December 1st

Holy smokes, what happened to the year.  Here it is December 1st, 24 days until Christmas Day and I haven't even stated Christmas shopping yet.  What a minute, I am a man we don't shop tell the 24th, it makes it easier to find things.  Where did this year go, it just seems like it was July 4th when we were at Calgary Stampede and now we are on the road to new places or some good old favorites.   We will be heading to Apache Junction by the end of the week and looking forward to a old stop for a change.
Today was maintenance day on the Car.  Changed the oil, checked all the fluids and greased all the fittings.  Cleaned the air cleaner, now we are ready to head out for some more riding.
Yesterday was our final ride with the group here in the desert.  We are leaving this Friday

On the trail for another great ride.

Look what we found on this ride.

 As you can see we found this bike that is out here some where, in the desert.  I think Pappy went in circle so we could not find this one, but it is a geocache so we have a find and the coordinates.

This was a little smaller group today, I think a few of them went out for a drink last night and had a few to many.  But the die hearts are out to day.

And look we even have a parking meter that still takes quarters. What a day, I am going to miss these rides, hope we have some good ones when we get to Apache Junction.
It might rain here in the next day or two, so it will be a mess out here riding, but water can wash off the mud and the car will be back to clean again.  The good thing with the rain is the dust will be down.

November 29th

We have had a great couple of days.  Thanksgiving was really pretty good here in the desert.  When we were working here two years ago we heard about all the things going on here in the desert.  But because we worked on the weekends and had the week days off we really didn't get a chance to get in on some of the fun out here on the Riviera.  But this last month we have had a great time and made some lasting friendships.  We do miss the kids but we are having fun and part of being retired is having fun.
Today we went out on another group ride.

We had a few people out on this ride, like about 12 cars following each other.  It was a lot of fun, the only problem is I didn't get to many pictures of the ride.  Some of the places that we were in was very technical.

 As you can tell it was a little tight going through some of the washes.

And a lot of sharp turns

.This place that we came down out of was almost straight up and down, but what fun.
It is going to be hard to leave here next week.  We will miss all of our friends, but I will not miss the fine dust.  The trails have been fun.  We have about 5 days left here and after this weekend everyone will be gone and maybe we can get a few more geocaches in before we leave.

November 25th

We went out for a short ride today and found some interesting things out here in the desert.  Pappy must of a photo memory of this area, he is able to take you on some great rides and never thinks twice about which way to go.  So here is another great ride.

The first stop was a cliff dwelling,  I really think some kids are playing around!!!!

Pappy says this has been out here for over 6 months, don't know who left it but it is about 5 miles from any road.  Now we are heading up to those hills to find something else.

First through some narrow washes, that are not very flat.

Well at least their have been other people on this trail.

Yep, we are going up that way!!!!

OK, we made a sharp left and went this way.

Still climbing!!!!

Pappy says he knows where he is going.

This old three wheeler is planted here, I don;t know how they got it here but what a view.

They have attached a geocaches to this 3-wheeler, so we did a logged this one into out fines here in the desert. The ride out was about the same as we had coming up here but a different way.  We had a great time and look forward to this weekend of trail riding with this group.  We are planning on going out geocaching tomorrow.

November 23rd

Here it is Sunday night, setting in my chair resting after a great weekend.  There are a few people down this weekend that we go riding with and it has been good.  Pappy does a great job of taking us out on some great rides.  We have been on some real good technical rides and then some nice washes that we can open it up and fly low.  Here are a few pictures of the two days of riding.

Here is the group getting ready to head out for a short ride.

 I think Pappy knows every inch of this park, here we are at a BBQ, just bring your lunch and heat it up.

 A lot of ups and downs and twisted trails.

Another hill to climb.

We followed a 1000 up this hill and he dug some deep trenches and guess what happened to us. Yep we got high centered.

 We went through some very narrow washes, a couple of places the sides meet the car when it was a little narrow.

 Slow down some big rocks to go over or around.

 We finished the ride with a beautiful sunset.  We have had a lot of good ones this last couple of weeks.

We had a great day, it is to bad most of these people have to go back to work.  They will all be back by Thursday for a long weekend of playing.  We are looking forward to Thanksgiving in the Desert.  The last time we were here, we were working, and I think this time it will be a lot more fun for us.

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.