Feb 26 Reconnoitering Palm Springs...

We had planned to take in the 'all you can drink champagne brunch' at the local casino but with nobody else interested, give it a miss in favor of a lazy start, grease fix camping breakfast of cheese croissants with bacon. Ahh the arteries are screaming...but tastes so good out there in the open.
  We woke to rain pattering and although the tarmac was wet, it soon dried up and was sunny and 22 by afternoon.
  There's an 8-hour difference from here to London so at 8am I do Facetime with my big sis Liz to find out how Clive has fared with his knee replacement. We have a chatty time and pleased to see Clive dressed sitting up reading in the living room. Surgery Tuesday, home Friday and doing well, not bad for an 80+-year old. No walker, no crutches, just two canes and doing the steep stairs to their bedroom 3 times today! Whew. Good going.
  We set off for town, about 20km south, and in fact Palm Springs is a conglomerate of several towns all joined together. Some beautiful palm lined avenues and flowers everywhere, what a change from Calgary where big snowflakes are still falling.
  I get in touch with several friends here and in Phoenix to plan some visits with them in the next week or so. It seems there are still a bunch of Canadians down here despite the dollar differential.
  Ted is delighted to find his Total Wine, an amazing store with about 6000 bottles for his perusal. We pick up a case of 6 to get a 10 discount, including our favorite New Mexico champagne from Gruet. And some good prices on Monbazillac  too.
  We still can't figure out the cable TV system, so follow some of the Oscar ceremony on wifi. Hilarious, they announced the wrong winner for best film! We havent't seen any of them...But lots of interesting digs at their new president, who hasn't tweeted his displeasure alll evening yet and fired the whole movie business...hahaha

Feb 25 Rain! And big winds..but divine opera

At CALIENTE we are on the San Andreas fault line but hopefully not a problem. I am up early to get door to door limo service to the live MET opera Rusalka today. Ushi has unfortunately gone down with post-Mexican food stomach problems so Ted comes instead with Dieter abd I. We are joined by Susan and Roy, another Calgary pal staying here. WE all have a jolly time enjoying the opera, which is packed at 10am with rabid opera fans. It's a lovely production, some great singing and acting and of course, lovely music from Dvorak.
  Back home I cook up a big feed of veggies and stuff avocado with the lovely baby shrimp form Alaska that we get here. Its dark and windy out by the time Ted gets out the frying pan and cooks the rockfish but he nails it.
  I am able to download my book so we settle in for the night, get our little space heater going and soon are cosy in our wee 22ft home.
  WE have found the local PBSradi station with classical music all day, Oh joy.
  

Feb 24 Back to Caliente HOt Springs RV in Palm Springs

We are up early and off after a nice walk along the beach and visits with various friendly neighbors. Sad goodby to the lovely S.Cal coast and beaches. The two hour journey takes us 3.5 hours with lots of traffic build up everywhere as we head back through the interior rather than the longer interstate route, maybe not such a great idea. It's warming up, hits 17 and sunny as we arrive at the desert hot springs spa which will be home for the next week.
  There is only one spot in this some 650-lot resort free for the week. However, we are willing to horse trade on sites, so we check out a few before we go to the office and, tada, discover a spot we found can be available for the week after all.
  We check in with Ushi & Dieter, who tell us we have an invite for impromptu supper with more Calgary pals Don & Kathy and her sister from Ottawa. Saves me doing dinner tonight, really thoughtful. We get set up for the week in our serviced site $330 for the week, great improvement on our beach site at $75 a night and having to check in every morning to see if we can in fact stay the next night there.
  It's very quiet here, seems they all go to bed early, no trains, we sleep for 10 hours.

Feb 22 Look who turned up?

Ushi.& Dieter are staying at Desert Hot Springs for 5 months over winter. They said they might join us on the coast but we really didn't  know what we were doing til we got here. However, they are golfing with friends and staying just north of us in Carlsbad today - so will come down and join us for early dinner.
  Ted and I go off to investigate the local market store and are walking down the main highway, and suddenly somebody is walking towards us and it;s Ushi! Small world. They came down early and decided to enjoy the beach. We all go back to the camsite and enjoy walks and sitting on the beach in the sun.
  We then wend down to the Chart House, a gorgeous resto overlooking the crushing waves for their excellent happy hour drinks and food for a song compared to regular prices. We take photos of the lovely sunset and they set off back to the desert, a 2 hour drive normally.
  Next day, we really do investigate the Seaside Market Cardiff store across the road from our campsite. They have Mondavi Opus1 wine for sale for $420 a bottle, and all sorts of caviar...clearly there are a few well-heeled burgers around this area...
  We do our grocery stockup and buy gas, try to find wifi and finally get it in the little local fish place where we have great scallop, dorado and Oprah tacos and a huge bowl of fish stew with a bit too much chili for my liking, but hearty all the same.
  Another lovely and last sunset over the Pacific but very cold and windy. I've lost my book from my download again, so satisfy myself with my real book, 'Yiddish for Pirates" which is a total hoot and very funny, to keep me vaguely awake til 10pm.

Feb 21 Surfies and beautiful people land...

  It doesn't seem to have changed since we started coming down here 40 years ago. Ted says the eye candy is still good (they peel off their surf suits with nothing much underneath but some ittybitty bra tops and floss bottoms...)
  Pelicans cruise above us, as well as stealth helicopters. I wonder if Mexicans are coming ashore here? Hahaha. It's high surf, they are probably just monitoring that. The birds and waves wake us, lovely.
  It's cool overnight so our little space heater goes on and off all night, glad we have a plugin.
  Ralph's grocery store has a great selection of fish and seafood. BUT the stone crab legs I buy turn out to be off, so we dump them and just enjoy my shrimp stuffed avocados, more fish soup, salad and chocolate! Lots of chocolate.
  I've found the French raspberry flan at TJs so we are set for dessert now, with gobs of cream.

Feb 19 Welcome to the Hotel California...

  We pull into San Elijo State Beach camp to find our spot backing on to the busy road and railway. It takes a while to convert our $35 non serviced spot to a one night $75 beach serviced spot. They have cancelled our other bookings. We will get a refund to our credit card in 4-5 weeks, right, weeks. So much for Silicon Valley influence down here.
  It is the Presidents Day holiday weekend, so busy as all get out. Hope we don't have to kowtow to their current president, who doesn't seem to be too popular here.
  We are surrounded by great grocery stores including my fav Trader Joe's - so it's off to stock up then Ted methodically gets the RV up and running, no glitches this time around to blow our hot water heater!
  It's too dark at 6pm and cold now to cook or eat out. I add onions carrots and mushrooms to TJ's clam chowder with olive oil/rosemary foccacio and wine. A good start. The trains are noisy but we are too tired to notice and go so sleep - and wake - listening to the waves crashing on the shore below our cliff side home some 2100kms from home.

Feb 18 Retail therapy in the rain..

When the rain gets going, the shoppers get going..when you can't sit at the pool or see the sights, a trip to the Premium Outlet Centre 10 minutes from your hotel is just the job. It drizzles most of the afternoon as we dive into shops, mainly looking for shoes for Ted's awful short wide feet, with no success. I think he is going to have to have shoes made in future, too difficult to find them off the shelf.
  We did find some nice bits and pieces at Banana Republic, Columbia Sports and, as ever, stockup on really good prices at the French L'Occitaine.
   Good thing we only had to risk our lives crossing the road from our hotel to the nice G&B brew pub for happy hour dinner again. $10 margaritas for $6, mango/shrimp and tapas tray, 10% coupon from hotel, $10 off to join their dinner club, dinner: $35 total. Tada.
  Next morning we make an early start (for us) at 9am. The storm has passed and it's mostly sunny now but very windy still. Gas is now $3.50 a liter.
  We follow the easy I-15 and 1-215 skirting Los Angeles east and are soon back on the beautiful long stretches of unspoiled sandy beaches of Southern California. We spent many holidays here when we worked, at co-worker John Knight's condo at Del Mar Beach Club. Still very exclusive, it is not C$200 a week now, it's US$200+ a day.

Feb 17 Glitz and glamor and minimum wage in Vegas

With a short drive to Provo, we have time to check out phones at Walmart. Your friendly Verizon sells you a phone for $13 and unlimited talk and text for $1 a day. This is a far cry from good ole Telus (aka Screw-us) and well use the iphone, ipad and iPad mini for wifi connection as we go. Leo sets it all up for me in the store with a California number (just give him a Cal zip code) and a hug to send me on my way. For 2 months we can be reached at 760 579 9338 if we remember to (a) switch it on and (b) take it with us....
  We find a local Japanese resto (help wanted on the door...) for great gyozas and sushi in Orem. 2 sakes, 2 beers, 2 dinners for $50. We drive to our usual La Quinta hotel to check in but we are not listed! It is now a Ramada so we drive about 5miles back up the highway to the one I am actually checked into. Closer to shops and restaurants in this busy young, lively university-based community. Utah is still growing like topsy, they are determined to out-baby the Islam religion here. New housing popping up everywhere, almost on the highway in places, with children's playgrounds practically on the road. Great for their little lungs I am sure....
  By Friday's its raining and a huge storm that hit the S.California coast is on its way. Ted hangs on to the steering wheel at times, but takes plenty of breaks.
  I've finally found how to download books from my local library to my ipad and while away the time with my crossword too.
  WE pull into Lost Wages in the rush hour Friday, not ideal, but easy trip as we did it last year. Fortunately no red lights from our engine this time and the panic of finding a Mercedes shop to fix it!
  We cross the road for dinner at the huge brew pub which is jumping at happy hour with happy drinkers and eaters. There is an early bird menu of $10.60 margaritas for $6 (I'm on them) $4 beers (Ted) and appies for $3,5,7 and 9. We put away shared servings of mussels, calamari, fish tacos and a beef slider for $50. Less the 10% coupon from the hotel. Not bad. So much for the night life, we are pooped and go to bed an hour early as we have gained an hour in Nevada.

US Winter 2017 - To go or not to go??

Having failed to get ur act together to spend the winter in Chile - that will have to wait til next winter - we took the RV out of storage on a day we could finally drive through the mountain of snow and ice. No signs of mice this winter, yeah.
  The line of least resistance is to head south into the new banana republic. No wall is up yet to stop us going south. It is much warmer down there. We will take the risk.
  A mild weekend and good forecast lets us get on the road on - sweet - Valentine's Day Feb 14 in clear dry weather.
  The border guard asks us how long we are going there for. We say two months. Is this holiday? No this is life. Are we going to work there? Certainly not. No guns, rifles, dogs, cats, fruit, meat or over $10k in cash? Nope. And off we go...tada.
  Day 1 in Great Falls, we return to the friendly pizza place next to the hotel on the river, beautiful sunset and sun on the river in the morning.
  Day 2 in Idaho Falls. It is snowy on the mountains but dry on the roads. We make good time and after a brief rest, walk along the river and lovely blue ice falls to the nice little Jalisco Mexican resto where happy hour give us $2 margaritas (me) and $2 16oz beers (Ted) along with $4 dinner. (Home made salsa and bean dip and a huge pile of warm taco chips, an Enchilada, beans, rice, salad.)
  The first of many signs on resto doors "Help wanted". Yup, you have no idea how much help you are gonna need now oh great America...