Good grief, we haven’t written here in such a long time!
When last we blogged we were just drying out in the desert at Quartzsite and getting ready to trek into Mesa for a couple of days to visit with my old high school buddy Sam and celebrate his wife Deborah’s 60th birthday.
We had a great time, visited and ate lunch with the birthday girl and spent a lot of time catching up. Since we visited last, exactly one year to the date by coincidence, we have all become grandparents. Even though I have been accused many times of having waaaay too many pictures of Emily, I have nothing on Sam and Deb who have pictures of their grandson Judah everywhere!
We got up to Lost Dutchman State Park which is where we were going to stay until we took a wrong turn and ended up in a regular RV park…hot showers! Two in one day!!! And TV! We also took a lovely sunset drive out to Canyon Lake where we parked on a hill and watched the setting sun turn the mountains crimson.
An uneventful drive back to Quartzsite which now seems like home!!
On Saturday January 30 Ross, Bruce and Buck left several hours before the crack of dawn, to drive to Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, for the annual Santa Luncheon. Sponsored by the Fraternal Order of Real-Bearded Santas the lunch is just one event in a week full of meetings and seminars capped off (this year) by a cruise to the Mexican Riviera.
The lunch was great fun made more special by the appearance of the tall, dark, handsome, Red Knight from the Medieval Inn Restaurant which features a jousting tournament among other things as part of the dinner show. The Santas had all gone to the show the night before and, of course, rooted mightily for the Red Knight who returned the courtesy by appearing at their luncheon the next day. For some reason Ross has about two dozen pictures of this guy who by the way appeared in his full costume including sword!
As we slipped into February we sadly said goodbye to our home in Quartzsite and headed south to Yuma and then east on Interstate 8 to the Quechan Tribal Casino. A beautiful new casino right on the road to Algodones, Mexico.
We all trouped up to the Casino to get parking passes (free) and Club Cards and decided to have a beer and check out the Keno machines, well, one thing led to another and the next thing we know we’re in the line for the two-for-one buffet that is served every Monday and Tuesday. All you can eat for less than $5 per person!
We have heard for years about all the various medical supplies and such available in Algodones and, as we both needed new glasses we decided to check it out.
Bruce and Sue were also looking for new glasses and steered us to Algodones Optical which is the largest of the opticians there. After picking our frames and telling them what exactly we wanted (progressive lenses, transitions, etc.) we were amazed and pleasantly surprised when the bill came to just under $300! For four pairs of glasses!! That’s half of what I paid for one pair in Canada!
While we waited, they guarantee two hour delivery, we toured the city centro. For a border town it was very clean and neat and almost everyone spoke English. Bruce took us to his favorite place to have fish tacos and while those were good, the shrimp tacos were stupendous!!
We also found out that they were selling our favorite Mexican liqueur, Dobel, which is leche quemada (caramel) and tequila…yummmm!
When we returned at the appointed hour there had been a glitch with my glasses (it IS Mexico after all!) Which only meant that we had to go back the next day to pick them up, have more shrimp tacos and buy more Dobel!!
The border was very interesting, going into Mexico they hardly even looked at you and didn’t speak if you were on foot. Not so going into the Excited States. The lineup of cars was inspected, x-rayed, and interrogated.
The foot traffic is huge because everything is right at the border including a huge parking lot (run by the Indians, natch) and the line up is lengthy. The US Border guards were very curt, wanted to inspect everything and were pretty generally unpleasant. Ah life in the land of the free and the home of the very, very, nervous.
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