Thursday, October 20, through Saturday, November 5, 2011: At Soledad Canyon:
We went about 20 miles out of our way to avoid road repair delays and the inevitable traffic on I-5 as it nears Los Angeles, so the 215-mile trip took a little longer than it might have. But, I'm glad we went the long way. It goes through pretty country.

We arrived at the Soledad Canyon Thousand Trails preserve and quickly located a perfect site. It had some interesting trees, stumps, and boulders, though, so it took almost an hour to precisely locate the trailer to accommodate the slideouts and satellite dish, and set up. We stayed in and relaxed Thursday night. Friday, I went to the RV repair place in Acton that is scheduled to fix our landing leg problem, to scope it out and verify the plans. It turns out that the manufacturer is refusing to treat the repair as a valid warranty claim, so we have to pay for it. I understand their position, so I'm not very surprised nor terribly disappointed. Anyway, we're on stream to have the work done next Friday. The necessary parts have already arrived.

Saturday morning, Becky dropped off the dogs at a nearby pet resort we have used previously, and we headed for downtown LA to spend the night at the Jonathan Club. The underlying purpose was to attend an 80th birthday party for my old partner, Marshall Rutter, at the Valley Hunt Club in Pasadena. It was a terrific crowd of old friends and former work associates. We had a great time.

Sunday morning we picked up Becky's father and her brother John at Bill's house, and had lunch at McCormick & Schmick's in Pasadena. It was fun. We last saw them at the Smith Sisters reunion in Temecula in August, so we had only a little to catch up on. But, it helped the conversation to have only the four of us together, instead of the 29 that were at the reunion.

We took it easy on Monday, getting ready for the Wheelers to arrive on Tuesday. We hadn't seen them since March at Palm Springs. They spent most of the interval in Michigan, their place of origin. They arrived on schedule Tuesday afternoon, having come from Death Valley where they had visited a bunch of former Xanterra associates who work there or were visiting. The good news was that Xanterra was spending a lot of money upgrading the facilities at Death Valley. The terrible news was that Alma Norman's son was murdered in Los Angeles last week in a random act of senseless violence.

Tuesday and Wednesday we did little else but catch up with the Wheelers' news. Thursday morning we all had a great breakfast at the Crazy Otto's Diner in Acton.

Friday morning, we dropped off the trailer at All Valley RV for the landing leg repair, dropped off the dogs at the local pet resort for the day, and headed for La Canada, to meet Honoria Vivell and her beau, Richard Petrie, for lunch at Taylor's Steak House. We had a good time.

We then reversed the morning's activities and picked up the dogs and the rig. The repair went well, and I'm happy to have a pair of landing legs that are no longer threatening to break down.

The rest of the weekend was quiet. The Wheelers took their motor home to the factory in Lancaster for some repairs, and spent the weekend (plus) away from our RV park. On Saturday, they returned briefly in their car with Jerry and Robbie Sypkens along. (We worked with them at the North Rim.) They had just dropped in on the Wheelers---spending Saturday night and planning to head off on Sunday morning.

Our entire next week was spent preparing to leave on Sunday for a long-planned cruise in the Far East. Packing for the big weather variations we expected was quite a challenge.