On The Road Again -- Palm Springs and Eastward

 

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.

Trick or Treat

 

The terrain in California can change tremendously in just one day.  We started Sunday off on the coast with the gorgeous Pacific Ocean.  As we turned and traveled east we rolled up and down a few mountains or were they just a lot of big rolling hills?  Next came the big city of Los Angeles and quite a bit of big city traffic.  As we moved on down the road the terrain even changed more.  We had sand again on the sides of the highway.  It was not the sand from the beach but the sand of the desert.  Many, many palm trees dotted the landscape.  We were south.  We were definitely in snowbird country and it was hot.  This was just a stop-off for us.  We had visited before but this time we knew we wouldn't be staying long.  We still had things to do and places to go.

We definitely still had a few things to take care of.  It wasn’t all lay around and do nothing for us.  We were on a mission.  Or, rather we had several missions to accomplish.  The first one was trying to find some side mirrors for the RZR.  If we were going to get it licensed as a street legal vehicle it had to have side mirrors.  They actually aren’t as easy to find as one would think.   We checked out an ATV shop, a bike shop and a motorcycle shop in the Pismo Beach area..  We were batting zero.  We found another shop in Banning.  It was a big ATV shop.  At least that’s what the ads said and we certainly hoped they were right.  The trip was 39 miles west.  Now if we’d known that, we would have stopped on our way east.  However, it wasn’t so bad.  They had the mirrors and we were tickled.

Then, of course, we had to stop again at the best outlet mall we had ever been to. We thought we might just do a little Christmas shopping.  Christmas is coming, you know.  We had been to this mall several times in the past.   This place has outlets we would never have imagined really had outlets.  It’s the only place we had seen Prada, Versace and Gucci outlets. Now that’s not to say we went in to all of those but we did snap a picture or two of the buildings. Last year I visited the Prada outlet. I went out of the store faster than I went in after pricing one awful looking pair of shoes. The price on the shoes didn’t look discounted to me!!

There are other stores not common in other outlet malls that were more my speed. You can find Kipling, Ecco, Merrell and even a Brighton outlet. It’s a big, big mall. So how many malls have you been to with a Prada, Gucci or Versace outlet? Are there really anymore like this?

It was back to the park and a little time with Duchess before we were going to head off again.  We had planned on stocking up with groceries at Winco.  This is Winco territory!  Then, I discovered there was just a little problem with my computer!  For some reason it was taking forever to shut down and then to load again.  Forever!!     It took several hours to fix the problem and get things back to normal again.  Having an issue with my computer is definitely not fun.

Things are good for now.  We like it here and probably if we weren’t looking for a place where ATVs or UTV riding was around, we just might pick this area as our winter home.  Maybe it’s because we’ve been here so much in the past.  It certainly is one of our favorite places. The problem with picking this place is that we have a handful of RVing friends we would miss.  One of the reasons we even head to the places we head to is because of those special people.  Everything isn’t just about the place. It’s about the people too.

 

When we started south we used our heater at nights just to take the chill off.  We’re certainly not using it now.  We’re using our air conditioner during the day to add a little chill. The need for an air conditioner isn't a good thing if you thought you might be boondocking.  Terry was pretty sick last night.  We think it's the heat since he's been spending lots of time outside trying to make some repairs.  Without an air conditioner running there is no way we'd be able to run around and leave Duchess in the RV either.  For us we're probably just a tad early to consider sitting in the desert without hookups.

That's it for now.  We're on the road again.