At this point life is a road trip, but we have been staying put for a week or more and then moving on to our next stop in a day. As we left Malibu Beach RV and our family in Los Angeles we elected to turn what could have been one long looong day into three shorter days just because we could. The “normal” route from LA to San Francisco area is up I 5, about the same as Rochester to NYC on the Thruway. The next acceptable route would be to take the 101, especially since leaving from Malibu in a motorhome the only way to go is North on the Pacific Coast Highway/PCH/CA1 to Ventura. It isn’t even legal, much less safe, to take the motorhome over the canyons to get to the 101 directly.

Avoiding the reasonable and relatively direct we elected to drive as much of the route as possible on The 1. The other question was what stops to make and where to spend the nights. Having spent exorbitant sums for a site in Malibu (more than twice our average per night) we did not want another commercial campground or even a state park since California State Parks are now pushing the ceiling. I guess if you can’t raise real estate tax you get it from other sources. California makes New York parks look reasonable

Our first stop was the Elks Lodge in San Luis Obispo (SLO). I took the wrong exit and then took the wrong turn. After a turn around the block we found our way into the Lodge parking lot with 16 RV spots that back up against the 101 so we can enjoy the road noise right through the night. It isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, but it also isn’t the desert. We made a timely, for us, departure from SLO Elks at about 10 AM and promptly got on the 1 right out of town. I suppose I could recite the towns and the views we passed, but far better authors than I have written about them in novels and stretches have been seen in documentaries and movies. The road rises and falls seeking a foothold on the edge of the mountains that line the coast. sometimes you are almost at sea level and at other times the sea is far below as the road winds around yet another gorge that forms a cleft in the mountains. In places the road has been swept off the cliff by falling rocks and has been rebuilt either by clawing another foothold into the mountain or by building a bridge to carry the road along the face of the cliff. In places the road is so narrow that we felt we were going to demolish our passenger side on the rocks yet again and at times there were broad pull offs so we could let other drivers pass us.

Eventually we found a glorious pull off on the left, ocean, side where we could pause and have lunch and change drivers.

Looking back the way we’ve come

The road ahead of us seems tame

Eventually, with Carol at the wheel, we found our way into Monterey only to find once again that the GPS Navigation required us to make an illegal and impossible U turn to get to the lodge. We ended up disconnecting the Jeep on a deadend in a commercial strip so Carol could jockey the coach back and forth to get it turned around. Remembering the route from previous trips I guided her back out to the main road and up the hill to the Lodge with its beautiful windows overlooking the bay. We are set up here for one night only and chose not to venture into town as we have done that several times and the drive had tired us both. 

We are sitting in Malibu Beach RV Resort in one of our favorite campsites. Here is the view through the windshield:

We are wanderers. Have been since before we started RVing. For the past couple of years Carol and I have talked about where we might settle down “some day.” We had never found anyplace  we wanted to stay for more than a few weeks so the topic was moot. While we were at the Escapade we visited the “Row” where various SKP organizations and Coops had members present to attract new members. We stopped by the Jojoba Hills SKP Resort booth and spoke with John at length. We decided it would be a nice idea to stop there for a week before going on to Malibu Beach RV Resort since it is less than 3 hours from Yechiel and Miriam’s home in LA.

We have not considered a Coop until now. We have stopped at a few of them and they have been very nice, but the members did not seem very welcoming to guests and it seemed it would take some effort to become part of the group. The welcome at Jojoba Hills has been anything but cool. People walking buy have stopped to talk and we have been greeted by everyone with a nice welcome. The views from the site we are on are wonderful

and the facilities are second to none. We are planning on getting on the wait list and leaving a fully refundable deposit on Monday when the office reopens. The refundable nature of the deposit reduces the risk should we get cold feet, in fact the membership payment is also refundable when we decide to leave the coop so the financial risk is pretty small.

Things I never thought would be part of our life, California as a residence (not domicile), staying in one place for an extended period of time, owning a golf cart. We do not plan to give up regular travel, but it is nice to think of having a home base in the warm, away from the crowds, near our West Coast family, with access to fine culture to our north and to our south when we want to take advantage of it. I have no idea how this will work out, but I am looking forward to yet another change in our life style.

To our Rochester friends: we are not giving up the apartment, yet.

When we set out for a drive in the desert we never know quite what we are going to experience. Some happening can be downright terrifying. Even in the Far East where dragons abound we never got into quite this situation. As you can tell from the open door I bailed out and ran, turning back only to get this picture:

Amidst all our other activities the jeep has mostly stayed placidly on paved roads, occasionally venturing off onto gravel roads. We have never quite gotten to a place to venture a bit further into back country. Yesterday the mail came with our permit for Arizona Trust land access and I decided to see if we could take advantage of it now that we are about to leave AZ behind for a year.

Just north of us is Boulders Staging Area with many trails and jeep tracks scattered across acres of BLM land – thank you fellow taxpayers. I downloaded this map and we set off to see what we could do. I will admit we were foolish. We went alone, we told no one where we were going. We trusted Ruby to do whatever we asked of it. We had a great time and other then some new AZ pinstripes we had no incidents. Looking at the map you can see the approach road from Highway 74 and Loops 6 and 8. That is all we did, about 4 miles once we got on to Loop 8. That took a couple of hours. Here is Ruby with me at the wheel climbing over some steep narrow boulders:

The picture almost does this climb justice. 

Where we came from

Where we are headed

Have to have at least one picture of Carol taking a picture 🙂

A week and a half ago we were in Phoenix at the Diane Schuur concert. We left on Saturday to get set up at the Pima County Fairgrounds just east of Tucson for the 55th Escapade, a gathering of about 900 RVs, members of Escapees, for 5 days of fun and education and an opportunity to spend money on “stuff” you just can’t find anyplace else. We even bought a new satellite dish and had it installed so we no longer need to listen to the dome whine as it keeps shifting from one satellite to another. I attended seminars on several of systems in the coach, water, 12 volt electric, etc. I could have taught a couple of them, but there is always something new to learn, or be reminded of.

We made new friends and renewed acquaintance with people we had met along the way. The two best socials we attended were for RVillage and Xscapers (you may need to log in to do more than read the post). RVillage is a one year old social network for RVers of all stripes. We sign in and “join” each camping place we stop in hopes of finding other like minded RVers nearby to sit and chat with. There were well over 80 members attending the social which offered bubbly and snacks to celebrate the first anniversary.

Escapee membership has been steady and not growing in particular because it is perceived as a club for retired full timers (read that as OLD people). The membership has been aging and there is need to bring in younger members who are raising families and working from the road. Thus a new club-within-a-club called Xscapers has been created to welcome younger members while also including the young at heart such as us. The focus is on mobile connectivity and more spaced out less intense gatherings than Escapade. Escapade is wonderful, but it is five intense days that do not leave a lot of time to keep up with daily activities, especially for those who need to keep up with their businesses.

How’s that for a summary of 5 intense days?

We moved on back to Phoenix after a two day stop in Tucson to visit a high school classmate (Margie) and her husband. We arrived in Phoenix and got set up in plenty of time to get to a concert at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts which is actually in the Scottsdale Arts Center where we heard Ladysmith Black Mambazo perform. We have owned recordings of this group from before they got together with Paul Simon to record “Graceland” which lead us to going to Memphis and to tour Graceland some years ago. We seem to be catching up on things Medical while in Phoenix, lab work and such and doing less museum going than usual. Had a delightful visit and dinner with Mary and Tom in Cave Creek after I wrote most of the above.

For now we are busy planning – how I hate that word – our travels through to May 3. As I may have mentioned before we are flying out of Salt Lake City on April 29 to be in Rochester until we fly out on May 3. We are going to the RPO concert on Thursday and then the Percussion Concert in Kilbourn on Friday to hear the world premier of a piece written to honor John Beck. On our return to SLC we will continue east arriving in VT for our nephew’s wedding on June 13. There will be a “minor” detour to Spartanburg NC where we will attend Camp Freightliner to learn more about this chassis we are planning to live on for as long as we are able to be on the road. We will also have our annual service done while there.

How often have I heard someone say “the desert is gray, colorless, boring? I once heard a woman looking out at the mountains in Borrego Springs complain that they were uninteresting. I felt sorry for her companions and wondered if maybe she needed cataract surgery or just a “recognition of beauty” implant. Listening to public radio the other day I heard an announcement that because of the recent rain and cool spell there would be a splendid bloom of desert flowers. The two places that were mentioned were Picacho Peak State Park and Lost Dutchman State Park. We consulted Google maps and chose Lost Dutchman since it was closer. We drove into the park and with guidance from a host and a ranger we set off on a hike to the high places where the desert was indeed in flower:

She is no spring chicken but there was no telling that from her performance. Her range is 4 octaves and her scat singing is just incredible. She matched the saxophone with ease and even sang against the base. We had the pleasure of dining with Susan and Lee Berk, he is a college classmate of mine, at their place and walking to the concert from there. We found ourselves surrounded with lovers of Jazz from Susan and Lee to the entire audience including the head of The Nash where we had been the week before. We will be returning to Phoenix next week and will hear Anat Cohen perform at MIM and Ladysmith Black Mombaza at the Scottsdale Performance Center. In the mean time we are settled in to the Pima County Fairgrounds for five days of RV Rally, a totally different cultural experience.

We are always on the lookout for a venue we can get to with decent music. Carol found The Nash (http://www.thenash.org/) an almost three year old venue on Roosevelt in downtown Phoenix. It is not very far from the Elks Lodge we are staying at in Scottsdale. We tried to get in Friday night but we were too late to get tickets online and 7:30 is real early for us to eat and get into town if we are not sure of getting in. We planned ahead, a bit for Saturday and got tickets for Chuck Johnson Quartet.

 He performed two sets of straight ahead Jazz, mostly standards. The sidemen were also marvelous.

Or have I?  I suppose I ought to devote some writing to our travel history before we started traveling in an RV and before there was such a format as a blog. I will post those thoughts at Goldberg-online.net and mention them here as they happen.

It seems we had too much time on our hands today. We needed to be planning something, it would have been cheaper had we elected to go for a long walk. I mentioned we wanted to be in Rochester for a very special Percussion performance so I got busy booking flights to Rochester while sharing some information about concerts in Rochester with Dottie and Larry (well, Dottie’s name was on the email). Seems there is a Rochester Philharmonic concert that week and Christopher Seaman will be conducting and Jon Nakamatsu will perform the Saint-Saens Piano Concerto #2 in G Major on Thursday. We have flights from Salt Lake City to Rochester on Wednesday the 29th arriving late night so we can recover in time for the concert. We fly back on Sunday to rejoin our coach wherever we have left it.

We had email from Bunny and Alan with whom we have been trying to plan a trip to New Zealand and Australia. They are hot on going on a National Geographic Tour on South Island of NZ. Although the trip looks excellent it is not what we are are really thinking about. We have heard a lot about RVing in those parts, but it seems rather daunting to put it together for ourselves. I remembered that Fantasy Tours (yet another shameless plug) runs an annual 51 day tour of NZ and Australia mostly in rental RVs. As we explored on line it dawned on us that we knew a member of CHAI who represents Fantasy Tours. With just a bit of research we located Marcy’s phone number in an old CHAI roster. That launched a long conversation at the end of which we agreed to take the trip, as soon as they firm up any proposed itinerary changes. Departure is from Los Angeles on March 24, 2016. It is about 30 days in NZ and the 21 days along the East coast of Australia. There is a 12 day extension to the Outback, still in RVs and then a stopover in Fiji on the way back to LA. We are psyched.

Our passports are expiring in January so we are applying for renewals for our travels. They will have plenty of stamps before we get passed the middle of 2016.

Somehow it seems a waste to arrive someplace new and not start touring. I need to remember that this is living not “vacation” not a “tour.” Yesterday, after a lovely lunch at Chipotle in Sierra Vista with Mike and Cindy which extended into mid afternoon, we decided to take the long route back through Tombstone past the San Pedro Riparian Reserve. As we passed through town I saw a tire shop and stopped to rotate the tires on the Jeep as they are wearing sort of weird and then at a natural food market so Carol cold pick up some produce since we were having Ellie and Kelly from our Thailand/Vietnam trip at the coach for lunch. As we pulled into the parking lot I noticed a barbershop next to the store. I hadn’t had a haircut by a barber in some time. I usually just use an electric clipper I keep for the purpose and when Carol goes into a unisex hairdresser I often will have them cut my hair too, they are hairdressers not barbers! These guys were trained barbers. Not only did he reduce my hair length to almost nothing as requested, but he shaved the back of my neck with a straight razor, trimmed my eyebrows and made sure the hair on and in my ears was eliminated. I’ll never understand why as men lose the hair on top of their heads it seems to start growing from the ears. Is it gravity?

Goodness that paragraph seems to have wandered all over the place. I thought I would wax philosophical and then cover some locations and somehow I got into barbering and aging. The mind does wander and there is no one here to edit me, well Carol might try. Back to the initial thought, I know there was one there someplace. We are sitting in Benson with no motivation to move on to Phoenix just yet. Our mail will arrive at Benson General Delivery on Monday at some point. Then we be free to consider moving on. Since we know we have to be in Phoenix on March 6, we will most likely head on up there on Tuesday, that is February 24 if you are not reading as I post it. Actually we are hoping to get into the Tempe Elks Lodge if there is space available.

This year has been an interesting mix of the planned/scheduled and lots of time to stare at the mountains and read. We can even take the occasional hike or long walk just for the fun of it. The planned we have taken on intentionally and then sometimes find it to be a straight-jacket. We really want to go to Escapade, but it is a fixed time commitment. We do enjoy getting together with the people we know along the way, but most people plan more than a day ahead and that means we must also. This is not a complaint, just a comment on how our lifestyle has changed from one of daily/weekly/monthly commitments to a very loose schedule. Also since we are traveling through areas we have explored many times, the sense of urgency to get out and explore is much lower.

On the other hand, while sitting with Ellie and Kelly yesterday, Kelly asked whether we had been to the Amerind Foundation Campus and I replied yes, but many years ago. It is less than 20 miles from where we sit so we will head there after lunch. I looked at their website  http://www.amerind.org/index.html and started drooling over some of their offerings. But that will require us to plan ahead.

People do ask when we will be where and this is as good a time to outline our thoughts for the balance of 2015 as any. Through March 22 we will be in the Phoenix area. April 1 through 13 (at least) we will be in Los Angeles visiting with Yechiel, Miriam and family and celebrating Pesach. We will then drive north to the Bay Area to meet our nephew Leo. We need to fly to Rochester for May 1 and 2 when a percussion piece we have commissioned in honor of John Beck will be premiered. We still need to figure out where we will fly from, Reno? Salt Lake City? I know those sound strange but we are determined to travel east far more northerly than we have in the past. I tripped over the Lincoln Highway in my browsing and we are thinking it would be interesting to follow the first named US Highway back east. Everyone follows “Route 66” we have too, but this is different and it passes through Reno, Salt lake City and Denver. The calendar includes our nephew Steven’s wedding in Vermont in early June, Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival -June 19 to 28, and travel to Greece and the Adriatic with OAT in August and the last stop we are sure of is C’vlle Virginia for Corey’s Bar Mitzvah on October 24. Hmm, just noticed my high school class will be gathering in Rochester October 9 -11 to celebrate our survival of 55 years since graduating. It actually sounds like a pretty full calendar for retired folk who don’t plan ahead.

As I say when I blog the jazz Festival, watch this space to see how it actually plays out.