Beginning A Revisit of San Diego; A Foodie's Wretched Excess on the First Day

At Chula Vista RV Resort, Chula Vista, California...

It has probably been more than three decades since Sandy and I visited the San Diego area. It was in the summer then, and we remembered since that time how perfect the weather was, compared to the scorching heat of Texas. During this visit, in the dead of winter, we couldn't tell much difference; it's stunningly perfect almost all the time--just a little cooler. Shirtsleeves are fine during the day, and a light jacket is all that's needed at night. If only one could afford to live here!

We are staying at a very nice park right on the bay; it's a little more costly than we are accustomed to paying, but it's so nice to be close to the water and to the city itself. This is our site:

Here's our view, just a short walk away:

At day's end, we can walk out to a nearby beach and watch the sun disappear into the Pacific Ocean:

The park is full, and will remain so during our entire stay. Apparently, we're not the only ones willing to pay a bit more for such nice surroundings. Unfortunately, this comes on the heels of some other significant expenses for Phannie. The last of her original roof air conditioners finally gave up the ghost before we left Palm Springs so, hopefully, the three relatively new ones will get us by until we hang up the keys, whenever that may be. (Yes, to all our snowbound friends, we run air conditioning nearly every day; sorry to have to tell you that.)

Our trusty TST tire monitoring system also began to give some faulty readings about the same time the A/C gave up. For no apparent reason, the monitor would suddenly begin showing a pressure of 441 psi on one of the tires, irrespective of which was being sampled at the time. Of course, that sets off the alarm, and then, you have two choices: Keep silencing the alarm every few minutes or turn the system off.

Since the old  TST system had given us excellent service for many years, I figured I might was well retire it and get a new version. I ordered the new system with a color monitor and, so far, I really like the looks of it. Here's a photo before I installed the sensors:

We're going to have another big bill at Caterpillar in Tucson when they do the 100,000 mile service on Phannie's engine in early March. So, this is turning out to be a fairly expensive winter trip. One thing's for sure: stuff's gonna break now and then, and keeping up with Phannie's scheduled maintenance seems to have paid off, considering her relatively trouble-free drive train all these years.  

When we arrive at a new destination, we have developed a post-setup habit of hopping in the car and doing a little exploring of the surrounding area. In the process, we try to find what we hope is a good place to eat dinner. I think this is because we're usually tired of being on the road, and neither of us wants to mess with fixing anything to eat. 

Sometimes, we happen upon some surprisingly good restaurants, and I just have to tell you in detail about this one in San Diego. We were hungry for seafood, so I found a listing for a place named 100s Seafood Grill Buffet. It had very good reviews on Yelp, so we headed there for an early dinner. I probably wouldn't give this much attention to an eating joint but frankly, I've never seen anything like it--especially since it's devoted mostly to seafood. This place is huge, encompassing three large rooms, once of which is devoted just to desserts. 

During our travels, we have found that buffets are a hit or miss when it comes to quality, freshness and cleanliness, but this was over-the-top in all three. In the first room is the hot buffet with perhaps three or four dozen selections of cooked items--mostly seafood, but with some other dishes for landlubbers. There was also a Mongolian grill, if you wanted to pick out your own selections and watch them cook it. There was a selection of several soups including lobster bisque and an excellent clam chowder.

In the next room were the cold seafood selections and salads:

In this photo, you can't see the salads, which are on the opposite side. And yes, those are all-you-can-eat king crab legs. In the next room were the desserts:

In case you're wondering, the first case on the left above has 24 flavors of ice cream. I couldn't get the whole line of desserts in the photo. You can tell how spotlessly clean the place was.

The big question, of course, is whether it was good. The answer is a resounding yes!  Apparently a lot of folks agree; take a look at the people waiting patiently to be seated when we left:

The price? Well, it was about sixty bucks for both of us, I think, which, considering the incredible selection, variety and quality, didn't seem too bad. The only semi-comparable buffet in our travels was at the Rio in Las Vegas, but its seafood section was skimpy compared to this. 

Yes, we're foodies and, when we find something like this--the definition of wretched excess--we feel obliged to share it, in case you're in the area sometime. But beware--go early, or you'll be like one of the crowd twiddling their thumbs, as are the hungry folks above.

Pretty cool first day, huh? Well, stay tuned, and we'll see what the next few days bring.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood

Elvis's Honeymoon House in Palm Springs

At Chula Vista RV Resort, Chula Vista, California...

I almost forgot! A couple of posts ago, I teased you about our tour of Elvis's honeymoon house in Palm Springs and, with all the excitement about our other adventures, I failed to follow up on that promise. Well, I guess it's better late than never; it's so frustrating that the old memory isn't what it used to be. Anyway, here goes:

You may remember that I previously wrote about Sandy's youthful visits with Elvis and his parents at his home in Killeen when he was in the army and that she had twice obtained his autograph. Since then, we have visited his birthplace in Tupelo and the Graceland mansion, but we didn't know until this trip that he once owned this house in Palm Springs. He and Priscilla lived there in 1966-67 and spent their wedding night here after their marriage on May 1, 1967. We also stated that, while neither of us were rabid Elvis fans, Sandy's personal visits with him made a lasting impression, especially in consideration of the fame that eventually came his way. The house is located near downtown Palm Springs on a cul-de-sac in a quiet neighborhood of houses of similar age. Its design is mid-century modern, taken to the extreme:

We signed up for a tour and, since we were the only ones to show up on the appointed day, we had what amounted to a personal guide throughout the house.  According to the guide, Elvis and Priscilla had intended to be married in Palm Springs but, when the word leaked out, the publicity became overwhelming and Elvis borrowed Frank Sinatra's jet for a quick trip to Las Vegas, where they were married. Then, they jetted back to Palm Springs, where they honeymooned in this house. I know at least some of you are curious as to what it looks like inside, so here it is. Remember, the decor has been kept as it was when Elvis owned it, to the extent possible:


Here are the steps leading up to the front door. There is a waterfall that trickles down around the circular steps:

Looking to the left after entering the front door, the living room is visible. The sofa hugging the stone wall was custom-made and is 64 feet long:

Looking to the right from the entry hall is the kitchen. Note the black dome on the cooking island underneath the vent hood; this is the cover for a charcoal grill. Looking beyond the cooking island, you'll notice a round white mixing bowl, which is connected to an electric mixer motor below the cabinet top. It still works!

In the next photo, looking further to the right after entering the living room, you'll see this layout that appears to serve as a den.  Not seen in the photo is a jukebox or a replica thereof that was original to the house. By now, you may have noticed that the rooms we've seen are all circular in shape which, indeed, is the shape of all the rooms in the house.

 Not seen is a dining area between the living room and the den, but someone (duh) neglected to take a photo of it. Below is a shot of the back yard and pool area. There's no grass in this area--only shrubs and trees:

And now, the room all you ladies have been waiting to see--Elvis's and Priscilla's bedroom, with Sandy sitting on Elvis's side of their bed:  

It was here that Lisa Marie was undoubtedly conceived, as she was born exactly nine months after the marriage, on February 1, 1968.

Adjoining the bedroom was the master bathroom, whose centerpiece was a very deep Jacuzzi tub to accommodate Elvis's six-foot height. The light you see over the vanity is natural light from a rooftop skylight. Electric lights were used at night.

So, there you have it. Getting this accidental personal tour of the house was just another of the fun adventures we had at Palm Springs. I hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood

Last Days in Palm Springs; Marooned in the Desert!

At Palm Springs Thousand Trails, Desert Palms, California...

It has been a really novel and interesting visit here in this playground of the wealthy. We have felt a little like the Clampetts among the million-dollar homes, the landscaped street medians and the 126 golf courses. And I've already talked about the price of other things like restaurants and fuel and, oh yes, let's not forget toffee at 30 bucks a pound. 

One thing we never got used to was the unavailability of bags at checkout stands in grocery stores or Walmarts--unless you wish to buy one, of course. Once we figured this out, we would take bags with us when we went shopping but would inevitably forget and leave them in the car. The colliding forces of habit and old age do not serve us very well, I'm afraid. 

Another odd thing was the absence of plastic straws; we hadn't seen paper straws in years, and no, they don't hold up any better than they did when I was a kid. I'm glad that Californians' worries have diminished to the extent that there is a law dictating what kind of drinking straws are allowed to be used. I'm just having a hard time figuring out why they can give us paper straws for our drinks but can't give us paper bags at the grocery stores. And, oh yes, there's one more thing: Donut shops here are not like those in Texas, where most of them are closed by mid-afternoon. Here in California, they stay open late. (Don't ask me how I know.) 

We've learned some interesting things from our tours. We were wondering why the landscaping is so lush and green everywhere in the Palm Springs area, considering the terrible years-long drought and resultant water shortages in California. We noticed that sprinklers seemed to be on at all hours, and we were wondering how this could be in a state so desperate for water?

The answer is that Palm Springs and the eight cities surrounding it sit atop the gigantic Coachella Valley aquifer that contains about 12 trillion gallons of water--fed by the White Water River, but mostly from snowmelt off the surrounding mountains. The valley's water district manages the water carefully, using recycled water as much as possible for the golf courses, each of which uses about a million gallons a day for irrigation. Thanks to the gift of the aquifer to the desert, water never seems to be a problem.

During our last days here, we had a couple of interesting adventures. We took the Palm Springs Tramway from the desert floor up to the 8,500-foot level of San Jacinto Mountain--the iconic 10,000-foot peak that appears in most photos of Palm Springs:

 The tram was built in the mid-60s, and there is a park with hiking trails at the top, allowing visitors a 30-degree relief from the desert's summer heat that can soar well above 100 degrees:

Of course, we were visiting Palm Springs in the winter, when the temperature at the desert floor is in the low 70s. If you subtract the 30-degree temperature drop at the 8,500-foot level at the end of the tram ride, you get what? Snow; that's what:

 Yes, the white stuff you see beyond the railing where Sandy is standing on the top platform is, indeed, snow. The temperature at this level was 37 degrees with a strong breeze blowing. Neither of us had dressed for this, so we didn't spend very long outside the visitor center. The more insightful of our readers may ask themselves, "Wasn't the reason for Mike and Sandy's wintering in the Southwest to escape the possibility of snow and cold weather?" Well, your insight would be correct and, apparently, better than our own.  Okay, maybe I'm hyping this a bit, but, while outside on the platform, we did laugh at the irony of having wandered into the very kind of weather we were trying to escape.

We did stay outside long enough to take a couple of photos of Palm Springs and the valley below and, as you can imagine, the view was spectacular. I really liked this photo, taken just as the sun was  setting. See the red tops on the San Bernardino mountains in the distance?

In the photo below, you can see the Coachella Valley and the city of Palm Springs. The lower arrow is pointing to the Palm Springs International Airport, which is very near downtown. The dark line running diagonally between the two arrows is Interstate 10.  The upper arrow is pointing to the approximate location of the San Andreas Fault, a geological feature that has always been fascinating to me and which will receive some attention a little later in this post.

We took a tour on the next day out in the desert to take a look at where the San Andreas fault runs through the area. In case you don't know, this fault line is a major one of many that run through California. It is the linear boundary where the Pacific tectonic plate slides very slowly northwestward against the North American tectonic plate, moving southeastward. Due to this movement, it is an area that produces several earthquakes a day, most so small as to be undetectable by humans. Scientists tell us, however, that it is overdue for a massive earthquake, which we hoped would not occur while we were out there in the desert, driving around on top of it. 

According to the scientists, the plates move only about 10 centimeters per year and, if you do the math, Palm Springs will be about where San Francisco is now in about 16 million years, and San Francisco will be underwater in the Pacific Ocean. This will create all sorts of problems. 

For example, Tony Bennett will have to revise his iconic song to read, "I left my heart in Palm Springs." Somehow, it just doesn't seem right. But Tony probably won't be around then, either; isn't he already about 16 million years old?  Oh, I see I'm digressing; let's get back to our tour.

Our tour vehicle was a 10-passenger open-air Hummer. If you know anything about a Hummer, you'll know that it was built as a larger and more robust replacement for the iconic U. S. Army Jeep. It was designed for off-road driving and built like a dump truck with a ride to match. I explained to Sandy beforehand that the tour would take us off paved roads or even identifiable roads and that the ride would be somewhat different from the gliding air-suspension smoothness to which she is accustomed in Phannie. The fact that she--a person for whom 'roughing it' means having to wait too long for room service--agreed to go along is quite a testament to her being a good sport and her willingness to accommodate something only I wanted to do, however knuckle-headed it was to her; I was impressed. And to prove she was there, here is her photo in the Hummer, bouncing along in the desert, God bless her:

So, let's talk a bit more about the San Andreas fault. I wasn't aware of this, but there are only a few places in California where its location is readily discernible. In other places, like near Palm Springs, you have to know what to look for and, not being a geologist, I didn't know what to expect. We hadn't gone far until the driver pulled up to a group of large palm trees that formed an oasis, of sorts, in the desert:

The palm trees were huge and were grouped there because of the presence of water. The water was seeping upward from the underground aquifer at the precise location of the San Andreas fault, which lies directly below the pool of water in the photo below:

This was not what I was expecting at all, but geologists rely on clues like this and others along the fault line to identify it. The next photo shows an uplifted area that continues to rise along the tortured area of the fault:

 To the right of the photo, you can see some of the palm trees of the oasis.

It was all very interesting and soon, we climbed aboard the Hummer to continue our buckboard-like ride through the desert to God knows where. We hadn't gone far until, while climbing a fairly steep hill, the Hummer's engine sputtered and died. The driver made several futile attempts to restart it, then hopped out and raised the hood, as if he knew what was wrong. Sandy looked at me with that look of someone facing a firing squad. She didn't look upward, I think for fear of seeing buzzards circling overhead. I turned back and looked straight ahead, not knowing exactly what was in store for me, as she knows where I keep the firearms. At that point, I was hoping for the big earthquake.   

I took out my cell phone and noticed that we still had two bars of signal! There was a chance, then, that we would be saved, after all! I shared that information with Sandy, but that didn't do much to soften "the look."  The driver also still had cell signal, so he called his company to inform them of our plight. They said a rescue Hummer would be along in about an hour.  Fortunately, it was a very pleasant temperature in the desert, and the driver had plenty of bottled water and snacks aboard, so this was clearly not the end for us.

Because the engine was trying to start with each attempt, it seemed to be starving for fuel going slightly uphill. The menfolk talked among each other and decided we might help matters if we could get the Hummer turned around and headed back downhill. So we all climbed off, leaving the women and driver aboard, and pushed the Hummer backward to a spot where it could turn around. Once the vehicle was pointed downhill again, the engine started, and we continued backtracking until we met the rescue Hummer. Once we had climbed aboard that vehicle, our Hummer's engine died again, as it was no longer was pointed downhill. The new Hummer was diesel-powered, and there were no more problems while we returned to our pickup points. The driver and company were very apologetic, of course, and promised to refund our fares.

Thus ended our tour of the San Andreas fault, about which I learned a lot (for free, as it turned out), and we are still living to tell more stories of our adventures. On top of that, Sandy was sweet about the whole ordeal. She knew that "the look" was all that was needed to express her sentiment at the time. She is a Godsend, and has been for 44 years. I took her out to a nice dinner, and this is one of those things that we--well, mostly I--will laugh about for the rest of our lives. I just wish I had thought to have taken some photos of what went on during the 'marooning.' It was priceless.

And so ends our two weeks at Palm Springs. It was a great time, and we are still making those memories, aren't we?  San Diego is next on our itinerary, so our next report will be from there.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood

Palm Springs, Graveyard of the Stars

At Palm Springs Thousand Trails, Palm Desert, California...

We are fond of taking tours when they are offered to places we'd like to see. There's nothing quite like having a guide who knows where to find things we would never discover on our own.  Fortunately, there are ample opportunities to do that here in Palm Springs. 

Older folks like us grew up in the latter years of the golden age of Hollywood stars, and we still remember their movies, appearances and concerts and the glamour associated with them. A very significant number had homes or second and third homes here in Palm Springs, and we thought it would be cool to see these. So, we took a celebrity homes tour on a bus with about 40 other geezers who wanted to do the same thing. 

It would be difficult, actually, to name one of the old movie stars who didn't have a home here. The names included Eddie Fisher, Bob Hope, the Gabor Sisters, Steve McQueen, Gene Autry, Frank Sinatra, Jack Benny, Dean Martin, Cary Grant, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bing Crosby, George Hamilton, Elizabeth Taylor, Suzanne Somers, Sonny and Cher and many others. So did Kirk Douglas who, coincidentally, passed away at age 103 while our tour bus was near his home.

The tour was quite interesting, but there were a few things that were particularly striking: 1) While their homes are mostly still here, almost all the stars who owned them have passed away. These homes are now owned by other people, and a couple have been demolished. 2) Most of the homes were difficult to see because of the fencing and shrubbery that the stars had installed to, uh, keep peepers like us from seeing them. 3) After looking at the photos afterward, we found, in some cases, we had forgotten which ones belonged to which stars. If you ever do something like this, we would highly recommend taking notes of every photo you shoot, rather than count on your memory--something that is notoriously unreliable for us nowadays. 

Some of the homes were simply inaccessible due to their locations  in secluded areas. Bob Hope's magnificent modern home in the Araby Hills, for example, is inaccessible to any kind of tourist's vehicle, much less a bus, as there is no turnaround area at the guarded gate. Our tour bus driver told a story about another new driver having to back his bus all the way down the mountain road upon making this discovery. However, since the house is way up in the hills, it is visible from the valley below, but few details can be seen without binoculars.  Here is a photo borrowed from the internet:

It is a remarkable house, worth reading about on the web.  Bob Hope had at least two other homes in Palm Springs.

I'm going to include some photos that I took of the few homes that hadn't been hidden from view. The photography isn't great from a moving bus, but they'll have to do:

Above is the Gene Autry estate, by far the grandest that we saw. He and Bob Hope were perhaps the wealthiest of all the stars who had homes here, as they had the foresight to buy up vast parcels of land in the area for as little as a dollar an acre. Both were also very generous in their philanthropy, especially here in Palm Springs.

Barely visible behind the shrubbery is the house where Marilyn Monroe lived.

Above is the front of Liberace's Palm Springs home, in which he died in 1987.

Above is one of Cary Grant's homes here in Palm Springs, now owned by a member of his family. It sits unoccupied and deteriorating, sadly.

About halfway through the tour, the bus stopped in Desert Hot Springs at a small convenience store where we were able to take a restroom break and where we were treated to a date shake, which the store claims is the best anywhere. I have to admit, it was delicious, and I don't think I left a molecule of it behind.

Although we saw dozens of homes of the stars, I've omitted those without good views or whose owners we couldn't remember. However, we were quite surprised to learn that Elvis Presley's honeymoon home is here in Palm Springs:

It may surprise you to learn that Sandy has a bit of accidental history with Elvis, having visited him twice in his home in Killeen, Texas when he was stationed at Fort Hood in the U. S. Army.  He lived across the street from Sandy's cousin, so the two girls would go over and visit him, along with Elvis's mom and dad, who also lived in the house. He would often be drinking a soda, his preference being a Pepsi with a package of peanuts poured into it. The girls would giggle and decline any refreshment, but Sandy got Elvis's autograph on both visits. These are safely tucked away, as you might imagine.

We also toured Graceland a few years ago, the experience having been recorded here in this blog. Sandy's learning of this, Elvis's honeymoon house in Palm Springs, elicited no small amount of excitement from her so, after doing some checking, I learned that small-group private tours of this house could be arranged. I promptly booked one, thinking it would be only appropriate that Sandy should be able to see all of Elvis's homes--the four that we know of, anyway--being the house in Tupelo in which he was born, the Killeen house, Graceland, and now Palm Springs. 

As it turned out later, we were the only couple on the tour, and we had the run of the whole house! I will have photos of this tour and more adventures in the next post.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood

More on Palm Springs - Expensive Stuff and Hamburgers With Insults

At Palm Springs Thousand Trails, Palm Desert, California...

I began the last post by describing how tight the spaces are here at this park. Well, I have included a short video of a monster rig that includes a heavy-duty Volvo diesel tractor carrying a Smart Car behind the cab and pulling one of the longest fifth wheels I have seen. It has stopped in the street directly in front of Phannie, and appears to have a worse problem than we did in terms of maneuvering:

The reason I had to do a video is because the rig is so long, I couldn't capture it all with a photo.  As it turned out, the driver was barely able to turn the corner at the end of the street, and he finally found a site long enough for the fifth wheel. But I haven't seen the Volvo truck or the Smart Car since they arrived. There's no space at

the site for them; they must be parked somewhere else.

Sandy has been a little under the weather for most of our first week here, so we have mostly just done some local sightseeing and did a lot of eating out. We have learned a few things, some of which we already knew. First, just about everything is more expensive in California, and especially here in Palm Springs. A fillup in our little Honda CRV costs ten bucks more here than in Arizona; I don't want even to think about filling up Phannie. We filled her up leaving Arizona and, hopefully, won't have to buy any diesel in California.

Eating out is considerably more expensive but, even so, we've found some great dining joints that I'm putting on our list of favorites page linked here on the blog.  Here's a sampling:

Sherman's Deli (this is the downtown location) has been here for a long time. Now, there isn't a sandwich I like better than a really good hot pastrami  on rye, and this place knows how to make them --definitely the best I've had outside New York City:

Now take a look at Sandy's club sandwich in the background. She could eat only half, so there was enough left over for us to have two sandwiches for lunch the next day. The bill?  Fifty bucks with a tip. 

Palm Springs even has a toffee store, for goodness' sake! It's supposedly the world's best, but at $30.00 a pound?! 

Yes, being a toffee lover, I bought a small amount. It was good, but not THAT good!  Take a look at the packaging, which may have cost as much as the candy:

Sandy and I walked around old town Palms Springs later and stopped for a single small serving of gelato apiece:

Wanna guess the cost of the two scoops of gelato?  Eleven bucks. See what I mean about it's being expensive here? Clearly, this is where the other half (not our half) live.

While we were walking, we spotted this sign in the window of an office building:

This is something we don't see in Texas every day and, since Sandy was staring at the same sign and then back at me for my reaction, I figured my response should be a carefully considered one. I think I said, "I wonder if they're talking about the tax preparer or the customer?" That seemed sufficient for me to avoid injury, so we moved along quickly.

I am always on the lookout for a local eatery where the food is good, but it's so much more interesting if the place is also quirky. The next one got good reviews, and the sign was just too inviting to pass up:

Did you notice the "And Insults" on the sign?  This I had to experience. Although I failed to get a photo of the inside (partly out of fear of being berated by the owner), I'll try to describe it for you. It was a very nondescript building outside and inside, with no windows; it was more a bar than a restaurant. Inside were a few booths and tables on the left side of the room and a curved bar with barstools near the front of the room. The kitchen was open to view by those sitting at the bar, so we chose a booth that was out of the line of sight of the kitchen. The owner was also the cook, who, as it turns out, was George's son. Apparently, George had already gone to his reward and had left his son to carry on the business, including his famous insults to customers. 

From our vantage point, we were close enough to hear the owner's
commentary, which was directed mostly at the patrons sitting at the bar. Judging by the insults flying their way--including threats by the owner to toss their burgers in the trash for various perceived transgressions or their trash talk directed at him. We guessed that the customers at the bar were probably regulars and gave the owner as much grief as they got in return. 

In a couple of minutes, there appeared at our booth a waitress with a purple hairdo and a bit of an attitude. "Whaddaya wanna drink?"

Somewhat gingerly, we ordered our usual Diet Coke and iced tea, and her eyes rolled back in her head, as if to say, "Oh, one of THOSE," as if we were the first customers to have ordered a non-alcoholic drink in the last ten years. She brought the drinks fairly quickly and then said, "Whadd'l ya have?"

We ordered a burger apiece and a single order of fries to share. She grabbed the menus and hurried off. In a minute, we heard the patties hit the griddle and begin to sizzle on the other side of the half-wall separating us from the cook. Shortly afterward, she brought our meal and, with it, a very small paper cup filled with ketchup. When she set the ketchup on the table, she said, "This is for your fries; better not let him (pointing toward the owner) see you putting any ketchup on your burgers. According to him, ketchup doesn't belong on hamburgers."  

I had seen comments on Yelp about the owner's refusal to prepare a hamburger with ketchup on it and, luckily, we don't use it on hamburgers anyway, so we felt pretty safe. I'm sure that, if he had seen us do that, we would have received one of his famous insults. The burgers? Well, they were actually quite good--hot and fresh with tasty hand-formed patties, but we're not sure they could be classified as "world famous," as the sign outside indicated. We finished the meal without incident or insult--which was slightly disappointing, but found the whole experience quite a hoot.   


There are a LOT of restaurants here, and we were pretty lucky in finding some really good ones that we've listed on our favorites page--the first we've listed in California since we haven't spent much time in this state.

Since Palm Springs has been a playground for the rich and famous for decades, many of the streets are named for the stars of yesteryear, like Bob Hope, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Gene Autrey, etc. The streets are wide and immaculate, and the landscaping is beautiful on most of the major streets:

We did not see here any sign of the homeless encampments that appear to plague Los Angles and San Francisco. I don't think they would stand for it here.

Sandy is feeling better, so we have a number of additional adventures planned to tell you about, so stay tuned!

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood

Arriving at Palm Springs and Thoughts on Thousand Trails and Other Discount Programs We Use

At Palm Springs Thousand Trails, Palm Desert, California...

Well, if perfect winter weather is why we're touring the Southwest, we haven't been disappointed.  The weather here at Palm Springs is much like that at Yuma--in the seventies during the day and in the fifties at night, with mostly blue skies.

Palm Springs is the first Thousand Trails park in which we've stayed other than Lake Conroe--where we've stayed many times.  

Thousand Trails Palm Springs

Our Site at Thousand Trails Palm Springs

We have checked out other TT parks, like Medina, near Columbus, Texas, and Bay Landing, near Bridgeport, Texas, but the latter two didn't meet our needs in terms of full hookup availability, site conditions or cell service.

We are like most RVers, I think, in that we like to stay in nicer parks but, being a trifle cheap, we prefer not to pay full price. That's why we always look for discounts. That was our idea when we signed up for a Thousand Trails Elite membership. It's hard to beat staying in Palm Springs or any other TT park for two or three weeks at little or no cost. Of course, that doesn't take into account the membership initial cost and annual fees. It's all a matter of how much you use the membership; if you use it a lot, you can't help but save a bunch of money. 

The problem with Thousand Trails (hereinafter referred to as TT), for us, is that many of their parks do not meet our standards that I mentioned above--full hookups, nice sites and good cell service. When I mention nice sites, I'm talking about fairly level sites that are gravel or concrete--not dirt. Dirt is a no-no because dirt+rain=mud. We don't do mud. We don't boondock, either; we are, unapologetically, not into roughing it--not even a little bit. We love beautiful scenery and all the wonderful creatures that live in the outdoors, but we have no desire to mingle with them. I'm pretty sure this is in line with God's intention; otherwise, He wouldn't have given most of them the desire to kill us. 

We also don't tolerate well the demonic little bloodthirsty insects that somehow know when we appear outside. With the first blip we make on their radar (and it's probably not a small blip), they immediately begin a nosedive toward us--clearly not fearing what could be a suicide attack--due to the possible payoff of what must appear to them as two well-marbled ribeyes--their ultimate targets of opportunity. 

Many of the TT parks, especially on the west coast, are old parks that are not big-rig friendly and haven't been maintained all that well. Phannie just barely fits into her space here at Palm Springs, and maneuvering among the palm trees is very tight. In fact, when we leave here, I'm going to have to ask two of the RVers across the street to move their tow vehicles, or I'll never be able to make the turn to clear the palm trees where we are parked.

Fortunately, out of the 88 or so TT RV parks across the country, there are a small number that are acceptable, given our criteria, so we limit ourselves to these and forget the rest. Even with these restrictions, we think we come out slightly ahead because of the free stays for weeks at a time. There is also a TT membership provision that gives pretty good discounts at Encore properties and--for an additional yearly fee--discounts called the Trails Collection at about 200 other parks. We also get an automatic "in"  with Resort Parks International (for a modest fee after a year), another discount camping outfit. 

At Lake Conroe TT, which is, I suppose, our "home" park, we almost always get a very nice concrete site that rivals most of the nicer parks in the country, and we've noticed that improvements are slowly being made in some of the other TT parks after years of neglect under changing ownership. Some of these other owners were unscrupulous asset-flippers who skimmed the income and invested nothing in the parks. Lifestyle Equity Properties, the current owner of TT, seems to be more interested in improving things, but there is much work to be done. 

If you are thinking about a TT membership, you need to take into account your requirements, as most of the parks are not up to the standards we prefer, and many are found in remote locations, which also usually don't work for us. If your standards are a bit prudish, like ours, I would probably advise against it. But, if you aren't such prima donnas and are willing to stay in remote, rustic areas--like real honest-to-goodness campers do--it can be a surefire money-saver.  

We also use Passport America 50-percent discounts fairly often, and we'll stay in low-cost government parks (federal, state, county, municipal, etc.) that fit our requirements, although there aren't many of these that measure up. Escapees also has some discount parks that we use from time to time. The bottom line is this: We can almost always find some kind of discount park that we can tolerate, but it does take some significant research and planning, and these things don't come easily for retired and lazy people like me and, for fulltimers, the job never ends. Once we find a good park that's a real bargain, we'll probably stay there for a while and come back when we're in the area. There are other discount programs, like Coast-to-Coast, but we haven't run across any of their members who could give us the lowdown. And we're not even counting the Good Sam or KOA discounts, as they are only 10 percent. We use them from time to time, but we don't consider that much of a bargain.

Once in a while, we just have to bite the bullet and pay through the nose to get into a decent park in high-priced areas. That'll be the case when we get to San Diego; the reasonably priced parks either fail to meet our requirements or are too far away.

We've got more to report on Palm Springs, but that'll be in the next post.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood

Goodbye to Yuma

At the Palms RV Resort, Yuma, Arizona...

We have certainly enjoyed our stay in Yuma and the near perfect weather, with daytime temperatures in the seventies, low humidity and endless clear blue skies. We see the weather reports from other parts of the country that are snowbound with single-digit temperatures, and we can't help but feel a little sorry for those, including our friends, who have been caught up in that. We know they would like to be in a place like this, and we miss them.

Yuma has been on the grow, with the addition of a fairly new mall and a beautiful new city hall that contains something of particular interest to me, but more on that when we go inside.

As in previous photos in these posts, I found the landscaping at Yuma City Hall artfully done and appropriate to the desert setting. I knew there are many varieties of cacti, and there is no shortage of these on display here. I really find them interesting and beautiful.

Here's what caught my attention immediately upon entering the lobby of city hall:

Hanging from the ceiling was an airplane, a 1949 Aeronca Sedan named "City of Yuma." This was a particularly awesome sight to me, since this airplane is very similar to the 1949 Aeronca Champion, the first airplane I ever flew, and in which I soloed in 1963, a seminal event that developed into a career as a pilot that has been deeply enjoyable and rewarding. In fact, I have the good fortune still to do some flying even now, some 57 years later! 

The Sedan model of the Aeronca airplane was a four-place version, while the Champion held only the pilot and one passenger, seated in tandem rather than side-by-side. It was also flown by a control "stick" rather than a wheel or "yoke" to move the elevator and ailerons. Such fond memories I still have of that exciting event so long ago!

The "City of Yuma" was placed in this hall to honor a record-breaking endurance flight in 1949, wherein two pilots flew the airplane around Yuma without landing for 47 days. Now, you're probably asking, "How did they do that?" Well, in as few words as possible, the pilots, when new supplies were needed, flew in slow flight over a runway, the airplane's speed matched on the ground by a 1948 Buick convertible, from which fuel, oil, food, drink and other essentials were passed up to the pilots three times a day. That's over a thousand hours aloft for those pilots, and it brings to mind all kinds of questions, especially as to how they took care of the human factors that would naturally be involved. If you would like to read an interesting article about how and why the attempt was made, you can find it here.  

Located below the airplane in the city hall lobby is the very 1948 Buick convertible that was used to race along underneath to supply the airplane:

The event was sponsored by the Yuma Jaycees, who wanted to bring attention to the federal government about the near perfect flying weather at Yuma. The national attention brought about by the event did, in fact, result in considerable federal money subsequently being spent on a U. S. Marine flying base and a military proving ground here in Yuma. The stunt was re-enacted some years later (but not for 47 days), and here is a photo taken during the re-enactment. 

So, we add this to our list of cool things we wouldn't have known, had we not made the decision to be vagabonds for a while--by coincidence, starting our fifth year as such this very month!    

After several pleasant encounters with Ray and Cindy, as I mentioned in an earlier post, we had the good fortune of being contacted by Dan and Peggy, more bloggers we've read for years. They invited us to go with them to one of their favorite Yuma restaurants, the A&R Grill, where I had a sublime southwest chile cheeseburger, and Sandy had some very tasty fajita tacos: 

We knew from their posts that they liked the Yuma area so well that they purchased their own RV lot here. They invited us out to see it, so we did, not knowing that we got there on Dan's golfing day, so we missed him. Sorry, Dan, but we'll see you next time. Peggy was nice enough to show us around:

Theirs is a huge lot, and they have a nice storage shed at the back. There's even room for a friend's RV to be stored there for a while. In the poorly-composed photo above, I just barely included the edge of Dan's Big Green Egg cooking center. Cooking everything imaginable in that huge smoker, he is a master BGE chef, and they even take it to rallies to be with other members of their BGE groups. I really didn't know what a big deal it was until I saw Dan's and read some of his stories. You can find Dan's blog here.

With this pleasant experience, we're going to say goodbye to Yuma, ever impressed with its status as a winter playground for snowbirds. We were going to drive to Quartzsite since it is nearby but, instead, we think we'll stop there on the way back from the west coast after things have died down a bit from the Mecca-like RV swarm that occurs there every January. We're not all that fond of crowds, anyway, but we're going to stop there, so we can say that, as RVers, we have been to Quartzsite at least once, even if we are a little late to the main confab.

From here, we're headed to Palm Springs, California, for a couple of weeks, so we'll continue to report from there on our winter trip in the great Southwest. By the way, we've already started planning our summer trips, one of which will include Colorado and Wyoming beginning in mid-July, and we already know we'll be meeting up with friends along the way. In fact, we'll be joined by some good friends in their rig, doing a caravan with us for much of that trip. We don't often get to do that, so we're really excited. We'll have more news on that adventure when the time gets closer.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood