Winter 2015 – Southwest
Safari
December 30, 2014 – 960 Clay St. has officially closed the 2014 holiday season. Most of
the Christmas Stuff has been put away
in their respective bins, lollipop tree taken back outside, and the house
roughly restored to some sense of order.
Loading up food, clothes,
dogs and ourselves into our MoHo we were ready to head south to maybe find some
sunshine and warmth? First nights stop is Red Bluff, CA. We enjoy 3 nights at
our regular “hang out” – Durango RV Park. We enjoyed a delicious feast of King
Crab Legs for New Years Eve accompanied by some great cheese, bread and a good
bottle of wine. New Years 2015 was
toasted at about 9:00pm (thinking New York, maybe) – old people just can’t
party like they used too. We enjoyed our
next couple of days, watching the Rose Parade, some football, Karen Knitting on
the baby blanket (and knitting and knitting), sitting and soaking up a bit of
sunshine, playing some cut-throat dominoes, and washing/cleaning the MoHo and
the car so we were ready for our next 6 weeks of adventures.
January 2-4, 2015 – We stayed at the Alameda Fair Grounds about 20 miles from Marq and
Steph’s place in Lafayette. We got together with them and had a late family
Christmas. Good times were had by all, the kids had decorated the house, and
yard with real Wraight enthusiasm. Good to see that our craziness is
contagious. We spent Saturday wining
tasting in the Napa area with our family experts – Marq and Steph. Sunday
morning we had breakfast with them and chatted with Kris and Laura via Skype.
Enjoyed having the family together!
January 5, 2015
– drove to Bakersfield, boon-docked at the Camping World there. In the morning
we filled our propane, and did a bit of RV shopping.
January 6, 2015
– on to Southern California, and Casa de Wraights on Myrtle Ave. in Long Beach.
We dropped the Boyz off at their spa in Pet Smart Pet Hotel where they resided
for 5 days. We had a nice afternoon and
evening with the So Cal family. Met Mr. Tyler – what little cutie! Evening
dinner with the 3 girls was Elena’s home made pasta and lots of red wine – oh
my what a treat!
January 7-10, 2015 - Up EARLY, Steve took us to
LAX to catch our flight back to the East Coast. We went to surprise Kristin.
She was nominated and awarded a Forty
under 40 Award – this
acknowledged a lot of the work that she does in the City of New London, at the
Women’s Prison in New London and of course her job with her agency Safe
Futures. We had a fairly easy day of travel LAX – Chicago –Providence RI. Amby
and Cristina picked us up, providing us with warm jackets, earmuffs, and gloves
as it was COLD and delivered us to
the girls’ house. Needless to say Kristin was VERY SURPRISED.
0 degrees the 1st
night we arrived, brrrrrrr! We stayed cuddled up in the house all morning. In
the afternoon we joined a tour of the Safe Futures Offices and House. It was a
great tour, lots of information and gave us a better picture of what the agency
does for people in the New London Area. Everyone loves Kris and can’t say
enough good things about her, makes us so proud. After the tour we joined Kris
and a couple of her friends at the Dutch, a nice neighborhood bar. We were stalling for time so that Laura could
get home and set up another surprise for Kris, a party with 30+ friends and
family to celebrate her award! It was a wonderful gathering of people who love
the GIRLS.
Friday morning we awoke to
cold and snow, definitely looked like January in Connecticut. We again snuggled
in the house, reading, and watching snow while Kris and Laura went to work for
a while. That evening we dressed up and got out in the snow to go to the Fox
Woods Casino – quite a gathering of 500+ in attendance. We enjoyed a buffet dinner
and visiting with friends and family. Kris was a star amongst the 39 other
honorees – she always brings so much fun with her. After the award ceremony we
enjoyed an hour dancing and entertaining ourselves. We were so glad that we
could be there to honor her and see her get acknowledgements for all the good
deeds she does.
Saturday morning Kris headed
to New York City early for training. Laura drove us back up to Providence to
fly back to the west coast; the weather has dried up, but still pretty chilly.
Steve and Elena picked us up at the airport and we joined them at El Torrito
for a couple of margaritas and a good Mexican dinner.
January 11, 2015 – Back on the road again. Picked up the BOYZ from their “Hotel”. They
both had been good by reports, but Guinness seemed a bit bent out of shape J. With all 4 of us aboard the MoHo we headed south to
Barstow, CA., there we met up with Carol and Eric for lunch. We continued our travels together to Death
Valley and camped at the Furnace Creek RV Resort.
January 12-13. 2015 - Our Death Valley Experience.
We enjoyed a day of touring the interesting desert area with Eric and
Carol. We took a nice walk up Titus Canyon, enjoying a pleasantly warm day,
blue sky and wonderful landscapes. We took a tour of Scotty Castle – where the
Chicago millionaire, Albert Johnson, built an interesting Spanish/Mediterranean
style snowbird getaway home for himself and his wife. The property got it’s
name Scotty’s castle from a friend of Albert’s (Walter Scott a wild west
entertainer) who as a con –man and friend took a lead in hosting events on the
property and providing Albert with a confidant and front man.
The next day aboard our rented
red 4 x 4 Jeep we took the very “Rocky Road” drive out to the Raceway. Eric navigated us along the
very slow 30-mile trip out to the dry lakebed. Along the way we stopped at Tea
Kettle Junction. We left our contribution, a teakettle that Carol were willing
to donate. After about a 3-hour bumpy, bumpy drive we arrived at the 3 X 1 mile
playa. This was an amazing experience seeing the “sailing stones” that appear
to scoot across the lakebed, leaving behind them a trail - this is the evidence
that they move. No one has ever been able to capture the actual movement of the
rocks. It is always quite windy on the
playa and scientists believe that the motion is caused on the silty surface by
moisture from rain, ice from freezing temperatures, thawing, and the wind that
gets these stones moving. Such an interesting phenomenon, glad that we made the
trek out to the “TRACK” – one of those once in a lifetime experiences. The 4 of
us really enjoyed our adventure.
January 14-16, 2015 – Fired up the two motorhomes and headed from Death
Valley to Lake Havasu. Spent a long day driving, arriving at our RV Park after
dark. Tired from a long drive we retired to our rigs for a good night’s sleep.
We spent the next day running a few errands and relaxing. Friday morning we
arose early and drove into the city, on the outskirts of the fairgrounds we were
treated to a hot air balloon Rally. It was a great event – 70 or so crafts
launched all around us. We stood and watched balloons of every shape and color
inflate and fly in the still skies above. After the early morning Carol and
Karen treated themselves to a pedicure, the guys did some repair projects on
the rigs. We met for lunch at Barley’s Brew Pub, right at the London Bridge. That bridge is quite a feat, the movement and installation of that famous bridge
over the Havasu waterway was an amazing task.
Mike’s and my afternoon was a pleasant walk along Lake Havasu where
there were 100+ Volkswagen Buses that were on display for a VW Bus gathering
called Buses on the Bay. VWs in every
condition were there, (rust buckets to very spiffed up/ outfitted vans). As we
walked, we reminisced about our 2 VW Bus experiences – some great memories. In
the evening we enjoyed a campfire-in-a-can campout. At the RV park.
January 17-19, 2015 Quartzite AZ Experience. We camped with The Escapees’ – Boomers, a
group that Eric and Carol belong to. It
was dry camping, out in the middle of a big dusty field. The campsites were
large and we parked so we had a nice campfire area between out two rigs.
After setting up camp we headed
into see what Quartzite is about. It is a little town in the southwest desert
(between Lake Havasu and Yuma AZ). In the winter, when the weather is pleasant,
over a million visitors, most driving some sort of recreation vehicle, converge
to enjoy some sun, meet up with old and new friends and take advantage of one
of the largest swap meets ever. Shoppers
can find anything and everything, the saying “shop till you drop” might have
been invented here. Days and days can be spent looking at the huge selection of
gems and minerals, antiques, household items, crafts, jewelry, auto, RV parts, and
sporting goods. Karen and Carol’s favorite was the Readers Oasis Book Store,
owner Paul Winer was present and displaying his love of nudity (wearing a
sweatshirt because the desert was cooling down and a very colorful rainbow
pouch over his “package”. What an interesting and talented individual; the
store is a lot like its owner, very eclectic and diverse.
Spent a few hours perusing a
bit of the swap meet activity. We focused our looking in the Big Tent that
looked like a county or state fair on steroids. The vendors that caught most or
our attention and $ were the RV parts guys. We bought some new lighting parts
that Mike and Eric installed. Later we
enjoyed a barbeque at our campsite, good outdoor fun.
A real highlight of the
Quartzite area was our visit to the Desert Bar – a quirky place that a “broke,
down on his luck-gold miner” started when about all that he had was a liquor
license and thought what the heck.” It
is now open every weekend, operating with a huge solar installation, that
provides all the power necessary to cool the beer, run the fans, lights, power
3 different snack bar restaurants, etc. We enjoyed a cold drinks and lunch,
listening to a pretty good country band.
Quartzite ended up being a
lot of fun, and much more interesting than we expected, glad we made the trip.
January 20-21, 2015 – Out of the
sand and on into 29 Palms and Joshua Tree, CA. This was a new area for all of
us. We really enjoyed the small little town of Joshua Tree – quite a bit like a
small less developed Ashland, with even a bit more “hippy” influence. There
were some interesting shops (many weren’t open) Found a good place to eat and
enjoyed a great early birthday dinner for brother Eric.
The four of us spent half a
day driving through the spectacularly scenic Joshua Tree National Park. Lots of
Joshua Trees, and many amazing piled up rock formations. We also enjoyed a few nice
walking paths through out the park. The weather was beautiful, sunny and warm. Ahhh
now that was what we had been looking for. Today is our last day of touring
with Carol and Eric; they head back to Sacramento and work on Monday. It was
fun having travel buddies with us.
January 22-25, 2015 – The beautiful Cochella Valley home of Palm Springs, Palm Desert,
Indo and many other “exclusive” desert communities was our focus today. We
found the Elks Lodge in Indio – they have a nice RV area for 50 or so rigs. We
got settled and went out to do a bit of exploring in the local area. We had an
afternoon snack at the Shields Date Farm: a date milk shake, quite the sweet
treat! Mike remembered them fondly; his family had stopped there a few times
and always enjoyed the cold date drink. The weather was perfect, in the 70’s,
blue sky…… enjoyed sitting out in our lawn chairs and sipping a little bit of
Happy Hour Beverage.
The San Jacinto, Palm Springs
Aerial Tramway was our outing today. We got a nice early start and were up to
the tram station not to long after they had opened. WOW – that was a great
ride. The tramway is an engineering marvel featuring the world’s largest
rotating tramcars, taking you up the 10 minute, 2-½ mile trip through several
different scenic life zones. The tramcar rotates 360 degrees giving you an
amazing view of the surrounding desert and mountains. Once we got up top we
enjoyed the beautiful scenic wonderland of the San Jacinto State Park. There
were several nice hiking trails and many different viewpoints. There was a
movie that covered the initial, concepts, plans and building of this amazing
system. At over 8,000 feet elevation the
temperatures were a bit chilly, luckily we had brought our jackets.
Day 3 of our Cochella
Experience took us east through 30 miles of very abundant agriculture to see
the Salton Sea. It is an interesting (and a bit stinky) place. It really does resemble a sea, with sandy
beaches, and small waves lapping at the shore. This is the largest lake in
California, a very saline lake in the dry desert basin that sits directly over
the San Andreas Fault. Water originally came from the Colorado River, in 1900,
when engineers were trying to increase water flow to agriculture and flooded
the area. The Salton Sea primarily fills
now with farming run off and rainfall. The lake provides habitat for thousands
of birds throughout the year; with 424 different species have been documented
around the lake and the surrounding valley. We returned to our nice campground
and hired a very efficient and skilled crew to wash and wax the MoHo. We had
watched them detail several other rigs in the park and were very impressed with
their service. Quite a treat for Mike to sit in his lawn chair, with a beer and
watch the team take care of his “baby”.
January 25 -
We went to the Southwest Indio Arts Festival, which is held annually at
the Polo Grounds in Indio. It had a large, very diverse display of artists: paintings,
purses, sculptures, pottery, clothing, etc. All the exhibits were very well
done and high priced. A bit out of our budget, but fun to look at. After walking the polo grounds, we decided we
needed lunch so we into Palm Springs. There we enjoyed strolling the streets
named after famous residents: Frank Sinatra Boulevard, Bing Crosby Street,
window shopping the main drag and finding a cute little cantina for lunch. The
Blue Coyote Grill had excellent margaritas and fabulous shrimp fajitas. We headed back to the MoHo and got a few
things organized, readying ourselves to travel tomorrow to Temecula,
California.
January 26-28, 2015 – We made our way to the Pechanga Resort, a short – easy
drive. This casino complex is the largest Indian Casino in California. It was
nice and relatively quiet, although they seemed to clump the RVs together into
areas, leaving a lot of empty spaces. We
enjoyed a restful afternoon and then went over to the casino via the shuttle
for “Happy Hour”. Not much in the way of bars with poker machines. But we did
find our way to the Round Bar, drank
our expensive (small) bourbons and played on the machines for about an hour,
coming out a little ahead.
We spent Tuesday, 1/27/15
looking for a repair shop to appraise and possibly fix our tow dolly. Mike has
been worrying about the braking system for some time and is afraid that she
might not make it home L. Stopped at a couple of shops, but none of them
seemed able to do what we think we need. We will look for a Les Schwab when we get a
bit further north. Temecula has a nice old town area. It is only about 3 blocks
long, but has several cute stores and restaurants. We enjoyed lunch outside –
good food, drinks and watching the passers by. The casino called us back, with less luck than
last night. It was quite entertaining to watch others around us win, loose ……
Mike was frustrated with the machine he had, so he left it, only to have a
woman sit down and win repeatedly! Damn!
Our last day in Temecula we
took a nice drive around the outskirts.
This is a very nice rural
area, with a lot of large homes, lots with horse/animal property. Most of the
communities are very “planned”. The
neighborhoods look a lot alike, color, design, landscaping, etc. nice
appearances but a bit boring. The evening saw us trying out luck one more time
at the Round Bar – must be our mojo, even less successful attempts than the
last two nights. Oh well “easy come-easy go”? Luckily neither one of us is a
big gambler.
January 29-31, 2015 – We traveled north back to Steve and Elena’s place in
Long Beach. A smooth drive with very little in the way of traffic for
California, that is. We enjoyed a quite afternoon, and had a nice evening with
the family.
Mike has caught a bit of a
cold, so he is laying low today. The girls (Marina, Mia, Morgan, Elena, Tyler
our token male and I) headed out for some retail therapy, we did a Costco run,
then stopped by World Plus and enjoyed a good Mexican lunch. Chuck & Terri
have been down in Southern California visiting friends, so they joined us for a
nice afternoon and dinner. Steve manned the barbeque and the girls and Elena
completed the grilled steak menu with a great salad and potatoes.
A wonderful evening together.
Saturday morning Elena and I
attended a Zen Tangle Workshop in Santa Ana. The group of 12 or so women had
such great energy and creativity, made me wish we lived closer so that I could
attend more of their classes. In the afternoon we enjoyed some great patio time
sipping some good margaritas and a good sushi dinner at a local Japanese
restaurant.
February 1, 2015 _ Bakersfield was our destination today. L.A. traffic was amazingly
civil, no slow downs and almost easy. We arrived at our favorite “boondock”
Camping World. There was bit of shopping to do, got that completed and settled
into watch the Super Bowl – Go Patriots!
February 2-3, 2015 – We found the new Les Schwab in Bakersfield. They were able to look
at our tow dolly and determine that yes; we REALLY did need new brakes! Not an
easy or cheap fix, but necessary. They had to order our parts and have them
sent to them for our installation. Hopefully they will be in tomorrow.
We boondocked at Les Schwab.
The parts finally arrived about 1:00pm. The guys were able to get it all back
together by about 4:00 pm. We were very happy to have the work done and
carrying our little Prius safely again.
The pocket book is a bit lighter, but one of those things one has to do
to keep the RV on the road.
February 3-4, 2015 – We headed north to Coalinga for the night. It was
about 100 miles, and we were glad to make our way closer to home. We found a
really good price for diesel fuel, and a campground right next door. After the
stress of the dolly repair, we were ready to unwind a bit.
February 5-7, 2015 – We were back at the Alameda County Fair Grounds in
Pleasanton, California. We are taking another couple of days to visit Marq and
Steph.
We spent the next day taking
it easy, staying inside, cuz we were having some very strong rain on and off.
Met up with the kids in the evening for a good dinner at the Blackhawk Grill,
one of their favorite restaurants in Danville. The gps was pretty helpful, but
the extremely rainy night made it a bit difficult navigating.
Saturday morning we met back
in Lafayette and went wine tasting. Our first stop of the day was at Larsen
Family Winery in Napa. It was a small winery, in a barn, a bit drafty and cool,
and wines that were ok, but not wonderful. Did buy one of their 3 Lab Cabs –
dog lovers that we are. Our next stop
changed all that; we went to the Buena Vista Winery. It is the oldest winery in
California and had WONDERFUL wines, nice tasting room and very friendly and
knowledgeable staff. Wow if $ were no object we would have bought several
cases. The kids joined their wine club, so we splurged and bought 3 bottles of
their delicious red & a bottle of amazing champagne. YUM! We drove on to
Sonoma where we stopped for lunch. Took a short stroll around the square admiring
the shops and the pleasantly warming and dry weather.
The next day Mike and I went
into old downtown Danville for the afternoon, we had a bit of trouble finding
it –
not easily gps – able, but we
did finally stumble on to it. We enjoyed a brief walk along the main drag,
stopping to buy a couple of boxes of Girl Scout Cookies from the cute little
peddlers’. The rains came back so we did the only logical thing; ran into a
local pub to dry out. With a couple of
beverages and a small happy hour we waited out the storm. We made it back to Lafayette to have dinner with the kids. We
had a nice evening, Steph made a great lasagna (her grandmother’s recipe) –
wonderful dinner and as always so good to visit with them.
February 8-9, 2015 – We are back in Rancho Cordova, CA – parked in the Elks
lot for the night. We arranged with Carol to meet them for dinner. Eric’s
birthday is tomorrow. It wasn’t quite the surprise we had hoped for, Eric saw
the little Prius in the parking lot, still a nice evening. We got to catch up
and visit a bit with Kate and Russ over dinner.
February 9, 2015 – We arrived
safely back to Ashland. Got the MoHo back in her birth and got mostly unpacked
before we collapsed in our comfy bed.
Another great expedition in
our motorhome, seeing many new things, visiting family and friends and
experiencing a wonderful winter get away.
