No pics and sick....again

We're probably going to be pretty lame about doing blog posts and posting in general over the holidays. We've been taking pictures, and assumed we'd have access to a PC with a card reader to download our pics. That not being the case, we also forgot to bring our cord, so for now, no pics to share until we get back. In addition, I was feeling a little under the weather since we came back on the 22nd, but my body managed to hold out & keep me functioning until the 26th. I'd been having serious sore throat and congestion/cough, but now I've freakin lost my voice! This is so frustrating!!!! I either have to write Rich a note, or whisper to him. The good news is that I've had no appetite, so I've lost weight over the holidays for the first time ever. Good thing too because my dad emptied his fridge on Rich and my sister yesterday, so we don't even need to grocery shop while we're here. There are multiple bags of chocolate things that I'm sure I can stuff into my bag for later. :-)~

As of today, my brother is out of town and loaning me his '99 Hummer (the BIG one), but I've been too sick (and a little sceared) to drive it. I'll bet this thing is as wide as our moho. It's freakin huge......and diesel. I've never driven anything diesel before. My brother, however is a big diesel fan. When he learned our moho was a gasser he was shocked & dismayed. Yes, we go up mountain passes at 40mph. w/the pedal to the floor, but we get up. Maybe someday....but not now.

So......that's all that's new for now. Hopefully we'll have healthy news w/picturs to report soon.

Laura

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Back in Michigan!

Yesterday was a loonnngg day. The day started at 3am. when we got up for a 6:45am flight out of Las Vegas, 60 miles away. We sneakily spent the night in our moho in the storage lot in Pahrump (didn't ask, but probably against the rules), then we got up and drove 60 miles into Vegas, waited in line for 30 minutes to pay for Snuggles "ticket" ($80 each way...babies are free...go figure!) Snuggles did very well with flying. She especially gathered a fan club at airport security. They had me take her out of her carrier, so they could put it through the X-ray machine, then the 2 of us walked through together. Some people knew that she was a cockatoo, and everyone declared her beautiful. She smiled at her adoring fans....lol! Our flight out of Vegas landed in Chicago where we changed planes, & got lunch for the 3 of us. Some little kids came up to Snuggles, freaking her out, stuck their fingers at her and asked if she'll bite. I told them to not put their fingers near her because she can bite a finger right off. LOL! Actually she'd fly before she'd bite anyone, but it got them away.

Our plane landed in Detroit right on time at 4pm. Rich's mom picked us up, we drove to her place, with Snuggles getting scritches from "grandma" the whole way. She's going to be sooo spoiled over the holidays. Grandma was telling her about all the wonderful veggies she bought for her. After spending some time with "grandma" we got some dinner and headed "home" to my mom's house where we're staying. Mom's in Paris for Christmas, but she left us some wonderful little gifts for Christmas and our birthdays (Rich's is Jan. 4, mine is the 20th...hint-hint!). Of course we had a little trouble getting to sleep, since our bodies are used to the Pacific time zone, but eventually we fell asleep.

OK, There are a few GOOD Things about Vegas!

After re-reading our last few post on Vegas, we've definitely put out the impression that its not our favorite place. We don't like the traffic, the smog, the crowds or the casinos; so, I guess its not one of our favorite places! Today, I finally found a reason to like the Vegas area....The mountain bike trails!

Laura dropped me off at a local trail head to do some exploring in the Red Rock Canyon. She is still getting over her cold and didn't feel up to riding. Nice trails here with a great looking back drop:


I was out by myself, so I used the self-timer feature on the camera to capture some 'action shots'. They didn't turn out too bad.












Yeah, I know I have my foot down in this pic. It was tough to run through the creek, up the hill and get on my bike in time for the shot. I did ride that section though, twice, just because of the creek crossing;)


We'll have to do some more exploring in the Red Rock Canyon and the Black Canyon near the Hoover Dam when we return in January! And, maybe another dinner at Okada, for my b-day on the 4th!!! -Rich-

Death Valley

We took a day trip over to Death Valley, Ca. It was truly unique in colors, landscape and texture. Most of the valley is below sea level, like the Bad Water Salt Flats.







The salt flats went on as far as you could see. It was kind of surreal standing on this white salt flat, no wind and absolute silence and looking up to the top of Telescope Peak at 11,200' covered with snow, and clouds moving over it.







At the far end of the flats was a place called the Devils golf course. It was made up of these salt formations, that seemed to go on forever. It was a 17 mile drive from the Bad Water Basin, the middle of the flat, to this end to see the formations.




Here you can see how far the formations go. They were solid salt and sand stone and very difficult to walk-on.









Next, we went on a hike in the Golden Canyon. This formation kind of stood out by itself, light brown sandstone surrounded by redrock on one side and the white salt flats on the other. It was very cool to walk through these deep canyons that had been carved out by centuries of water flowing down from the peaks and winds. The thing you noticed again, was the absolute silence of the area.

















One of the things I hate about winter, it gets dark quick. The sun started setting behind the mountains at around 3:30! Our last stop was the Artist Drive and Artist pallet area. Ansel Adams has many works from this area. (Isn't most of his work black and white? It just does not do this area justice!) The color contrasts were amazing. The hills went from pinks to deep reds, blacks, browns and blue-greens from the copper veins. Unfortunately the pic below was taken in low light and the color contrast are just wiped out. You'll have to trust us that the colors here were amazing.



For us, the outdoors and experiencing this kind of nature is a whole lot more fun then being in a loud, smoky, seedy casino. It was probably the most enjoyable day we have had since getting into Vegas. -Rich-

The 'No Gift' Christmas

First, I have thank our full-timing friends Howard and Linda for the idea for this post. (Explore their adventure at www.rv-dreams.com ) In his journal, Howard went on a little 'rant' about 'zombies' aimlessly shopping for gifts at the local Wal-Mart. No joy, no thought, just mindlessly buying because that's what you're supposed to do. Howard made a plea to consider the 'giftless Christmas'.

Now, we tried this last year, with just my mom. We discussed how each year we run around trying to come up with the perfect gift, only to end up with another pair of pajamas, typically the wrong size. We decided at Thanksgiving, no gifts. Just the pleasure of friends and family for dinner, drinks and good conversation. If you brought anything, it was either to be used or consumed on the evening get-together or a little token for everyone. We brought little half bottles of wine, that we made, for everyone.

Afterward, we met up for my birthday(it really stinks having a b-day so close to Christmas!) to discuss our first 'giftless' Christmas. Everyone was relieved not have to go through the hassle of purchasing, wrapping and ultimately returning things. It was the most stress free, guiltless Christmas ever!

Now that we're full-timing, we really don't have room for 'gifts'. We also travel with everything we need and don't have many wants. What we do need, we go out and buy. Plus, we'll be flying to from Vegas this year, with Snuggles, we REALLY don't have the ability to bring anything back. So, we decided to expand the 'no gift' policy to the rest of the family. Of course, nieces and nephews excluded, because Christmas is all about kids! And we'll be exchanging gifts with Laura's dad, because they were gracious enough to put up with us for a week in Santa Barbara for Thanksgiving. And, will be entertaining us while we're home in Michigan (that has to worth something!)

Since we've been away for almost 3 month's (wow, the time flies!) we are looking forward to visiting with friends and family more then ever! Sometimes, it gets kind of lonely out on the road, and you look forward to seeing a familiar face!

We'll keep you updated here on how the giftless Christmas works out!

Happy Holidays everyone! (is that the latest PC phrase now?!)

Rich

Las Vegas!

We got an early start out of Palm Springs on Thursday for the 300 mile trip up to Las Vegas. The drive was uneventful with light traffic. The weather, however, was drastically different then what we've been used too! As we drove, we had to keep turning up the heat. We pulled out of Palm Springs around 10AM at about 65 degrees(daytime temps avg 72-75). We arrived in Las Vegas around 3pm at 52 degrees (I know, Michiganders are rolling their eyes right now) it was COLD! At night it drops below 32, which can be a tough situation in the coach, freezing pipes and tanks.

Thursday afternoon, after setting up, we headed out to see the town. This was a first time visit to Vegas for both of us. First thing you notice is the construction and traffic everywhere. Turns out Vegas is one of the fastest growing areas of the country. Next, we walked through a few of the casinos, New York, Paris, Monte Carlo. We both noticed once you get past the cool designs and eye candy, there all just smoky, loud casinos. Neither one of us are gamblers, at all, so we were bored pretty quickly. Next we looked into some show possibilities, Cirque deSoliel or Blue Man group. But, everything is sold out for just about the remainder of the year. You need to book stuff well in advance of your visit! Based on our experiences so far, we decided that we can safely put Vegas into the 'OK place to visit, don't want to live there' category.

There was one thing we did plan ahead for, fortunately. The chef at one of our favorite restaurants back in Michigan, Tribute (www.tributerestaurant.com) chef Takshi Yagahashi, started a new restaurant inside the new Wynn casino. We made reservations months ago for Okada Sushi and Teppanyaki restaurant(www.wynnlasvegas.com) We had met Takshi a few times at Tribute and had hoped to congratulate him on his new place. Unfortunately for us, Takashi was vacationing with his family in Japan. This was a 'budget breaking' meal for us, but oh, so worth it! After a sushi appetizer, I had Sea Bass and Laura had scallops, all chef prepared right in front of us. If you visit here, I would highly recommend a dinner here!

On Friday, we decided to head over to see Hoover Dam. Wow, it was big! This pic is from the Nevada side observation deck:


Here is a pic of one of the intake towers on the Lake Mead side. HArd to believe that thing extends down 500' below the surface. (Why do I have this urge to run out there and try to disable the 'tractor beam' for Luke and Hans!!!!):


Here is a pic of the generator rooms down at the bottom of the dam:


You can take an elevator down to the bottom (500')and take a tunnel through the dam and into the generator house. I was impressed at just how quiet the generators were, even though there was 6 of them spinning at 1,800 RPM:


Sunday, we are packing up and heading over to Pahrump, a small town about an hour west of Vegas. This is where we are going to be storing the coach while we are visiting Michigan for the holidays. We'll spend the early part of next week preparing the coach for storage and packing for the trip. We will make some time to head over to Death Valley prior to flying home on Thursday morning.

We look forward to seeing everyone back home next week!

Rich

PS I thought the blog could use a little 'update', so I changed the color template. What do you think?

We're baaaccckkk!!!!

We're back and feeling much better. I still have a nagging little cough, but otherwise I'm feeling 90% better than before. Rich doesn't even have as much of a cough, but he was sicker longer than I was.

This morning Rich went out for a 16 mile bike ride. I wasn't up for anything like that yet, because whenever I get out of breath in the least, it's a coughting fit. I came over to the clubhouse to do a little surfing. Later we went out for lunch (getting out is a big thrill since we were cooped up for a few days).

So our big event in the last few days was when I received an email from Susan Hollingshead, another young full-time RV'er from Ontario. You can read about them on their site, Coulson Castle Corporation. She emailed me to say they are also in the Chochella valley & would like to meet. She and I talked on the phone when Rich was sick & I wasn't. We planned to get together in the next couple of days for some "girl" time since her husband was out of town and mine was sick. Well...wouldn't you know it, I got sick the next day. So we decided to hold off on meeting until this week, so we'd (hopefully) be better and her husband would be back in town.

Tonight we all met at our motorhome and drove over to Tanpopo, a japanese restaurant in Palm Desert. They have sushi happy hour from 5-6pm where all their sushi is 1/2 off. We had an excellent time getting to know then and hearing their tips and idea of places to go and things to see. They've been full-timers for 2 years. Susan found my site through Kristen's site, which they found through Malia's site. I told them about meeting Howard & Linda and their fun & internesting site. Us young full-timers have to stick together.

Anyway, we had very fun evening with them, and as Rich said on the way home, "it's nice to talk to younger people who GET full-timing." So many people don't understand why we are doing this or say we are "too young" to full-time, so it's refreshing to talk to people who understand and are doing it too.

Now I'm sick too....

Not much to report except that when we realized that Rich had the flu, I ran off to a doctor Friday morning before we left to get a flu shot. It came too late as I woke up that morning with a stuffy head. It's progressed to the point where we've been curling up in the moho and not leaving it much. Yesterday I got up, had breakfast, then went back to bed from 8:30am-1pm. Went to the hot tub to soak, and back to the moho for the evening. Today we forced ourselves to get up and get out, so we returned something to Best Buy (note: stay out of BB until after Xmas, it's a zoo), then to a wine store, but neither of us was too excited about wine, or anything, then to Trader Joe's where we picked up a few goodies. When we got back we took a tub, and walked over to the clubhouse to surf. We did feel better when we got out, but Rich, having flu (mine's a cold), gets tired easily. So...don't expect much in the way of blogging from us for a few days. Hopefully we clear up soon because it's depressing to be sick when it sunny & 75 degrees, like today.

Laura

Sick husband, slow times

Not much to report other than Rich has been sick with what appears to be the flu since Tuesday night. He hasn't left the moho much except when when he was feeling good enough for us to drive over to the south entrance of Joshua Tree National Park. We wanted to buy a yearly pass to get us into all the national parks, but we didn't have enough cash, and they didn't take credit cards. We did check out their campground, which we could have fit into, but this place is wayyy out in the boonies. There's nothing for 15 miles around. It does look like there's good hiking potential. Since we're here for another 8 days, we'll go back when Rich is feeling better, but next time we'll go to the north entrance, about an hour away.

Tomorrow, provided Rich is feeling good enough, we're moving to another RV park called Emerald Desert. We almost stayed there originally, but they didn't have internet access at the sites, so we came to Shadow Hills. Our 2nd day here we drove through Emerald Desert and it's beautiful! Unfortunatly, they sold out to a housing developer, so they are closing at the end of December.

News Flash!!! It's raining here!!! In an area that only gets 4" of preceptitation a year, this is huge! It's actually a little sprinkle, but it's cloudy and raining. We haven't seen rain in a looonnggg time, but we got our fair share in Pennsylvania.

Playing around Palm Springs

We attempted a road bike ride out of our 'rv resort' on Sunday afternoon. The winds (Santa Ana's) were killing us! We stopped along the way at a few of the 'golf communites' to look at the models and see what you get for the money. Nothing special, they are packed in tight. The amenities are nice if you like golf. It took us both a minute to figure out that the 1/2 size garage door on the side of the house was for your golf cart(our first thought, those would be great for bikes!). After about 10 miles of fighting the wind, we packed it in! The weather reports is calling for the Santa Ana's to be pretty active through Wednesday of this week, gust up to 50 mph. So, looks like we'll be hitting the hiking trails.

We found a trail that overlooks Palm Springs and headed up! The trail was rocky and loose, but the views overlooking the city were pretty spectacular.



We're finally getting to know all of the features of our digital camera. So, we decided to try out the self timing feature. It helps that the top of our hiking stick unscrews and acts a camera stand. So, here's our first attempt:



And I offer a bit of advice. Don't try to run over to your framed in shot when the trail is steep, loose and there is a drop-off on one side! (Don't ask how I know that)

After the hike, we headed over to the Palm Springs tramway to check it out. It takes you from 2,600' to 8,400' feet. You can see our pic, we were dressed pretty lightly. The temp where we were hiking was 73. The temp at the base of the tram was 60 and temp at the summit was 48! Needless to say, we decided to attempt the tram later in the week, with the proper attire.

For those interested, the mountain biking here is pretty much a bust. Too much sand. One trail desctription I read on-line says something about starting off with a 3 mile climb, 2 miles of which is walking through sand (and I thought riding in Traverse City was sandy?)! It looks like we'll have to save our moutain biking for next stop, Vegas.

Look for more later about the Palm tramway and Joshua tree National Park. For now, I have to go get an oil change in the Suzuki.

Rich

Palm Springs!

We made a quick retreat out of Malibu on Friday morning. First, to beat the rain and wind storm that we could see coming in off the ocean. Second, our trip took us right through the center of LA. Nothing like piloting your house through 7 lanes of LA freeway. We got lucky and hit downtown just as morning rush was settling down, about 10:30 am. The worst part about it was the amount of lane changes one has do to stay on your freeway (confusing)

The rest of way to Palm Springs was smooth sailing. We pulled in to our rv resort (they're not called campgrounds down here) and headed into town to check things out. Having lived in Michigan my whole life, I don't know if I'll ever get used to seeing Christmas trees for sale in the middle of the dessert, or lights around palm trees. Here is a pick of downtown Palm Springs at dusk, the lights had just come on.



Since we are on the far eastern end of the Pacific time zone, it get dark early here, 4:15! We grabbed a local guide and headed back to the coach for some dinner and rest. We found out this weekend was 'Tamale Fest' and they were expecting 150 to 250 thousand people; We have to check this out!



All I can say is WOW! It was packed. Even though there was a ton of tamale vendors, lines were anywhere from 10 to 100 deep. We later determined it was the amount of trophies at your booth (the judging was the previous night) that determined how long your lines were. We opted for a sampling of tamales, cheese, chicken, beef and pork. The cheese and beef were the clear winners, but all were good.



We heard rumors of dessert tamales, so we set out through the crowd to search them out. We found Belgian chocolate tamales with raspberry couli(sp?)and carmalized walnuts in them, delicious!

I can only handle so much of crazy, tamale eating throngs of people. So, we headed out. There were some other 'rv resorts' in the area, so we decided to check them out. One had about 1,400 spots, it was the largest 'park' we had ever seen! It had ever amenity imaginable from tennis, golf, hiking/Biking paths, clubhouse, events, dances spas.... The other was a gated, guarded motorcoach facility. Motorcoach, meaning 1/2 million and up bus conversions. For the heck of it we had the sales manager take us on a guided tour of the place. We told him we had a 38' coach, no specifics, I don't know if we would have passed inspection! (no joke, they 'determine' if your 'rig' is good enough to stay there!) Most of the parking pads were privately owned and the owners could deck them out as they saw fit. We saw 'outdoor' kitchens that modeled the best restaurant kitchens. Lots were for sale for anywhere from 80,000 to 250,00, for a cement parking pad! Time to move on!

We are going to have to treat ourselves to one of 'resorts' one day ( the first one, not the gated, guarded one). But, they are pricey, anywhere from 40 to 100/night. We normally try to limit ourselves to $25, but, that has been very difficult to do in the resort towns. Santa Barbara, $50/night. Malibu, $38/night, Palm springs, 40/night. Time to do a little budget adjustment!

Rich

Wrapping up Malibu & Santa Monica

Today we wrapped up our time in Malibu and Santa Monica & headed out to Palm Springs. The weather was forcasted to be big rain starting early this morning and going all day. We wanted to get going before the rain, but not too early as to get caught in LA morning rush hour. Somehow we managed to avoid both. It was a bit hairy driving through L.A. and Rich became a lane-changing fool, but we did it in just about 3 hours, plus a stop for gas somewhere along the way.

On Wednesday we met my aunt Caroline & George at the Santa Monica farmers' market along with my aunt Connie & Uncle Terry. After a bit of shopping for veggies, we ate lunch at Wolfgang Puck's pizza kitchen. Rich was in heaven having pizza. On the way home, we stopped along the beach to watch the surfers.

Last night we had a wonderful dinner with my aunt Connie, uncle Terry, and cousin Paul. Paul has certainly grown since we last saw him. He's now over 6' tall with size 13 feet!!! He's running cross country, playing violin and playing piano. We took a wine which seemed to go over well. Earlier in the day Connie & Terry came over to see our RV. They seemed to be impressed with the size and ammenities.

On our way to Palm Springs today we went through a valley of sorts, where it got very windy. Suddenly there were tons of these wind machines, everywhere:


When we stopped for gas Snuggles got to do her favorite RV activity, spying. She loves to look at what's going on outside, especially if someone gets close. Here's a picture of our resident "spy".


Laura