Palm Springs/Indio CA in Nov 2009

Hi everyone,

We have been doing a little relaxing, a little dancing, a little maintenance and a little geocaching. We had some R & R before the square dance festival started.

The festival was terrific!  With callers like Tony Oxendine, Gary Shoemake, Marshal Flippo, Ken Bower, Wade Driver, Mike Sikorsky and Johnny Preston how could it be anything but wonderful!  Cuers included one of our favorites, Chuck Weiss.  There was a 'Trail In" dance Thursday evening.  Friday and Saturday had morning, afternoon and evening sessions, and Sunday morning was a Trail Out.  It's hard to get enough good dancing...but I think we finally did!!  We were able to park the motorhome pretty close to the dance halls there at the Indio fairgrounds, and had 50 amp service too.  We were very comfortable, and it is so nice to 'hobble' out of the dance hall and into your house to rub your sore feet and take a little nap!  There were a record number of dancers--1100.  We made a trip out to the date farm packing house to drink our free date shakes.  We had thought there was going to be a tour, but not so.  We bought 11 pounds of them, enough majools to last us until next year!

Afterward we did a little geocaching and will show you one of the caches we thought was interesting.  It hung above a canal.   It was tiny, about the size of the upper joint section of my little finger.  It was on a cord and you had to pull it to you, take it apart and sign, then pull it back out over the canal. 

 This one shows a little of the canal and surrounding area

The next picture you may think is a little strange.  We were driving down the highway when we saw this one.  It was fascinating and the camera was handy.  It was aluminum cans that had really been compacted.  I don't know if they were  anchored together in any way or not.  The can colors showed up like there was nothing around them.  If anyone has seen them from a better viewpoint I'd like to hear about it.

These next pictures were taken on a 5 hour hike.  It was labeled as 5 miles but it felt more like 7 or 8.  We were pretty "done in" by the time we finished it even though the day was a perfect one for hiking.   It was in the Pushawalla Preserve and trails criscrossed our path all day long.  The geocache series was called the Pushawalla Power Path and there were 29 geocaches in the series.  We found 27 of them so it was a pretty good day's work.  One of the missing caches was definitely missing.  It had been tied to a little rope,  when we came home and checked the previous logs on it we discovered that someone had reported being able to see it at the bottom of the ravine with their binoculars.  The other one that we didn't get had reported that it might have been moved and had another set of coordinates. We checked both locations but since there were several DNFs (did not finds) we assume it has disappeared also.

 

This last one shows the area where the other pictures were taken from.  It was such a spectacular spot so you could shoot in every direction and get a different view.

 

When we worked our way off the hill we had several caches in the Oasis.  There was still water seeping  from the ground as you can see in one of the pictures.

We also found some closer to the park where we are staying.  The next picture shows where we are headed, it was all loose sand and sand dunes.  The name of the cache was Dry Dock.  Interesting name.

We stopped just outside Sun City Palm Desert to pick up a couple of caches and we thought you might like to see the tower there.  We don't know if they are Cell towers or what, we have seen them in AZ as well as CA.  They try to make them look like a palm tree.

Gary often enjoys a nap while I fetch groceries.  This day he didn't spend his time doing a crossword puzzle, or napping, he had other interests.  This 65 Mustang convertible came in and parked near him, he took a bunch of pictures but I won't bore you with all of them.  Except for the color it is like the one we bought in NC and took with us to CA.  We are always fascinated by them. 

The owners were not spring chickens, even older than us I think.  Maybe they had a new one in 1965?The mustang was gone before I finished in the store but this VW was there when I came out.  Really a unique one. 

 

We did another hike on Tuesday, it was 4 hours and we did about 13 caches.  It was a hotter day than our 5 hour hike and we were really soaking up the water.  Just a few more views from this area, it was a little lower than the other hike so the photos may not be quite as spectacular.  Here they come:

We had a pretty good Thanksgiving Day dinner, all the trimmings.  As always we eat too much and are still waiting for the main course to settle before having pecan pie for dessert.  I hope you all had an ample Thanksgiving dinner.

We will be heading into AZ next week, some maintenance work to be done in the Phoenix area and some more in Tucson.  We will be spending 2 weeks in Apache Junction and then on to Benson.

Gary's step-mother Jeanette is getting married on Saturday.  Our congratulations to her and her new husband!