Acton, CA

OK, it finally happened! Someone is so un-observant or un-aware of their surrounding that they took us for a mother-daughter pair. Like there couldn’t be any other possible relationship between two women travelling together! We both laughed – it’s not our responsibility to educate the world of the ignorant.

We had a problem with our electricity and called camp maintenance. They came out and solved our problem while leaving our neighbor unhooked. Supposedly they left him a note about the “why.” He came home and found no note but his rig had NO electricity. So, he came over here to see if we knew anything – hence the mother-daughter comment.

As some of you know, Boots has a full head of white hair and Ruthi has only 12-18 gray hairs on her entire head! But if you were to really look at our faces you’d see not only the aging process but the vast differences in tone and look. Really, come on do we look like a mother and daughter team???

Acton, CA

We had our first experience with “Wily” coyote when we arrived in the LA area in June 2008. Karma doesn’t even bat an eye or even roll over when they are baying at night or worse yet enjoying their kill. Like the ducks at Santee Lakes, Karma is intrigued by birds but has come to accept that she isn’t able to fly and they are.

But in Indio we had our first encounter with the elusive Road Runner. They aren’t as tall as I had imagined. But the crew cut and long tail gives them away. With gentle reminders, Karma is fairly passive with birds. Given her breed (Labradoodle), we are surprised because for cats and rabbits nothing stops her charging off for the chase - with us in hot pursuit trying to rope her to a stop like she’s a wild mustang.

Here in Acton, there are very large ravens that fly around like vultures looking for fresh kill to feast upon. They stand up pretty tall almost as big as those we remember from Alaska. Karma is keeping her distance and dis-interest!

Acton, CA

We are hop-scotching up to see Boots’ son and his family. RV Park rents vary from $300 monthly rate to $650+ monthly rate. Day rates are the most expensive with weekly’s providing some savings but monthlys provide the best discount. We joined a RV membership club that has campgrounds across America and relationships with other similar organizations. For this year’s tour from now to when we are back in San Diego for winter (or at least November), we are using these membership campgrounds to check them out and see if we really can save money. Once disadvantage is that we can’t stay longer than 2 weeks at a time. This makes it work very well when we are “touring”.

For the 5 weeks we are taking to get to Reno the total camping fees are $93. At this rate our daily average cost of our life style goes down down down!

Indio, CA

If you have been following the blog, you will recall that our RV park/campground choices have turned out to be very close to railroad lines. The clickety-clack and whistles were “romantic” or at least not offensive or irritating.

This park just happens to be across the street from a local Fire Station. There are sirens going off and fire engines roaring out of the place all day and night. Since we aren’t seeing much in the local paper about fires, we think it might be more rescue/ambulance work. This area has a very high average age of the residents (local and snow birds). We, of course, do bring that average down quite a bit. The busiest time of day is around dinner time (6 or 7pm). We haven’t figured that out yet.

Early Saturday evening, we began hearing voices (or one voice, really) rev’ing up a crowd to ask for “more air!” “more air!”. It took us a while to figure out something else must be going on close to our park. Off to the internet to see what are the events in the Palm Springs area. We are within 3 miles of the Fair Grounds. And, Saturday was a “Monster Truck” event. We could hear the announcer clearly across the desert. On the other hand, we couldn’t hear the trucks – so maybe they weren’t so very monstrous after all.

Indio, CA

This is our first experience using our Coast-2-Coast membership to get very cheap ($10 max/night) spaces that we can use for up to 2-weeks. Our plans for this trip North to the kids is to try our 5 different parks/resorts. At this particular camp (Indian Wells Resort) we do not have sewer but the “Honey Bucket” can empty us for $8. We had forgotten that we wouldn’t be having sewer (See Memory loss below), so we hadn’t planned very well. But we’ll see how it goes.

This camp ground really isn’t worth more than the $10 for amenities but we’ve paid more for even less. So, we’ll keep you updated – If we remember.

Indio, CA

We finally left San Diego. The 5 months there were slow and restful. We didn’t do much but we accumulated more stuff and it took much longer to pack/hitch and leave. We were so out of practice we needed to refer to our original check lists to make sure everything was in order. We had lots of questions about where some things got stored.

Aging and your memory loss is such a fun activity. We get to have discussions over and over again; discover new ways of storing things we have no idea how we carried them to San Diego. Ruthi put the bikes up and arranged the bungee cords to secure them. This morning she realized that the un-used cords are on the highway between here and SD as she left them just hanging on the bike.

Santee Lakes, CA

Karma has developed a new “strange” behavior. We feed her dinner around 6 or 7 depending on what’s on our schedule. Then she gets her last trip outside and is ready for the night. Normally, she would soon fall asleep in her crate, in the middle of the living room floor or even go back and claim space on our bed. Sometimes she’d get up and pick a new spot to fall back asleep. A couple of months ago, Karma started demanding that we go to bed with her. She’d stand in the bathroom hallway and bark “come on it’s time to sleep”. We’d tell her, “Go ahead, you can go to bed”. It’s like a 3-4 year old child’s laments at bedtime: “I want some water”,”I have to go to the bathroom”, “Something’s under my bed”. If we go back and lay with her for a few minutes, she’ll settle down and go to sleep for the night but she wants that extra attention. A dog for gosh sakes!!!! Of course we both do it – what can we say we’re suckers for her charms.