Frosty the California Christmas

• Where is the time going? My Casa Grande days flew by and too soon it was Palm Creek in the rearview mirror.

• My target for Tuesday was a Flying J at the last exit on the I-10 in Arizona. Pulling off the road early, I spent several hours reading in the coffee shop, silently amused by the ever friendly Flying J waitresses continually and enthusiastically addressing all customers as “honey”, “baby”, “sweetie” and “doll”. Later, I slept to the sound of – or perhaps in spite of - the ‘truckers lullaby’; i.e., the constant humming and changing pitches of about 60 commercial transport trucks.
  

• Christmas Eve day, I crossed the Arizona/California border, stopping at the agricultural checkpoint to assure the guards that I had no produce on board, and watching as roadside cacti gave way a valley of windmills. Having tuned into a country’n’western radio station, I pulled into a Coachilla gas station humming, “bring whiskey for my men and beer for my horses.” From the parking lot, I could see snow on the not-so-high surrounding mountains. Snow in southern California? Yes, snow!

• 

• The I-10 Highway in California has several named sections. Initially it is called the “Veterans Memorial Freeway” and eventually it becomes “Pearl Harbor Memorial Freeway” but passing through the Palm Springs area the military theme is interrupted by the “Sonny Bono Memorial Freeway”.

• The plan to drive to California in two half-day stretches proved a good one since I was fortunate enough to miss pounding rainstorms in both states. At least, I missed them while I was on the road. Arriving at Hemet around noon, I registered at the Golden Village Palms Resort, backed- in and leveled MineRVa at my site, and hooked up to local hydro, water and cablevision marginally ahead of the temperature dropping, the wind coming up and the rain pouring down. I did manage to meet a few neighbours, all very friendly and all grumbling about the cold except for one guy proudly driving an old Army jeep that he rebuilt from pieces.

• And thus, Christmas Eve 2008 found me toasty and warm inside MineRVA, watching “White Christmas” (again), and cozily drifting off to the land of sugar plum visions.

• 

• Christmas Day the weather was dreadful; dark, low clouds, lots of wind, and inevitably lots of rain. Hardly what I expected for a southern California Christmas! Believe it or not, this photo was not taken in black and white, nor was it taken in the evening. This photo was taken at mid-afternoon on Christmas Day.
  

• I went to the clubhouse for happy hour and devoured a wonderful Christmas dinner in the company of people mostly from BC.

• I did get a fabulous Christmas surprise in the form of discovering that a woman who I greatly admire is also staying at this resort. I took a course about ‘solo RVing’ from Joei Carlton Hossack at the Kelowna RV school. Joei is an author with a number of published books about her travel adventures which include having lived full-time in her truck/camper for most of the past 20 years. She is starting a writing club here at Golden Palms and I’m signing up!

• T’is now Boxing Day and the weather, apparently, is going to get worse before it gets better. I wasn’t happy to see frost on my patio chairs this morning and am even less happy about the prospect of unhooking my water connection tonight because the temperature will plunge down to 28, three whole degrees below freezing. Freezing temps predicted for tomorrow night as well, followed by a week of sunny days and steadily increasing temperatures. I sure hope so!