Baby Gracie is born!!

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. We are now here in Santa Paula, CA. at the Mountain View RV park.

Mountain View RV Park

It is a very nice park. Great managers who keep it pristine. They even have hot tub which I have not been able to use because.....

As we were packing up in Palm Springs to come here I fell in a gopher hole and broke my metatarsal bone in my right foot. The first diagnoses from the x-ray tech and also the attending doctor was that I also broke my calcaneus bone which is a weight bearing bone. This was devastating news because with Grace on the way and living in the 5th wheel, it would make me immobile. My doctor set me an appointment for the following week to meet with Dr. Emily Benson the director of the Orthopedic Center 5 days later. My foot was placed in a splint and I had crutches until then. Much prayer later and Dr. Benson could not understand what others were seeing!!!! Praise God! My calcaneus bone was perfect! My metatarsal bone was broken in the "best place possible" for best healing. 

A walking cam boot was prescribed and I can now walk around without crutches! She first said I needed to wear it always for 6 weeks except showering. After three weeks I could quit wearing it bed. 

I had an appointment 1 week later. New x-rays were taken and she allowed me to take it off to sleep! Awesome!! 

Now the real reason you have stuck around to read the blog! On 10-30-12 at 8:27 pm Grace Michaela Hill decided to join us! She is the third generation born at CMH. Well actually when Patty and I were born there it was called E.P. Foster..

Crystal and Grace

Grace was 8.4 lbs. and 21". She is a beautiful and healthy baby. (just like her momma)!

Kissing baby

Great grandpa Flay (my dad) got a great birthday present yesterday! Yep, it was his birthday yesterday. On my dad's 84th birthday he got the ultimate gift, his first great grandchild! That's him closest to the camera. Also in the picture is Great grandma Claire (Flay's wife), Great grandma Rosemarie (my mom and Flay's first wife), and Great Aunt Cynthia (Patty's Sister).

We are going back to see Grace at the hospital now. More pictures to follow.

Love you all!

Brian and Patty

Good Bye Palm Springs

Tomorrow we leave Palm Springs for Santa Paula. We will be staying in Santa Paula for three months. I will periodically update the blog, but not as often. We will be staying in Santa Paula to be close to Ventura for the birth of our first grandchild Grace. We will stay until after the holidays. We will leave on January 3rd. Our overall trip will include Las Vegas, Quartzsite, Az, and then on to Texas for several months. We're still not sure how long that trip will last, but we assume between 3-5 months.

We now know we can homebase in Santa Paula so that makes it convenient.

We had a wonderful time in Palm Springs. The first several days Patty and I were by ourselves and then we had the privilege to spend our great friend Scott and Terri's vacation week with them. As Scott says, it was a Hoot!!

I kept saying I would post pictures of the pool area here. The water has not been heated because with the extreme heat here, the sun has kept the water temperature at about 86 degrees!

Pool and Hot Tub

They use a saline system here. It is essentially a salt water system. It's kind of like a glorified soft water system. There is no chlorine to burn your eyes, but the water is NOT super salty like the ocean. It does a good job keeping the water clean.

Palm Springs Pool

We spent hours every day in the pool and even enjoyed the hot tub.

Well it's time to say good bye to Palm Springs! We really enjoyed you and will be back!!

Good Bye Palm Springs!

That's it for tonight,

We will see you all this week!

Love you,

Brian and Patty

Salton Sea and Salvation Mountain!

Today the Blankenbillers left to go back home. We are sad about that because we had a great week with them!! Terri texted Patty to let us know they got back safely.

The post today is about yesterday Saturday October 6th. We did a lot Saturday so let me apologise in advance for a very long post..................

Scott wanted to go to the Salton Sea. You know that Patty and I are game to go see almost anything so we were up bright and early. The girls first wanted to go to College of the Desert (COD) to the "street fair" they host every Saturday and Sunday. It is really large. We spent several hours there.

The first stop was the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club.

North Shore Beach and Yacht Club

This was built in the 60's and at the time was the largest Marina in California. It was a hopping place with boats docked there owned by the Beach Boys, Jerry Lewis and the Marx brothers. In 1981 major storms flooded the marina as well as the salinity from agriculture runoff ruined the jetty making in impossible to dock here. By 1984 it was closed and left to disappear

In 2009 the Riverside County spent $30 million to restore the property. Although the building looks nice now, the property and marina are still trashed!

The white "rocks" on the jetty are actually pelicans.

Pelicans

We then went to the Salton Sea State Recreation Area. We received directions how to get to Slab City and Salvation Mountain. As the sign says we wee 281 feet BELOW sea level!

-281 feet

We were also told we should stop at Bombay Beach on the way to Salvation Mountain.

Bombay Beach

The town was founded as a private development in 1929. In 1976 and again in 1977 the town was flooded by tropical storms. The waterfront and a mobile home park were destroyed. The ruins still "stand" today. There are dead fish laying around far from the water.

Dead Fish

The ground has a powdery chemical look to it. It is probably dirt and salt mixed.

Ruins

This must be what they call the waterfront ruins.I believe this once was a pier. Lots of pelicans everywhere.

Waterfront

The shoreline is covered with fish skeletons. 

Fish bones

Here is one of the buried trailers. It is weird that they just left them here from the 70's!

Buried Trailers

Best friends enjoying themselves!

Patty and Terri

We continued down the road to Salvation Mountain. This is a work of love from a guy named Leonard Knight. He went off the grid many years ago, but wanted to share the love of Jesus through this huge work of "art". 

Salvation Mountain

Salvation Mountain was the inspiration for Third Day's Revelation album's cover art. It is made out of local adobe mud, hay, tree branches and over 100,000 gallons of paint.

The mountain

Leonard felt that the more paint he put on, the stronger the mountain became. At once point the county decided it was an eyesore and wanted it torn down. (If you saw slab city down the road from it you would see what a joke that was)! They took soil samples and said there was lead poison issues. That was ludicrous since all he had used was latex paint, and for years you haven't even been able to buy leaded paint.

He had independent studies taken and there was NO lead found in the surrounding soils!

Shown to be false studies, the county backed off and haven't messed with him since. In fact Congress has actually named Leonard and Salvation Mountain as a National Treasure! Yep that's Scott up there..

National Treasure

That's me up the yellow brick road. It goes all the way up the mountain. I chose not to go up any further because the steps are off camber and kind of spongy. Scott did go to the top.

Yellow Brick Road

The B's camera card got filled up, so Patty went part way up and met Scott with our camera so he could take some pictures from the top. Here Patty is going back down.

Patty going down the mountain

There are passageways and tunnels in the mountain. Leonard used tree branches and some 2 x 4's to shore it up, and of course lots of paint!

Tunnels

God is Love! This is in one of the tunnels. This was Leonards main message. I say was because Leonard is no longer living here. He checked himself into the hospital with dementia  At this point nobody is officially taking care of the mountain, but there is a group trying to get together to maintain it. Without maintenance the mountain will go away and that will be a shame!

God is Love

The cross is at the top of this. John 3:16 is what it is all about! 'For God so loved the world he gave his only Son' is painted all over the mountain!

The Cross

We drove just about a mile down the road to Slab City.

Slab City

OK, I get getting out of the rat race! Patty and I did just that. It is the best thing we ever did! Of course we planned for it. We needed to do our time so we could get out. What I don't get is this! Slab City! This is just plain weird. This is just too far off the grid. No electricity, no water, no sewer, no trash, NADA! 

Slab City is an old retired marine base that has the slabs left over from the demolished buildings. Here is what happens when you totally check out....

Average Slab City resident

We left Slab City very quickly, not for us! 

We went to the Salton Sea mud pots. This is a thermal event, however they were not bubbling so we continued on.

Mud Pots

We read about a slot canyon called Painted Canyon. If it wasn't so hot we could have hiked more of it, but we wanted to go look anyway.

We drove about 5 miles back on a sandy wash. We got out and started walking up the canyon.

Slot Canyon

We continued up the canyon.

Narrowing down

The canyon started getting real rocky. We realized that the walls had caved in, and this was probably not the correct trail. We turned around and went back up the larger canyon.

Dead End

We went a little further, but after the long day the girls really didn't want to go any further. Frankly that was alright with me. 

Larger Canyon

We turned around and headed back to the truck.

Back to truck

We got back to the truck and realized we were all pretty hungry. We had only had some snacks, and no lunch. There really was no place to eat lunch on out trip and we didn't bring sandwiches. 

We decided to stop at Mario's Italian Cafe near our campground to eat dinner. We shared a large antipasto salad, and a large pepperoni and olive pizza. I don't know if it was because we were so hungry, but it was really good!

Got back home and went to the pool and hot tub.

What a wonderful day with great friends!

We will be back in town on Tuesday for 3 months. See you all then!

God Bless you,

Brian and Patty

1000 Palms Oasis and Air Museum

Wednesday we decided to go to the 1000 Palms Oasis in the Coachella Valley Preserve.

1000 Palms Oasis

Although it was about 105 degrees we walked the McCallum trail to the McCallum Pond. There is only a 100 foot elevation gain so it was not to bad. The heat was the main issue. You could see the palm trees in the distance. The round trip was 1.5 miles.

1000 Palms path

On the trail there was no shade. We came upon this sign which let us know which way it was to the pond.

McCullum trail sign

The trees are surrounding the pond.

McCullum Pond

We made it to the pond. In spite of the water it was still HOT here. There was shade though which helped.

No swimming allowed!

Patty and Terri enjoying the shade.

Patty and Terri

We spent about 30 minutes at the pond. Scott and I walked around the entire pond while the girls enjoyed the solitude. As we were getting ready to head back several other people starting to show up. I like this picture with the relflections.

Reflections

We left the Oasis and drove into Palm Springs to the Palm Springs Air Museum. Patty and I have been here before. There are two sides, The Pacific and European campaign. Last time we came, only the European was open. Scott and Terri and never seen the museum. There is alot of information about how we got into the WWII conflict.

Pacific Side

There are many exhibits and a lot of era correct planes. There were steps at this plane so you could look into the cockpit.

Scott checking it out

We moved over to the European side. This plane was part of the Teskegee black flying squadron. The movie "Red Tails" is about the Teskegee Airmen. Patty and I will rent Red Tails as soon as it is available on RedBox.

Teskegee plane

This is a Mitchel B-25 Bomber. It is nicknamed "Mitch the Witch".

Patty posing in front of "Mitch the Witch"

This is a front view of "Mitch". How would you like to be sitting in the front seat? :)

Best seat in the house!

There were a bunch more planes outside. Although most planes are fully restored and are beautiful, we did not stay outside long because it was pushing 110 degrees.

Planes, planes, and more planes!

They even had a Russian built MIG fighter that had been sold to Korea. I'm not sure how it got from Korea to Palm Springs! It definitely is obvious why American Air power is so superior to the rest of the world! How scary if you were an enemy combatant having to face one of our finest in an F18!

Russian MIG

We were pretty hot and tired so we came back to camp and went into the pool for a couple of hours. The pool is still not being heated except by the sun, but is naturally staying at about 86 degrees. It is soo nice!

I will take some pictures of the pool before we leave, but here is our campground. This is a former date farm and the still cultivates the dates and sell them. The palm trees you see produce a large crop of dates.

1000 Trails Palm springs

That's it for today. 

God bless you!

Brian and Patty

Palm Springs Aerial Tram

It was HOT today in Palm Springs. 110 degrees, so we decided this would be a good day to go hiking. Actually we took the Aerial Tram to the top of the San Jacinto mountains. It is approximately 40 degrees cooler up the mountain.

Both the Blankenbillers and us remember the tram cars looking like this:

Old style tram cars

About 12 years ago they changed them to the new style. They can now carry about 80 passengers. They are considered rotating cars because the floor rotates twice during the 15 minute ride up or down the hill. This allows everyone to get a complete 365 degree view of the canyon. The new cars look like this:

New rotating cars

We made it to the top and the temperature was a very comfortable 70 degrees. Here Scott and I are appreciating the cooler weather.

Scott and Brian

The mountain station is at about 8000 foot elevation. Here is a picture of the desert floor. You can see Palm Springs, as well as Desert Hot Springs and Palm Desert.

Palm Springs

We walked to the highest point at the tram station. You will see this point in a picture later. The white poles you see are windmills in Palm Springs. We could see all the way to the Salton Sea which is 40 miles away from here.

Windmills

We decided to hike the Desert View trail. This was a 1 1/2 mile easy/moderate and fairly rocky loop trail. This is part of the Mount San Jacinto State Park.

State Park

But first we had to walk down a fairly steep .30 mile switchback concrete path to Long Valley. Not so hard going down, but for us out of shape folks, it was a little harder coming out after hiking the trail.

Path to Desert View Trail

This sign showed us our options for two short hikes. We did the Desert Trail and looked at all five viewpoints. We came back on the Nature Trail.viewpoints

Desert View Trail sign

Here is one of the viewpoints on the trail. The signs actually called them "notches".

One of the Notches

I told you I would show you our overlook in a later picture. Here is the overlook taken from down in the valley. You can see a person standing on the rock in the middle of the picture. After the hike we needed to walk back up the path to the station.

Overlook

Here is the Desert View trail. There were sections that were very rocky. It was probably a dry creek bed.

Desert View Trail

Another viewpoint.

Viewpoint 2

Here's a picture of Terri and me at one of the viewpoints. While looking at all the pictures today I realized that I didn't have any of Patty because she took all the photos! OOOPS! Well she did hike the trail today also! Good job Patty!

Brian and Patty

We finished the loop and made our way back to the top. We watched a movie on how they made the tram and then went back down at dusk.

On the Tram

\We were all really hungry and decided we wanted good Mexican food. I asked two employees at the Mountain Station for advice. They both highly suggested Las Casuelas Restaurant. Good prices, and Great food. Chips and salsa were excellent as was the iced tea which was great after the hike. We all said we would definately go back!

That's it for tonight,

Love you all!

Brian and Patty