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It’s Been a While

I know...I haven’t blog in some time.  But when we’re doing kind of the same things over and over, there’s not much to talk about that I haven’t said in previous blogs of this area.  I’ll try to recap what we’ve done to date since the last blog.

The rest of the week between Feb 26 and Mar 2, we did some more hiking in various spots and just enjoyed our RV Resort.  Here’s Gerard enjoying a swing ride next to a cactus - better not be doing twirls!  (It wasn’t real.)



On the night before we left, we had our neighbours over for happy hour.  Very nice people.

So Friday, Mar 2nd, we headed over to California.  We went by Phoenix, and the Salt River.  Here it is???


Yep, dry as a bone.

And we’ve arrived in California, and the Pacific Time Zone!  We had just over a week to get used to this time zone, which neither we, nor Tibby, did.  All’s good now that Daylight Savings Time has arrived.


Frank and John arrived in Palm Springs on the same day we arrived in the area.  We went to their place on Sunday (Mar 4th) for Sunday Caesars, and enjoyed their pool for the early afternoon.

We did some hiking and biking around, and on Tuesday, we all went up to Joshua Tree together.  Love this place.  Here’s a nice, mature Joshua Tree along with 3 guys I found.


We had packed a lunch so we could eat up there...just underneath this “cap rock”.  Yikes - we kept our eyes on it.

                 

We had them over for dinner to our place last Thursday.  Great time had by all.

So Friday we’re sitting in our RV in the morning and a knock comes to our door.  It’s a guy just across from us who noticed our licence plate (Heffner Toyota in Kitchener).  Turns out he’s from St. Clements (just north of Waterloo) and they’re with other people from Cambridge!  Such a small world.  We chatted for a bit.  Early afternoon rolls around, and Gerard had a snooze.  Another knock comes to the door.  What???  What’s with this?  There were John & Judy!  They had been about 2 hours away from here and decided to just come to our RV resort for a couple of days on the way to Joshua Tree!  Very cool.

So we hung out for the rest of the day, and had decided to do a hike the next day, but Saturday was a washout.  It rained all day here (fairly unusual).  It was never a downpour or anything like that, but just a steady rain.  Not knowing how much it was going to rain, you don’t want to get caught in a mountain wash.  Water can accumulate and you’d have to hightail it out of there.  So we cancelled that plan.

Saturday, we had dinner arrangements with Frank and John to go to Johnny Costa’s Ristorante in Palm Springs for their last night here.  We were able to get John and Judy in as well.  So we had a great time, and great dinner there.  Highly recommend the restaurant if you’re ever in the area.

Yesterday (Sunday) we did a BIG hike (well, Judy and I did).  We climbed up the mountain range behind Desert Hot Springs for quite a way.  John decided to fly his drone from one ridge, so he and Gerard stayed there while Judy and I kept going.  We went for another couple of kms, or so, along the ridge to a very high point.  Here’s Judy at the top.


At one peak, there was a chair, held down by rocks.  Whoever hikes this area a lot wants that there, I guess.


Beautiful views of the Coachella Valley.  That’s Desert Hot Springs in front, and Palm Springs is nestled against the clouded over mountain in the distance (Mt. Jacinto), to the left.  Doesn’t look very big from up here!  We thoroughly enjoyed the hike.  There were some steep spots, but we managed OK.



We had been texting with Gerard and John, and we told them to go back to the truck.  They weren’t interested in continuing up the mountain range.  So they went back to the truck, and to our RV Resort, waiting for us to text them to come get us.  Gerard took this photo on the way back.  Very cool hole in the clouds.


I gotta say, Judy and I were both done by the time we got back to the truck.  My knees were killing me, and Judy’s toes were hurting her.  It’s actually worse going downhill than uphill from a body point of view.  All that pressure in spots you don’t normally put that much pressure.  Anyway, today we’re no worse for wear!

So that brings you up to date.  We plan on meeting the Hollingers up at Joshua Tree today.  We have only today left on our park pass, and they’ve gone up there to camp for a couple of days, but will be back here.


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