Monday, April 18, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Busy...Busy...Busy...
Many of you wondered and commented that it is some time since we last posted to the Blog.
Well the reason is that we have been very busy for the past few weeks. It has made us realize that keeping a blog going is time consuming. In the movie Julie Julia, Julie’s life must have been totally consumed between cooking, writing her blog and still going to work every day.
Our intention was to stay a week in Palm Springs and then move on into Arizona; but here we are 4 weeks later and still in the Palm Springs area. We spent a lovely first week here and visited old friends Carole and Bob Kase for dinner. Carole was in my first Newcomer’s lunch bunch. We had dinner the night we arrived in Palm Springs with Beth and Tom Feldman. This is their second year coming here for the “season”. I have decided to call it that because it looks like most of Canada (East to West) and lots of Americans come here for the 3 months after Christmas.
We loved walking to downtown Palm Springs and experienced lots of funny incidents the principal one; one Saturday night a religious group was preaching at the Plaza pedestrian crossing when two 6’4” tall transvestites in full regalia, big blonde wigs, very short sequined dresses and 6” platform boots arrived to cross the road. As you can imagine the crowd was enjoying the scene – preachers preaching while the transvestites whooped and hammed it up for all it was worth. Free entertainment at its best!
We went to the “Follies” a show in the historical old downtown Theatre. To qualify to be in the show the actors and dancers have to be 55+, with the oldest at 81. It is a wonderful show as all these dancers have had careers on Broadway, TV, Movies and Vegas. The MC was fantastic.
My brother John called to say he and Tess were coming to Palm Springs as it was raining in Vancouver BC and would remain raining for the next week. So we had a great St Patrick’s few days together; it was John’s birthday and Tess and John’s wedding anniversary on St Patrick’s Day. That night Carole and Bob took us to their Country Club for a St Patrick’s Dinner/Dance. We also met Sue and Bill Piche, Mike and Candy Belanca for lunch; while they were here on vacation from Los Gatos.
The next week my nephew Luke (aged 15) who had been scheduled to go to Japan on a school trip arrived, also from Vancouver. I bought him “James Bond” silky dark olive sheets; we laughed a lot at those sheets as we had to fold away his bed every morning.
We enjoyed having him; he and I played lots of tennis with new friends of mine. We played golf one day and another day we had a camel ride in the “Living Desert” (it is a desert zoo in Palm Desert). On a hot day we had a ride on the aerial tramway (the floor revolves as you climb). It climbs through 5 different climates to 8,500 feet from where it is an unusual sight to look down to the desert from up in the snow. Lots of snow up there this year. We stayed in the snow until six o’clock. It was too hot to come down.
By then Tom had started our Taxes and we realized we needed to return to Los Gatos to get documents so off we set the day after Luke left. Our engine overheated as we climbed the Grapevine just north of Los Angeles. We pulled off at a little town called Gorman and as we rolled down the off ramp the engine cut out and the steam started to flow out from under the hood. We were lucky there was a garage with a mechanic in the town so we pushed the car the 500 yards to the garage. We did not want to wait for AAA. We hired a car from “Rent a Wreck” and left my precious Bluebug with the mechanic and headed on with our journey.
We stayed with Eileen and Carl who have been welcoming and gracious hosts every time we are in Los Gatos. We searched for the documents in storage next morning. I knew they would be either near the front as we might need them or back at the back safely put away. Lucky us they were right at the front. We saw our 2 grandsons and they loved seeing us, it was hard leaving them especially as they had me by the legs and would not let go. Mellissa is looking well now and studying to be a teacher.
We had dinner at Maky & Mark’s; Grainne & Patrick’s; Anjali & Amit’s; Sally & Gerry’s and met Cearull & Leslie, Tony & Stella also for dinner. We did not have a free night thank you to all our wonderful friends. Wednesday I went to the Newcomer’s book club and meet lots of friends and they had an author from North Carolina attending the book club meeting. Impressive!
In the meantime Tom got the taxes completed and filed!
Now we are back in the Palm Springs area after having collected the car in Gorman.
On Monday we will, finally, be on our way out of California and into Arizona.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Sports on the road...
Did you ever play golf behind a group of men swilling beer on their second round of 18 holes? We did and I can tell you the more beer they consume the slower and slower they get; and take forever on the greens, as they decide which hole to aim for and finding it harder and harder to get that ball into that tiny moving hole. Being stone cold sober, we both had a refresher course in patience playing behind them; and they did not have the wit or courtesy to call us through!
We have now been in Palm Springs since March 10th and will be here until the 31st – our nephew Luke from Vancouver, B.C. just arrived today for a week’s visit – he was scheduled to go to Japan on a school trip, which understandably had to be canceled. I have played tennis at the local publics courts - it costs $$. First day I was partnered with a lady who had a hip replacement not too long ago and was recovering from a sore on her leg. A very nice lady but she did/could not move she could hit the ball if it came her way.
Did I tell you she was over 80? I was so frustrated… The next day I had a much better partner and a good match.
But…on Thursday last we had a great experience; we were able to get tickets to the BNP Paribas Open in nearby Indian Wells and saw the ultimate winner Djokovic beat Troicki; Gasquet beat Roddick; Nadal beat Devvarman and Federer beat Harrison – an amazing treat. Note the name Ryan Harrison who played Roger Federer – an 18 year old wildcard phenom who has a great future!
All the RV parks now have heated swimming pools so I can swim every day. Some pools are longer than others so I can get a good work out. In Palm Springs the water is nice and cool but up to now the water was warmer than the air.
I do half an hour of Yoga most mornings, I try to find a nice spot with a view but sometimes that is not possible so I just roll out the mat outside the door.
We can walk into Palm Springs from here; so we are back to our nightly walks which we have missed as we usually are not in a spot where we can go wandering off in the dark, we also do plenty of walking or biking during the day.
Golf, we did say we would play golf at least once in every State; so far we have achieved our goal. Three States almost completed with many rounds of golf; we’re guessing that going down the East coast will present a bigger challenge.
Tom promised that he would start yoga when we got on the road - so far he has bought a book with a demo CD he read the first Chapter and I have not seen the book since. However, he does get plenty of exercise walking, biking, swimming and weight lifting when we are moving, getting the dolly hitched on the back of the RV and strapping the car onto the dolly.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
San Diego and Balboa photos
Friday, March 11, 2011
San Diego experience
We moved on from Malibu to Anaheim not to visit Disney World but to get nearer to San Diego as we usually travel 100 miles or under when we move.
You wondered why we are taking so long to get out of California. We are the tortoise not the hare. On our first night there was a magnificent fireworks display from across the road in Disneyland. It lasted half an hour. It was President’s Day.
We took a trip to Balboa Island, (it is near Newport Beach). What a beautiful little resort this is. The houses look tiny and cute, they are painted beautifully, some have a theme, like boating or sailing, Irish or Dutch and on the perimeter of the island the houses have their own gated marinas. Prices range in the multi-million dollars. We took the car ferry to Balboa Beach where we had a picnic on the beach or as I used to say to my children “let’s have sand sandwiches”.
We arrived in San Diego and pulled into a RV Park called “Camp Land” right on Mission Bay. There are activities organized every morning, yoga, water aerobics, tennis, aerobics. Needless to say I tried them all...
We were not too far from my friends Barbara and Debbie. The weather was beautiful when we arrived but the forecast was for rain. We had Dinner at Barbara’s on our first night; it was great to see her. Barbara had invited Leslie and her boyfriend Dieter also, I had met both before and they had visited us in Los Gatos.
The weather got cold and wet our first week end - all of San Diego’s February rainfall fell in 48 hours – and, we had lots of puddles. The second night Leslie had us to her fabulous new home for dinner. Lucky us!
Throughout our stay we had a male and female duck literally camped right outside our door. They had no fear of humans they just quacked and sat by the door, demanding to be fed.
Debbie and Mike came to lunch in our RV and that was a wet day (they brought lunch) and also treated us to dinner at Il Fornio on Coronado Island looking back at San Diego, what a lovely setting? We watched the lights go on in downtown San Diego which was pretty.
We also hiked in Torrey Pines State Park with Debbie and Mike - a truly amazing place to hike – spectacular. Afterwards we dined at Chef Debbie’s; where we enjoyed the best Lamb roast, ever!!
I got to play tennis with Barbara’s group twice, most of whom I know from previous visits. Some very strong characters and I don’t mean tennis. Barbara was our chauffer to quite a few of the scenic sights of SD. We saw the yachts that compete in the “Americas Cup” race on the Bay. That was really exciting, we enjoyed it so much we went back a second day.
Visiting the “Midway” aircraft carrier turned out to be a real surprise. Once again it was much better than we had expected. It is like a city on a ship. We visited the Bridge first that took half an hour. We spent 2 hours on board and we needed longer. Thanks to Barbara we went to the Zoo on two passes. That is the best Zoo in the World. The animals are so well looked after, the landscaping is beautiful and they have Panda bears and Koala bears.
We had several dinner parties at Barbara’s and each time I met friends form previous visits. The weather improved as the week wore on so we decided to stay longer as we were enjoying ourselves so much.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Ventura – Malibu – Anaheim
Since sharing a camp site with Robinson Crusoe we have moved on; and been busy!
As you know from the last blog we were in Ventura for a long weekend. Ventura is a relatively nice town, but the beach left us cold – in more ways than one. And…believe it or not we met up once more with our Monterey neighbors!
From Ventura we traveled down Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu – the coast line is absolutely breathtaking. As we were driving along approaching Malibu Tom noticed RV’s in the distance on the side of a hill and wondered if it was Malibu RV Resort where we had reservations.
It was; and what a joy it turned out to be!
We pulled into the campsite and were directed to site V1, which challenged Tom’s parking abilities – it demanded that he parallel park, no less! What a view we had, we were literally looking down a bluff (about 250 feet) at the beach and the Pacific; where every morning a pod of Dolphins entertained us. Certainly, the most spectacular camp site we’ve been to since we set out on our travels.
The Northern Trust Open was being held at the nearby Riviera Country Club and we had 5 Pro Golfers as neighbors, including Jimmy Walker who finished in 4th place.
Tuesday we settled in, chatted with two new friends Mary who hails from Wisconsin and who is Giada De Laurentiis (of TV Cooking Channel fame) mother-in-law and Roger from DC; Roger had a 1960’ish BMW Motorcycle and a German Army WW11 sidecar complete with machine-gun mounting. We also hiked the short distance to Solstice Canyon, and then the Canyon itself on Tuesday; which has an interesting history.
Wednesday we went to visit the La Brea Tar Pits www.tarpits.org and the adjacent George C. Page Museum. Why, oh why are these not more widely publicized? Only that we were meeting my friend Lisa for lunch at the nearby Farmers Market Tom would still be in the Museum. This should be on everyone’s “to do” list when in the LA area. Roger joined us for dinner that evening and entertained us afterwards with his bass banjo.
Thursday we spent at the Getty Villa www.getty.edu/villa in Malibu and Friday at the Getty Museum www.getty.edu/museum in LA. Again…both should be on everyone’s “to do” list, not alone for the exhibits, but more importantly for the splendor of their location and architecture.
Saturday we had a wonderful visit from Jennifer and Karl’s friends the Brookbanks; Richard & Dina, 10 year-old twins Ben & Oliver and 5 year-old Henry. After some time exploring the campsite and its environs we headed north to Bob Morris’ Paradise Cove Beach Café for lunch – you just have to go there for brunch/lunch when visiting Malibu; and…for you chocolate lovers the Chocolate Cake is ginormous and delicious – we ordered a slice – all 7 of us had some and we still took some home! We played soccer and rugby on the beach to Henry’s great delight.
Uncle Karl eat your heart out!
In our next blog I’ll start with Sunday at Lisa’s.
Monday, February 21, 2011
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