January 16-18

January 16-18

Blue Skies and Bluegrass

After a stop at Camping World, where we picked up folding table (very few RV parks have picnic tables), which we will use for the portable barbecue and Jeannine’s quilting, we then made the uneventful 2-hour drive to the Arizona Oasis resort in Ehrenburg, which is right on the Colorado River. We spent an hour after supper in the pool and hot tub, watching a beautiful sunset. We were the only ones there, so it was very peaceful.

On Saturday morning, we drove over to Blythe to spend the day with Joanne and Dave at the 28th Annual Blythe Bluegrass Festival.

The weather was perfect; clear blue sky with the temperature in the low 70’s Fahrenheit. I know Bluegrass is not to everyone’s taste, but c’mon, how can you not love songs with lyrics like “The only thing you left me when you left me was no choice”, and “She always looks better through the bottom of my glass”. You certainly haven’t lived until you have heard Chuck Berry’s “Nadine” played by a traditional bluegrass band. Between sets, we walked around a quilt show, and were particularly struck by this one:

It was a great afternoon.

After returning to Rancho Ventana (Joanne’s resort), we went to a community soup and salad dinner and dance. We returned home at around 9:30.

On Sunday the Mass in English in Blythe was at 8:00 AM, a little too early for us, so we stayed put for the day, reading, quilting and attending the ice cream social at 3:00. Before supper, we took a walk along the river, then went back up to the pool and hot tub and watched a beautiful sunset. Again, we were the only ones there, although there are a lot of people in the park. Strange.

 

January 15

January 15

Holiday Inn and Hockey; Been There, Done That, Got the T-shirt

We left for Glendale around 10:00 this morning after saying goodbye to our Bowmanville friends. Turns out we may run into them again later in the month. We hope so, as we developed a nice relationship with them. After a stop in Gila River for fuel and lunch, we arrived at the Holiday Inn (the same one we stayed at last year) at around 3:30. At 6:00, we made the 15-minute walk over to the arena to watch the Flames-Coyotes game, which Calgary won 4-1. You may recall that 2 years ago, Jeannine got a Coyotes t-shirt by pick-pocketing the girl doing the t-shirt tossing. This time I got one the legitimate way; the shirt, which was tightly folded, bounced off the hands of 2 or 3 people before landing on the step right beside me; all I had to do was reach over and grab it. Good fun all around.

After making a stop at the Camping World store a few minutes from here, we will make the 2-hour drive to our next stop in Ehrenburg on the Arizona side of the Colorado River, where we will be for a week.

 

January 14

January 14

Hot Dogs, Fire and Friends

After the excitement of Los Algodones yesterday, we had a down day today and just hung out reading (me) and quilting (not me). At 4:30, there was a community hot dog roast at the fire pit, which was fun, and after everyone left, we kept the fire going and were joined by two other couples, our Bowmanville friends and a couple from Missouri, Debbie and Charlie (who sported a lengthy white beard and looked like he had stepped right off the set of Duck Dynasty ). Very nice people, and we spent the next three hours in good conversation. Headed for Glendale tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

January 12-13

January 12-13

Marshalls, Movies and Mexico

Yesterday we drove into Yuma to do a little shopping, ending up with a pair of cute acrylic Martini glasses (palm trees on them no less – seemed fitting) from Beals and a couple of shirts from Marshalls. I had to go to Best Buy to get another length of co-axial TV cable; I seem to have left the original back in Desert Hot Springs. We then went to see the movie “”Selma”; difficult to watch in places, but very well done.

Today we decided to do what every red-blooded retiree does around here, which is to drive to the Mexico border crossing about 2 miles south of here, park in an immense parking lot ($8/day for an RV), then walk across the border into a town called Los Algodones, which is a warren of very kind of store you can imagine, dominated by liquor stores, pharmacies, eyeglasses/contacts stores, and doctors and dentists of every description. (Nobody checks you when you enter Mexico on foot; you go through U.S. Customs when you cross back, complete with drug-sniffing dogs). It was actually a lot of fun (if you get stressed by an endless stream of vendors and panhandlers, and Mexican salespeople who constantly invade your personal space, this is not the place for you). Once you say no, they back off immediately, and our philosophy is that at bottom, these are all people just trying to make a living the best they can. Here is a taste of the time we spent there;

Cheap glasses, but they apparently work fine!

Jeannine decided to get a $5.00 trim:

Before…

After!

We celebrated the new haircut with a taco lunch

Our new BFF Santiago; it seemed only fitting that Jeannine bought a sundress from him!

It was a great experience, and we discovered that this is a way of life for sunbirds and Yuma residents alike, who flock here to pick up prescription drugs (no prescription needed), new glasses or contacts, liquor , and to have dental work done, all at prices very much below what you would pay north of the border. After crossing back through U.S. Customs (a painless process), we headed into Yuma to see yet another movie (at $5.00 a ticket to sit in a beautiful multiplex theatre, it’s a no-brainer). This time we saw “Into the Woods”, which we really liked. Is there any role Meryl Streep can’t play?

We returned to the RV park as darkness fell. Tomorrow is our last day here, as we head for Glendale to go to a Calgary Flames-Arizona Coyotes hockey game on Thursday night. We are going to spend the night at the hotel we stayed at last year, which is within walking distance of the arena. On Friday we will head west again to Ehrenburg, which is just across the Colorado River from Blythe California, While there, we will be touching base with Joanne Mawhinney. More details to come in the next few days.

 

January 11

January 11

It Never Rains in Arizona.. Well, Almost Never; Death By Karaoke

We went into Yuma this morning and picked up some groceries, then attended 11:00 Mass at St. Francis of Assisi. After Mass we stopped in at a McDonald’s to use their Wifi to post to the blog and catch up on email. After returning back to the RV park, the weather, which had started out a bit grey and cool, decided to become rainy. Jeannine called Mickie and we had a nice conversation with her. At 3:00 we all gathered around the fire with nibblies and Gary’s home made sangria, which turned out great. We passed the next 4 hours in good conversation, sharing our travelling experiences:

Later in the evening, we went up to the clubhouse in hopes of watching Downton Abbey on the TV, only to find that we were pre-empted by “Karaoke with Barb”, which in reality, turned out be “Karaoke by Barb”, as she was pretty much the only performer in front of about 10 seniors. God bless her, she was doing her best and we had to giver her credit, but if I heard one more rendition of a hurtin’ country song by Hank Williams or Willie Nelson, I felt like I’d be taking a long look at the pill bottle. When the crowd started bad-mouthing the Dixie Chicks (we keep being reminded of what a right-wing Republican part of the country this is), and then she launched into “I’m walkin'”, we took that as an omen and decided that it was time to cut our losses and do some walkin’ of our own back to Lucy for the night.

January 9-10

January 9

Where’s Walter? (For You “Breaking Bad” Fans)

Went into Desert Hot Springs to kill some time and buy a few groceries, then grabbed some breakfast before heading for Winterhaven, a 3 hour drive through the desert:

Sand dunes just west of Winterhaven

Shortly after this picture was taken, we spotted, a few hundred yards into the desert, an old Class C RV parked out in the middle of the desert, with a couple of lawn chairs beside it. All that was missing was Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in their white suits. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a picture of it. We arrived in Winterhaven at about 2:30, only to find out that it was really 3:30 because they are on Arizona time here (Arizona time stays the same year-round. We went to a communal hamburger dinner and stayed to play Bingo. No winnings to speak of, but we met some really nice people at our table. Internet service is pretty sketchy, so I may not be able to post this until we drive into Yuma.

January 10

Instant Sangria Party!

We spent a pretty relaxed day. At bingo last night, we met a really nice couple from Bowmanville Ontario (can’t seem to get away from Canadians down here 🙂 ). They took their motorbike into Yuma and bought a new anode rod for our water heater, then helped install it. Jeannine went up to the pool while I waited for them to return, but found the pool unheated, and too cold, even for her. There is a hot tub, but it is quite small. This is a nice enough resort with very friendly staff, but the lack of a heated pool and truly terrible Wifi service makes it unlikely that we would return here. Once again, we have had to resort to good old McD’s to check email and post the blog. Our friends stayed for Happy Hour, and another fellow we had met last night came by, got talking about some blackberries he had in his freezer, and that led to a discussion about sangria recipes, which in turn led to the arranging of an instant sangria party at his RV this afternoon. (We donated the wine).

After dinner, we started a fire in the communal sheltered fire pit right behind our site. The free firewood is very dry and dense and burns beautifully. Nobody else showed up, but we enjoyed the fire anyway. If we have another fire tonight, I’ll post a picture of it next time.

I’ll leave you with this one that we heard at our last resort:

Four guys go hunting for a few days. There are two small cabins, each of which has two beds. Harry is a very loud snorer, so Charlie agrees to sleep in the cabin with him the first night. The next morning Charlie appears at breakfast haggard and with bags under his eyes. When asked how it went, he replied “I couldn’t get to sleep with Harry’s snoring, so I sat up and watched him all night.” The next night Bill agrees to take a turn; next morning, same story. On the third night, Bob, a ruggedly handsome cowboy type takes his turn, The next morning, he appears bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. When asked what happened, he said” Well, when it was bed-time, I tucked Harry in and kissed him goodnight and went to sleep. He sat up the rest of the night and watched me!”

All of the photos we have taken so far are up on my Fotki site. Click on the link below:

http://public.fotki.com/TwoDwarves/our-trip-december-2/page15.html

 

 

January 8

January 8

Can You Hear Me Now?

Went back to aquacise for the last time this morning, as we leave for Winterhaven tomorrow. As our instructor George (he who had the bad fall and is in a neck brace) entered the pool, he was asked by someone how his neck was doing, to which he replied that the doctor told him that his injury had a Latin name which translates as “I don’t know what the f**k the problem is”. During the last half of the session we were treated to a lengthy, loud cell phone conversation being conducted by a woman pacing up and down the pool deck, oblivious to the fact that the 20 people in the pool were an unwitting (and unwilling) audience. She was apparently also oblivious to some rather funny comments being passed around the pool.

At 5:00 we joined in a Mexican dinner put on by the Staff, followed by a round of card bingo which is, as its name implies, is bingo played in groups of 4 with a deck of cards. It’s actually quite fun, but the game was made more interesting by the lady next to us who, to put it simply, had a few control issues. However, it all ended well and we had a good time with the very nice couple we played with. We are headed into Desert Hot Springs tomorrow morning to an Al-Anon meeting and a visit to a swimsuit shop before heading for Winterhaven.

 

January 7

January 7

When Does The Fun Begin? Turn Out the Lights, The Pot-Luck’s Over

We went to aquacise this morning (yes, I said we), an hour and a quarter session (somehow it seemed longer than that…), led by the fellow we watched the hockey game with, complete with neck brace. He was a Sociology professor at UBC among other professions, and seems to really know his physiology as well, judging by the full range of exercises he put us through, designed to work seemingly every muscle in the body, including some I didn’t know I had. It wa a good workout, but one I may pay for tomorrow!

At 5:00 we went to the clubhouse for a very pleasant pot-luck dinner with about 20 other people. A microphone was passed around and everyone said where they were from, how long they had been here and told a joke if they felt like it. It was very nice, but when dinner was over, it was over; 5 minutes after finishing, everyone except us and one other couple were packed up and gone. A bit strange.

 

January 6

January 6

New Shoes Are Unbroken

We decided to make today a shopping day and in late morning, headed for a couple of Outlet Malls in Cabazon, about 30 minutes west of here. Given the high end nature of the stores, all we actually bought were some running shoes for each of us at a pretty reasonable price. Jeannine was looking for a pair of sunglasses, but the cheapest pairs started at $80.00. Enough said. The rest of the time was spent window shopping, although we did indulge in lunch at Starbucks.

We headed back to the theatre in Rancho Mirage to see “Unbroken”, which was a little hard to watch in places, but was very good and for us at least, lived up to the hype. We then went to a Walmart next door to pick up a few groceries (and a nice pair of sunglasses for $24.00), before heading home. As often as we come down to the States, the cultural shock of walking through Walmart and seeing bottles of Jack Daniels whiskey flanked by stuffies on one side and packages of gum on the other never seems to wear off.

 

January 5

January 5

Hockey Night in Palm Springs; Hospital Horror Story

Jeannine went to Aquacise this morning while I finally managed to get the blog entry for the past few days posted. Other than that we had a relaxing day poking around some of the park models for sale or lease in the park (no, we’re not quite at that stage yet). While at Aquacise, Jeannine managed to wangle us an invitation to watch the Gold Medal Junior Hockey game at the 5th-wheel home of an older couple who have a satellite setup. He had just returned from a brief hospital stay, due to a fall he had which cracked a vertebrae in his neck. We got talking about medical insurance, and it turned out that the guy in the bed next to him (a Canadian) had recently developed lung and chest congestion problems, which ultimately put him in the ICU for a few days. His family wanted to fly him home, but the airlines would not take him until his condition stabilized. Total bill; $310,000: Insurance; none. He was only going to be down here for 3 weeks, so he didn’t bother atking out insurance. As a result, he is probably going to lose his house. Lesson: never, ever travel to the States without medical insurance!

We had a great time watching the game, especially because of the result. Good people, good conversation, and yet another example of the kindness of strangers. It really is nice here:

Our little Palm Springs home