Exploring.....

6:57 am - Friday - November 17th - GNHS - 52° F, humidity 100%, wind 2 mph out of the north by northwest.....heavy fog this morning....that's weird...sunny later with a forecast high of 75° F.  The view this morning.....foggy.....

On this date in 2017 TLE and I were enjoying our 6th Rincon Parkway sunset....this was a long one......↴

Normally we would have been working Thursday, but with the big Thanksgiving blowout coming next weekend (really begins around Tuesday, or Wednesday) this weekend will be a slow one rental wise.  As of Thursday morning we had just one booking, and that was for a 1/2 day on Friday....nothing for Thursday, Saturday, or Sunday yet.  At any rate, with the blessing of our bosses in Durango, Hunter, TLE and I did not open the office.

There are three hot springs resorts on Mineral Hot Spa Road.....Fountain of Youth, Bashford's, and Glamis North Hot Springs.  Of the three Fountain of Youth is the largest, the nicest.  Whereas GNHS and Bashford's are kind of rustic, funky places catering to the offroad crowd, FOY is very upscale, and gentil with paved, lighted interior roads, a very adequate grocery store, and a restaurant to compliment the hot springs.  We have never checked it out, so we decided Thursday would be the day to do just that.

FOY is about 3 miles from GNHS, so we opted to drive over in the VW around 11:30 am for our first visit.  Our first stop was the Sunset Grill which offers copious amounts of alfresco dining.  TLE ordered their Rueben, and I there BLT.  To chase my BLT I ordered a Modelo Negra (beer).  Mine came with fries, and TLE's sweet potato fries.....

Internet photos

The Rueben

The BLT

.....TLE loved her Rueben, and she is a pretty strict judge of such things.  She has ordered Ruebens all over the USA, so she knows when she's got a good one.  The portions were so large we ended up taking half of them home.  After lunch we drove over to Freddy's Market, and were quite surprised at how well it was stocked.  I would rate it somewhere between a mini-market, and a grocery store.....very nice.  FOY is a full on 'snow bird' destination, and there are a lot of Canadians who migrate here each winter.  There are hundreds of sites with park models, mobile homes, and RV's.  As one might imagine, there are hundreds of electric, and gas powered golf carts carrying these senior citizens to and fro, and one must be careful whilst driving a full size car, that one does not back into one zipping behind you as you are backing.....I almost hit two while doing just that....lol.

We were home by 1 pm, and within a few minutes I was taking a beer induced nap.  When I was young I could drink a couple of brews for lunch and never miss a beat.  Now, one beer is like taking a sedative for me....lol.  After the nap I went outside to tighten some of the ropes we use to hold the 'sail shades' in place.  As is often the case, rope stretches for a few days, and therefore needs to be tightened up every couple of days for the first week, or so.

Around 4 pm I walked over to the hot pools to take another soak.....TLE demurred....I was mainly going for a quick soak, and to watch the sun set, so I wasn't gone long....maybe 40 minutes.  Upon my return TLE suggested we enjoy another fire, so I put some more wood in the portable firepit, and within minutes had had a great fire....

.....around 5:30 pm I noticed the sunset was still ongoing, so I snapped a couple of pictures.....

....then took a picture of all the rope lights TLE and I deployed Wednesday....

.....then a couple more looking from the outside into our 'lido deck'.....

....and with that another GNHS day came to an end.

Thanks for stopping by!

A diversion.....

 7:23 am - Thursday - November 16th - GNHS - 54° F, humidity 96%, wind 3 mph out of the west by northwest.....partially cloudy today with a forecast high of 76° F.  On this date in 2019 TLE and I were at the Angelika Film Center in Poway, CA watching a double feature.....'Midway' and 'Ford vs. Ferrari'....we had free coffee before Midway, and lunch at their cafe before Ford vs. Ferrari.....↴

Ford GT-40....the subject of the movie, Ford vs. Ferrari

Wednesday began and ended with heavy cloud cover, and just as the weather guessers forecast, it rained for several hours during the afternoon, and into the evening, but I get ahead of myself once again.

I enjoyed my hot pool soak so much Tuesday afternoon I went back for seconds Wednesday morning.  The skies were heavy with clouds, and the smell of rain as we walked down to the hot pools to enjoy the hot mineral water, and the threatening weather.  As is the case on a Wednesday morning before 9 am, we had the pools to ourselves....

.....TLE chose to just soak her feet while I luxuriated in the 104° F (the temp varies slightly from day to day) mineral water.  While TLE read, I listened to the Etta James Channel on Pandora.....what a great way to begin any day!

We were back home by 10 am, at which time I changed into dry clothes and went out to deploy the last 5 strings of solar rope lights.  We've been here almost a month now, and it was time to add the final touches to our site environment.  With TLE's help I wrapped 5 palm trees around our parking lot with the solar rope lights, and true to form I neglected to photograph them last night, but I had a good excuse....it was raining....lol.

The rain came a couple of hours later, and continued and off for much of the afternoon....

....it rains so infrequently here at GNHS in the winter that it is kind of a shock to the senses when it more than sprinkles.  There were times when it was coming down quite hard.  We get so used to crystal clear, blue, sunny skies all the time, that when it rains it is really a nice diversion.  With the advent of the rain our outdoor activities consisted mainly of putting things we didn't want to get wet in the trailer, or under the dining canopy.  Otherwise, we spent the balance of the day indoors enjoying the pitter patter of rain on our aluminum roof.

That was our Wednesday....thanks for stopping by!

Staying busy......

7:32 am - Wednesday - November 15th - GNHS - 56° F, humidity 50%, wind 4 mph out of the south.....quite cloudy today with a chance of rain this afternoon, and a forecast high of 75° F.  On this date in 2022 I was soaking in 106° F mineral water in one of the individual tubs....↴

.....which, ironically, was what I was doing this Tuesday afternoon, a year later, but I get ahead of myself.

On our non-work days we make sure we are not getting out of bed before 7 am, most of the time, and Tuesday was no exception.  It was after 7:15 am when we decided to begin our day.  As is my custom I got a cup of coffee, and sat down to compose my latest missive.  I like writing on days when I have no obligations as I can take my time, and be more creative, and colorful.  

After finishing, and posting I headed outside with TLE to take care of a few pressing issues, one of which was we needed to trim back the tree at the front of the Newell.  With TLE's help in holding the ladder, and passing pruning tools (pruning hooks, pruning saw, hand pruners) up to me I was able to cut the tree way back.  There were two reasons for trimming the tree: 1) When the winds blows from the northwest the branches brush up against the windshield, and front cap, and 2) the overhanging branches continuously deposit a kind of dusty pollen  that sticks to the windshield, and front cap.  Once the branches were sufficiently trimmed I washed off the front of the Newell, and she looks a whole lot better now....

....she sure cleans up nicely!  Next up was a second attempt to deploy our third 'sail shade' triangle.  We have three of them, but this one is slightly larger, as we bought it several months before the other two.  Each side is about 4" longer, which makes it impossible to connect it to the other two, so we had to figure out how to deploy it, and still get maximum shade benefit from it.  I think our solution worked well.....

.....while it is connected to one of the other two 'sail shades', the other two points of contact have their own mooring spots....

.....one corner attaches to the patio awning, and the other to the back of the office.....

.....next up was the last wind event blew a couple of composition shingles off the office roof leaving bare wood exposed.  GHNS has no replacement shingles, but in that same wind storm some shingles blew off the 'Roadrunner' building, which is next to the office. They are larger than the office shingles, so I cut one down, and placed it over the exposed wood making sure the upper end was overlapped by the shingle above it.....it's not perfect, but it doesn't rain that much here, either........

......the office used to have one of those wind turbines on the roof, but the all important turbine was lost years ago in another wind storm.  Last winter I drilled a hole in a square piece of plywood, and placed over the aluminum duct using the 1" shaft upon which the turbine used to reside to hold it in place, and keep the infrequent rain out of office.  With each successive wind event the hole in the plywood wallowed out a little bit more until it was a wobbly mess last week.  A few days ago (I neglected to write about it) I found another suitable piece of plywood to replace the old piece, drilled another hole in it, but this time attached a 2 x 4 between it and the roof to stabilize it, and keep it from flopping around in the wind. So far it is working.....

....as I wrote above, exactly one year ago today I was soaking in one of the individual hot tubs, although I did not know this at the time, I decided to take a soak around 4 pm....exactly one year to the day.  Within 30 minutes the sun was beginning its final slide to the horizon......the view is wonderful as the setting sun slowly slips over the San Jacinto Mountains to the west.....

....it was one of those long, drawn out sunsets that just keeps evolving for 30, or 40 minutes.  As I continued my soak I thought about how amazing it is that we can change our view with the ever changing seasons, and enjoy such amazing, rural vistas no matter where our wheels stop rolling.  TLE opted to pass on another soak, so I had the place all to myself.  As I finish writing today's post I cannot help but comment on how  QUIET it is right now.  There is not a breath of wind, and there is not a single RZR running.....NICE!

Thanks for stopping by!

Clean bill of health (dental wise).....

7:42 am - Tuesday - November 14th - GNHS - 55° F, humidity 49%, wind 1 mph out of the southwest.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 81° F.  On this date in 2018 TLE and I were having coffee and pastries at Harden Coffee in Campbellsville, KY on a day off from Amazon.....↴

....we wore matching peacoats.

We had 9 am appointments at Dr. Eva Urena's dental office in Los Algodones Monday, so we were up by 6:30 am.....  

The sun was just rising when we awoke

We were in the VW at 7:45 am heading to the local Speedway fuel station to top off our tank before making the 15 minute drive to the border parking lot.  We managed to snag a great premium unleaded price per gallon of $3.97....the best we have found in over 2 years!  From there we headed to the border parking lot where we were separated from $6 in cash to park.  It's been $6 for years now....one of the few things on which inflation has had no effect.

After a quick 10 minute, 4 block walk we arrived at Dr. Urena's office at 8:30 am.  Thinking we had 30 minutes before our appointments began I went to the bathroom, only to return to the waiting room to find TLE had already been called for her checkup and cleaning.  Within 25 minutes she returned with a clean bill of health, and now it was my turn.....I haven't returned with a clean bill of health in a long time, but was hoping for the best as I sat in the dentist chair.  Within 25 minutes I, too, was done, and I too received a CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH!

After paying our meager $80 bill ($40/person) TLE and I began our walk back to the USA re-entry point arriving there 10 minutes later to find NO line.  We walked right in, handed over our passports, and were on the final 5 minute walk to the Beetle.  It was just after 9:30 am when we got in the car, but it was really 8:30 am California time.  Before we got on I-8 for the first leg of our drive home we stopped at the Quechan Casino to get Starbuck's Frappuccinos (mocha moi, and vanilla bean for TLE) for the drive home.

After exiting I-8 on US-111 we headed into Brawley to stop at the local Walmart Supercenter to pick up a few things, and within 30 minutes were back on the road for home where we arrived WITHOUT incident around 11:15 am.  After unpacking, and putting away the groceries I settled in to catching up on some of the YouTube channels I follow.  I did spend some time masking off the door latch for the trailer in order to apply some black gloss Rustoleum to rust which had been there since Seal Rocks RV Cove back in 2020.....yes, I know, I am a procrastinator from time to time.....

It turned out well

....we enjoyed our first sunset fire on the 'firepit deck'.....it has been way, way too long since we had a wood fire.....

....from the 'firepit deck' we transitioned over to the 'dining/game deck' where TLE prepared stir fry for our dinner.  I took a couple of videos to show her process.....

TLE doing stir fry in the Cowboy Wok

The finishing touches

And there it is....DONE!

TLE used her Vita Clay pot to steam the white rice

The finished dish

......there was thinly sliced beef, broccoli, and ginger on a bed of sticky white rice.....aka: Ginger beef and broccoli stir fry.  Food just seems to taste better when it is cooked, and consumed outdoors...don't you agree?...

The fire is still burning 2 hours later

....as we were finishing our dinner TLE observed that it was time for another round of  'Phase 10', to which I agreed.  She hadn't forgotten that I bested her last week.....lol....

....the game was neck and neck for the first 6 phases, but then I caught her with all her cards still in her 'hand' twice in a row to take a commanding two phase lead, which I never relinquished.  It is not often I beat her in 'Phase 10', but two times in a row?  I'm on a roll...lol!

We retired to the Newell salon for the evening around 7:30 pm, and watched the final episode of 'Morse' on BritBox.  It had a surprise ending, which I will not divulge, just in case you decide to watch this high quality series about a British Chief Inspector (detective).

Thanks for stopping by!