Nelson

Hey everyone!
Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! It's just that this ankle "injury" of mine from golf on Wednesday has kept me from being able to write. Too much "excruciating pain". LOL

Actually, I feel like a total joke that I hit myself in the ankle with my 5 iron. I'm really not quite sure how it happened . . . but it did and there was a witness, so now I'm paying the price. It really hasn't been bad . . . but it's interesting to me that it took such a boneheaded move by me to coax 10 responses to just one post on our blog! Maybe I'll do more boneheaded things. :)

The last few days have been productive and busy. On Thursday, I finally got a chance to wash the RV. "Howie" needed a bath in a bad, bad way. It was starting to look like the engine tub of one of my hydroplanes. Ugh. But we got 'er done, and it looks much better now. Thursday night, as Dawn has already reported, we went to a really neat street fair in down town Palm Springs. They do a nice job of getting the community (which likely grows in population during the winter months . . . you all would be very surprised how many Washington, Oregon and Idaho license plates we see down here on RV's and what look to be "tow cars"), involved with civic activities. Last night we went to the Palm Spring Parade of Lights (or some such name. Dawn probably knows the real name). It was awesome. There was a surprisingly huge crowd there. Bigger than the Hazel Dell Parade of Bands (which some may not know is Vancouver Washington's largest parade of the year). Palm Springs is a third of the size of Vancouver. Anyway, the point is, there's lots of fun stuff to do and lots of people participate.

Tonight, we're in Phoenix. Tomorrow I get to fly to Redmond, Ore. and then rent a car to go to La Pine, where they have two feet of snow on the ground. Ugh. The sunny southwest to two feet of snow. Talk about "culture" shock. Actually, I'm looking forward to the trip. I have a chance to pitch my public relations and design consulting business to a group of really neat people who work for publicly-owned utilities. I'll let you all know how it goes when I get back. We came to Phoenix for me to fly out, though because my original plane ticket for this trip was purchased when we thought we'd be in Arizona by now . . . to stay. When we decided to stay in Palm Springs, we checked into changing my ticket, and found out it would cost more than $600 in change fees, we said screw it and made plans for a road trip to Phoenix. While we're here on Tuesday, we'll check out a few RV Parks and little downs outside of the big city in case we want to come here after the Holidays. It's nice having some flexibility from the people you do work for like we have.

The trip over here today was only 4 hours driving time, but man did it seem longer than that. There's truly not much to see between Indio, Calif., and Phoenix. One little town we wanted to see, however, was Quartzsite, Ariz. About 11 miles east of the border, it's a nearly-nothing spot on the map that somehow draws 850,000 RV'ers every January-February. There are probably a million sites for people to park RVs and camp (mostly dry-camping on Bureau of Land Management land), surrounding Quartzsite, and lots of places to buy rocks, minerals and out of date books. Looks like the world's biggest flea market may also occur in Quartzsite every year. We may pay a visit with the RV for a few days just to do some in-depth exploring. We were curious about the town, though, because of a DVD Dawn bought us after a bunch of people had said we needed to see Quartzsite. The DVD was interesting enough to make us pay a visit, and we had lunch at a restaurant (Sweet Darlene's Bakery & Restaurant . . . possible new Purato's customer for you Kevin Fox!) that was featured in the DVD. It was kinda neat. We had fun.

Anyway . . . my good friend Jeff Paulson (from college at WSU--2004 and 2005 APPLE CUP CHAMPS) lives in Phoenix now and we're going to get together with him tonight for a couple of beers. So . . . for now, that's it. Four days worth of blogging all wrapped up in one LOOONGG (yet pretty) post.

Thanks again for reading!