Where Did They Go?

Well , we made it over to Desert Hot Springs to visit our friends Hal and Bunty. And what a drive it was. We left Valencia Travel Park north of Santa Clarita at about 8:00AM, just in time to participate in the morning follies on I-5 as folks head into the Los Angeles megopolis for work. Once we got off of I-5 we got stuck in a traffic jam on I-210 that lasted for over a half hour. All in all it took us over an hour and a half to travel 40 miles. Once we cleared that though we were off to the Palm Springs area.
They have a Park Model in the Sky Valley RV resort. It is really a nice place about 10 or so miles outside of Palm Springs. Boy is it warm though, when we arrived it was in the mid 90’s. A lot hotter than we are used to. One problem though we had no internet connection there so I didn’t manage to get anything posted for a couple of days. First time we had reached a spot where there was absolutely no signal for our air card to work with. I guess I better get the booster set up to see if that will help in the future.

Hal and Bunty in their "garden"

We had a great supper at Hal and Bunty’s and enjoyed visiting with them. Yesterday, the 19th, we ran into Palm Springs to do a little shopping and stock up the fridge for some time in the desert. I noticed in Palm Springs that the majority of the folks were calling me “sonny”, I guess it is because even old as I am I am below the mean average age.
After our shopping trip we helped set up their desert backyard for a wine and cheese party. Sure were a lot of friendly folks who showed up and each and every one of them happy to share their beautiful spot with us. After all the food we devoured we skipped supper, too many good snacks.
On the morning of the 20th we hooked up and moved over to Quartzsite. Unlike the drive through the Los Angeles area this one was a traffic free dream. I-10 just heads out across the desert and the fact that there is no water to be seen is not a huge issue for us modern day travelers. It certainly must have been for those who travel in this country over the last few centuries. And I think the shortage of water is again on the verge of affecting all of California. From the billboards we have seen there is a huge lobbying going on about the allocation of water. Agriculture/cities/wildlife and environment all have their advocates.
We met our friends Bill and Margaret here along with their friends Ron and Edy who we had also met here last winter. We got our rig set up for desert living so now we’ll see if everything does it part to make it all work. It appears to use a lot of power to just be, but we suspected that so we have 400 watts of solar panels on the roof to, hopefully, recharge the batteries through these sunny Arizona days. Things haven’t changed much here but it is a little dryer this year than last.
I am not sure whether or not our internet connection will be solid enough here to upload this posting or any photos but we’ll give it a whirl. If it doesn’t work we’ll update it as soon as we can. Thanks for checking on us Mick, it's nice to know someone is watching.

Here's a shot of our new neighbourhood in Quartzsite. Nice neighbours too.