The best part.......

The forecast temperature in Indio on Tuesday was 100.....we haven't seen 100 degrees since I don't remember when, so in order to get through that I-10 corridor before the high temperatures of the day arrived we decided to leave Winterhaven before 7 am, and, in fact, we were on the road merging on to I-8 westbound by 6:55 am.

It is the simple pleasures in life that make each day worth living.......seeing my speedometer working, and my cruise control holding our speed at a steady 60 mph mile after mile as we floated eastward on a bed of air Tuesday just made my day.....but the best was yet to come.

Just before El Centro we left I-8 and headed northbound on HWY 111.....eventually we came to a Homeland Security checkpoint.........

......as we inched forward I saw several vehicles ahead of us being waived over for further inspection.....I'm thinking...."....here I am pulling a large enclosed trailer...I'm sure they'll want to look inside...", but alas, when we pulled even with the border agent he simply asked "What are you carrying in the trailer?"....I replied..."A VW and a bunch of bikes".....he responded...."Have a good day", and waived us through.  Certainly, I have nothing in the trailer to hide, but who needs the aggravation and delay.....we're trying to beat the heat!

The day we left Wittmann we were down to under 1/4 tank of propane, and I was sure we could get all the way to Lake Tahoe without running out, but decided, nonetheless, to stop at Wells Market on our way out of Wittmann (same place we filled up in February) to fill the tank.  Unfortunately, for some reason their propane fitting would not connect to our tank properly and they were unable to 'fill 'er up', so we headed out thinking we would find a place along our route up to Lake Tahoe over the next few days.  Of course, I need something to worry about, so I worried for a couple of days that the problem was with our propane valve, and not Wells Market's fittings, and was concerned that we might have to have something repaired.....I need to stop doing that. Well, as you know, 10 days have been added to our itinerary, and we'll probably need to get propane well before that.  I remembered getting propane at the Flying 'J' in Palm Desert a few years before, so I had TLE look up the station to verify they still sold propane and they did, so we exited I-10 at Bob Hope Drive around 10 am and did just that.....as it turnes out nothing was wrong with our tank valve at all.....we took on 42 gallons....yup we were a little lower than I thought!

The climb up over Banning Pass was the usual grinder, especially as we approached the heat of the day, but the Newell purred along up the grade from below sea level at Indio to almost 2,000' as we passed the summit just past Beaumont and merged on to California 60 to Riverside.  We arrived at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park at 11:30 am, and were in our site with both A/C's running within 15 minutes.

We had made plans to meet as many of our kids as were available at one of our favorite local brew pubs, 'The Salted Pig'

Have been waiting to taste this very good 'Imperial Stout' for a while!

TLE and I arrived at the 'Pig' about 3o minutes early to be sure we could get a table big enough to hold 9, or 10 people, but as it turned out we ended up having 12 show up (kids, grandkids, great grandkids, spouses, fiances, etc.).  For me, and I know I can speak for TLE here, this is the best part of life.....standing at the end of our long table and seeing all of these people who are connected to each other because Elaine and I fell in love 44 years ago just fills my heart to overflowing......

 Our great grandchild 'D.C.'......he even let me hold him! 

We drank copious amounts of brew, ate some great food, laughed and talked for 2 hours.....this was just how I saw my day ending....:-)......this is, indeed, the best part of life!

Thanks for stopping by!