Surprise!

7:58 am - PST - Monday - 56º F, humidity 77%, wind - calm......sunny from horizon to horizon.  Very, very windy last night, but finally abated around 3 am.  

After 24 hours of rain it was nice to wake up to sun once again Sunday, and then the drying out process began.....the awning mats were wet, and covered with wet sand, and there was some standing water, but that is the great thing about the desert......water soaks into the sand quickly, and things do dry out fast......by 11 am the mats were dry to the touch, and the standing water was gone, so we decided to take a hike up Rockhouse Canyon towards the 'dry' lake bed.....we did this hike last year, but I did not recall how far it was......

.....we reached the dry mud flats which still had us about 1/2 mile from the dry lake bed, which did have water in it as is often the case this time of year.  Unfortunately this eventually turned into much softer mud and made it unwise to proceed any further.  At this point we had covered 2.3 miles......whoa.....much further than I remembered!

.........our return trip had us back at the coach around 1 pm, and our total mileage came to, as one might expect, 4.6........

 Our 4.6 mile hike route

We had made plans to meet at the site of fellow bloggers Tom and Deb Duchaine for a campfire.....they will be leaving Monday morning.  Earlier in the afternoon we had met their friends Bill and Patsy Richards from Ontario, Canada, who were also at the campfire. Bill and Patsy are also bloggers......Bill's is 'On Our Way', and Patsy's is 'Chillin With Patsy'. We had a wonderful time chatting and getting to know each other for about 90 minutes until the wind came up, and chased us back to our respective domiciles.......usually by this time of the evening the winds, if there have been any, have abated and it is very still, but not Sunday night.....surprise #1........

Our campfire 'usie'.....left to right: moi, Deb, Tom, TLE, Pat and Bill.....oops I cut Bill's head off.....¡lo siento mucho!

......surprise #2.....we had barely gotten home when TLE advised she was not feeling well.......this past summer she came down with a bladder infection while we were in South Lake Tahoe......the first in 25+ years.  Well, it was back again and here were are almost 60 miles from medical help (everything in Borrego Springs was closed by this time), so TLE googled '24 hour urgent care centers' and the closest one was in Indio......we called and found they only had a 30 minute wait, so at 8:22 pm we got in the car and made the dash to Indio arriving at Premier Urgent Care on Monroe at 9;20 pm sharp......58 minutes.....not bad Clarke!   TLE was in and out in less than an hour, however, now it was after 10 pm and most pharmacies close at 10.....we found out from the Urgent Care lady there was a CVS over on Washington and 42nd that was a 24 hour pharmacy so we drove over there......by the time the prescription was filled it was 11:20 pm, and now we still had an hour drive back to Borrego Springs (Anza Borrego State Park). We arrived back at the Newell without incident by 12:20, and were in bed by 12:45 am.......you just never know how your day it going to end....SURPRISE!!

Editor's note.......out of respect to TLE's privacy I rarely, if ever, share something so personal about her, but this is real life, and I know many who are contemplating this fulltime life are concerned about these types of situations.  This is the first time in 5 years of traveling, and staying in sometimes quite remote locations that we have had what I would call a medical emergency when we were quite far from medical help.  The odds of this happening increase with each passing year as we continue to add years.  Fortunately this was an easily remedied situation, and just required that we drive an hour.  We have certainly been in much more remote areas where we were probably two hours, or more from help.  I think it is time we subscribed to 'Teledoc', or 'Doctor on Demand', and it is also probably wise that the next time we are in Los Algodones, Mexico where you don't need a prescription for antibiotics that we buy a couple of prescriptions just in case we find ourselves in this situation again.......a 7 day dose of antibiotics costs under $10 there, and they are usually good for a year.....a small price to pay for piece of mind, and to avoid that unexpected 120 mile drive late at night!

Thanks for stopping by!