In Motion Again after Indio

Our RV Park in Indio, CA

                The motorhome was not in motion for a month – a lame excuse, but an excuse nonetheless, for my lack of blogging. The truth is – we were busy: busy relaxing for the month of January in Indio, CA (i.e. Palm Springs) at a great RV park that kept us constantly on the move. I played a lot of pickleball (for the uninitiated, it's kind of a cross between tennis and ping pong, played on a court 1/3 the size of a tennis court with a wiffle ball). It’s not hard to pick up if you are a tennis player, but it takes a long time to become truly competent. I was making progress until I slightly pulled a muscle in my calf and was sidelined the last week we were there. Oh, well. Best of all, it was a great way to meet the snowbirds (most of them from Canada) who swoop down on the desert year after year like homing pigeons.

Lew's hiking, view over Coachella Valley

                Meanwhile, Lew took some lessons, but mostly stuck to hiking, at least twice a week. Together we visited two local desert preserves to hike some intriguing trails. One, the Coachella Valley/1000 Palm Oasis Preserve took us through two oases, along the San Andreas Fault line, and through a hillside of wildflowers, a gift from the rain gods who visited the area the week before! The other, a loop trail at Whitewater Canyon Preserve, gave us the opportunity to hike a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail as it wound its way up the side of a mountain. Difficult, but not overly so, we had  beautiful expansive views of the valley below and the snow-covered mountains in the distance. Both hikes were wonderful, making us all the more determined to try different desert trails next year when we return.

One of two oases at 1000 Palms Preserve

Wildflowers in the desert with snow-capped Mt. Gorgonio

Along the Pacific Crest Trail at Whitewater Canyon Preserve

  

Scenery at the Preserve. Mt San Jacinto in background.

              

 And return, we shall, mid-February to mid-March, 2020, to rekindle some friendships made this year, to attend some early rounds of the Indian Wells Tennis Tournament, and to see some sights we missed this year (for example, Joshua Tree National Park, which was closed due to the government shutdown). We heard too late about some great restaurants we’d like to try, and, of course, what’s a visit to this part of the world without a chance to see the ponies at the polo matches!? That is just sooo, us!

                Other activities, besides pickleball and hiking, included visiting a date farm (and sampling lots of yummy dates – Lew had a date shake), attending a few services at the local UU church, playing tennis with someone who moved to Palm Desert from Anacortes, touring Old Town La Quinta, dinner at the Polo Club, visiting friends who winter there, and a quick trip to San Diego to see friends and meet with our financial advisor. At the park, we never wanted for something to do: a New Year’s Eve dinner and dance, a sock hop and potluck, Friday afternoon happy hour, bridge, twice weekly (I got it started and ended up doing some coaching for newish players), hot tub in the evening, bike rides, and, lots of time to read and relax.

                The time passed quickly – but all good things must come to an end (and, besides, we were both getting antsy to get on with the rest of our adventure). The motorhome was in motion again on January 29^th, as far as Phoenix, where it now sits, awaiting our return. We are still in motion, in the car, on our way to Breckenridge for a week of skiing, with a brief stop in Colorado Springs to visit friends and hike on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in the Garden of the Gods. 

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs

               As ready as we are to move on, I look back on our last five months and think about what we’ve learned. Clearly, we need these long respites to relax, regroup, and refresh ourselves. We know that we have to build them into travels, as surely as we need to plan our various excursions. We’ve also learned that being spontaneous isn’t always easy and we will have to learn to balance our desire for spontaneity with our need to reserve RV space during popular times in popular locales. But we’ve also learned to be flexible, what with government shutdowns and such. We WILL enjoy what we do get to see and do!!! 

                I’ve learned that I need to meet people on our travels – not an easy task, since we often stay only briefly in one place. I will need to channel my inner mother/father and start conversations with our camp neighbors more often. And, I need to stay in touch with “old” friends a whole lot more – traveling can be lonely, especially when your traveling companion isn’t the most gregarious individual in the world!  I recognize that the telephone works most of the time…I will endeavor to use it more! And I’ll learn how to download audiobooks from the library to my phone!

                Another thing we’ve learned we need to balance is our love of nature with our plans to see museums and other sights located in urban areas. Lew’s photography is his way of recording the amazing natural world in which we live and will give us fond memories of that part of our trip. I will try my best to convince him to occasionally take pictures of people and other experiences!

                The most important thing we’ve learned is how very fortunate we are – to have our health, to be able to travel, to have amazing natural and man-made wonders at our fingertips in our own country, to be financially able to indulge in what is really a luxury few people are afforded. For all of these reasons, we are grateful. And we are grateful to be in MOTION AGAIN.

Getting to Mexico

Of course, we are now in Mexico, on the Sea of Cortez, enjoying a relaxing time at a luxury resort far removed from the tourist experience of Cabo or Puerto Vallarta or Cancun. But getting here had its challenges.

When we pulled away from our RV park in Indio, we fully expected to store our RV at a facility nearby – having made arrangements back in September. Ha! Weren’t we surprised when they said their renovations weren’t finished and they couldn’t store the motorhome until January or February. We called around and didn’t find anything close, but did find a place in El Centro, CA. OK, that could work, it was on our way to the border crossing at Tecate.  Panic, followed by Relief!! When we get there, they tell us they only have one place left – one place designed for a much smaller rig, but, oh well, Lew is really good at parking this thing. Oops! Was that a mirror we just crunched on the other RV? Surprise! They found us another spot at the end and we spent time on the phone as we drove into Mexico figuring out how to pay for the damages. Luckily the other people were very nice.

And then there was the border. We’ve never driven into Mexico, but we did assume that someone would meet us at the border and check our passports. Then, we could ask them where to get the FMM we needed to drive in Mexico. No one met us. No one cared that we drove in. Before we knew it, we were out of Tecate and on our way to Ensenada (where we had hotel reservations). It was getting dark, so on we went. No FMM. No stamp. No Passport control. We felt like illegal aliens.

We spent two nights in Ensenada – relaxing, but for the constant worry that at any minute they would find us and throw us in jail. We tried getting the requisite forms, but after miles of walking from one office to another and getting the bureaucratic run-around, we gave up. Got the forms online – or, we paid for them and Lew got his, but mine never came. And, of course, there is no stamp. People have told us that no one ever checks, so we are driving very carefully and hoping we can make it back to the USA next week with no repercussions. 

The drive from Ensenada to Guerrero Negro was harrowing – mountain crossings, road construction delays, teacher protests on the road, potholes, slow trucks and fast cars, and cows on the highway.  But we made it unscathed and enjoyed the beautiful scenery along the way when we could.

From there to Loreto was shorter and quite beautiful with an amazing array of cacti and other unique desert plants – and much less frightening. It is good to be here. Glad to see friends from Anacortes, who have showed us around, and very glad to have Sandi, Dylan, Andy, and Sarah (Sandi’s Danish helpmate) join us. It’s been a relatively relaxing week at a beautiful resort – we’ve hiked, walked on the beach, read, swum in the pools, had a few margaritas, taken trip up into the mountains to visit one of the oldest missions in Baja, and generally enjoyed ourselves. Preparations are being made for Christmas – note our little Christmas Tree. We’re hoping Santa will find us in Loreto.

 The grandkids and our tiny Christmas tree.  Santa, note the tree location

 Beachfront, mountains, quiet cove -- what could be better?

Death Valley

We've long since left Death Valley and find ourselves now in Loreto, Baja Sur, Mexico - a desert by the sea - but as we look at the many mountain ranges and valleys down here, we can't help thinking about our time at Death Valley National Park earlier in December. So much of the southwest has a haunting beauty to it, with interesting rock formations and a barren-looking landscape. But there was something different about Death Valley. It is hard to articulate. Maybe it's just because the park wasn't what I expected, but, then again, what did I expect? The first word that often comes to mind is DESOLATE. And, yes, it is, in a way, but so much more. I couldn't put what I felt about this place into words, so I asked Lew to give me three words he would use to describe his experience of Death Valley. I had my own three. They were entirely different. A friend added some more. These are the words we came up with - complex, varied, dry, raw, changing, powerful, textured, and tapestry.

Death Valley National Park - the largest in the country - is so complex and varied it almost boggles the mind. Here we find towering snow-covered peaks rising over 12,000 feet from the floor of the valley, which boasts the lowest point in the western hemisphere at 282 feet below sea level. The park has salt flats that are as much as 5 feet thick, the result of repeated flooding and evaporation over many thousands of years. There are tenacious plants and animals that have adapted to the hottest temperatures ever recorded, as well as mud and sand dunes turned to stone, ancient lava flows, active sand dunes, eerie eroded badlands, abandoned mines, wildflower displays in the spring, a volcano crater half a mile wide and 800 to 7,000 years old and still potentially active, and rocks of many varied shapes, sizes, colors, and type. Complex and varied, indeed. And dry.  The mountains to the west wring out all the moisture from the ocean and there's little left for the desert. Yet it is the dryness that makes the rocks so interesting. Rock layers in Death Valley comprise nearly a complete record of the earth’s past, not in neat layers like at the Grand Canyon, but jumbled out of sequence, testifying to the powerful geologic forces that recently (in geologic time) tore the land apart.

I used the word raw because Death Valley’s geologic formations are unadorned. So little vegetation grows here, you can practically see the mountains eroding; the moraines, which on other mountains are often hidden by vegetation, are stark, visible, clearly delineated, and obvious -  raw, as it were. Yes, the land is raw, but it is ever changing. The sand dunes shift in the wind, rocks fall, summer storms create flash floods that break away rocks, dig canyons, create arches, and erode away ever more mountain. It seems to happen before our eyes.

You can almost feel the powerful forces at work here, forces that pulled apart a continent, lifted up 3 mountain ranges, and sank the valleys to a depth below the sea. A visit here is truly a sensual experience, a  tapestry of color – from yellow and beige and brown and black, to reds, greens, blues, and purples: a tapestry of texture – fine sands, salts, rock, mud, and water: a tapestry of shapes – intricate patterns in the salt flats to jagged mountains, rounded dunes, balanced rocks and huge boulders to tiny pebbles. Death Valley was truly an amazing, visceral experience – topped off our last night with an incredible display of stars containing the arc of the milky way, a sight we hadn’t seen in years. It was a good reminder that we are not as important as we think we are. This is a vast universe and we are fortunate to live on such an incredible planet.We shall return.

Artist's Palate

Cathedral Rock, hike in canyon

Another colorful canyon

Overlooking the badlands. Dark is lava flow.

Salt flats

Looking over the salt flats and valley from 6,000 feet