Breakfast was delicious at the Casino this morning, as are most meals that I don't have to prepare myself.  Here is Gary in front of a very large guitar in the lobby.

Throughout the day we heard constant gunfire from a nearby practice range.  Sometimes it was single shots but many times it was multiple shots making me wonder what the shooters were practicing for.

I was thinking about how most of the people we see in RV Parks this time of year are older folks and how many of them move daily or every other day.  It made me think of a giant game of senior musical chairs going on all over the country every day with millions of RVs switching places.

Baby is enjoying the oscillating fan we run on warm days.  Cute??

Canyonville is so small that the courthouse and the Department of Human Services are in a tiny strip mall.  We found a new restaurant in town and ate there both nights.  The first night they were out of meatloaf, which Gary loves, so we had to go back the second night to get some.  It was worth it.  This was our last dinner of this vacation and tomorrow we will be in Lake Oswego.  It will be great to be home.

We crossed the border back into Oregon today.  I swear, the sky was completely blue (see picture of Mt. Shasta above) until we were within 2 miles of Oregon and then it clouded over. 

Speaking of Shasta, it was very heartening to see how much water is in Lake Shasta now.  When we passed it last year it was pitiful and now it is close to normal.  The news reports are that the reservoir is full.

On the road this morning a car was getting onto the highway and we were in her way, so she slowed down to get behind us and then sped by us on the left while her male passenger waved his middle finger at us.  Amazing!

I saw a road sign I had never seen before.  It said, "Controlled burn ahead.  Do not report."  We never did see any smoke.

We are staying in Canyonville, OR at Seven Feathers Casino and RV Park.  It is run by the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Indians.  Canyonville is small but has a few interesting spots.  I enjoyed seeing the metal horse on the balcony across from the restaurant where we had dinner, and the barber shop next door.  We will be here until Sunday and then home.

We spent last night and are spending tonight in Corning, CA, known for its olives.  Above is a picture of an olive grove.

We like to stay at RV Parks run by casinos whenever we can.  This one is Rolling Hills RV Park run by the Paskenta Nomlaki Indians.  There is usually a pretty good dinner buffet, although that isn't the case here and, if you are a first time visitor and sign up for the free club membership in the casino, you get a few dollars of free play on the slot machines.  Here we each got $30 of free play and we had a great time doing it.  We walked away with $53 in cash after using not one cent of our own money on the penny slots.  Woo hoo!!    In addition, Tuesdays and Thursdays are half price buffet days for seniors, and even though last night's dinner was fairly bland, this morning's breakfast was fine.  A great time was had by both of the last of the big time spenders!

Today's picture was taken by Gary.  It is a picture of a cover of coots.  And his finger.  He saw these on the golf course today.  He had fun but, unfortunately they had just plugged the greens for the season which threw off his putting.  110.

Baby and I stayed in and caught up on paperwork, TV watching, reading and I made a quick trip to the grocery store.  It was a perfect, relaxing day.  On to Corning, CA tomorrow.

The ground was too wet for Gary to play golf today so instead, we went to Fresno to start looking for a new trailer.  We want to be able to pull it with our Jeep and our goal is for it to be no more than 24-28 feet long.  We want a dinette, two recliners, an extra place for someone else to sleep, kitchen, bathroom with shower, sufficient room to hang up our clothes and the one thing it looks like we can't have, a combination washer/dryer. We have one now and I am going to really miss it. There are SO MANY brands and models.  We looked at about 8 today and thoroughly confused ourselves.  We will wait until we get back to the Portland area to look at more.  Meanwhile, we are researching online to find out about quality and company reputations.

This is some art across the street from the Fresno Convention Center.  It was right across from today's Starbucks.

Here is the menu that was on the wall of the Mexican restaurant where we had dinner.  Both of us decided against Tongue, Head or Guts for our choices of meat.  We took the conservative route with chicken.

Where else would we go on a rainy day in Chowchilla, CA?  Don't worry, we only ordered decaf!

Last night we were driving around in the CMax and got hit in the windshield by a large rock.  It will take a whole new replacement windshield.  So now we have to extend our stay a day because it can't be fixed until Tuesday.  That's OK with us, there are many worse places to get stuck.

Today we drove from Castaic, CA to Chowchilla.  The mountains were just beautiful, covered with purple wildflowers and California poppies and topped with low-lying clouds. 

Part of I-5 is known as the Grapevine.  It is a very steep area, ascending and descending, and today was complicated by some high winds.  It takes about 45 minutes to get through it.  Most of the time we end up trying not to get stuck behind slow trucks because once you lose momentum in the BaysBus, you can't get it back when going uphill.  Today we successfully navigated the Grapevine once again.

We saw something I've never seen before today, a crop dusting helicopter.  I wasn't quick enough to get a picture.

 We also saw a kids' party when we were almost at the RV park.  They had a small petting zoo and one of the animals was a camel!

The Lakes RV and Golf Club is where we stayed for 3 nights before and we are going to do it, again.  Gary hopes to play golf tomorrow and the next day.  It is very peaceful and relaxing here.

Yesterday Gary played golf at Marriott Valley Golf Course with Donna and Bonnie and they had a wonderful time laughing at each others' shots and difficult lies.  I didn't go but they all said I should next time.  We went out for dinner at a lovely restaurant called Vicky's and then said our goodbyes for this trip.

We drove from Indio back to Castaic and Valencia Travel Village where we have stayed before.  When we arrived we had to set up in pouring rain but we really can't complain as it is the first rain we have encountered on this trip.  It didn't last too long and has been dry since. 

Because of my health scare on Sunday and the fact that I had shingles on our last big RV trip to Florida last year, the family has decided that maybe the stress of this big RV is too much for me.  Gary and I have been talking about it and we think we may shop for a smaller rig, maybe a C class, as opposed to the big A class we are driving now.  It will be much easier to maneuver and should be less bumpy on the terrible interstate roads.  We'll see.

This has been a real vacation for me, I haven't cooked dinner one time since we left home.  I am thoroughly spoiled and loving it.

It is tough to have a little white dog in the desert.  Baby is more gray than white right now.  Yesterday we saw a white poodle with socks on up to his knees.  I think his owner is on to something!

If you look closely at the picture below you can see that the field is covered in tiny purple flowers.  They are surprising and beautiful in this sand-filled lot.

We went to Shields Dates today.  It is a real tourist trap but was fun to see.  They run a movie all day about the "sex life of the date".  There are samples of many kinds of dates to taste and lots of souvenirs. 

 Gary golfed with Donna and Bonnie today at Palm Desert Country Club.  He shot 99!!

Baby and I chilled on the BaysBus and caught up on some paperwork, laundry and resting.  We both enjoyed it.

We had a very good day today.  We drove to Palm Springs to ride the Aerial Tram.  First we passed a large wind farm.

Then we arrived at the Tram and rode it to the top where we took in the sights and ate lunch.

We shopped for souvenirs and then went back to Indio to see Baby. 

Before you read this, I am fine now.  However, yesterday afternoon I experienced atrial fibrillation, which is an irregular heartbeat which can lead to stroke, for the first time and I had to go to the emergency room and spend the night in the hospital.  It was quite an experience.

Gary drove me from the RV Park to the hospital where the staff determined with an EKG that I was not having a heart attack.  Then they used various medications to slow down my heart beat and lower my blood pressure.  After about 4 hours in the ER, where I saw many different varieties of injuries and illnesses, I was admitted.

Hospitals are not about getting any sleep.  Many different nurses, assistants, technicians, etc. gave me tests, including an echocardiogram at 11:30 PM.  My roommate was also interesting, an older lady who used to be a nurse and freely dispensed advice about my condition during the night.

The good news is that my arrhythmia was stabilized with drugs and the doctor said there was no reason not to continue our trip.  I will check with my doctor when I get back to Oregon.  Let's hope this was a one-time thing!!

After coming back to the RV after being released, I took a nap and tonight Gary and I had dinner with our former neighbors, Donna and Bonnie.  It was great to see them.  Gary will play golf with them during the week.

The GPS Saga.
In the BaysBus we have a GPS system that we researched and had installed into the dashboard.  It was supposed to be the best one to keep an RV out of a tight squeeze or dangerous situation.  We also have a Good Sam GPS that rests on the top of the dashboard because we have learned not to trust the first one.  As a back up, I always load our destination into the GPS in my smartphone, which doesn't "know" we are driving an RV and not a car.  We study paper maps before we leave each travel day.  Then, when the GPS systems have a difference of opinion, we vote.  Today we set all the machines and the two that know RV routes wanted us to take one route, but the smartphone GPS wanted us to take the route we had decided was best on the paper map.  Oooops!  We decided to go with the RV GPS systems.  OMG!!  We ended up on a two lane road over the mountains from Temecula to Indio.  It was very slow and very scary.  We had to pull over on every turn out so people could pass us. Lesson learned.  Trust our instincts!

The mountains were full of gigantic boulders, miles and miles of them.  I can't imagine how they ever built the road through that.

We saw a formation of five small prop planes flying over the mountains.  They looked like they were practicing for something.  We also passed a larger-than-life metal sculpture of a stagecoach and horses about an hour before we arrived.  The field behind it was full of hundreds of metal sculptures on the same grand scale but we only got a glimpse as we passed by too quickly to get a picture. 

Palm Desert was having a Wildflower Festival.  We saw many different flowers as we crossed the desert.  I had read that many of them were making a rare showing because of a little rain that had fallen here recently.

We are staying at Indian Wells Carefree RV Park in Indio.  It is an older park with many permanent residents but the spaces are very large and it is a clean, pleasant place. The temperature today was about 80 and will be about the same after the next two days, which will be cooler.  We plan on staying 6 nights.

Here is a cute metal sculpture one of the residents has outside his home.

Baby and I were walking near the entrance to the RV Park and a duck came flying out of a bush.  Baby almost flew, too.  We were both completely startled.  It was pretty funny.

San Diego reminds me of Norfolk.  It has a huge Naval Base and much of the economy revolves around the Navy.  We drove along the harbor and saw ships and cranes involved in ship building.  The USS Midway is a converted aircraft carrier, now a museum.  We saw a tall ship, a hospital ship and an amphibious tour bus. 

Our next stop was Seaport Village, a cute tourist trap down by the harbor.  The parking meter was run by an attached solar cell and had the ability to flash red when time on the meter was up.  Otherwise, it was green. 

After a drive through the Gaslamp District, which seemed to be restaurant after restaurant geared toward the users of the huge convention center, we headed back to the RV, Starbucks and later, dinner.  Tomorrow we will see if we can beat the forecast El Nino rain to the desert.

Chula Vista RV Resort and Marina is probably one of the nicest RV parks we have found.  It sits on the edge of the city of Chula Vista and a little apart from the city.  It is one of the only parks in the San Diego area that was available to us because of the length of our rig and we feel very lucky to have found it.

After we left Chowchilla this morning we went down 99 until it joined I-5 and we crossed the Grapevine, a steep climb and then descent with many 18 wheelers all around.  After that we went through L.A.  The challenge about that part of the drive is that you have to change lanes constantly just to stay on the same road.  The traffic is so dense that it is difficult.  We breathed a sigh of relief when that part of the trip was over. 

There is a street in National City called Mile of Cars Way.  It is literally a mile of car dealerships all on the same road.  We saw it from the highway.

We went into Chula Vista and found a Starbucks after which we went back to the BaysBus for a little nap.  Tonight we had dinner with our nephew, Steven in Encinitas.  He is a delightful young man and it was very enjoyable.  Tomorrow we will explore San Diego.

You would never guess from the beautiful, natural setting here that you were within a stone's throw of Magic Mountain.  We are at Valencia Travel Village in Castaic, CA which is north of Los Angeles.  We stayed here on our way to Florida last February and enjoyed it so much that we returned.

The top picture is of the huge BBQ pit and the next is a typical view of the surrounding mountains.  Guess who is hamming it up in the bottom picture.

The drive here was easy as long as we were on US 99 but became more difficult on I-5 in the Grapevine area.  The climb up is very steep and, if you lose momentum, you are stuck going slowly for the whole time.  Then, after the top of the climb you have to be careful of all the 18 wheelers that are going faster than they should on the descent.  Very nerve wracking.

Tomorrow we will meet family members who live in San Diego.  We are looking forward to dinner with nephew Steven, and niece Stacy and her family.