Rolling Along Country Roads: We pause and catch our breath

December 26th - January 9th

Palm Springs Thousand Trails
Palm Desert, CA

We finally stopped running from place to place. When we started the travel life we purchased a zone pass from Thousand Trails. This gave us thirty nights of "free" camping and $3 a night thereafter for the a year. The caveats… You can stay for fourteen nights in a park and then you have to be "out of network" for seven nights. Or you can stay "in network" perpetually if you only stay four nights and move on to another park. This is OK if you are moving right along, but setting up and taking down all your stuff every four nights can be exhausting. We stayed here for fourteen nights.

This was the most homelike we have felt since setting out. We did do the requisite sightseeing with all the new tourists. But mostly we just settled down to regular life. Did laundry twice, went to church, washed the RV for the first time, took long walks, shopped for food, and had doctor's appointments for Ellen's hand. The basic errands and chores that make up day to day life.

This Thousand Trails is more of an RV park, (side by side RVs with palm trees between them) and less of a campground. The staff and guests were very friendly and there were quite a few Seahawk fans. The flags, banners and even a neon light were in evidence. We even ran across one of the RV traveling couples we follow on youtube.

The park does not have free Wifi so we used our phones for any internet we needed. We had enough data from Verizon to be able to skype with Chris and Monica and then turn around and see Cam and Kaitlin as well. Albus the dog and Hobbs the cat made guest appearances.

We looked for interesting places to hike while we were here. Our first hike was from the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Visitor Center. Great center and the Randall Henderson trail was our first desert hiking experience. Beautiful views but "Toto, we're not in Washington anymore". The next great hike was the Coachella Valley Preserve. Amazing Palm Trees! We also took a trip to Idyllwild Thousand Trails Campground so Ellen could play with snow.

The most fun/expensive thing we did was ride the Palm Springs Ariel Tramway. It took us to the top of the neighboring mountain and rotates 360 degrees in the process. The Mount San Jacinto State Park is at the top where there is camping and hiking and a gift shop. Spectacular views!