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

In Palm Springs now!

It's been a month since I have last posted because we have not had internet access except on our Android phones. We can tether the laptop but we have been maxing out the data plans just using the phones so I have decided to put the blog on hold until we could get back to some WiFi access.

We are in the Palm Springs Thousand Trails now which has WiFi access so I will do a quick update for the last month.

I last left off in Hemet at the Golden Palms RV park after we were evacuated from Silent Valley because of the fire. After four really nice nights at the Palms we moved to Menifee to the Thousand Trails Wilderness Lakes for three weeks. The problems there is two fold.

1. It is only 30 amp so if it too hot the air conditioner will not keep up. We can only run one A/C on 30 amp. It was hot for most of the month.

2. It is right next to a working dairy and the flies can be a problem.

Here is a picture of our camp site.

Wilderness Lakes

There really isn't a lake at Wilderness Lakes, but there are canals that are stocked with fish that run through the park.

Wilderness Lakes Canals

The problem with the canals is that the ducks and geese poop all over the place and also it is closer to the dairy so the flies are everywhere! We parked on the complete other side of the park and although there was no water there was also no flies!

They have two swimming pools, an adult pool and a family pool. We initially went to the adult pool. The problem is that it is right next to the dairy and the files are thick! The flies land on the water and die. You have to keep brushing them out of your way. It is really gross! 

We decided it was better to put up with the misbehaved kids then the flies.Because it was so hot, be went to the pool everyday. During the week there really weren't many kids at the pool, but on the weekend it was crazy!

Temecula is not to far from Menifee. We went to Old Town Temecula. It had some cute little shops like "old towns" tend to have.

Old Town Temecula

 Diamond Lake reservoir is a made made lake is just a few miles from the campground. While they were digging it up they found a lot of dinosaur bones. Everything from Mammoths to Mastodons to Ground Sloths. They are housed in the Western Science Center.

Western Science Center

Here are some Sloth bones.

Sloth bones

Over the weekend we drove up the mountain to the town of Idylwild. After checking out the town we went a few more miles and checked out the Thousand Trails Idylwild campground. As it turns out they were having an early Octoberfest celebration. We ended up having lunch for cheap at Thousand Trails. They had REALLY good huge bratwurst from a German market, German potato salad, Potato pancake, ice tea, and desert for $5.00!

Idylwild

Patty wanted to go to a ballgame. Lake Elsinore has a minor league team called the Storm and they were playing the Merced Nuts while we were in Menifee. We got front row tickets and had a great time. Oh ya, we won! Look at the batters last name! :)

#8 Hunt

We drove to Yorba Linda to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. President Nixon was born on this property in this house. They built the library and museum on the property. With all the bad press and cover-up he did with Watergate which they did deal with at the museum he also really was a pretty amazing president. History is and will be kind to him. Having said that he should have resigned.

Richard Nixon Birth house

After an enjoyable three weeks at Wilderness Lakes we drove out the 15 to Escondido and then up the 78 to Ramona. This is a very windy road and the new torque converter we put in the truck last October was evident, No slipping at all! We like the Campground. We realized because of the heat we haven't really been walking very much, and we have just been floating around in the pools, so we went to the Big 5 in Ramona and got some water goggles. We have started doing laps in the pools now. We have it covered, When it is cool we will walk, and when it is hot we will swim!

Ramona Canyon Campground

After spending a week in Ramona we continued up the hill to Julian. We stayed at K&Q campground in Julian. This is a CRA campground that we stay in with our RPI membership. 

We really liked the campground! Even though they advertise it as a 30 amp campground we had a 50 amp site. Crystal, James, and Gracie came up on Thursday and stayed with us until Monday. That was so nice to see them! We love them so much!

We went into Julian and went to the Eagle Mine tour.

Eagle Mine tour

Gracie is mesmerized by the mine.

Crystal and Gracie in the mine

Julian is known for it's apples. We bought some apple cider and of course an apple pie! The apple pie is from the Apple Alley Bakery. It was Yummy!

Julian Apple Pie

While the kids were here Patty opened the refrigerator door and the door fell of in her hands! The bottom hinge is made of plastic and is designed to fail! If you Google Norcold refrigerator hinge you will find hundreds of people with the same problem. In fact I found out too late that Norcold even sells an aftermarket part that goes over the plastic hinge to strengthen it because they know its a problem. I called Norcold but because its 3 months out of warranty they don't even want to talk to me!

The problem is that the hinge is built into the door, when it breaks you need to buy a new door at about $700! Of course that door will break also!

I called our great friend and RV wizard RV Bill to ask him what I could do. He suggested I get a piece of aluminum flat bar and drill a hole where the hinge pin goes and drill small screw holes in it and attach it to the bottom of the fridge door. He said it will never break again! I asked if a guy like me who is so tool inept could do it, he said absolutely. 

So we temporally duct taped the heck out of the hinge to keep it together until we got to where I could buy some flat bar. It held. Coming to Palm Desert we even drove down the Banner Grade which has a 40' RV limit and most suggested not to do (I thought is was not to bad), and it still held.

Our first day here on Tuesday we went to Lowes and I bought the shortest piece (3') of aluminum 1/8" x 2" flat bar I could find. I cut it to 8" long and visually measured where the hinge pin would hit. I then taped the broken hinge back on and drilled the pin hole. I then lined the two holes up and inserted a drill bit to keep the lined up. I then drilled 4 smaller screw holes while holding it up to the bottom of the fridge door.

After screwing it on and verifying it would work on the fridge I took it back off filed off the sharp edges and painted it with a can of black satin Rustoleum paint I already had.

Here it is from the bottom sitting on the table.

Hinge Fix

Here is another picture on the fridge. It works great and will never break now! Total cost of fix was $12.00! Thanks RV BIll!

$12.00 fix installed on refrigerator

Well that pretty much gets you caught up with where we are now. We will try and update more often now that we have internet and I'll sneak in some Gracie picks in the coming blogs!

God Bless,

Brian and Patty