Home Sweet Home

We are now "home" at Wilderness Lakes in Menifee, CA.  It feels sooooo good knowing we won't have to pack up and move again in a couple days.  This trip has been incredible, and we loved all of it, but we did get tired, and are happy to be home for now.  Here's the details of the last few days of travel.
We left Benson, and drove to the Wal-Mart in San Tan Valley, where we had been told we would be able to spend a night.    When we went inside to ask where we should park the RV, we were told instead that we should not park there overnight as the local police would ticket us if they saw the RV there.  I called Matt to find out where else we might be able to stay overnight.  He suggested we drive to his house and just park out front of the house for the night.  We arrived and he opened the garage so we could hook up to his electricity.  Since he had us park on his side of the street (on the left side) we were able to put the driver's side slide out (the living room slide) but we decided not to risk sliding out the bedroom slide as it would be out into the road.  We sure
didn't want some drunk driver to slam into the head of the bed while we were in it!  This is the front of his house.  The silver car on the left is Shannon's and the car on the right belongs to her cousin.  Later that day I baked a cake for Matt's birthday.  He is now a vegan, so I had to find a recipe for a cake using no eggs or dairy.  It was really pretty good.  We went to a restaurant for dinner where he was able to have a pizza with no cheese. 
We saw this unbelievable sunset in San Tan Valley that night.



As I have already mentioned, we are falling in love with the beauty and the calm, quiet of the desert, so now I want to include a few pix I took in Arizona.  It is really awesome.  The sky is so blue, and the air smells good.   

In Arizona, they decorate the over-passes above I-10.  Some are very colorful.  We really got a kick out of them.  On Monday morning we left his house and drove west to Quartzsite for one night.

As you can see from the picture on the left, the area is already beginning to fill up for the winter. 

We were also treated to another awesome sunset in Quartzsite Monday night.

After one night there, we continued west to the Elks lodge at Indio, CA.  They have quite a few RV sites, with electric and water hook ups.

The folks there were very friendly and we had a really nice visit in the lodge.  We got up this morning and packed up for the last day of our journey. 

 Just had to include a shot of the palm trees out in the desert.  This next picture is of the over-pass at Cathedral City.  Much of the landscape here is dry and brown, but some is very pretty, and some is even quite green.

As you can see above, there are many wind turbines in the Palm Springs area, but it seemed to us like the number has increased a LOT since we left here in January. 

These pictured above have a different base, and we don't remember seeing them before.

 

This picture above is a dinosaur statue at the Cabazon Outlet mall.  Cute!!!  We usually don't travel this many days in a row, but we really wanted to get here, so we could get settled in and stay in one place.  This makes four days in a row of travel.  Even the dogs looked like they were tired of being seat belted for travel. 

The picture on the left is on Highway 79 on the way from I-10 going down to Wilderness Lakes.





The three pictures above are at Wilderness Lakes.  The last one is the Mini Golf course.  It looks like it has been re-surfaced and upgraded.  We look forward to many games of golf while we are here.  We are also looking forward to the Saturday games of Candy Bar Bingo.  Yummy!  We found a wonderful site, with 50 amp power and plenty of green grass behind us over by the Pickle Ball court.  The dogs love going over there to run and play. 

 

And last, but not least, here is the RV, all set up here for the next three weeks.  There is also an adult pool in the area behind the RV, beside the pickle ball court.  The country store is just a short way up the road from our site.  The people across from us are scheduled to leave tomorrow, and Mary is arriving tomorrow too.  I'm hoping she will get here in time to get into that site before someone else does. 

Praise God, we have had a truly wonderful trip over the last nine and one half months.  We have seen family and friends.  We visited beautiful places.  We met many fantastic people along the way.  We had all kinds of adventures, from my 50th class reunion to visiting Mystic Pizza in Connecticut, and "Mayberry" in My. Airy, NC and so much more.  Now we are safely back home in Southern California.  We are incredibly grateful for all of the trip.  Thank you God, for the opportunity to see so much of this great country.  Please people, enjoy America.  It's God's awesome gift to all of us.