Goodby Vegas hello Hemet

We arrived in Hemet California on the 10th for our first Tiffin Rally. Tiffin is the manufacturer of our motorcoach and they sponsor 2 rally's a year. Their rally's are mostly social with a few seminars. Although we enjoyed the dinners & entertainment, our preference are rally's with lots of educational sessions. We met our friends Cathie & Ray and really enjoyed our visit with them. We've met some really nice RVer's.


Cathie & Ray enjoying dinner and perfomance by the California Cowboys.


Bob & Judy Tiffin...owners of Tiffin Motorhomes.


Since we have never been in this part of California we decided to extend our stay here for another week to see some of the area. Hemet is about 40 minutes west of Palm Springs so we toured Palm Springs one afternoon and again another evening for dinner.

The high temperature yesterday was 99 degrees. Fortunately we spent the better part of the day in the high desert were the temperature at times was 20 degree's cooler. We drove to Joshau National Park. Joshau NP is land were two desert ecosystems meet - the Mojave and Colorado deserts. The Colorado Desert is dominated by abundant creosote bushes. Adding interest are small patches of the ocotillo and jumping cholla cactus - both of which were in bloom. The Mojave Desert is a high desert, slightly cooler and moister than the Colorado Desert and is the special habitat of the Joshua tree.

The park is over 1 million acres and the drive through it is 64 miles long.


Colorado Desert


The Joshau Tree is to the Mojave Desert as the giant saguaro cactus is the Sonoran Desert. The Joshau Tree is a giant member of the lily family and looks like a large yucca tree.


Joshau Tree




Mojave Desert with forests of Joshau Trees



Throughout the park are many displays of exposed granite monoliths and ragged mountains of rock formations. Geologists believe these formations were born more than a million years ago by continous movement of the earth's crust, the effects of molten liquid & erosion thus producing the mounds of uniquely shaped rocks we see today.


Rock formation




Skull rock ... you need a little imagination!


Jumping cholla garden. They get the name "jumping" because they break off easily if touched. They tell us you don't want to get stuck by one of these...very painful and hard to remove.


View from "Key View" - elevation 5134


Joan resting at Key View observation point.


Hiking path to Cottonwood Spring...that I never found...but the walk was nice.


The desert in bloom.


Caught another spectacular sunset on our way home.

We will be leaving here Thursday morning for the Grand Canyon.

Hope all is well!

Las Vegas

We extended our stay in Las Vegas one extra day to take advantage of a few of the attractions. Just walking through the casino is a tour in itself, with the beautifully appointed lobbies.


Bellagio Lobby


Glass mushrooms


Bee made from dried chrysanthemums and sunflowers




Water show in front of the Bellagio. Water formations play to music.


We saw the Terry Fator show. His career spanned 40 years as a stand-up act, not all that well known. As soon as he won America's Got Talent, the Mirage offered him 5 year contract for $100 million. His "casts of thousands" fills the stage with singing impressions of celebrities and unbelievable ventriloquism. His band and backdrops add to his performance. It is a great show and highly recommended if your in Vegas.


Opening character - the "Impersonating Turtle".



Winston


One evening we had dinner on Freemont Street and enjoyed the outdoor show. Fremont Street was the original Las Vegas Strip and still has a few older casinos, but to compete with the newer more elegant casinos they had to come up with something to continue attracting tourist. Thus the birth of the "Fremont Experince". They closed off a four block area and turned it into a pedestrian mall. It features a huge overhead canopy, equipped with a $17 million digital video display complete with 12.4million bulbs. The show runs for about 10-15 minutes every hour beginning at 7 pm. The best was Don McClean's American Pie and the other performance we stayed for was the Doors. Based on the number of people roaming around that area I think they came up with a winner.


Shot of Fremont Street





Don McCleans American Pie




The Doors


Not sure who or what this is but it's fun just to watch everything going on around you.

Hope all is well!

Tucson to Las Vegas

We received a recall on the coach (no it's not a Toyota) so we spent 2 nights last week at a Freightliner garage in Phoenix to have it taken care of as well as the first 6,000 mile servicing. We made 2 stopovers on our way to Las Vegas, in Quartzsite, Arizona and Needles, California. We were going to dry camp in Quartzsite since there are miles of BLM (Bureau of Land Managment) but were running low on water and high on our waste tanks from dry camping at the garage, so we decided to pull into a park instead. We are finding there are RV parks of all kinds. Many advertise as "resorts" but their definition of a resort and ours are worlds apart.

Here were our neighbors at the Freightliner garage:





Here's where we stayed in Quartzsite:


Pretty bad huh?



Our site in Needles was better. Each site is surrounded by 6' Oleander hedges that are in full bloom making it a very private setting. Here are views from the coach.










A beautiful sunset can make any place look better.

In Las Vegas we stayed at the Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort. This is truly a resort with 5 swimming pools, tanning pool, 5 spas, tennis courts, 9 hole lighted putting course, fitness center with spa, saunas & massage rooms, on site restaurant and 24 hour security. Many of the sites are privately owned and upgraded with patio furnishings, outdoor kitchens with dishwashers & ice makers and thatch roofed huts. Hope we don't get too spoiled here....


Our spot at the Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort...there's grass!!


A privately owned site with lots of upgrades.








We visited with "old" friends Gary & Suzanne who now live in Las Vegas. Gary and Ron attended high school together in St. Louis, then years later when Ron joined the Globe Democrat...lo and behold Gary was working there too in the advertising sales department. They both made the move to the St. Louis Post Dispatch and enjoyed nearly 20 years of working together.




We met for lunch at Raffles in the Mandelay Bay Resort to get caught up and they graciously invited us the next day to there home for brunch. They have a great house and we had a great visit.

It has been years since we visited Las Vegas and I had forgotten how exciting it is with all of the hussle and bussle. Unfortunately, we are only going to be able to stay a few days, but have already decided to come back to take advantage of some of the attractions, shows and restaurants.

Hope all is well!

Goodbye Tucson.

Our final days in Tucson Arizona comprised of a tour of Old Tucson Studios and a visit to Saguaro National Park.

Old Tucson Studios is a touristy amusement attraction with a can can musical, gun fights, card shark show, pistol & lariat shows. But the real attraction is that it is the site of the most active filming locations for Western-themed movies, TV & cable shows in the USA. The history dates back to 1939 when Columbia Pictures chose this site to build a replica of 1860’s Tucson for the movie Arizona starring William Holden and Jean Arthur. Local carpenters built the town from scratch, erecting more than 50 buildings in 40 days. Without running water, they made more than 350,000 adobe bricks from the desert dirt to create authentic structures for the film, many still standing today. Over time it was the site for The Bells of St. Mary’s, The Last Outpost, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Lone Ranger, Cimarron, Lilies of the Field & Have Gun Will Travel to name just a few. The Gambler, Three Amigos, The Quick and the Dead were some of the films in the
1990’s and early 2000’s.



Stunt man falling from tower at a Wild West Comedy show.



Bullwhip demonstration by Pistol Packing Paula



Joan with Pistol Packing Paula...the only female pistol twirler.


Location for a film shoot


We were hoping to see the desert in bloom before we left Tucson, but our visit to the Saguaro National Park, although awesome, was still a little early. We did see some blooms along a short hike.

















Balancing rock formation.


We packed a lunch and had this little visitor serenade us!


Trail up into the mountains


Joan along the trail.



Ron along the trail.


Our friends Tom & Sue finally pulled the trigger and bought a beautiful 5th wheel. They spent a couple of days at Beaudry RV resort in the space next to us. We went to the dealership to see the rig they chose and spent a day shopping. Tom & Ron hit the hardware store and where back in 1.5 hours. Sue & I hit Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, Wal-mart and 5-6 hours later we were back. How do guys do that?


Not only did they have to decide on which RV to buy they had to shop for a new truck too!


Tom & Sue with their new home!

We attended the Stations of The Cross on Good Friday at Santa Cruz Catholic Church. The stations were simple crosses positioned around the outside of the church & school complex. With Father leading the group and the participants taking turns carrying a large wooden cross we walked from station to station. Interesting!


We liked our 2 month stay in Tucson. They do things different down here though. The city has very few storm drains so when it does rain the washes fill and the streets flood. Instead of spending money for a storm sewer system, they just purchased signs to place all over the city.





Their highway overpasses are very artistic. I guess this is where all of their tax dollars went.










There is one exit off of I-19 with an exit sign and ramp that leads to nowhere???? We were told the original plan was the development of a casino that never took place.









But you can't beat the sunsets!






Our next destination is Las Vegas to visit friends.

Hope all is well

Joan &
Ron