With family for the holidays!

We drove back to Ventura on Wednesday and left the rig in Las Vegas at the Thousand Trails. You are supposed to ask the manager for permission before you leave your rig overnight because they don't want the park to be a free storage yard. Many people do not, I chose to follow the rules and Randy was very accommodating and said they would keep an eye on my 5th wheel for me!

Wednesday is supposed to be the busiest travel day of the year so we left at 6 am. We just stopped for a restroom break in Barstow because my truck as plenty of fuel to get the 320 miles on one tank. We arrived at Crystal and James' house at 11:15 am which really is good time! They are awesome and allow us to stay there when we are in town.

On Thursday Patty, Cynthia and Crystal were doing the cooking. Patty got up at 5:00 and had the turkey in the oven (upside down) by 6:00.

I picked up my mom at about noon. My dad drove down from Ojai but Claire was not feeling well and did not come with him.

Matt came early and Jasmine came in her own car so she could take off early and go to her own family. Milo and his girlfriend Jane also came. It was a great day with family!

Thanksgiving day at the Hills house

After I got back with my mom I turned the turkey right side up. Having the breast down for most of the cooking time drains the juice from the dark meat into the dryer white meat. At least that's the theory. All I know is that we have been doing that for the last three years and the turkeys have been so much better since we have done it!

On Monday we headed back to Vegas. Crystal and Gracie rode back to Vegas with us. Our son-in-law James took Friday off of work and will be driving to Vegas tomorrow morning and staying until Monday taking his family back with him.

On Tuesday we went to the Bellagio to see their atrium display. It was being worked on and will not be ready until Friday. We will go back.

Bellagio

Several years ago before Crystal was married I took her on a daughter//father trip to Las Vegas. One of  the regrets with the trip is that I did not buy her something that I did my my son Matthew on our trip to Vegas.

A Deep fried Twinkie!!

We went to the Freement Experience Tuesday night and that is where you can buy the scrumptious experience! Now that Twinkies are back in business redemption was mine!  :)

Deep Fried Twinkie

For you that have never indulged in one, they taste like a funnel cake on steroids. They are really good, but you need to share it because it is soooooo rich tasting! She gave a taste of the powdered sugar to Grace.

On the way back from Freemont Street we stopped by the Sams Town Casino. They have a free show called Mystic Falls every two hours. They use lasers and water and steam and music and animated animals. During Christmas time they change to show to Christmas music and even have bubbles come down like snow.

Sams Town Mystic Falls

On Wednesday night we went to the Ethel M Candy factory. They have a 3 acre cactus garden that is free to the public to tour. At Christmas time they decorate the whole thing with lights!

Ethel M Cactus Garden

Here are three beautiful generations of women! Grandma, granddaughter, and daughter!

3 Generation girls

Santa won't be here until Friday so I had to sit in!

Santa Grandpa

Crystal wanted to take this picture because the RV in the background!

Gracie, Grandpa and Grandma

If it looks like we are bundled up, it's because it's about 38 degrees out. Today it never got above 42. We are really having a cold spell right now! It's lovely having weather!

Tonight we are going to Opportunity Village which is Penn Jillette's charity. On Saturday night after James gets here we will go to the Las Vegas Speedway. You drive the speedway which is decorated with Christmas lights!

That's it for now,

Love you all,

God Bless,

Brian and Patty

Nevada National Test Site Tour

It has been more then a month since I have posted. I really haven't had time or good internet to be able to be able to post. Although I can use my phone to tether from, I have been using a lot of data so I don't want to use it on the blog. It takes more to upload the pictures.

To catch up what we have been doing is that after we left Palm Springs we went to Acton for 2 weeks. We realized with Gracie's first birthday coming up we would be driving into Ventura every day so we decided to come back to Santa Paula for birthday week.

Birthday Girl

After we left Santa Paula we went back to Palm Springs for a week. We then went to Earp, CA which is across the Colorado River from Parker, Az. The picture is from the Arizona side looking across at our RV Park. It is called Emerald Cove RV Resort.

Emerald Cove RV

The funny thing about it is that although it is in California, the entire Parker strip as they call it use Arizona time, even on the California side. Legally it was one hour earlier, but all the businesses use the later time.

We stayed a week here and really enjoyed it. One night three wild burros came into camp. Here one of them is in front of our rig.

Wild Burro's

We are now in Las Vegas. We are here for three weeks but will be coming home for Thanksgiving. 

On Wednesday we did the Nevada National Test Site tour. It is an all day free monthly tour that you need to book 5 to 6 months in advance.

You are loaded into a nice motorcoach at the Atomic Museum in Vegas. They take you to the test site about 70 miles outside of Vegas. You are assigned badges and they are checked at the security check. A soldier comes on the bus and actually touches and checks the front and back of each and every badge. No cameras or phones or computers or even binoculars are allowed on the tour so from now on all pictures are photos I found on the internet but do properly describe what we saw!

Security Check

Obviously I won't show or describe the whole tour as it was from 8:00-4:00 and about 250 miles, but the highlights were as follows.

The Aluminum Domes were setup to see if they could stand up to the atomic blast. Not only did they crumble but when you looked into the whole they were actually melted. 6" thick cement also did not hold up, but 2' thick did.

Aluminum Domes

This train trestle is warped and mangled. This was from a bomb dropped from a plane about 1600 feet away.

Train Trestle

The bank vault held up. The contents were fine although it was said the contents were warm inside.

Bank Vault

We went by a low level waste dump. I was surprised that it was not buried deeper then it was. They put the waste in train containers and then put them in pits maybe 20 feet deep.

The bus drove down into a fairly shallow crater.  The Bilby crater is about 80 feet deep. This one is created by an underground explosion.

Bilby Crater

The Apple II House is one of the houses you saw in the old newsreel films with the mannequins in them. Because of all the reinforcing in the house it actually held up during the blasts.

Apple II House

The Sedan Crater is the worlds largest man made crater at 320 feet deep and 1280 feet across. A 104 kilaton bomb displaced 6.5 million cubic yards of dirt. This was a test to consider using nuclear for clearing large areas of dirt and rocks. The project was called ploughshare.

Sedan Crater

That's it for today. We will try not to make it so long next time!

God Bless,

Brian and Patty

Bombay Beach Apocalypse!

Scott wanted to drive all around the Salton Sea. Last year we headed to the east side and saw Bombay Beach and the North Shore Yacht Club. This year we started on the west side. We drove into Salton City and Desert Shores. Patty and I had done that a few weeks ago, but Scott and Terri and not seen those towns yet.

After driving through those towns we stopped at the Red Earth Casino for Scott to fill up his truck with diesel. It is by far the cheapest place in the area at $3.79 a gallon! We continued on through Westmoreland and headed up to the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.

Of course with the government pinheads being shutdown this HUGE wilderness area that should be just left open was shut down. It was not even gated because there are no gates, it just had barricades up.This is just another case of our president being nasty, trying to prove a point! Like when he had Secretary of Defense Hagle refuse to pay for our brave servicemen funerals!

A lot of anger in our country!

Ok, enough about politics and back to our day!

We continued to the east side of the sea. Scott is a big train fan so we stopped next to the train tracks to have lunch. We got to watch several freight trains as we munched on our sandwiches. Our friend Bill Gehr who some of you know as a friend, and some of you may have read his reviews in Trailer Life or MotorHome magazines or know him as the "Ask the Expert" in RV Journal or "Ask RV Bill" in the Thousand Trails Trail Blazer magazine called just checking up on us while we were stopped.

We will see Bill in December because we will both be Park Hosting along the beach in Ventura. We won't be at the same park but we will be within a few miles of each other overlapping for two months! Wahoo!!

We continued to Bombay Beach and pulled into the community. There are approximately 245 residents "living" in Bombay Beach. It truly reminds you of one of those apocalypse type of movies..

Rubble at Bombay Beach

I saw on Zillow that there is a 1500 square foot house that has been foreclosed on that the bank is asking $9,500.00! Yep, nine thousand five hundred dollars for a house and property! This is a very depressed area!

In the 60's this was becoming a very popular and exclusive place to come vacation. But with the water turning bad and then in the 70's a hurricane from mexico brought heavy weather up here and flooded all this away. With all the salt and toxicity of the water it destroyed everything here. It was never repaired and still sits like it was before the storm.

Luxury trailer

They have built berms around the town which you can see in the background of the above picture to keep it from happening again.

This is what remains from the old dock.

Old Dock

Because all the fish were dying in this horrible water, they stocked it with tilapia, gulf croaker, corvina, and sargo.  The tilapia weigh up to 3.5 pounds, and the corvina have weighed up to 37 pounds and measured 42 inches.

The Salton Sea has a salinity level of over 4.0, way over seawater. Once it reaches 4.4 there is a belief that only the tilapia will be able to survive.

Dead Fish

You can see how bad the water is by this chair that was fished out of the water!

Chair

We continued the loop around the sea. In all it was about 150 miles. We got back and rested a while. We then went to Mario's Italian and had antipasto salad and a large pizza that we shared among the four of us. After that we went to the VillageFest in Palm Springs. It is a weekly event on Thursday nights that is about 6-8 blocks long on Palm Canyon Blvd. They block the street off and venders hock their wares.

It was a great day with great friends!

Tomorrow is more of a rest day...

God Bless,

Brian and Patty

Scott and Terri are here!

Our great friends Scott and Terri Blankenbiller arrived for their vacation on Saturday October the 5th. It was really good to see them! We used to go every year on family vacations with them. I would usually plan the activities. 

Because we are living full time on vacation now, and Scott and Terri are on vacation for just a week, I did not want to dictate their time. If they wanted to just kick back and rest, that would be OK with us. If they wanted to go do alot this week that would be alright also. I asked Scott to plan what he wanted to do.

They decided because they were pretty burnt out from work, they wanted to just wing it. We would figure it out when they got here. Patty and I had already been here for almost 3 weeks, so we are good with whatever they want to do, even if that just means sitting by the pool.

Saturday was just kicking back and catching up with each other. It had been awhile. We are both fairly new grandparents, so that took awhile. :)

Sunday we went to church and when we got back we had some grocery shopping we had to do. Other then that the pool was awesome!

Monday we went to the Augustine Casino in Coachella. They have a great breakfast steak and eggs buffet. On Mondays and Thursdays it is only $4.50 for seniors over 50 years old! Terri and I won some money. Terri kept hers, but Patty lost mine. :(

Tuesday Scott went hiking but it was too hot for us. The girls went shopping.

Wednesday it cooled off and even rained a little. We went to the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. It is a cooperative between BLM and Morongo County so in spite of the Federal Government shutdown it is still open. 

Big Morongo Canyon

The preserve has several miles of hiking trails.

Trail System Map

The trails are a large mixture of boardwalks over marshes, hilly and rocky, and forestry.

Trails

The terrain is quite diverse in the canyon. Here are some steps in the trail system.

Steps

We walked almost all the trails which was just under 3 miles total.

Rocky trails

Here we are after having hiked up the mountain.

Canyon View

They have a lot of rest areas and decks. You can see one from up on the hill.

Deck

Patty took this picture of Scott, Terri and Brian on one of the decks.

Brian, Terri and Scott

The decks are made of 80% recycled plastic and 20% wood. They have bottle holders that Patty thought was kinda cool. Here is Patty displaying the bottle holders.

Patty and the bottle holder

On our last trail a blue-jay started following us. It was weird. It must have been used to people feeding it. It actually followed us for a couple hundred yard or so.

Blue-Jay

After the hike, Scott and I had appointments to get Swedish massages at the Milan Institute which is a massage school. 50 minute massages which ended up being about an hour for $25.00 and they were very good! Quite a bargain... 

Ended up the night in the Jacuzzi and I'm not sure how I'm writing this blog!!! ;)

With that I MUST say goodnight and God Bless you all!

Love you, 

Brian and Patty

Coachella Valley Preserve

Sunday we went to Southwest Community Church. We go to this church whenever we are in the Palm Desert area. We really like the worship here as well as the teaching from Pastor Gerald Sharon. Having said that we really do miss our home church, New Life Community Church in Oxnard, Ca.

Southwest Community Church

After church we decided to go out to lunch. I had heard of a burger joint called "Grill-a-Burger" that was supposed to have some really good hamburgers. They really were good and I think we will be back! :)

Bacon Cheese burger!

Today we took a trip to the Coachella Valley Preserve to 1000 Palms Oasis. We have been here many times and last year even hiked a couple mikes to another oasis with a pond in 100+ weather with the Blankenbillers. 

I took the pictures today with my phone, and I could not see what I was taking because the sun was so bright. I did not get this whole sign.

1000 Palms

Here is the preserve.

Preserve

I thought this was kind of cool how this palm curved over a bench seat.

Curved Palm tree

We walked a little ways down the McCallum trail.

McCallum Trail sign

This is the start of the trail.

McCallum Trail

We met a couple that was on vacation from England. They were planning on going to Joshua Tree National Monument Park tomorrow, and then on to Death Valley and then Yosemite. Unfortunately the boneheads in Washington didn't do their jobs and ALL of those places will be closed starting Tuesday! 

Here is the wood walkway we met the couple on.

More of the trail

We really like it here in the Coachella Valley. Palm Desert is so pristine! All the roads are always clean and the landscaping is beautiful! Because we have good 50 amp service (and the Hughes Autoformer is working great), the 5th wheel stays cool. The swimming pool is very nice. And so far the heat has not bothered us at all! In fact the other day it got down to about 85 and we were commenting how cool it was! WEIRD! 

No problem though, it was back to about 97 today! :)

Well that's it for today,

God bless you and thanks for reading,

Love you,

Brian and Patty

Flexible Cutting Sheets

Yesterday we went to the Salton Sea again. The Salton Sea was formed in the early 1900's when the Colorado River had a levy break and the flooded the plain. There was no exit so the Salton "Lake" was formed. Because there is no exit for the water to flow, once the levy was fixed through evaporation only the salt and chemicals were left. As farmer runoff occurred with no place for the  water to exit and thus circulate the water continued to become more salty and toxic.

Fish died, the water stunk, the land became scarred. It is an awful looking place. Some people have stuck it out, but it is truly a dead area. Some homes, but most are abandoned. We took some pictures last year if you want to look it up. Did not take any new ones this trip.

It was time to defrost the freezer in the RV.  It normally takes several hours to accomplish this tedious task. I read somewhere that you could use flexible cutting sheets to line the back of the freezer.

These can be bought at Walmart or Bed, Bath and Beyond or other stores. We picked ours up in Quartzsite back in January at one of the swap meets for cheap.

Flexible Cutting Sheets

We got either 4 or 6 of them for about $5.00. They are 15" x 11" in size. Sometime maybe in May or so we installed them. Because they were not the right size to fit I first put one in long size up.

One sheet in.

Because they are flexible they do bow a little so I have the bowing out in the middle, that keeps the top and bottom tight against the back. The shelf keeps it tight in the middle. I overlapped the sheet to put the second one in.

Both sheets in.

After we put both sheets in, we refilled the freezer. I usually wait until we are low in the freezer to defrost.

Refilled

To defrost now I just reverse the process. I first pull the food and the shelf. The ice just builds on the back wall. I was able to pry the first sheet because they overlap using a butter knife. It came right out with a 1" thick sheet of ice. The ice slid right off the sheet. I thew it out the door like a Frisbee! I did the second sheet the same way. Next time I will put a towel in the bottom to catch any falling ice.

Ten minutes later I was putting it all back together with no fuss or mess! Whoever thought of using this was a genius! I am impressed. I have a few extra sheets that I am giving to RV Bill. It is about time I am able to give back to my good friend!

This morning we went to the Augustine Casino in Coachella. It is a small Indian Casino that has an excellent breakfast buffet. Monday and Thursday are Senior Days or as they call them, "Golden Gamers" day.

The made to order Steak and Omelette buffet is only $7.50, but on Seniors day it is only $5.50. For some reason they only charged us $4.50, possibly because it was our first time. I questioned the lesser charge, but they said it was correct. There is no tax because it is on the reservation so it was only $9.00 total for both of us. It was really good! Better then the Vegas buffets!

They also gave us $12.00 each in free play. You can not just cash that out, but have to play it, but can cash out any winnings. We cashed out $59.04! We figured that was pretty good, even after paying for breakfast, we cleared $50.00! We could get used to that! :)

Well that is it for today,

Thanks for reading,

God Bless,
Brian and Patty

Gracie is walking!

When the kids were with us in Julian, Gracie was trying to walk. She would stand by herself and try to take a step but would fall down. Here she is standing up without holding on.

Gracie standing

She was walking but would brush up against the cabinets, not really holding on, just balancing.

Walking

A week after they got home, she did start walking without help from the walls. There's no stopping her now!

Gracie in her car seat

I told you in the last blog I would insert some shots of our granddaughter. As cute as she is, how could I not do it?

You can see she looks like her mama! :)

Crystal and Gracie

I wanted to show you our campsite in Palm Desert. The campground is a Thousand Trails and although it is in Palm Desert is called Thousand Trails Palm Springs.

Thousand Trails Palm Springs

It is closed during the summer and opens the middle of September. We got here last Tuesday. It opened just days earlier. With our TT membership we can stay for free for three weeks. Other campgrounds in the area are between $35- $60 per night. Because of the membership we have, twice a year we can pay $29.00 and stay an extra week. Because we want to say 4 weeks in the area we chose to do that. $29.00 for 4 weeks is not so bad!

Site 278

If you notice there are a lot of Date Palm trees. This is an active Date Palm ranch. They harvest Medjool Dates from these trees. I have heard by doing this it keeps the water and electric rates cheep. Half the park is 30 amp and half is 50 amp. Unfortunately the 50 amp side is very tight because of the trees. Because of the heat we chose the 50 amp side. We are getting pretty good at backing in though so no problem.

The pool area is nice here. temps are nice, pool is clean, and they use a salt water chlorination system. It still chlorinates but doesn't feel as strong. We really like it for swimming laps.

Pool

The park is still pretty empty right now, but it will start filling up during the next month. I just took this picture this morning. There is nobody on our row! In a couple weeks the Blankenbillers are coming for a weeks vacation and we are looking forward to that!

Empty Park

One of the concerns we have on the road is low power. It can cause long term damage to air conditioner compressors, refrigerators and microwaves. Many people purchase a product called an Autoformer. To the best of my understanding it converts amperage to volts and will boost volts by 10% of they read under a certain number. Hughes is considered the best. The 50 amp Autoformer cost about $600.00. I have been looking for a good condition used one.

Hughes RV220-50 Autoformer

I found this one online on Craigslist Phoenix for $200.00. A retired guy who was a fulltimer and now has settled in Mesa, Az is selling it. He and his wife have a small business now. Cost of freight is $40.00. (It weighs 45 lbs) So for $240.00 It is a very good value. If they go bad Hughes will fix them for a whole lot less then a new one, so getting a cheap used one is a good idea. It is good cheap insurance for the expensive appliances.

Well that's it for today.

Love you all!

Brian and Patty