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