Happy Birthday, Dwayne!

I've always said that the nicest thing that a mother-in-law can do for her future daughter-in-law is to have her son on Valentine's day!  Happy Birthday, Dwayne!!!

That's a big Chimichanga! 

New friends

We stopped in Redlands, California, at Redlands Truck and RV (http://redlandstruckservice.com/) to get scheduled maintenance done on Miss Daisy (oil changes for the engine and generator, transmission fluid change, and a few other odds and ends).

Redlands has a great service for RVers who need their rig maintained - they have a 5-space RV park that their customers can use for overnight stays while getting service. We were able to use it for 3 nights - the night before our service as well as the night after our service.

We got to spend some nice time with new friends, Geoff and Johana Matthews:

Geoff and Johana and Patti working on computers

Geoff and Johana were great to get to know! Not only do they have a great RV service business in Custom Coach Connections (http://www.customcoachconnection.com/) - they also carry a smoker with them, and made us some incredible meals while we were there!

We talked with them about satellite TV for our rig, and hope to be able to get them to install MCD shades for us later down the road.

It is always nice to meet up with RVers, and service people who are also RVers are an added bonus!

Some updates to the blog

Stepson David suggested that I put a map onto my blog to show where we are and where we've been - while looking for how to do that, I found a way to add a "subscribe by email" button to the blog - that should now be showing up on the right side of this text (I think!). I haven't figured out the map yet, but am working on it!

Edited to say: I found out that I could include map links -- they are also over to the right on the web view; I'm not sure they will show up on mobile devices. I tried putting a map onto the blog itself, and while I could do it, it was costly in terms of time to load, so I opted to go with a side link.

Now, whether I will remember to update it when we move is another question altogether!

Hello again!

 Sorry for no updates this week. On Tuesday, we moved from Palm Desert to Redlands to get some maintenance done on Miss Daisy. The shop we were going to has its own small RV park where we could stay while they were working on the Trek. It was quite nice and we enjoyed visiting with the other folks who were also there.

Palm trees above the Jeep in Redlands 

We are now 6000' up in Idyllwild. It is a bit cooler here and there are a lot more trees - pictures from here later!

Now, that's a WASHER!

Laundry day - we decided to go to a laundry in town rather than using one at the campground (we had visited one at the campground yesterday and it was rather warm). We found a nice laundry not far away - they had all sizes of washers and dryers - one of the washers was ENORMOUS:

Dwayne checks out the washer

We didn't use that one - from what I read online, I think it was a 12x washer - able to wash 12 times what a "normal household" washer would do. I think that would wash everything in Miss Daisy, plus us and the kitty cats!

Joshua Tree National Park

From the drive over here from Las Vegas, we started seeing Joshua trees... they look to me like something that would grow in Dr. Seuss' WhoVille. On Saturday, we decided to visit Joshua Tree National Park. (Note to self: retirees should not visit national parks on Saturday and Sunday when other working people would normally visit.)

Soon after we entered the park, we saw immense boulders with people practicing their rock climbing skills - yes, that is a person at the very top!

We then went on a walk into "Hidden Valley" - this was a valley surrounded by the large rocks that allowed for growth of many species of plants that would otherwise had not survived here. The rocks captured moisture and the interior of the valley had species that would require more moisture than the rest of the desert in general. However, the Joshua trees, as the one pictured here, were both inside and outside the valley. This is a particularly large one as you can see by the size of Dwayne next to it.

We drove up to an overlook that looked into the valley where we are staying - we thought that was a cloud of smog. Unfortunately, it was a dust cloud, and all surfaces within Miss Daisy were covered with a fine layer of dust when we returned in the evening.

They had a "Geologic Loop Road" that we took - it was interesting, though honestly the "interest per mile" value dropped significantly after we entered the portion designated for 4WD only - the signage seemed not to be kept up so even though we had a paper that told us what we would be seeing at different points along the road, we didn't know where those points were. However, it was interesting, at least for the first half! And you can see some additional Joshua trees there.

 We also visited a couple of the campgrounds within the park. There were completely full, but we were determining if we would want to come back and try to find a site in the middle of the week. We found that the sites at the Jumbo Rocks campground were really not very nice - just wide places in the road, and very crowded. We thought the Belle campground was more beneficially laid out for the campers. We aren't sure whether we will go there or not; there is a night sky program that looks interesting, but we think it is only on the weekend, and it was SO crowded on Saturday that I'm not sure we want to return.

We headed back to Palm Desert by the south entrance of the park. Interestingly, this crosses into the Mojave Desert (out of Joshua Tree Desert) - there are no more Joshua trees, but a lot more Cholla (cho-ya). We stopped to take pictures at a large group of Cholla on our way out.

She was lost, but now she's found...

No - this isn't the story of someone coming to Jesus... I wish it was, but I'm happy nonetheless.

When we got home this evening, somehow Miss Kitty got out. We didn't even know it for a couple of hours, but when she didn't come out after we were settled in the evening, we started looking and couldn't find her. We looked and looked inside - we just couldn't believe she had gotten out. We finally had to accept that she wasn't inside and she must have gotten out. Dwayne walked and walked and walked around the campground. We made up "Lost Cat" posters and Dwayne put them in the various public buildings. I stayed at the Trek and just kept calling her. I prayed and asked God to take care of her; I knew He knew where she was, and if He wanted us to keep her, He would bring her back to us.

We were about to call it a night, Dwayne had come back and was about to come in; we were talking - I was on the steps and he was outside, when we heard a kitty cry... oh my goodness... we both started calling her and she came out from under the Trek. I don't know whether she had been hidden up in the insides somewhere for all that time (she had been out for almost 5 hours by the time we found her).

But, we're just thankful that God brought her back to us!