Here we are, on the road: We’re in Palm Springs for another week

April 7, 2013 Lorraine’s report

Hello once more from Palm Springs, the 1000 Trails. What a nice time we have had this past week. Easter was a good day, with all the group from Lewis & Clark. The food and fun was all there; only thing missing-the family.

This was the first year I did not make Easter Eggs for in the rig; but Kaitlyn sent us a picture where she made up Easter Eggs and she put Nana & Papa’s name on them, only she turned Papa’s into an ugly egg by putting all the colors on it. She enjoyed herself and was she proud of her egg. Thank you, Kaitlyn-we enjoyed the gesture and the pictures.

Chuck has been working on stuff around the rig this past week. One day we took the rugs and laundry to the laundry mat to clean them up. Only thing was the place was closed, so we started to leave. The gal came out and told us they had a big emergency, it had flooded; and all the machines were closed, except for the extra large machines; which were the ones we needed. Of course, I also needed a couple of smaller ones, but did only the big one for all the rugs. So that meant, I had to bring the rest of the clothes back home to do them here. Oh well.

It was good to see Tim, and he and Chuck enjoyed their time together. Hopefully he had a nice trip back home.

Dorothy came by this past week, and we were visiting, and she mentioned that she was a captain for “Relay for Life” to be held this weekend. Of course, I jumped on that. I asked her about this and she gave me the information. I didn’t know where I would be to do the cancer walk this year. I try to walk each year, and this year it start out early. Usually, I don’t walk until July back home in Bellingham. I don’t know where we will be in July, so it was good to do this so early.

The day arrived and what a day it turned out to be. The wind was really strong, like last Monday, where we couldn’t see the mountains around here. The storm covered all the mountains here with the blowing wind. I didn’t sit out that day, too windy. We went up early to see if we could help Dorothy. Of course she was busy as ever. We helped out even though it was so windy. The next day my sinuses were pretty full of sand from the blowing wind. But it was fun to see Dorothy and help her out.

Now, I think back to my bout with cancer, it was hard, it was painful, I hated being poisoned every week by the chemo, and I hadn’t ever been that ill with radiation treatment. The one good thing was, when we came out of that time, we knew what was important!!! That is how we came to be here, on the road. It was kind of a blessing, in disguise, of course. The rest is history.

So that is it for me. Have a great week everyone..

Lorraine

4/7/13 Chuck’s report

One more week here at Palm Springs, enjoying the weather and the friends who are here too.

Last Sunday we had a pot luck with lots of members from Lewis & Clark FMCA Chapter participating. There were a few potential members who were there too, a good time was had by all. Lots of good company, good conversation with lots of laughter and good food.

Monday Tim came over and we started cutting the wires for the electrical changes I wanted to make. I have a surge protector that is hardwired and wanted to change it to plug-ins so I could plug in the autoformer whenever the power demanded it. I have been plugging it in at the pedestal when needed and some parks don’t allow that so now I can use it without calling attention to it. It took a couple of hours but we finally got all the stiff wires connected to the correct pins inside the connectors and didn’t even let out any of the “magic smoke” when we plugged it in and tried it out, YEA.

After we finished with the electrical work, I took Lorraine to out to lunch at Augustine casino. I believe Lorraine won more than I lost again and the buffet was good. We thought about our friends Joe/Alice who have been there with us before, they are now back in Washington at their home, visiting with grand kids and such. Wish you could have been with us!

Tuesday I had made arrangements for a dog groomer to stop by our place and pick up Misty for a much needed grooming. I usually give her a bath every other week but didn’t do it this week so she was pretty dirty what with all the dirt and dust around here. And the last time she was groomed was here too, back in Nov. I think it was. The groomer showed up and took her away, told us she would call when she was finished.

I received the parts to repair our front screen in the mail so I decided to attack that job in the morning before it got too hot. I took everything down and laid the parts out but I couldn’t figure out how the new parts worked. So I called the factory in Texas and when the repair guy returned my call he told me that part A went into part B. But I still couldn’t figure it out and explained what parts I had received. Turns out, what we have is third generation, they sent parts for 4th and 5th generation and they don’t match up correctly.

So I wasn’t able to fix it but they are sending the correct parts and they should be here tomorrow and I’ll try to fix this problem before we leave. Otherwise, I’ll have to take it down when we leave as I don’t want it just hanging on one side, I don’t think it would stay up for two travel days across the California roads.

We then loaded up all the rugs and our laundry and headed out to a laundry mat place we’ve used before. But they had a “Closed” sign on the doors, seems they had a water or plumbing problem. But just before I got back in the car, one of the owners came out and spoke to us. Seems we could use the big machines and do our rugs, just couldn’t do the regular laundry. But the rugs were the biggest reason we were there anyway so that worked out just fine.

We got the rugs unloaded and into the machine and I drove across the parking lot to a Jiffy Lube place to have our car serviced. While I was there, I got a call from the dog groomer, seems Misty had picked up some hitchhikers, she had fleas! It was a good thing we were washing the rugs and I stopped at Home Depot and picked up some stuff to dust the rest of the carpeting in the coach too. Glad we caught it early! Ants a couple weeks ago and now fleas, it must be spring down here, huh?

Wednesday Lorraine had to do the laundry we couldn’t get done at the laundry mat washed at our rig. I don’t know how many loads she had but it was an all day thing for sure. While she was doing the laundry, I made up a 50 amp extension cord with some wiring I had been carrying around with us. After doing the electrical work over the last few days, I’m glad I didn’t become an electrician, not my bag. And this wasn’t in some crawl space or hot attic either.

Later a group of Lewis & Clark folks were going out for lunch at Fantasy Springs Casino and invited us to go along. We agreed to go but drove by ourselves as we had to head out to Desert Hot Springs to attend a Relay for Life Cancer dinner for cancer survivors. Our friend Dorothy was volunteering her time with this cause and was to meet us there too. We met a few of the other survivors and more of the volunteers who help put this walk on.

Thursday was Wal-Mart and Costco plus Lorraine found a shopping mall she wanted to try. A quiet day compared to others but everyone needs some slower days too.

Friday was the Desert Hot Springs Relay for Life Cancer walk so we headed over a bit early to see if we could help with the set-up. Of course there is always something for folks to help with so we made ourselves useful when we could and met more of the folks putting this on.

The Relay started at 5:00 with the presenting of the Colors then the first lap was for Cancer Survivors. There may have been 10 folks in the first lap, everyone else stood around and cheered them on and encouraged them. I think Lorraine walked 4 laps then stopped and helped with the Luminaries again. These are bags with Cancer victims and/or survivor's name on them. The bags are set around the track after dark.

The only problem we had while there was the wind. We had steady winds of about 25 MPH with higher gusts. It really made it hard to put the table cloths on plus the luminary bags were hard to handle with the wind wanting to blow them away.

The Relay is for 24 hours, started at 5 pm on Friday and went until 5 pm on Saturday. Lots of folks stay at the high school overnight, they make sure someone is walking all the time. Some folks have sponsors who donate for every lap they complete, it’s a big money raiser for the American Cancer Society. This is the 14th year that Lorraine has taken part in one of these Relays across the country, she tries to make one whenever she hears about it wherever we may be.

Yesterday Lorraine and I went to the Swap Meet in Palm Springs. They are open every Sat. and Sun. during until “it gets too hot”. She managed to find a few items she wanted while we were there but it was starting to get pretty warm for us.

After we got back, Lorraine went to the swimming pool here and there were some of the Lewis & Clark folks there. They told us the group was planning on going out for Chinese Buffet later and asked us to come along. We agreed and had another couple ride over with us. Once again the conversation and laughter flowed, luckily we were sort of off by ourselves and didn’t bother anyone too bad.

We have also been over to Happy Hour a couple of times with Lewis & Clark folks at someone’s site. We sit around and solve all the ills of the world and have a good time. A couple of nights the winds were too high for sitting around outside so we didn’t go but when we did we had a good time. Some of the folks have already headed back home, the others will be mostly leaving this week. I bet this park will be pretty empty by the end of the month and the temperatures will be in the upper 90s by then too.

Our friend Tim, who was staying here at 1000 Trials, decided to head out for home because the forecast was for more winds to crop up. He got hooked up then stopped by to let us know he was leaving. Hope you have a good trip Tim, thanks for all your help with the electrical stuff too.

While I was out walking this morning, I realized that yesterday was the 6th anniversary of the day we picked up our motor home. Boy, what a fun, exciting and great 6 years we’ve had. I just checked and we have 64,667 miles on the coach and we’ve spent the night in 37 states and three Canadian Providences.

We’ve seen lots of this great country but there is still lots of sights and areas for us to explore. We’ve managed to visit with family and friends across the country and probably spent more time with our daughter and grand daughter than we could have if where were living in a sticks and brick place somewhere. We’ve met lots of people and made some very good, lifelong friends.

I’ve learned lots about motor homing for sure and we are still glad we bought the coach we have. And most important, I’ve spent all our retirement years with Lorraine while doing all this. I can’t imagine not doing this and hope to continue as long as we want and our health holds out. But like I’ve talked about before, we are looking for a place to live when we do stop, when ever that may be.

The weather has been getting warmer and warmer, getting into the 90s most every day and only dropping to the mid 60s at night. I promised I wouldn’t complain about it being too hot after the colder than normal Feb. and March down here so I won’t. But I will complain about the winds we’ve been having. Knowing we are in the desert, I expect it to be hot in the daytime and cool off at night but we’ve been having high winds this week. On Monday and Tuesday, the wind was blowing so hard it blew enough sand that our views of the mountains were obscured completely. Sand was blowing around so bad it was almost uncomfortable to sit outside.

I’m glad we weren’t driving our coach in these winds, they were bad enough that we would have probably pulled over anyway. Even with all the windows closed, we still ended up with sand all over the coach and inside the car. But at least, it’s warm, we’re in shorts and sandals and have lots of friends around. What a life!

We have to be back at our normal stop over in Sunny Vale for our grand daughter’s 8th birthday before next weekend. Not sure when we will get there but will check the forecast for winds and try to make it over on good traveling days. Still working on our schedule/itinerary after that.

We didn’t take lots of pictures this week so I’ll go through the SD disk, pick out some and get this posted.

At the Easter pot luck with Lewis & Clark.