California Still

(NOTE: View a larger picture by clicking on the photos above.)

We made the move to Lake Skinner as planned. It is a very nice park in the middle of a nature preserve, surrounded by mountains. No traffic noise here. It is a mile to the first gate off the road, then two more miles to the guard station before the campgrounds. No WiFi at the campground, so no internet. We will have to work at finding a “hot spot.“ The campground is about 13 miles from the town of Temecula (pronounced Te MAY cula). We are about 90 miles from where our daughter Debbie lives in Huntington Beach.

Look at the pictures above. The first one is of our trailer at the campsite, approximately in the center of the picture, taken from a distance, You should be able to recognize it by now, if you are a regular reader. The second picture is a view across a portion of the lake. The day was rather overcast, one of very few such days we have experienced since we have been in the West.

As we pulled into the campground we saw that one of the “Camp Host” (Volunteers who receive free site accommodations in return for 20 hours per week of light duty in the Park) had Dish Network TV hooked up. We decided that since he was getting service, we would give it another try. We got out the equipment and set it up again. We went through the procedures as required. Again, we could find nothing that worked. I thought perhaps the Camp Host could help. I knocked on his door and explained the situation. He said he would be glad to try and help.

The “Host” came down to our trailer. He setup the dish as he usually did. Nothing! No signal. “That’s funny,” he said, “I never have any trouble finding the satellite. I just spit in the wind, turn it this way and that, and it connects.” We tried again. Nothing! We checked all the connections. Nothing seemed to be wrong. “Would you like for me to go get my dish and try it,” he asked. “Sure, I say, “if you don’t mind.” He retrieved his dish, got out his compass, set everything up and……your guessed it, nothing! “It can’t be your dish,” he says, “or mine should work.” Sounds logical to me. Since nothing we did worked, I put up the equipment. I thanked our host for trying. We resigned ourselves to watching “fuzzy,” over-the-air, Network programming until we returned to Arizona.

On Thursday Debbie came to the Park to spend the day with us. We were discussing the Dish Network situation and the thought hit me, I haven’t tried this dish hooked directly into the receiver without going through the trailer wiring. Perhaps the Trailer wiring is at fault. You guessed it again! Out comes the equipment, and we try again. Same outcome. Nothing! Perhaps it’s the receiver itself. We don’t know. We will be back in Quartzsite on Monday. Perhaps then we will find the problem. I have determined that it is not we who are the problem. Something else is amiss.

We forgot the TV problem and when into Old Town Temecula to visit the many gift and antique shops they have. Seems that everywhere we go has an “Old Town.” The town is decorating for Christmas. You see a view of some of the buildings in the picture above.

Today, Friday, we came to visit Debbie in Huntington Beach. We have already told you that the distance is 90 miles, which should take about 1 ½ hours to drive. But an unusual thing occurred, it started raining about 1:30 AM, and was still raining when we got up. To avoid the traffic on the freeways, we decided not to leave until about 8 AM in order to miss the heavy “down town” traffic. But we had not counted on the rain. “It never rains in Southern California.” Or, so it is claimed. So, since today is an exception to the rule, we left an hour later just to be sure we would miss most of the heavy traffic.

You know how it is in the Southeast when it snows a little and nobody seems to know how to drive in it? The same thing happens in California when it rains. The cars stack up and the traffic goes crazy and there are accidents everywhere. Today is no exception! It was raining steadily when we left the campground. We had little trouble at the beginning of the trip, but after about 30 miles it all changed.

Our trip for the day requires travel over four different Freeways. I don’t think I have to tell you what California Freeways are like. If you haven’t experienced it, you have heard about it. We ground to a halt. Then we moved at Campground Park speed, 5 to 15 miles per hour. For 15 miles we crept. Then, we saw the problem. A dual-tandem semi-truck had wrecked. On the other side. Going in the opposite direction. The only problem on our side was “rubber necking.” We got up to normal speed again…….for two miles, then slowed again. By the time we were supposed to have arrived, we had gotten about half-way. We completed our one and a half hour trip in just short of three hours. Now, we have to get back. Going with the traffic. We will have to hurry. The gate at the campground closes at 10 PM.

Now that we have Internet at Debbie’s, I will get this blog on. By the time a blog is again due, we will have Internet service in our “Winter quarters,” and hopefully our TV problem will be solved. Until then, we hope your days are going well and filled with good things as you prepare for the coming season.

Still Winding Down

(NOTE: View a larger picture by clicking on the photos above.)

We hope each of you had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. We enjoyed the day with our daughter Debbie in Huntington Beach, CA. We are camping in Perris, CA, which is about 64 miles east of Huntington Beach. Not much to do here, but it is a nice little town of about 45,000 people. The countryside here is strewn with very large boulders alongside the roads and up the hillsides. The pictures above show some creative artwork that someone used to make an interesting scene. The first picture is a “frog” painted from more than one boulder, and the second picture of “apple slices.” You can get a sense of the size of the boulders by the six foot fence in the “apple” picture. This “zoo” is only about 2 miles from out campground.

The Sana Ana winds are blowing again in California creating problems with fires. Yesterday (Friday, November 23rd) we drove into the town of Lake Elsinore to visit a Wal-Mart, a distances of about 7 miles. You know how it is, you just have to find a Wal-Mart. As we were returning, a fire truck flew by with sirens blaring. As we drove on we saw smoke billowing upward just a short distance away. Something was on fire. Was this the start of another season of fires? This morning on TV we saw that 400 acres were burning in Malibu, an area of multi-million dollar homes, some miles North of LA. Twelve homes had already been destroyed. We are keeping an eye out for the wind and the smoke in this area. So far, everything is OK and the winds are suppose to die down by evening.

If you are not familiar with Sana Ana winds, let me explain. Imagine a High Pressure system with winds turning in a clockwise direction. Now, imagine a Low Pressure system with winds blowing in a counter-clockwise direction. Now the two systems collide and the winds merge. The right side of the High Pressure system and the left side of the Low Pressure system come together blowing downward at double the force. This creates winds of upward to 50-60 miles per hour that fan the flames of any fire that is created by the dry conditions, and spreads it rapidly.

Enough about fires. Let’s talk TV. As some of you know, we are not big TV watchers, but we do like to see occasional favorite programs when possible. Our new “Winter abode” in Gila Bend has no TV signal what-so-ever and no cable. So, since Carolyn likes her sports and I favor channels like Discovery, History, Travel and the like, we thought it would be good to have some availability. So, we decided we needed satellite TV.

While we were in Quartzsite, AZ we found a satellite company that handled both Direct TV and Dish TV. I had called the 800 number for each and was told that as an RVer we would have to buy our own equipment that is usually given free with home installation. Well, as it turned out, the company in Quartzsite would give the equipment free to RVers. So we signed up for Dish TV, since it was the cheaper of the two services. We received the dish, tripod, cable, receiver and satellite finder without charge. We tried to set it up the day we got it, but it wouldn’t work. We decided that we didn’t have the right size cable for connecting inside to the receiver, and since we were leaving for California the next morning, we would just wait until we arrived at our next stop to get it installed.

We found the recommended size cable, an RG6U as apposed to an RG59U, which I had tried. We arrive at our new destination and out comes the dish, tripod, cable and satellite finder. We get everything hooked up and turn on the TV for the setup menu. We find the right numbers for Skew, Angle and Azimuth. We connect the satellite finder and listen for the strongest “beep” as the dish is moved East and West. Strong beep but no signal! We try again and again. Nothing! We check all connections. Still nothing!

We found a Radio Shack in a shopping area nearby and make a trip to talk to someone, since they are authorized Dish TV dealers. They knew nothing more than I did, and had no one to install. They suggested that I call the Dish Network Tech support. Ok, I call. The tech runs me through the program inside on the menu. Everything is as it should be. I go outside with my cell phone on “speaker” so the tech can hear the “beep” signal for himself. What we got was a loud signal that should be centered on the satellite. It was, except it was the wrong satellite! For all our trying, we could not zero in on the right satellite. The tech says, “You will have to get a local tech to help you install the service.” Great!

I find a phone book and look for satellite services. Nothing in the local area. I find a service in Riverside, CA, some good distance from were we are, and they wanted $100 just to come out. That didn’t seem like the right choice to me. So, we are still without TV. They do have cable at the park we are in, but it only has the Network channels and none of the ones we would wish to watch. We are going back to Quartzsite on the way to Gila Bend, so we decided to wait and see what can be done from the place we bought the service.

We are moving from this park on Monday the 26th to Lake Skinner, a county park, for another week before heading back to Arizona. Since we have no internet service here at the park, we have to take a 7 mile drive to put this blog online. Sorry for the delay. We’ll “see you on the blog” a little later on.

POSTSCRIPT: (6:00 PM PST, November 24th ) We took the trip out in the afternoon to find an internet “hot spot” to put up this blog, but we didn’t get there. After a few miles, we found the road blocked by the Police with a yellow tape across the road. Everyone was being diverted onto a side street. I asked one of the Sheriff’s Deputies how we could get where we were going. He said, “Sorry, I don’t know.” We tried following some cars in front. They didn’t know where they were going either. We tried on our own for 15-20 minutes to find the way with no luck. Every turn we took was blocked. We never found out what was going on. We turned around and headed back to the campground. We will try again tomorrow, Sunday.

An update on the fires: Now it appears that 51 homes have been destroyed and more than 4,600 acres burned, according to the local newscast. There is a continued fire warning out for some counties, including Riverside County where we are camping. We are keeping our eye on the situation, but for now the winds are dying down and we don’t think we will have a problem.

Winding Down

(NOTE: You can view a larger image by clicking on the pictures above.)

Well friends, we seem to be winding down for the Winter. We are now in Quartzsite, AZ. The town has about 1,900 to 3,000 people, depending on whom you ask, who are permanent residents. What Quartzsite has is warm desert weather and RVers, hundreds of thousands of them. By January every Park will be full, as well as most of the surrounding desert. The population swells upward to two million in the Winter.

There are numerous RV Parks in the area. The one we are in, Kofa Mountain, is one of the nicer ones. The first picture above is of our campsite here. Like many of the Campgrounds, this one is about 90% filled with Park Models, which are essentially RVs without wheels, and a little different style (the second picture gives you a view of a couple Park Models). People buy these “RVs” and lease the spot to put them in. These really are second homes, or vacation homes for the people who own them. The owners return here year after year in the Winter. One camper we talked to has been doing this here for 29 years, another we talked to is in their eight year. Incidentally, this campground with 54 sites is for sale. If you have $825,000 you can buy it.

There are what is called Long Term Visitor Areas (LTVA) run by the Bureau of Land Management. Around Quartzsite there are some 34,000 desert acres set aside for this purpose. Campers here can only “boondock” or “dry camp,“ which is camping without facilities. There is no electricity, one must provide their own, with generators or solar panels, or the like. There are no sewer connections, but they provide a “dump.” There is no water connection at the site, but a place is provided where one can fill the RV fresh water tank. These are gated areas and are patrolled by Rangers for security. What attracts people to these sites? CHEAP! With one fee of $140, one can camp on these lands for seven months, September through March. That is $20 per month, or less than 70 cents per day! This $140 permit is good at all the LTVAs in both California and Arizona. There are several in each of these States, and one can move around within any of them during the season. Out here in the desert, one can spread apart from one’s neighbor as far as one likes.

Quartzsite originally was little more than a stagecoach stop and way station on the California-Arizona line. In the early 1800’s, a man by the name of Tyson dug a forty foot deep well by hand. Around this well grew up the Town of Quartzsite. In the 1850’s, a man by the name of Halji Ali (Hi Jolly, as the Americans called him) led an experiment for the Army to see if camels would serve well for Calvary use. It didn’t pan out well, but Hi Jolly became famous. His gravesite is here in Quartzsite. General Patton trained tank troops in this area during World War II.

Another attraction for the area seems to be “swap meets,” what we call “flea markets.” Beginning in 1967 with the first Pow-Wow Gem and Mineral Show, Quartzsite has grown to the point where today twelve main shows plus a variety of special events attract visitors. The "season" runs from November to March with the main shows in January and February. It is a big area for “rock hounding.” The third picture above is of a typical “swap meet” area.

Most residents and visitors to Quartzsite have visited the town’s only permanent bookstore, operated by Paul Winer, who is best known for what he doesn’t have than what he has. What he does not have is clothes on his body as he goes about his daily work, including waiting on customers. Known as the “Naked Bookseller,” his store is stuffed with mostly used books, but some new ones as well. And there are magazines and DVDs and other stuff. Actually, he does wear a thong. Sorry, no picture of Paul, but he is a very skinny, tanned old dude with a beard and a cowboy hat---and that’s about all.

As I mentioned at the outset, we are winding down. We are basically finished with the “tourist” activity and about to settle down to one place for the Winter. We have now made the firm decision to return to Gila Bend, AZ, after we spend a couple weeks in CA, then stay put in one place until April. Of course, we are likely to make day trips without the RV. After all, our winter abode is not far from Phoenix. We will arrive back to our “Winter Quarters” on December 5th.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING to you all. We’ll catch up with you again before the next holiday.

To Yuma

We arrived at Augie’s Quail Trail RV Park in Gila Bend, AZ after about a four hour haul from Benson on Saturday, November 3rd. There is very little to Gila Bend, but the campground is nice with long and wide spaces. This we liked. We quickly discovered that there was no TV reception here. Oh, there was suppose to be three or four channels one could get, but we got nothing. They do have a recreational hall with a large screen TV with satellite service, but the first one there chooses the programming. We wanted to see Dancing with the Stars Monday night, so we went early and got lucky. No one else was there.

The first picture above is the view out our bay window. Two Palo Verde (green stick or pole in Spanish) trees and a view of the desert. The Palo Verde is the State Tree of Arizona. It seems to be named such because the trunk and limbs are green and has fern-like leaves. In the Spring it has bright yellow flowers. We’ll have to wait to see those.

After we arrived on Saturday we discovered that the town was having a “Sweet Shrimp” festival. We decided to go check it out. There was a good sized crowd and lots of “carnival” rides, and venders selling this and that. They also had a shrimp eating contest. We didn’t participate. Since it was a “shrimp” festival, they were also selling cooked shrimp meals. We got some very tasty coconut shrimp. Gila Bend is the home of a “sweet shrimp” farm. Something to remember for the future.

We discovered that John, the owner of the RV Park, had a unique “lawn mower.” What is there to mow in the desert?, you may ask. Well, not much. A sprig of weeds here and there up from the sand and between the rocks, something one had to hunt to see. So, John has attached a tube and some sort of nozzle to a 20 gallon propane tank creating a “blow-torch.” This he uses around the many acres of the Park to burn off the grass and weeds, for days, walking and riding his four-wheel cart.

Gila Bend, about 65 miles south-west of Phoenix, has only a little more than 2,000 population. One can’t expect much from a town of this size. It has a grocery, a few eateries, a Post Office, school and a few assorted businesses. The nearest town of any size is Buckeye, 35 miles north on highway 85 on the way to Phoenix. We checked it out also and found a little city of some 15,000 people. It seemed to have all the services and shopping one would want. It also has a Walgreens and Quest Laboratory for our medical needs. This is important because since Augie’s RV Park is so nice, we are considering making it our home for the winter. We have made tentative arrangements with them, and if we don’t find anything better during our remaining two weeks in Arizona that we like, we will return there after a couple weeks in California. We’ll let you know about that later.

We checked out of Gila Bend on Thursday the 8th and made our way to Yuma, only about a two and a half hour drive. Yuma is another location we are checking out places to “winter.” On the way in we saw numerous RV Parks along the highway. They all seemed crowded. Our destination was in town at the Riverfront RV Park along the Colorado River, looking across to California and the Quechan Indian Reservation. This park also seems over-crowded with many who seemed to have already sat down for the Winter. A little too “close living” for us.

Yesterday, our second day in Yuma, we visited The Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park. It was the Arizona Territory’s first prison. The Prison was built in 1876 and closed in 1909. You see a picture of the cell units above. An interesting point is that when the prisoners started to arrive here there were no buildings or cells. The prisoners themselves had to build the prison. Anything a prisoner could not make himself, or barter for, he had to do without. Each small cell was shared by six inmates. During its thirty-three year history a total of 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, lived within the walls. After the prison was closed in 1909, the hospital and other building were leased to the Yuma School District for $600 a semester and used as a High School. During the Depression, homeless drifters moved into the cells, which were later used as a dog pound. Following the 1916 flood in Yuma, building materials from the prison were salvaged to rebuild the city. The picture you see above of Carolyn standing beside one of the giant saguaro (pronounced suh-WAH-ro) cactus was taken in the prison yard. Judging by its height, it was probably growing there when the location was still a prison.

We will be leaving Yuma on Tuesday the 13th for Quartzsite, some 85 miles north and just 20 miles east of Blythe, CA. We will catch up with you again, or you with us, before we leave Arizona

Arizona

We have been lucky for a while, no unusual incidents to report in our journey. We have been enjoying the solitude of the New Mexico desert. A day or two before we left Hidden Valley Ranch, we noticed a number of bees flying around our trailer. They were swarming around the door and over the top of the trailer. We wondered, ‘What is going on here?’, we saw no bees anywhere else on the Ranch. The day was warm and we had windows open and the draw-fans going to pull refreshing air through the trailer. We have three such fans, in the bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom. I went to the bathroom and as I opened the door I heard loud “buzzing”. I looked up to the bathroom fan….. and you see something of what I saw in the first picture above. Dozens of bees. By the time I took the picture, I had persuaded many of them to leave by thumping on the screen.

Why they came in, we don’t know. The fan was spinning around, some bees had died as a result. Some were flying, some were crawling. What to do! Carolyn was making vegetable soup in the Crock Pot. Perhaps the bees liked the smell and wanted some soup. Who knows? I found some bug spray and let the little bees have it. After all, this is not a hive. We shut the outside fan hood, and waited for the bees to die. We removed the fan screen and blade, dumped the dead bees and cleaned up the mess. Job done. Or, so we thought.

We went about our business. Suddenly a bee was flying around the trailer. I grabbed a fly swatter. Swat! Then another showed. Swat! Then another, and another and more. ‘What is going on here?’ How are these bees getting in? Why are they coming in? Is it the soup? We checked all windows and could find no way the bees could enter. No holes in the screens. No openings. Yet, they still came. One after the other. Swat! Swat! I killed bees for hours. Finally, we had enough. We closed all the windows and turned on the air. Ok, another bee or two was still loose in the trailer. Before I got the last one, one little bee took revenge on me and popped me on the arm. That was 6 or 7 days ago. I still have the mark on my arm.

On Monday, October 29th, we left the bees behind and moved on to Arizona. We are in Benson, a little town of around 4,800 people. No special reason to pick Benson as a stop except it is “on the way west” and met our driving mileage criteria (you will remember that we don‘t want to drive more than 200 miles in any one day). It is also easy access from here to Tucson and Tombstone, two places we wanted to visit. Midway between Wilcox, AZ and Benson, AZ ( you can find those cities on your map, along I-10) one passes through Texas Canyon (no, it is not in Texas). Here the huge rocks are piled on one another and look like pebbles on steroids. You see a picture of the rocks above. It is here in this area that Cochise, the famed Apache Chief and warrior, formed a treaty with the Army in the late 1800’s. The Apache lived in the canyon. Beautiful sights.

On Wednesday we took a trip to Tucson, about 45 miles west of Benson. Tucson is the second largest city in Arizona, more than 500,000 population. Tucson lies in the high desert valley flanked by the Tucson Mountain to the west and Rincon Mountain to the east. The Sonoran Desert around Tucson is home to the giant saguaro (pronounced suh-WAH-ro) cacti. It is that giant cactus with its arms raised high, as though some cowboy said, “Stick-em-up!” and the cactus threw up its arms. If you see a 40-foot saguaro, you know that it has stood on that spot for 150 years. They are slow growers.

We drove around Tucson to take in the sights, stopped at Old Town Artisans, a 150 year old adobe building filled with native arts and crafts. We looked, didn’t buy. Just up the block was the El Charro, the oldest family-owned Mexican restaurant in the country, established in 1922. We decided to try it out. Frankly, it could not beat our most frequented family-owned Mexican restaurant back in Tennessee. In all our travels, so far, we have not found as good a Mexican meal.

On Thursday we drove to Tombstone, about 25 miles south of Benson. I’m sure all of you have heard of the legendary OK Corral where the famous gun-fight between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday against the Clanton Gang occurred. We walked the board-walk through the city, past the OK Corral, The Bird Cage Theater (famous for its entertainment and bordello) and many other period buildings of the 1800’s. Most are used today for shops and restaurants. Of course there is always the reenactment of gun fights in the streets all during he day. Above is a picture of a typical street scene in “old” Tombstone today. If you look closely you can see the “OK Corral” sign in the middle of the picture.

Today, Friday, we drove some 35 miles south to Sierra Vista, a city of about 43,000 folks. Nothing special here to see, but it is the nearest place to Benson that has a Walgreens Drug Store where I can pick up some needed medication, and a Quest Laboratory to get my monthly blood screening to test the effectiveness of my blood thinning medication. That done, since we were there, we had lunch at a new restaurant called El Paso. Pricey, but good. Oh yes, speaking of pricey, we also purchased diesel fuel. It was the cheapest we had found in the area, $3.03 per gallon. We have seen it as high as $3.49. It appears that diesel fuel is about 50 cents per gallon higher than regular gas. Just our luck!

Tomorrow is moving day. We are headed to Gila Bend, AZ a town of less than half the population of Benson. It is a rural farming community in the low desert, about 736 feet elevation. I guess it is apply named since it lies in the bend of the Gila River. Check in on us again next week, we’ll be somewhere else. By the way, as of this writing I have “blogged” over 21,000 words (21,565). Boy, no wonder my fingers hurt!