Down By The Riverside

Welcome back friends and followers, our story continues. Our previous chapter concluded on Wednesday, February 9th, after we arrived in Ehrenberg, Arizona, located on the Colorado River just off of I-10, across the river from Blythe, California. We are staying at the Colorado River Oasis RV Resort, one of our Western Horizon parks and we will be here for two weeks. Peggy and Vernon Bullock are still traveling with us and we got side by side spots at the back of the resort, only a couple hundred feet from the river. We spent most of the afternoon getting settled in. About 3:00 p.m. we got together in Peggy and Vernon’s coach along with Doug and Linda Stoudt, some other friends of ours. We spent the evening talking, catching up and having a light dinner of tacos and rice.

Thursday, February 10th we awoke to a little bit of a breeze and moderate temperatures. After lunch we drove into Blythe, California, just across the river, to do some shopping at Kmart and Albertsons. We were also scouting a laundromat because we have a bunch of laundry to do and don’t want to spend all day in the small laundry at the RV park. After we finished our shopping we went home where I finished “redecorating” the coach. When we cleaned out our storage unit in Indio back in December we kept a few pictures and art stuff the Jackie wanted to use in the coach. We had been making a few changes over the last few weeks and today I finished changing the pictures around so the place looks a little different.

Around cocktail hour we went out behind our coaches on the grass and watched the sun go down over the river. Doug and Linda joined us and the Bullocks and we sat outside for about an hour until it got too chilly. The day was good, just slightly cool, but as soon as the sun goes down it gets cold. We went into Peggy and Vernon’s rig and Peggy cooked up a meal of pasta and salad for the six of us. It was great and we had a good time until about 8:30 when everyone wandered off to their own coaches for the rest of the night.

Friday, February 11th we decided that it was time to do some laundry. We packed everything in the car and headed across the river into Blythe. Our first stop was Garcia’s Restaurant on Hobsonway and 2nd street. Peggy and Vernon had eaten there on Thursday and said the food was good. The restaurant is very small, but the food was excellent. I had a red chili burro and it was one of the best I have had. The service was also good and the prices reasonable. I would highly recommend the place. When we walked into the restaurant it was lunch time and the place was packed. I didn’t think we would get a seat until we noticed that our friends Linda and Doug were already there. They had just ordered, so we sat down and had lunch with them.

After lunch we went to a pretty decent coin laundry and spent a couple hours getting all of our clothes, towels and bed linens washed and dried. We then headed home and relaxed outside in the nice weather until sundown. At about 7:00 p.m. we went over to the recreation center here at the park for karaoke. We had been here last year and gone to the Friday night karaoke and it was a lot of fun. The park bought the equipment and it is pretty good stuff. The rotation of singers was fairly short, although nearly all were very good singers. Because of the short rotation I got to do about seven or eight songs, so we had a very good time. We didn’t quit until the place closed up about 10:30 at which time we headed back to the coach and went to bed.

Saturday, February 12th was another caching day with Peggy and Vernon. After lunch we drove over into California in search of some more First To Find (FTF) caches. When I checked the Blythe area I found two caches that had just been placed within the last week and neither showed any finds yet. The first cache was about 23 miles from the park, South of Blythe, and was out in a flat desert area that appears to have been used as a dumping ground for the last 50 years. There were hundreds of acres that just glistened with broken glass and trash. You could tell that a lot of it was old, for instance there were numerous rusty beer cans with holes in the top made by an old fashioned church key opener. I mean, how long has it been since beer cans were steel or tin? The coordinates took us to a point in the dump and then it was up to us to figure out where the cache might be. It turned out to be very clever and we searched for about 20 minutes before I finally spotted it. There was an old refrigerator lying on the ground, on its back with the door open. It was full of bullet holes from people doing target practice. I finally spotted a bolt screwed into one of the holes in the bottom of the fridge. When I took it out of the hole I saw a tiny version of the geocaching symbol printed on the head. The bolt came apart and inside was the log! And - we WERE the first to find! Yea! The cache was called “Wasteland” and it certainly was.

After that find we continued South, heading into the hilly desert at the North end of the Imperial Dunes area. We drove about eight miles on a desert Jeep trail to an area where rockhounds looked for a type of rock called Pastolite, a pastel colored granite. This was where the other FTF cache was supposed to be. We found the cache, however, someone else had beat us to it earlier in the day, so we missed getting the FTF. On the way back we spotted one of the wild burros that inhabit the area. After that cache we did a bunch of caches in the Blythe area, ending up with a total of ten finds for the afternoon. After we got home the four of us went over to Doug and Linda’s coach for dinner. Linda had made a batch of spaghetti, along with both a meat and sausage red sauce, and a shrimp white sauce. Both were excellent. We had a great meal, chatted for a couple of hours and enjoyed the evening. After dinner we went back to our coach for the rest of the night.

Sunday, February 13th was a day of leisure. Other than going outside around sunset for an hour or so of evening cocktails with the Bullocks, we didn’t go anywhere. Monday was Valentine’s Day and again we decided on a quiet day at home. Jackie and I exchanged cards and had a very pleasant day. Jackie was watching the Emmy awards on TV when Barbra Streisand came on singing her song “Evergreen,” which was one of our first romantic songs from back in the seventies when we first met. We had a very nice romantic dance in the kitchen of the motor home as Barbra sang. Later Jackie played a song called “Connected at the Heart” by a group called Ricochet, which was one of our later romantic songs. Once again we danced. We concluded the day with a nice steak dinner on the BBQ with just the two of us. All in all, it was a very quiet, romantic day.

Tuesday, February 15th, we went out with the Bullocks after lunch to do some geocaching in the Blythe area. The caches were pretty far apart, and some were difficult to get to, so we only ended up finding five caches, along with one DNF, for the afternoon. One of the caches took us to the California side of the river, right across from our RV park. After our caching we went into downtown Blythe to try and visit the Elks Lodge there. By way of background, we have been trying to get into the Blythe Elks Lodge for the last five years. We have never been able to find it open, or even figure out conclusively when it is open. Our Elks travel book, which is a couple of years old, says it is open on Tuesday evenings before Lodge meetings, and on Friday evenings for meals. We figured that it would open about five or so on Tuesdays, but nope. Closed, even at 5:30 p.m. We will try one more time on Friday evening to see if we can get in for a visit. After our attempt at the Elks we headed back to the park for cocktails, dinner and relaxing the rest of the night.

Wednesday, February 16th we woke up to cloudy skies and brisk winds. The weather forecast called for a chance of showers and wind all day, so we decided not to try and go out to do any caching. I spent a couple of hours doing our taxes and cleaning up the records for 2010. For the first time in a couple of years we don’t have to pay any additional Federal tax. Yea! Late in the afternoon we started making dinner for the group. We had picked up a couple packages of chicken at the store a few days ago and decided that this was the day we would do a BBQ for everyone. In addition to the Bullocks and the Stoudts, our friends Dave and Karen were coming over. We met Dave and Karen last month at Quartzsite during our campout with Peggy and Vernon’s friends. After Quartzsite Dave and Karen had gone to Yuma, Parker and Lake Havasu, and had just arrived here in Ehrenberg today. We had some snacks with cocktails and then I BBQed the chicken for dinner. Jackie also made a batch of wasabi cole slaw and some broccoli. All eight of us ate inside our coach because it was too cool outside. It was a tight fit, but we got it done. Dinner was great and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. For desert we had ice cream and some of the strawberries that we had gotten direct from the field in Santa Maria back in June of last year. We froze them fresh and they kept great. After everyone left we watched TV the rest of the night.

Thursday, February 17th we stayed around the coach for the day. I spent some time getting five new travel bugs ready for distribution the next time we go caching. Jackie spent a few hours with Peggy doing some sewing and clothing alterations. At 4:00 p.m. the four of us went down to the clubhouse to listen to Doug and Linda give their travelog talk for Fantasy RV Tours. You may recall we met Doug and Linda when they were the “tailgunners” for our Alaska tour in 2009. A few years back Fantasy was bought out from Western Horizons by the employees and Doug and Linda are now among the owners as well as employees of the company. The talk they gave this afternoon was about the 45 day Mexico Yucatan tour, which looked pretty interesting. Although I would not want to do it for a couple of years yet, that is one Mexico tour I might be convinced to embark on. We will see how things go in Mexico. After cocktail hour all of us gathered in Dave and Karen’s rig for dinner. She fixed pork steaks with sauerkraut, mashed potatoes and salad. The dinner was wonderful and we all hung around and chatted until about 8:30 when everyone headed off to their own coaches for the night.

Friday, February 18th we went out after lunch to do some geocaching. Peggy and Vernon took Dave and Karen, who are fairly new to caching, in their Jeep and Jackie and I went out in ours. We took a route South down the Arizona side of the Colorado river to do a series of caches that are hidden along that route. The levee road we were on was gravel, but it was fairly smooth. Ultimately, we ended going about 25 miles or so South of Ehrenberg, as far as the town of Cibola and the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, and ended up finding nine caches for the afternoon. One of the caches was Dave and Karen’s 200th milestone cache. We also discovered that there is an old one lane bridge across the Colorado that is still in service just North of Cibola. This is also a place where the course of the Colorado River has changed and there is a small piece of ground, a few square miles perhaps, that is on the West side of the river, but is part of the State of Arizona. There is a county park over there, so there is a La Paz County park on the West side of the Colorado. There was a cache right by the old bridge and while we were looking for it we saw a La Paz County Ranger come across the bridge from the park. A nice piece of trivia to use in a bar game sometime.

After caching we went back to the RV park for a quick dinner and then went over to the clubhouse at the park for karaoke. While we were out caching two of the other couples we met at our outing in quartzsite arrived at the park. Curt and Sharon, and Ray and Del were parked just across the road from us. All of us ended up at the karaoke and Sharon, who you may recall is a former professional singer, sang a couple of songs. The rotation was a little longer tonight than it had been last week, but I still got in about six songs for the night. Sang and danced until about 10:30 when we headed home for bed. While we were in karaoke the rain we have been expecting came in and the ground was already a little wet.

Saturday, February 19th started out as a very wet day. It rained the entire night, sometimes fairly heavy. Sometime in the early morning hours there was even a thunderstorm that rolled through. I had my window open just a little so I could hear the thunder, and the rolling echoes off of the mountains to the East. I only saw slight flashes of lightning, so the storm was not directly over us, but I enjoyed listening to the show for a while. It continued to rain hard until shortly after lunch when the skies started to clear. Because it was still pretty cool, and the ground was very wet, we didn’t try to go out and do anything today. In the early evening we went over to Peggy and Vernon’s coach for dinner, along with the rest of group. We had a total of ten people. She fixed a pork roast, stuffed with greens, along with rice and beans and it was wonderful. We stayed over visiting with them after dinner until about 10:30 when we went home and went to bed.

Sunday we stayed at home all day because I wanted to watch the Daytona 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race. This is the first race of the season for the Cup cars and is usually a pretty good race. Today’s was no exception. The race was won by a rookie driver named Trevor Bayne who had just turned 20 the day before. This was only his second Cup race start and he is the youngest driver ever to win at Daytona. Great race! My favorite, Mark Martin finished in the top ten and had a good day too. We had afternoon cocktails outdoors again now that the wet weather has passed. For dinner we got a couple of pizzas from a little lunch trailer that is parked inside of the RV park. For evening entertainment we went over to Doug and Linda’s coach, along with Peggy and Sharon, to play some cards. We played Hand and Foot, which I haven’t played for over 20 years. My ex and I used to play with my parents a couple times a month when I lived back in Phoenix. It took a couple rounds to remember the game, but Jackie and I came in second. Had a very enjoyable evening.

Monday, February 21st promised to be a nice day, so we decided to do a final day of caching in the Blythe area. When I downloaded the results of my query for the day’s caching I noticed that two days prior someone had put out seven new caches along Highway 95, just North of Blythe. As of the time the query ran no one had logged them yet, so there were seven potential First To Finds (FTF) out there! We also decided that we wanted to have lunch one more time at Garcia’s Mexican restaurant in Blythe, the great little restaurant we found the first week we were here. We went out as a crew, with Doug and Linda in our car, and Karen and Dave with Peggy and Vernon in their Jeep. We all met at Garcia’s, along with Curt and Sharon who just wanted to try the restaurant. After lunch, which was once again great, Curt and Sharon went off to do some errands, while the other four couples headed North to try and catch the FTF’s. When we reached the first one we were disappointed to find that two other caching teams had hit the cache at about 8:30 in the morning, thus earning the FTF. Oh well, at least we got the cache. All seven of the new caches were along about a six mile stretch of the highway and they were all very easy caches. After all four of our teams had found the seven new caches we split up. Peggy and Vernon took Karen and Dave to some caches in the area that were new to Karen and Dave, although Peggy and Vernon, and us, had already found them. This was to help Karen and Dave get their numbers up. Meanwhile, we, along with Doug and Linda, headed Northwest of Blythe along Midland road to some caches about 20 miles away that were new to us.

We had never been up in this area before and we found that the paved road out of Blythe ended in the foothills of the mountains about 20 miles or so Northwest of Blythe at what used to be the community of Midland. From 1925 to the late 1960's Midland was a U. S. Gypsum company town. It was started as a tent city with miners in the middle of the Mojave desert digging gypsum out of the Little Maria Mountains to meet the demands of movie studios. All the winter scenes during the golden age of Hollywood were filmed with “snowflakes” from Midland. The population was approximately one thousand and there were approximately three hundred and thirteen houses. The gypsum plant was leveled in the 1970’s and the houses were sold and moved to Blythe, California and Parker, Arizona. All that is left of the town are some cement foundations left from houses, tennis courts, and some of the mining buildings, and the tallest thing in the area is the elementary school smoke stack. The cache was placed by a woman who’s family lived in Midland most of the time the town was in existence. She was the one who provided most of this history.

After our caching, which netted us ten finds, we went back to the RV park for cocktails and dinner. Dinner tonight was served by Ray and Del in their 5th Wheel and was salad and scratch made lasagna. The lasagna was wonderful. We also played about an hour of a game called “Catch Phrase”, which is kind of like the old “Password” TV show. Give hints to try to get your team guess the phrase you are trying to convey. We had some really good laughs, especially when Doug used the hint “oral sex” to try and get us to guess “Sodom and Gomorrah”. By the way, once he added “biblical cities” I got the answer! After dinner we headed home for the rest of the night.

Tuesday, February 22nd we spent the afternoon getting ready to leave on Wednesday. We did our laundry at the park’s laundry and then I spent a couple hours packing up the outside decorations. We had our usual happy hour on the grass behind the coaches watching the river roll by. We were surprised to find that Darrel Larson had come to the park yesterday. We had met Darrel last April when we were here in Ehrenberg. He was a couple coaches down from us and we had cocktails with him and several other couples almost every night. He is a single traveler who used to be a commercial fisherman in Alaska. When his last boat sank in a storm he decided to retire and travel in warmer climes. We knew he was in town because he is now caching and he picked up one of our travel bugs. We get notified when someone moves a bug we own, and on the log he mentioned that he met us last year here in Ehrenberg. We asked him to come to happy hour and he did. It seems that back in April we talked so much about geocaching that he got interested and became hooked. He already has over a thousand finds. We got another convert! Yea us.

After happy hour we all went over to Curt and Sharon’s coach for dinner. They have a Knight like ours but a year newer. The twelve of us had a pot luck dinner that was very good. Around 9:00 or so we called it a night and headed back to our coach.

Wednesday, February 23rd was another travel day. We packed up the coach and left Ehrenberg about 10:00 a.m. on our way to the Yuma area. We are actually going to Pilot Knob, one of our membership parks, which is located about nine miles West of Yuma on the California side of the border, in a town called Winterhaven. We have been to Pilot Knob many times in the past and we really like the Yuma, Arizona area. The trip was about 110 miles South on U.S. 95 and took us a couple of hours. We arrived at Pilot Knob around noon and managed to get two very nice North-facing spots side by side with the Bullocks, who moved down to Winterhaven with us. We will be here for two weeks.

With our arrival here in the Yuma, Arizona area I will close this episode out and get it on line. Thanks for reading our story and until the next Chapter, stay happy, be safe, and enjoy every moment of life.

Chilling (Literally) In the Arizona Desert

Greetings again readers. Welcome back to our story. Our previous episode ended on Thursday, January 27th with our arrival in Salome, Arizona at the Desert Vista RV Resort. This is one of our membership parks in the Resorts of Distinction (ROD) network. It was recently sold to a company called Encore Resorts, but they kept the ROD affiliation. We were happy about that because, even though the place is pretty remote, we enjoy coming here for a couple weeks each year. There is a lot of desert to explore and it can be a relaxing place. The RV park is actually located a couple of miles South of Salome on U.S. Highway 60 in a community called Harcuvar, named after a local mountain range. Salome is a small ranching community, founded in 1904 by a guy named Charles Pratt and two brothers, Earnest and Dick Wick Hall. Pratt was founding the town as a support base for a new railroad through the Eastern Arizona Territory and was speculating on where the railroad would lay its tracks, Unfortunately, he miscalculated by a mile so the community had to be moved to its present location a couple years later. The Post Office was established April 14th, 1905, and later moved to the current town site in 1906.

Dick Wick Hall was a widely known wit who published many stories in the Saturday Evening Post. Born in 1877 in Creston, Iowa, Dick's given name was DeForest Hall, He was a well known journalist and "political operative." In honor of his mentor, Henry Wickenburg, the miner after whom the town of Wickenburg, Arizona is named, he changed his name to "Dick Wick Hall." Hall died suddenly in 1926. You can find Dick Wick Hall's grave site in Salome on Center Street 2 blocks North of Hwy 60.

After settling in on Thursday we decided to just stay in for the rest of the day. We did some house cleaning to get rid of the dust we accumulated during our stay in Quartzsite. We got together with Peggy and Vernon Bullock, our friends who have been traveling with us for the last month, for cocktails and a dinner of leftover sushi and Halibut chowder which Jackie had made for the group in Quartzsite.

Friday, January 28th was also designated a day of leisure. It seems like we have been on the run and busy ever since our arrival in Indio before Christmas, so we felt we needed a down day. Salome is a great place to do that and the weather was perfect, temperatures in the low seventies and clear blue skies. We spent the entire day around the coach, just playing games and watching TV. Jackie made an enchilada casserole for dinner and we had cocktails and dinner with the Bullocks.

Saturday we loaded the car with us, Peggy and Vernon and their puppy Belle and left before lunch for a road trip. We needed to do some light shopping and wanted to go to a Walmart, the closest of which was in Parker, Arizona, on the Colorado River about 50 miles Northwest of Salome. We decided to make a day of it and did some caching along the way to Parker. When we got into town we stopped for lunch at a great Mexican restaurant called El Serape. We didn’t know where to eat and while we were looking for cache in a city park in Parker there was a Border Patrol agent parked in the parking lot watching traffic. Jackie and Peggy walked over and asked her where to eat. She said that there always seemed to be a lot of cars in the parking lot of the El Serape, but she had never eaten there. Since we all love Mexican food, and a lot of cars is usually a good sign, we went there. The food was excellent, as was the service. It was also reasonably priced. We would highly recommend the place which is right on U.S. 95, which is Riverside Drive, South of the airport.

After lunch we did some more caching in the Parker area. We ended up with a total of eight caches with no DNFs. We then made a quick stop at the Parker Elks Lodge for a refreshment. We had been to this lodge back in 2005, but had not been back since. Peggy and Vernon got a lodge pin for their budding collection, however, we already have one on our banner. After the lodge visit we hit Walmart and then drove the hour back to Salome. The lunch was so good, and so filling we didn’t even do dinner.

Monday, January 31st - Holy cow, the first month of the new year already ending! The weather this morning was cool and very windy, not good caching weather in the desert. We decided to do our laundry after lunch right here at the park. Later in the evening we joined Peggy and Vernon for cocktails and then BBQed some burgers for dinner. Peggy and Vernon had gone out in the afternoon to do some geocaching on their own. After finding their first cache in Salome, they headed out into the desert for their second and ended up punching a hole in one of their Jeep’s tires. End of caching for the day. Bummer. When he took it to a local place for repair they told him the tear was in the sidewall and was not repairable. I guess we will be out with them looking for a tire somewhere in the next day or two.

Tuesday, the 1st day of February already. The morning was again cool (40 degrees) and windy. Vernon has decided to just wait until we get to Ehrenburg, Arizona, near Blythe, California, next week to get tires. There is no where close to where we are in Salome to get a used tire of the right size to use as a spare. After lunch, when it warmed up a bit, the four of us went out to do some caching. We were doing desert caching which greatly increases the time between finds, so we were only able to get six caches in a about three hours. Nonetheless, we had fun and rode some interesting Jeep trails out in the desert, including one that led to an old mine site. The cache was inside of the remains of an old rock cabin. Very cool. After caching we went back to the RV park, had cocktails with the Bullocks and then spent a relaxing night at home.

Wednesday, February 2nd we woke up with no water because the supply hose outside was frozen solid! The outside thermometer said it was 27 degrees and there were icicles hanging down from under the coach near the bay where the water and sewer connections go in. I have a slight water leak and when the water hit the outside air it froze. Yikes. The wind is still blowing too, so I am guessing the wind chill temperature is in the teens. Way too cold for Arizona. Fortunately, the furnaces worked to heat up the coach and I had water in the fresh water tank so we were able to turn on our internal water source and didn’t have to rely on the outside supply. I also ran down to the store and bought an inexpensive automotive work light and a 100 watt bulb to use to keep the bay with the water pump and bottom of the fresh water tank, from freezing. Since the bay is closed in, putting a lit 100 bulb inside produces enough heat to keep the interior above freezing, which would be bad for the internal plumbing of the coach since it is all plastic piping.

We decided it was way too cold and windy to do anything, the weather forecast said it was only going to get up to 42 today. We stayed in until after lunch when the four of us, we and Peggy and Vernon, went down to the park’s pool/card room and we taught them how to play Texas hold’em poker. They knew basic poker, but had never played the hold’em variety. We played for a couple of hours and had a good time. I then went home and made a big pot of chili for dinner. Peggy and Vernon came over for cocktails and dinner with us. The chili turned out great, especially nice on a cold day. After dinner we chatted for a bit and after Peggy and Vernon left we relaxed the rest of the evening.

Thursday, February 3rd was another very cold morning, 25 degrees this time. The outside water supply was disconnected so we didn’t have to worry about not having water this time. My light bulb heater in the water bay kept everything down there from freezing, so we still had water for showers and such. About 10:00 a.m. the four of us got in our car for a day of caching and sightseeing in Wickenburg, Arizona, about 55 miles Northeast of Salome. We had a little issue when we first started out because the tire pressure monitoring system on our Jeep was showing a low tire. I was fairly certain that it was only because it was so cold outside - tire pressure is temperature sensitive, getting lower with the cold. The indicator showed it was only one pound below the “low air” threshold, so I drove the car on the highway for a mile or so and watched as the pressure came up like it should as the tire warmed up from the driving. I stopped for fuel and afterwards all the tires showed normal pressure, but my warning light was still flashing. I really didn’t want to drive over 50 miles with a warning light, even though I was fairly certain the pressures were OK, so I started back towards the park. About halfway there the sensors finally decided the pressures were OK and the light went out. I then turned back around and started towards Wickenburg.

We did one geocache about halfway between Salome and Wickenburg, but after arrival in town headed for the Horseshoe Café in downtown Wickenburg for lunch. We had eaten here last year and found it to be a great little café. It is a small, hometown type place with a dozen tables that seemed to be a favorite of the locals. It has also been cited by Arizona Highways, a very respected publication, as one of the ten best places to eat in Arizona. We again had a great meal, with great prices and wonderful, friendly service. Peggy and Vernon agreed that it was a great place to eat. Anyone in Wickenburg around breakfast or lunch (not open at night) could not do better than the Horseshoe Café right on Highway 60, a block East of the Highway 93 turnoff.

After lunch we started doing some geocaching in the Wickenburg area. We ended up with a total of 10 caches for the afternoon, including the one we did on the way to town. We found a couple of interesting places including the Hassayampa River Preserve, just South of town on Highway 60. The Preserve is on the site of a turn of the century dude ranch and includes a visitor’s center with nice exhibits on the flora and fauna of the central Arizona desert, and a series of nice hiking trails. We toured the visitor’s center to get the clues we needed for the cache find, but didn’t do any hiking. It was still in the low 40's so it was a little chilly for walking around. We also did a cache on the site of one of the original Arizona highway rest stops. Highway 60, which runs Northwest out of the Phoenix area to Wickenburg, and then back Southwest out of Wickenburg back towards I-10 and into California, was the main route from Phoenix to Los Angeles up until the 1980's when they finally put I-10 through from Quartzsite to Phoenix. Back before freeways Arizona used to put up rest areas along the main highways which consisted of a parking area with a couple of ramadas with picnic tables which had palm fronds on the roof for shade. Some had BBQ grills for cooking lunch. The one along Highway 60 about ten miles South of Wickenburg still has the original low stone wall which used to separate the rest area from the road, along with two large stone BBQ fireplaces. The ramadas and picnic tables are no longer there and the rest area is located on what appears to be a hill above the road. Actually, when they built the new four lane divided road back in the 70's they cut through the hill, so the rest area is actually on the original grade of the road. We would have never noticed the rest area except for the cache because it is a dozen feet above the current road grade. After caching we did a little light shopping and then headed home where we crashed for the night. By the way, our caching efforts today put us over the 2,100 finds milestone. Yea!

Friday, February 4th, the freeze has finally lifted! We woke up to a temperature over the freezing mark. Not very far mind you, 34 degrees, but nonetheless above the ice point. We decided to have a “home” day, so we just stayed in, watched TV, working on the computers, and took care of some light chores.

Saturday, February 5th - Happy Birthday to Me! I woke up this morning with “will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four,” the lyrics to Paul McCartney’s “When I’m 64," going through my head. They stuck with me all day. That, and the thought that in a 360 days I will be on Medicare! Yea! About 1:30 in the afternoon we got in the car, along with the Bullocks, and headed for Quartzsite for some caching and my birthday dinner. We cached for a couple hours, finding a total of five caches. We also made a couple of shopping stops in Quartzsite. Around 4:00 we stopped for dinner. I had decided that I wanted to go to a place called The Grubstake in Quartzsite. It’s a rugged cowboy bar and restaurant on the North end of town that we have eaten at a couple times during previous visits to Quartzsite they have a lot of stuff on the menu, but I haven’t had anything other than the fish and chips, which is their trademark item. On Fridays during the RV show period, which is when we are normally in Quartzsite, the line to get in the place is an hour or more for their all you can eat fish dinner. It is, by far, the best fish and chips dinner I have had, anywhere, ever! Although it is all you can eat on Fridays, I don’t believe I have ever seen anyone order more. The initial order, which is the normal portion (available anytime), is two huge pieces of Haddock, a giant pile of fries, and some coleslaw. It is more than enough for most people, including me. I managed to finish mine, but Jackie took some home with her. After dinner we drove back to Salome, about 40 miles, and made it home before dark. Weather point, it made it up to 70 today - the cold spell has passed. Yippee.

Super Bowl Sunday, February 6th, dawned showing promise of another mild day. We spent the morning and early afternoon relaxing in the coach. About 4:00 p.m. Peggy and Vernon came over to watch the big game with us. We would have liked to watch it on the big screen outside, but with the game being late in the afternoon it would be a bit too chilly. We set out the snacks and cocktails and watched my Green Bay Packers take the Steelers to school! I think they did quite well for an underdog team. Although I grew up for the most part in Arizona, I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and have always been a Packers fan. I mean, it’s not like I am a huge football fan - the super bowl is probably the only game I watch end to end all year - but if someone had asked who I was rooting for, it would have been the Packers. Go Cheeseheads! After the game Peggy and Vernon headed back to their coach and we chilled the rest of the night.

Monday, February 7th was our seventh wedding anniversary. We don’t exchange gifts on any holidays, birthdays or anniversaries, but we did exchange cards. Happy, happy us!! After lunch we got into Peggy and Vernon’s Jeep for an afternoon of caching. Peggy and Vernon have a Jeep Wrangler, the four door version, and enjoy getting out on the back roads. Unfortunately, they have been hobbled for the last week without a spare tire. As I mentioned about a week ago, they went out geocaching on their own one morning and cut a tire and have had problems finding a replacement spare. Saturday, while we were in Quartzsite we stopped at a tire shop and found that they had a used tire of the right size. Yesterday Vernon took the Jeep in and had it mounted and now they are back in business, so today we are going out to do some “real” Jeeping. (Some Wrangler owners don’t think Grand Cherokees are “real Jeeps”)

Today’s destination was Alamo Lake, a large manmade lake about 45 miles North of Salome on the Bill Williams River. Back in the 80's I used to go fishing at Alamo Lake a lot. It is (or at least used to be) one of the best big mouth bass lakes in the state. I also recall from camping up there a couple times that it is also the rattlesnake capital of Arizona, at least in the winter. I saw more rattlers up there in one weekend than I saw all the rest of the time I lived and camped in Arizona. We picked up one cache off the road on the way up to the lake and then got seven more around the lake itself. Surprisingly, we found three FTF caches up there. FTF means “first to find” and in caching is considered a big deal. The first person to find a new cache after it is published gets the FTF. In all of our caching we only have two and both were from back in 2008 in Iowa. I had seen these FTFs almost a week ago, but we didn’t think we would get up to Alamo. When we decided to go up there the caches still did not show anyone having found them. Sure enough, when we found the caches there were no signatures on the logs. YEA! Since Peggy and Vernon are fairly new to caching we let them take two of the FTFs and we took one. On the way back from caching we stopped at two other caches just to round out the numbers to ten finds. After we got back to the RV park we sat outside with Peggy and Vernon until sunset having cocktails and chatting. This was the first time it was nice enough in the late afternoon to sit outside and enjoy it. After dark we went in the coach for dinner and TV.

Tuesday, February 8th was another anniversary of sorts for us. February 8th was the day I reunited with Jackie after being out of contact for 21 years. I had first met her in Hawthorne, California back in 1976 while on a prisoner transportation trip. I worked for the Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix and was assigned to the fugitive apprehension unit. We saw each other off and on over the course of a year or so until I was transferred to narcotics enforcement and stopped traveling out of state. In early 1998 I relocated her on the internet through her real estate license, which I remembered she had, contacted her and ultimately went to visit her on February 8th, 1998. Six months later I moved from Phoenix to Indio to be with her. We have always celebrated this “reunion” anniversary.

Around mid-morning we climbed back into Peggy and Vernon’s Jeep and went out to do some back country caching. Vernon likes to visit old mines and ghost towns and we had told him about a cache located near an old mine called the Yuma Mine. I told him it was a couple of miles up into the mountains on some rough trails, but that we had visited it last year and enjoyed it. It was also only about 20 miles or so from the RV park. They were game so we headed up there, ultimately arriving at the Yuma Mine. We found the cache and were looking around the mine area when a big four wheel drive truck came up the road and stopped. Since the road dead ends at the mine, we knew they were coming here. It turned out to be a couple of older guys who have leased the mine, along with a number of other mining claims in the area. We chatted with them for quite a while, learning the history of the mine, which we had never known. It turns out that the mine, which was a horizontal shaft into the mountain rather than the more common vertical shaft, was a copper mine. It was originally started during WW-II and produced copper ore for the war effort. The usable copper ran out, but the owners continued until the 90's working the mine for semi precious stones such as malachite and chrysocolla. The guys we were talking to were looking for more veins of these type of stones in a number of them mines in the area.

After the mine trip we drove back down towards the RV park and did a couple of other caches before driving into Salome and eating a late lunch/early dinner at the diner there. The restaurant, now called the Salome Café, started out as Sheffler’s Café and Soda Fountain back in the 40's when Highway 60 was the primary route from Phoenix to Los Angeles. There is still a Sheffler’s motel right across the street from the café. The food was pretty simple diner fare, but pretty tasty. After lunch we went back to the park and I spent a hour or so packing things up in preparation for our departure the next day.

Wednesday, February 9th was another travel day. We were only going 54 miles, from Salome, Arizona to Ehrenberg, Arizona located on the Colorado River just off of I-10, across the river from Blythe, California. We left Salome about 10:00 and arrived an hour or so later at the Colorado River Oasis RV Resort in Ehrenberg. Since the distance was so short we didn’t even hook up the car in tow - Jackie just followed me. This park is another one of our Western Horizon parks and we will be here for two weeks. We got a nice spot at the back of the resort, only a couple hundred feet from the river. I can see the river flowing by out of the back window of the coach as I write this. Very soothing. Peggy and Vernon, who are still traveling with us, got a spot right next to ours. We spent most of the afternoon getting settled in. About 3:00 p.m. we got together in Peggy and Vernon’s coach along with Doug and Linda Stoudt, some other friends of ours. Regular readers may recall that Doug and Linda were our “tail gunners” on the Alaska trip back in 2009. The tail gunner is part of the staff that takes care of the caravan participants. This was the same trip that we first met Peggy and Vernon on, so it was a reunion of sorts. We spent the evening talking, catching up and having a light dinner of tacos and rice.

Our arrival here in Ehrenburg will close this episode of our travel chronicle. We will publish again in a couple weeks when we leave here and head South to the Yuma area. Until our next chapter, stay safe, be happy and enjoy every day to the fullest.

Desert Winter

Welcome back friends and followers. Our last chapter ended on Tuesday, December 29th while we were parked at the Indian Waters RV Resort in Indio, California. We have been here for a week now and will being staying for another three weeks, until the middle of January.

Wednesday, December 30th we stuck around home, doing laundry and some other chores. Later that evening we walked over to Peggy and Vernon’s coach for dinner. Peggy made a great pasta bake with a nice salad. Vernon fixed up some of the Canadian escargot that we both came back with after our trip last year. I don’t eat the snails, but the garlic-butter sauce is great and I ate a bunch of sourdough bread dipped in the stuff. We had a great time playing with their new puppy, Bell, who is only a couple months old. She is a mini Australian Shepard and really cute and friendly.

Thursday we went out after lunch with Peggy and Vernon to do some geocaching. We had first introduced them to the sport back during our trip to Alaska. We took them with us a number of times since then and they seemed to be really interested. Then in August Peggy got a new GPS receiver, the same type that Jackie uses, and they got started on their own. They are now up to over a hundred. The four of us did caching in Palm Desert and we managed to find a dozen in a matter of about three hours. As a side note, some of the caches were in the area of El Paseo Avenue, a ritzy shopping district in Palm Desert that people call the Rodeo Drive of the Desert. One would not know there was a recession going on based on the number of people shopping in that area. I was really surprised. Even though there is a lot of money in the Coachella Valley, I still didn’t expect that many people out shopping after Christmas. After caching we just went back home and relaxed the rest of the day.

Friday, December 31st - New Year’s Eve! The end of 2010 has arrived. I will say that we generally had a pretty good year. Jackie’s mom passed away in March which was sad, but we didn’t lose any other family or friends over the year. We had some great travels and are looking forward to a wonderful 2011. Our normal New Year’s Eve in the past has been spent at home with friends, and this year was no exception. The past four years we have spent with our friends Barry and Colleen, and occasionally another couple or two. However, this year they are up in Sacramento with their daughter and her family. Fortunately, we have Peggy and Vernon here and they have the same attitude towards the night as we do - quiet time at home with friends. Early in the day Jackie and Peggy went out to do some end of the year bargain shopping at the mall. Later in the afternoon Peggy and Vernon came over to our coach and we had a nice evening. Jackie made up some sushi for happy hour snacks. Peggy made a great antipasto salad and I put a nice tri-tip on the BBQ. We had a wonderful dinner and watched the ball drop in New York City at 9:00 p.m. California time. Having access to the East coast network channels on our satellite is great! By 10:30 Peggy and Vernon left and we went to bed. I didn’t even hear the midnight gunfire that normally goes on in this part of Indio on New Years.

Saturday, January 1, 2011, or 1111 as I was reminded in a couple of emails. We left the park with Peggy and Vernon around 10:00 a.m. and drove over to Palm Desert for the College of the Desert weekend street fair. We had just been there last weekend, but Peggy and Vernon had never been so we told them we would take them over. We walked around and shopped until about 1:00 then started back towards home. We stopped at La Casita for lunch because we wanted to show Peggy and Vernon one of our favorite Mexican places. Vernon and I went out to try and get some RV parts, but found that all of the stores were closed on New Years. Duh! We spent the rest of the day hanging out at home.

Sunday, January 2nd we were up early again and with Peggy and Vernon in the car drove West on the freeway headed for Silent Valley, South of Banning. Regular readers will recall that Silent Valley is a large ownership RV park in the San Jacinto Mountains. We normally spend a month or two there in the Spring. Two of our friends, Gary and Ramona Wilson and Ray and Suzie Babcock, are staying up there. We have traveled quite a bit with both these couples over the last couple of years. Gary and Ramona were in Albuquerque with us at the Balloon Fiesta last year. We wanted to show Peggy and Vernon Silent Valley and since they also know the other two couples well we thought we would visit today. We arrived about 11:00 or so and found it cloudy, grey and VERY cold. We don’t normally come up to Silent Valley, which sits at about 4,000 feet elevation, in the winter for that reason. The temperature was in the low thirties and Ray told us that they had freezing temps for the last week at night. There was a lot of ice on the ground around the campground, but no snow. The eight of us visited for a while, catching up on our various travels since the last time we were together.

We then left Silent Valley and continued South into the mountains to the community of Idyllwild, about ten miles South of Silent Valley, and about 2,500 feet higher. We all went into Jo Ann’s restaurant in the Idyllwild town square for lunch. Jo Ann’s is our favorite restaurant up there and we go to it almost every time we go to Idyllwild. The town was another new experience for Peggy and Vernon, who are Californians, but from the Northen part of the state. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground in Idyllwild, but the roads were clear and dry for the most part. While we were in the restaurant we noticed that it had started to snow. By the time we finished it was snowing pretty hard, although the temperatures were not quite low enough for it to start to stick on the roads yet. We led Peggy and Vernon to one geocache in the town square area that we were aware of, just so they would have at least one cache in the area. We had originally planned to spend a couple hours in town shopping and caching, but decided with the snow coming down and the temperatures dropping that we should get off the mountain when we can. I am not a real experienced snow and ice driver, so I didn’t want to get practice on mountain roads. We drove back to the Coachella Valley through the back way, coming back to the valley on Highway 74. This was not only a new route for Peggy and Vernon to see, but also let us avoid being on the freeway on a holiday weekend Sunday afternoon. Interstate 10 has a nasty habit of ending up closed because of accidents on busy holiday weekends. Once we dropped back down to under 5,000 feet the snow stopped, so we had a pleasant drive back and even stopped to get one geocache alongside the road. Once back in the desert we headed home and stayed in for the rest of the day.

Monday, January 3rd I left the coach early, about 9:30 and drove over to our storage unit to do some badly needed cleaning. When we sold the house in 2005 we gave away or sold most of the big stuff, the furniture and a lot of clothes, but there was still a lot of stuff that we weren’t yet sure of what we wanted to do with. We rented a fairly large 10X12 storage unit and pretty much filled it up with boxes of clothes, pictures, and personal stuff. Sometime around 2007 we managed to clean out a lot of stuff, again giving most of it to charity or friends, and “downsized” to a 5X5 unit. Over time, this unit has been pretty much filled to capacity with “stuff” and we have determined that we need to try to eliminate the need for a storage unit, or, failing that, at least cut down on the amount of stuff we have to look at when we go there. I spent a couple of hours there, taking one big load of stuff over to a charity thrift store in Indio, and bringing a few things back to the coach to try and sell at the park’s “yard sale” later in the week. One thing I brought back was two boxes of music CD’s that we had in the house. I had copied all of the music to digital format before we left the house and we have determined that we no longer need to keep all of the original CD’s. I left them with Peggy and Vernon first to pick through, and then the rest are going up for sale on the yard sale. Later in the afternoon I drove Jackie over to Rancho Mirage for her annual mammogram.

After the doctor’s appointment we drove back to Indio and went to Cactus Jack’s to meet with Barry and Colleen Cohen who had driven back from Sacramento today. They left early in the morning and we were afraid that they might get caught in the bad weather. Before I left the coach in the morning I had seen on TV that the Grapevine, the pass on Interstate 5 North of Los Angeles that is notorious for being snowed in, was closed because of snow and ice. I knew that Barry liked to leave REAL early (like 5 a.m.) when he travels, so I was afraid that they might not know the pass was closed. When I called him about 9:00 a.m. he said he did know about the closure and that they were taking the “back way” down the coast on Highway 101. They made it with only about an extra hour or so of travel time. We wanted to meet them for dinner because we missed them, but also because today is Colleen’s birthday! Happy birthday Colleen. We spent the rest of the evening there celebrating her birthday with dinner and drinks. After Cactus Jack’s we went home and to bed.

Tuesday, January 4th Jackie and I both went over to the storage unit after lunch and started going through stuff, sorting what we wanted to try and sell at the yard sale and what we could just get rid of. We loaded the car with boxes of pictures, glassware and crystal, a lot of knick knacks and brought it over to the coach for the yard sale. We spent some sorting stuff and then just relaxed the rest of the day.

Wednesday I got up and went outside about 8:00 a.m. to get our stuff set up for the big yard sale. We had all kinds of stuff out there, my old framed photos, my golf clubs, Jackie’s collection of old vinyl records, a couple hundred music CDs, knick knacks and other stuff. The sale went for three hours and the only thing that sold were the CDs. We sold one or two other small things, but mostly CDs. We ended up making $37. Whoopee! Oh well, a bottle of Absolute. That is how we tend to value things. For instance, eliminating our storage unit is worth 25 bottles of Absolute per year. Not too bad! After the sale we cleaned up and went to the doctor’s office for some routine medical stuff. We both needed prescriptions renewed and since my melanoma scare a couple years ago I always have the doc check my back and front for suspicious stuff. He did end up burning something off of my back with nitrogen. Later that evening we went over to Peggy and Vernon’s coach for cocktails and dinner. She had a wonderful curried chicken dish that I thought was great. Jackie also fixed another batch of escargot for the snail eaters. I just dipped bread in the sauce. A great meal, great company and great evening.

Thursday, January 6th I drove over to the storage unit in the morning and picked up most of the remaining stuff, which was primarily a couple of boxes of framed family pictures that we once had hanging in the hallway of our house, and a big box of old papers and books. I went though all of the pictures, removed them from the frames so we could keep them, and putting the frames aside to take to the thrift store. Jackie and I sorted the box of papers, which was mostly old tax records, and kept only a few souvenir things and tax records from the last seven years. I then spent a couple of hours shredding the old tax records. As of Thursday the only thing left in our storage unit is the metal shelving unit, which we are going to take to Vicki’s house, some framed art work that Jackie is not sure what to do with yet, and some luggage. If we can find room in Vicki’s garage for the luggage and art we will keep it there, otherwise it’s off to the thrift store. It looks like we will make our goal of eliminating the storage unit. Yea!

After our work on our “stuff elimination” project we went to Cactus Jack’s for dinner. We took Peggy and Vernon with us and met another couple, Jerry and Beverly King. Although we had crossed paths in the past, we really got to know Beverly and Jerry at the FMCA rally in Redmond, Oregon this past summer. Jerry is a retired Los Angeles firefighter. Beverly took the job as the Secretary of the new Veteran’s Chapter of FMCA. They are pretty good friends with the Babcocks and the Wilsons and we got to hang out with them quite a bit at the rally. They have a place at Desert Shores, an upscale RV resort here in Indio, and are here for the Western Area Rally which starts next week. The six of us had a great dinner, although the service was pretty lousy. That is unusual for Cactus Jack’s and could have been because the place was busy. In addition to the pending RV rally the big dog show is also in town, so the place was packed. Our waitress just seemed like she didn’t want to be there and didn’t want to be serving us. I had the beef ribs (again!) And took part of it home for lunch. Yum!

Friday, January 7th we again went to the storage unit after lunch and disassemble the shelving and took it, along with my gold clubs and a couple other items, to Vicki’s house. I am giving the golf clubs to Vicki’s brother Larry and Vicki is taking the shelving for her garage. About 5:00 p.m. we went to one of the local night clubs, The Jackalope Ranch, for dinner with Jay and Donna Blumenthal. We have known Jay and Donna for several years. Jay used to be the Area Vice President of the International Area of FMCA, which is the area in which nearly all the Chapters we belong to are chartered. We usually only run into Jay and Donna a couple times a year, usually at rallies. They are staying here in Indio for three months. We spent a couple of hours catching up and having a nice dinner and a couple of drinks. After dinner we made a stop at Cactus Jacks for a drink before heading home for the night.

Saturday, January 8th will be known as the day we became true full time RVers! I took a drive over to the storage unit in the morning and took the last items out. I took some luggage we wanted to keep over to Vicki’s and a few pictures to the thrift store. Before I left the storage place I stopped in the office and told them we had vacated! We finally got rid of our left over stuff - and saved $600. Yea! After lunch we went out with Peggy and Vernon for some geocaching. We managed to find a dozen caches in just a couple of hours. Peggy and Vernon even had a couple more on their list that we had previously found. Later on in the afternoon we went over to the Motorcoach Country Club to visit with Barry and Colleen. We took Peggy and Vernon with us. They had met Barry and Colleen briefly last year, but had never been to the Country Club. We wanted to show them how the “other half” of the RV world lived. We took them on a short driving tour of the Country Club and they were impressed. Amazing what having a little money will do for you. We then spent a couple hours with Barry and Colleen having cocktails and chatting. On the way home we stopped at the pizza place and picked up a large pizza. We had dinner at Peggy and Vernon’s coach with pizza and beer. All in all a busy, productive and friendly day.

Sunday, January 9th we stayed around the coach relaxing until about 3:00 p.m. when we went over to the clubhouse here at Indian Waters for a social gathering of the Full Timer’s Chapter of FMCA. The FMCA Western Area rally starts next week here in Indio at the fairgrounds so there are a lot of FMCA members staying in the area, including several right here at Indian Waters. Pat and Jim Goetzinger are members of the Full Timer’s Chapter, as are we, and they decided to have a small get together of as many members of the Chapter as possible. We ended up with probably fourteen people at the social. We had snacks and cocktails and had a great time catching up with old friends and acquaintances.

One interesting development was a reunion with an old acquaintance from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix. I worked for MCSO for 22 years and retired in 1992. While we were sitting there visiting a couple walked in and I thought I recognized the man from somewhere. I assumed that we had met at some rally or gathering until Jim Goetzinger introduced him and said “you and Tom worked together.” When Tom said his name was Tom Stroup I remembered him as a Lieutenant with the Sheriff’s Office that I had worked with for years. We were not close friends, Tom was a Detention Officer working in the jail system while I was a sworn Deputy sheriff. However, we did know each other and for a couple years had offices just a few yards apart. We had a great time catching up. It turns out that Tom and his wife had been on an RV caravan with the Goetzingers this past summer in the Canadian Maritimes and they happened to both be here at Indian Waters. The Stroup’s are not here for FMCA because they own a 5th Wheel (only motorhomes are allowed in FMCA), but they are full timers and have been since 2003. I always marvel at the way RVing can bring old friends together as well as make new friends. After the social gathering Jackie and I headed over to Cactus Jacks for dinner. I had learned that George, the owner, had put chicken and dumplings back on the specials menu for Sundays and I loved the chicken and dumplings. Back when we had a house here we used to go there nearly every Sunday for the special. It was off the menu for many years, but it still tasted the same and was great.

Monday, January 10th Jackie went out to lunch with Peggy and several other women friends from here in the Desert. I stayed at home and took care of some chores. I had to find “hiding places” for some of the stuff from the storage unit that we couldn’t part with. It was mostly family pictures and personal memorabilia, so fortunately it doesn’t take up too much room. It has a new home under the bed. Other than Jackie’s luncheon with the girls this was the first day in a couple weeks when we didn’t have plans, so I enjoyed the quiet opportunity to get a few little things done around the coach.

Tuesday, January 11th we left mid morning to go do laundry. After our laundry duties we drove into Palm Desert to a jewelry store. We had some old gold and silver jewelry we don’t use or need anymore and Jackie had some work that needed to be done on some diamond rings she has. We ended up getting a pretty good sum for a handful of old gold and silver stuff plus Jackie was able to trade two small diamonds for a larger one to put in her wedding ring and also get a small chip replaced in one of her other rings. While we were waiting for the rings to be fixed we went to the mall and walked around for a while. Bought a couple of little things, but generally just killed time. After picking up the jewelry we went back to the coach for happy hour with Peggy and Vernon. They moved over to the fairgrounds for the rally today. We will be going to the rally on daily passes but staying here at Indian Waters. Peggy and Vernon were lucky enough to get good handicap parking right in the middle of all the activities. We had been able to do the same thing a couple years ago when I had my surgery on my back.

Wednesday, January 12th we drove over to the Date Festival grounds, AKA the Riverside County Fairgrounds, to the FMCA Western Area Motorcoach rally. Today was the first day of any activities and we had agreed to help a couple of our Chapters with the Chapter Fair. Most rallies have a Chapter Fair the first day to allow the Chapters for that area to set up a table and try to recruit new members. Jackie helped with the table for the Fulltimers Chapter and I helped at the table for the Veteran’s Chapter. The fair went for two hours and the Veteran’s Chapter was able to sign up about six new members. After the Chapter Fair we went back to Indian Waters for a couple hours before going to Cactus Jacks for dinner.

Jackie had set up a dinner for some friends after Dick Conrad, our friend from the Desert Hot Springs Elks Lodge had said he wanted to get together for beef ribs at Jacks one evening. They brought their coach down from DHS and are staying on the fairgrounds. The dinner sort of snowballed from that and we ended up with a reservation for 16 people. Dick and Ginger, Barry and Colleen, Jack and Gail, our other friends from DHS, Peggy and Vernon, some friends of theirs Sharon and Curt, Bev and Jerry King, and a couple that Jackie met at the Chapter Fair and invited for dinner. They were Barbara and Jim and she invited them because they wanted to get involved with a local Elks Lodge travel group. She wanted to introduce them to Dick and Ginger. The dinner went very well. We had a great waitress, George, the owner of the place, came over and visited with everyone, and the food was wonderful. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and even with that many people there didn’t seem to be any problem with conversations. We stayed for a couple of hours before finally heading home fed and happy.

Thursday, January 13th we had another pretty busy day scheduled. About 11:30 a.m. we drove over to the Desert Shores RV Resort where Bev and Jerry King live. They were having a luncheon for the Veteran’s Chapter of FMCA and had asked us to come a little early to help set up. Desert Shores is another very upscale RV resort, along the lines of the Motorcoach Country Club where Barry and Colleen live. The big difference is that at Desert Shores you are allowed to have an actual house on your lot, and all of the lots seem to have them. Bev and Jerry’s was very nice with a big kitchen, living room and office, or bedroom if you would prefer. They also have a lake behind their place, but unlike at Barry’s, there are no boats on this one.

About two dozen people came to the social and we had a very nice time visiting. Bev put out a good spread of sandwiches and snacks, and they had wine and beer. The social lasted about two hours, after which we went back to the coach briefly before going back over to the fairgrounds for some rally activities. We spent about an hour walking around the vendor area, just to get an idea which vendors were there. One of the vendors on site was Chuck and June McCubbins, who are good friends of ours. We first met them eight or ten years ago through Barry and Colleen. Chuck and June have a business selling plaques and plaque holders for the ladders of RVs. We have six of them on our coach. We have not seen Chuck and June for over a year and it was nice to see them again. Hopefully we will have a chance to spend a little more time with them after the rally since they are pretty busy while the rally is going on.

After browsing the vendors we went out to where Peggy and Vernon’s coach was parked and set out our chairs to watch the parade. The Western Area rally always has a parade based on the theme of the rally. Last year it was movies, this year is the old west. Different chapters of the Western Area put together floats and matching displays and they all parade down the middle of the fairgrounds. It is always a lot of fun and usually lasts about an hour. This year’s parade was very entertaining with a lot of different varieties of “horseback” riders walking around. Lots of dancing girls too!

After the parade we hurried off the fairgrounds, went back to the coach so Jackie could change clothes, and immediately left again to go to La Quinta and a restaurant called the Sandbar. The Sandbar was the first place the Jackie and I went out to dinner at when we reunited in 1998. We sat at the same two stools in the bar and reminisced about our reunion nearly 13 years ago. The reason we were at the Sandbar however, was that we were celebrating Jackie’s girlfriend Nancy’s 80th birthday. Nancy’s daughter Vicki had told Nancy that she and her son ShaneRyan were taking her out to dinner at the Sandbar because it is one of Nancy’s favorite places. What she didn’t tell her was that Jackie and I, and Nancy’s other girlfriend Jackie Sparks, were also going to be there. We were waiting in the bar when Vicki, Nancy and Shane walked in and she was very surprised, and happy, to see us. We had a wonderful dinner, which included a visit by Harpo the clown. Jackie tells me that Harpo has been a fixture at Desert restaurants for twenty years or more. He is in full clown regalia, never speaks, and just works for tips. We got some pictures of Nancy with Harpo. After dinner we went back to the coach and crashed for the evening.

Friday, January 14th we had lunch at the coach and then drove over to the fairgrounds and the rally for shopping. We met Barry and Colleen there and spent a couple hours walking around the vendors and then looking at the coaches they had in the coach display. Most of the coaches were used, but there were a couple of new models on display. One was a Winnebago Tour model that was a big 42 footer with a tag axle and a floor plan that we all liked. Not that either of us are in the market for a new coach, but it was a nice model to consider if we hit the lottery. After spending some time at the rally the four of us went over to Cactus Jack’s for a cocktail. After one drink we went home and crashed. We had reached the point where we were wore out and just wanted to chill the rest of the night, which we did.

Saturday we went out after lunch to do some shopping at Costco and Walmart. Next week we are leaving the Desert and heading into Arizona and will not be around major stores for about five weeks. We are working on getting our major shopping done before we have to leave. In the early evening Peggy and Vernon and Ray and Suzie came over for dinner. Ray and Suzie had just arrived yesterday at Indian Waters from Menefee, California, about 90 miles Southwest of Palm Springs. We fired up the BBQ and cooked steaks. Jackie made some broccoli and some yams for us and we just had a great dinner. After a few hours of eating, drinking and talking the other couples headed for their coaches and we relaxed the rest of the night. Peggy and Vernon, who are staying over at the rally on the grounds, have to leave the fairgrounds on Sunday and are going to the Thousand Trails RV park on I-10 near Palm Desert for a couple of days before heading to Quartzsite on Tuesday. We will be joining them in Quartzsite on Thursday and it appears that Ray and Suzie will be heading to the same area, also on Thursday.

Sunday, January 16th we finally had a day when we could relax. We hung around the coach the entire day, doing minor chores, playing computer games and just relaxing. At 6:00 p.m. we did drive down to Cactus Jack’s to meet our friends Pat and Jim Goetzinger for dinner. We know Pat and Jim from both the Full Timers and old 100%ers Chapters of FMCA and we cross paths with them at various times over the year. Pat wanted some good prime rib so we told her you can’t beat Cactus Jacks. We had a very nice dinner with just the four of us. It was nice to have a small group for a change so we could have real conversation. After dinner we headed home for the rest of the night.

Monday we did some major shopping in preparation for our departure for the Coachella Valley on Thursday. Once we leave the Desert we will be five weeks pretty much in the boonies, no where near a Costco, Sam’s Club or even a Walmart. There are a lot of good, valid reasons to dislike Walmart, but one cannot get around the fact that overall you can save about 25 percent on food and general household goods. When you are on a fixed income (how many years did I hate THAT phrase!) it makes a difference. There are times I get frustrated over their “our way or the highway” attitude with manufacturers and suppliers that results in sometimes limited choices. I understand what they can do to small local groceries and home goods stores, but we have to stretch our budget and Walmart is the best way to do it. Anyway, we needed to stock up on can goods and household products for our month-plus long foray into the Arizona wilderness. We filled the freezer and the cabinets and are now ready. OK, we aren’t really going to be in the wilderness, this time of year Quartzsite has a couple hundred thousand people, but we won’t be close to any big grocery stores. After shopping we chilled for the rest of the day.

Tuesday, January 18th we went to lunch at one of the Taqueria Guerrero restaurants in Indio. We are acquainted with the owner, Jose Guerrero, from Cactus Jack’s and he now has three locations in the valley. We always try to eat at one of them least once each time we visit the valley because the food is great. They are true taquerias catering to the Hispanic population, so the food is not fancy or sauced up. It is just good, authentic Mexican food. We enjoyed the lunch. After lunch we ran a couple of errands, then went back to the park to do some laundry. We wanted to get our laundry done since in a couple of days we are leaving Indio and will be dry camping in the desert for a week. We spent the rest of the day relaxing.

Wednesday, January 19th was an interesting day in that for some reason Jackie and I both became convinced at some point that we were leaving Indian Waters for Quartzsite on Thursday, tomorrow. When discussing our departure with friends I always said we were leaving on the 21st, our calender showed we were leaving on the 21st. Friday is the 21st, but for some reason we got it in our heads we were leaving Thursday, going by day of week rather than date, I guess. Anyway, Jackie left after lunch to go to one of the local casinos with Colleen for the afternoon. I began my process of packing things up outside the coach in preparation for what we thought was our departure. A couple hours of work and I had everything outside packed away. I then took a walk down to the office in the early afternoon to remind them to have someone read the electric meter so we could pay our electric bill either today or early Thursday morning. I am talking to the lady at the desk and she said, “we have a note to read the meter Thursday morning and the bill will be ready Thursday afternoon.” I then said, “but we are leaving tomorrow morning. I don’t want to wait until afternoon.” She pulled out the book and proceeded to tell me that we were scheduled to leave on the 21st, to which I replied “yes.” That was when she said that the 21st was Friday and I looked over her shoulder at the calender on the wall which clearly showed the 21st as Friday. Great Big DUH!

I then went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the afternoon because I now had an extra day. Sort of yea! I also called Peggy, who is already in Quartzsite with the folks that we are going to join when we leave here. I told her that despite what we had told her, we weren’t coming tomorrow (Thursday) but one day later. She just laughed and said no problem. Jackie came home from the casino late in the afternoon and also had a good laugh over our misconception of our schedule. We just stayed in the rest of the day.

Thursday, January 20th we relaxed most of the day. Around 5:00 p.m. we drove over to Cactus Jacks for a going away dinner with Barry and Colleen. We had a great dinner with our good friends, whom we will not see for a couple months. Friday morning we got up and packed up the coach for our 125 mile trip East from Indio to Quartzsite. We got out around 9:30 a.m., but as soon as we crossed the Arizona border at Blythe we lost an hour as went into Mountain time. We still arrived in Quartzsite fairly early, about 2:00 p.m. and drove to our camping spot about three miles North of town on Highway 95. We are camped in a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) camping area called “Hi Jolly” after the U.S. Army camel driver from the 1800's. The area we will be in is a free area where camping is restricted to 14 days. There are a number of BLM sites, some like this one for transient campers, and others for long term camping. The long term area is still desert dry camping, but they provide trash containers and porta potties scattered around. It is still cheap, only $40 per month, but you have to pay to have your tanks dumped (actually pumped) and to buy more fresh water for your rig.

We arrived to find five other rigs, including Peggy and Vernon, already parked in a big square with an opening just for us. We wiggled in, closed the square, and spent a couple hours getting set up for our six day stay. Other than Peggy and Vernon we had met only one of the other couples, Sharon and Curt. We met them in Indio because they were at the rally there. The other couples were Barbara and Ernie, Dave and Karen, and Ray and Del. Ray is Curt’s brother and they are all friends from Northern California in the same area that Peggy and Vernon live, near Sacramento. They were all very nice people and welcomed us to their annual Quartzsite outing. Curt and Sharon have a Monaco Knight like ours, a year newer but with the same floor plan. Dave has an older Class A motor home and the other two couples have fifth wheels. Inside of the big square formed by the parked rigs was a big fire ring with lots of wood and lots of space around for sitting and visiting.

This group had a unique meal plan, unlike any we had come across in any of our many other group outings. Most groups have pot luck type meals, where everyone brings something, for group meals and then eats out sometimes. This group had one couple responsible for the entire meal for the whole group each evening. This way one only had to cook once every six days, which just happened to be the amount of time we were going to be there. Friday’s meal was tacos with all the fixings, including beans and rice. We built a nice big fire, had dinner and visited until it got too chilly to stay out, about 8:00 or so. There was an agreement among the campers that we would run generators only from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. except for emergencies. Since we had no power hook up we had to run the generator for about three hours in the morning and about four hours in the evening to keep the batteries charged up. We have done this several times in the past, so I know what to watch and how to handle the dry camping routine. It is not our favorite way to camp, but we do it for a few days every year, usually at rallies and in Quartzsite.

Saturday, January 22nd, we went out after lunch to do some geocaching. We took Dave and Karen in our car and Peggy and Vernon took Ray and Del with them. Dave and Karen have just started geocaching and have about a hundred finds. Ray and Del were just curious and wanted to see what the sport was all about. We went out and did four nearby caches before heading back to the campsite. About 5:00 p.m. my brother Ken and his wife Susan arrived from Goodyear, Arizona, near Phoenix. We were expecting them, having talked about a few weeks prior. They wanted to just drive out and visit for a day. It’s only about a two hour drive from their house to Quartzsite. It wasn’t a big inconvenience for the group since they were going to sleep in our coach and there was no group meal scheduled for tonight. Most of the women were going into town for bingo, and the other men were going to a local auction house for the night action. Peggy and Vernon, who have met Ken and Susan in the past, stayed and the six of us did a nice BBQ with some beef and chicken carne asada. We had a great visit with Ken and Susan until we hit the sack for the night.

The next morning, Sunday, we went out fairly early for more geocaching. This time Ken and Susan were with us and Dave and his wife were with Peggy and Vernon. The eight of us found about seven caches before lunch. Peggy and Vernon and Dave and his wife went off to so some chores and we, with Ken and Susan, went to a local restaurant for lunch. After lunch the four of us continued caching and ended up getting a total of 16 finds for the day, with one DNF. The DNF was not our fault. We had found this cache last year and knew were it was, but it was gone. Someone had taken it, or “muggled it” in the parlance of geocaching. After caching we headed back to the coach where we sat around and talked until sundown, when Ken and Susan headed back to Phoenix. Dinner that night was at Curt and Sharon’s place and we had bacon wrapped filets along with all the fixings. It was windy and cold so we ate inside of their coach. It was a little tight, but we found eating space for everyone and had a great meal.

Monday, January 24th we went out after lunch to do our first day of Quartzsite shopping. For those who don’t know what quartzsite is all about, it originally started as just a place for snowbirds with RVs to go for part or all of the winter. Quartzsite is a town of a few thousand full time residents that swells to a hundred thousand or more in the winter months, December through February. There are a lot of RV parks in town, but the majority of winter campers just stay out in the desert. Most of the desert around the town is fairly flat, hard surface terrain, ideal for dry camping RVers. Quartzsite also has several “shows” that go on during the winter. There is a gem and mineral show that goes on most of December and January because Quartzsite is considered the rock hound capital of the country. In mid January there is a nine day RV show that takes place. The actual RV show takes place in and around a big circus sized tent, but there are hundreds of other vendors that set up booths at various places around town. The bottom line is that there are hours of shopping to be had in the area. Today was our day to visit “the tent” as it is known. Because it is set up for the RV show, many of the vendors in the tent had also been in Indio at the FMCA rally. There were some other RV related sellers there too and we spent most of the afternoon walking around shopping. We only bought a couple of small items this time, although in past years we have spent quite a bit in the big tent. Because we have been on the road for over five years now, we have bought most of the big gadgets we need.

After shopping we went back to the campsite so Jackie could finish preparations for her dinner on Tuesday night. She had worked on her Halibut chowder in the morning and wanted to fix some sushi tonight. She likes to make both the chowder and the sushi the day before so it gets some flavor soaked in. Later we had evening cocktails and a campfire with lots of chatting about what everyone bought at the vendors. Barbara and Ernie had dinner that night and she made an excellent batch of cabbage rolls with mashed potatoes and corn. We had a great evening and stayed up with the fire again until about 8:00.

Tuesday, January 25th we went before lunch to shop at Tyson’s Wells, which is a large open air shopping area across the street from the big tent. There are several hundred booths in the place and it is essentially a big street fair. We spent several hours wandering around and looking at stuff and had a little lunch from one of the vendors. Again, we didn’t buy much, but we had a good time looking. We went back to the campsite early afternoon so we could get set up for dinner. I had told everyone that we would set up the karaoke stuff on the night we did dinner, so I spent a couple hours getting everything ready and Jackie worked on dinner. We started karaoke about sundown and had dinner a little later. Dinner, the chowder and the sushi, was wonderful and everyone enjoyed it very much. We also had Doug and Linda Stout come over for dinner. Regular readers may recall Doug and Linda as the “tail gunners” from our Alaska trip back in 2009. We have stayed in contact with them since. They happened to be working the big tent on behalf of Fantasy RV Caravans, so we invited them to dinner. After dinner we did more karaoke until about 8:30 at night. Most of the singing was done by me and Sharon. Sharon had been a singer with a band in the past and had a great voice. There was also a gal named Paula who was there as a guest of Curt and Sharon’s who sang a couple of songs. Del sang one song, but Sharon and I did the most. It was a great night and we even had a couple of visitors from other camps around us.

Wednesday we went out after lunch with Peggy and Vernon for some last minute shopping at some of the areas that we hadn’t hit yet. Peggy and Vernon are having problems with the satellite dome on the top of their rig so they wanted to buy an inexpensive outside dish that they could use until they got the dome fixed. Vernon had borrowed one for this trip from Dave and it worked good, so he wanted one of his own. We managed to find a nearly new dish that he got for $12, a real bargain. He had to pay $30 for a tripod, but less than $50 for a complete setup is still a real good deal. We got back to the campsite and I spent a little bit of time putting things away since we will be leaving Quartzsite on Thursday. Dinner was early and Del made pulled pork sandwiches, beans and potato salad which was very good. Most of the rest of the folks left for bingo and the auction again, so we and Peggy and Vernon spent the evening visiting.

Thursday, January 27th we packed up the coach and pulled out of the desert, heading Northeast to Salome, Arizona. It was only about a 40 mile drive so I drove the coach and Jackie drove the car. Peggy and Vernon had pulled out of the campsite early to get some minor repairs done on their coach, but we got a call from them later that they still got to the RV park before us. They told us there was a spot right near them and they were expecting us. We pulled in and got the spot right behind where Peggy and Vernon are parked, and only a couple down from where we were last year when we stayed in this park. This is one of our membership parks so it is very inexpensive for us to stay here. Peggy and Vernon will be traveling with us for our next three stops. We will all be here in Salome, at the Desert Vista RV Resort, for 13 days. We are kind of out in the middle of nowhere, but we are looking forward to some geocaching and also some days of just relaxing after a busy month and a half.

With our arrival here in Salome we will close this episode. I will post again when we move on down the road. Until then, stay happy, live healthy and enjoy every moment of your life!