13 hookup sites and a big lot for dry camping. The bar is downstairs and is fairly typical 60's design. There were only a couple of people there when we were there a little after 4:00. We had a couple of cocktails, the second of which was on the lodge. We also got a pin for our banner since this was our first visit to this lodge. Both Jackie and I had to chuckle because in the clubroom was an old 50's vintage cigarette machine, they type that had the pull bars to select your brand. I haven’t seen one quite like this one in many years. It was interesting that they had grafted a box to the side of the machine to accept paper money. The old machines only took coins and it would take a lot of coins to get to the $6.25 per pack price on the smokes now. Yikes. I always jokingly tell people that I quit smoking in 1978 when the price of cigarettes went up to a dollar in the machines. After our visit to the lodge we headed back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, September 21st, we woke up to a slightly more dreary morning. The weather report told us that today was going to be cool, only in the low 60's, with a pretty good chance of rain. We were not afraid! We went down into north Colorado Springs for lunch at a place called Ted’s Montana Grill which is owned by Ted Turner. We were there to meet our friends, Jim and Pat Goetzinger, for lunch. We first met Jim and Pat back in 2008 when they joined the 100%ers Chapter of FMCA. They are also full time RVers, originally from New Mexico. They are staying at a park in Colorado Springs and when we found we would be in the same area at the same time, we made arrangements to meet for lunch. We had a great time catching up and spent about two hours with lunch. Jim and Pat went back east for all the rallies this summer, so we had to find out how they all went. We will probably see them again in Indio at the Western Area rally in January, although we may cross paths sooner. They belong to some of the same RV park membership affiliations as we do, so we stay in many of the same parks. We last saw them in Indio at Indian Waters RV Resort in January of this year.

By the way, Ted’s Montana Grill was very good, although a little on the pricey side. They specialize in bison dishes, offering their hamburgers, for instance, with either beef or buffalo. I had the beef, Jackie had the buffalo and both were very good. I had never heard of the place, but I have learned that he has 47 restaurants around the country, mostly in the eastern part of the country. There are none in Nevada, California or Arizona, which is where we spend a good deal of our time.

After lunch we had decided that we were going to go see a movie. However, we had about an hour to kill before the movie, so we decided to do a little more caching. We were able to get five new finds in that hour. The exciting part was that, although we didn’t know it at the time, the last cache we got was our number 2,900th find! Yea, another milestone! The next one, the 3,000 mark, will be really special.

The movie we went to see was Contagion, with a lot of good stars, including Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet. The film is based on a book by Robin Cook and is a medical thriller. The basic plot surrounds a new highly contagious and virulent virus appears in China and is quickly spread around the world, ultimately infecting a quarter of the world’s population and killing 65 percent of those who contract the virus. The story is presented from the perspective of the medical investigators with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the U.S. The movie was quite good, and, at least from my viewpoint, scarily accurate. In my opinion, the possibility of this movie “coming true” is at the top of a scale of film plots that starts with alien invasion (highly unlikely), world wide nuclear war (unlikely), and the rapid spread of a new virus (likely).

The movie also emphasized the potential for a complete collapse of the social structure of the world when faced with an unknown, and at first untreatable, disease that spreads at an exponential rate. That was probably the scariest part of the whole movie. All in all, a good movie, well made and easy to follow and understand without being condescending. I enjoyed it. After the movie we headed home for the rest of the evening.

Thursday, September 22nd, we woke to a clear but cool morning with nothing on our agenda. We had decided that today was going to be a stay at home day, and we stuck to it. We did a few little chores around the house, but mainly just relaxed and played on our computers. Very relaxing after many days of scurrying around.

Friday, September 23rd the weather report said it was going to be warm and clear - a great day to go to the top of nearby Pikes Peak. The base of Pikes Peak is only ten miles west of Colorado Springs and is the reason that the area is called the Pikes Peak region of Colorado. The summit of Pikes Peak is at an elevation of 14,116 feet, making it one of the 54 “fourteeners” in Colorado. It is also the eastern-most of these tall peaks and the only one where the summit can be easily reached by vehicle. The peak was named for Zebulon Pike Jr., an explorer who led an expedition to the southern Colorado area in 1806. He never climbed the mountain to the top, and is credited with stating that he didn’t think any man ever would.

In 1915 a roadway was constructed from the town of Cascade, Colorado, to the summit of the mountain. The road is 19 miles long and climbs in a series of switchbacks and grades to the top of the mountain. The road has been the site of an annual road race to the top, the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, since 1916, along with other events, including a marathon. For many years the road was gravel and dirt, however, over the years the lower sections were paved. The very last section of original dirt is being paved this year. The road is maintained by the City of Colorado Springs and we had to pay $12 per person to use the road.

One can also access the summit via a couple of hiking trails, or on a cog railway. The cog railway actually preceded the road to the summit, having been constructed to the top in 1891. It originally used steam locomotives but the train now uses diesel driven motorcars. The line runs from Manitou Springs to the summit along a distance of nearly nine miles. The average grade on the line is 16 percent. When we got to the top of the mountain the train was sitting in the summit station.

The climb on the road was quite steep as well, much steeper in places than you would see on a public highway through the mountains. There are numerous signs cautioning against overheating and telling you to turn off your air conditioning. I don’t think the Jeep got out of second gear more than a couple of times during the climb. The speed limit is 25 mph, and with some of the hairpin turns it got down to 10. It took almost an hour to get to the top and we were watching the car in front of us, an older Saturn sedan, start to overheat at about the two-thirds mark. The driver seemed oblivious to the steam coming out from under his hood. The air temperature went from 74 when we went through the gate at the bottom to 45 degrees at the summit.

We were greeted to magnificent views, both on the way up and once we reached the top. Jackie, with her altitude issues, was getting lightheaded at the top, so she took one quick look at the scenery and then she went back to the car and sat down. I did one virtual geocache at the summit, and also tried to look for one of the two conventional caches hidden at the top. Unfortunately, the regular cache was hidden in an open area that was covered with large rocks and about a foot of snow, so I was unable to find it. By the time I got back to the car I was panting like an old locomotive. The altitude wasn’t bothering me too much if I just walked, but struggling through the snow damn near killed me. We also got another virtual cache a few miles down the road from the summit. We only spent about a half hour at the summit, I wanted to get Jackie back down to an altitude where she wasn’t dizzy. At least she now has a new personal best, she survived over 14,000 feet. The trip to the top of Pikes Peak is one that I am glad we did, one doesn’t get a chance to drive to those altitudes anywhere else. However, it is pretty much a one time thing - been there, done that. I certainly have no intention of hiking up the mountain!

After we got down off the mountain we stopped on the way back in the little mountain community of Manitou Springs. The city of about 5,000 people was incorporated in 1888 and lies on the original road to Pikes Peak. It is also where the lower station of the cog railroad is located. The town’s primary claim to fame is tourism and there is a very quaint main street with numerous shops, inns and restaurants. They are also known for their naturally carbonated spring water, which helped the town grow in the early 1900's as it was touted to have great curative properties. It was late in the afternoon when we came through town, so we didn’t do any shopping. We did get one geocache in town and also stopped at the American Legion for a cocktail. The Legion is in an old gas station on the main street and the folks there were very friendly. We plan on coming back to Manitou for a more extended visit before we leave the area.

After our stop at the American Legion we drove down into Colorado Springs and went back to the Elks Lodge. When we were there earlier in the week we saw that they were having a Friday night dinner, so we came back for that. We had a drink before dinner, and then were served Teriyaki Chicken, a couple of egg rolls, and rice. The dinner was very good and the place seemed to be pretty well packed. We had another drink after dinner and finally left around 7:00 for home. All in all, a very good day of sightseeing.

Saturday, September 24th was another great morning. Or, at least it was until we got into the car after lunch and started driving back to Manitou Springs, the nice town we found yesterday and didn’t have a chance to explore fully. Just after leaving the RV park I noticed that the Jeep’s air conditioning was not putting out any cold air. A little further checking revealed that the compressor was not running - again. We had to repair the A/C back on March 31st, less than six months ago because the condenser coil had sprung a leak. This was done back in Moreno Valley, California. Just a little more than six months prior to that we had the condenser replaced at the Jeep dealership in Pahrump. Needless to say, I was a little pissed off. Now at this moment I don’t know for sure it is the condenser again; there are a number of things that could be wrong, and I won’t know until a dealer can look at it. But if it is, I am going to raise hell with somebody. We probably won’t be able to get it into anyone until we get to Pahrump at the end of October. Fortunately, it is not terribly hot, just in the low 80's today, so we can get by without it. A little uncomfortable, but not overbearing.

We continued on to the town of Manitou Springs, which I talked about in some detail in yesterday’s section, to do some window shopping and geocaching. The town was very crowded, as most quaint mountain towns are on the weekend. We finally found a parking lot just off main street and started walking around. We ended up spending about three hours walking up and down the main drag, looking in shops and sightseeing. We even tried some of the town’s famous spring water, which they have coming out of a couple of public well sites right on the street. It tastes a lot like seltzer, slightly carbonated, and a little salty tasting. Jackie was even able to find a reputable jewelry repair person in one of the shops that was able to fix her gold bracelet, which had broken several months ago, for a reasonable price. We spent so much time shopping, but not buying anything, that it was getting late when we finished. We did manage to do four new geocaches before we decided to head for home for the rest of the day. One of the caches was in a cemetery located at the edge of town and we were surprised to see about a half dozen young male Elk just lying on the ground amongst the tombstones. They didn't seem to be bothered by our presence.

Sunday, September 25th, we had another great day in the forecast so we headed out after lunch to do some geocaching in Colorado Springs. We headed for the downtown area, figuring that Sunday would be a good day since there would be few workers around. The older area of Colorado Springs, around the downtown, is very picturesque, much like we saw in the older parts of Denver. Many of the streets are divided parkways, with a wide grass median and lots of trees. Many of the houses are very nice, turn of the century, homes that would have been considered very upscale in their day, even perhaps mansions. We found a dozen new caches, along with one DNF, before we decided it was just too hot. The temperature was only in the low 80's, but with no car air to cool us off between caches it got a little too hot for us. We spent another half hour or so just driving around looking at neighborhoods before heading home for the evening.

Colorado Springs was founded in 1871 by William Palmer, one of the founders of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. It was founded primarily as a railroad town and as a tourist stop for the entire Pikes Peak area. It was specifically platted further down in the valley than nearby Colorado City, which had been around since 1859 because Palmer did not like the rough and tumble nature of the older town. He wanted the town built on relatively flat land to make expansion easier than in the more mountainous terrain of the foothills. Colorado Springs is very much a military town today, with the Army’s Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy, Peterson Air Force Base, Schriever Air Force Base, and the Cheyenne Mountain Air Facility, the home of NORAD located deep inside a mountainside.

Monday, September 26th, I decided not to wait a month to see what the problem was with the air conditioning on the Jeep. I decided that if the problem was the condenser again it was covered by a parts and labor warranty and they might not look favorably on my waiting a month to get it looked at. I found that there was a Jeep dealer, Faricy Boys, only about 10 miles from the RV park. I got up early and headed there to see if I could get it looked at. I got there about 8:15 a.m. and they did the write up for the work. After a couple hours or so the service writer told me that it was, indeed, the condenser and that they had the part in stock. The work actually took most of the day, I didn’t get out until almost 3:30, but they took the time to try and find out what was causing the spate of condenser failures. The service guy told me he though that it was the way it was installed the last time and that it had been rubbing on another part, eventually wearing a hole in the part. He said his mechanic shimmed it and put it back in such a way as it shouldn’t be rubbing anymore. Hopefully we won’t face this same issue again another six months from now. Everything was covered under the warranty except for the extra hour it took to remove and replace our tow bar equipment. Ended up just over $100 and we now have cool air again. Yea!

Tuesday, September 27th, another wonderful morning. Today is our last day here in the Colorado Springs area. We decided to go out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Monument, close to the RV park. This place was recommended to us by a lady we met in the laundromat shortly after our arrival in Monument. Since she was a local we asked for a recommendation for a Mexican place and she told us that La Casa Fiesta in the Old Town part of Monument was great. We also found a coupon for the place in one of the local newspapers that gave us half off one entree. We finally went there today and the food was great. I had a shredded beef burrito that was huge and packed with meat. More than enough for a meal. Jackie had a taco and a chili rellano and she said they were excellent also. If you ever find yourself driving near Monument, Colorado and want good Mexican food, head down to La Casa Fiesta.

After lunch we drove south to Colorado Springs to an area on the west edge of town that is called Old Colorado City. Although it is now a part of the city of Colorado Springs, at one time it was a town all its own and it predates Colorado Springs. The town was founded as Colorado City on May 22, 1859, when the Colorado Town Company laid claim to two square miles of land. They envisioned that Colorado City would be a major supply hub via the Ute Pass for the new gold mines in South Park and the Blue River, where major strikes in the Pike's Peak Gold Rush had recently been made. The name Colorado was chosen (the area was still part of Kansas Territory) because the Blue River mines were supposed to be on the headwaters of the Colorado River.

Although the town prospered at first, by the summer of 1860, newly built roads from Denver to South Park and the Blue River had diverted most of the traffic to and from the mines, and Colorado City commerce instead shifted towards serving the agriculture of Colorado's eastern plains. Colorado City was the county seat of El Paso County until 1873, when the courthouse moved to Colorado Springs.

By an act passed on November 5, 1861, the first Colorado territorial legislature, meeting in Denver, named Colorado City as the territorial capital. However, Colorado City effectively functioned as the capital for only five days. When the second territorial legislature met at Colorado City on July 7, 1862, in a log cabin that still stands on Colorado Avenue, they found the accommodations so inadequate that they voted to adjourn on July 11 and reconvene in Denver on July 16. Colorado City was never recognized by the Federal government as the territorial capital. Colorado City was incorporated into Colorado Springs in 1917. The area is called Old Colorado City because another unincorporated area of Pueblo County, south of Colorado Springs, started using the name Colorado City.

We did some geocaching in the historic downtown area, including one virtual cache that was located at the log cabin that served as the capital of the Colorado territory for five days. We also spent about an hour walking around some of the shops on the main street. We ended up with six new cache finds. On the way home we stopped at Walmart for some last minute shopping. Once we got home I spent a little time putting stuff away outside so we would be ready to travel in the morning.

Wednesday, September 28th was another travel day. Time to leave Monument and head 150 miles south to Trinidad, Colorado. Since the RV park we were staying in Monument is closing at the end of the month, it is time to move on. The travel route was straight down I-25 and was uneventful. We arrived at the Summit RV park and Budget Motel (yep, that’s the full name) about 1:30 and got settled into a spot. Not much of a spot, but it does have full hookups, 50 amp and cable. The place is a bit of a dump, but there are not a lot of choices here in Trinidad. We will be here for three days, so we can handle it. Trinidad is an old mining town that is supposed to have a very picturesque Old Town, so we are looking forward to some caching there.

Our departure from Monument is the perfect time to publish the blog, so I will close this episode. We are here for three days, then three days in Las Vegas, New Mexico before we move on to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. Until the next time I will leave you with an old proverb I saw on the wall of a restaurant recently. Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction. Good Advice! Bye for now.

On The Front Range

2011-09-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

Hello again friends. Welcome back to our story. Our last chapter closed on Friday, September 2nd, with our arrival in Loveland, Colorado. We will be here at the Riverview RV Park for a week.

The RV park is about six miles west of town on the banks of the Big Thompson River. It is in the lower reaches of Big Thompson Canyon, which means that there is no Verizon cell phone service in the park. This means no phone and no Verizon internet at the coach. The park does have free Wifi, but it is a little spotty. I did manage to get a satellite signal for the TV, not with the dome on the roof - it was blocked by trees, but with the spare dish we carry. At least we are not completly cut off.

After we got settled in we drove into town to visit Sam’s Club for some things we needed from the “big box” store. We then needed to find a liquor store as our Absolute stock was just about gone. When we priced the big bottle of Absolute in Lamar at one of the local stores it was $39 a bottle. We were worried that because Colorado does not allow sales of liquor in anything other than a liquor store, that the price might be high all over. We found a place called LiquorMax Warehouse just down the street from Sam’s and when we went in we saw Absolute was only $26.99 for the big bottle, about the same as we pay in Costco in California or Arizona. They also had Three Olives, an English vodka that is as good as Absolute, for only $19.99 a bottle. We stocked up and bought two bottles of each. Good prices, happy, happy, joy, joy. After shopping we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the evening.

Historically, Loveland is a railroad town. The city was founded in 1877 along the newly-constructed line of the Colorado Central Railroad, near its crossing of the Big Thompson River. It was named in honor of William A.H. Loveland, the president of the Colorado Central Railroad. The city was founded one mile upstream from the existing small settlement of St. Louis, the buildings of which were moved to the site of Loveland. For the first half of the 20th century the town was dependent on agriculture. The primary crops in the area were sugar beets and sour cherries. In 1901, the Great Western Sugar Company built a factory in Loveland, which remained as a source of employment until its closure in 1985. During the late 1920s the Spring Glade orchard was the largest cherry orchard west of the Mississippi River. At that time the cherry orchards produced more than $1 million worth of cherries per year. A series of droughts, attacks of blight and finally a killer freeze destroyed the industry. By 1960 cherries were no longer farmed. In the late 20th century, the economy diversified with the arrival of manufacturing facilities by Hewlett-Packard, Teledyne, and Hach, a water quality analysis equipment manufacturer. A new medical center has added a substantial amount of employment in that sector as well..

Loveland is also the home of the Valentine Re-Mailing Program. For decades people from across the world have sent their valentines to Loveland, Colorado, to be hand-stamped with a cachet and verse, and a specially designed postal cancellation. A new verse and stamp are selected each year through a contest held by the Loveland Chamber of Commerce and residents can submit their poems and artwork to be judged. On average, this program re-mails more than 160,000 cards from the United States and more than 110 countries. Loveland’s Valentine Re-mailing Program has inspired many other Valentine’s Day programs including the Official Loveland Valentine, Miss Loveland Valentine and the Thompson Valley Rotary Heart’s Program. Information on all these programs is available through the Loveland Chamber of Commerce website. The Loveland Chamber of Commerce and the Loveland Post Office sponsor the Loveland Valentine Re-mailing Program.

Loveland’s Valentine Re-mailing Program began in January 1947 by Ted Thompson and Elmer Ivers, the Loveland postmaster after Ivers received about 30 valentines from individuals requesting to have the cards postmarked from Loveland for, “a romantic extra touch.” The two thought re-mailing valentines would be an opportunity to advertise Loveland, and the Loveland Chamber of Commerce agreed to promote the service. Thompson designed a cachet with the message, “A Valentine Greeting from Sweetheart Town, Loveland, Colorado,” and the image was a heart pierced by an arrow over the Rocky Mountains. The cachet was used twice, then Thompson started the tradition of changing it each year at the request of collectors. Since then, a different verse and design have been used every year. End of history lesson.

Saturday, September 3rd, we left the coach after lunch to do some geocaching in Loveland. We had pretty good luck and in about four hours we had found a dozen caches with only one DNF, a cache we couldn’t find. After our caching we spent a little time driving around town sightseeing. We visited Boyd Lake State Park on one of the several large lakes in and around Loveland. The park has campsite facilities, unfortunately, the guy at the guard gate wouldn’t let us in for a quick drive through just to check it out. He wanted us to pay the $8 day use fee. I guess we will never know what the park has to offer.

About 5:00 or so we went to the Loveland Elks Lodge. The lodge is in an old building downtown, one that I would guess was built in the 30's, which was quite nice. Large, three story building with lots of wood, very typical of the older Elks lodges. Like most of the early lodge buildings this one had the dining room and bar on the first floor, the lodge room on the second floor, and apartments on the third floor. Back in the early and mid 1900's many Elks lodges around the country had rooms for rent in their lodges for traveling Elks. Very few still maintain those amenities.

The bar was very nice, with quite a few people having cocktails. They were a very friendly group, including one woman named Anna who came over and sat with us for a while. She told us to be sure to visit the Moose Lodge in Longmont, about 20 miles South, telling us they had a great lodge with great RV parking. We will check it out. We had a couple of cocktails, the lodge bought us one, and got a lodge pin for our banner. This was our first visit to the Loveland lodge. After our lodge visit we made a quick stop at Sam’s Club for a take and bake pizza and then headed home for dinner.

After dinner, about 7:00 or so, a band started playing in the RV park’s pavilion. We had known that they were going to have entertainment both Saturday and Sunday nights. We are parked right behind the pavilion, so all we had to do was put our chairs behind the coach and we could enjoy the show. The band was very good, four middle aged guys who seemed to really be enjoying themselves. They played mostly oldies and blues. They played until about 9:30 when they shut down the show. There were quite a few people around watching, but considering that this is a large RV park that is completely full, there were not as many as I would expect for a free show. Tomorrow night is supposed to be a rock band.

Sunday, September 4th, we woke up to a cold morning for the first time in months. When I got in the car to run out and get a paper about 7:30 the thermometer read 44 degrees. I actually had to turn on the heat pump in the coach to get the chill out. From the 100's to the 40's in the matter of a few days. Amazing.

After lunch we left the coach to chase around for the day. Our first stop was the large outlet mall we had spotted as we got off the freeway for Loveland on Friday. Once we got there we found that at least half of the stores were vacant, but we still spent about two hours wandering around shopping. We each bought a couple of things, but not too much. We generally only buy when there are real bargains. After wandering the outlet mall we did a little more caching in the area. We only spent about 90 minutes or so and found six new caches. We concentrated on those that had travel bugs and managed to drop off four that we had in our possession and got two new ones in exchange. For any new readers not familiar with geocaching, travel bugs are separately trackable items that are placed in caches. Cachers can take the item and then drop it in another cache somewhere else. TB’s, as they are known, have unique serial numbers and are logged and tracked on the same website as the geocaches themselves.

On the way back to the RV park we stopped at an antique mall and found a huge place. It was so big that we only got about half way through before we decided it was time to get back to the coach for happy hour. We will go back sometime over the next few days to finish the place. Unlike a lot of antique malls, most of the stuff in here was reasonably priced. Jackie picked up a nice denim purse and a denim vest, both of which were very well made, both for less than $15. Quite a bargain.

After dinner we walked over to the pavilion again to listen to the music for a little while. The band tonight, the Nitecats, was another local band, three older guys who did a lot of 60's and 70's country and rock. They were pretty good and we enjoyed the music for about an hour. We even got up and danced a little. Again, the turnout seemed poor for a free show in an RV park. Only a few dozen people showed up to watch. I guess most of them could hear the music at their RV’s and didn’t want to go out in the cool weather.

Monday, September 5th, Happy Labor Day. Since we stopped doing labor six years ago, it’s pretty much just another day for us. After lunch we went back out to take advantage of the great weather and do some more geocaching. It was a little warmer today, supposed to be in the low 80's by the end of the afternoon, but still very nice. In the course of about three hours we found another dozen caches with one more DNF added to the list. This brings us to thirty finds in the last three days, not a bad average.

After our caching we went back to the big antique store near our RV park to finish looking around. We spent about an hour there and found a couple of little things we could use for geocaching “bling,” stuff to leave in caches. After the store we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Tuesday, September 6th, we left the coach around noon, after an early lunch, and drove west on US-34 towards the town of Estes Park, Colorado and the Rocky Mountain National Park. We had awakened to cloudy skies and a little drizzle with temperatures in the high 50's. It was 23 miles from our RV park to Estes Park and the road took us from about 5,000 feet elevation to 7,500 elevation in that distance. Much of the road was through Big Thompson Canyon and the middle part of the trip was in a very narrow part of the canyon where it was only wide enough for the river and a two lane road. The canyon walls went straight up a thousand feet and the course of the river was very winding, which made for pretty dramatic scenery. Unfortunately, the clouds and rain made it difficult to get good photos. We arrived in Estes Park in a little under an hour and found a very quaint little mountain town.

We continued on through town to one of the entrances to Rocky Mountain National Park, the Beaver Meadows entrance station and visitor’s center. The park actually has two entrances on the west side, one on Highway 34, the other on Highway 36. You can only get to either one through Estes Park, however. East of town Highway 34 goes to Loveland, Highway 36 goes more southeast to Boulder, Colorado. The two highways meet up a few miles into the park and only Highway 34 continues on through the park. This is the only through road in the park and it comes out at the southwestern corner of the park at the town of Grand Lake. This road is about 46 miles long and is considered the highest continuously paved highway in the country. At it’s highest point the road crosses the tundra above the tree line at 12,180 feet elevation.

The park is about 266 thousand acres, or a little over 400 square miles. There are 72 named peaks above 12,000 feet elevation inside the park boundaries. There is also Longs Peak which is the northernmost of the so-called “fourteeners” which are peaks in the Rocky Mountain chain that rise above 14,000 feet elevation. There are 54 fourteeners in Colorado, but this is the only one in the park. The park was created in 1915.

After visiting the Beaver Meadows Visitor’s Center we headed into the park. We spent about four hours driving through the park. It was really unfortunate that there were so many clouds, so much rain and even fog. It obscured what had to be really magnificent views. We only drove about halfway through the park, to the Alpine Visitor’s Center, located at 12,000 feet. Had we continued on to the Grand Lake entrance we probably wouldn’t have really seen anything more because of the bad weather, so we drove back to Estes Park, exiting the park through the Falls River station. An total we got into four of the five visitor’s centers in the park and got some pretty neat pictures in spite of the rain and clouds. There were even some small glaciers on the side of the mountains up near the Alpine center. We even managed to get a geocache inside the park. The National park system does not allow regular geocaches in the parks, but this one was a virtual, which meant no actual container.

We saw a lot of Elk in the park. This area of the country has some of the largest Elk populations and they are all over. This is rutting season (mating)so the big bull Elks have their full rack of antlers, and they are pretty impressive. We saw large herds of Elk in two different meadows, and we came across a small group right on the side of the road. Very impressive animals. After we finished in the park we went back into Estes Park. We had loaded a whole bunch of caches for Estes Park, but we don’t like caching in the rain and it was still raining when we got back into town.

Estes Park was named for Joel Estes, who arrived in the area in 1859 and settled here with his family to raise cattle until 1866 when he moved to seek a more favorable climate. The Homestead Act of 1862 offered up to 160 acres of land for the cost of filing the paperwork if a house was constructed and the property was labored upon. In the 1870s, surveys of Estes Park brought homesteaders to the area who attempted farming, ranching, logging and mining. Most of the early ranchers found it more profitable to become proprietors to the growing number of visitors in the area as words of beauty and adventure reached all the way to Europe. After the 1905 platting of downtown Estes Park, the village thrived and set ground for much of what the town looks like today. Access to the area was vastly increased with the road improvements funded by the Stanley Hotel owner, F.O. Stanley, and the natural surroundings would be protected for posterity with the dedication of Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915. The Town incorporated in 1917.

We drove through town and checked out the Stanley Hotel, which was built by Freelan O. Stanley, the co-inventor of the Stanley Steamer automobile. Stanley came to Estes Park in 1903 and built the hotel just a few years later. It opened on July 4, 1907. The hotel has 178 rooms and it served as the inspiration for Steven King’s novel, The Shining. Many believe the Stanley Hotel is haunted, having reported a number of cases of ghostly activity, primarily in the ballroom. Kitchen staff have reported to have heard a party going on in the ballroom, only to find it empty. People in the lobby have allegedly heard someone playing the ballroom's piano; employees investigating the music supposedly find nobody sitting at the piano. Employees believe that particular ghost is of Freelan O. Stanley's wife, who used to be a piano player. In one guest room, people claim to have seen a man standing over the bed before running into the closet. This same apparition is allegedly responsible for stealing guests' jewelry, watches, and luggage. Others reported to have seen ghosts in their rooms in the middle of the night, simply standing in their room before disappearing. The hotel is a large white, mostly wooden structure built on the side of a hill and can be seen from all over town. Very pretty building.

The town also had one street with about six blocks of neat shops and boutiques, but it was getting late and we wanted to start back down through the canyon to home. We did stop at the town’s visitor center to try and see where the Elks Lodge was located. One of our travel books, an older one, showed a lodge in Estes Park. However, it seems that the lodge has closed because the lady in the visitor’s center told us there was no Elks Lodge and the newer travel book we had in the car did not show a lodge in town. We then made a quick stop at the KFC to pick up dinner and headed back down the canyon to our RV park. We got home around 6:30 and just stayed in the rest of the night listening to the rain.

Wednesday, September 7th, we woke up to more rain. Actually, it had rained most of the night and it didn’t appear that it was going to get any better. We couldn’t go caching in the rain, so we just went out after lunch to do a Wally World run. By the time we got out of the store the rain had tapered off to a heavy mist. We went home and stayed in the rest of the afternoon. According to the local weather, the rain is supposed to move out tonight.

Thursday, September 8th, we finally saw the sun again! After lunch we drove back up into the mountains to Estes Park for some more exploration, this time not in the rain. We split our time between geocaching and walking around the downtown area checking all the little shops. We also found where the Elks Lodge used to be. The address on Elkhorn Street, the main drag through town, is nothing but an empty foundation. It appears that the building may have burned down, but we couldn't verify that. We ended up getting ten new geocaches and spent most of the afternoon in town. We finally left about 4:30 and went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Friday, September 9th, was a travel day. We only went about 55 miles, south to the city of Westminster, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. We arrived at the Westminster Elks Lodge about noon and were surprised to see the RV park nearly full. The lodge has 44 RV sites, many with full hookups, but there were only a couple of sites open. We were a little surprised being this late in the year. We didn’t get a site with 50 amp or sewer, but we do have water and 30 amp. We will only be here for five days, so we can get along without the sewer connection.

The area that would be Westminster was first settled back in 1858 with the discovery of gold in the area. The land act of 1862 brought even more settlers to the area to make their homesteads. The town had several early names, including DeSpain Junction, Harris, and Darell Park, but it was incorporated in 1911 and given the name Westminster. The name came from Westminster University, a Presbyterian college built in the area in 1893 and opened in 1908. The first building at the university, a large red sandstone building called the Westminster Castle, still stands on the site.

The Westminster Elks lodge is fairly new. It was chartered in 1961 and they built their present building in 1965. After our arrival we phoned some friends of ours, Jim and Jane Easley, who live in nearby Arvada, Colorado, but are members of the Westminster Elks. We met Jim and Jane through our association with the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) and our attendance at various rallies over the years. Jim and Jane are security volunteers for FMCA and we see them at most every rally we go to.

The Easley’s came over to our coach about 5:00 and we had a cocktail and caught up on what has been going on since we last saw them in Indio back in January. About 6:00 we went over to the Lodge for dinner. We had a very nice dinner, Chicken Marsala for Jackie and I, and another drink, along with lots of great conversation. Jim and Jane are very nice people and we really enjoyed our visit. We have a lot of mutual friends through FMCA. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Saturday, September 10th, we went out after lunch to do some caching in Denver. The set of caches that I downloaded for us were all located just southeast of downtown, in the older residential area of the city. Many of the homes in the area appear to be early 1900's construction and were very pretty. It was a very picturesque area and we enjoyed looking at all the buildings, however, it was a real difficult area to cache in. The streets were very narrow and most were one way streets. In addition, apparently many of the homes and apartment buildings did not have off-street parking, because the streets were packed with cars. We had to bypass several caches simply because we could not find a parking place close to the cache. We did finally manage to get ten caches, with a couple of DNFs, by 3:30, and we decided that was enough for the day.

After caching we drove to downtown Denver and the 16th Street Mall. For those not familier with Denver, the 16th Street Mall goes through the middle of downtown and is closed to all vehicle traffic except for buses. The mall is one and a quarter miles long and is lined with stores, shops and restaurants. The entire mall is paved with granite pavers and there are all kinds of street entertainers along the route. The city runs free transit buses up and down the street, making it a very popular place, even for the locals. We spent a little over an hour walking on the mall and enjoying the 78 degree weather. We did a little looking, but didn’t buy anything. After our shopping we headed back to the coach and stayed in the rest of the night.

Denver is the capital of Colorado, the capital building is right near the end of the 16th Street Mall. It’s population is a little over 600,000 and it covers nearly 155 square miles. Denver City was founded in November 1858 as a mining town during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush in western Kansas Territory. General William Larimer, a land speculator from eastern Kansas, placed cottonwood logs to stake a claim on the bluff overlooking the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek. Larimer named the townsite Denver City to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver. Larimer hoped that the town's name would help make it the county seat of Arapaho County, but unknown to him Governor Denver had already resigned from office.

Larimer, along with associates in the St. Charles City Land Company, sold parcels in the town to merchants and miners, with the intention of creating a major city that would cater to new emigrants. Denver City was a frontier town, with an economy based on servicing local miners with gambling, saloons, livestock and goods trading. The Colorado Territory was created in February of 1861and Denver City was incorporated in November of 1861. In 1867, Denver City became the Territorial Capital and shortened its name to just Denver.

Between 1880 and 1895 the city experienced a huge rise in corruption, as crime bosses, such as Soapy Smith, worked side by side with elected officials and the police to control elections, gambling, and the bunko gangs. The city also experienced a depression in 1893 after the crash of silver prices. By 1890, Denver had grown to be the second-largest city west of Omaha, but by 1900 it had dropped to third place behind San Francisco and Los Angeles. Denver has also been known historically as the Queen City of the Plains and the Queen City of the West, because of its important role in the agricultural industry of the high-plains region in eastern Colorado and along the foothills of the Colorado Front Range.

Sunday, September 11th, Patriot Day. Hard to believe that it has been ten years since the attacks on 9/11. I remember Jackie waking me up about 6:30 a.m., my normal “get up for work” time, and telling me that the news was talking about an airplane hitting one of the World Trade Center buildings. By the time we left for work all three aircraft had impacted in New York and Washington. I remember standing in the office of the country club where I worked and watching with all my co-workers as the towers each fell.

This morning’s news coverage was expected, probably necessary, but terribly depressing. We were very glad to be able to go out after lunch to do some geocaching and get away from all the remembrance ceremonies. We did some caching to the east of downtown, in the huge shopping area that has been built where the old Denver International airport, Stapleton Field, used to be. I recall going in and out of Stapleton several times back in the mid 1970's when I was working the Fugitive Division at the Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix. One of our duties was doing prisoner extraditions and we did a lot of flying to other states to pick up wanted people.

We ended up with a total of fourteen new cache finds in the course of a couple of hours, and never had to leave the large shopping area on the site of the old airport. We also took the time to go into a couple of stores in the mall for some shopping. After caching we went back to Westminster and did a little sightseeing. We drove up to the top of the hill on the north side of Westminster and visited the Westminster Castle. I mentioned this place earlier in the blog as the main building for Westminster University which opened in 1908 and served as the inspiration for the name of the city. The building is still used as a Christian school and is well maintained and very pretty. On the way to the coach after our sightseeing, we stopped in the Elks Lodge for a cocktail. We also picked up a new lodge pin for our banner, which we had neglected to do when we were in the lodge on Friday. We already have one pin from this lodge, but this year is their 50th anniversary and they had a very nice anniversary pin. After our drink we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Monday, September 12th, we left the coach around noon and drove north to a small town named Berthoud, Colorado, about 45 miles north of Denver. We went there to visit our friends Doug and Linda Stoudt. Doug and Linda were the assistant wagonmasters, or tailgunners, for our caravan to Alaska in 2009. We really hit it off with them on the trip and they are one of the two couples from that journey that we have stayed in contact with. We last saw Doug and Linda in Quartzsite, Arizona, back in January. Doug and Linda have a house in the country near Berthoud, which is just south of Loveland. We had tried to get with them while we were in Loveland, but they are in the process of “reorganizing” their house, and were unable to get together while we were up there.

We got to their house about 1:00 and found that they have a lovely three story brick home on about 11 acres of land in a very pretty area of rolling hills, pastures and farms. The back of their house looks west to the mountains and they have a perfect view of Long’s Peak, the tallest peak in the Rocky Mountain National Park, from their deck. We sat out on the deck for a while talking and catching up. We then spent an hour or so looking at pictures from their summer trip to New Zealand and Australia. They are still share holders and employees of Fantasy RV Tours and they took a tour this summer to these places that was two months long. They flew down there and then used small, rented RV’s to tour New Zealand, the northeast coast of Australia, and the outback of Australia. It looked like a fantastic, fun trip.

We had a great time visiting with Doug and Linda and hope to see them out on the road sometime in the near future. They have a Monaco Knight with the same floor plan as ours. Theirs is a year newer and a different color scheme, but other than that very similar. Their son is moving into their home in Berthoud, which will enable them to spend more time on the road without having to worry about the house and grounds being maintained. They will keep a couple of bedrooms for their use when they are at home. That is the reorganization that I mentioned. Doug showed me the family car collection while we were there. He has a 1950 Chevy that is almost completely original. It has new paint, but the interior and all the mechanicals are original. He just sold it, but it was still in the drive for me to look at. His son has an 80's model Rolls-Royce that is in decent shape, an older Jaguar sedan, and a 65 Mustang that needs some work. I climbed into the back seat of the Rolls for a moment, just so I could say that I sat in the back of a Rolls. All in all, an impressive collection.

About 4:30 we left Doug and Linda’s to head down to Longmont, Colorado, about seven miles south of their house. We wanted to go to the Moose Lodge there to see it, and see Anna, the lady we met at the Loveland Elks Lodge last week. She was the one who told us that the Moose Lodge in Longmont was spectacular. She also told us that it had great RV parking, so we wanted to check it out. We arrived at the Moose, which is on the north end of town, and did find a very large building with a huge parking lot. While there is a lot of room for RV parking, we didn’t see any formal hookup sites. There were a couple of RVs parked there, but they were dry camping.

We went inside and were disappointed to find that Anna was not there. We did stay at the bar and have a couple of drinks. The bar was very big and very nice, probably the nicest Moose lodge we have visited in the few months that I have been a member. The place was very full for Monday night football and the people were very friendly. The bartender rang the bell behind the bar and announced us to everyone as visitors. We had a very nice chat with an older guy at the bar who was a past Governor for the lodge and also held offices at the state level. The Governor is the head guy of a Moose lodge, similar to the Exalted Ruler of an Elks. He also told us a story of being selected to serve on the National Council for the Moose, which would have resulted in his eventually becoming the Governor General of the Order, the top office. He didn’t take them up on it because he didn’t want to spend three years traveling around the country. This was a very nice Moose lodge and we enjoyed our visit.

After the Moose lodge we went to the south end of town and visited the Longmont Elks Lodge. This lodge is still in the original early 1900's building which was very typical Elks style architecture. The inside was very ornate and had a very nice bar and clubroom. The Lodge room was on the top floor and took up most of the floor. It was nice, but not overly elaborate. No stained glass or guilt ceilings, but a very nice, dignified room nonetheless. They also had a huge ballroom on the bottom floor which you could look down into to from the second floor clubroom through big windows. This bar was not nearly as busy as the one at the Moose, but the bartender was pretty friendly. We had one cocktail, got our lodge pin, and then headed out to go home. We got out of the lodge right at sunset and by the time we got to Westminster is was 7:30 and dark.

Since it was so late we decided to stop and get something to eat before going home. Jackie checked her Bing application on her phone and found a Mexican restaurant located just a couple miles from the Westminster lodge, that had four stars on it’s listing. We stopped there and found that the food was, indeed, excellent. We both had the special, which was a “super burrito” and you could get it with any kind of stuffing. She got grilled chicken, I had shredded beef. Both were wonderful. They were smothered in green chili sauce with lots of lettuce and tomatoes. The chips and salsa were also good, as was the service. The total meal for both of us was under $20. The name of the place is Rosita’s Mexican Restaurant, and it is located on Federal Boulevard near 81st Avenue, in Westminster. I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes Mexican food and finds themselves in the north part of the Denver metro area. After dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the evening.

Tuesday, September 13th, we left the coach about 11:30 so we could go do lunch at one of the several Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives (Triple D) restaurants in Denver. Triple D is a show on the Food channel with chef Guy Fieri that we watch all the time. We like to try places that Fieri has visited. We decided on a place called The Bagel Deli on the south side of Denver. From the outside it doesn’t look like too much, a smallish place in a strip mall. When we went in the place was packed, but fortunately, a table opened up just as we came in. The food was outstanding. I ordered the Reuben with fries and when it came I was shocked. Jackie even took a photo of the sandwich. It had to be five inches thick, stacked with corn beef and kraut. It tasted as good as it looked too. Jackie had eggs Benedict, which she said were just OK. They didn’t come out real hot and she likes her food hot. We also ordered the sampler platter that had a sample of each of the three dishes that Fieri tried when he did the show there. It had some matza ball soup, a beef knish, and a small piece of kishke. The matza ball was very good, the knish, a small meat filled pastry, was tasty but a little dry, and the kishke was outstanding. The kishke, which they make without the trademark sausage skin, tasted like stuffing. I took half of my sandwich and most of my fries home with me, which is very unusual for me. There was just too much food, and it was not expensive either. All of the food we had was less than $35.

After lunch we went to a couple of animal shelters to look at kitties. We have been talking about getting a second cat. We had two cats when we first sold the house and took off on the road, but the older one died after less than a year. Smokey is a good companion cat, but he is not cuddly and Jackie wants a cuddly lap cat. Smokey is also getting older, he just turned eleven this year, although he probably still has a good five or six years on him. He doesn’t exactly have a tough life. We went to a non profit, no-kill shelter that only had cats first and walked around checking out the cats. This was one of the type where the cats are just all running loose in various rooms so you can go in and interact with them. We spent about an hour in there, but just couldn’t find one that really struck us as a good fit.

After the first shelter we went to another that was much more upscale and formal. This one had all types of animals, but they were all inside of locked rooms where you could see them through the glass and read the information about each one on a placard, but you couldn’t interact with them. You had to write the number of the animal you were interested in on a card, give to a worker, and then they would take you to a room and bring the animal in for you to interact with. We didn’t find anything we really liked here either, and these animals were much more expensive. Kittens were $120 and older cats were $50. We were going to do some caching, but by the time we got done with the animal shelters it was getting late in the afternoon, so we went home for the rest of the day. This place had a very cute bronze statue out in front.

Wednesday, September 14th, was another travel day. We packed up the coach and left the Westminster Elks about 10:00. We are still heading south, this time to a town called Monument, a suburb of Colorado Springs. We only had about 70 miles to travel, although we did have to make a fuel stop. The weather has really turned, it was gray and overcast and the high temperatures was supposed to only be in the 50's. We arrived at the Colorado Heights RV Resort about noon and managed to beat the predicted rain. We even got completely set up before the rain hit about 2:00.

We are going to be here in Monument for two weeks. This is one of our membership parks and seems to be a very nice place, although it is at 7,300 feet elevation so Jackie will have to watch her breathing. This also seems to be a good place to close out this chapter of the blog. I will publish again in a week or two. Until the next time, remember that out time on this earth is finite. There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing. Bye.

The Blistering Hot Prarie

2011-09-03T09:52:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to our story. The last episode concluded on Wednesday, August 24th with our arrival in historic Dodge City, Kansas. We arrived at the Gunsmoke RV park about noon after a 100 mile drive from Hooker, Oklahoma. Since it was quite hot, and a travel day to boot, after we got set up we just stayed in the coach for the rest of the day.

Thursday, August 25th we headed out after lunch to do some exploring and geocaching in Dodge City. The basic history of Dodge City is pretty well known, with lots of books, movies and television shows centered around the town. Dodge City can really trace it roots back to the early 1800's and the Santa Fe Trail, a travel and trade route which linked the State of Missouri with the city of Santa Fe in the Western territory. Because the route went though Indian territory, the Army built a series of forts along the trail to help protect travelers. In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, the Army established Fort Dodge not too far from the Arkansas River. A few years later, in 1872, settlers to the area laid out a town about five miles West of the fort, which they aptly named Dodge City. This was same time that the Santa Fe Railroad was pushed through to the new town. Because of a variety of quarantine actions by the Kansas State government, the routes used to move cattle from Texas up into Kansas and Missouri for slaughter were pushed West. Around 1876 the new town of Dodge City suddenly found itself the Queen of the Cow Towns.

South of the tracks, hastily built frame buildings and tents housed two grocery and general merchandise stores, a dance hall, a restaurant, a barber shop, a blacksmith shop and a saloon. The famous Front Street legend had begun. During those early years, Dodge City also acquired it’s infamous stamp of lawlessness and gun-slinging. There was no local law enforcement and the military had no jurisdiction over the town. Buffalo hunters, railroad workers, drifters and soldiers scrapped and fought, leading to the shootings where men died with their boots on. That created a hasty need for a local burial place, Boot Hill Cemetery. The cemetery is now a part of downtown Dodge City. It was used only until 1878.

Dodge City was the Buffalo capital of the country for three years until mass slaughter destroyed the huge herds and left the Prairie littered with decaying carcasses. An estimated 850,000 Buffalo hides were shipped from Dodge City in the years 1872-1874.

Law and order in Dodge came in the form of such now famous names as Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman and Charlie Bassett. Out of these personalities evolved the famous fictional character of Marshal Matt Dillon. The town these early men knew was laid out with two Front Streets, one on either side of the railroad tracks. The city passed an ordinance that guns could not be worn or carried north of the "deadline" which was the railroad tracks. The south side where "anything went" was wide open. In 1876 the population was 1,200 and nineteen businesses were licensed to sell liquor. The Long Branch Saloon, made famous in the legendary television series “Gunsmoke” really existed in Dodge City. Fort Dodge was closed in 1882 and by 1886, the cattle drives had ended. Wyatt Earp and his brothers moved to Tombstone and their famous date with destiny there, Bat Masterson moved East and became a writer. Dodge City settled down into a typical Kansas prairie town with farming and cattle ranching as the primary economic drivers. However, it never forgot it’s past and there are monuments and parks all over town keeping the names and places of the past alive.

We did our geocaching around town first so as to avoid the worst heat of the day. We had pretty good luck, finding a total of twelve new caches, with one new DNF, in the course of about two and one half hours. We also found a couple new travel bugs, which seem to have been far and few between the last few weeks. One of the caches was in the Visitors Center downtown, where we gathered some information on the area, including some of the history outlined above. Another of the caches was pretty cute and easy to find, just hard to get to. It was a standard rural mailbox on a ten foot pole outside a hanger at the local airport. The cache was a container inside the mailbox. There was a stick with a hook on it conveniently located nearby. The cache was a play on some novelty mailboxes we have seen other places in the country. People put a box on a tall pole and then put a sign on it that says, “air mail.” Pretty cute.

After we got our twelve finds we quit caching and did some sightseeing in the area. We stopped at the Boot Hill Museum, thinking it was a city run operation. Turns out that the original Boot Hill in downtown Dodge is privately owned and they have built their own museum and gift shop. They also built a replica of what Front Street might have looked like in the late 1800's, including the Long Branch Saloon. Unfortunately, they wanted $10 a head to tour their “museum” so we didn’t take them up on it. We also drove for about an hour on various streets in town, looking at old houses and buildings and just getting a feel for the town. Very nice little place. Currently Dodge City has a population of about 30,000 and meat packing and support for local farming and ranching are the primary economic forces. After our caching we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the day.

Friday, August 26th, we left the coach after lunch to do some more geocaching. Our first stop was a virtual cache (no actual cache container) located at a roadside historical monument. I walked out on the path and was able to see some of the remains of the actual tracks from the Santa Fe Trail, left by the wagons traveling West over 150 years ago. Pretty impressive. We spent the afternoon working on caches located in outlying areas and found a total of ten new caches with two DNFs. In our caching we visited Montezuma, primarily a farming community, but also host to a wind farm, an area where about 170 windmills are located generating power. Small by the standards of someone from the Palm Springs area like us, where thousands of windmills are working.

After our caching we visited the original site of Fort Dodge, which is now the Kansas Soldier’s Home. There are a whole bunch of small bungalows along with several buildings that appear to be dormitories. There is also a VA clinic on the site. Looks like Kansas really cares about it’s veterans. We also paid a visit to the Boot Hill casino, locate on Highway 50, not too far from our RV park. Boot Hill is apparently where money goes to die, because our $20 donations didn’t last long. Oh, well. After the casino visit we headed for the coach where we stayed the rest of the day.

No Elks or Moose lodges in Dodge. Kansas has very strict liquor laws and was the last state to eliminate prohibition, waiting until 1948. Even now there are dozens of dry counties and most of the rest have restrictions that on-sale service, buying drinks to consume on the premises, can only be in an establishement where at least 30 percent of the revenue is from food. Basically this means there can be no true “bar’ or cocktail lounge that is not a restaurant. There are only a handful of counties, mostly around the big cities like Wichita and Kansas City, that allow regular bars. The county we are in is Ford County and it has the food restriction, so there are no bars. There can’t be bars in private clubs like Elks or Moose.

As we pulled into the driveway by our coach this afternoon the thermometer in the car showed 107 degrees, this was about 4:30. When we watched the local news we noticed that this broke the all time number of days over 100 degrees in Dodge City for one season. The previous record was 40 days from sometime back in the 1930's.

Basically, Oklahoma, Kansas and North Texas are getting more heat than they did during the dust bowl days of the 30's. Things are looking bleak in this area. As we drive around we see thousands of acres of corn and feed looking brown and stunted. We can see food prices spiking in the next few months as a result of the extreme heat and drought in this area. This has been an eye opening visit with regard to what these farmers and ranchers are going through. Good thing there are lots of churches around. These plains folks are certainly church goers. Our tour through Dodge City revealed dozens of churches. There were times when we could see five or six different churches from one place on the road.

Saturday, August 27th is moving day again. Time to get the Hell out of Dodge. Originally, I wanted to head North through Kansas to a town not too far from the Nebraska border named Lebanon. Not too far from Lebanon is a marker put out in 1918 by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, the predecessor agency to the current National Geodetic Survey. This marker is supposed to represent what they determined to be the exact geographic center of the lower 48 states, which, of course, WAS the United States in 1918 since Alaska and Hawaii didn’t come along until 1959. I just thought it would be neat to stand exactly in the center of the country.

Unfortunately, when I started looking for RV parks in North central Kansas I found nothing. No RV parks anywhere close to Lebanon that I could find. Since we would be going a couple hundred miles out of our way to get there, I didn’t want to take a chance on finding a place to park. It just wasn’t that important a deal. Bottom line, we decided to just head West, back into Colorado and take a more direct route to our next reservation destination, Loveland, Colorado, North of Denver. We have had these reservations for several months. We need to be in Loveland on September 2nd. So, we left Dodge City about 9:30 and headed West on U.S. 50 to Lamar, Colorado, about 150 miles away. En route we time traveled, crossing into Mountain Time just before exiting Kansas. We arrived at the Country Acres RV park about 11:30, local time, and got set up for a five day stay. This is a Passport America park and we got in for $17 a night. Since we don’t really have any special place to be between now and September 2nd, we decided to go cheap and just stay here for most of the six day gap. We will stop at a KOA halfway between here and Loveland on Thursday for just one night. KOA’s are just too damn expensive to spent a lot of time there.

This park is a little rugged, not quite as much as Alice’s down in Hooker, but very basic. We did get a 50 amp site with full hookups, so we will be happy here. We will cache a couple of days and relax the rest of the time. Got a few chores to be done with the coach anyway. It was hot here, in the high 90's, but cooler than Dodge City. The weather showed that it would be six or seven degrees cooler here than in Dodge, so it should be comfortable. Once we got the coach set up and settled in we just stayed in the rest of the day.

Now for your history lesson. Lamar was one of the way stations on the Santa Fe Trail for a long time. After abandoning his first site about 50 miles West, William Bent built his second trading post several miles west of what is now Lamar in 1853. This was the area of "Big Timbers," a thick belt of giant cottonwoods that extended up the Arkansas river almost 40 miles.

As a town, Lamar was founded by speculators who reasoned they needed a federal land office and a railroad depot to ensure their venture's success. So they named the town "Lamar" after the sitting secretary of the interior, Lucius Lamar and he granted them the land office. One interesting story I found in my research related to the town’s first railroad depot. The town “fathers” actually stole it from a cattleman who lived 3 miles out of town. He had built the depot as a way to easily get his cattle onto the trains. The mayor of Lamar had the rancher summoned to Pueblo, the largest nearby city and the center of commerce for Southern Colorado. While the rancher was gone, the city fathers hauled his railroad depot into their townsite. On May 24, 1886, lots went on sale and before the week was out, several saloons and real estate agencies had set up shop and were doing business. Evidently the rancher didn’t make too much of a stink about his depot. By December, 1886, stores, schools, a church and a newspaper were in operation and the town's population reached 1,000.

Today Lamar has a population of about 10,000 and is primarily a support and transportation center for local farming and ranching. In 1983 Neoplan, a manufacturer of transit buses, built a plant here and also had its headquarters here. However, the company went bankrupt in 2006 and the plant is closed.

Sunday, August 28th we decided to pretty much stay in for the day. We got off to a bit of a rough start when I woke up just before 5:00 a.m. and noticed that the outside power was off. Our inverter was keeping most of the stuff inside operating, but it was pulling the batteries down. I wasn’t sure how long it had been off. I fell asleep about midnight after the band that was playing in the courtyard of the RV park quit. They were having some sort of community fund raiser party and had quite a crowd. The band was good and I enjoyed laying in bed listening through the open window.

Anyway, I went outside and noticed that my surge protector, connected between the coach and the power pedestal, showed that one leg of the 50 amp circuit was out. I reset the breakers, but it still showed one of the two legs dead. I got the adapter for plugging into 30 amp service and plugged the coach into the 30 amp receptacle and we had power, so I went back in and back to bed. In the morning I went to the office and told them about the problem. Within a half hour the owner showed up and between he, his son and I we managed to replace the breakers on the 50 amp receptacle. That was the problem, one of the breakers had burned out. New breaker and we had our 50 amps back. That is good because it’s supposed to be hot for the rest of the time we are here and with 30 amps we can only run one A/C. With the 50 we can run both. Yea.

We did go out briefly after lunch for a quick Walmart run. While we were in the car the thermometer showed the temperature to be over 100. Other than that, we just stayed in the coach and relaxed for the entire day.

Monday, August 29th, we decided that this would be a good day for caching since it was supposed to be much cooler than it has been for the last week or so. We left the house after lunch and started our caching right in Lamar, and then started East on U.S. 50 caching along the way. As with most rural and small town areas, the caches were spread out over a long way. We actually ended up back in Kansas where we did two caches before going back West to Lamar. I think we ended up driving over 100 miles today, but in the process we got 17 new finds with no DNFs and our last find was number 2,800. Yea, another milestone.

Two interesting things from our caching day. Of our 17 finds, seven were cemetery caches from a series called “Colorado Spirit Quest.” We have done spirit quest caches before, I recall some from back in Minnesota and Iowa back in 2008. Fortunately for us, all of the spirit quest caches today were pretty quick and easy finds. We also did a virtual cache, and actually one of the spirt quest caches, inside the grounds where the ruins of Camp Amache are preserved. The virtual asked for some information off of a sign at the entrance to the ruins. It was a wooden sign with a map of the camp carved on it. The original map had been drawn by a Japanese high school student who was in the camp during the war. It was later copied to the sign by some high school kids in Lamar that are helping to preserve the ruins.

Camp Amache, originally called the Granada War Relocation Center, was one of 10 Japanese American internment camps, or “relocation” centers, created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941. The camp opened in August 1942 and is about a mile West of the small farming community of Granada, a half mile south of Highway 50. It is about 25 miles East of Lamar, where we are staying. At it’s peak it had a population of 7,318 persons.

Nearly all of those interned at the camp came from the West Coast of the U.S., mostly from the Los Angeles area. Each person was only allowed to bring one bag, therefore, many people were forced to sell what they could or give away their possessions before being forced out. This also included pets. The camp's unofficial name quickly became Camp Amache, named after a Cheyenne Indian chief's daughter.

The Camp Amache residential area was spread across a low hill, which prevented the flooding and mud problems which plagued other internment camps. It was surrounded by barbed-wire fencing, with eight machine-gun towers located all around the camp. However, all eight towers were rarely manned at one time, and the guns were never used. The camp had a police department which was actually worked by Japanese Americans living at the camp.

Camp leaders, internees themselves, set up a separate Amache District for Boy Scouts at the camp. These Scouts still flew the American flag, notwithstanding the treatment they and their families had received from the government. The camp had a high school with an excellent football team. Sources indicate that the high school football team lost one game in three years. One noteworthy event was when the Amache football team played the undefeated football team from Holly, Colorado, which is located just 11 miles east of Amache on U.S. 50. This game was unique because Holly actually agreed to come up to the camp and play Amache on their home field. One of the Holly team players was Roy Romer, who went on to become Governor of Colorado in 1987. The Amache team won this game by a score of 7-0, the only touchdown coming from a trick play, thus the Amache team can claim to be undefeated on their own field.

Today there are no complete structures left on the site, however, there are hundreds of concrete foundations and the road system is still passable. We drove around for quite some time looking around the camp. The cemetery is still there and is still maintained. Over 100 internees died during their stay at the camp and are buried in this cemetery. There are also over 40 military veterans, Japanese who, after joining the US military, fought and died in Europe. We had one cache near the cemetery and another near the entrance to the camp. It was spooky driving around the now deserted and desolate camp. After our caching we headed back to the coach where we spent the rest of the evening.

Tuesday, August 30th, a stay at home day. Both Jackie and I got some chores done around the coach, but other than that, we just stayed in for the day. Wednesday we went out after lunch and did our laundry in town. We then went to Walmart to do some shopping. Later on in the afternoon we paid a visit to the Lamar Elks Lodge. We have never been to this lodge, which is only about a mile South of where we are staying. The lodge is in the clubhouse for the Lamar Golf Course, although I am unsure as to whether the Lodge owns the course or just rents space. It is only on one end of the building. The lodge has a very nice, homey clubroom and the people that were in there were very friendly. We chatted with the Exalted Ruler for quite a while. The Lodge has about 500 members. We had three drinks, one of which was on the lodge, then got our lodge pin and headed home for dinner.

Thursday, September 1st, one of our anniversaries. On September 1, 1998, I moved from Phoenix to Indio to be with Jackie and we have been together ever since. Happy Anniversary us!! Yea! Today was a moving day, so about 9:30 we pulled in the walls and started North out of Lamar, heading for Limon, Colorado, about 120 miles Northwest. It was an uneventful trip and we arrived at the KOA in Limon about noon. Since we are only going to be here one night we didn’t even unhook the car. We just plugged in the water and electric, settled the coach and relaxed for the day. Limon is just a small town, about 2,500 population, that sits at about 5,300 feet elevation. It is mostly just a railroad town, but now has one of Colorado’s prisons, which employs about 500 people and is the town’s biggest employer.

Friday, September 2nd, we were up and out of the KOA about 9:30 and on the road again. We picked up I-70, our first freeway in about a month, and headed Northwest towards Loveland, Colorado. Loveland is in the Northern part of the front range, not too far from Fort Collins. We had 140 miles to drive and the first 90 minutes we were in some weather. Light rain, some fog and lots of wind. As we got closer to Denver we drove out of the weather and it got nice. The traffic in the Denver metro area was pretty heavy, as could be expected on a Friday before a holiday weekend. We finally arrived at the Riverview RV park just West of Loveland on Highway 34. Seems to be a nice park and it looks pretty full for the weekend. Since we are a little ways up into the canyon we have no phone service where we are parked. Fortunately, I was able to get the satellite TV working and they have good internet here, so the only thing we lack is a phone while we are in the coach.

We will be here in Loveland for a week before moving down closer to Denver for a while. This seems like a good place to close this episode of our story. I will post again, probably in about two weeks when we get done in Denver. Until we meet again, remember the words of Henry David Thoreau; “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” Bye.

A Little More Texas, A Lot of Hooker, Oklahoma

2011-08-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

Hello again friends. Our last episode concluded on Sunday, August 14th, with us staying at the Oasis RV Resort in Amarillo, Texas. We are planning to be here in Amarillo until the end of the week.

Monday, August 15th, was a stay at home day. I spent most of the day on some minor chores I needed to get accomplished. I finished scanning the last of the photo albums from my parent’s collection. I now have all their pictures, from the 1930's through 1997, digitized and stored. I am going to send DVDs with all the pics to my four brothers. I also did some minor repairs to the coach and, of course, published the most recent installment of our blog.

Tuesday we decided to go catch another movie and went out for an afternoon showing of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” I have to say it was a very enjoyable movie, although the plot seemed to drag just a hair in the first third. I was very impressed with the way the script was carefully crafted to integrate with the original 1968 film. There were a couple of quick references to a missing space mission, which could easily have been overlooked by someone not familiar with the original plot, that made the first real link. It was all wrapped up in a neat little package with the final vignette that actually appears after the credits start to roll. The first “end” scene of the movie actually had me saying to Jackie, “well, that was a somewhat unsatisfying ending,” Then a few moments later it is all tied together. Brilliant. I was also pleased by the homage to the original movie with the line, “take your stinking paws off of me you damned dirty ape,” one of Charleton Heston’s iconic lines. All in all, a very good movie, even if you aren’t old enough to remember the original. After the movie we went back to the coach for the rest of the day.

Wednesday, August 17th, we went out after lunch to do some shopping in preparation for our scheduled departure from Amarillo on Friday. We will be heading up into Oklahoma and Kansas for a couple of weeks and will be in rural areas for the next couple weeks. Our first stop was the local Sam’s Club for what we had hoped would be a booze run. Unfortunately, after we got into the store I realized that Texas was one of the majority of states that doesn’t allow the sale of hard liquor (“spirits” in the nomenclature of the liquor laws) anywhere except a state approved liquor store. Regular stores can sell beer and wine, but no spirits.

We are so used to being in California and Arizona where all liquor can be sold in any store that gets an license. New Mexico also allows sales in retail groceries, so I hadn’t even given it a thought when we walked in Sam’s. But, no sprits for sale. We made a stop at a regular liquor store after leaving Sam’s and found the price there to be almost exactly 50 percent higher for the large bottle of Absolute at a Costco or Sam’s in New Mexico, Arizona or California. Oh well, we will buy it when we need it rather than stock up. After Sam’s Club we went to the local Walmart and stocked up on groceries before heading back to the coach for the rest of the day. I did go down and spend a little time in the hot tub before dinner.

Thursday, August 18th, we stayed at the park for the day, for them most part relaxing. We did do our laundry at one of the laundry facilities in the park and I spent a half hour or so cleaning up outside to be ready to travel tomorrow.

Friday, August 19th, was a travel day. We packed up the coach and left Amarillo about 10:00 a.m. heading North. We are headed for a little town called Hooker, Oklahoma, located in the middle of the Oklahoma panhandle on U.S. 54. We had a very nice drive, most of which was in the panhandle of Texas. Much of the route was four lane divided highway, relatively flat with little traffic. Once we crossed the border into Oklahoma, where they grow a lot of corn and wheat, we started seeing a lot of grain trucks on the road.

We arrived in Hooker about 1:00 p.m. and found an open spot in Alice’s RV Park, the only RV park in Hooker. Alice’s place is on a large corner residential lot which has been set up with six pull through RV sites, of which two were open. We discovered Alice’s place in the Passport America book. It does not appear in any other travel guide, such as Trailer Life or Woodall’s. Passport America (PPA) is a program that we have used since we first started traveling full time and provides information on RV parks that offer half price camping. Each park has it’s own rules such as how many days you can use the discount, seasons, holiday exceptions, that sort of thing. Alice’s was listed as having full hookup 50 amps sites, regular price $30 per night, $15 per night for PPA members with no time limit. We found a pretty level grass and gravel site with the advertised 50 amp hookup along with water and sewer connections. Other than the sites being pretty close together, enough room to get the slides out, but not a whole lot more, the sites were very good. There is no one on-site at the park, only a self serve station with a lockbox in which to put your registration and money. When I got the envelope out I found the regular price had been reduced to $20 per night, which meant the PPA price was $10. For a decent full service site this was an absolute steal! There aren’t even any Elks Lodges that are that inexpensive. I registered for three nights and put in a check for $30.

Now, the reason we are stopping in Hooker, Oklahoma, population 1,200 or so, is to visit Don and Wanda Fischer. We first met Don and Wanda at our first FMCA rally in Minot, North Dakota in 2006. They are also members of two FMCA chapters that we belong to, the Elks International Chapter, and the Full Timers Chapter. The Fischer’s at that time were in their late 70's, but very active, very friendly people. Don is a very outgoing person who hugs everyone he meets and he called himself “the Hugger from Hooker.” Over the ensuing years we often ran into Don and Wanda at various rallies and FMCA Conventions. Because of Don’s outgoing personality and his self imposed moniker, they were easy people to remember. We only saw them at rallies, so we didn’t become close friends, but we were always happy to see them and always had time to chat with them when we ran into them.

While we were staying in Amarillo I was looking at a map, plotting our next route, which was originally intended to take us to Dodge City, Kansas. I noticed that the best route from Amarillo to Dodge City took us right through the panhandle of Oklahoma, and right through the town of Hooker. Naturally, we thought of Don and Wanda. We were afraid that we might miss them since the FMCA Convention was going on in Madison, Wisconsin the second week of August, while we were in Amarillo. Jackie called Don and found that they were, in fact, at the rally in Madison, but they planned to leave there at the end of the week when the rally closed and head for home. Don anticipated they would be back home in Hooker by Friday, August 19th, the same day we would be passing through town. At that point we modified our plan and made Hooker our destination.

Hooker came to be in the very early 1900's when the Rock Island Railroad ran a line between Liberal, Kansas and Texas, near what is now Texhoma. Texas and Kansas were already states with set boundaries, however what is now Oklahoma was just a territory. At that time the strip of land between the State of Kansas and the panhandle of the State of Texas was called No Man’s Land. When the railroad went in through No Man’s Land in 1902 towns started to pop up every ten miles or so along the rail route and Hooker was one of the them. The town was named after a local cowboy and cattle ranch foreman named John "Hooker" Threlkeld. His nickname, Hooker, came from his ability to lasso, or“hook,” a calf on the first throw of his rope almost every time. The town was laid out in 1904 and the name has stuck. Don Fischer’s family came to Hooker about 1915 and started farming and ranching in the area. Don, who is now 80 years old, tells us he now lives in a house only two miles from where the house in which he was born used to be. A fourth generation of Fischer’s still works a very large farming operation just outside of town.

We got settled into our spot at Alice’s and called Don and Wanda to invite to our coach for cocktails later in the afternoon. They came over about 5:00 and we had cocktails and some great conversation. Don loves to tell stories and talk about the history of Hooker and we really enjoyed learning about his life here. Later in the evening we went with them to a local restaurant on the main street of town. The restaurant is called the Hooker Soda Fountain and Grill and is decorated in a very 50's retro way with all kinds of memorabilia on the walls and counters. They also had a good menu with everything from hamburgers to steaks and Mexican food. Jackie and I both had rib eye steaks which were quite good. After dinner Don and Wanda took us on a driving tour of Hooker which included a huge amount of trivia and historical information about Hooker and it’s residents. We very much enjoyed the history lesson. Don and Wanda finally dropped us off at the coach about 9:00 and we crashed for the night.

Saturday, August 20th, we drove out to Don and Wanda’s house about 11:00 a.m. They live on a county road seven miles West of town. There are only a couple of houses on this road between their place and the edge of town. Their closest neighbor is about three miles away and their house lies on a corner of a section of land (one square mile) that Don still owns. Although Don is now retired and no longer actively works on the farm, he is still a farmer at heart and never throws anything away. He proved that to us when he opened his garage and showed us a very nice 1958 Ford Thunderbird hardtop sitting in the back of garage. It is pink with a white top and is 100 percent intact. It would still take a lot of work to restore since it has been sitting in the garage for over 20 years and the interior leather and fabric would be rotted and dried out, but there is no body damage, all the chrome and glass are there and even the paint appears to be in good shape. Needless to say, as a car guy, I was awestruck that he had such a jewel in his garage and didn’t seem to have any idea what he was going to do with it. 1958 was the first year for the four seat Thunderbird and the car is gorgeous. I envy whatever relative eventually gets that car.

Don and Wanda then proceeded to take us on a five hour tour of the surrounding area, including the two Fischer family operations. We also stopped at the Hitch Feedlot, which is the largest cattle feedlot in the area with a capacity of some 80,000 head. Since he knows everyone in the area we were able to go inside the control room of the feed mill where they mix their feed and also in the equipment room to look at the grinding machines and the grain elevators, sorters and mixers. It was a fascinating tour. The entire time we were driving around looking at various parts of the operation Don was explaining everything in great detail. The two family operations were typical farm lots with dozens of machines, tractors, trucks, trailers and other equipment parked all over the place. As I said before, farmers never throw anything out, including old equipment. There was a 1950 and a 1952 Ford pickup parked on the lot, just sitting there - great candidates for restoration. There was even a WW-II era truck that they use as a winch truck. It is amazing the amount of money that farmers and ranchers have invested in equipment. We saw easily several million dollars worth of equipment during our tour of the two operations.

We also stopped for lunch and again went into the Hooker Soda Fountain. Lunch was also pretty good and I bought a Hooker Car Show tee shirt. Had to have something from Hooker, Oklahoma. We then went to the Hooker Chamber of Commerce gift shop and found a whole collection of Hooker tee shirts. Hooker has made the best of their name and everyone who lives there calls themselves a Hooker. They have a tee shirt at the shop that said “Hooker, Oklahoma” on the front and “A Location, Not a Vocation” on the back. Very funny. I did buy another Hooker tee shirt there, but not that one. I bought one that has a replica of the famous Las Vegas welcome sign with the slogan “what happens in Hooker, stays in Hooker” lettered underneath. Very funny shirt. We then went back to our driving tour of the area.

After several hours of touring we went back to the Fischer house where we sat and talked for a little while before we left. We left their house about 4:30 and decided that we would drive to Liberal, Kansas to visit the Elks Lodge. We knew that they were open on Saturday, but not on Sunday or Monday, so this might be our only opportunity to visit there. Liberal is only 20 miles Northeast of Hooker on Highway 54. There is also an Elks Lodge in Guymon, Oklahoma, 20 miles Southwest of Hooker, which is the lodge Don has belonged to for many years. However, that lodge is only open sporadically and Don had called and found that they would not be open today. We arrived at the Liberal Elks Lodge about 5:30 and found a very nice building with a very pretty bar. There were a lot of people in the lodge, but they were all in the back room playing in a Texas Hold’em poker tournament. There were only a few people in the bar, but they were all very friendly. We had a cocktail and talked to the bartender about lodge pins, but she was unable to locate any.

While we were sitting at the bar enjoying our cocktail, we made the decision that we were going to extend our stay in Hooker a couple of days to give us time to explore and do some geocaching on our own. While we have enjoyed our time with Don and Wanda, and learned a lot, we also wanted to do some caching and spend some time exploring on our own. Since Alice’s is so inexpensive, and we had no set schedule for a couple of weeks, we saw no reason not to stay for another couple days. We told the bartender that we would be back to the lodge on Tuesday and asked if she would try to find someone who might know where we could get a lodge pin. After our cocktail we drove back to Hooker and stayed in the coach for the rest of the evening.

Sunday, August 21st, we got up and left the coach a little before 11:00 and went to church. As our regular readers will know, we are not regular church goers, but Don and Wanda had invited us to go to church with them and we thought that was very nice of them and agreed to meet them there. They attend the United Methodist Church, which is in the middle of town, just a few blocks from our RV park. It was a very pretty church, built in the early 1950's, and we were welcomed by everyone in the congregation. Don and Wanda were very gracious to introduce us to everyone and we felt very welcome. The service was very nice and the pastor’s sermon was based around his recent trip to the Holy Land and was accompanied by pictures projected on a large screen. Very interesting and reminiscent of a similar trip made by Father Ned and Reverend Kathy, the priests in our church back in Indio. They went to the Holy Land several years ago and told many of the same stories.

After the church service we went back to the coach and changed clothes so we could go geocaching later. We then followed Don and Wanda back to Guymon for lunch. We were joined by Wanda’s son and daughter in law, Doug and Diana Brown. They were very nice people, just a little younger than us. We also enjoyed the fact that they had done a little geocaching and were very familiar with the hobby. They helped us explain the sport to Don and Wanda. After a good lunch at a local Chinese place, the six of us went to a park a few blocks away to find a geocache so as to be able to show Don and Wanda what we did in our spare time. After finding that cache we said bye to everyone and went off on our own for some caching in Guymon. We ended up with a total of six new finds. These were our first caches found in Oklahoma. Yea, another new state for our stats. We stopped at six and headed home because it was getting close to happy hour and it was getting hot. It was only about 93 degrees, but the humidity was up and it was pretty uncomfortable. We drove back to Hooker and settled into the coach for the rest of the night.

Monday, August 22nd, woke up to another muggy morning with a promise of temperatures over 100. We did, indeed, extend our stay and I wrote another check to Alice for $20 for two more nights. We went out after lunch to do some more geocaching in the area. When I say area, in this case, I mean a fairly large area. The caches were concentrated in four different areas which formed an almost perfect square about 16 miles on a side. We ended up driving about 70 miles total for the day to find eleven caches with no DNFs. We did several from one series put out by a local cacher that had a cemetery theme. All of the caches were hidden in local cemeteries, hanging from tree branches so one did not have to poke around near any grave sites. Like many areas in middle America, this area is dotted with small cemeteries. One we went to for a cache was the Lee family cemetery. It was on the corner of a large farm field at the intersection of two dirt roads. It had a sign that said “Lee Cemetery” and about a dozen graves, all of which had Lee in the name on the tombstone. It clearly appeared to be just a part of the family farm set aside for a graveyard. For each of the caches the guy that put out the caches made up a photo for the web page that showed a black and white photo of the cemetery along with some ghosts. Pretty cool pictures.

We also found several caches around an area known as Optima Lake. The lake was built in 1978 by the Army Corps of Engineers, but the water level never reached more than 5 percent of capacity because of extreme drought and evaporation in the area and the pumping of groundwater which decimated the flow of the Beaver River. Today there is no water whatsoever in the “lake” and the locals jokingly refer to it as the “water-free lake.” There was a park here at one time that included approximately 3400 acres of land along with approximately 4300 acres of Federal Wildlife Refuge. There was a campground at one time, along with several boat ramps and other recreation sites. There are paved asphalt roads throughout the park, however, the roads are nearly grown over with grass and weeds since the park has been effectively abandoned. About the only people who come into the area now are vandals out to finish destroying what little infrastructure is left, or geocachers looking for some of the three dozen geocaches hidden in or near the park.

After our geocaching we headed back to the coach for the rest of the evening. The temperature on the car thermometer was at 100 or higher for most of the afternoon, hitting a high of 103. However, because of the stiff breeze, it wasn’t too uncomfortable for caching and we had a good afternoon.

Tuesday, August 23rd, we left the coach at about 11:30 and went into downtown Hooker to have lunch with Don and Wanda. Since we will be leaving Hooker tomorrow this would be our last chance to spend some time with them. We again went to the Soda Fountain, which has really good food. We had a great lunch and a great visit with our friends. After lunch we drove 20 miles Northeast to Liberal, Kansas to take in the sights and do some geocaching. Our first stop was Dorothy’s House and the Seward County Historical Museum. Dorothy’s House is actually an old, authentic early 1900's Kansas farm house. It has been tweaked a little to resemble as much as possible the house shown in the movie. It is also furnished with antique furniture authentic to the era. Next door to the house is a playground for kids, called “The Mutchkin Playground” and a large tin building that contains a diorama type display called the “Land of Oz” which is based on the original movie, Wizard of Oz. The Seward County Historical Museum is in an old Liberal mansion that was donated to the society and then moved from another part of town to the city owned lot. The museum has a lot of very nice displays outlining the history of Southern Kansas. There is also a couple train cars on display next to the museum. They are a steam operated crane and equipment car used back in the early 1900's by the Rock Island Line for track maintenance.

The historical museum is free and we spent about a half hour going through the displays. The tour of the inside of Dorothy’s House and the Land of Oz has a charge and we didn’t bother with that. After touring the museum and taking some pictures of Dorothy’s House we found the geocache that was hidden on one of the train cars.

As we were getting ready to leave Dorothy’s House to head over to the Liberal Air Museum we had a bit of a scare. As I was pulling out of the parking space we heard a horrible, loud screeching sound coming from the front of the Jeep. I looked around the wheels and tried to figure out what it was, but didn’t have much luck. It seemed to be coming from the left front wheel. Any movement of the wheel would start the screeching noise and it seemed key to movement of the wheel. I thought maybe a brake pad had come loose. Jackie had noticed that we passed a Dodge/Jeep dealer on the main street of Liberal, just a couple blocks from the museum, so I headed over there, hoping I wasn’t making something worse. I managed to get the service manager to come out and look at the wheel and listen to the sound. He wasn’t able to come up with anything either, other than to say he thought maybe the brakes were bad. He also told us that he could not get us in today, even to look at the problem. Even after we told him that we were staying 20 miles away and were just visiting the area. Great customer service. He suggested we go down the street to a local garage called “Safety Lane” and maybe they could help us. We drove the additional two blocks and found a small two bay garage. I checked with the guy inside and explained our situation. He said he could get us in to have a look in about a half hour, so we parked the car and waited. It actually took about 15 minutes and his mechanic put the Jeep up on the rack and took off the left front wheel. I walked out there as he was looking around at the brakes. He then took a large screwdriver, pried the brake caliper back just a little and took out a pea sized piece of gravel that had become wedged between the caliper and the wheel. He said, “there’s your problem” and put the wheel back on. No more noise. Great relief. To top it off, when I asked how much, he said, “don’t worry about it.” That’s customer service. I tipped they guy $10 and we were on our way. Anyone who reads this blog and finds themselves in need of mechanical assistance anywhere near Liberal, Kansas, remember The Safety Zone. They made my day.

With the car now once again quiet, we drove over to the Mid-America Air Museum adjacent to the Liberal airport. The museum is in a large hanger that we found out had once been an Beech Aircraft factory. They charge a modest fee that allows you to wander through the dozens of aircraft that they have on display, most of which are inside the hanger and out of the sun and heat. The museum has over 100 aircraft and is supposed to be the fifth largest in the country. The interesting thing about it is that it emphasizes private aviation more so than military. Probably 70 percent of the aircraft are private planes of various vintage, including a couple Beechcraft planes made in the actual hanger in which they are now on display. The museum does have some military planes, notably a pristine F-4U Corsair in Marine paint with VMA-214 numbers. VMA-214 was, and still is, the Marine Corps attack squadron made famous as the Black Sheep. Col. Greg “Pappy” Boyington won the Medal of Honor commanding and flying with the Black Sheep in the Pacific during WW-II. There was also a 70's television show called Baa Baa Blacksheep based on his exploits during the war.

There is also a fully restored North American B-25 Mitchell bomber and a Grumman TBM-3 Avenger dive bomber. Outside on the tarmac are a variety of unrestored more modern military jets, including a nice Chance-Vought F-8B Crusader in Marine Corps paint. This is the same type of aircraft that I worked on in the mid 1960's during my tour with the Marine Corps. We spent over an hour walking through the hanger and admiring the planes. I love air museums. We also learned that back during WW-II this entire airfield, which is now the Liberal Airport, was Liberal Army Airfield and was a B-24 training base. The museum had a big display with dozens of pictures from back when it was a military base. A very interesting place to tour, especially if you have a fondness for airplanes.

Another interesting display was a Beech Bonanza that was restored and painted to look like the plane in which Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson died in the early morning hours of February 3, 1959. Fittingly, the display was titled "The Day The Music Died" in tribute to the Don McLean song, "American Pie." The display included a replica 50's soda fountain and other memorabilia from the era. A very nice tribute to a tragic event.

After looking at the planes we did a little more geocaching in Liberal. We found a total of six caches, with two DNFs, before we decided it was too hot. It was well over 100 degrees. About 5:00 we went back to the Liberal Elks Lodge with hopes that the bartender we talked to on Saturday would have found a lodge pin. No such luck. We did enjoy our visit, however, as there was a new, very friendly bartender, and a number of pretty interesting members in the bar. We had a couple of drinks before getting back on the road headed for Hooker again.

We finally got home about 7:00 or so and walked into the coach to find that it was stifling hot, well over 107 degrees. Smokey the cat met us at the door with his tongue hanging out. Turns out the main breaker in the park controlling our power pedestal had tripped. I reset it and got the air conditioners going again, but it was a couple of hours before the temperatures finally came back down to something close to comfortable. We also found that we had been invaded by ants. Actually, a skirmish, since they were only down by the cat’s food, but it was still annoying, especially since it was so hot inside the coach. I got the ant spray out, killed the ones inside and found their entry point, putting an end to their invasion. What a day! Thought we broke the car, thought we killed the cat, and thought we lost the coach to the ants. Yikes. But, everything turned out fine on all fronts and we just relaxed the rest of the evening.

Wednesday, August 24th, we packed up the coach and finally left Hooker, Oklahoma, after a great five day visit. Jackie called Don and Wanda one last time to say goodbye as we were driving out of town. We headed Northeast, destination Dodge City, Kansas, about 100 miles away. We stopped just before the Kansas border to top off the fuel tanks since we had noticed that fuel was more expensive in Kansas than it was in Oklahoma. We got into Dodge City about noon and got settled into the Gunsmoke RV Park. After getting set up we decided to just relax the rest of the day and not go anywhere.

We will be here in Dodge City for about three days before moving on through the Kansas prairie, but I thought this would be an excellent place to stop this chapter and get it published. I will put out another chapter in a week or so when we reach Colorado again. Until the next time, remember what Richard Carlson advised in his book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. When you are facing an issue or problem, ask yourself this question: "Will this matter a year from now?" Probably not. See ya’ soon.

Up in the Texas Panhandle

2011-08-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to our story readers. Our last episode ended on Friday, August 5th, with our arrival in Amarillo, Texas. We settled into the Oasis RV Resort on the Western edge of Amarillo for a one week stay. The resort is very nice, with great amenities, and it is inexpensive.

Amarillo had it’s start back in the 1880's as a railway junction and shipping and marketing area for cattle ranching in the area. Originally called Oneida, the name was changed to Amarillo, Spanish for “yellow,” a few years later. The name was believed to have come from the windflowers that grow in the area. Gradually the town grew into the primary economic center for the panhandle region of Texas. Today Amarillo has approximately 190,000 population and still relies heavily on the ranching industry. Jackie was very pleased to learn that Amarillo sets at an elevation of 3,600 feet.

We also learned that Amarillo is known as the “Helium capital of the world.” Large stores of helium were discovered along with the discovery of gas and oil deposits in 1918. In 1927 the Federal government bought up the local gas fields that provided the helium and opened a processing plant that was the primary source of the world’s helium until after WW-II. Although the industry is now again in private hands, the area remains a source of helium and the government’s strategic store of helium is located not too far from Amarillo.

Saturday, August 6th, we set out after lunch for our very first caching experience in the State of Texas. The last time we came through Texas was back in 2006, quite some time before we got interested in geocaching. One of our first finds for the day was a virtual cache (no physical cache container) located just a mile or so from our RV park. The cache took us to a fairly well known piece of public art called “Cadillac Ranch.” It was created in 1974 and it consists of what were (when originally installed during 1974) either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the car line (most notably the birth and death of the defining feature of early Cadillacs; the tail fin) from 1949 to 1963, half-buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. In 1997 the entire work was moved two miles West from the original wheat field to a cow pasture in order to get it further away from the expanding city limits. Both pieces of land belong to the original patron of the work, a wealthy local rancher.

The cars are a couple hundred yards off of the interstate and are accessible from the access road. Not only are people encouraged to come into the field and right up to the cars, graffiti is also encouraged. While we were there several people, including both kids and adults, were climbing around on the cars with spray cans. The grounds around the art work are littered with hundreds of empty spray paint cans and lids. I have seen this work a couple of times in the past from the highway as I was driving by, but this was the first time I ever got up close and personal. A very interesting piece of Americana. Interestingly, our RV park, which is only around the corner, has it’s own version of this type of art. In front of the office is an old class A motorhome, buried in the ground, nose down, just like Cadillac Ranch. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Another piece of public art we visited, drawn there again by a geocache, is a huge modernistic sundial located in front of the Discovery Center in an Amarillo park. It is a stainless steel tripod with a central spire that tops 60 feet in height. Each of the four “arms” of the work are also a time capsule. The piece was installed in 1968 and the time capsules were designated to be opened at 25, 50, 100 and 1,000 year intervals. The first was opened in 1993 and the second will be in 2018. One of the interesting tidbits we discovered is that the 1,000 year capsule holds a bank book with a ten dollar deposit made in 1968. The claim is that it should be worth about one quadrillion dollars in 2968 when the capsule is opened. My guess is that, based on current economic conditions in this country, it should be worth about nine dollars.

All together we garnered a dozen new finds in a few hours of searching, with no new DNFs. After our caching we drove around town for a while, just seeing what Amarillo looked like. We drove down Amarillo Boulevard, which lies at the North edge of town and was an original part of old Route 66, to see if it held any Route 66 memorabilia, but it basically just goes through a crappy part of town and looks like any other big city. We also checked out The Big Texan Steak Ranch, located on the East side of town just off the freeway. We have read a lot about this place and plan to go there for dinner once during our stay. It is supposed to be one of the most famous steak houses in Texas. It certainly looks pretty kitschy. One of it’s big advertising features is a 72 ounce (4.5 pound) steak that is free if you can eat it within one hour. You have to eat all the steak, plus a roll with butter, baked potato, ranch beans, shrimp cocktail, and salad. You have to pay $72.00 in advance and if you complete the challenge you get your money refunded. Those who have successfully consumed the Texas King meal have their names recorded and posted at the restaurant. As of March 15, 2011, over 8,800 people out of about 50,000 have accomplished this feat.

The record for the shortest time needed to finish the entire Texas King meal is held by competitive eating champion Joey Chestnut. He finished the challenge in 8 minutes and 52 seconds, breaking Frank Pastore's 1987 record on his March 24, 2008 visit. The unofficial record is held by a 500-pound Siberian Tiger, who ate the steak in 90 seconds. I believe I will pass on the big boy.

After our caching adventures and exploring we went back to the RV park. I walked over and tried out the hot tub at the recreation center. Although more of a “warm tub,” it was still relaxing and I enjoyed it. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the coach. Although we didn’t get any rain before bed, we did wake up about 1:30 to lightning and thunder and a brief spate of heavy rain. About 2:30 I woke up to the sound of a distant siren that sounded much like a tornado warning. There didn’t seem to be any storms left around, and the weather radio hadn’t gone off, but I got up anyway and checked the weather radar on the internet. Nope, no storms, no tornados and no warnings. I guess the siren shorted out. After about a half hour it finally went off. I feel sorry for those who were close to where ever it was located.

Sunday, August 7th, we decided that today would be a stay at home day. We stayed around the coach all day, playing on computers, watching TV and enjoying the relaxation. I did a few chores, including starting on scanning the last couple of photo albums from my mom and dad. I have been working on this project for a couple of years and am finally down to the last two albums my dad had. Once they are scanned everything will go on DVDs and be distributed to the family for their viewing pleasure.

Monday the friendly neighborhood weather bureau said it was going to be hot, as if it hasn’t been since we got here. Nonetheless, we decided to not go geocaching but to complete some chores instead. Today, the 8th of August, would have been my mom’s 85th birthday. Happy Birthday mom. After lunch we drove into town to do our laundry. After laundry we went to the local Walmart for provisions. The weather guy was right, it was HOT. The car thermometer said 108 at one point, and later on the local news they said the “official” high for the day was 105. Inside the laundry, which did not have working A/C, it was stifling. After our chores we went home and hid inside the air conditioned coach for the rest of the day and night. I though we left the desert to get out of this kind of heat.

Tuesday, August 9th, we went out after lunch for some more geocaching. The weather said it was “only” going to be 97, so we decided to take advantage of the cooling trend. Actually, it wasn’t too bad as long as you didn’t stand in the direct sun too long. There was a little breeze and it was very dry, so the heat wasn’t unbearable. We managed to get a dozen caches in about three hours of searching. We also topped the 2,700 finds mark. Yea! Several of the caches took us into the alleys of the residential areas in Amarillo. The descriptions even called them “alley caches” and named them as a type. We are not too used to alleys, as they are not used much in the Coachella Valley. Even in Phoenix, where I grew up, they are only in the very old neighborhoods. None of the new tract home areas have alleys.

After our caching we went to the mall and walked around for about 90 minutes, getting some exercise and doing some window shopping. A little before 5:00 I glanced outside and noticed that it was getting very black and nasty looking in the West, the direction our RV park was, so I told Jackie it was time to go home. We got home before the storm hit, but within the hour we had severe thunderstorm warnings going off on the weather radio, thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. At one point we pulled the slides on the coach in to protect the topper awnings because the weather radio was calling for 70 mph winds with the storm cell that was tracking towards us. We got maybe 35 or 40 mph winds, lots of rain for about 30 minutes, and then everything cleared up. We put the slides back out and chilled the rest of the night.

Wednesday, August 10th, we hung around the coach until mid afternoon when we went into town for a movie. On the way we stopped and picked up one geocache that we had passed over a few days before because we weren’t sure of the general location. I did a little more research and narrowed down the area and we found it pretty quickly. For our movie choice we went to see “Cowboys and Aliens” even though it had not received the best of reviews. I like action movies, I like alien movies, I like Harrison Ford. I am somewhat ambivalent about cowboy movies, but have enjoyed some. Not the best movie we have ever seen, but enjoyable and entertaining, which is what I go to movies for; to be entertained. This was sort of Indiana Jones meets predator meets True Grit. A lot of critics panned the premise of aliens visiting in 1875, but in my estimation, if an alien civilization is a million years advanced from ours, what difference does it make to them to come in 1875 or 1975? Probably the oddest part of the movie was that the aliens captured earthlings by lassoing them from flying machines. No “beam me up Scotty” for these guys, it was strictly “git along little doggy.”

After the movie we went to the Big Texan Steak Ranch for dinner. I really wanted to get a nice “slab o’cow” at a Texas steakhouse and this one had the best advertising. The inside was pretty neat with an arcade and gift shop in the lobby to keep folks busy while waiting for a table. We were seated right away and had a very nice balcony seat overlooking the main dining room. For a Wednesday night they were pretty busy, but the wait staff was efficient and we had our food quickly. I had a T-bone that was cooked perfectly and very tasty. Jackie had a rib eye and she asked for it charred rare, a difficult request that has disappointed more often than not. In this case it was perfect, black and crispy outside, rare inside. Unfortunately, while we were there they had no takers for the 72 ounce free meal offer. There is an elevated stage with six seats right in the middle of the restaurant and overhead are six digital timers. That is where they put the contestants. We hoped to see someone try today, but no joy. The meals were great, the service good, the steaks excellent and the drinks a little over priced. If you go, drink beer, its way cheaper than cocktails. After dinner we headed back to the coach for the rest of the night.

Thursday, August 11th, we had planned to go out for some more geocaching today because the weather called for somewhat cooler temperatures. Unfortunately, it was cooler because it was cloudy and rainy most of the day. It started a little before five in the morning when a pretty good thunderstorm rolled through the area. Who has thunderstorms at five a.m.? In Phoenix, where I grew up, thunderstorms were mostly a summer thing and almost always afternoon and evening. When it cooled off in the early morning hours the storms faded away. Here we didn’t have any more real storms for the rest of the day, just mostly cloudy with drizzly rain on and off. That makes caching hard because the hiding places are wet and yucky.

I did go up to the office in the morning and extend our stay here in Amarillo for another week. At dinner last night we were discussing our plans, or more precisely, lack thereof, and decided that we really didn’t have much to do between now and September 2nd when our first reservation in Colorado come around. There are a couple places we want to see, Dodge City for instances, but for the most part we have about 700 miles to travel and three weeks to do it. Anyway, the discussion ended with us deciding that there was plenty to do here in Amarillo, it was inexpensive and comfortable, and we decided to stay. Since the park is about two thirds empty, staying another week was not a problem for the park.

Other than a visit to the hot tub in the afternoon, I spent most of the day on the computer just messing around playing games. Jackie never left the coach. Although we wanted to go caching, we did enjoy our “down” day.

Friday, August 12th, we left the park after lunch for some geocaching. When we left the park the sky was completely clear of clouds, so it had promise of being a hot day. We cached for a couple of hours and got seven new caches, along with a couple of DNFs, our first for the Amarillo area. At that point we decided that we were getting overheated. In the two hours we had been caching there had been quite a buildup of clouds and it was humid as well as hot. Since we were fairly close, we decided to visit the Amarillo Moose Lodge. The lodge is located on a county road North of the city limits by about two miles and is a little bit of a ramshackle building. When we were going in we noticed that they had a swimming pool and spa in the back of the building, but neither had water in them.

We got into the lodge about 30 minutes after they opened and there were about six people already at the bar, along with the bartender. The air conditioning in the building wasn’t working particularly well either. The bartender, Paige, looked at our card and then introduced to everyone else at the bar. That is a nice touch that we have only experienced a couple of times before in Elks lodges. The lodge also bought our first drink, another nice, welcoming touch. The group was very friendly and chatty with a number of the people, including the Lodge Governor (head guy of the moose order), came over and introduced themselves. The bartender told us that the pool had some plumbing problems and there appeared to be no immediate plan to fix it. We had another drink and talked to folks for about an hour before deciding to leave about 4:00.

I will give the place credit for being friendly, but a little run down. Pretty cheap drinks, about $2 each, so I can see why the bar was busy in the early afternoon. Shortly after we arrived Jackie got up to use the restroom and went to the door in the bar that showed it was a unisex handicap bathroom. She pulled open the unlocked door and there was an old guy standing in the middle of the room, in the dark, buttoning, or unbuttoning, his pants. Jackie wasn’t sure, she just closed the door and came back to the bar. She said when she opened the door there was an unreal stench that wafted out and punched her in the face. After about five minutes the bartender asked one of the other patrons to “go check on Joe” in the bathroom, make sure he’s OK. I got the impression Joe was very old and had issues. A guy looked in and said he was OK. By this time we noticed at least the light was on. About five minutes after that Joe came out and told the bartender he was leaving. Since he still had half a beer on the bar she asked if he was all right. He said he was, but he was sick, something he ate. That sort of pulled the whole episode together nicely. Bad burrito syndrome.

After visiting the Moose we decided to hit up a different Elks Lodge. I had checked and the closest one to Amarillo, which we visited on our first night here, was the Hereford Lodge, which was located about 40 miles Southwest of Amarillo. We headed down there and arrived in Hereford, which touts itself as the “beef capital of the world.” It has a population of just over 15,000 people and lots and lots of cows. There were feed lots all around the town. We did three more geocaches in Hereford, so we could get our ten finds for the day. We then went over to the Hereford Elks Lodge. The lodge was in a nice little building at the South edge of town and when we rang the buzzer the door was opened by a four year old boy. Hmmm. Turns out the Exalted Ruler is a relatively young guy and his wife is the Secretary of the Lodge. They were there with their two young kids. The ER was in the bar and we talked with him a little, finding out that the lodge had less than 200 members. That is barely hanging on for a lodge. It had a nice little bar, with a bartender who just started and appeared to have not tended bar before. In fact, she didn’t look old enough to even be in the bar, much less behind it. We did have a couple of drinks and in the hour we were there no one else came in the bar except for the officers that were there when we got there, and they weren’t drinking.

The lodge had a very nice, small but nicely appointed, lodge room off of the bar. There was one mystery however. When we came up to the lodge and parked there were about ten cars or so in the parking lot. While we were in the place we only saw about five different people besides the kids, which made us wonder a little bit. When we left the place there had to be three dozen cars in the lot. We did notice when we walked in the main hallway a door marked bingo hall, but all the time we were in there no one said a word about what was going on, bingo tonight, dinner tonight, nothing. Unless the lodge doubles as a train station, there were a bunch of people in there somewhere, doing something, but we don’t know what. The ER was nice enough, but not very talkative. He would answer a direct question in a quiet Texas kind of voice, but never volunteered a thing. Odd. We did a new lodge pin for our banner and had a couple of drinks.

After the lodge visit we headed back home watching the storms building up all around us. We drove through a couple of light sprinkles, and hit some patches of road that showed rain had been there not too long before us, but we never really got heavy rain. Since it was after 7:00 by the time we got back to the area of the RV park, we just drove another couple miles into town to what we called restaurant row, a mile or so of restaurants on either side of I-40. We settled on Red Robin and went in for dinner. They have a new prime rib dip on the menu that I tried and it was wonderful. Been a while since we tried the chain, but I sure liked my sandwich. Jackie’s burger was OK, nothing to shout about, but not bad either. After dinner we headed back to the coach for the night. Never did get any rain at the RV park.

Saturday, August 13th, we took a drive after lunch to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, about 35 miles Southeast of Amarillo. Palo Duro Canyon is described by various sources as the second largest canyon in the United States, after the Grand Canyon. This honorific, however, is based on the size of the canyon in square miles, not depth. It is roughly 120 miles long and has an average width of about 6 miles, but reaches a width of 20 miles at places. Its depth is around 800 feet but in some locations it can increase up to nearly 1000 feet. This is compared to the Grand Canyon, which is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and 6,000 ft. deep. Palo Duro Canyon has been named "The Grand Canyon of Texas," both for its size and for the dramatic geological features, including the multicolored layers of rock and steep mesa walls similar to those in the Grand Canyon.

While the depth certainly doesn’t approach that of the Grand Canyon, it is still pretty impressive given the fact that when you drive around this area, even for long distances, it looks flat as a table top. As we approached the entrance to the park you could all of a sudden see this big, colorful hole in the ground. It was very pretty, and unlike the Grand Canyon, the road system in this canyon drops right down into the canyon bottom, so you are looking up at the walls, not down. We were very impressed with the campgrounds that the State of Texas has put in this park. There are several hundred very nice, large, flat sites with 50 amp electric and water at the sites. They also have several dump stations in the park and another camping area with about 35 30 amp camp sites. While we were driving around the place we saw very few campers, I would guess about 20 percent of the sites were occupied. I guess that would be because it was so hot, but with electric you would have A/C if you had any kind of camping trailer or motor home.

We also stopped at the visitors center which was a nice stone building built right on the edge of the canyon. The building was built back during the depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as were many of the roads in the park. We spent a couple hours exploring the park, looking at the scenery and checking out the amenities. We will keep this place in mind for future trips through the area. We also found a couple of geocaches in the park and then did a few more after leaving the park. All together we had five finds for the afternoon. On the way out of the park we spotted a deer just hanging out with a bunch of cows, eating their food. After our tour we headed back to the RV park for the rest of the night. Another day and night with no rain.

Sunday, August 14th, we left the park after lunch for some more Amarillo geocaching. We targeted some geocaches located right in the downtown area of Amarillo for today. Geocaching in urban areas, especially the downtown parts of cities, is much easier on weekends because most government and big business entities are closed. Amarillo was no exception, there was almost no traffic, auto or foot, in the downtown core. After we exhausted the downtown caches we expanded out to the surrounding residential areas. We managed to get a total of ten finds for the day, but we stacked up four new DNFs in the process. I don’t feel too bad about the DNFs because I noticed when I downloaded cache information from the website that caches seem to go missing here quite a bit, so it may be that we couldn’t find them because they weren’t there anymore. Could be the weather, could be that they don’t hide them real well. Several of the caches we have found over the last week have been very much out in the open. Makes you wonder how they stay without being muggled.

Two of the caches we found were virtual caches, both in the downtown area. One was a very pretty granite monument in a plaza next to the civic center. It was a four foot diameter black granite ball, inscribed as a world globe, that was setting in a base with water between the two. The polishing was so precise that the ball, which reportedly weighs over 3,000 pounds, can be turned with just a push of a hand. Pretty cool. The other virtual was a restored steam locomotive on display near the old rail station. It was a big, Baldwin steamer that was in use on the local railways until 1953. I can just barely remember as a young kid in Milwaukee when railroads were finishing the transition from steam engines to diesel electrics.

After caching we took a little drive to Thompson Park, on the North edge of Amarillo, just to see what it looked like. This is the largest city park in town and includes a couple small lakes, picnic areas, a disc golf course, the Amarillo Zoo, and the Wonderland Amusement Park. The total park is about 610 acres in size and was named for Ernest O. Thompson, a local WW-I hero and one of the original organizers of the American Legion military fraternal organization. There appeared to be thousands of people enjoying the park on a Sunday as we drove around, including some very large gatherings. Whoever owns the bouncy house business in Amarillo was happy because there were at least seven or eight in use in the park at various parties. Wonderland Park appeared interesting as it looked like a couple steps up from what you see set up at big state fairs, with a couple of big steel roller coasters thrown in for good measure. The place was first called Kiddie Land and initially opened in 1951 with three children's rides and a ticket booth made from a large box. After adding additional attractions during subsequent years, the owners changed the name of the park to Wonderland, inspired by Alice in Wonderland. According to their advertising the park now has 26 rides and hosts more than 200,000 annual visitors.

After our touring we headed back to the RV park for the rest of the night. We will be here in Amarillo for another couple days, but it has been ten days since the last time we published, so I decided that this was a good closing point for this chapter. We will be back with another episode in a week or so. Until the next time, remember that “Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.” (Aldous Huxley) Find what makes you happy!

New Mexico Redux

2011-08-07T09:45:00.001-07:00

Hello again loyal readers, welcome back to our story. Our last chapter concluded when we left the great state of Colorado and arrived in Bloomfield, New Mexico, on Thursday, July 28th. We had a great ten days in Southwest Colorado, and will going back to the State again in September, this time to the “front range” of Colorado.

We settled into the Desert Rose RV Resort in Bloomfield after a fairly short 50 mile or so trip from Durango. After lunch we did our laundry at the park’s very nice laundry facility. After that we just stayed in for the rest of the day.

Friday, July 29th, we headed out after lunch for some local geocaching. Although we had stayed in Farmington, New Mexico, just 25 miles West, for a few days a couple weeks ago, we had not come this far East for caching, so we had quite a few to choose from. We managed to get nine finds in a couple of hours, with two DNFs tossed in for good measure. Bloomfield is a small town, about 7,000 population, and is pretty much a crossroads community. It lies at the intersection of the two primary highways in Northwest New Mexico, US 550 which goes North/South and US 64 which goes East/West. A lot of the local jobs are also in support of the oil and gas industry, as is Farmington.

Saturday, July 30th we set out early, about 9:00, from Bloomfield, driving South on US 550 for Sante Fe again. The drive was about 190 miles, but Highway 550 is a major artery in this area and is a four lane highway all the way from Bloomfield to where it ends at I-25 North of Albuquerque. The road is also fairly level without a lot of up and down grades to worry about. We were headed back to the Sante Fe Skies RV park, where we were earlier in the month when we stopped at Sante Fe. The reason we are headed back to the same place so soon is that our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen are also headed to the same park. They have been in Denver, visiting their daughter, and we set up our travels to meet them in Sante Fe. They are coming down I-25 from Denver and have over twice as far to travel, over 400 miles, but they should still get in by mid afternoon.

We arrived at the park at about 1:30 and got settled into a nice spot. Barry and Colleen arrived about 3:30 and parked in the site right next door. We had a great reunion, we had last seen them in Camp Verde, Arizona back in June. They came over for cocktails and we then fixed dinner for all of us. They are traveling with their six year old granddaughter, Zoe, and have had her with them for about three weeks. Jackie fixed an chicken enchilada dish and Barry brought over some of his wedding soup, both of which were wonderful. The girls played a couple of games of Skipbo while Barry and I just talked. They left about 9:00 because it had been a long day for Barry.

Sunday, July 31st, we all got into our Jeep to spend some time exploring Sante Fe. We left the coach about 11:30 and went to a Mexican Restaurant in Sante Fe called PC’s. This place had been recommended to us by a guy we met at the FOP Lodge when we were here earlier in the month. We didn’t get a chance to go then, but suggested it to Barry and Colleen for today. We found a very clean, very busy restaurant with a great menu. The food was excellent. Even Barry, who is a bit of a picky eater who doesn’t usually eat a lot, cleaned his plate. I would recommend PC’s to anyone visiting the area. It is on Airport Road, a block or so West of Cerrillos, which is the main road through Sante Fe.

After lunch we drove up to Old Sante Fe to do some tourist wandering. They were having a huge art festival in the Old Plaza and had a lot of the roads closed. We finally got a parking place and walked into the Plaza area. We looked at some of the art booths, but found that 90 percent of the stuff was religious art, Catholic icons, crucifixes, that sort of stuff. We spent about an hour walking around, looking at different shops and stuff. We then got back in the car and headed to Walmart for some shopping. Barry and Colleen needed some provisions. After shopping we went back to the coaches.

Barry, Colleen and Zoe came over to our coach and Colleen and Jackie played cards while Barry and I went in the back to sing some karaoke and drink. Zoe watched cartoons on the TV. Barry and I had a wonderful time singing, as we always do when we are together. About 8:00 we heated up the leftovers from the night before for snacks. None of us were real hungry after the big lunch, but we did nibble a little at the leftovers. About 9:00 the Cohen’s left to go to bed. They are leaving in the morning, heading back towards their home in Indio, California. Barry is going to stop in Flagstaff for the night, but it is still a 350 mile drive from Sante Fe to Flagstaff. Then he has another 350 miles from Flagstaff to Indio. I don’t envy his having to be back to work on Wednesday and having to make all these long hauls. A long day for us is 200 miles.

Monday, August 1st, happy August and day before the big USA default! Barry and Colleen were packed up and out by 9:00 and we were up to say goodbye. After we had lunch we drove the 45 miles back to the North part of Albuquerque to do some shopping at Costco and a Walmart supercenter. We also made a quick stop at Sam’s Club since it was close by. We needed to get some supplies that might not be available for a few weeks as we wander the prairies.

After our shopping trip we drove to the Rio Rancho Elks Lodge. Rio Rancho is a suburb of Albuquerque, to the Northwest of the city. We had never been to this lodge before. They have a nice lodge building close to the center of town. We noticed coming in that the Intel company, the one’s that make a lot of the chips for your computer, has a huge plant in Rio Rancho. The campus appears to be about a mile long along the main street of town. Must be a big employer for the area.

The Rio Rancho lodge was very friendly and we chatted with the bartender and a couple of other members for over an hour. We visited their casino, but didn’t win anything. Poop! We had a couple of drinks and the lodge bought us one as well. We also got their lodge pin to put on our banner. Yea! After the lodge visit we headed back home after a quick stop at a Papa Murphy’s pizza place to pick up a take and bake pizza. We went home, made our pizza and had a nice evening.

Tuesday, August 2nd, default day, except that I woke up to the news reporting a compromise that was going to pass both the house and senate and be signed into law today. Wow, who would have guessed that they would come to an agreement at the last minute. (Hint: Just about everyone.) We packed up the coach and left the Sante Fe Skies RV park about 9:30 for a 170 mile drive Southeast to Tucumcari, New Mexico. We arrived in Tucumcari about 1:00 and were greeted by triple digit temps. Yikes. It was 102 when I was setting up the coach. We decided that it was a long drive and too hot to go out to explore, so we just stayed in the rest of the day. We are in the Kiva RV park, which is affiliated with one of our membership groups, Adventure Camping Network (ACN). This gives us camping at discount rates. We called ACN while we were on the way to Tucumcari and made a reservation for three nights at $20 a night, which is pretty good. Their normal rate for a 50 amp full hookup pull through site is close to $30, plus taxes. Although the place looks pretty rustic from the street, when we got back to the sites they were nice level gravel sites with cable and free internet to boot. Much better than what we had in Farmington.

What would eventually become Tucumcari was created as Douglas Camp, a railroad construction camp built by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in 1901 as it pushed the line West. Because there were so many gunfights at the camp, it was nicknamed “Six Shooter Siding.” Like many of the railroad camps, settlers gradually moved into the area and in 1908 the town was founded and renamed Tucumcari. The name comes from the nearby Tucumcari Mountain, which was named by early explorers in the region. Tucumcari is a rough derivation of the Comanche word for “lookout.” The town is also one of the many small towns which laid along the route of old U.S. 66, and main street still has many of the old, colorful neon signs and a couple of the famous “shape buildings,” which popped up along Route 66 over the years. There is a Mexican restaurant in the shape of a sombrero and a curio shop shaped like a huge Tee Pee.

Wednesday, August 3rd, we awoke to humidity! Now I know there are some of you who would say, why mention that? I grew up in the desert and lived in desert areas almost all of my life. Humid for me is 10 percent. This morning it was super sticky, everything you touched felt damp and sticky. We did have some pretty testy thunderstorms roll through last night. None of them lasted too long, nor were they serious cells, but lots of lightning and thunder (which I enjoy and Jackie hates) and hard rain for ten minutes while the cell goes over. It was enough to leave the ground wet, which means humidity this morning.

After lunch we went out to do some geocaching in Tucumcari. We were last here in 2006, which was before we started caching, so this is virgin territory for us. I was surprised that there were several dozen caches in town and geocaching was even listed on the town’s sheet of “things to do” that was provided by the RV park. We did seven caches in a couple of hours, along with two we were unable to find. One of the caches we went to, actually one of our DNFs, was named Six Shooter Siding, and was supposed to be located very near the original camp site where the town started. While we were caching we noticed that the town appears to be slowly dying, with dozens of abandoned stores, buildings and houses, all around the center of town. It is a very sad looking little town.

About 3:30 we decided it was getting too hot, it was in the high nineties and humid, so we went to the Tucumcari Elks Lodge. This lodge has RV sites in the lot behind the building and we had stayed here for two nights back in September of 2006. We had originally planned on staying at the lodge on this trip too, but decided that with the extreme heat we needed 50 amp service so we could run both air conditioners, and the lodge only has 30 amp.

There were several people in the bar, but only one said hi and the bartender was a little slow to warm up to us also. We had a cocktail and spent a few bucks each in the casino. Again, no luck with the Elks slot machines. Oh well, a donation to a good cause. We found that this lodge has about 450 members, which is pretty good for a town of only a little over 5,000 population. We also picked up a lodge pin. We had one from 2006, and they still had the same pin, however, they also had their centennial in 2009 and they had a new pin made for that, so we got the newer pin for our banner.

After a cocktail at the lodge we drove around town for a little bit, just sightseeing, fueled up the Jeep and then headed back to the coach for the night. About 7:00 or so the monsoon thunderstorms started up again and went on for about two hours, just like the night before. Lots of light and noise, a little rain and wind, and then a quiet night.

Thursday, August 4th, another sticky morning. After lunch we went out to do some more caching. Although it was just as hot as yesterday we seemed to have an easier afternoon of it. We managed to get an even dozen new finds with no DNFs. One of the caches took us to an antique store and we spent about a half hour wandering around looking at the stuff in the store. After we were done caching we stopped at the Tee Pee curio shop, the one with the front shaped like a tee pee, and then headed back to the coach about 3:30 to get into the A/C again.

Friday, August 5th we were up and out of the RV park by about 9:30 for a day of travel to Amarillo, Texas, about 100 miles East on I-40. We made a stop for fuel before leaving Tucumcari because diesel is about a nickle cheaper in New Mexico than it is in Texas. Once we cleared New Mexico, about 60 miles West of Amarillo, it was clear that we had made the prairie. There wasn’t a mountain anywhere in sight. It took us a couple hours to get to the Oasis RV Resort, about five miles West of Amarillo on I-40. This is a very nice RV park with all 50 amp full hookup sites, perfectly level concrete pads and patios, nice streets, nice clubhouse and amenities, including cable and internet. The best part is the rate for a full week was $120. That’s just a few cents over $17 a day. The park is a little stark, there is no grass or trees, but when we were coming down the road everything for a hundred miles around is brown and dead because of the drought. Grass would probably just be dead and ugly anyway. It was hot, 99 degrees by 1:00 when I started getting setup, so I didn’t do much outside except put up the shade screens.

While we were on our way between Tucumcari and Amarillo Jackie got a phone call from some friends of ours back in Indio, Pat and Monte Montes, asking us if we were going to be in Amarillo tonight. It turns out that Pat and Monte were also traveling in their motorhome on the way to Michigan and were going to be overnighting in Amarillo! Pat and Monte were members of the Indio Elks travel club, the Desert Drifters, and we have known them well for years. We were excited to be able to cross paths with friends.

After we got settled in Jackie and Pat talked again and we made plans to meet at the Amarillo Elks Lodge about 6:00 for dinner. They are staying on the East side of town, we are on the West, but he Lodge is about in the middle. We agreed and decided that we needed to leave the coach around 5:30 or so to be sure we got to the lodge on time. About 4:30 I turned on what I thought would be the local news on local television (off the antenna, not the satellite) and found the network’s national news show on. I immediately checked the internet for time zone information, looked at my phone, and realized, oh oh, when we came into Texas we went into the central time zone. It wasn’t 4:30, it was 5:30! I told Jackie and she went into high gear and miraculously, we were ready to go by ten to six and made the Elks Lodge only ten minutes late! Yea us!

We had a great time catching up with Pat and Monte over some cocktails and then dinner. The lodge had a pretty good dinner menu, that they serve five nights a week. Jackie had a nice steak and I had the shrimp dinner. We finally decided it was time to head for home about 9:00, the latest we have been out of the coach in a long time. We were really happy to have the chance to cross paths with Pat and Monte. They are leaving in the morning for their next stop, Oklahoma City. We told them to be sure and try to make time to see the OK City memorial where the Federal building was blown up back in 1995. We had been there back in 2006 and were very moved.

When we left the lodge we found that it had rained a little bit while were in having dinner, but it had quit and the temperature had dropped into the 70's, very nice out. We drove home in the dark, a rare event, and spent the rest of the night in the coach (after changing all the clocks!).

Our arrival in beautiful Amarillo, Texas for a week stay will mark the end of this chapter of our travels. I will post again in a week or so as we wander the prairie. We will be here for a week, then head up into Oklahoma and Kansas. Until we meet again, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” (Henry David Thoreau) See ya soon!