November 21st

Before I start telling what we have been doing these last couple of days, I thought I would start out by telling you about our trip we will be doing next fall.  We will be Tailgunning the 42 Day West Coast America tour, along with Wagonmaster's Jim & Cherril Roberts. We will be starting the trip on September 15th, 2015.  Right now we have room for 5  more couples to travel with us and explore the West Coast.  This has been one of our favorite place to explore and we have been driving this area for over 20 years.  If you would like to see the full itinerary go to the following web site:  http://adventurecaravans.com/tour/west-coast-america/ .  If you have any question or would like to go with us please contact us and we can set that up for you.  OK! enough, sales stuff on this blog, now to tell you what we have been up too.
Wednesday morning we got up and hauled a few bikes and the burned out car over to Pismo for Steve and LaVerine.  It was a good ride but we had another thing we were going to do also.  We wanted to see there new remodeled house.  LaVerine says this is here perfect kitchen.

 This is a real big kitchen and I forgot to take a picture of the other wall that has another sink over there. We had a great dinner with them and enjoyed the visiting we did with them while there.

Steve and Cyndy along with Turbo were enjoying the swing in the back yard.  Before we new it was time to hit the rack, because Thursday we were on our way back to Salton City.  When we were here two years ago we made a few trips over here throughout the winter.  Now I know why I do not like driving through LA.  Anyway we made it back with no problem and I like those kind of trips.  I think it is nice visiting here with Steve and LaVerine and not working for them.  It is more fun!!!!

 I don't know if you can tell, but it rained here last night, so this morning while walking Turbo.  My shoes picked up a lot of this great desert dirt and I grew by 3 inches.  The only problem is my shoes got real heavy.  By noon the sun was back out and the ground was nice and dry again.  The rain only got down about a 1/4 inch into the ground.
Well with two days of driving it was a great day to take it easy.  We are going to stay here over Thanksgiving for two reasons.  The first we have been invited to have Thanksgiving on the Rivera in the desert.  Sounds like fun and a lot of playing with the cars.  The second reason is our new shocks will not be here until Friday after Thanksgiving. The weather has caused them to just ship today. Hay, its the weekend and time for everybody to come out and play.

November 18th

The last few days, or should I say the last year I have been thinking about making our Car ride a little bit better when out for trail rides.  So after a lot of thought and the problem with our shocks starting to go south, it has finally come time to order some new ones.  Now I want to say the ones on our car are still pretty good but, they are cheap shocks.

These are the new ones that we ordered and they are called: Phantom Pro Sport Series Piggyback Shocks - RZR S.  After a lot of research and checking out all the different types of shocks we or as Cyndy would say I picked these out.  The forum that I had talked on, said that we will notice a big different in the ride of the car.   We will know by the end of or know later than the first of next week.
Next we got one more thing for the both of us and it was a full windshield.

 When we went out last week one of our friend said why don't you have a full windshield it keeps a lot of the dust out of your face.  So we ordered one and it will be here by the end of this week and we will even have a DOT approved windshield now.  Look out with the new tires on and everything else we will be ready for just about anything.  All I will have to do is change the oil in the car just before we head out to Apache Junction.
Tomorrow we are helping Steve & LaVerne, we are hauling a few bikes over to Pismo and then brining some back here.  It will be a thank you for letting us stay here for the couple of weeks.  It is the least we can do for everything they have done for us.
Then the weekend starts with more rides!!!!!!!!!!!!  We may even get out for geocaching this week.

November 16th

Where has the time gone.  This last week just flew by, and went out the window.  Today we woke up to a good strong wind blowing, so no riding today.  Everyone out here calls their RZR's CARS, so I am working on saying cars not RZR's.  Really they are just a small car that travels cross country if needed, on roads and not on roads.
Yesterday we went out for a nice ride with some of our friends down here and drove down by the Salton Sea.  The closer we got to Sea some of the areas the smell got stronger, but not to bad for this time of year. Here are a few pictures of our ride.

At one time this was for the Marines barracks and we think this was to tie down the float planes, where they trained.  Plus some of the old maps we have looked at shows this area was a training area.

  They have had very little rain here this last year, but when it rains in the mountains west of us the washes fill up and run all the way down here to the Salton Sea. We have to be careful, because there might be some soft spots in here where water is still setting.

 Here we are following Pappy through this area.

Having fun out making our own trails.

 Yep water about 300 yards from the beach and we are not going this way.

If you look real hard you can see where we are heading to cross this mud hole, Pappy front tire is showing up where we are crossing.

.We think this building was part of the training towers for the float planes.

 Cyndy had to see how close she could get to the water before it got to soft, not very close.

Beautiful beach, but no one can get to the water.  We had a great ride and enjoyed it a lot, looking forward to more like this.

On the 14th Steve and I went over to the Glamis North, to do a little riding.  It is almost straight across from Salton City.  It is about 16 miles north of Niland, where slab city is located at.  You can see the arrow down in the bottom center of the map.  After driving 8 miles from the Glamis North campground we are here.

So now we take off up the wash, following the dotted line to the right,  Here are some of the pictures of the washes we are in,

We head up this narrowing wash and come to this nice little rock climb.

We take a look at it, and Steve tells me he has been up it once before, we were a little worried about Jeremy, being his first time ever in a car. So be are going to save this one for the next time we come out here.

Up to the right of where we are parked is this nice deep pool, the only thing we seen in it was a small frog, that headed down under when we got to close to the water.  You can see the wash that filled this pool.

We had a good ride I am looking forward to coming back and doing an all day trip out here.  We were gone about 3 hours and I put on just about 35 miles.
Today I went for a ride back to Glamis North with Steve to pick up what is left of a burned up car.

The person that was driving this, was doing donuts in this soft sand and rolled the car.  After they righted it back up on its tires,  They started it and it started burning.  This is the first time I have seen one do this, and hope I never see another one.  I don't think he checked to see if oil or gas had leaked out before starting the car back up.  You can see the fire was pretty hot because of the aluminum pools on the ground from the melted doors and motor.
We are looking forward to getting back out and doing a lot of geocaching this week.

November 10th

We have been taking it pretty easy the last few days.  After that trip along the ridge we thought we would set back and relax a little.  We have done that and went out again today to finishing geocaching the last couple of the ones we didn't get last week.

We didn;t have much of a problem finding the other half of the 30 or so caches that we looked for.  Right now I think we are 48  finds and two no fines.  Not bad when you think they have had a few good floods this last spring and high water in some areas.  We will just have to see how we end up with by the end of time that we are here.
Last Saturday night we went to the North County Yamaha Dinner in the desert.  It was a great night and a lot of people.  I think there was over 250 plus people here.

And look Cyndy is in her element serving food to people.  She had a good time and I was busy BS with other guys.
We are really enjoying the time we are having here in the desert.  Yesterday Steve & Laverne showed up and we servied them a good dinner we hope.

Turbo is busy playing with his girl friend Molly,  They haven't seen each other in over 4 months when we were up in Oregon this summer.  They still play hard together.  Tomorrow we are maybe going out for a ride with them.
I also want to thank all vet's for there service in the military, I served my time and am glad to say I am a US Vet!!!!!  Hope you all have a great day.

November 6th

Yesterday, and today was good weather, so we have been out Geocaching and doing real good.

Here in the desert of California, we have to wear helmets so these are our geocaching helmets, and guess who has the camera today.  We do believe in wearing helmets, but these are good for when we are getting in and out a lot, I do like wearing the full face helmet when we do hard riding. We left and headed out to see if we could get lucky and find some geocaches, some of these have not been logged since last April so wish us luck.

This is the name of the area we are riding in, their is just over 400,000 acres to play in and more just south of here also.

 I could not get the RZR up there, the trail was a little narrow.  So I get to hike while Cyndy takes pictures, something about creepy crawlers.  Haven't seen one in all the time being out here when we were here two years ago.

Now this was a cache, would you put your hand in this boot?  You bet I didn't, but a lot of shaking and everything came out.  no creepy crawlers.

It is hard to believe, but back in September this wash had water up these walls about 10 feet.

Two years ago this area had a lot more water in it, all winter long.  The rain must have moved the spring a little bit.

We stopped right at the top of this hill to pick up another cache.

This cache was full of mud, so the water was pretty high in this area also, I had to dig this one out, we also found a travel bug in the mud filled box.

Now the next cach is some where up this away, now look ahead and you will see why Cyndy was a little worried.

Yep, the trail is getting narrow and on top of a ridge, I am looking at what is over the hill.  I don't know why I walked up their, because their was no where to turn around so we kept going.

 This is looking out my door while I walked up the hill, yep, it is pretty much straight down, can't go that way.

Hay, look we have more hills to go up, remember everything that goes up must come down.

It looks a little narrow, but I think we can make it, I don't understand why Cyndy has here eyes closed.

See the trail is getting wider now, and we are heading back down.  See nothing to worry about.  Another great trail and we or should I say I, nope we had a great day .  We did pretty good the last two days of Geocaching, we found 30 and only had to say one was not where it was suppose to be.  I think the high water got that one. We had a great day and travel another great day in the Desert.

November 4th

Yesterday we made it to Salton City, and found Steve & Laverne's house, and have set up here for the next month.  We are hoping to get a lot of Geocaching done plus playing here in the desert.

No grass here in the desert for Turbo to use.  Oh well he will just have to get use to the dirt again.
We left Verde Valley at about 8:00 AM yesterday.

As we left the park we said good by to some pretty good riding area and geocaching area.  We had a lot of fun playing in those hills.

We new we were finally dropping in altitude, we have been above 3500 feet for the last 2 months.  But these Sonora Cactus are below 2000 feet.  By the end of today we will be back to sea level once again.  I don't know what we will do with all of this dusty oxygen, but we will make do.  I am amazed at how each one of these cactus's have so many different shapes.

   When we get back to Apache Junction we will look for some amazing shapes.

Turbo enjoyed the ride also by putting his nose out the window. It just amazes me we can be driving at 60 miles an hour and he doesn't mind the wind in his nose, but you blow in his face and he doesn't like it one bit.
Today we got up hoping to go out geocaching but the wind was blowing pretty good so we decided to head into town and get Turbo his monthly bath and nail's cut and all the rest of the stuff they do for him.  He was happy to see us and we were too.  Whiles waiting for him to get done we made a mad dash to Costco and then headed to Mario's Restaurant for some good Italian food for lunch and dinner all in one.  We made it back here to the coach and the wind is not blowing as bad as when we left this morning so tomorrow we will be head out for some Geocaching, we have a lot to find before we leave this area.

November 2nd

Between yesterday and today we have gotten everything pretty well loaded into the trailer.  Even got the RZR all cleaned and loaded.

Yep, got it cleaned of all of this Arizona dust and packed everything on it for loading into the trailer. Looks pretty good if I don't say so myself.  So by yesterday afternoon like around 3:00 PM, Cyndy had the craft room all put away and we got the RZR loaded.  We heard it was suppose to rain today so we wanted everything put away dry.
Then we got a call from Rose & Bobby, they wanted to meet for dinner so why not, we don't have to cook then and neither one of us was up for cooking after a day of cleaning and putting things away.  We had a great pizza and talked for a good long time.  We said our good-by and look forward to our next visit to this area.
I said something the other day about working on some walking sticks, and I have 3 of them done now.

This is what the diamond willow looks like before we removed all the bark and clean it up to look something like these do.

The two on the left will make great walking sticks, the one on the right will make a great wall hanging.  Now if I can just get the last two done sometime in the future.  They do take a lot of work but the end resort is well worth it.
Today we went into town to get fuel and some grocery, because were we are going is about 35 miles from a major store.  I can't believe the price of fuel,

we are really enjoying it at this price and I hope it keeps dropping.
  We will be at the Salton City area for just about a month.  So if you are traveling on Highway 86 come from Palm Springs or heading to it, give us a call and we will try and meet up with you.  Cyndy hates when I say tomorrow morning we will be leaving here before 8:00 AM, we have got just over 300 miles to drive.  Looking forward to playing in the Desert of California again and Geocaching also.