Through the Desert Some More

Spent a few nights in Benson enjoying the nice 25-to-30 C. sunny weather, complete with a hot spa and nice pool, then headed out on the morning of April 8th for the Palm Springs area of California, Indio to be exact.  We really like the RV park here, it's a mix of permanent park models and people like us, three nice pool/spa areas, and palm trees everywhere.  We originally were leaving on the 13th, but decided to extend it until the 20th, taking a chance on what the Coachella Music Festival festivities might bring.

This is a huge (75,000 people a day) music festival about 4 miles from here.  it starts tomorrow for 3 days, but the town is already buzzing and motorhomes and campers of every description are filling up the park, and the city!  Just went out for groceries and saw cars packed with people everywhere, wearing a lot of interesting outfits.  Both cars and RVs have writing all over them in rainbow colors, like "Coachella or Bust," or "Carpoolchella," which is a promo for people to carpool to the festival and win a prize for best decorated vehicle.

Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre are performing, along with over 50 or so other artists, both local and international.  They are having the exact same lineup again next weekend because they can't fit in all the people that want to go.  Both weekends have been sold out for a long time.  Yee haw!

Above, early morning in the Arizona desert

Above, a green adobe on the way into Douglas, AZ

Above:  Glamis, the Imperial Valley Sandunes, where thousands come to camp and run their ATVs and dune buggies and just generally party!

Above:  On the way into one of many Border Patrol Checkpoints along I-8 in southern Arizona near Mexicali, Mexico (you can see the wall separating Mexico and the US in the background)

Above: I-8 is a much nicer way to travel with the RV than I-10, you go through some nice BLM land reserves with thousands of big Saguaro cactus

Above: One of the dingy little stores in Douglas, Arizona.  Note the yellow tulle foo-foo prom dress

"Welcome to Glamis"

Videos of the RV Park in La Quinta, California

Walked the dogs around taking video clips of the park at 7 a.m. this morning. I will upload them to Photobucket in a separate album and put a link to it in here so those interested can view them:

Click Here for Videos of La Quinta, CA

Just another day in paradise...

It's 5:30 p.m., 22 degrees C., and we are ready to hit the pool and hot tub, watching the hummingbirds zooming around the surrounding hedges of thick, bright orange lipstick flowers as the dusky pink sky darkens into nightfall and the tall palm trees stand sentinel over all.

And yes, that was all one sentence, perfectly punctuated.

Redding, Calfornia

Just pulling in for the night. There was snow on the roadside going through the mountain passes from Oregon to California today. That's all the white stuff we want to see!

On our way to Coalinga tomorrow, then Palm Springs on Thursday :)

Corning, California

We used this as just an overnight stay on the way to Junction City.  It's just south of Redding, and it was still nice and sunny and warm here, about 81 degrees.  The small park was a nicely treed place behind the Subway Sandwich shop in a small town.  We went to a Taco Bell for dinner and the staff were all excited about the new double taco for 89 cents.  One at a time, they would come over and ask us how it tasted because none of them had tried it yet.  It was typical Taco Bell food, but we didn't feel like cooking after being on the road for 8 hours!

Kind of reminded me of the kid working in the kitchen at the Cowboy Cafe in Roswell, New Mexico.  This is a small cafe run as a hobby by a guy who likes to keep busy in his retirement.  He bakes all the pies that they sell there, and they are really tasty.  Anyway, the first day we went there, we get asked the usual question about where we're from (we can't help it if we sound like Yankees, we were just on our way south and hadn't developed the suthun' drawl yet). 

So awhile later, out comes the (obviously) dishwasher kid, Tyler, who is about 17 years old.  We figured he was the dishwasher because he had on blue rubber gloves to his elbows.  Anyway, he does his best impersonation of a waiter and asks us how everything was.  It was rather incongruous with the rubber gloves.  So we said it was great.  And then he blurts out, "oh, darn, they were right.  You guys don't talk funny at all."  And he's dead serious.  Ha!  So my cohort gave him a "Have a nice day, eh," in his best McKenzie Brothers' voice, and then Tyler's face lit right up.  I guess we made his day after all!

Coalinga, California

We're heading out tomorrow morning for Coalinga, California, about 6 hours from here northwest.  For anyone who may be paying the slightest bit of attention to all my efforts here, yes, we did stay there on the way southward last year.  It's the place with the huge almond and pistachio and orange groves all around it, and not much else.  We're staying there for a couple of nights, then pushing on towards Junction City, Oregon, where we're going to spend a few days at the RV dealership getting some warranty work done that was left over from last November.

Anyhoo, we're going to be taking a different route up there from last year, and going through Pasadena, then up the I-5.  The weather looks promising.  When I called to make a reservation a few days ago, I was informed that it actually had snowed there the day before, briefly, before turning into rain.  The weird weather continues!

Indio, California (Palm Springs)

Back in sunny California again.  It's a little warmer now than it was when we left on January 2nd this year.  We arrived at the start of a 2-day heat wave with temperatures around 105 degrees F.  Lucky for us that the RV park has 3 pools and 2 spas, and lucky for the dogs that the RV has air conditioning!

There are a lot of Canadians staying in this park.  We really miss Texas.  People just aren't as friendly as they are there.  And there's no Texas BBQ here either.  Am I whining?  Get used to it...

A guy just pulled in that we met in Roswell at the park we were staying at.  He had said his wife had some golf tournaments here in La Quinta the first week of April, so we told him about this park, and here he is!  Kind of cool to see someone further down the road again!

The citrus trees here had more fruit on them in December than they do now, and there were more hummngbirds flitting about, so I guess some of them have started to move a bit northward.  Even though we kind of know that once we start moving northward in a week or so, the weather isn't going to be summer-like anymore, we are still going to be in denial til we get into it!  We will be in Oregon around April 18th, and back in Canada at the beginning of May. 

Time to go lounge by the pool, then barbecue some chicken for supper.  I'll add some photos to this later :)  Meanwhile, check out the Photorama and Random Observations pages for photos from Texas and Arizona...

Sentinel of the Desert

The hummingbirds seem to be more active in the last couple of cold mornings.  Once the sun hits the flowers, there are lots of them zooming around the park.  Across the road there is a patch of desert, where we take the dogs to run, and there has been a solitary shimmering, emerald-green hummer over there for a few mornings now.  He sits on the top branch of a big sage brush and chatters away like a budgie.  Today I got quite close to him and got a few photos.  When I got to about 10 feet of him, he buzzed over to see what I was doing, then took off.  We are pulling out tomorrow for Arizona, and I shall miss my little sentinel of the desert...

Happy New Year

 Above:  Walking in the desert with Nachelnik ambling ahead, always the guardian

This RV park was deserted at about 5:00 p.m., cars with dressed-up people exiting in large numbers to New Year's celebrations, with most of the remaining in attendance at the club house for the dinner/dance (this year's theme:  Senior Prom).  There was a frost warning for last night, but after doing laundry and spending some time in the outdoor pool and spa, the temperature read a balmy (choke) 40 degrees at 10:00 p.m.  The cold may have also played a part in why there was not a soul to be seen anywhere after dark (see prior Oz Syndrome post).

 Above:  One of the pool and spa areas at the park

We went outside at midnight to see if there might be some fireworks.  There were a lot of firecrackers and cherry bombs going off in the distance, a few people hollering and whistling at the far end of the park, and then 3 shots rang out from a large-caliber gun of some description, about 500 yards away from us, then some automatic weapon fire a ways away. Someone fired up the song "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang about two streets over, then you could hear the dull roar of car horns and crowds screaming in the town a few miles from here, and then that was the end of that, after about 10 minutes total.

About an hour later we heard a crash on the street outside, and then the sound of something being dragged along that had the sound of metal with sparks flying.  We looked outside and discovered it was one of the park residents trying to navigate his golf cart home and failing miserably.  I don't know what he hit, but he got out to look at the front of his cart, and a crowd of people, glasses in hand (in true Julian fashion -- hey, we ARE in a trailer park, even if it's more posh that Sunnyvale) were all turning away and wandering off, excitement over for the time being.

Happy New Year, everyone!

 Above:  Fuera patiently waiting to hit the road to Arizona (Aaron checking tire pressures)

Above:  The 99-dollar stainless-steel BBQ from Costco:  State of the art, 2 burners, about 2 feet wide but nicely portable with folding legs :)

Oz Syndrome

It rained here yesterday, and tonight it is 43 degrees out there, so it's been much colder than usual, apparently, according to the locals.  We walked the dogs past a group of people hanging out in front of someone's diesel-pusher this afternoon, and when they found out we were from Canada, one of them said, "We apologize for the weather!"

We have now experienced 4 out of the 5 days a year it supposedly rains here.  The park looks absolutely deserted when the skies are cloudy, and when the sun reappears it is like a scene from the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy's house lands on the witch and the place looks deserted until Glinda comes along with her "come out, come out, wherever you are ..." song, and then the Munchkins all pop out in full force.  It's a carnival atmosphere here when the clouds dissipate, with people on bicycles, people in golf carts, people walking dogs, people walking themselves, people in groups, people with suspicious-looking cups in hand, drinking as they amble along together.  I haven't heard anyone singing anything about a dead witch yet, though, and most of them seem taller than in the movie.

Bingo Tonight!  Oh, yeah!

Indio/La Quinta/Palm Springs, California

Another desert, this time the north end of the Sonora Desert and about 100 miles from Mexicali.  The Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountains make a nice backdrop to this desert, and they have snow on the tops right now, which is a great contrast with the palm trees down here on the desert floor.

We are staying in an RV resort from the 20th through New Year's as a treat to ourselves, and it's a great park with 3 pools, 2 spas, friendly people, and lots of great dog lovers.  As an aside, we had been told by someone before we left, who apparently drives around down here in an RV every winter, that it would be hard for us to find campgrounds/resorts that allow dogs.  We would like to share with this person that what you focus on expands, and our experience has been exactly the opposite, and we have been welcomed with our 3 big dogs and 3 cats at lots of different types of places.  People always want to meet Nachelnik and learn about him, all have admired and complimented him, and we have met lots of people through having him around.

It's Christmas Eve and we spent the day lounging around on the patio, enjoying the 20-plus degree sunshine.  After our barbecue tonight, an entourage of carolers made the rounds, consisting of a bunch of golf carts and people strolling along, singing carols as they went.  There is a hot buttered rum party for everyone at someone's place tonight, too.  This resort consists of a mixture of permanent park model homes, huge motorhome/diesel-pusher buses, and spots for people who come for shorter times.  The guy next to us has lived here full-time for 5 years.  He's a short-haul truck driver originally from North Dakota and now works and lives here by choice.   He said there's only him and about 6 others that live in this 500-spot park during the summer. 

The first 3 days we were here, there was major rain and flooding, and the internet was even down due to water in the phone lines.  It apparently rains here about 5 days a year, and we were here for 3 of them.  Hopefully that's the end of all the weird weather and we will have sunshine from here to Texas!

Barstow/Yermo, California

Yermo is a spit out the window on your way from Barstow, California, to Arizona on Hwy. 40.  It's in the Mojave desert, California.  There's a U.S. Marines logistics base nearby, and apparently there is a Hummer auction there in the near future, with all bids starting at $300.  

The sand around here is more like fine gravel with beige/brown tones.  Lots of creosote bushes with Joshua trees in some spots more than others.  The campground is a couple of miles from the restored silver mining town of Calico, which has been restored to the likes of Barkerville, with original buildings now housing a variety of shops and eateries.  The town is on the side of a bare mountain and has old mine shafts everywhere, which makes it kind of interesting, and it does have a great name.

We got there just after noon on a Saturday, and there were not many people about, but then a couple of tour vans arrived, and then a large bus from L.A., filled primarily with Asian tourists dressed inappropriately for hiking around old silver mines.

The campground was really nice with lots of oleander shrubs and trees giving each campsite quite a bit of privacy and shade, but the minute you walked out the back gate, you realized you were indeed in the middle of the desert.  It started raining the second day we were there.  It poured from 4:00 p.m. to after midnight.  The next day there were flash flood warnings in the area and heavy rain warnings for the San Bernardino area, which was the way we were heading to get over to the Palm Springs area.

It poured rain all the way over the mountains and down into San Bernardino.  There was freeway construction that had reduced the traffic to one lane in each direction.  We found out later that night why the Channel 2 TV van was there, setting up their equipment.  The cause of the one-lane traffic was due to a mudslide in the center of the construction, and a little while after we got through they closed the freeway until the next day.

Burgers and Windmills

Just on the brink of the Mojave, we came across our first sight of operational windmills used for generating local power.  They looked like a set of child's jacks tossed across the hillsides.  It is really heartening to see the large number of windmills that are in use throughout the Mojave and into the Sonora Desert as well.

One of California's best assets is the In-n-Out burger.  Family owned and operated, a private company since at least the ‘40s, these people have stuck with doing what they do best, which is providing great-tasting hamburgers made with the freshest ingredients at low prices.  The menu is basic.  There is a choice of a hamburger, cheeseburger, or a double-patty cheeseburger (the double-double), fries (you can watch the guy chopping up the potatoes and throwing them into the fryer), shakes in 3 flavours, and about 3 types of sodas.  Sounds simple, it IS simple, so why can't somebody get this right in Canada, too?  We were at the In-N-Out in Palm Desert, with the parking lot full of cars, the drive-thru with at least 25 cars waiting, and the McDonald’s across the street had literally 2 cars in their lot.  Speaks for itself.  More has to be said about the In-n-Out burger itself.  Fresh, fresh bun, tasty melted cheese in generous proportion, a thick slab of crispy iceberg lettuce (not shredded, not chopped, it’s an actual slab), a good slice of fresh, crunchy onion, normal size beef patty that is NOT greasy, and a great-tasting sauce complete the burger.  Pure heaven!

Mojave Desert

Travelled over the Tehachapi Mountains following the historic Pacific Coast Trail over to the Mojave Desert.  We are staying here for a couple of nights at a campground full of trees and oleander hedges that make this one of the nicest ones we've seen so far, even though it's in the middle of a desert!  We took the dogs for a run behind the campsite and noticed that there are a few RV boondockers about a mile north of the campground further up off the road and into the desert.  As has been the case with our trip so far, this campground only has a handful of people staying in it right now.

Coalinga, California

We travelled from Sacramento to Coalinga today.  This RV park backs onto miles of almond and pistachio orchards where we are allowed to take the dogs for exercise.  Very cool!  This park is situated just off the I-5 and is surrounded by miles of farmland.  There is a large orange grove across the street, too, with the trees full of oranges.  We are spending two nights here and then staying in Bakersfield in a park that is situated right IN an orange grove, and we can pick as many oranges as we want, so we'll be stocking up, needless to say...

Pistachio Nuts on Trees

 We are planning on spending a week through Christmas in the Palm Springs area, then heading over into Arizona and New Mexico.  The temperatures have been really comfortable, with daytime around 16 and nights around 45 to 50 degrees.

Brookings, Fortuna, Willits

Brookings is in the "banana belt" of Oregon, apparently, and we really felt a change in temperature when we got there.  It was a balmy steady 13 degrees.  The Coast Guard was practicing out in the giant breakers about 50 feet from the beach in the morning.  They had the type of boats that can roll over and completely right themselves after being tumbled around in the huge waves.  It was awesome to see them doing their maneuvers right in front of us.

We spent the next day traveling the Redwood Highway to Fortuna, California, and stayed a couple of nights there.  The town looks like it must have looked at least 50 years ago, with lots of old buildings and wonderful old houses.  I think the weather is going to stay warm from now on, although it's been damp so far.  There were lots of happy tree frogs in the campground, and a great horned owl came and hooted most of the two nights we were there.

We're now in Willits and will be going to Sacramento in a couple of days, then down to the Desert Springs area for Christmastime.  The band of gypsys are all doing well and are not missing the snow and cold one little bit!