Races

Today was a little cooler so we stayed away from the golf course and went to watch the Formula 1 boat races.

The Formula 1 boats have an American tour and a European tour, much like the cars. They were reaching speeds of 159 miles per hour today...and they are so loud!

We also stayed to watch the Cracker Jack races. These boats are operated by two people and they are even louder. 

The Cracker Jack race was going well until the orange boat couldn't manage a curve and they flipped sideways. Not head over heels like you see in movies, but just as frightening.

The Water Rescue boat was out in minutes and had the two men on the way to the hospital shortly after. One was on a stretcher so he may have been seriously injured but we don't know.

Scenery

When we were driving from Rio Bend to Parker Arizona we came across some very different landscape near the Imperial Valley....I think the dunes were actually called Imperial Valley Sand Dunes.

Dune buggy loving people were camped out in the hundreds waiting to race their machines across the sand.

Like Glass

We are camped at Buckskin Mountain State Park and the Colorado River runs right beside the campground.  Yesterday morning the water was like glass and the reflections were huge.

My Favourite

Emerald Canyon Golf Course in Parker Arizona is a beautiful and difficult course to play. We played it yesterday and it ate me up! Fred, on the other hand, did extremely well....no canyon walls for him.

Eventually I just picked up a cooler with ice at the clubhouse, threw a few beer in there and just enjoyed the views! The only way to golf when having a brutal round!

Cleaning Up

Fred's usual routine: cleaning up a campsite before he feels it's ready!

Tough Job

We pulled into Rio Bend RV and Golf Resort on the 17th of November not knowing what to expect and left on November 24th already planning to return.

The park is located about 10 kms from Mexico so it definitely has a Mexican feel to it, but it still retains the look of any RV park in Arizona and California.

There are many things that appeal to us including the three minute walk to the golf course. The gym is a good size, there is a pool plus an activity centre for zumba, yoga…even line dancing should Fred so desire!

The golf course has a snack bar plus there is a full size restaurant in the clubhouse area. An outdoor pub keeps people entertained with dancing and music many nights of the week.

We really enjoyed our time there and will someday probably join Saskatchewan Row….three families from Rosetown have set it up. The one family knows Bob and Verna Nunweiler…they live at Lake Diefenbaker in the summer plus they sold their land to Bob.

Settling In

We are in El Centro, California at the Rio Bend RV and Golf Resort and plan on staying a week to do some golfing and enjoy the benefits of having electricity....good TV not included as part of the park is having a TV problem and it looks like we are in that part of the park.

We golfed yesterday and found it to be a very challenging course....not very long, but well kept with lots of hills and some water.

It is a little cooler so this morning we are hibernating and trying to catch up on E Mails and paper work. We will hit the gym and then do some golfing this afternoon, if the weather smartens up.

Not a Good Day

On our last day we usually get ready to travel by organizing items so the bumps and bruises they receive on the road don’t cause any real damage…no broken dishes or stuff falling out of the fridge.

We were close to being ready when I went in to change into something warmer and Fred followed me outside. He closed to door to keep the warmth in and that was the last time we were able to get into our 5th wheel for at least four hours.

Jayco trailers and 5th wheels seem to have a problem with one of the locks slipping and locking the door on its own…it happened once before in Wickenburg, Arizona and now again today.

Our camping neighbour drove Fred into 29 Palms for cell service and to contact CAA…long story short, CAA couldn’t or wouldn’t send someone out. Too busy. And, we had topped up our CAA coverage before we left to include the RV.....so that didn't work!

Fred and Tony had to hire an independent locksmith to come out to pick the lock. Should be easy, right? No such luck. Eventually he had to drill out the lock in order to open the door. We had to pay him $100 USD to pick the lock, which he couldn’t do and now we have to spend $100 USD to get a new lock.

At least we got in and didn’t have to sleep in the truck and we didn’t find any more Kangaroo Rats in the unit. It has been a strange day and the glass of wine tastes mighty fine right now.

Rats!

When we arrived in Jumbo Rocks we took our apple cores out of the truck and put them in the belly of the Jayco to go into the garbage later. To make a story short, we forgot and the next morning we found that something had gotten into the belly and found our apples.

We set out traps and by the evening we had caught a Kangaroo Rat by the side of the 5th wheel….just looks like a large mouse with a long tail.

Nothing else showed up so we thought we had cleaned up all the mess. Until tonight!

I went to the pantry to get some juice and could smell something that reminded me of the shed when we caught mice out there.

Fred took the cover off the water system [which is in the bottom of the pantry] and sure enough we had caught a rat in there….we don’t remember even putting the trap in there….must have been in the spring when we did our spring cleaning of the unit.

Now I won’t put my feet down on the floor because I think there may be more hanging around!

BTW, these rats look just like mice so to make ourselves feel better we will try to call them mice from now on…Kangaroo Rat is just a name!!

Another BTW....we caught two more rats in the belly of the 5th wheel before we left Jumbo Rocks...the good news is that we haven't caught any for two days!!

Recap

I thought I would give a recap of the National Parks we have been in since arriving in California. Furnace Creek at Death Valley seemed very primitive when we first arrived…no water at the sites, no electricity and no showers. But, they did have large RV sites, dishwashing stations, modern bathrooms and showers were available at the Ranch Swimming Pool. We also had cell service. If need be we could hook up and go fill up with water and to dump our tanks.

There was always something to do in Death Valley…hiking, golfing, swimming at the pool, eating out [we didn’t even do that] and they also had a little bar where we could watch a sporting event if we so desired.

That place was just plain luxury compared to Jumbo Rocks Campground at Joshua Tree National Park. Here the sites are obviously made for tenters so we had to do some pretty good truck driving to fit into our site. There is absolutely no cell service, no showers anywhere, no water anywhere in the park, no electricity, just ugly, dirty pit toilets and no dump stations for units like ours.

Jumbo Rocks has so impressed us with the beauty of the place that I’m sure we would return in a heartbeat. Death Valley has a different kind of beauty with a large part of that coming from the fact that it is 200 feet below sea level and the landscape is so drastic.

E Mails

On Friday we drove to Split Rock to do one last hike before heading out on Sunday. This one was a little different in the fact that the boulders were actually split from breaking away from the main wall. There was a little more climbing on this hike too.

We had only gone about 50 metres when we realized we were already off the trail and hiking through some unknown territory.  Correction made and then it happened again. Now I know why a guy I talked to yesterday said he had been lost on the Split Rock Trail for over three hours before he finally found his way back to the trail. This one isn’t marked as well as the other hikes we have been on.

From Split Rocks we drove into 29 Palms for water and to pick up our E Mails. Last week we received verbal offer on our house in San Carlos from the people who are renting it and we had told them to give us a few days while we mulled it over.

I have been slowly changing my mind about selling the house as we find it very comfortable. How long do we want to do this RVing? What if one of us gets sick..where would the survivor go? Those are the type of the questions that have been rolling through my mind.

I know Fred wants to sell but he told me today that the sale was up to me. I was pretty certain I knew what I wanted so I E Mailed and said no sale, unless they want to pay full asking price. Now what have I done!

We will probably talk to them more on Sunday, November 17th when we get to Rio Bend RV and Golf Resort. Finally we will have water, electricity, internet and TV!!! I am getting excited as we haven’t had anything like that since we left home on October 19th, with the exception of the KOA in Las Vegas while we visited Diane.

Lots of Rest

We have no internet or TV so we have been doing an enormous amount of reading…even Fred!

We try to fill our mornings with hikes before the weather gets too hot.

There is a Trailhead right in our campground so we followed that to find the Skull Rock we have been reading about. It is hard to get a good picture of the actual rock but we think we did okay by moving farther away and climbing higher.

A Day For Hikes

Hidden Valley Trailhead was our destination this morning and the trail didn’t disappoint. It took us through boulders surrounding a huge meadow inside. The cattle rustlers used this spot to hide their theft while rebranding the stolen cattle.

It is easy to see why they did this for years as no one could get in or out without going through one opening in the canyon walls. Very interesting place.

Cliff climbers have discovered this spot and today we watched a couple of them try to climb the face of one cliff. Other cliffs have been declared off limits as the constant travel in and out by the climbers has destroyed too many native plants.

Great Views

When we got up this morning we realized what a special spot we had parked in. The campground is not called Jumbo Rocks without reason.

Boulders everywhere and climbers on top of many of them. Looks spectacular! We didn’t take advantage of the hiking trails today as we wanted to rest some plus we are here a week so we have plenty of time to climb and explore.

Depressing Town

We were in Twenty Nine Palms before we bought our home in San Carlos and it wasn’t much of a town then and it is even less so now. The lack of water in California has turned this town into a dried up groups of homes and businesses.

We don’t usually carry water in our unit when we travel longer distances and this time wasn’t any different. We knew our destination of Jumbo Rocks Campground in Joshua Tree National Park didn’t have any facilities at all….no water, no power, no sewer dump and no wi-fi. We researched ahead and found that the Visitor Centre for Joshua Tree set aside an area that RVs and campers could fill up before entering the Park. That was our plan until the Visitor Centre’s water pump wasn’t working. They told us to go to the RV Park by the golf course and they would look after us and allow us to fill our 30 gallon tank….they did for $25.00 USD!  Fred, the pessimist, decided that the Visitor Centre guide and the receptionist at the campground were in on a big scheme and walked away with our $25.00. BTW, we didn’t get a receipt for the water!

Jumbo Rocks Campground was certainly built for tenters and when I booked they told me that we would be okay with our unit. And we were, but just barely. Fred had to move around for a long time before we were able to comfortably put the slides out.

It was a tiring drive today so we didn’t do much other than set up, get a few things organized and make grilled cheese sandwiches before climbing into bed at 7:00.

The Mules

Death Valley was built on the strength of the mule teams that carried Borax from here to different towns 160 miles away. It took them 10 days to travel that distance. Everything in Death Valley was geared to the mule teams and the borax industry.

There is a group called the Death Valley ‘49ers who come to here every November and put on all kind of displays, sales and golf tournaments. The music is nonstop, but the best so far is the coyote howl. The contest was last night and the howling was quite impressive!

This is the 70th year for this group and in special recognition they had a twenty mule team come into Furnace Creek and travel on to the Harmony Borax Site. The mule team was a re-enactment of the actual teams that carried the Borax…I loved this! The mules were so cute!!

When the Borax mines were in danger of losing money the company decide to try to keep the area alive by attracting tourists. To do this they needed a nice hotel and so the Death Valley Inn was built in 1927. It has been renovated and is a beautiful oasis in the midst of the arid surroundings. We were there yesterday to check to out again and to get an update on prices…$400 - $500 UISD per night depending on the season seems a little excessive to me!

Sightseeing

Today was spent exploring some of the sights we visited before…just to refresh our memory. Death Valley really is a stark place with a moon-like feel..if we knew what the moon looked and felt like!

We went to see Devil’s Golf Course with its crystallized salt dunes. This place is what originally drew us to Death Valley…we thought it was an actual golf course!

We tried to get up close to Artist’s Palette but we think that the road to it has change since the flood a few years back. Even so, we did give Gord a pretty good tour of the beautiful rock colours.

We stopped to see an abandoned and restored Borax Mine, but I think the one at the Ranch is better. This one did give us a good idea of how the mules hauled the borax to towns hours away.

The most impressive stop of the day was at Zabriski’s Point with its impressive rock formations and hikes.

Reading

Once the sun goes down in Death Valley darkness hits quickly. I love to read and do crossword puzzles and using the solar lamp seems to be the best option.

We have two new batteries but we have been trying to keep them fully charged in case we need them later on. We have two more weeks of no electricity so we are in saving mode right now!

BTW, we did have two solar lamps but I dropped one on the first day here so now we have one!

Lazy Days

It has been pretty quiet in Furnace Creek so to keep us occupied with something other than golf we decided to drive to Pahrump, Nevada for a new RV battery….yes, on the coldest morning we wake up to find a dead battery in the system. No furnace means no heat!

Pahrump is an hour’s drive from here and it is the nearest town that would have a battery. We decided to kill two birds and took our laundry along. While Fred hunted for the battery I washed the laundry along with every homeless person in Pahrump. They must use this place as a warm up spot and I know they use the bathroom…evidence everywhere. Next time I will look for the battery and Fred can do the laundry! As if we will ever be back to this place.

Gas is more than a dollar cheaper per gallon in Nevada than California so that was also on the list…this truck is no Prius! The fills are very costly.

We stopped for a few groceries and were home four hours after we left. A worthwhile trip, but also an eyeopener.

Tonight we have a friend joining us for a few days, taking a break on his way to Yuma. Golfing and sightseeing will be on the agenda as Gord has never been here before.