Now finishing our 3rd day here in Indio, I've got to say that we've been busy...Did I say busy? Well that may not be exactly true. Thursday we decided to find all the local stores and just see the area that we are now living in for the next two weeks. There is no doubt that this area of California's desert is nothing but beautiful. Those of us that haven't been around Palm Springs, Indio, and the other towns tghat make up this area only had the pictures and words of others to tell us how nice it is. Now it's my turn...don't miss it !!! It does seem that just about everything is brand-spankin new and lying in the shadows of some outstanding mountains. The weather has really been great since we got here, but yesterday we were entertained with rain...a down pour. The news told us that this was the wettest day that they've had in the last 2 years. There were a couple of areas around us that got as much as an inch of rain and created flooding and power outages from one area of the valley to the other. We were without power for about 2 hours ourselves. There was a silver lining to being without power, we had a chance to run the generator and get it up to "load". They tell us that we should run the generator at "load" once a month so thaty gave us our opportunity. No sooner had the rain stopped that we received high winds across the desert. Unfortunately today, Saturday, is the day they celebrate the tamale. The Tamale Festival" is celebrated in Old Town Indio every year. This is a BIG DEAL !!! Last year they had 120,000 visitors. It started off with a parade through town at 10am, opening of the booths and fhe fairas the last person clears the end of the route. Now the "tasting" of the tamales begins. There is this one tamale stand that you might say is "the" place to eat tamales. As we were walking around looking at the different booths and having aq tamale or two, we came upon this one booth called "Grandma Lupes Tamales".
I kid you not, the line for their tamales was about 150 yards long and each person that was lucky enough to get to the head of the loine was buying "quantities" of those tamales. It was amazing... Nope, we didn't get into the line but we heard from some of those that did...."the best you can buy" ! Later in the evening, after washing the coach, we walked over to the club house and had a dinner of chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, gravey, corn, salad, and or course...desert. We ate well today...