Next Stop Quartzsite - 2 nights

We left Palm Springs on March 24 and spent two nights in Quartzsite.  We stayed in a great park about 6 miles outside of Quartzsite.  It was like a senior ATV/dune buggy park.  Since we were surrounded by BLM land with lots of trails, everyone there had ATVs or small dune vehicles parked outside of their spots.  Lots of the spaces in the park had park models in addition to RVs and they rented their spots yearly, or several months at a time.  Two nights were enough for Craig and I.

It was interesting to see what was in the area of Quartzsite when nothing was going on.  I can't imagine the area in January and February when they get thousands and thousands of RVs.  The only attraction that we stopped to take a picture was the Hi Jolly Pioneer cemetery.  Hi Jolly was a camel driver in the 1850s helping the government survey for a wagon road across Arizona.  Once the government decided not to use the camels for this work, they auctioned off the camels and Hi Jolly used them to haul water.  

Saw a few rigs parked out in the BLM lands, again no hookups, water, etc.  Just not our type of camping.  Especially since we did experience some winds and dust storms - HABOOBs.

On Wednesday we travelled into Phoenix and will be staying in Sun City for eight nights.

Palm Springs

We made it to Palm Springs after getting through the crazy outskirts of Los Angeles traffic.  Everyone is in a hurry, lanes kept getting narrower, lots of trucks and construction, merging traffic that doesn't look prior to merging, etc.  This is when I know I'm not a big city girl.  

Palm Springs area is beautiful for being in the middle of the desert - lots of resorts and golf courses which provides a lot of greenery and color with all the flowers.  A mile outside of the towns, then it turns totally brown again with all the sand and desert terrain.  We had enough room to park the motorhome and Explorer in our space but had to store the trailer across the park which worked out just fine.  We enjoyed meeting all the people and watching the roadrunners and bunnies scurrying throughout the park.  

We went on two day outings while in the park for the two weeks.  Craig went out one day on a motorcycle ride and we went out to lunch with friends we met in the park for great Mexican food.  We also spent time at the College of the Desert craft fair - very interesting southwestern crafts.  We were able to again buy fresh fruit and vegetables and of course my favorite - fresh flowers.

The first outing was to again check out some of the nearby Thousand Trails parks.  The first was the small preserve in Idyllwild, cute town that I would go back to but not with the motorhome.  The sites were way too small and the park was above 6,000 feet.  It was 80 degrees in Palm Springs when we left and only about 45 when we got to the Idyllwild preserve.  We then went down to another preserve called Wilderness Lake between the towns of Menifee and Hemet and would definitely come back to this park with the motorhome.  On our way back to Palm Springs, we experienced one of the deserts storms, black clouds over the mountain, large rain drops and wind gusts.  When the wind blows, the sand can cause brown outs and they start closing roads.  We made it back to camp just fine, but they were closing all the roads towards the mountains.  We experienced two more major wind storms while we were in camp - lots of sand blowing everywhere which created lots of clean-up inside and out!!

To the northwest of Palm Springs is a large area of hundreds of wind turbines.  There were so many in such a small space that as you are driving through you almost feel like you are "going to lift off".

We spent another outing seeing the area to the south of Palm Springs.   We went to the Salton Sea which due to the water draining, most of the area has been abandoned.  It was so hazy that day that we didn't get any pictures.  We then went onto Salvation Mountain in Niland, CA where a man had who has just died spent three decades painting religious messages on a tall mound of adobe hill and vehicles.

Then onto Slab City.  That was quite an adventure and I know the pictures don't capture the real environment.  Lots of mobile housing - trailers, tents, motorhomes, some surrounded by barb wire and any materials they could find in the desert to stake their property outline.  We saw a couple of trailers that had dug holes in the ground for their sewer holes.  This was an entire community with little businesses, Internet cafe and The Range (see pictures below) - their spot for weekly entertainment.  Unless you had solar panels and generators you had no power and all water had to be hauled.  Not my environment for camping.

We then had to go through border control to head north.  I was a little nervous about it not knowing what to expect, but they just waved us through.  As we were driving through I did see a person with a dog searching a car that had just been pulled to the side.  We then travelled to Joshua Tree national park.  The entrance we went into we could not go far as they had some wash outs from recent rains.  We did enjoy seeing the terrain and all the cactus that was blooming.

The rest of our time we spent in camp meeting people, walking every morning, riding our bicycles, etc.  Seemed like the days just flew by.  We met a couple from Yucca Valley and spent two Sundays with them watching NASCAR on their outside TV.  We had so much fun with them that we look forward to future visits to see them.

Rancho Oso

We arrived in Rancho Oso Thousand Trails park on Feb. 20.  This preserve is in the hills above Santa Barbara very close to the Cachuma Reservoir.  There was a lot of wildlife around the park to include these turkeys.  Also, we had "really big hummingbirds" at our feeders lol!

We stayed around camp for the first few days just checking out the preserve and of course keeping up on all the Olympics activity.   Lots of history on this preserve and it's the only truly working ranch with cattle and horses in the Thousand Trails system.  We attended a dog herding exercise of young calfs and then we watched them try out the bucking capabilities of young calfs using a stuffed bear cowboy.  They had at least 60 horses on the ranch.  Below is a teddy bear dressed up like a cowboy that they used to put on the young bulls for bucking practice.  Quite interesting.

We attended three wine tasting events, meeting others and giving and getting good wine tips.  Whether we wine taste in the park or in some of the local wineries one of the best parts is meeting people who also enjoy the wine.  In the park we met a very young couple who are raising six kids who just joined TTN.  After the event they found our campsite and brought us a bottle of wine from one of their favorite wineries in the area.  Of course that gave us the opportunity to share a bottle from the Walla Walla area.

We also spent a day grilling our first attempt at Pork Spareribs - trying a different rub for each of the 3 different slabs.  They all turned out great and something we look forward to trying again.  Later in the trip we also did our first grilled meatloaf with jalapeños and garlic - it turned out great as well.   I also made cookies for the first time in our motorhome oven and with a few adjustments for cooking time, it was a success.

In the park, our wifi and cell service is really poor, including the wifi in the adult lodge.  I had planned on doing lots of updates, email, taxes, etc. but I don't have that kind of patience.  It was taking 1/2 hour per picture to upload, sometimes 10 minutes to load a website and many times it would take so long it failed.  So one of our days we went into Santa Ynez, sat in a city park and was able to get service enough to do some updates.  We also decided since we were there we should do at least one winery, so we chose Gainey.  Their wines were really full bodied and very good and again we met a really fun couple who were celebrating their anniversary.

We also checked out the Cachuma Lake recreation center hoping to take our kayaks out, but even though the reservoir was down about 60%, this is  a reservoir where there can be no human contact with the water as it's Santa Barbara's water source.  With our Hobie Kayaks that wouldn't be possible so we are still looking for another body of water close to the preserve.

Prior to the heavy rainfalls, we went into the Reagan Library in Simi Valley.  We enjoyed the sites there, especially boarding Airforce One.  They also had a replica of what the oval office looked like when Reagan was there.  There was also a part of the actual Berlin wall outside of the building which is the last picture in this grouping.

We went to Solvang to check out the shops as Craig and I had not been there since I was sent to the Westlake area for six weeks during the Northridge earthquake in 1994.  Lots had changed and the day we were there it was pretty dead - lots of shops closed.  So, we went wine tasting instead in Santa Ynez and then went back to Solvang for the weekly market - got great fresh veggies, fruits and flowers.  The second picture is of one of the wineries we went to in Santa Ynez - Bridlewood winery.  All the wineries were quite interesting - some big estates, some small warehouses, some cabins, etc.

So by the end of our trip in this area, we had spent time driving up and down the coast, checking out downtown Santa Barbara, went to dinner at Cold Springs Tavern which was an old stagecoach stop in the 1860s (Pictures below) and tried out a couple of other great restaurants.




























We also made it to a couple of additional wineries in the Lompoc, Buellton, Los Olivos Santa Ynez area.  We went to Flying Goat Cellars, Palmina, Sunstone, Blackjack, Epiphany, Babcock and Carhartt.  Babcock was one of our favorites as we had a great server pouring the wine.  Also, the Carhartt winery was interesting as it is in the family of the Carhartt clothing manufacturers.  It's a good time to leave as our wine storage area in the motorhome is full.

So, on Monday, March 10 we moved onto Palm Springs Thousand Trails park.

Pismo Beach

Next stop was at Pismo Beach  We had not planned on stopping here but after talking with people, we decided this was a necessary stop.  We only spent 3 days.  We stayed in a RV resort that was right on the dunes,  that totally surrounded the park.

We spent one day going to Hearst Castle in San Simeon, which was a great day trip.  Loved the views and grounds of this place.  We toured the main floor and then took the cottage and wine cellar tour that took us through two of the cottages, the wine cellar and the kitchen.

The next day we decided to go wine tasting and so we toured the San Luis Opisbo wine country.  We visited Edna Valley which is known for their Chardonnays, Saucelito Canyon which is known for their Old Vine Zinfandels, with some vines up to 132 years old and then Wolff winery which was a smaller winery that had just some solid good priced wines.



When asking locals for restaurant recommendations they all talked about Splash, a restaurant known for their clam chowder.  It was very creamy and rich but when ordered with the toppings of fresh crab and shrimp on top, it was great.  The beach was great that evening down by the Pismo beach pier.