Spa, Spa, Spa….And RV Buddies! Desert Hot Springs, CA
We’re settled into a monthly spot at one of our favorite lay-your-head-back-and-soak-yourself-to-a-jellyblob-of-happiness RV campgrounds. It’s one of the very few private campgrounds we frequent on a regular basis, so much so that we’ve been here every year since we discovered it. It’s quirky, the decor is gaudy and it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere, but Sam’s Family Spa had us hooked the very first time we slipped our bodies into the palm-lined, oh-so-relaxing mineral pools. Ahhhhhhh! For only $540/mo with unlimited spa access it’s a total deal and it’s the perfect compliment to a month of boondocking in the wilds.
But the spa is not the only thing on our minds here. By planned coincidence our good buddies Technomadia decided the lure of spa-time could not be resisted and joined us after their epic storage-purge for a week of social fun. Yeah!! We soul-melded with these techno-geeks at Cape Blanco this summer, so we were super-excited to see them again and paint nearby Palm Springs red with margarita-tasting and street fairs.
Our buddies even threw a creative wrench into the bucket when they invited their friend Sean to the park for dinner and a night-time photo shoot yesterday evening. Sean is a rather masterful night photographer, so it was a total treat to spend the night learning and playing with cameras and lights out in the desert next-door to our site. I’ve got a looong way to go before I reach anything close to Sean’s level, but the evening gave me a bunch of cool tips which I’m hoping to develop into better night-time photos down the road.
And we’ve been busy in other ways too. As you might recall my computer hard drive crashed and died in glorious fashion a few weeks ago. We finally managed to procure all the necessary bits and pieces through Amazon Prime here at the RV park and I plunged into a rather terrifying, but ultimately easy swap-out of the hard disc yesterday afternoon. I can proudly say that, once again, my beloved HP 8740w is back up and running, color spectrum has been restored and I no longer have to guess what my pics look like. Whoo hooo!
Lastly we’ve plunged into our yearly medical checks. Now we’re probably different from the vast majority of folks out there in that we don’t have a primary care doctor and have been self-paying our way through health checks for years. We started this when we signed our catastrophic health-care plan in 2010 and will very likely continue this way through the implementation of ACA (Obamacare) next year. I’ve actually got a series of posts planned on self-medical & cash-pay health care, but suffice to say that we self-selected and self-paid for several comprehensive blood tests earlier this week and have (once again) given ourselves a clean bill of health. All this despite the fact that my blood pumps at the rate of a zombie and I’m terrified of blood draws (seriously most nurses tell me my blood pressure is barely above the level of living dead). I’ve got a few more health checks planned (including my yearly dermatologist visit), but that should take care of us until we get back to Mexico for our annual dentals early next year.
That’s about it for now. Paul is flying off next week for a few days with family while I’ll hang around here and spa (I know, woe be me). Given the fun stuff that happened last year while I was flying solo, who knows what trouble I might get into this time around. ‘Tis the mystery and magic of RV life….always unpredictably jello!
Love, love, love Desert Hot Springs!
It’s a little, quirky gem of a place.
Nina
Sounds great, Nina, so glad you are back at the spa. I am going to have to check out Sam’s when we get to DHS this year in January. We are staying at the Catalina as usual, for the same reason you love Sam’s, those pools! But Catalina will now only honor two nights with our Passport America so we might need an alternative. However, farther points south and east are calling us in January so we only need a couple of days anyway. Love the night shots!
Where is Catalina exactly? I like the sound of it. They don’t honor any discounts here, but the monthly rate is a deal.
Nina
Such a funky, wonderful place. Enjoy your time there with friends, we wish we were joining you all!
Sue
Sure is. Wish you guys were here. It isn’t quite the same without you.
Nina
A month there sounds totally divine. Do you ever get OUT of the pools?? :-))
Only when we prune up LOL…and then only long enough to get dry.
Nina
Glad you have your PC back!
Me too…phew! I’m very happy my little fix worked.
Nina
You should have some nice weather for the next month. I’m jealous..up here in SW Washington it’s cold……wet….and dreary. Love the photo of the bottles!
Sorry to hear of your wet weather. It’s still a tad hot down here (hitting around 85 daily), but otherwise gorgeous and sunny…and of course very dry. Hope you get to see some sun soon.
Nina
Whoa, are you actually a cartoon character, like me? Your hand only has four fingers!
There are actually 5, tho one is hidden 🙂
Nina
The night shots are very fun. Hope you’ll share the tips. I’m impressed with your IT skills. Hmm, leaving you at the spa again, should make for some interesting posts.
Gosh, I learned so much it’s hard to condense it down. The bare essentials involve using a tripod, attaching your fastest wide-angle lens, shooting at your biggest aperture setting and keeping shot exposures to below 30 secs (beyond that you get star streaks). My lens was a bit slow for what we were doing (it’s an 18-200mm f/4.5) so most of my shots were taken at around ISO 3000 and 30 sec exposure…made them kind of grainy and I lost a lot of detail. Sean shoots with a much faster wide-angle so he’s able to use lower ISO and faster exposure times leading to sharper shots with a lot more detail. If I really want to get into this I’ll need a better lens.
Nina
Thanks. I’ve tried a few times with no real wide angle lens but didn’t shoot with as high an ISO. Definitely need a tripod for that long of an exposure. Don’t we all want another lens? 🙂
An RV Park break (if it’s the right one) is needed every once in a while. We are taking a month at Zion River RV Resort right now, and we’ve only been on the road since mid October 🙂
Box Canyon Mark
I seem to remember you guys stayed at the same resort last year. Once you find a good base like that it’s hard to resist the draw to come back. Sure am enjoying all the bike rides you’re doing on your blog. It’s enough to tire me out just reading about them LOL.
Nina
Oh good, an endorsement for this RV park. We have it bookmarked for an upcoming S. Utah RV adventure. Thanks!
Sounds like a wonderful month with the luxury of FHU!! It looks like you have an area to yourself. It will be nice if you don’t end up with neighbors on either side.
Have a great time with Techno and Rick and Joann!
I love the night photos:) Very cool!!
I forgot to mention that Mr.Lewis and I are now great friends! I went visit him with dog treats so I am now in!!!
Lewis is such a sweetheart. We miss those dogs (and the owners are pretty neat too)!
Would you believe we parked just across from Rick and JoAnne without even realizing it? So, all 3 of us are within spitting distance of each other. The perfect RV rendezvous.
Nina
Gorgeous night photos–I take crappy night photos, maybe I need some lessons too! That’s exactly the type insurance we had before my cowboy lost his mind and decided to go back to work–for the time being I (Janna) am using COBRA to continue Mike’s employment insurance, he went back to Medicare. I will decide what to do at the end of 2014. We have two friends who had their catastrophic insurance canceled–it didn’t meet the ACA requirements. Enjoy your spa time!!
Thankfully our current insurance will carry through to Oct 2014, but then we’re going to have to make some big decisions. We will probably have to switch domicile this coming year since the options in SD have dwindled to almost nothing. Lots of things to think about. When we figure it out I’ll definitely be writing a post.
Nina
I may also be abandoning South Dakota as a domicile if those idiots in Pierre continue to stonewall the Medicaid Expansion.
Enjoyed reading your post, Nina. : ) Looks like you guys are living it up at RV Haven! : )
We’re not much for RV Resorts, but when we head out to California (as soon as our old van…and life will allow) we will need to check that out. Thanks for sharing! Have fun!
This is really the only resort we go to…and it’s more quirky than classic resort really. Enjoy your travels!
Nina
Your night shots are fabulous Nina! Enjoy your time at the spa and try to fend off the old guys! 🙂
I’ll do my best 🙂
Nina
It has been absolutely marvelous to jelloblob (does that mean we’re also jelloblogging?) with you guys! Thank you for sharing one of your favorite spots with us, it is now one of ours too!
It’s going to be hard to pry ourselves away from you guys on Monday morning.
We’re already sad that you’ve left snif…snif…until next time my friends!
Nina
Awesome night pics!!! Islandgirl and camp lopez are headed west … hope to meet you along the way. Hector
Finally you’re coming west! Whoo hoo! Enjoy the ride.
Nina
Love all the photos, the one of you is awesome.
Sorry about your computer problems. I have been fighting my own battle with my Dell Inspiron 530 for the last 2 weeks. I reinstalled the OS 3 times and had hours of fun. As a Microsoft Certified Professional, Certified System Engineer and Certified Partner, I decided that was going to get to the bottom of it. Swapped out memory, installed a new power supply, upgraded drivers, looked for viruses, rootkits and cleaned all the components.
Finally, I started backing off on the utilized quad processors on the CPU chip. Down to two and I no longer reboot 30+ times a day. I have gone 3 days without a single bluescreen or spontaneous reboot. Life is good! It is amazing how you always run into something new.
Phew! That sounds like some major debugging. Sure glad my problem was a lot simpler than that! Happy you got yours fixed too.
Nina
Just wanted to let you know what a wonderful inspiration you have been to us. Tomorrow we have new 4 tires installed. May not seem like much – but to us it is the halfway mark. 4 down, 4 to go. I don’t know if you ever watched the original “Flight of the Phoenix” with Jimmy Stewart and Ernest Borgnine (another RV nut before his death). But a little bit at a time – we are getting this bird ready to fly.
Thanks,
Bill and Mia
Whoooooo hoooo! Love to hear about folks who are working their way to the dream. Good luck with everything!
Nina
P.S. Haven’t seen the movie. Will have to check it out.
Glad your computer is up and running…Sam’s is on my short list but not for this year:(….