Spending Money and Going Nowhere

Currently one of the big lotteries is up to $474 million dollars and right now we surely could use a little of that, what with the dental work we've had done (routine maintenance and my broken bridge), the plug on our 50 amp power cord pulling loose again and causing 220 volts of electricity to go through the rig shorting out and frying our microwave/convection over, the torn awning topper, the ice maker that died, et al.  So there has been shopping and appointments and waiting for repairmen and a whole lot of nothing else going on. 

The good news is that the weather finally turned nice, the water is warm in the hot springs fed swimming pools here and we can drive just a few miles to mix with the hoity-toity residents of Palm Springs should we feel the need to see how the rich and famous live.  This is the area where you see gold lame' and lots of bling on the cotton tops shopping at Wally World, always a treat.  It's a pretty area where the desert finds just enough water to allow "real" flowers in the landscaping and not just cactus and bougainvillea.

Some firsts: this is the first campground that has ever handed us an instruction sheet on what to do in the event of an earthquake since we're currently located on the San Andreas Fault.  Second, while walking Patches yesterday she poked at a hole and I watched as a pair of claws came out to snap at her.  After pulling the cat away from the opening to a small burrow I watched through the opening as this translucent yellow critter crawled past through the burrow below, slowly exposing a wide body and eventually a ribbed tail--my first desert scorpion!!!  I no longer leave my aqua shoes outside to dry overnight after water aerobics.  Shudder.  Finally, we have had wonderful responses from three different mobile RV service technicians who not only show up when they say they will, but even arrive early.

A near miss; our soon to be RVing again friends Tim and Penny almost had us talked into working with them at a campground in North Carolina but the only positions left were working evening doing housekeeping which is pretty much a euphemism for cleaning bathrooms.  So we'll stay California for now, playing it by ear on our destinations if fuel prices continue to rise.  I'd like to wander Yosemite National Park and the Napa Valley vineyards as I'm sure there's a bottle or two of Cabernet Sauvignon with my name on it. 

Right now a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou sounds pretty good.

Denny's Nightmare

Denny said he was awakened by a nightmare this morning; when he told me what is was I had to laugh.

The background; Denny and I have friends we met while working at a campground in Virginia years ago.  Tim and Penny gave up the RVing lifestyle when Penny starting having problems walking due to a still undiagnosed neurological problem.  The two of them settled in Florida and then moved to Alabama where they started a successful business and created a home for themselves and their two cats.  But the wanderlust was still running through their veins.



Last summer they took a couple of weeks off and drove up to Maine to meet up with us and eat lobster.  That road trip by van was enough to get them thinking about doing some travel by RV so I started looking around for a company that could build some sort of lift for Penny's electric scooter to install on their newly purchased travel trailer.  I located a gentleman in Texas that came up with a really neat solution and all of a sudden I hear that the two of them have put their business up for sale and they are anxious to get to Texas to have the lift installed so they can get on the road.  I figured that any day we'd have them knocking at the door to our rig here in California saying "hey, good to see you!"



Yesterday I got a call from Penny saying that she and Tim took a quick car trip up to Cherokee, North Carolina to hit the casino there and take a look at a local campground that was advertising for seasonal workers.  Darned if Tim didn't sign up to work there for the summer!  Naturally the first thing Tim said to Denny while he was on the phone is "come work with me!!!"



And that's where Denny's nightmare came in.  He dreamt he told Tim yes.  Heh.

I'm So Confused.

Denny and I have been in California for the past two weeks.  However, because there is no shopping on this side of the Colorado River and because we are located across the river from Parker, Arizona the campground here uses the Mountain Time Zone instead of the official Pacific Time zone.  So when we arrived here we didn't change the clocks because we knew when Daylight Savings time began we would still be on the same time. ???? you say?

You see, Arizona does not recognize Daylight Savings Time.  Therefore, this morning when everyone else was "springing forward" an hour, we in effect stayed at the same time because 6 AM Arizona time was now 6 AM Pacific DST due to the fact that Arizona time didn't change.  Still with me?

All of which is moot, because I forgot that our atomic clock was still set to automatically shift to Daylight Savings Time for the Mountain Time Zone and therefore when I woke up at 6:20 AM wondering why the coffee pot had not started to perk and why Patches was not bugging me for her breakfast it was because it was actually only 5:20 AM.  Which I didn't realize until Denny asked why it was still so dark at 7 AM.  *sigh*  So much for not having to change the clocks.

Comment modification

I took off word verification after Bl*gger put that annoying two word form up, but since then I've started getting spam comments so I've put it back in place.  Sorry folks.

Edited 03.03.2012:  Okay, I'm trying it the way some have suggested in the comments below and removing the word verification once again.  I have to admit I can't read the darned things myself.  But no more anonymous comments.

Rollin’ Down the Rivah

This is the view from our dining room table for the next two weeks.  In the morning it’s bright and vivid and in the afternoon the mountains turn red and the light softens the edges of everything around.

Although we are on the California side of the river the campground uses Arizona’s Mountain Time Zone because there are no towns near us on this side of the border so they align with the time zone of the town of Parker which is across from us.  Weird, but time is relative, right? 

This is a wonderful area to relax because there really isn’t a lot to do otherwise.  There is a golf course nearby, but they have raised their prices so much that Denny and I refuse to play there.  We have explored the monument at Poston dedicated to the Japanese-Americans who were placed in the relocation camp in the area, as well as hit a few geocaches, drove out by the Nellie Saloon (although it was closed during the week) wandered up and down Hwy. 95 and squeezed our way illegally across the Parker Dam which is no longer wide enough to drive a dual wheeled truck across since they’ve put concrete barriers along the edges of the road after September of 2001.  Therefore this week we have made appointments to be worked on by a local chiropractor (who is wonderful) and will install the final window treatments in the bedroom, I’ve taken down our Hughes.net satellite modem and router due to frustration with tech support and have followed the suggestions of a RVing friend and switched to an air card with a fairly large data plan.  I don’t think it will support two people playing computer games so I’m weaning myself from the various F*cebook games online and downloading more library books to my Kindle.  The weather is still not as warm as we’d like, but it’s certainly better than the craziness that’s going on in the Midwest right now with the snow and rain storms and tornadoes.  All of which makes eventually settling in the western portion of the States a little more sensible.  Maybe.  Not there yet.

In the meantime, the morning sunlight has dropped a giant fistful of glitter on the river and I feel the pull of its siren song.  Catch ya later.