We left Ramona on January 8th and drove 101 miles of fairly familiar roads to Fisherman's Retreat in Redlands, CA. It was raining. Fisherman's Retreat is in a rural canyon, not far from both Moreno Valley and Redlands. Here is our wet campsite.
We met our friend William for lunch at the Mission Inn in Riverside on the 10th, it was great to see him. He had recently moved south from Marysville, WA.
The rains continued and the next day we found that of the three roads that lead to the campground, two were flooded and closed. Luckily they did not close the main road. On our last full day, the 11th, we woke up to no electricity, the rains had soaked the ground so much that the power poles had fallen over. Since the campground was on a well we had no water since they pumped the water with an electric pump. We were worried since we were going into dry camping and needed to fill our water tank. Luckily the power came back in the evening.
While in Redlands we drove to the Sharper Image store in Rancho Cucamonga to exchange our Ionic Breeze with a newer model since it was not working well, they let us upgrade for the price difference. When we came back we unpacked it and set the new one up and came back to the living room to find that Evita had found the box and made a mess:
We had to clean both her and the floor up from Styrofoam pieces. We had to laugh.
January 12th we drove 59 miles to the Western Area FMCA rally in Indio, CA at the Date Festival Fairgrounds. Diane's father was helping with parking at the rally, but didn't have any say on where we got parked so we were out at the south end on mud:
It worked out though it was just a longer walk to the activities. The mud was not sticky. Here are some views of the rally from our roof:
They had a parade one day, the theme was the 50s:
One of many Elvis's:
FMCA Northwest Area Vice-President Jim Phillips and wife Ann, who we know:
Another beautiful day we saw balloons:
We enjoyed the rally and saw many friends at it. When the rally was over we stayed three nights paying the fairgrounds. We had almost full-hookups since the sewer connection was shared. Here we are the first day packed in tight:
From our roof you can see the place looked different with many fewer motorhomes:
Dexter and Cherie were also staying. Dexter had to fly out and take the car, so we stayed around to keep Cherie company. We took her to Costco and enjoy visiting with her and their dog CC. Dexter was due to come back the 19th so we left that day.