Dinner with Friends, a movie and a lot of Shopping

Last night we were invited over to Richard and Terri's site for a lovely Barbeque dinner. We've been trying to connect with these two for ages but Terri has been struggling with what she believes to be allergies. Severe congestion has kept her out of sorts for the last month or so.

Finally feeling better they tracked us down and invited us to dinner. Even Robbie was invited which is always nice. Their baby Della is a beautiful German Shepherd and she is 8 years old, just like Robbie. They are not sure if they like each other yet but hopefully next season we will be able to socialize them a bit more and that will change.

Della is sooo cute, she refuses to leave the golf cart and sits out there all day/evening likely waiting for her next ride....

Really enjoyed the steak and sweet potatoe supper and the conversation with them. Before we knew it we realized it was 3 minutes until the resort movie night started. Tempting as it was to forego the movie, we did have other friends who were expecting us there so we dragged ourselves away. Thank you both for the wonderful dinner.

This week's movie was The Shape of Water. Not quite sure what to expect from this movie having heard it was about a woman who falls in love with a fish.... not quite. It won best picture this year apparently and everyone was praising it... We quite enjoyed it. Didn't think we would, but... for what it was, it was pretty damn good. Not our usual kind of movie but we had considered going to see it in Temecula just last week but I didn't want to pay to see it, so when we heard it was playing here for free.... why the hell not?!

Today we decided to drive out to Palm Desert. On the way there we heard an alarm going off. Realizing that is wasn't stopping and had to be us we were very careful but decided to continue on to our destination, especially since we had no cell service to 'google' the problem.

Once we reached Palm Desert and cell service, I found a couple of forums where I discovered that others had experienced this odd alarm. Turns out it seems tied to the turn signal which we had noted when we were driving. When we turned the signal on to pull over the alarm stopped. So we drove along and every 80 seconds or so when the alarm went off we had to hit the turn signal on and off again which shut it up. After replacing the bulb at Wally World, it never happened again. Weird.

We wandered through waaaaaayyyyy too many shops (Brad and Robbie included) looking for some 'California summer' gifts to take home with us for the Grandkids. I am not a 'shopper', I'm a get in, get what you need and get out kind of shopper so gifts are very difficult for me. Never did find anything... well, actually Brad picked up a pair of white lounging pants... that won't last 5 minutes I guarantee. Between the coffee spills and not changing to do work around the house..... 5 minutes is probably a stretch. We shall see.

Deciding to stop for dinner out tonight, we went to Temecula for Vietnamese, one of our favourites. The drive to Temecula from Palm Springs/Desert area is reaaaaallllllyyyy far. About 1.5 hours (in a car).... a try to stay awake kind of drive. But the winds in Palm Springs beside the bazillion wind towers is crazy windy. Quite the wind tunnel you have to drive through - perfect spot for a wind farm for sure. The passenger window was actually bulging outwards and I was having to hang on to it for fear it would break in the winds... It is only held on to the window frame with velcro so I was quite afraid it would not hold, but it did - easily. 

Our little 4 cylinder was having trouble holding 50mph but we didn't feel so bad since the rest of the traffic wasn't doing much better with the head wind as strong as it was.

Anyway, we finally made it home after a long day of shopping adventures. Next week we're going to go to Oceanside, we saw a lot of stores there that had nice gifts for the Grandkids.

9 days to go before heading north.

Spent the day in Palm Springs

We decided to go to Palm Springs for the day yesterday and came across a market. It was quite packed but we managed to find parking and off we went for a little retail therapy.

The palm trees in Palm Desert have a burnt look, not sure if they apply something to them for bugs or if they actually burn the bark.

Come on Mum let's go shop!

Brad noticed this display of old foofoo hats

He wanted me to try one on, I don't think so Maynard!

Brad had a hotdog for lunch

I ordered the ribs

We wandered around and found some interesting things for the site, picked up a couple of business cards so we will know where to go when we're ready to put decor on the site. I found a summer dress (I almost never wear dresses, but it gets hot here...) and a tank top that reads 'Sassy since birth'. Perfect.

Once we got home I went across the creek and played a couple hands of Crib with Karen. If you recall, everyone is teaching me how to play. I'm still learning but getting better. We tied in 2 games.

After supper Brad asked if I'd play him.... uh..... okay. Brad is pretty damn good at Crib and I seem to recall beating him once before but in the hundreds of games we've played over the years, once was all I could manage. This time at least I didn't get skunked.

Brad won game 1

I kicked his a**,  game 2

Wouldn't you know it... Brad wins the tie breaker.

Today, Brad is going for a massage and I am looking forward to sitting outside in what 'they' say will be warm temperatures. Its been cool here for 2 days (hence the sweater in the picture above). Brad threatens to send me to Saskatchewan every time I moan that its cold here... It's all relative, of course. Expected to be in the 20's again today, at least that's what they said yesterday... 'they' have likely changed it since then.

Personally, I think we should go back to the old weather teller system because this new fandangled way of predicting the weather frankly sucks!

Day trip to Palm Springs

Yesterday, after our binge the night before Janice and I arrived for Pickleball but The Vicster was nowhere to be seen... Today, I was the only one who showed, actually there was one other person there who managed to make a call and get 2 others to join us...

This morning, after Pickleball of course, we loaded in the car and headed to Palm Springs once again. Well, technically a first since the last trip we didn't actually go to Palm Springs but actually Palm Desert which is sort of a suburb.

I was quite surprised by Palm Springs itself to be honest with you, not at all how I - imagined or was led to believe?- thought it would be.

They do a pretty cool thing to their palm trees which I hadn't seen anywhere else but otherwise it was pretty dull. We drove around thinking perhaps we were 'on the wrong side of the tracks', but it didn't get much better.

Somehow I guess we had imagined it to look more like Beverly Hills than Temecula. It really wasn't much different than Temecula, in fact I think Temecula has better housing.

Anyway it was a beautiful warm sunny day for a drive and we had a fantastic meal there. Saw the fancy palm trees and even saw some dune buggies doing their thing on a sandy hill beside the highway on our way home. We took the short route there and the long route home through Hemet.

Hemet is actually a pretty big place and I was shocked by it. Another town I think was Romano... I'll check... well, clearly I was abducted because I can't find anything even remotely close to a town name of Romano... no idea where that was, but it was also surprising how much they had for such a small town.

All in all a great family outing day.

Can anyone explain to me?:
I placed an order through Walmart (if you'll recall) for Quality Street Chocolates about a week ago. In order to get free delivery I had to up my order from $27 to $35. Since we are always looking for something to munch on I figured okay. Twizzlers, Maltezers and Starburst were added to the original order. The order was then broken up into 3 deliveries... Starburst arrived first, delivered to the RV, Twizzlers and Maltezers came next, delivered General Delivery to the local Post Office, I'm still waiting for the Quality Street - should be delivered tomorrow... I don't know where...

My question is: Why would items from the same order be delivered to different places? Isn't there a more efficient means of doing this? Surely putting a small flat bag of Starburst in a 8"x10"x5" box with some stuffing and the maltezers and twizzlers in another even larger yet box - half empty.... is not the most environmentally nor sensibly financial way to sell a couple bucks of candy... I think the Post Office won on that whole deal. I'll take pictures of whatever they send the Quality Street in.

Palm Springs

Woke up yesterday and decided to go to Palm Springs for the day. Yes, it's a hard life but we continue to struggle through it every day LOL

Its a beautiful drive through the mountains along Hwy 74, the road is very windy on S.R. 371 and then you hit the switchbacks of Hwy 74 allowing you to descend to Palm Springs, I had heard it recommended that you don't drive your RV along this route and I can tell you there is good reason for that.

If you look closely you can see the switchback roads in the above picture, not for the faint of heart.

Although we did see a guy pulling a small trailer up the hills, I wouldn't recommend it. There was even a spot where someone had smashed into a rare barricade. It's a long way down and most of it has no guard so my personal advise is to listen to the advise and go the long way around with your RV.

Palm Springs area (we went to Palm Desert) including Palm Desert, Cathedral City, La Quinta to name a few is very lush and green. While it was beautiful I couldn't help but remember a comment a while back from someone who said it was all a ruse, not unlike the lips and cheek bones I guess, While I didn't notice these things Brad said he saw a few women with duck lips. The area was really beautiful though and I took a bazillion pictures so I'm only posting a few here.

Brad at Costco looking for a bottle of Port, he chose one and grabbed 2 bottles for the winter, we'll see how long they last...

Stopped at Denny's for lunch, not worth writing about.

The hills we came down through the switchbacks can be seen in the distance

As it was 2pm we decided to start making our way home, it's only an hours drive but our Jeep is a 4 cylinder and we weren't sure it would handle the switchbacks well but it did.

The hills are a jumble of rocks. Not 'mountains of solid rock' as we're used to, these were literally just massive piles of rubble. Very cool.

Enjoyed a relaxing night in our backyard and Brad took Robbie for a very very long walk, I was starting to worry but then there they were, completely worn out.

Today is Propane day, we made it - Yay! No idea what time they will show up so I best get myself beautified. Brad is going for yet another massage today... and he will need to go to Walmart to exchange the water filter I bought the other day as this one doesn't have a gasket in it. I knew something was wrong because I couldn't get the bloody thing to seal and even had Bruce come by and take a look at it - this is how I know it is missing the gasket. Thankfully I still have the box and the receipt.