Our drive into California was one of the worst ones so far with heavy rain and snow flurries. The roads in California were awful and we sustained our first road damage to the RV on the first day. The truck kicked up something and put a hole in the door of the front generator compartment (damn California roads). We stayed in Hemet, CA at Golden Village Palms RV Resort for 16 days and ended up in a site right next to the 10 pickleball courts. We played pickleball every day that it was not raining. It’s easy to get up and get out on the courts when you get woken up by the sounds of pickleball. The resort was nice and had lots of activities. We went to a Fleetwood Mac tribute band, a super bowl party and an omelet breakfast. There was not very much to do in the town of Hemet. We did find The Maze Rock (which contained a single petroglyph of a maze… hence the name), the Western Science Musuem (all about dinosaurs) and Diamond Valley Lake (you can take a boat on the lake to fish, but the sign said that it was a “No Body Contact” lake, so don’t fall in or there will be a fine). We failed to make reservations ahead of time for Valentine’s Day, so we had a romantic lamb dinner in the RV. We made a couple of day trips to the wineries in Temecula. Our favorite was Oak Mountain Winery and Distillery, where we took a tour that included the cave they built to age the wine, a personal meat and cheese plate and many generous wine samples followed by dinner and craft cocktails. Our underbed RV wine cellar was getting sparse, so these trips to Temecula replenished our collection and then some (the overflow is behind the recliners). We also visited Riverside, which is a great town. We saw their downtown area, visited some breweries, and had a great dinner out at Prohibition. A bonus of the park was that there was an RV repair person in the sight right behind us. He put on a great clinic while we were there and he helped us diagnose a furnace issue, adjust our propane regulator and install some additional tail lights on the RV. Also while we were there, we made use of the venison from David’s friend, Brett (saw him in Phoenix). We made some awesome venison steaks and used the ground venison for burgers as well as for the Super Bowl party chili. Thanks to Brett for sharing!

Next we headed to San Dimas and stayed at Bonelli Bluffs RV park for 10 days. This is a great park with lots of grass, ample space between RVs, and views of the mountains and Puddingstone Lake. This park put us about 40 miles from Kim’s Dad in Long Beach and daughter Brianna in Redondo Beach. Of course, it takes an hour or two to go 40 miles, depending on the time of day. Between the potholes and the traffic, it was a white knuckle ride in the Smart car. It was great to see Kim’s Dad and Bette! We went out to lunch a couple of times with them and got to see their new apartment, which is in a beautiful historic building. It was built in the 1920s and is in a great location by the beach. They also came to see us at the RV park one day and Kim’s Dad tried out one of our electric bikes. We also got to spend some time with Kim’s daughter Brianna. She came to visit us at the RV park the day we got there, went out to lunch with all of us at Sea Level restaurant and cooked a wonderful dinner for us at the apartment that she shares with Annica and their two cats. Their apartment is in a great neighborhood and has off-street parking! It was so nice to spend some time with family. We also found lots of breweries/food trucks around San Dimas and went on a great 5 mile bike ride around Puddingstone Lake. As we prepared to leave, we had to make one last minute repair to the RV. One of the axle dust covers had come off, so we ended up pulling the wheel, adding some more grease and reinstalling the dust cover (that wasn’t on the checklist!).

We are now back in Arizona and staying at the River Sands RV Resort in Ehrenberg, which is right on the Colorado River. Here we spent time creating this blog post and making reservations for this coming winter in Florida. Not much else to do in Ehrenberg unless you want to visit the Dollar General. It was 80 degrees and sunny when we pulled in and we were thrilled to be back in shorts weather. Next we are headed to Mesa, where our friends Vickie and Leon will meet us. Then to Phoenix for spring training with other friends; Kim, Kevin, Rick and Tangy. Stay tuned for the next blog, it is bound to be an exciting one!