December 5, 2009 – Temecula, CA

We’ve been to several RV parks associated with Indian casinos, and their quality has ranged from awful (a casino on Highway 40 in New Mexico) to sublime (Seven Feathers in Canyonville, OR); this one is good, but not great. The grass at each site is nice, the sites are plenty big enough, and there’s no gravel to hurt my tender feet. The walking opportunities, however, are kind of limited. I have to stay on leash almost all the time, and even the dog run requires leashes; what’s with that? How do you run with a leash on and Geri or Don attached to the other end? Doesn’t work for me. Please don’t think I’m a big complainer, consider me a reviewer of RV park quality.

Geri and I met a lady this morning who was walking two Goldies, a boy and a girl, both rescued from shelters. They were lovely, friendly dogs, and the girl was almost white, like my old pal Buddy was. The boy was very smart, and he knew how to sit on someone’s foot while they were being petted so that the petter was unable to move. He knew how to move his snout between a person’s hand and another dog, thus moving the petting action to him. I didn’t think any other dog knew these things. Geri and the lady had a good long talk, though it made me a bit nervous when they talked about adopting abandoned dogs; I don’t want Geri or Don to get any wild ideas. We had to move the coach to another site before leaving on our explorations, as someone else had reserved the site we were on. Don managed the move very crisply and quickly, and we were in the truck and heading out before noon.

Geri wanted to go to a town called Julian, which is up in the mountains south of here, so that’s where we headed. It turned out that Julian was quite a distance away, so the trip took awhile. We stopped at a place called Outdoor Resorts Rancho California, which we had seen ads for in RV magazines, and was related to parks that we had stayed in at Las Vegas and Newport, Oregon. It looked very nice, but they wouldn’t let use cruise through the place. Looked like it was favored by the golfy set; they had a full-sized course there. So, we kept chugging up the hills to Julian. When we finally got there and got out of the truck, we realized that we wouldn’t be here very long; the temperature was in the low 30’s, the wind was blowing fiercely, and Don thought it was going to snow any minute. And the place was packed with tourists! We even had trouble finding a place to park. Julian is famous for its apples and apple pies, so we found a place that sold locally made pies, bought one, got back in the truck, and headed down the hill.

Geri and Don hadn’t had lunch yet, and they were starting to get grouchy about it. I, of course, had demanded mine before we left the RV park. Don was fixated on getting some Mexican food before our little trip was concluded, and we found a little restaurant in Ramona that looked OK. They went in and had their 3:00 PM lunch, and reported that it was excellent and very reasonably priced. The place is called La Cocina, and they recommend it to anyone who is travelling in the area. Garmie did a great job of getting us back to Temecula, where we did a little shopping before returning to the rig. I got a nice dinner right away, my reward for spending most of the day couped up in the back of the truck.

Geri and Don decided that they couldn’t leave Pechanga without making a contribution to the welfare of the tribe by visiting the casino, so they called the shuttle and shuttled over there. They came back a few hours later, a little pleased with themselves; Geri had kept her losses to a minimum, and Don had walked away with several months worth of dog food in winnings. Good for them!

Tomorrow we head for home. This has been a fun little trip, we’ve been able to explore some parts of our region that we hadn’t seen before, we’ve partied with relatives and friends, we’ve met nice people that we probably will never see again, and I’ve been complimented on my manners and appearance endlessly. What more can you ask for? I’ll give you a little wrap-up tomorrow! Nite, all!