_24 April 2010

After leaving Indio we headed over to Los Angeles to check out a manufacturer of RV furniture.  I found them online over a year ago and kept them in mind to “someday check them out”.  Their website looks really good and their prices…pretty darn good.  Now let us see just what is what.  We’ve kicked around the idea of either reupholstering or replacing the couch, but with their prices it almost makes sense to look at replacing everything.  Just before noon after pulling into their parking lot and meeting one of the owners, we were given the “grand tour”…  Rick and his partner started this business about 15 years ago and is doing quite well.  There biggest part of their business is home theater seating and then it breaks down to the RV and boat furniture end.  They ship all over the world from this one manufacturing plant and all of their business is done out of a catalog, although they will do custom manufacturing as well.  I will admit I went with a negative mind set but came away quite the opposite…very impressive. 

Now it was time to get the hell out of Los Angeles before the traffic comes to life and we’re caught right in the middle of it…we’re off to the coast, where I had no idea, just drive until we have to stop for the night.  Well we got as far as Lompoc and immediately headed off to find the local Wal-mart for a night of dry camping.  A surprise awaited us as we pulled in and found out that they don’t allow over-night camping in their parking lot like most others…  Well as it happened, we looked across the street and noticed that there was a large group of trucks and 5th wheel trailers parked together…the carnival was just arriving.  With our little motor home in-between 2 of their big rigs we got away with a free nights lodging.  Early the next morning we headed off for our next stop along the California coast…Montaña de Oro State Park.  We’ve heard how the state parks fill up in California so we weren’t too sure we’d get a spot.  As luck would have it, we found we’re still traveling in the early part of the season and their campgrounds aren’t full yet, but that will be changing soon.

_We had a lot of young families camping around us, and they brought all their “little ones” with them…what a good time for all of us.  For Louise and me, it gave us a chance to take a couple of nice long hikes along the beach. 

_On one of the hikes we almost stepped on a rattlesnake !!!  The trail was wide enough for us to have seen it in plenty of time, but our attention was caught by a little lizard scampering away from us.  Fortunately it just wanted to get out of our way more than set up and fight.  It was so close that I could almost count its rattles.  We knew that there were these critters all around us but that was a little “all too close”.  Other than the short lived scare, we had some wonderful sights and adventures along the beach.  From the white shale

_to the unusual rock formations with pass-thruogh waterways...

_Life continues to be wonderful.

_21 April 2010
Notice the little green string under our "Hummer"???
We've been here in Indio for the last 10 days and we're ready to pull out in the morning. I'd say the real reason we stayed this long was the weather...that is the weather up north.Not that it's changed all that much but we're going for it anyway.  Our stay in Indio allowed us to take in another street market in Desert Palms.  About 2 years ago we took in our first market there and really enjoyed it so we're making it a must do when in the area.  I found one of those "Fire in a Can (although the one I bought was called an "urn") that I've been wanting for quite some time.  It stands about a foot high, 10 inches square, and has a fire
pit with volcanic rock that run off of a propane tank.  This will be useful when we want to just sit outside while watching the stars and enjoy a small fire at our feet.  During our stay we also enjoyed taking a few long walks, riding our bikes in the park, shopping at one of our favorite Mexican grocery stores, and finding a new (to us) casino.  The Fantasy Casino is really a very nice casino, as far as casino's go.  Good food in anyone of the 4 restaurants, very attractive, clean, not too smokey (and I'm a nut over that...), and the machines seem to be some what "loose".  I saw one lady win $1,000 on a penny machine and quite afew winning
into the one and two hundred areas.  Louise was even at $230 early on.  At 6pm we were able to sign up for their "club card".  Their deal was; for us to put in $20, once or if that was used up, you would push a button with your card in the slot, and you would be credited $50. You couldn't take that $50 directly out, but what ever winnings you made you could draw out.  I pulled out $53 gross, our $33 and Louise came back with just over $100...we had a great dinner and a good time and we still have a little of our money left.

_
11 April 2010

Our Google Earth location is:  33.70596N, 116.21192W    Indian Waters RV Park, Indio, California

_Once again our drive out of Yuma to Indio took us down California 8 to El Centro and north on 111.  We passed along side the Salton Sea passed by The Fountain Of Youth RV Resort

_and then into Indo.   We arrived this last Friday afternoon after a quick stop by Algodones, Mexico.   We had to stop by Algodones once more because Louise lost her prescription sunglasses somewhere and she needed to replace them before we got too far away.  By “quick stop”, I mean that by the time we stopped outside border, crossed over,

_walked to the optometrist who took an examination of her eyes, made the glasses (2 pair), had a great lunch, walked back across the border, and back on the road in 2 ½ hours…not bad.  Oh ya, it cost us $100 plus $10 for lunch.  Two weeks ago we had driven into Yuma and immediately went over to see Mark and Susan (Louise’s brother).  We parked in their drive last November for a couple of days but this time we were offered a second option…some friends of theirs offered they’re place to us to pull into.  Jim and Nancy have a large lot that was set up for RV parking in 4 different locations around the property.

_Including the RV parking they have a small casita that we could use to watch TV, wash clothes, or stay in if we wanted.

_Hell, we even had “Wi-Fi”…pretty nice digs from some great people.  We couldn’t thank them enough for their hospitality and generosity.  On Easter afternoon, after we were sitting around after a great barbeque, we were “treated?” to a 7.4 earthquake !!!  There were about 20 of us enjoying “our” patio and a great pot-luck when the ground started to shake and shake…  Some of us guessed that it lasted at least 2 minutes or more, but the reality of it was much less.  Less of not, it was one hell of a shake…  Even some of the “after” quakes came close to the size of the first and they continued for a few days after.  If you remember, I wanted to get the frontend aligned on the Winnie while in Yuma.  Well I got that taken care of…

_it only cost me a set of upper ball-joints, 4 more items on the tie-rod, and the alignment, and all for $528.  Next it was new glasses for me in Algodones and a trip to the dentist for the both of us for a cleaning.  All in all, we had a great visit, met and made new friends, got a lot of our “must do’s” done, and once again continued on our way.

_
3 April 2010

You know, I think this is the longest period that I’ve gone through without posting.  At this very moment we are sitting in a wonderful location deep in the heart of the Foothills of Yuma and have been here for a week…more about that later, but first let’s catch up a little. 

Between the 10th of March and the 22nd we were still very much enjoying La Piñata.  We had a chance to move to one of the “PREMO” spots that sits directly over the beach.

_I could start my day by having my morning coffee while sitting with my feet propped up on the railing and hear and feel the surf as it came rushing up the sandy beach 50 feet below.  I felt like we had moved our coach onto the patio of a 5 star hotel…  Hell, we even had local visitors join us…Ziggy (the male),

_Aggy (one of the females), and 6 others that would drop in now and then throughout the day.  We continued to visit the farmers market in La Piñata and Guyobitas each week.  We really enjoyed the many breakfast, lunches and dinners

_that we took while on and off the beaches of the local communities, and then of course, we still had the Sunday hamburger and Tuesday taco nights (in the palapa)

_at the park.  Boy, did we eat good or what???  Something I didn’t do when we were there in December was water volleyball.  Well I made up for lost time…I played twice a day over the last three weeks and really enjoyed myself.

_Another great benefit from staying another month was we were able to see the improvements that Sol made.  Sol is tough and for what he went through he showed it each day, but then there was Carol….she was twice as tough and she needed to be.  Our meeting them has meant a great deal to Louise and me and we look forward to traveling again with them soon.  To have our last dinner together on this journey to Mexico was a lot of fun and very emotional for all of us.

_Now we have plans to continue were we left off sometime in the very near future (possibly this next winter).  On the 22nd we put the coach in gear and headed to Tepic.  Tepic is only about 2 hours northeast of La Piñata and we were headed there to have the frontend of the Minnie Winnie aligned.  Boy we almost bit the big one in Tepic…we took a wrong turn and ended up on a road that was so narrow that I really thought there was no way we could make the 2 turns I needed to take.  I did hit the driver’s side mirror once against another pick-up and then on the last turn I crawled up onto a very high curb and almost laid the side of the motor home against a telephone pole…close but no hitty…  We were looking for the Ford dealer and after our close call, we found it a little further down the main road.  Unfortunately we couldn’t get in to have the work done for another 4 days so we continued down the road.  Our next stop (about 3 hours away) was Mazatlan.  We were only there to spend the night and then in the morning continue on north.  I chose our “campground” for the night because of a good experience I had camping there…the hospital parking lot were Louise spent a night the last time we were in Mazatlan.  With full security, in the middle of the city, great food in the hospital restaurant, and easy to get too, a great combination.  Our next overnight stop was going to be in a huge parking lot behind a PEMEX (the Mexican service stations) in Novajoa.  Sometimes this kind of stop can be real noisy, but that night was relatively quiet.  Our third and fourth nights were spent in Santa Ana with Ana and Edgar.  We spent a couple of nights with them on our way down.  They have the campground that we spent our first night in Mexico.  Edgar is also the one who found me the mechanic that “could fix our air-conditioning” system…well, he fixed it OK, but unfortunately it didn’t hold.  This time he wanted to have his mechanic fix our front end problem.  I’ll make this short…after taking the tie-rods off he found he couldn’t get the parts so he had to put them back on.  I was a little miffed, no, I was a lot “miffed”.  Fortunately we were able to drive on, and on we did…  We drove to the border at Lukeville and crossed into the USA.  We crossed the border just after noon so we decided to head up the road another 5 miles and stop for lunch at the Organ Pipe National Monument.  Finishing lunch Louise looked at me and convinced me we should head back across the border and drive on another 18 miles to the place where we purchased our 10 year import sticker.  You see, this sticker is good ONLY for the vehicle that it is placed on and must be removed by the same office you purchased it from.  If we were to sell this Minnie Winnie (which we are going to do…) and the sticker went with it, we could NEVER take another vehicle deep into Mexico again.  Soooo, across the border to get the sticker taken off and de-registered, turn around and head back to cross the border one more time before heading to the casino RV parking lot in Why, Arizona.  Now let me tell you about this casino….DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME !!!!

This Monday morning we have another appointment for our frontend alignment (and anything else it might need).  I look forward to having all this finished.