Jeanette Flies The Coop....and Meeting Long Time Bloggers

Currently in Desert Hot Springs, CA - in the Palm Springs/Palm Desert area of Southern California.

The past couple of days have rolled by quickly.  We are well set up in Desert Hot Springs @ Sam's Spa and RV Resort.  This is a really cool place.  It's our first time in this park and we grew to like it almost instantly.

Very nice - long - site

The spa facilities, the wide and paved road, the numerous mature palm trees make this park feel good.  It's one thing for me to opine my thoughts on a park but when Jeanette expresses a similar view, we know that we've parked in a good spot.

Nice, wide streets.

Check out this rig and the long, very long, pull through site.

The desert view looking west towards the San Jacinto Mountains.

We are enjoying the wonderful facilities offered here.  The swimming pool and four hot spas are very nice.  There is even a small - man made- lake with a variety of birds and fish and, of greater surprise, are the numerous large cages that house all types of exotic birds.  I'll focus on those in later blogs.

The winds have behaved, since our arrival.

This Desert Hot Springs area is more prone to strong winds.  We know we will face a few days when we'll want to be away in Palm Desert, La Quinta, Cathedral City, Palm Springs or other places that have the mountains to protect one from wind.  That's the beauty of this area.  There is no shortage of places and/or things to do here.

We rode out of the park and headed for Palm Desert

Our second day saw us ride east on Dillon Road and down to the extreme east side of Palm Desert.  Once on Fred Waring Drive, the lovely east-west ride took us into Palm Springs. 

According to Wikipedia,  Fred Waring was a popular musician, bandleader and radio-television personality, sometimes referred to as "America's Singing Master" and "The Man Who Taught America How to Sing."

Great day for a ride through this Palm Desert area on Fred Waring Drive.

We knew of a nice little motorcycle parking area in the heart of downtown Palm Springs.  We were quick to park - directly across the street from Ruby's Diner - our choice for lunch.

Very easy to park a motorcycle in downtown Palm Springs.

We requested an outdoor terrace table, with the young woman at the door, and within minutes, we had a great table for two where we could enjoy the busyness of the downtown core. 

Ruby's is a great diner with the true retro look of the 50's

Hmm....I might be arm twisted into trading in for this pretty bike.....but it would take a very strong arm for that to happen.

With lunch and our couple of hours of putzing around downtown Palm Springs over, we dropped by a food store for a few items before riding home.  We took the Gene Autry road, north - along the Palm Springs Airport - towards Desert Hot Springs on the north side of I-10.

Orvon Grover Autry^[1] (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as a singing cowboy on the radio, in movies, and on television for more than three decades beginning in the early 1930s. Autry was also owner of a television station, several radio stations in Southern California, and the Los Angeles/California/Anaheim Angels Major League Baseball team from 1961 to 1997. (Wikipedia)

Yesterday was departure day for Jeanette.  She had an early evening flight back to our home, in south west coastal British Columbia.  

We enjoyed an outdoor breakfast at our site, while the washer was busy with one load of clothes.  With the second load in, we left for a nice walk around the RV park.

Near noon, we took a telephone call from Ontarians,  George and Suzie Yates of Our Awesome Travels fame. These are true full time RVers with plenty of experience and stories about their travels.  They summer back home in southern Ontario and traipse all over the US south east and south west in the winter months.  These two are veteran RVers.

L-R  George, Suzie, Me and Jeanette - I pirated this photo from George and Suzie's blog. 

We had communicated via email (blogs too) that we would both be in the Desert Hot Springs area and that it would be nice to finally meet.  That happened yesterday afternoon.  We drove the very short distance to their RV park - Catalina RV Resort - and enjoyed about an hour of great banter.

George is relaxed and engaged while relating one of his many RVing stories.

We noticed how well this couple feed off each others' travel tales.  Great fun to listen to their road stories.  They certainly have the right attitude.  The RVing lifestyle suits this couple perfectly.

Suzie is a reading fanatic.....and she has the books to prove it!

A prolific reader, Suzie has the knack to swap, trade, bargain, borrow or whatever it takes to renew her library of books.  She loves novels.  To hear George talk about the books is proof that Suzie can devour a novel in little time.  We talked about e-readers v. holding a book in one's hand and we both professed our appreciation for actual books.  It's nice to have an e-reader (such as we have) but I still prefer a book in hand.

With laundry on the line back at our site, and a few more tasks to complete before heading to the Palm Springs Airport, we said our good byes and headed back for our site.  Fun visit we had, in person, with a truly nice RV'ing couple.

Likely to get one more afternoon ride in today before flying back home.

By late afternoon, we drove to airport on time for Jeanette's flight.  About four hours later (11:00 pm) I checked email and Jeanette had written that she had been home for a few minutes.  She had powered up the desk top computer and left me a note before calling it a day.  She will be busy while at home. Good fun awaits!

I leave on Saturday evening for home too....and that is quite likely where I will post the next blog.

Paulette and Rick Doyle

I  best post this soon.  I have a special RV blogger coming by for a mid-morning coffee.  I always look forward to seeing and chatting with Rick   Rick & Paulette's RV Travels  It is a short drive, east on Dillon Road, from Rick and Paulette's place at the Sands RV and Golf Resort, to our resort.  More on that visit later. 

Thanks for dropping by.