Makin' pies......

 7:43 am - Saturday - October 22nd - Niland, CA - 70° F, 69% humidity, wind 6 mph out of the south......clear, blue, sunny skies today with a little haze from the humidity.  Forecast high for today is 86° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were hiking some trails in Bryce Canyon NP.....↴

We've now been at GNHS for about 5+ days, and are beginning to acclimate just a little to the weather in October at -54' elevation....yup, we are 54 feet below see level here at GNHS....that is quite a change from living at 4,500' at LPG&RVR for 6 months.  So far we have not had a chance to soak in the hot springs, as it has really been too hot, and the pools were not really ready for occupancy until Friday morning, but we plan to rectify that omission Saturday morning.  We are working on creating our own environment in site #225 slowly, but surely.  So far, we like everyone with whom we work, and we like the owners, Cal and Roslyn (Roz for short)......

We have an altimeter in the Newell

.....I'm not sure if I have shown a picture of our altimeter in quite a while, but our Newell came equipped with one from the factory.  Like all altimeters it must be adjusted to reflect the true altitude just like ones in small aircraft must be adjusted before takeoff, so the reading you are seeing is the true reading based on the known altitude at the resort.  It will vary over the course of a day, or week due to changes in barometric pressure.  When are traveling TLE will pull up a program on her iPhone before we roll our wheels so I can set the altimeter.

We ended our palm fronds session on Thursday believing we had found all the piles scattered around the park, but we were wrong.  When we talked to Pam (the one who stacked them all into piles for pickup) that evening we asked her if we had missed anything, and she replied that we had missed a few in the 'Tent Area'....wait, what?  We didn't even know there were tent sites....lol.  Well, there are.....2 of them nestled in behind the hot springs pools.  At any rate, we agreed to head out first thing Friday morning and pick them up, and dump them at one of the numerous burn piles outside the park.  We thought it would take 15-20 minutes, but what we found ended up filling the large dump trailer beyond full....when we finished over an hour later the palm fronds were stacked about two feet above the sides of the trailer.....

Still smiling, but now because we are really done with palm fronds duty

The trailer is emptied for the last time

Last load on the left

.....we started around 8 am, and were done about 9:10 am, and were home a few minutes later cooling off once again.

We spent the rest of the day, except for about 30 minutes, inside the A/C cooled interior of the Newell.  The 30 minutes I spent outside was to tack down the edges of the artificial turf, and patio awning in front of the trailer as the forecast calls for winds in excess of 21 mph on Saturday afternoon.  I'll need to secure all 6 wheel covers with bungies to be sure they do not blow away, but I'll do that Saturday morning.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post we only made two pizzas Thursday night, and were hoping for a better Friday night.  We reported for work at the restaurant at 5 pm, and already had an order for 10 pizzas (3 cheese, 4 pepperoni, and 3 sausage) from a large group in the park....WOW!.....that was way better than that for which we were hoping.  The large group was going on a RAZR ride, and wanted them ready by 7 pm when they returned.  While we were prepping the 10 pizzas we got another order for two, then when we were finishing cooking the 7th of the original 10 pizza order two more orders came in for 3, and then 5 more, so we ended up putting out 20 pizzas Friday night.  In all it took TLE and I 2.25 hours from beginning to end to put out the 20 pizza orders, and another 15 minutes to clean up our tools, sanitize the stainless steel preparation tables, then sweep and mop the floor.  Each pie takes about 7 minutes to make from the time you begin to dress the pizza dough until the pie comes out of the Turbo Chef oven, you cut it, then put it in a pizza box.

Once again I completely neglected to take any pictures due to how busy were were from the time we arrived until we began our walk home a little after 7:30 pm.  Once again the old adage is proven to be true....it is much better to be busy, than to sit around waiting for something to happen.  We only worked an hour Thursday night, but it seemed like 3 as we sat most of the time.  Friday night we actually worked 2.5 hours, but it felt more like an hour it went so fast!

We'll work at least one more night (Saturday) turning out pizzas, and then on Monday we'll begin our other job, which will be site cleaning after our weekend customers have returned to their workaday lives.

Thanks for stopping by!

Workaday......

 7:23 am - Friday - October 21st - Niland, CA - 68° F, 59% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the south by southeast......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 90° F.  On this date in 2013 we were westbound on I-90 about 40 miles east of Bozeman, MT.....breathtaking scenery......↴

Thursday we were determined to work more than 2.5 hours, or at least I was....TLE had her reservations.  I figured we had about 8 more trailer loads of palm fronds to pickup, then dump for future burn pile consideration......

Still smiling, but my oh my is it hot!

.....we clocked out for a 15 minute break at 9 am after working two hours, then again at 11 am for a 60 minute lunch (we didn't really clock out for our break....we get paid for our breaks, but not for lunch).  After our lunch break it took us another 45 minutes to collect one more load, which we believed was our last load, especially after driving around the entire park one more time to make sure we had not missed any.  So, over two days (Wednesday and Thursday - or a little over 7 hours of labor) we collected and dumped 12 loads of palm fronds, and learned that this type of work is not for old people with old people skin....lol.....

TLE's injuries

My injuries

.....we each wore long sleeved shirts, but both chose to wear shorts, however, none of our garments really protected us completely from the sharp needle like thorns with adorn each palm frond.

Around 4 pm we reported for our first evening of take out pizza making.  The first hour was spent learning how to prepare and make each pizza.  First we made one for our dinner, which we shared with the owners, Cal and Roslyn.  I neglected to memorialize any of the pizza preparation, and/or consumption with pictures, but there will be pictures tomorrow for sure.  We all agreed the pizza was fine, but we also felt the crust should be more crispy.  The pizza oven we use (Turbo Chef) can cook a fresh dough pizza in 90 seconds, but we are using frozen dough.  You can adjust the temperature for the top and bottom to different temps.  Our initial settings were 500° F for the top, and 600° F for the bottom.   We ran the timer for 90 seconds before rotating the pizza, then another 90 seconds (3 minutes in all), but that did not seem to get the dough crispy.  The next pizza we made was for one of the employees, and we did 110 seconds twice, but that was still not what we wanted......don't get me wrong, the dough was done, just not crispy.

While we waited for additional orders TLE did some YouTube research and found one guy doing 500° F for the top, and 750° F for the bottom, and getting a frozen pizza cooked in 4 minutes.  As it turned out there were no more orders Wednesday evening, which was to be expected.  This is a new thing (take out pizza) they are offering, and there were only 30 rigs in the park Thursday evening.  As people checked in we made them aware of the take out pizza option, and they indicated they might order Friday evening.  We expect more activity Friday night, and will get to check our temps further.

We were home in time for a beautiful sunset, and after glow.....

....thanks for stopping by!

Two for one.......

 6:39 am - Wednesday - October 19th - Niland, CA - 70° F, 45% humidity, wind - CALM....forecast high for today is 91° F.  TLE and I are going to work early today to help with some cleanup before opening weekend, so I will be posting my blog later today.  Thank you for your patience!

As it turned out I never got back to the blog Wednesday.....TLE and I volunteered (for pay, of course) to pick up all the palm fronds generated by the recent trimming of the 100's of palm trees here.  I figured it would take parts of two days, and I also figured that TLE and I would need at least one day to get acclimated to the hotter temperatures, and I was not sure how long we would last the first day.  At any rate here we go:

Tuesday:

We slept in Tuesday, but around 10 am Cal (the owner) came by to give us the tour of our work area where we will prepare pizzas 'to go' beginning Thursday.  They have full kitchen, which was a very busy place prior to COVID when the restaurant (Sassy's Outback Grill) was running at full capacity.  Due to COVID they lost their wonderful chef of 10 years, and their entire wait staff (3 servers) who had been with them the same number of years.

We returned home around to take at easy, as beginning Wednesday we would be working outside for a couple of days helping them get the park ready for the influx of customers beginning Thursday.

Wednesday:

TLE and I reported for work at 7 am Wednesday.  Everything is automated here, including the time clock.  Cal (the owner) showed us how to download the app to our phones, which is Time Clock Wizard.  We can clock in and out via the app, and our paychecks will be automatically deposited.  While we were awaiting Cal's arrival I took a couple of pictures of the alfresco dining area of the restaurant (Sassy's Outback Grill).  Back before the Wuhan Flu was unleashed upon us the restaurant was a busy place, serving upwards of 70 meals per hour for breakfast and dinner.  They lost their chef of 10 years, as well as the wait staff and haven't been able to replace them.....one of the casualties of the lockdowns.....

.....I didn't take any pictures of our work on Wednesday, but it was intensely hot in the sun....in the shade it was quite pleasant, however, there is not much shade here......the temp was only around 90° F, but being out in the direct sun was a chore, especially combined with the chore we were performing....picking up 100's of palm fronds, and putting them in a large dump trailer.  We made it to about 9:30 am before we quit for the day (2.5 hours of work).  We ended up filling the trailer four times, and dumping four times before we called it a day.  While the palm fronds are not very heavy they have hundreds of sharp needles on each palm frond which can easily draw blood....as me how I know....lol.  I think it will take us another 5 hours (each) to finish the job on Thursday.

Later in the day, after I had recovered from the heat, I spent time installing the telescoping pole I bought on eBay on which to mount our Starlink 'dishy' to get it off the ground.  I bought the pipe adapter (on the top of the pole, between the 'dishy' and the pole).  Keeping it on the ground worked fine at LPG&RVR, as it sat behind the Newell, but in order for it to get a clear, unobstructed view of the northern sky here I needed to mount it high off the ground......

....I mounted the pole on the right front of the trailer, and I think it came out pretty nicely.  I also deployed some of our rope lights,  and set up our Adirondack chairs.....soon we will have a 'lido deck' once again.....

.....we were in bed by 9 am in anticipation of another early workday.

Thanks for stopping by!

It's still Summer.....

 7:46 am - Tuesday - October 18th - Niland, CA - 70° F, 68% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the east by northeast.....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 90° F.  The views this morning.....↴

Monday was another moving day for us, so we were up at 7 am getting ready to depart the Fontana/Rialto Elks Lodge between 9 and 10 am in the hopes of reaching GNHS* before the heat of the day.  GNHS* is right near sea level, so it is still late Summer there, even though the calendar says it is Fall, and the daily highs are still hitting 90-91° for the next few days until they dip into the 80's later this week.

From the time I finished posting my latest missive until we finished inserting the VW into the trailer for the last time for about 6 months a little over 1 hour elapsed, and it was now 9:20 am....perfect!  Within 10 minutes we were merging into the eastbound lanes of I-10 from the Cedar entrance ramp, and on our way to GNHS*.  The traveling time from the Elks Lodge to GNHS* is just over 2.5 hours, and by 11:10 am, with about 40 minutes of travel time remaining, we were pulling into the ARCO Travel Center at the intersection of SR-86, and 66th Avenue to top off our propane tank for the next 6 months.  It has been six months since we last filled her, and the needle still stood just above half full, meaning we had used less than 1/3 of the 60 gallons we had last April when we arrived at LPG&RVR**.  That Girard tankless water heater really saves on propane....normally with the old water heater we would have exhausted the entire 60 gallons in six months.

From the ARCO it was another 40 minutes until we entered the gates of GNHS*, and backed into site 225, which will be our home for the next 6 months, give, or take a couple of weeks.....

Site #225....environment, including 'lido deck' yet to be created

The Salton Sea is (you cannot see it in this picture) to the west

The Chocolate Mountains to the east

.....just as it had rained in Fontana a few days ago, it had rained here, also, but torrentially, and even though the daily high was forecast to be just 86° F, the moisture content of the soil from the torrential rains made it quite humid.  After connecting our utilities, I hurried inside to cool down in the wonderful Newell A/C....thank goodness for well functioning A/C!

Other than pulling the artificial turf out of the trailer to begin our setup of the 'lido deck', we did nothing else outside the rest of the day.  The forecast for the next week, or so is for clear skies so the sun should evaporate the moisture lingering in the ground, and the humidity will drop accordingly, but for right now TLE and I have some serious acclimating to undergo.  Of course the steadily lowering of temperatures as Fall transitions to Winter here will do more than its share to lower the humidity.

We actually had a nice sunset, which I managed to capture the moment.....

First GNHS sunset

.....it is still early in the 'season' here, and there is a lot of work to do to get the park into shape for the winter season after sitting idle for the entire Summer, and early Fall.  I'm sure we will be meeting with Cal, the owner, to go over our duties in the pizza parlor in the next day, or so.

Thanks for stopping by!

*GNHS - Glamis North Hot Springs

**LPG&RVR - Likely Place Golf & RV Resort

Saving the oldest for last.....

 8:00 am - Monday - October 17th - Fontana, CA - 59° F, 77% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the south....crystal clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 83° F, which we will not see as we roll our wheels in about an hour.  On this date in 2015 my daughter Kate married Nick....hard to believe it has been 7 years already......↴

Sunday was to be our last day at the Elks Lodge in Fontana, and we had just one child left to visit.....our oldest son Chris, who just turned 50 six weeks ago.....just writing that gives me pause.  How is it I have a 50 year old son?  I remember my 50th birthday, and it wasn't that long ago, but only if you count 23 years as not being long ago....lol.  He, and his wife Rochelle have been married over 21 years now, and have two children.....Cynthia, and Christopher.  We set a time with Chris of 2 pm on Sunday to arrive at their home in Rancho Cucamonga, CA for a BBQ.

We didn't deploy much stuff for our 4 day stay, so there was not much to do Sunday morning except for me to finish a couple of projects, whilst TLE did another load of laundry in the Splendide, which is working splendidly again, by the way.  To finish the two projects I headed to the local Home Depot, which is just a long block away from the Elks Lodge.....how handy, right?  I needed a couple of air compressor quick connects, and two new water filters for our two stage city water filter we've been using for a couple of years now.  I found everything I needed quickly and was back home within 20 minutes.  To visit the local hardware store when we are in Likely is a 40 minute round trip, plus whatever time you spend within the doors of Ace Hardware.  

By 1:30 pm we were on the road driving to Chris and Rochelle's.  Rochelle is an avid, and very loyal reader of my blog, and I was not surprised to receive a text from her that the home was ready for blog pictures to be taken....lol.  The first thing we did when we arrived was walk into the backyard to take an 'usie'......

....any time we get Chris and Rochelle to ourselves for even an hour is precious.  Rochelle makes my son very happy, and for that I will love her as if she were m own daughter for the rest of my days.

Within an hour of our arrival Chris and Rochelle's son, Christopher, and daughter, Cynthia, arrived with her husband Daniel, and our two great grand children Daniel, and Jameson, so another 'usie' was in order.....

TLE holding Jamison...for the first time he ran up to us and wanted to give each of us a hug......it just melted our hearts

-t

Left to right - back row: Moi, TLE, Chris, Rochelle and Christopher

Left to right - front row: Daniel, Jameson, Cynthia and Daniel

.....we had a great time visiting with everyone, and the BBQ tri-tip sandwiches were scrumptious Chris!

By 4 pm TLE and I were feeling the effects of three consecutive days of socializing, plus we needed to make a quick stop at COSTCO to pick up some things before we got home, and then we needed to stow the patio, and window awnings in preparation for lift off Monday morning.  We've been getting heavy dews the few days we've been here, and I didn't want to stow them wet Monday morning.

I was in bed by 9:30 pm.....very tired, but with a large smile upon my face.  What a great time we've had catching up with our kids, grandkids, and great grandkids!  My youngest son, Tim, his wife, Laila, and their two children (Crosby and Bowie) moved to Woodstock, GA about 6, or 7 months ago, so we will need to fly out to see them before we return to LPG&RVR in April.

Thank you for stopping by!

Time to reacclimate......

7:27 am - Sunday - October 16th - Fontana, CA - 61° F, 93% humidity (OMG, will the madness never end?), wind 3 mph out of the southwest.....heavy overcast this morning with a forecast high of 74° F.  On this date in 2015 TLE and I attended the wedding rehearsal in Riverside, CA for our daughter Kate, and now son-in-law, Nick.....↴ 

Whenever we come into SoCal for a short period of time, such as this time (just 4 days) the days we are here are a whirlwind of visiting with family, and friends.....mostly family as we have 5 children, 9 grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.....that is a lot of catching up to do in a short period of time.

Saturday we had a date with our oldest daughter, Meredith, who was born in 1978 on my birthday. I am always so impressed with her breadth of knowledge about most anything one might want to talk about, and when TLE and I are with her the time just seems to melt away.  We met her at Simple Simon's Bakery and Bistro in the walking mall in downtown Riverside (next to the world famous Mission Inn) around 10 am for breakfast.  Whenever we are in town breakfast at Simple Simon's is a must.  They make all their bread, bagels, croissants, and pastries, and many people visit their establishment just to purchase one of the aforementioned.  We had to park about 4 blocks away as parking is always an issue on Saturdays as there is a weekly farmers market.....

.....which draws thousands of visitors.  Simple Simon's is located about 1 block south of the farmers market.  Their sign says they serve Lunch & Breakfast & Lunch.....I've always wondered why lunch is mentioned twice.....maybe I should ask one time, right?  LOL!.....

....Meredith beat us there as she found parking spot right on Mission Inn Blvd......

....whilst Meredith snagged an indoor table (it was quite cold, and stormy looking outside so we forewent the alfresco option), TLE and I got in line to order 3 breakfasts.....

.....they have a one page menu at Simple Simon's, and their omelettes are for which to die....

.....TLE had their Breakfast Croissant Club, I their Fresh Spinach & Bacon Omelette, and Meredith their Chicken Apple Sausage Omelette.....all of our breakfast entrees were splendid.....

.....as always, the conversation flowed non-stop, and soon the restaurant got much busier, so we decided it was only right to abandon our table so someone else might enjoy it.  From there we walked across Mission Inn Blvd. to visit one of our all time favorite thrift shops, Mission Galleria, which is 4 stories in all, counting the basement, and they have a lot of stuff to see.....

....a little after 12 pm we bid Meredith adieu, and headed back to our car.  From there we stopped off at Walmart to buy a few things, and were home sometime after 1:30 pm.

Sunday will be our final day here at the Elks Lodge in Fontana, CA, and by Monday afternoon we will be at our winter job site, Glamis North Hot Springs.  I was looking at the weather forecast for Likely, and for Niland, where Glamis North is located.....quite a different forecast for the two places....

......a 31° F differential for the morning lows at each location.  I think we've got some adjusting, and reacclimating to do...lol.

Around 3 pm it began to rain, and continued on and off well into the evening. At times the rain came down so hard one could not hear the TV audio at any volume level.  Additionally, we had quite a bit of lightning and thunder....something we only briefly experienced at LPG&RVR.

Thanks for stopping by!

When the Splendide is not so splendid......

 7:35 am - Saturday - October 15th - Fontana, CA - 62° F, 92% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the southwest.....heavy marine layer this morning with a chance of rain later today, and a forecast high of 71° F.  On this date in 2021 we stopped in a Rest Area off I-90 eastbound in Washington State to find a billboard advertising Elks Lodges, and saw they had used a picture of our Newell and American Trailer while we were staying at the Elks Lodge in Lompoc, CA back in April of 2017......very cool!.....↴

We refused to get out of bed until the sun had come up, but by 7:30 am it was obvious there was a heavy marine layer blocking out any hint of the sun, but at least it was light outside.  According to everyone with whom we have talked since we arrived it has been quite humid the past 10 days here in SoCal.  We've been used to humidity in the 15-25% range the past 6 months, so returning to SoCal where it is normally pretty dry to find humidity in the 90's is kind of a shock to our collective systems.....lol!

Besides seeing our kids and grandkids, our other main reason for spending 4-5 days at the Elks Lodge in Fontana before continuing on to Glamis North Hot Springs (to be referred to as GNHS from now on) was to pull our Splendide washer/dryer combo unit out of its cubbyhole once again to address a recurring problem with the dryer cycle.  The washer portion of the Splendide would work fine going through the wash, rinse and spin cycles without a hitch, but 10 minutes into the dryer cycle it would shut down.  I think I wrote about dealing with this issue when we were at LPG&RVR.  At the time we had vacuumed out the dryer vent hose, and using the crevice tool for our ShopVac we vacuumed out, as best we could, the rubber tunnel running from the back of the washer/dryer down into the drum area.  It was obvious to us at the time that the air flow coming out of the vent was not what it should be, but after doing the vacuuming it seemed to improve a bit, so we put her away, and she worked fine for another week, or two, but then the dryer started shutting down 10 minutes into the drying cycle again.  LPG&RVR has a nice laundry with pretty new equipment, and it was only a short distance from site #55, so TLE decided she would utilize those facilities to wash our clothes for the final few weeks we were there, and then we would deal with the Splendide when we returned to SoCal and would be nearer to the service folks who would come and and diagnose our problem.

Anyway, I decided to pull the Splendide out once more to see if I could find something obvious, like a big lint blockage deeper into the machine.  Around 9:30 am after finishing my latest post, TLE emptied the pantry, and then I removed the shelving, and doors so I could pull the machine out.  Once it was out I removed the top, then a panel on the back so I could access the rubber snorkel connecting the vent hose with the dryer.  Most of the time the problem is not very obvious, but this time I was blessed with the obvious.....

You are looking at the bottom end of the rubber 'snorkel', an obvious place where lint might gather....not a good design

That is a LOT of lint

......I was initially aghast at how bad the clog was....there was no way you could see it without removing the entire snorkel from the machine, but in the end I was so relieved to find the problem was easy to fix, and would not involve the services of a costly mobile service guy.  I spent about 10 minutes thoroughly cleaning out the snorkel, then as I began to reinstall it our daughter Kate, and her oldest son Elijah arrived for lunch, so I took a break and joined TLE, Kate and Elijah out on the patio behind the RV section here at the Fontana Elks Lodge.  I failed to take a single picture to memorialize the occasion, but needless to say, we had a great time talking, and eating sandwiches prepared by the hands of The Lovely Elaine (I type out TLE once and while as there are some folks who wonder what TLE means).

After our lunch I returned to the task of putting the Splendide back together, and then pushing it back into its cubbyhole where it is my prayer that it will remain for a long time to come.  By the time I finished my job, and TLE was able to put all our stuff back into the pantry it was after 2 pm, and I was sweaty (high humidity) and tired.

We had also arranged for our daughter Sharon, Rod (husband) and Brayden (6 year old son) to join us for dinner at the Elks Lodge.  They host a dinner every Friday night at 5 pm, and we eat there at least once, or twice each time we are here.  We had a great dinner filled with a lot more conversation, then it was time to bid everyone adieu.....

......we had barely said goodbye to Sharon, Rod and Brayden when our oldest daughter, Meredith showed up to welcome us home.....we had plans to see her for breakfast Saturday morning, which is still on, but being able to spend a little extra time with her is quite a bonus!

By the time Meredith left it was going on 9 pm, and I was tired after a few hours of socializing with our three daughters, and was in bed a little after 10.  We'll see our oldest son Chris on Sunday at his home along with Rochelle, his wife, and hopefully their kids (Cynthia and Chris).

Thanks for stopping by!