Thursday, January 26, through Tuesday, January 31, 2012: At the Colorado River:
It was about 150 miles from Palm Springs to Earp, California, the site of the Emerald Cove RV Resort. Earp is just across the river from Parker, Arizona, site of the Parker Dam. Most of the trip was across barren (and boring) desert, with surprisingly good roads, and that made the trip a piece of cake. There are a number of RV parks and other recreational places on the Earp side, most of which is Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land.


Across the river is a pretty depressing city, 22 square miles in size, with about 3,000 people, located entirely on the Colorado River Indian Reservation, with, of course, a huge casino and a lot of pretty dull scenery.

The RV park is huge, nice, and reasonably priced.

There is a place just below the dam on the Parker side, Tommy’s Paradise Bar and Grill, which has an all-you-can-eat Fish & Chips special on Friday. There were 20 of us from the RV park that went there on Friday afternoon.



The special starts at 2:00 PM, and the price of the meal starts at $6.99 and goes up a dollar every hour or two. By the time we left, there had to be several hundred people eating, leaving, or waiting. It was a lot of fun and the food and service were very good.

On Saturday, we took the 40-mile trip to Quartzsite, Arizona, to see this incredible place. There are 3,000 residents for most of the year. In the winter, the population rises to about 1,000,000, due to the world’s largest continuous swap meet/county fair, focused largely on RVers.



They are everywhere---in RV parks, boon docking (i.e., with no electricity, water, or sewer service) in open fields, parked by the side of the road. Everywhere. The place is amazing.

Sunday was our day to visit The Desert Bar (also known as the Nellie E. Saloon), an amazing place tucked into the Buckskin Mountains just a few miles north of Parker---reached via five miles of (rough) dirt road. The place is only open Saturday and Sunday, and only nine months of the year.



It was built on the site of an old copper mine. It's very unpretentious, to say the least; and fun. There had to be several hundred people there, and the entertainment (good) was a live band.



Sunday evening, there was a potluck supper hosted by some nearby neighbors. Becky's homemade chili was a big hit. Attending, among others, were Ron and Caroline Pennington and Larry and Robbie Sypkens, all four of whom we first met as co-workers at the North Rim, Larry and Claudette Van Dusen, whom we first met while working at Zion, and Bill Wheeler (Pat is still in Michigan tending to her father). It was a fun reunion.

Monday was devoted to an 80-mile roundtrip to see Lake Havasu City, which I had never seen and Becky last visited in 1971. Parts of it were kind of depressing; a bit run down. We walked across the London Bridge and hit the local Walmart Supercenter (always an upper). We were not impressed.

Tuesday, we visited the Blue Water Hotel and Casino across the river from us. It was pretty normal, and unexciting, for the genre; mostly filled with old people like us. We had a nice buffet lunch in the coffee shop.

The rest of Tuesday was spent wrapping up our stay at the river, preparing to head for Wilderness Lakes on Wednesday.

Wednesday, January 11 through Wednesday, January 25, 2012: At Palm Springs:
We started the uneventful 150-mile trip early again, arriving at the Palm Springs Thousand Trails preserve before 8:30 AM, and finding a nice pull-through space.


We came to Palm Springs without any specific plans because we intended to relax. But Becky immediately got into playing Pickle Ball every morning, anyway.

Late Wednesday night, there was a fire in the refrigerator of a motor home two rows away from us. The RV was totaled as a result. Fortunately, the owners got out in time. The firefighters said the fire jumped to the palm tree next door and it was harder to put out than the RV fire.


On Monday, the 16th, we met Chuck Conway for lunch at the Elephant Bar in Palm Desert. Chuck had selected the restaurant. It has a very interesting menu, and the food was wonderful. It’s one of a chain of 37 restaurants by the same name in several states across the country.

And, naturally, it was fun seeing Chuck again.


Shortly after arriving at Palm Springs, our electric fireplace went on the fritz.  I contacted the distributor, who agreed with very little prompting to simply send us a new one.  It arrived on Wednesday, and I installed it immediately. 

We decided we had to return to the Elephant Bar for another meal before we left the desert. It turned out that we did. John and Nancy McCrady called from their home in Durham, California, to find out where we were, hoping that we might be somewhere near the desert, since they had planned to visit there with Nancy’s brother and his wife. They ended up coming without the brother and his wife, who had changed their minds. I picked them up at the airport Thursday morning, the 19th, and we went to the Elephant Bar for dinner that night.


They are staying at the brother’s second home way out in the far reaches of La Quinta, about 15 miles from the TT preserve where we are. We spent most of the next five days playing with them.

On Saturday, we went to the Living Desert Museum in Palm Desert. We had been talking about doing that for more than 20 years, and finally did it. Wow! It’s a marvelous place.




A ferocious wind came up in the early afternoon, causing the cancellation of the 2:00PM animal show at the museum (we had seen the 11:00 AM show, so we didn't miss anything) and causing substantial damage in the greater Palm Springs area. On the way back to our RV park, there were places where the sandstorm was so strong that we could barely see the other side of the intersection.

Saturday night, we had dinner at the Jackalope Ranch in Indio. It is a spectacular place, and the food was better than good. The big surprise was that we ran into Becky’s sister Wendy


and Wendy’s husband Kai while we were waiting for our table.

We knew they were going to spend the weekend in the desert with some other people we knew, but we had no idea what their plans were. It turned out that they were all together at the restaurant, and their table was right next to ours. What fun.

Sunday, the 22nd, was a football day for me. (Becky made her weekly pilgrimage to Pasadena to spend the day with her dad, and returned in the late afternoon.)


I suffered through the losses by Baltimore and San Francisco. (I have no particular love for the Ravens, but I can’t stand the Patriots; and I have always had a soft spot for the 49ers.) At least they were exciting games. We watched the games at the McCradys, with some friends of theirs, Suzy and Jere Willcoxon, and Marilyn and Pete Richards. Marilyn was a sorority sister (Pi Phi) of Nancy’s at Oregon State a “few” years ago. We had a good time with all of them. The next day, we met the McCradys and the Richardses for lunch, then spent the afternoon visiting our home and Marilyn and Pete’s beautiful vacation home in the Sun City complex just a few blocks from the Thousand Trails park. (Their principal home is near Portland.)

While in Palm Springs, we rented four movies at the nearby Red Box: Moneyball, The Debt, and The Ides Of March, all of which were very good, and Friends With Benefits, which was awful.

I took the McCradys back to the airport Wednesday morning, the 25th, and spent the rest of the day preparing to leave on Thursday.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011, through Tuesday, January 10, 2012: At Soledad Canyon:
The trip to Soledad Canyon was easy and uneventful. We found a nice site at the Thousand Trails preserve in the B section, where we usually stay.


It’s interesting that they continue to have a substantial electrical problem in that area, and they do not seem to have any plans to fix the problem in the foreseeable future. It makes about 1/3 of the sites unusable, but it’s OK with us because it keeps down the congestion.

We came to Soledad because it is the closest TT preserve to Los Angeles, and it will be necessary to make several trips to (mostly) Pasadena this holiday season. For the first few days, we mainly got ready for Christmas---getting haircuts, making last-minute purchases, etc.

On Christmas, we went to Wendy’s for the family gathering.






Everyone was there. (Headline: Lauren Carroll returned her hair to the natural deep red it is. It looks great, and will likely fit in better than her recent Goth look in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where she is headed to college in January.)

The next day, we returned to Wendy’s because the Boggs clan was there, so we had another excuse to party.



Bill’s news was that he bought a Class C RV recently (a 24-foot Winnebago)---about a year ahead of his earlier plans---and expects to become a real RVer (though not full-time) some time next year.


In between other reasons to go to Pasadena, we (together) and Becky (separately) visited her dad several times. He’s home from the hospital as I write this, but he’s recovering very slowly and is a bit discouraged. He has 24-hour home care, so he’s at least well taken care of.


Becky found a gym nearby, so she is working out every morning these days. Zumba and spinning are now in her lexicon. My only exercise continues to be walking the dogs a few times a day.


In November, Becky received her annual voucher for a free dinner for two at The Jonathan Club in honor of our anniversary. The voucher was set to expire on January 2, so we decided to use it on Friday, December 30, also choosing to spend that night in one of the suites at the Town Club in downtown Los Angeles. Becky opted for the surf & turf special; while I settled for just the turf. Yummy!!!



On New Year’s Eve there was a party at our preserve. The highlight was a band with seven pieces (eight, if you count the leader who sang and occasionally played the maracas) that played a lot of oldies.


The band included a keyboard, a guitar, two saxophones, a trombone, a trumpet, and drums. They were pretty good, and Becky actually got me to dance a bit. In accordance with tradition, we left very early and were asleep by 9:00PM.

On New Year's morning, I continued a long-standing tradition by making my version of a Ramos Fizz. It's nothing like the real thing, but it works. I use lemon juice instead of orange flower water, vodka instead of gin, and soy milk instead of cream. I love it.


Over the New Year weekend, there were several great football games, and some lousy ones. In the Kraft Bowl, the Bruins forgot to suit up any offensive players, and at Denver, the Broncos put someone else in Tim Tebow’s uniform. Stanford lost a heartbreaker in triple overtime and Michigan and Michigan State won in heart-stopping fashion. And Oregon saved what is left of the Pac-12’s reputation by beating Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. It’s too bad Oregon’s uniforms are so consistently ugly.



The following Friday, we ventured to Pasadena to visit Bill Shelton again. He has improved quite a bit. We then went to West LA to have lunch at The Cheesecake Factory with Barbara Coad. We hadn’t seen her since Singapore. We had a belated Christmas with her.


On the way home, we realized why we hate Los Angeles so much. The traffic was horrendous getting out of West LA. There was so much gridlock, we rerouted ourselves twice, just trying to get to the 405 Freeway. Once we were on the freeway, it was bumper-to-bumper until we got halfway up the hill heading toward the San Fernando Valley. It didn’t help that it was Friday afternoon, but it was still ridiculous.