Arizona Adventures

Welcome friends and family to the next installment of our travels. I ended our last episode with us spending our last night in Winterhaven, California, near Yuma, Arizona.

Sunday, February 21, 2010 we packed up the coach and left the Pilot Knob RV Resort in Winterhaven and headed East on I-8, destination Casa Grande, Arizona. We left about 10:00 a.m. for the 190 mile trip. Other than a couple of light rain showers en route it was an uneventful trip and took us about three and a half hours. We arrived at the Western Horizon park, Desert Shadows, and got the same spot we were in last year when we were here. We will be here in Casa Grande, Arizona for two weeks. Casa Grande is located just about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson and is pretty much right in the middle of the state. Not too long after getting set up the rains started and it rained pretty hard the rest of the afternoon and all night.

Monday, February 22 started early, about 6:00 a.m. when I woke up to the sound of an alarm. Our gas detector alarm in the kitchen was going off and as soon as I was out of bed I caught the overwhelming odor of ammonia in the coach. I immediately knew that something had gone wrong with the refrigerator, which uses ammonia for coolant as do all RV refrigerators. The first thing I did was shut off the power to the fridge and run outside to open the access panel to the fridge to ensure that there was no fire. There have been many many reports of RV fires caused by gas absorption refrigerators. Under the right circumstances the ammonia coolant can ignite if it leaks out of the system. Fortunately, there was no fire nor any indication there had been any. The next thing we had to do was open the windows and ventilate the coach. That was uncomfortable as it was about 40 degrees outside and we had all the windows open and the fans blowing outside air into the coach to get rid of the ammonia smell.

After a couple of hours we had cleared the air in the coach and we began to evaluate our options. We do have an extended warranty on the coach which meant that if we could find someone to do it, we could have the refrigerator repaired and it would only cost us the deductible on the policy. We could also consider replacing the gas absorption RV type refrigerator with a standard electric household type refrigerator. I have seen many reports from other RV owners on various chat groups indicating that this was a fairly common thing to do. Many new RV’s are coming new with household type refrigerators. After considering this for a while we decided that we would fix the refrigerator rather than try to do a conversion. A conversation of that type would be beyond my abilities as a do it yourself job and we were not in an area where a lot of coach renovators do business. We also had some time constraints. A conversion would require a lot of wood working and modifications and would probably take longer than the two weeks we had to spare. Finally, our extended warranty would not cover any of the costs. It covers repairs but not modifications.

Having decided to have the existing refrigerator repaired we contacted a local RV repair shop. My initial contact with the shop was not positive. The guy told me that it would take a week to 10 days to get a new cooling unit for our fridge. They were also not even sure they could get to us for a day or two. We then decided that we needed to find a small dormitory or office type refrigerator to put our perishable food in while we waited for repairs. We have had the refrigerator go out twice before in the five years we have been on the road and we found that using an ice chest was not a real good option. Everything got wet, they didn’t have much capacity and you had to get ice every day. We knew that we could get a small fridge for under $200 and decided that we would go out and try to find a used one first before we went to Home Depot for a new one. Fortunately, we didn’t have to worry about the stuff in the freezer part of the fridge because we have the freezer in the back that we had to buy in Alaska for our fish.

Since we didn’t know where there might be a used appliance store in Casa Grande we stopped at the RV park office on the way out to look in the yellow pages. It was there that the Gods smiled on us. When we explained to the lady in the office what had happened and what we needed to do she first pointed to guy standing in the office and told us that he was the “resident” RV repair guy. Seems that he has a mobile RV service business and lives in the park during the winter months. The office staff said he was very good. We talked to him and he indicated that he could get by the coach later that same day to look at the problem and that he could get a replacement cooling unit in about two days. He told us that he was sure he could have us fixed and back up and running before the end of the week. Eureka! Then, when we asked the lady in the office, Betty, where we might find a used appliance store she said not to bother, she had a dormitory refrigerator at her rig that she wasn’t using and that we could use it. She would have her husband drop it by our coach in an hour or so. Eureka Part II! With that news, we just went back to the coach and waited. The little fridge was delivered within an hour and after it cooled down we moved everything that needed to be refrigerated out of the non-functioning fridge into the little dorm cooler that fit perfectly in the corner of the kitchen. We put everything from the freezer section into the freezer in the back. The repair guy came by, got all our information, including our extended warranty info, and told us he would handle everything. Since we were staying home to handle all the fridge stuff anyway, Jackie also took the opportunity to do our laundry.

Tuesday, February 23rd we headed out after lunch to do some caching. We managed to find nine caches in a couple of hours and also did some light shopping. When we got back to the part we found that our friends Vernon and Peggy Bullock had arrived and were parked in a spot two down from where we were. We got together with them for cocktails and a BBQ. You may recall that Vernon and Peggy were on our Alaska caravan with us and are one of the few from that group that we have remained in close contact with. For our BBQ we used Elk and Buffalo meat that we had both gotten at a place in Alaska during out trip. The last time we saw Peggy and Vernon was when we were in Cottonwood, Arizona back in November so it was nice catching up. They have a house near Redding, California, but they spend most of their time on the road. They were laid up for a couple of months because they had to have the engine on their coach rebuilt. It seems that during the trip to Alaska the air filter on the coach failed. It collapsed and allowed a lot of dust and dirt to get into the engine, pretty much ruining it. It cost over $15,000 to rebuild the engine. Fortunately, the air filter company stepped up to the plate and paid the cost because of the failure of their product. Makes our fridge problem seem small by comparison.

Wednesday, February 24th we went out with Peggy and Vernon to a local Mexican restaurant, Eva’s, for lunch. Eva’s is just down the street from the park and is very good. It is a little on the high end side as far as price, but the food and service are very good. I would recommend it to anyone in Casa Grande looking for good Mexican food. After lunch we took Vernon and Peggy on a little tour of the area and did some geocaching. They are not cachers, but they enjoy being out with us while we are doing it. We managed to find five caches in a couple of hours, including one which was located at the Casa Grande National Monument. Vernon and Peggy had never been to the Casa Grande ruins and were very interested in visiting the site. We spent about an hour there touring the old Indian ruins. Vernon and Peggy said that they had been to a number of other Indian historical sites in the Southwest, but never this one. After our touring we went back for happy hour and then just relaxed the rest of the night. We had also heard from the RV repair guy that he had our part and would be at the coach on Thursday to install it. Yea!

Thursday, February 25th the RV service guy showed up at 9:30 to repair our fridge. The fix requires that the entire refrigerator, which is very big and heavy, be removed from the cabinet and laid on the floor of the coach. That is the only way to get to the cooling unit which is mounted on the back of the actual refrigerator box. Since the mobile repair guy works by himself I had to help him with the grunt work of muscling the box out of the cabinet. Jackie went shopping with Peggy while I stayed with the repair guy. It took about five hours to complete the repairs and get the refrigerator back up and in the cabinet. By the time we were ready to go to bed the fridge was cold enough to move all the stuff from the little loaner fridge into our big one. Everything seems to be working fine. By the way readers, this is the fourth cooling unit that has been on that refrigerator in the five years we have owned the coach. The first two replacements were done within the first year and were covered by Norcold under the warranty. Norcold (the manufacturer of the fridge) has had a lot of problems with their refrigerators and have been doing recalls for the last three or four years because of fires being caused by the failure of the cooling unit in the same manner that ours failed. We are lucky we didn’t have a fire. I think it was only because the leak occurred when it was cold and rainy and the fridge heaters were not working so it was not hot enough to ignite the ammonia mix. However, when Jackie called Norcold to see if they would take responsibility for at least our deductible on the repair they denied any responsibility and said there was nothing they can do for us. Jackie was so mad she started an “I Hate Norcold” web site! It’s a rotten company that won’t stand behind their products.

Friday, February 26th we set out again after lunch with Vernon and Peggy to do some caching. We drove about 20 miles to the small town of Maricopa and spent a couple of hours caching. We found seven, including one which was hidden on an old dining car from the 50's. The car had once been a part of the “California Zephyr” train that went coast to coast. This particular car had been moved here and was used for years as the train depot for Maricopa. Now it is just a display piece. We also had one DNF for our efforts. We had four sets of eyes looking for this one for 20 minutes and just couldn’t find it. Oh well, maybe another time. After our caching we did some shopping and then headed back to the coach. We got together with Peggy and Vernon for cocktails and then we BBQed some steaks. We had a great meal and a great evening. Ray and Suzie Babcock arrived at the park this afternoon and are parked right next to us. However, today was Ray’s birthday so they went out to eat and did not join us for the BBQ. Saturday was pretty much a hang around the coach and veg day. We did get together with Ray and Suzie and Peggy and Vernon for a couple hours of happy hour.

Sunday morning we woke up to rain. It had started raining shortly after midnight and it was very gloomy and damp when we woke up. We had been watching the weather forecast so it was not unexpected, but still not pleasant. Around 11:00 a.m. We and Vernon and Peggy left the park to drive up to Florence, Arizona for lunch. Florence is a small town about halfway between Mesa, in the Phoenix area, and Casa Grande. We were going up there to meet Linda and Ernie for lunch. You may remember that Linda and Ernie were on the same Alaska caravan as Vernon and Peggy and us. They were staying up in Mesa and had met briefly with us last week when were in the Yuma area. They especially wanted to see Vernon and Peggy whom they had not seen since the caravan ended last summer. We met at a nice Mexican restaurant in Florence that I remembered from my days of working for the State of Arizona and traveling around the state on business. We had a very nice lunch and nearly two hours of pleasant conversation.

After lunch I took Vernon and Peggy on a brief tour of Florence which is basically a prison town. It is also the county seat of Pinal County, but primarily know as the location of the original Arizona State Prison. Of course, now there are now prisons all over the state, but when I was growing up the only prison was the one in Florence. After the tour we did a couple of caches in the Florence area and then stopped at the Florence-Coolidge Elks Lodge. This Lodge had built a new building a couple years ago down the road from their old location and we had not visited the Lodge since the new building opened. The last time we were visited the lodge they were operating out of the American Legion post in Florence. The folks were very friendly and we had our free drink and then one more. The new lodge is a metal prefab very similar in size and appearance to the Lodge in Pahrump, our “home” lodge. We didn’t notice if they had RV parking. After leaving the lodge we stopped at the grocery store and then headed home for the night.

Monday, March 1st we just stayed in and relaxed for the day. I did manage to get out and get the car washed - it was filthy, and Jackie repainted our couch tables. That evening the six of us, Ray and Suzie, Peggy and Vernon and us all went to Macayo’s Mexican restaurant for dinner. Macayo’s is an Arizona chain and I have been eating in their restaurants since I was a kid. Their original location was only about two miles from where I grew up and went to high school. The food is very good and you get a lot for your money. The only bad thing is the margaritas are overpriced. Next time I’ll drink beer. Tuesday Jackie and I went to the shopping center after lunch. She wanted to check at Penny’s for a particular brand of jeans she wanted. She ended up having them order them for delivery to the Penny’s in Tucson, our next stop. After the shopping center we went to the Casa Grande Outlet Mall for a while. We didn’t get much, but the mall was big so we got some badly needed exercise. It was really a shame to see the outlet mall about seventy percent vacant. Only about five years ago it was a busy mall with a hundred stores, now there are only a handful. I am not sure if it’s the location, the economy or just the concept of outlet malls running its course, but I will miss them. They were fun places to shop. We had a nice happy hour with our friends and then relaxed for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, March 3rd we did our laundry and then we had an early potluck dinner with the six of us. We BBQ’d some carne and chicken and we had a nice homemade Mexican dinner. We all had way too much to eat. Ray made rice and Peggy made beans. Thursday afternoon Jackie and I headed off to do some more caching. We drove back up to the town of Maricopa, about 20 miles NW of Casa Grande, where we had been caching earlier in the week with Vernon and Peggy. The first cache we went to was the one that we had the DNF on and - bingo- Jackie had it in less than two minutes. We went on to find a total of seven caches but managed to get another DNF in the process. After caching we went back to the coach for cocktail hour with the group, a nice dinner of Alaskan Halibut, and then relaxed the rest of the night.


Friday, March 5th all six of us headed over to the Casa Grande airport, which was just up the road from the RV park, for the annual “fly-in” celebration. There were about 50 antique airplanes that came in for the show. It was very similar to a car show, except with aircraft. They were all parked out on the tarmac and we walked around, looked at the planes and talked to the owners. There were some very pretty old planes, most of them dating to the 40's and 50's. There were also five old Stearman biplanes that went back to the 30's. Four of the Stearmans went up and did a little formation flying over the airport. There were also a couple of vendor booths and food booths set up. We had lunch at the show and spent several hours walking around and looking at the planes. We had a pretty enjoyable time.

Saturday we got up and once again the six of us headed out just before lunch, this time to the Arizona State Chili Cook-off, which was being held at a park just across the street from our RV park. Very convenient. There were a number of vendor booths selling crafts and stuff and a couple of dozen chili booths. For $4 they sold you an armband that let you go around and sample the chili at the various booths. You were also given a voting slip that you could drop into a can at the booth that had the best chili in your estimation. They also had a small car and motorcycle show at the park. We spent a couple of hours walking around sampling chili and looking at things before heading home. After we got home I put away the stuff we had outside in preparation for our travels on Sunday. We are only going to a park about 30 miles South of Casa Grande, so it won’t be a long trip.

Sunday, March 7th - time to leave Casa Grande and start South. We are headed for the Monaco International Chapter rally in Tucson. However, we don’t go into the rally until Wednesday and we have to leave the Western Horizons park today, so we are headed about 35 miles to the Picacho Peak RV Resort for three nights. We have stayed at this park before and it is a nice place. It is also a Passport America park, so we can stay for half price. Unfortunately, just as I was finishing preparations to leave the rain started. Although we only had 35 miles to drive, we did have to stop for fuel. I had to stand in the rain for 10 minutes with an umbrella putting the fuel in the coach. Just as we got to Picacho there was a lull in the rain, so I was able to get set up without getting any more wet than I already was. Not too long after getting set up the rain started again, along with the wind. Monday was a stay at home and do chores day. It was still raining in the morning and gray and drizzly all day. Good day to stay home. Monday the weather cleared up a little bit, but we still didn’t go out anywhere. We stayed at the park and did some laundry and other chores.

Tuesday, March 9th we headed out after lunch to do a little bit of caching. When we left the park the weather was partly cloudy, but by the time we got about 15 miles North where we were going to cache the weather had turned nasty and rainy. We did manage to get two caches before we finally decided to call it a day and headed back to the coach. Both Vernon and Peggy and Ray and Suzie had arrived at Picacho from Casa Grande to spend the night. They were both parked right near us. We are all going into Tucson on Wednesday for the Monaco International Rally.

Wednesday, March 10th we packed up the coach and left about 10:30 or so for Tucson, about 45 miles to the South. We are headed for the Beaudry RV Resort, which is located at the Beaudry RV dealership. Vernon and Peggy caravanned down with us but Ray had left earlier because he was going to stop along the way to get his transmission serviced on the rig. It only took about an hour to get to the park and we were all set up and ready to relax by 2:00 p.m. The first thing we did was get in the car and head off to do some shopping at Costco. After that we went back to the park to relax. Ray didn’t get into his spot until late in the afternoon, but we managed to have our happy hour get together on time. We are all three parked next to each other. The actual rally doesn’t start until Monday morning, but since the rally was being held at Beaudry’s, which is a very nice resort, we took advantage of the cheap rally rate to get a few early days before the rally kicked off.

Thursday, March 11th was a leisure day. We pretty much stayed around the coach except for a quick trip to the store. That evening we went to Red Lobster with Ray and Suzie for dinner. It was great. It’s been a while since we have eaten at Red Lobster. Although the food was good, the service at the North Tucson store was pretty poor. Friday morning we got out about 10:00 a.m. so that we and Peggy and Vernon could go down to Tombstone, Arizona. Tombstone is about 60 miles or so Southeast of Tucson. Although we had been there several times in the past, Peggy and Vernon had never visited. We got there and had lunch at the Long Branch Café in the middle of town and then set off sightseeing. We spent some time in the courthouse museum and walked up and down the main street checking out the shops and watching the people. Tombstone is a very interesting and historical place. After spending a couple of hours touring we did a little bit of caching in the Tombstone area. Although Peggy and Vernon are not signed up cachers yet, they enjoy going out when we do. We found five caches in less than an hour. We then headed back to Tucson for the night.

Saturday, March 13th was another lazy day around the park. We did our laundry and not much else. Early Sunday, March 14th, Jackie got a call from her brother, Dennis, that her mom had died of complications from her broken hip. Beverly had been fading over the last week or so and finally passed away. Our original plan for the day had been to go down to the Titan Missile Silo Museum, South of Tucson, for the day. Jackie had been so interested in the missiles when we visited the Air Force Base up in Montana that I thought she would enjoy going down into an actual silo. They closed all the Titan silos years ago, but they converted this one South of Tucson into a museum and take tours through it. It has a dummy missile and everything in it. At first Jackie thought she could spend the day doing fun things, but she got to thinking about her mom and getting upset, so we cancelled the trip and went back to the coach. Later that evening we had another very nice taco salad night over at Ray and Suzie’s coach along with Peggy and Vernon and Clark and Judy, a couple that we met at a previous Monaco rally. Clark and Judy were parked right across the street from us.

Monday, March 15th Jackie was feeling a little bit better so the six of us went for lunch at a Greek Restaurant. Jackie discovered this chain called My Big Fat Greek Restaurant which has stores in several Arizona towns and she wanted to go. Most of the rest of the group liked Greek food also, so we all went. The food was wonderful. Most of the group had Gyro’s, but I had the stuffed peppers. I can say that the food was excellent and the prices not too bad. After lunch we all headed over to Costco because they had Absolute Vodka on sale! We never miss an opportunity to get cheap Absolute! We bought a six pack! That evening we had our first “rally meal” at the Monaco International Rally. Monday afternoon they opened up the new coach area so people could tour the new Monaco models. About 5:00 they put out a very nice spread of heavy snacks and a full, hosted bar. We ate and drank our way to happiness. Gotta love these rallies.

Tuesday, March 16th was the first full day of the Monaco rally. We started the festivities with a luncheon put on by one of the Chapters we belong to, Monacos in Motion. This is a travel club which puts on caravans similar to those sold by Fantasy or Adventure caravans. The big difference is that they are organized and led by members, so the cost is usually about a third of what you would pay for the same caravan through one of the commercial companies. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the rally site, going to a couple of seminars and going through the vendor area. There were only a couple of dozen vendors and none of them were selling anything we needed, so we got away without spending any money. That night we had cocktails and dinner in the rally venue. One of the nice things about the Monaco International rallies is that they provide three nights of happy hour, dinner and entertainment as part of the rally fee. From 5 to 6 there is a full bar, then a nice dinner, followed by a show. The dinner this first night was BBQ chicken and shredded beef BBQ. Both were very tasty. The entertainment was a couple who put on a pretty good impersonator show. The woman did both Mae West and Marilyn Monroe, and the guy did Elvis. They did about 90 minutes with several costume changes and it was very enjoyable. The lighting could have been better, they were a little hard to see sometimes. They had great audience interaction, with Jackie getting some attention from Elvis and me from Marilyn. Wow!

Wednesday, March 17th - St. Patrick’s Day. We spent most of the day going to seminars and meetings. Jackie went to the ladies luncheon for lunch and Ray, Vernon and I went out to where the new coaches were for a lunch of brats and green beer, provided by one of the coach dealers. That night the dinner was corn beef and cabbage, along with chicken for the non-Irish. The corn beef was very good - I had seconds, but the cabbage left a lot to be desired. It looked and tasted more like sauerkraut. The entertainment was a 50's rock and roll band that had most of the audience on its feet for most of the night. They were very good. In case you ever see them advertised anywhere, they were the Tom Tayback Band and they were excellent. You have to keep in mind that 95 percent of the attendees at this rally were at least over 50, with a large percentage in their late sixties, seventies or even older. We have found in the past that if you give this group some good old rock and roll they will get up and dance!

Thursday, March 18th, the last day of the Monaco Rally. I went to a couple of meetings in the morning, but we didn’t do too much in the afternoon at the rally. Jackie did some laundry and we went to the store, all in preparation for the FMCA Rally which starts in two days in Albuquerque. I also spent some time taking down shade screens and putting stuff away, getting ready for tomorrow’s departure from Tucson. That night we went back to the rally venue for our cocktail hour and dinner. This was prime rib night and the meat was very good. They also had huge thick pork chops for those who didn’t want the beef. They also let us take home some “doggie” bags of prime rib and pork chops for lunches in days to come. The entertainment this evening was a two person group doing a variety of music, but mostly country stuff. We stayed for the first set, but left early because the music was very karaoke and boring. Not too many dancing, although Jackie and I did get in one good two-step number.

Friday, March 19th we left Tucson about 9:00 a.m. We had a drive of a little more than 200 miles East to Deming, New Mexico. We parted company with Ray and Suzie for the first time in nearly a month. They are heading back West to California - Suzie didn’t want to go to the Albuquerque rally. We are traveling to Albuquerque with Peggy and Vernon. They have never been to a big FMCA Convention and wanted to have us show them the ropes. Normally the Monaco International rallies are held at places that are less than a hundred miles from the FMCA Conventions so that one can leave Monaco and go directly into the FMCA rally on the first day of parking. However, this year FMCA is having their rally in Albuquerque and there were no other venues near there that were big enough for the Monaco group. This means that we have almost 500 miles to get from the Monaco rally in Tucson to the FMCA rally in Albuquerque, so they allowed two days for travel. Our plan is to drive to Deming today and then head North from Deming to Albuquerque on Saturday, the first day of FMCA parking. We had a very uneventful drive to Deming, arriving there in mid afternoon and getting settled into our RV park, the Little Vineyard RV park. That evening Jackie and I and Peggy and Vernon went to a little Mexican Restaurant called Erma’s in Deming. They had been through Deming last year and eaten there and told us the food was excellent. Since all four of us are Mexican food junkies, we decided to try it. It was outstanding. The food was very good, and very inexpensive. I would highly recommend Erma’s to anyone traveling through Deming, New Mexico. It is right in the middle of old downtown, on Diamond Street. We also visited the Deming Elks Lodge, but we got there during the Lodge's installation of new officers, so they were unable to serve us a drink at the bar. In most Elks lodges the bar is closed during a meeting and the installation of officers is considered a meeting. We were able to get a lodge pin for our banner.

This is where I am going to leave you loyal readers - right here in the heart of Southern New Mexico. From here we travel up to Albuquerque and the big FMCA Rally, so it seems like a good place to stop the dialog and start a new chapter. The next episode will cover the rally and our travels back toward California. Until the next time, laugh, live and love! Remember that life is a journey, not a destination, so enjoy the trip.

A Leisurely Four Weeks in the Desert

Hello again friends. As you know, at the end of our last episode we found ourselves nested into the Desert Pools RV park in Desert Hot Springs, California. Desert Pools is one of our Western Horizon membership parks and we try to come here at least a couple times each year because it is close to our old friends from our “sticks and bricks” house days. We got here on Sunday, January 24th.

Monday, January 25th we got up early and were on the road to San Diego by about 9:30 a.m. We needed to go down to see Jackie’s mom who had fallen a week or so back and broken her hip. She was in the hospital in San Diego, near where she had been living. Jackie’s brother Dennis had been in Thailand on vacation when the fall occurred and had just flown back to the States over the weekend. Since we missed most of the rush hour traffic the trip took a little less than 3 hours. We stopped at a nice restaurant for lunch (actually we both had omelets) and then headed over to the hospital. Beverly, Jackie’s mom, looked pretty good for someone with a broken hip. She was pretty chipper and said she didn’t have any real pain, just uncomfortable being in bed all the time. Shortly after we arrived in the room Dennis came in and we all had a nice visit.

Speaking of hospital visits, we were really taken aback when we arrived at Scripps Mercy Hospital. To get into the hospital you have to go through a security checkpoint where they check you for flu symptoms. Then you have to go to a desk and register to see a patient. Each patient is only allowed a total of four visitors for the entire hospital stay. When we checked in there were already three names on the list, so they initially told Jackie that only one of us could visit. I went out to sit in the lobby, but got a call from Jackie a couple minutes later telling me that I could come in because we were “out of state” relatives. That was one of the exceptions to the four visitor rule. When we arrived at Beverly’s room we had to put on sterile paper gowns and gloves before we could go in. I guess the swine flu and seasonal flu “pandemic” has really got hospitals concerned.

After our visit we talked to Dennis a while about Beverly’s future. He said that she will be transferred from the hospital to a nursing facility within the next couple of days. She is not a candidate for surgery because of her age, 91, and a heart problem. They said she had about a 10 percent chance of surviving a surgery. Basically she will go to a hospice facility and be bedridden for the rest of her days. Dennis said he would keep us posted. After that we headed back North to try and be out of San Diego before the rush hour started. After a stop at Costco in Moreno Valley we got back to the coach about 6:30 p.m. and settled in for the rest of the night.

Tuesday morning, the 26th, we headed out after lunch into La Quinta and Indio to do some shopping and our laundry. After our chores we went to Cactus Jack’s, our favorite bar in Indio, and met our best friends Barry and Colleen for a cocktail. While we were there we got some dinners to go because we were heading over to the Elk’s Lodge for a meeting our the Indio Elk’s RV Club, of which we are members. We knew by the time we got out of the meeting we would want to head home, so we wanted to have our dinner already made. The meeting was fun, we got to see a lot of our old friends. After the meeting we headed home and had our preplanned dinner. Yea! Good plan!

Wednesday we didn’t do much of anything. It was “yard sale” day at the park so we put a table out with a bunch of clothes that Jackie had cleaned out of her closet a couple weeks ago. We were originally going to take them to the Goodwill and donate them, but we figured we’d see if any of it sold. We made $11. Better than a sharp stick in the eye. We were going to go out and do some more shopping, but got lazy and just stayed in all day.

Thursday, January 28th we decided to do some caching. We hadn’t been caching in about week because of all the rally activities in Quartzsite. We had a pretty good afternoon, finding a total of eleven caches with NO DNF’s. Yippee! All of our cache finds were placed by the same caching team, The Wheeler-Dealers. This team has way over a thousand caches hidden in Southern California and we have been finding them since we first started right here in Desert Hot Springs two years ago. Their caches are fun because they are very clever in the way they hide them. They are very in to camouflage. For instance, they will make phoney hollow bolts and put them in a hole in a phone pole or they may take an old spring and hide a film canister inside of it. Two of the caches we found this day were phoney bolt heads made of Mighty Putty with a small magnetic cache container inside of it. In one case the pretend bolt head was stuck on a metal guard rail and looked just like all the other bolts on the rail. We had to wiggle each one to find the phoney one. Very clever these folks! Good job Wheeler Dealers! After caching we went to the grocery store and then back to the coach for the evening.

Friday afternoon we decided to had out and do some more caching. We knew that we had plans for the weekend that would preclude any caching, and we wanted to get some more finds in. The nice thing about this area with regard to caching is that there is a very active caching community. That means that there are always new caches being put out, so that even though we have cached in this area several times over the last couple of years, there are always numerous new caches to find. Wheeler-Dealer alone has put out dozens of new caches in just the last month or two. So we headed out and within about three hours had netted 12 more finds, again without any DNF’s.

After caching we headed over to the Desert Hot Springs Elks Lodge. We know quite a few people who belong to the lodge, and we are members of their RV group, the Desert Roadrunners. Since it was Friday night we expected that we might run into a few folks we know. We got there about 4:30 and were the first customers in the bar. We did remember the bartender, Ron, from last year. After a while people started drifting in, but we only had one other person we knew come in. We thought about staying for Friday night dinner, but then discovered that everything they were serving was fried. They had chicken, fish shrimp, all fried and all served with French fries. It seems that last year a disgruntled member notified the Riverside County Health Department that the lodge was operating an unlicensed kitchen for commercial purposes. The Health Department came out all pissed off and closed the kitchen and set out all kinds of demands for any reconstruction. The bottom line was that they are going to have to spend over $60,000 to remodel their kitchen. So right not the only food they can prepare on premises are on the BBQ or in the deep fryer, both of which are located out on the patio. Everything else, cole slaw, potato salad, etc., need to be cooked at someone’s home and then brought in.

After deciding we didn’t want dinner at the lodge we started home trying to decide what to have for dinner. We hadn’t taken anything out of the freezer and we finally settled on trying a little Mexican restaurant located just down the street from the RV park we were staying in. We have seen a lot of cars in the parking lot of Manuel’s Restaurant over the last week and figured it must be OK to have the number of customers they seem to have. We pulled up and found only a couple of cars, but it was almost 7 p.m. and most RVers (this part of Desert Hot Springs is wall to wall RV parks) eat early. From the outside I almost expected it to be a bit of a dump and more like a taqueria than a restaurant. However, when we got inside we found a very clean, albeit simple, restaurant with a very extensive menu. They even had an Italian section on the menu, something you don’t see in a Mexican restaurant very often, if at all. The salsa was homemade and VERY good. Jackie had chicken fajitas and I had carne asada and both were excellent. For those of you who read that blog that occasionally find themselves in the Desert Hot Springs area I would strongly recommend that you give Manuel’s a try if you like Mexican food. It is located next to the market on the corner of Dillon and Corkill Roads.

Saturday, January 30th we headed down into Indio mid afternoon to run some errands and do some shopping. Late afternoon we went over to the Motorcoach Country Club (former Outdoor Resorts) to spend some time with Barry and Colleen. We got there in time to fix a cocktail and get on their little electric boat and spend an hour or so out on the waterway. The weather was great, no wind and about 70 degrees. Considering what I saw on the morning news was going on in most of the rest of the U.S. weather-wise, it made it even more pleasant. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening visiting and having a nice dinner with just the four of us. They did have some good news for us, they are finally getting what seem to be fairly serious nibbles on their lot. They want so much to be able to sell their lot, retire and hit the road like us. They have no offers on the table yet, but all our fingers are crossed.

Sunday morning we got up and out early to head South to San Diego and another visit with Jackie’s mom. A couple of days prior she was transferred from the hospital to a convalescent home in El Cajon, a few miles East of San Diego on I-8. We stopped for lunch and then headed over to the Granite Hills Convalescent Home about 1:00 or so. Jackie’s brother Dennis had told her that one of their cousin’s and his wife were down from the Los Angeles area visiting Jackie’s mom. Howard Rosen and his wife Carol were in Beverly’s room when we arrived. Howard is the son of Jackie’s dad’s youngest brother and is the same age as Jackie. Jackie said that she had not seen Howard since the early 1960's. Howard and Carol were very nice and we had a very pleasant visit. Howard is the self-appointed historian for the Rosen family and he had a lot of stories and pictures going back to the 40's and 50's. He also did a little bit of a “living history” interview with Beverly, trying to garner some additional family history. Jackie’s brother Dennis arrived not too long after we did so the room was pretty full.

The home that Beverly is in is a little depressing, but I think all of those types of places are. The hallways are full of very old, frail women puttering around in wheelchairs. Some of the women are clearly suffering from various stages of dementia. Although the place is clean, it looks a little tired - in need of paint and new carpet. At least the rooms are large and Beverly is in a room with just one bed. I am not sure how she would react if told she had to have a roommate. Don’t want to be around if that announcement is ever made. Beverly is looking very frail now, although she still seems to be in fairly good spirits, at least while everyone was in the room. She did exhibit signs that she is having some pain from her hip which she had not had during our past visit. I suspect that the healing process is starting and movement disturbs that process. As I mentioned earlier, she will not be having any surgery on the hip because of other health issues, so she will be bed ridden for a long time. One little highlight of the visit was a birthday celebration for Beverly. She turned 91 today. We brought a dozen small cupcakes and some birthday candles so we lit the candles and all sang happy birthday to her. She seemed very pleased to have everyone there to celebrate her birthday. After visiting with Jackie’s relatives we stopped at the care home where Beverly was living before she fell to pick up some odds and ends and then headed back North to Desert Hot Springs.

Monday, February 1st was the day that I planned to finally do my annual (sort of) cleaning out of the storage bays under the coach. When I do this I try to get rid of anything that hasn’t been used in the last year or two or that I feel we don’t need anymore. It took me four hours to complete, but I was very happy with the results. I would guess that I eliminated a couple of hundred pounds of weight (very important to a full time motorhomer) and cleared a lot of the clutter in the bays. It also gave me the opportunity to clean out some of the dust that accumulated in the bays during our trip to Alaska this summer. We went through some pretty dusty conditions and a fair amount of it found it’s way into the bays despite the door seals. We also went through our big Tupperware tubs of dressy clothes and managed to get down to a single tub. It’s big, probably four foot long, but when we first started in 2005 we had four of them full of clothes down in the bay. A couple years ago we pared it down to two and now we have only one. I got rid of my tux and all the accessories as well as a couple of sport coats. A couple of years ago I adopted a no tie policy and it worked out well on our last two cruises. I kept one suit, one sport coat and a few dressy Hawaiian shirts that I only use on cruises. Jackie only kept a couple of dressy jackets. Most of the stuff I cleaned out got thrown away, but we have a couple things that need to go into storage and a couple of bags of clothes that we will take to a charity. Although I am pretty stiff and sore, I feel good about my day’s work.

Tuesday we headed down into Indio after lunch to visit our storage unit and one of the thrift stores to get rid of the stuff that we cleaned out of the coach the day before. We had a whole backseat full of stuff to get rid of. Most of it went to the thrift store, but I did have couple of items for storage. Later on in the afternoon we headed over to the Jackalope Ranch Restaurant for an early dinner with our friends Jay and Donna Blumenthal. We have been acquainted with Jay and Donna for about three years, having met them at an FMCA rally. At the time Jay was the President of the International Area of FMCA. We had several mutual friends as well as some other commonalities. We both have Monaco coaches and they are also Elks. As a matter of fact, their “home” lodge is the Indio Lodge, which we belonged to before we “moved” to Nevada. They are also full timers. Jay is no longer President of the Area, having served two terms, so they are free to travel a little more on their own schedule rather than wrapped around the schedule of various FMCA rallies and meetings. Although they are originally from New York, they try to spend all of their winters in Southern California and Arizona as we do. Jay and Donna had been assistant rally masters at the INTO rally in Quartzsite, so we saw a lot of them for the week we were there, but they were busy with the rally and we never had time to really visit.

We met at the Jackalope Ranch, a new restaurant in Indio. It was built a couple of years ago, originally to be a new Babe’s BBQ restaurant. There is a Babe’s in Rancho Mirage that has been very successful. However, when the recession hit Babe’s backed out and another company purchased the nearly completed building. They opened it as the Jackalope Ranch, a general casual dining restaurant. At the time it was built it had the distinction of being the most expensive restaurant building ever built in Indio. Their current claim to fame is their happy hour, which runs from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. every day where drinks are discounted and all of the bar food is half price. The place has developed a reputation for good food and seems to be packed most days. We have been dying to go there, and we had several meetings with friends scheduled there over the last year, but all of them fell through. This time we made it and we were not disappointed. The food was plentiful and excellent and the drinks were pretty good size. Jackie and I both agree that the Jackalope Ranch may be our new favorite spot in Indio to eat and drink. For those that want to try it and are in the area, it is on Highway 111, just East of Jefferson Street in Indio. You won’t be sorry you tried it.

We had a very nice meal and a very nice visit with the Blumenthal’s. We will cross paths with them again down in Yuma in a couple of weeks, and I am sure that we will see them at the FMCA rally in Redmond, Oregon in August. Ordinarily, we would also see them in Albuquerque in April for the FMCA rally. However, they told us that for the first time in many years they were skipping a major FMCA event to stay in the Coachella Valley for the big tennis tournament. They are big tennis fans and their FMCA responsibilities have caused them to miss many good matches they would have like to have seen. This year they get to see one. Good for them. Since they were from New York and had lived their most of their lives we also got some good hints from them for our tentative summer 2011 exploration of New England and Eastern Canada. We haven’t set any hard plans in place yet, but that is an area we have been wanting to see for quite some time. After dinner we headed back to DHS and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Wednesday, February 3rd was a chores day. On Thursday we are driving the car up to Las Vegas to meet Helen, Jackie’s lifelong girlfriend who lives back in Massachusetts. She had called us several months ago and told us that she was coming out to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl and wanted us to come up and spend a few days with her. Since we knew we were going to be staying in Desert Hot Springs, less than 300 miles away, we told her we could come up on Thursday and stay two nights. We have to leave the park in Desert Hot Springs on Sunday, so we have to drive back from Vegas on Saturday. She is staying at the Mandalay Bay on the Strip and has a double room, so we will just stay with her for the two nights.

So on Wednesday I had to take down some of the outside decorations like the flagpole, lights and patio mats and put them away so I wouldn’t have so much to do on Sunday when we leave. I also wanted to get any items that might blow around if the wind came up while we are gone. The cat will be fine for two days with his food and water. I also took the car down to Cathedral City, a few miles South of where we are staying, to have my friend Barry check the transmission fluid. He owns and operates a transmission shop so I thought I would take advantage of his expertise before the long trip. The fluid was fine. The rest of the day we spent relaxing and packing, although we don’t need much for a three day, two night casual trip.

Thursday, February 4th we headed out of Desert Hot Springs about 10 a.m. on our way to Las Vegas. We had 277 miles to drive, but since we were in the car and it was freeway all the way up, we figured between four and five hours. We stopped in
Barstow for lunch at a Carl’s Jr. and ended up arriving in Las Vegas about 2:30. Since Helen’s plane didn’t arrive until 7 p.m. we had some time to kill so we went downtown to see if we could catch my brother Russ at work. He is a box man at a craps table at the Golden Nugget on Fremont Street. We were lucky to catch him on his break and got to visit with him for a little while before he had to go back to work. After visiting with him we spent a couple hours walking around the old downtown Vegas, hitting a number of the old, original casinos. I was very disappointed to see that except for the Nugget and the Four Queens, all the rest of the downtown casinos have become very run down and dingy looking. The Plaza, which was one of the nicest casinos downtown 25 years ago is a complete rathole.

After spending some time downtown we drove down the strip towards the Mandalay Bay, which is on the far South end of the strip near the airport. The traffic was surprisingly light on the strip and we made good time, so we decided to run out to the Bass Pro Shop sporting goods store a couple of miles South of the Mandalay Bay. I have been trying to find new .32 caliber ammunition for the Colt automatic I decided to carry in the car. The ammo that I got with the gun had to be at least 20 years old, if not way older. I know that my dad got the gun in the 50's and some of the ammo could go all the way back to then. Unfortunately, handgun ammo is getting very hard to find. I could not find any gun shop in California that had any .32 caliber ammunition. Since Bass Pro Shops is one of the largest sporting goods stores in the country, I hoped that they would have some. Luckily, they did have some ammo and I was also able to get a light holster to put the gun in to keep it from getting scratched up while in the glove box of the car. As we were leaving the store we got a call from Helen that her plane had just landed and she was waiting for her luggage. We told her we would try to get to the airport to pick her up since we were pretty close by. We drove into the Las Vegas Airport and found that we had no idea where to go to pick up passengers. The airport is huge and the signs are very confusing, especially since we had never driven into there before. We finally said the heck with it and called Helen back and told her to take a cab to the hotel and we would meet her there. She told us that the hotel had sent a couple of limos to pick up their party, so we would not need to try and find her anyway.

With that we headed over to the Mandalay Bay, left the car with the valet and went inside to wait for Helen. Finally, about 40 minutes later, Helen and her group came in. It turns out that the entire trip was comped by the hotel to Helen’s cousin Michael because he is a high roller at the Mandalay. They flew eight people out from Massachusetts and were providing four rooms, including a penthouse suite for Michael and his wife. Their whole group also had tickets to a big Super Bowl party on Sunday. Everything for the weekend, rooms, meals and the party, were comped. After Helen registered we went up to the room which was a nice big room on the 33rd floor facing North up the strip. After we got settled in we went down to the casino and had dinner in the coffee shop. We then spent the rest of the evening in the Mandalay Bay casino. I managed to get through the entire evening without losing any money. I didn’t win big, but I broke even, which is winning in Las Vegas!

Friday, February 5th was my birthday. Jackie and Helen were kidding me about waking up on my birthday in a hotel room with two women. After lunch we spent some time wandering around the Mandalay Bay, then went over to a couple of other casinos nearby, including the New York and the Luxor. Jackie and I were just doing light gambling, nothing spectacular. When we finally went back to the room Friday night I was even for the weekend and Jackie was only down a couple hundred dollars. We did have a chance to meet the rest of Helen’s group for cocktails. They were a nice friendly group. Michael is actually Helen’s late husband Joe’s cousin.

Saturday morning we were up and back in the car headed South by 10 a.m. again. This time we stopped in Baker at The Mad Greek, a restaurant that Jackie had heard about. The food was very good, especially for a restaurant in a podunk desert town like Baker. We arrived back in Desert Hot Springs by 3 p.m. despite driving in poor weather much of the way. We were in and out of the rain for the entire trip, with some of the rain very heavy. We were fortunate that it was a warm storm and there was no snow in the Cajon Pass on Interstate 15. The Cajon Pass is notorious for being closed in storms because of snow fall. By the way, for those following the saga of the new Jeep - it ran great! We went both ways (about 525 miles total) at freeway speeds and the car performed superbly. I think I am beginning to love this car again!

Sunday, February 7th we woke up in Desert Hot Springs to clear weather and prepared the coach for travel. We were leaving DHS and heading Southeast to Winterhaven, near Yuma, Arizona. It was only about 140 miles and we got on the road about 10 a.m. This was also our sixth wedding anniversary, so we exchanged cards before heading out on the road. We got into the Pilot Knob RV park about 2:30 and had plenty of time to get set up before the Super Bowl game started. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the game. Go Saints! Yea!

Monday we decided to have a “veg” day and just stayed around the coach playing and doing busy work. Tuesday we decided we were still lazy and had a second veg day. Not too often we have two stay-in days in a row, but it just felt right.

Wednesday we headed into Yuma to take care of some errands. Our first stop was the Verizon Wireless store. We had been notified that we were eligible for our “new every two” upgrade allowance so we wanted to see what kind of options we might have. Jackie had expressed an interest in getting one of the new “smart” phones with data service so she could get emails on her phone and also for our geocaching. We found that there were applications for the Blackberry phone from Verizon which would enable us to quickly check for caches anywhere we were. That way if we found ourselves somewhere with some time on our hands and no prearranged cache list, we would be able to check to see if there were any nearby. Our friends Jay and Donna have that application on their iPhones and we have seen it work. After talking to the guy at the store for a while we found that we could get the Blackberry Storm, a very nice phone similar in appearance to the iPhone, for only $40 after our upgrade allowance and rebates, and only an additional $30 a month for the data service. We decided that we only needed one “smart” phone, I could get by with just a regular old phone. We did the deal and now Jackie has a cool new toy. After the phone store we did a little more shopping and then headed home. We also stopped by the Yuma Elks Lodge to pick up a schedule, but we just ran in and got the schedule, didn’t even stop for a drink this trip. That evening we spent several hours playing with the new phone and learning all the features. We also did some setup on some of the features.

Thursday, February 11th we headed into Yuma again in the middle of the afternoon. We had to run by the Best Buy store to get some gadgets for the new phone, car charger, screen protector, that sort of thing. We also had to find someplace that had income tax forms. The government used to have them at post offices, but when we stopped at the Yuma main post office yesterday there were no forms. We stopped at the Winterhaven, California post office on the way into town and found they didn’t have any either. I talked to the clerk and she said that the post office no longer handles tax forms, but she thought the main library in Yuma had them. She told me where the library was. After hitting Best Buy we went to the library and they did have all the forms we needed. We used to have our taxes done by the accountant in Indiana that handled a corporation that Jackie was a limited partner of. However, that corporation was closed last year and we no longer have the complications of capital gains or losses, so I decided I could do our taxes myself this year instead of having the accountant do them for $250.

After I got the forms we tried out the new phone app for caching. We turned it on in the parking lot of the library and it found several caches nearby. We went to one of them which was in a park near the library. It took us a while to find it, but we finally located it on an old tractor that was sitting on display. Our first ‘instant” cache! Yea! After a quick stop at Wally World, we headed home for the evening.

Friday, February 12th we went into Yuma to do our laundry and a little bit of caching afterwards. We found six caches fairly quickly, including two which had eluded us back in December when we were here. It’s always good to “make up” DNF’s on a later visit. Later in the afternoon we went to the Quechan Casino, located just a few miles from our RV park. It’s a brand new casino, just open this past fall, and they have a great Friday seafood buffet. Unlike a lot of seafood buffets, this one is not all fried foods. Among other things they have real steamed King Crab legs. It’s about $15 a person, but well worth it considering the quality of the food. We had agreed to meet the Babcock’s and Wilson’s there for dinner. Because the place was so crowded we couldn’t get a table for six so we didn’t get to sit with the Wilson’s, only Ray and Suzie. We did have a great meal though - I ate way too much crab, as if that can happen!

Saturday we headed into town again, this time to go to the big swap meet near the airport. I say swap meet, but it is really 99% new stuff. We enjoyed spending a couple of hours strolling though the booths, and even bought a few odds and ends. After the swap meet we went back to the Verizon store to get my phone. When we got Jackie’s new phone on Wednesday they didn’t have any of the basic LG flip phones in stock for my upgrade. I got the new phone and we also signed up for Verizon’s wireless internet service. We have used T-Mobile for our internet since we started full time in 2005, but it is slow and their internet coverage is somewhat spotty. Most of the people we have talked to with the Verizon service have been very happy, so we decided to switch. Hopefully, we will be happy as well because we rely on our cell internet for consistent internet access. Without the internet it would be hard for us to pay our bills and stay in touch with family and friends. Fulltimers live by the internet and cell phone!

Sunday, February 14th, Valentine’s Day. We got up early this morning to head West to El Cajon, near San Diego, to visit with Jackie’s mom. She is still laid up in bed with her broken hip in a convalescent home in El Cajon. We found it was actually a couple of miles less to drive than it was when we were up in Desert Hot Springs, only 144 miles. And, all of it was freeway so we made good time. We got to El Cajon in a little over two hours. Before we went to the home we stopped for lunch at a place called the Antique Row Café in El Cajon. A couple of weeks prior we had been reading an article in one of our RV magazines about old Highway 80, which was the first true transcontinental Federal highway, running from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida. The article was highlighting the first stretch of the old road from San Diego to Yuma and had a write-up about the Antique Row Café in El Cajon. It sounded like a neat place, and it was only a few blocks from the place where Jackie’s mom is staying. When we got to the café we found a lot of people waiting, however, it only took about 25 minutes for us to get a booth, not too bad for noon on a Sunday, and Valentine’s Day no less. The place is a true café, only serving breakfast and lunch, but there was a pretty extensive menu, especially the breakfast items. We were surprised to be served our food in about 10 minutes despite the packed house. The service was excellent and the food was fantastic. The portions on everything we saw being served were huge, some of the largest I have seen. Jackie had a gigantic veggie omelet and I had a beef dip. I think there was over a half pound of roast beef on my sandwich, along with a huge plate of fries. I had all I could do to finish everything on my plate and the taste was excellent. Best of all, the bill was under $20 for the both of us. I would highly recommend the Antique Row Café for anyone who finds themselves in the El Cajon, California area looking for good service, good food and lots of it. The café is on Main Street and Ballard, a couple blocks off the I-8 freeway.

After lunch we headed over to the home and had a nice visit with Jackie’s mom and her brother Dennis who was also visiting. Beverly still seems to be in pretty good spirits, although, not surprisingly, she is getting tired of being in bed 24/7. We spent a couple of hours with her and then headed back East to Winterhaven and our RV. We didn’t even have a full dinner because we were still full from the big lunch.

Monday, February 15th we went into Yuma to have lunch with our friends Gary and Ramona. We had met them, along with Ray and Suzie, several years ago at a Monaco rally. Like Ray and Suzy they have a Diplomat. Gary and Ramona and Ray and Suzy hang out a lot and are parked together in an RV park near Yuma. We had a very nice lunch at Mimi’s Café and enjoyed our conversation with them. Gary and Ramona spent last summer work-camping for the U.S. Forest Service in Northern Colorado. They had to work five months, 40 hours per day each. They made minimum wage and got free camping, so they were able to both make and save money for the summer. Their jobs involved maintenance at a number of Forest Service campgrounds in the area. While the idea of being able to put aside some money is enticing, neither Jackie nor I really want to do that kind of work right now. We are enjoying our full retirement too much right now. After lunch we elected to head out in the afternoon to do some geocaching. We decided to go after a series of caches set in the farming country along the California side of the Colorado River, North of Yuma. The caches were placed several miles apart, however we were still able to collect seven in a couple of hours without any DNF’s. We did see a couple of interesting sights while caching. One of the caches was hidden on an old tractor in large equipment museum. One would not expect to see such a cool collection of antique equipment out in the middle of nowhere, but there it was. We also came around the back side of the U.S. Army Proving Grounds, which is on the Arizona side of the river, and found a big display of tanks and other Army vehicles. The proving grounds is where the Army does desert testing of a lot of their equipment. After caching we headed home for the evening.

Tuesday morning we got up early and headed to Algodones, Mexico for the day. Before heading to the border we picked up Ray Babcock at his RV park so he could go with us. Suzie, his wife, doesn’t care for Mexico much so she elected to stay home. We got into Mexico about 10:30 a.m. and took Ray over to our dentist to see if he could get an appointment to get his teeth cleaned. We had told him we liked our dentist down there and he needed a cleaning. While he was getting his teeth cleaned I headed over to the optician to get an eye exam and new glasses. The nice thing about Algodones is that not only are the glasses much less expensive than in the states, you can get them the same day. The exam revealed that my prescription had changed just a little in the last two years, but I went ahead and got new glasses anyway because my old one’s were getting scratched and hazy with age. While we were waiting for the glasses to be made we went to lunch at an excellent restaurant called the El Rancharito, had some good food and a more than a couple of margaritas and beers. We then went out and did some shopping around town. We only bought some booze and I got a t-shirt. I also went to the jewelry shop we visit in Algodones, called The Mine. In my opinion it is the ONLY reputable place in Algadones to buy jewelry. Everything they make there is real silver and well made. They also back their products. I had pulled apart a weld on a ring I bought there several years ago and they fixed it for me at no charge, plus gave us free beer and tequila! Over the years Jackie and I have bought a number of items there and have always been happy. One of the owners, a guy who goes by the nickname Memo, remembers us and calls us “the happy campers” because of the motorhome picture on our card.

After I picked up my glasses we headed for the border to go across and found the line to cross stretched for about a half mile. It took us about and hour and a half to get through the border. Jackie and I passed with no problems but Ray got pulled aside because he had bought a carton of cigarettes and when the customs agent asked him when the last time he brought in cigarettes was he said, “two or three weeks ago”. Turns out you can only bring in one carton per month, so they pulled him aside and made him pay a $10 duty on the carton. After we dropped Ray the Smuggler off at his coach we headed home for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, February 17th was a fairly relaxing day. We had made plans to meet with Ray and Suzie and Gary and Ramona over at their RV park late afternoon for cocktails and dinner. Until then, we had no plans. About 3:30 p.m. we headed over to Ray’s coach for the evening. We had some drinks and then Ray served up a great taco salad buffet. The six of us just sat and talked until about 8:00 or so before we headed home. When we first got to Ray’s coach there was a group of amateur musicians that were playing country music at a coach behind Ray’s. They were actually pretty good and we enjoyed listening to the music. Ray said that it was just a group of snowbirds who all came to this same park every winter and who get together once a week or so to play and enjoy their music. We had a very nice evening visiting with our friends. Thanks Ray and Suzy.

Thursday we headed into Yuma to have lunch with some other friends at Chretin’s Mexican Restaurant, one of the better Mexican places in Yuma. Charlie and Sharon are fellow Monaco owners who we meet on the road periodically, most recently here in Yuma when we were here in December. When we had mentioned Charlie and Sharon at last night’s get together Ray and Gary indicated that they would like to come to lunch to because they also know Charlie and Sharon and haven’t seen them since the last Monaco rally in Tucson back in October. The eight of us had a very nice lunch and then went back out to the Yuma Market Place swap meet to do some shopping. We had been there last Saturday, but we got a late start and hadn’t been able to get through the whole place before they closed. In addition, Jackie had a blouse she had bought there that she wanted to exchange. We spent a couple of hours walking around the market place, then headed out to Wally World for some shopping before heading back to the coach for the evening. Friday was a stay at home and veg day. I managed to get our taxes done (ugh!) as well as some other administrative stuff. Other than that, we didn’t go anywhere and we managed to have two meals in the coach for the first time in a week.

Saturday, February 20th, our last day in the Yuma area. We had previously made plans to attend a geocaching event this afternoon at a place called Lute’s Casino, in old town Yuma. Yesterday we got a call from Ray Babcock asking if we wanted to have lunch with them and Gary and Ramona one last time before we leave. They suggested, of all places, Lute’s Casino in old town. We told them about the event and that it would work out perfectly. So we headed into Yuma and had a wonderful lunch at Lute’s. The building that Lute’s is in used to be a pool hall and had been built at the turn of the century. The place had a bad reputation. This is what it says on their web site about the history of the building. Built in 1901 right in the heart of old downtown Yuma Arizona. It looks old, like old places should. It was built as a general store with a hotel located on the second floor, with the hotel balcony overlooking main street. You ask one of the Lutes why they named the place a casino? "There's no gambling now, of course, but years ago there used to be gambling in here. They paid off the local authorities, and there was a trap door right behind you that went down to the basement where the gambling took place." The place inside looks like there'd be fights and derelicts and stuff hanging around, but there's never any trouble. Everyone's mostly congenial. In the past decade it's become "chic", you might say, to come here.

We got to the place about 12:30 and there was a long line to get in. Lute’s is a very popular place. We got in after about 15 minutes and all six of us were served inside of 30 minutes. The inside of the restaurant is worth the wait to get in. They have all kinds of old stuff on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. They have a lot of celebrity posters and their web site claims that many of them have actually visited the bar. They have a very large staff and the service is excellent. The food is typical bar food, burgers, fries, sandwiches, that sort of thing, but it was very tasty. And the best part, the meals are relatively inexpensive. We had a great meal and some nice conversation with our friends.

After lunch we did a little shopping on Main Street and got ready for our caching event. We have been to several events over the last couple of years we have been caching. They are really just gatherings, “meet and greet” they call them, for geocachers in the area. The local caching club, the “Southwest Arizona Geocachers - SWAG” was putting on the event. The events are published on the international caching website, geocaching.com so everyone is aware of events in their area. Although we are not members of SWAG, all cachers were welcome at this event.

The caching event was preceded by what they call a “flash mob” event. The “flash mob” phenomenon started several years ago when phone texting become widely available and used. The idea is to announce some sort of silly public event or gathering by texting your friends, who then text their friends, and so on. The idea is to get a large group of people to just show up at some public place at a specific time, do something, and then disperse as if nothing happened. I have read about nude flash mobs, silly costume flash mobs, all sorts of things. This one happened to be a bubble event. Everyone was told to bring something to blow soap bubbles with, show up near the fountain in front of Lute’s on Main Street in Yuma at 2:45 p.m. and make bubbles. At 2:45 there were over a hundred people around the fountain. Someone blew a horn and everybody started making bubbles. It was really a pretty cool, albeit silly, event. After 15 minutes they blew another horn and the flash mob event was over.

Normally a real flash mob with just disperse. In this case most everyone headed into Lute’s Casino for the actual caching event. There were a couple of hundred cachers in there and we got to meet a few of the caching teams that we have seen as signatures on logs in caches we have found. We also talked to a couple of caching teams that we already knew who live in this area. Since we didn’t know a lot of people we only stayed about an hour, but we got credit on the web site for attending the event. We had a great time and it was by far the largest caching event we have been to.

After the event we did some shopping and then headed home for the night. I finished cleaning up the outside stuff, sun shades, chairs etc., in preparation for tomorrow’s travels. Sunday we pack up and leave Winterhaven, California and the Yuma, Arizona area and head Northeast to Casa Grande, Arizona, in the central part of the state. And with the end of this day I will close this episode of our travels. It has been four weeks in two different locations and it is time to put this on the blog and start a new chapter. Until the next time you hear from us, happy trails and wonderful days to all of you.

Kicking Off The 2010 Motorcoach Rally Tour

Welcome back loyal followers. Our last chapter ended on January 5th when we arrived at the FMCA Western Area rally in Indio, California. We arrived Tuesday morning and got parked in pretty short order and had a pretty decent spot. Not nearly as close to the activities as we were last year when we were able to get into the handicap area, but this year I had no impending surgery to use as an excuse to get good parking. At least we were in a paved lot with 20 amp electric service. We had not expected any utilities, water, sewer or electric and came prepared. I had a full water tank, empty waste tanks and a full tank of fuel so I could run the generator as necessary. Having the electric meant we wouldn’t have to use the generator. 20 amp won’t run an air conditioner, but it is enough to keep the batteries charged and work the lights and TVs. We are about a quarter mile from the main part of the fairgrounds where the activities are, but the weather is nice and expected to stay nice for the whole week.

None of the activities of the rally started until Wednesday, so we didn’t have too much to do on Tuesday. We were originally going to go to a late lunch with a friend of Jackie’s from church, but about an hour before we were supposed to meet she called and cancelled because she didn’t feel well. Since we hadn’t had any lunch we left the fairgrounds and went down the street to one of our favorite Mexican places, Taqueria Gurerro.. Jose Guerrero is an acquaintance of Jackie’s and he has several taquerias in Indio, as well as a Mexican market. The food is simple, but very good and very authentic. Guerrero’s is always one of the restaurants on our list of “must visits” when we come to the Coachella Valley. The newest one, and the one closest to the fairgrounds is at 48th Ave and Jackson, in a strip mall. When we go there we are usually the only non-Mexicans in the place, always a good sign for a Mexican restaurant. I would highly recommend Guerrero’s to anyone looking for good, fast and authentic Mexican. After lunch we spent the rest of the day hanging out at the coach.

Wednesday afternoon we headed into the fairgrounds for the first of the rally activities, a chapter fair. Chapter fairs are often held at rallies to give the various chapters an opportunity to set up a table and “sell” themselves to the attendees. Almost all of the chapters at this fair would be affiliated with the Western Area of FMCA, which is basically California and Nevada. There were several dozen chapters set up in the hall and we walked around and talked to several. We also ran into a lot of people we hadn’t seen in about a year. We have gotten to know a lot of people from our attendance at various rallies over the years and many of them were here. Most of them we had not seen for nearly a year since we didn’t do any rallies this past year. Our last rally was this same Western Area rally last January. It was enjoyable catching up with many of our friends and acquaintances.

After the chapter fair we walked over to the coach sales area to check out the coaches for sale. They don’t have as many coaches at these area rallies as they do at the big FMCA conventions, but there were probably 30 or 40 coaches to look at. At the conventions there may be hundreds to look at. We spent a couple hours looking at coaches and, as usual, didn’t find anything that made us really want to give up our current house for a new one. After looking at coaches we went back to the coach for the night.

Thursday, January 7th was the day the seminars started and the vendor area opened up for shopping. I walked over for a seminar on tire pressure monitoring systems in the morning. I have been wanting to get some sort of a system for a while now and decided that I was going to get one at this rally. I wanted to do a little research to find the best system. Essentially, the purpose of the systems are to enable you to watch the pressure in all of your tires, coach and tow car, while driving. This way if you have a tire going down you can stop before it gets low enough to blow out and cause damage or an accident. They all work pretty much the same way, there is a sensor that goes on each tire or wheel which transmits a wireless signal to the receiver up in the drivers area. Different systems have different types of sensors, but they all do pretty much the same thing. After the seminar I had pretty much made up my mind which one I wanted and later on during the rally I bought one. The total cost was $500 but I will feel a lot safer while driving knowing what the tire pressures are and having the alarm features letting me know when a problem is developing. After lunch Jackie and I both went over and spent several hours walking through the vendor area. After the vendors and seminars quit for the day we stayed to watch the parade. The Western Area rally always features a parade on the first full day of the rally. Various chapters put together costumes and floats reflecting the theme of the rally for the year. This year’s theme was “Glorious Days of the Silver Screen” and there were some great costumes presenting characters from various movies. The Wizard of Oz was a popular one, there were at least three chapters that did the Wizard. The parade was a lot of fun. After the parade we headed over to Barry and Colleen’s for a quick visit and cocktail.

Friday afternoon we walked around the rally area just meeting people and enjoying the various activities. Friday was the day I bought my tire pressure monitoring system and Jackie also bought a central vacuum system for the coach. She has wanted one of those for a while as well. Friday evening we headed over to Cactus Jack’s for dinner. W e had made arrangements with a number of our friends to have dinner at Jack’s that night and we had a table for 10 reserved. Barry and Colleen were there, as were Dick and Ginger, some friends of ours from Desert Hot Springs. We also had Ray and Suzie and Gary and Ramona, some of our full timer friends. Ray is the vice president of the 100%ers Chapter that I am the president of. We had a great dinner with a lot of nice conversation.

Saturday afternoon we went back over to the activities area and met Barry and Colleen who had come over on a day pass just to do some shopping and look at the new coaches. We spent the afternoon with them, looking at coaches and walking through the vendor area. Barry ended up buying a tire pressure system too, the same one I got. Later we went to Cactus Jack’s for a happy hour cocktail. That night I went out and picked up a Round Table pizza for dinner. Round Table is still our favorite pizza joint.

Sunday was the end of the rally and I heard coaches starting up and leaving at about 6 a.m. We weren’t in that big a hurry and waited until about 10 before we pulled out. We got on the freeway and headed East towards Arizona and our next stop, Brenda, Arizona. We had about 140 miles or so to drive and ended up getting to the RV park in Brenda by mid afternoon. We are staying at the Black Rock RV Resort for a week. Brenda is about 20 miles East of Quartzsite, Arizona, so we will be close enough to go into Quartzsite for some shopping. Quartzsite in January is the scene of several big “shows” including the RV show and the rock and mineral show. There are hundreds of vendors that set up and there are generally close to 100,000 RVs of various types parked in and around Quartzsite. It is really quite a “happening” for anyone who enjoys the RV lifestyle. Black Rock is a full service RV park so we have 50 amp with water and sewer for the week. After our week here we will head into Quartzsite proper for the International Area rally. At this rally we will be dry camping (no hookups), so we wanted to have a nice comfortable week prior. My tire pressure system worked well on the trip over. I was surprised by how much the pressure in the tires rose as a result of driving. The Coach tires went up nearly 20 pounds in pressure and the car tires about 12 pounds. That was driving in pretty cool weather at 55 miles per hour. I can only imagine how high the pressure can get in the middle of summer, in the desert, at 65 or 70, speeds I have seen some idiot motor home drivers doing. Scary!

Monday we decided to take a drive into Quartzsite after lunch just to see what was going on. We stopped at Tyson Wells which is the BIG outdoor shopping area on the South side of the freeway. During the shows (RV and rock) there are hundreds of vendors set up in this area. Since the RV show doesn’t open until later this week most of the vendors were still setting up their booths. We did walk around and look at the couple of dozen that were already set up. We also stopped at the RV supply store and hardware store for some minor maintenance stuff we needed. After shopping we headed back to Brenda and stopped in at the Desert Gold RV park, right across the highway from our RV park, and visited with Bob and Bette Thomas. Bob and Bette are the Secretary and Treasurer of the 100%ers Chapter of FMCA, of which I am the President. We have known them since our first rally in 2005 and cross paths with them several times each year. They are getting on in years, Bob is in his 80's, but they still travel full time, going back and forth across the country every year. They are originally from New Jersey and go back there every summer, then back out to the Western part of the country in the winter.

Tuesday, January 12th was a leisure day. I did spend an hour installing Jackie’s new central vac system, but other than that we just relaxed and hung around the coach. Wednesday we went out after lunch to do some geocaching. We were able to find eight caches in a couple of hours. We also had time to stop and do some shopping in Quartzsite in between caches. We also met another caching couple at one of the caches in Quartzsite. As long as we have been caching, nearly two years now, we find we rarely run into other cachers in the field. This couple is probably only the fourth or fifth we have met. We were at a cache when they drove by and stopped to talk to us. They figured we must have been cachers because they had just found the cache earlier in the day and saw us standing near it, out in the middle of the desert trying to look inconspicuous. Anyway, we had a nice chat with them and promised to come visit them later in the week. They are dry camping in the desert South of Quartzsite with a bunch of other people from Oregon. They are Russ and Nellie and are from Grants Pass, Oregon. They seem like very interesting people. Among other things, Russ is a hot air balloon pilot and they have their own balloon. Since we to the Grants Pass area frequently I see a possible hot air balloon ride in our future. After we got back to the coach we went to the Black Rock Café, which is in the same building as the office for our RV park, and had dinner. They had liver and onions on the special and we both love liver. The dinner was great. We have eaten at this café in the past and they always have great food.

Thursday we decided to be a little more adventurous in our caching. Most of our caching recently has been urban or fairly easy desert caching. Today we put our sights on a couple of caches that were true desert caches. One was in the mountains about 15 miles Northwest of Brenda, called the Yuma Mine Cache. When I lived in Arizona years ago I used to enjoy going out and exploring old ghost towns and mining sites, so I wanted to give this one a try. The cache was about 7 miles off the nearest paved road, but except for a couple of rough spots, was a fairly reasonable gravel road. There were a couple of places where I had to go very slow over some very rocky areas - don’t want to break our nice new Jeep! We finally got to the place and found a true abandoned mine site. There were a number of shafts in the area, both vertical and horizontal, as well as an old mill structure and “residence”, which was really an old dilapidated trailer and shack.

We found the cache and then decided that this was a good place to do some target shooting. I have a very nice old Colt 1903 hammerless .32 Cal. automatic that I had gotten from my dad when he died. Although I didn’t get the entire story, I remember him telling me that he had gotten the pistol from some criminal he had arrested back in the 50's when he was a cop with the Milwaukee Police Department. He said back in those days the courts would give you guns that you seized after the court proceedings were complete. I have done some research on these weapons and found that, according to the serial number, the one I own was made in 1920. This particular weapon was very popular with criminals and gangsters back in the 20's, 30's and 40's because it was small and light and easy to carry. In fact, it is referred to as a “pocket pistol” in the literature. All of the famous gangsters, Capone, Dillinger, and others were said to have carried one of these Colt automatics in their pocket as a “spare” gun.

I have had the gun in storage since my dad died in 2002, but I decided that, since I now had my Federal concealed weapons permit, I would get it out and carry it in the car. I already have a 9mm that I keep in the coach. I got the old .32 out of storage in January, but I hadn’t had a chance to shoot it yet. Frankly, I wasn’t even positive it worked. It does. We shot up a few dozen rounds just to make sure everything was working right and it performed very well for a 90 year old! Even Jackie got to shoot. She had never shot a gun before and was very excited to be able to shoot a few rounds at a stick. Since the gun is a small caliber, .32, it doesn’t have too much of a kick, so it’s easy to handle. Now that I know the weapon works I will feel more confident with it in the glove box of the car.

After driving out of the desert from that cache we went out to another desert cache that required us to drive about 3 miles out into the desert and then walk another quarter mile. We found this cache also. So for the whole afternoon we only got two caches, but we had a great time and saw some wonderful scenery. By the way, the car (which regular readers will remember had its problems early on) performed flawlessly. Yea!!

Friday, January 15th we headed back into Quartzsite after lunch to do some shopping at Tyson Wells which was now fully opened. We also had plans for dinner with Doug and Linda Stoudt, some friends from our Alaska caravan this past summer. Doug and Linda were the “tailgunners” on that trip. The tailgunners are the caravan staff that leave a campground last and make sure that nobody gets left behind or has problems on the road that go undetected. We hit it off really well with them on the caravan and, although we have been in email contact, have not seen them since the caravan ended in British Columbia back in August. After about two hours of walking around looking at stuff, we met up with Doug and Linda, and some friends of theirs from another caravan they had worked. Allen and Tina are from Calgary, Alberta and had gone with Doug and Linda on a caravan to Mexico. The six of us then went to a great restaurant called Grubstake, which is located about a mile North of Quartzsite on Hwy 95. I wrote about this place last January as having the BEST fish and chips I have ever tasted. Friday is all you can eat fish night, although the portions they give at the beginning don’t usually necessitate having to ask for seconds. The only problem is that the place is packed every night, but especially on Fridays. We got there early and were lucky to get a table quickly, but it still took over an hour to get our food. This was not a problem, however, because we had drinks and had a great chance to talk and catch up with Doug and Linda and to get to know Allen and Tina. As it turns out, all three of us had the same model of motor home, the Monaco Knight. Doug and Linda have the same floor plan we have, but theirs is an 06. Allen and Tina have an 05 like ours, but a different floor plan. Small world. After a very nice dinner we headed back the 20 miles to Brenda and settled in for the night.

Saturday was a chores day. We did our laundry for the first time in two weeks. Having clean clothes is not the problem, we have enough clothes for six weeks. The problem is having a place to put all the dirty clothes. After two weeks the corner of the bedroom we lovingly call our hamper gets pretty full. We know its time to wash when the dirty clothes start to approach the edge of the bed. We also put all of our outside stuff away in preparation for our move to Quartzsite on Sunday.

Sunday, January 17th we left Brenda and headed 20 miles to the Southeast to Quartzsite. We will be going into a rally on Monday and we had wanted to stay one more day in Brenda, but the park just couldn’t find a space for us Sunday night. We left Brenda about 10:00 a.m. and it only took about 30 minutes to get to Quartzsite where we found a dry camping spot in the same RV park where the rally will be held. Since we will be dry camping (no water, electric or sewer connections) it didn’t take too long to set up. Park, put out the slides and level the coach. Done! After getting set up we headed to the “big tent” and the Quartzsite RV show. The annual RV show had started on Friday and the “big tent” is just that, a huge tent in which all of the RV related vendors set up shop. The show runs for two weeks. We spent several hours walking the tent and looking at all the vendors. Some of them had also been in Indio the week before, so we saw some of the same stuff. One of the repeat vendors was the guy I bought the tire pressure monitoring system from, which was nice because I had found that one of the sensors in my set was leaking. The leak was very minor, but was a problem nonetheless. I took the sensor with me and when I mentioned it to the guy he immediately took it and gave me a new one. Good customer service. After our shopping trip we went back to the coach and relaxed for the rest of the night.

Monday, January 18th was the first day of preparation for the International Area Rally for FMCA. The rally is being advertised as a “back to basics” rally, which essentially means that most everyone will be dry camping in a big empty lot and the activities will be held in a big temporary tent. The actual rally activities don’t start until Wednesday afternoon, but the rally organizers have asked Jackie and I to help out as volunteers. I will be handling the making and placing of the various signs for the rally. This includes directional signs on the roads coming into the rally area and the various signs needed in and around the tent. I will also be the sound man for various activities and the MC of the talent show. They also want me to do karaoke one night. These are pretty much the same things I did for the International Area Rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin back in the summer of 2008.

I got busy making and putting out the directional signs, which kept me busy most of the day. The tent company came out and worked on putting up the tent and the rally parking crew was out marking the parking areas for the coaches. They are expecting about 400 coaches at the rally, so it will be busy. The major problem for the day is that some of the rally participants are coming in while the rally organizers are still trying to get organized. Normally, the various volunteer groups get to come in several days before the rally participants so that everything gets set up before the “customers” start to show up. This time, because of some contractual glitches with the RV park owner, the first day of early parking for the rally participants is Monday, the first day that any of the organizers can get in to start getting ready. Needless to say, it was a very confusing and sometimes frustrating day as coaches starting coming in looking for someone to help get them parked before the parking crew even had the parking laid out. Yikes.

The next day, Tuesday, I had pretty much completed my sign work so we took the afternoon off and headed back into the shopping areas to do walk around and do some more shopping. Later on that evening the rally had a hot dog and hamburger dinner for the volunteers in the tent. Unfortunately, late Tuesday (actually early Wednesday morning) we were awakened by a phone call from the lady who runs the nursing home in San Diego where Jackie’s mom Beverly is living. She told Jackie that on Monday Beverly had fallen while trying to walk without her walker. She didn’t seem to be in too much distress, so they didn’t call for medical assistance. On Tuesday morning when Beverly woke up she found she couldn’t get out of bed. The paramedics came and took her to the hospital where they found she had broken her hip. The lady at the nursing home said that she had trouble finding Jackie’s phone number, so that is why the call was so late.

Wednesday morning Jackie went over to the information booth for her volunteer duties. Later on she called the hospital to check on her mom and found that she was resting comfortably and in no immediate danger or distress. Since we will be going back to the Coachella Valley on Sunday, and had already planned to go down and visit Jackie’s mom on Monday, we decided that no immediate changes in our plans were needed.

Wednesday was the first “official” rally day and the registration and information booth was pretty busy. Later on that afternoon the wind came up pretty heavy and I had to spend some time running around repairing my directional signs on the roads. The wind would knock them down and I had to go out and nail them back up again. Thankfully, by Wednesday night most everyone who was going to come to the rally would be there and I wouldn’t have to worry about the signage on the roads anymore. That afternoon it started raining, but it wasn’t too bad. The grounds we are on are fairly flat with quite a bit of rock, so the mud is not too bad. Unfortunately, the tent doesn’t have a floor, so the inside of the tent was a wet and muddy as the outside because the water just runs under the sides of the tent. It wasn’t bad enough to stop the evening bingo session, however. Jackie and I both played, but didn’t win anything. For the coverall game one of the RV dealerships had donated a $500 prize which would have been nice to win.

Thursday, January 21st we woke up to rain. It had rained on and off most of the night and was still raining. I had to get up and out early, about 7:30, because I had to set up the sound system in the tent for the Frustrated Maestros. The Maestros are a chapter of FMCA that is comprised of people who like to sing and/or play instruments. They entertain at the various FMCA rallies. The International Area rallies always provide a breakfast in the morning and the Maestros play and
sing for an hour as entertainment. I was the sound guy for the show. Not too long after breakfast the rains really picked up and by 1:00 p.m. it was a deluge. We were experiencing the same severe storm system that had hit Los Angeles the day before. The rally had several evening events scheduled, including a hot dog cookout for all rally attendees, and a chapter fair, talent show and karaoke session, which I was going to MC and host. However, the rain never let up and only got worse. About 3:00 p.m. or so the rally organizers decided that they needed to cancel all the events for Thursday evening. The water was six inches deep in the tent and the rain was coming down so hard we could hardly see the tent, and we were only parked about 100 feet away from it! All of the activities were rescheduled to Saturday afternoon and we had the evening off. Not that we were going to go anywhere in the terrible storm. The wind was blowing 50 mph and the rain was coming in sheets. We had a very nice little river running right through the parking lot in front of our coach. We had also heard from some friends who were working a booth in the “big tent” at the RV show that the tent had been evacuated and the show closed because of the storm. The water was coming in a flooding the floor and they tent was blowing around so bad they didn’t think it was safe to keep it open.

Some time in the middle of the night the rains slowed and then stopped. Although the wind was still blowing pretty strong, it was not 50 or 60 mph anymore. We woke up Friday morning to overcast but dry skies. I had to get up and get the sound system going for the Maestros again at 7:30 a.m., but at least the grounds had dried somewhat. There was still some mud, but most of the standing water had gone. The breakfast and morning entertainment went off without a hitch. By 9:00 or so the sun was actually peeking out from time to time and the skies were only partly cloudy. Once I was done with the Maestros in the morning I didn’t have any more duties for the day. Jackie had a ladies luncheon at 1:00 p.m., but I just hung around the coach playing on the computer. Friday evening we headed into Quartzsite to eat at Silly Al’s, a pizza joint that we go to whenever we are in Quartzsite for a few days. Like everything in Quartzsite this time of year, the place is packed. We made arrangements to meet three other couples there for dinner, Ray and Suzie and Gary and Ramona, who are our Monaco friends. They have been mentioned in the blog before. Also invited were Doug and Linda, our friends from the Alaska caravan who were the tailgunners for the trip. We waited about an hour for a table and then had some pretty good pizza. We got the gigantic size for us so that we would have some leftovers. The pizza was not as good as it has been in the past. They seem to have cut down on the ingredients and it shows in the taste. Not too much topping and very little sauce. May be the last time we do Silly Al’s.

After dinner we headed back to the coach and noticed that the evening’s entertainment was still going on. The entertainment was The Rivoli’s, a husband and wife singing act. We missed most of the first hour, but caught the second half of the act and found them very entertaining. They are full-time motorhome people and did a lot of parody songs about the RV lifestyle. I would describe them as very Branson-like entertainers, and, in fact, they have played Branson several times.

Saturday, January 23rd, was to be a busy day. First I had my 7:30 a.m. call to action to provide the sound equipment for the morning Maestro’s performance. Then we had all the activities that we were supposed to do on Thursday night scheduled for Saturday afternoon. At 1:00 p.m. I had set up all my equipment to do the talent show and karaoke, as well as be the MC for the Chapter Fair. We had a very poor turnout for the talent show - I suspect it would have been better in the evening had it not been rained out. However, we did have a couple of singers and even one guy who came up and played a couple of songs on his mandolin. I was able to do a couple of songs as well. Later on I was judged as one of the top three performances and got a $50 WalMart shopping card. Yea! Free groceries. After everything wrapped up about 4:00 p.m. I tore down all my stuff and stored it away again.

Saturday night we had left over pizza for dinner and then went to the entertainment about 6:30. The Rivoli’s were playing again and this was their night for their Patriotic Show. They sang a lot of patriotic and American songs and did a tribute to the veterans in the group. Again, they were very entertaining and it was a worthwhile show to attend. After the show we headed back to the coach to rest and get ready for the next day’s travels.

Sunday, January 24th was our next travel day. We packed up and headed out of Quartzsite about 10:00 a.m., headed West on I-10, back to the Coachella Valley. This time we were headed for a Western Horizon’s park in Desert Hot Springs on the West end of the valley. It was only about 140 miles and we gained an hour when we crossed into California and the Pacific time zone, so we got to the park about 11:30 a.m. Because of the recent storms all of the mountains surrounding the Coachella Valley were covered in snow. As you come into the Valley from the East and go down the Chiraco Summit grade you get a great view of the valley. With all the snow it was very pretty. Once we got to the park we quickly checked in and got our spot, a nice corner space with lots of room. We are going to be here for two full weeks, so I spent some time putting out a lot of our outside decorations, like our flagpole and patio rug. After the travels and the setting up I was pretty bushed, so we just stayed in the rest of the day.

We are now in Desert Hot Springs and finished with the first two of our 2010 motorhome rallies. With that I will end this chapter of our blog. We will be in Desert Hot Springs for two weeks, and then head back down to Winterhaven, California, Near Yuma, Arizona, for another two weeks. I will probably publish another chapter of our lives in a few weeks. Until then, be happy, stay safe and enjoy life.