Work Day...!

Greetings!
We had a wonderful day yesterday. We had sort of scoped out the little "strung-out over miles" community of Newberry Springs on Saturday. We found two churches about a mile apart on the same road as the elementary school. One was a Mormon stake house and the other a Community Church. The owner of the RV Park says there is a 3rd "somewhere out there off the road a ways," but we never found it.

We didn't get up terribly early Sunday and by the time we showered and ate breakfast I thought it was too late to go to church, but it was only 10:30 and services started at the Community Church at 11 AM which is only about seven miles away from us. It has got to be the friendliest church we have ever visited. We were about ten minutes early and people came from the other side of the building from where we were sitting to say hello. There were probably at least 150 people there -- I have no idea where they all came from as it doesn't seem that populated around here!

After services (they have a nice 18 person choir and good music) a fellow named Pete caught us as we were shaking hands with the pastor and invited us to lunch. We hesitated a few minutes, and thought "why not?" Pete and Dixie live almost fifteen miles from the church in a community called Calico Shores which is built around a pair of man-made lakes of about 30 acres. (All of these "lakes" around here are filled from wells -- they are pumping from about 300 feet down.)

We ate and talked and laughed a good share of the afternoon. Dixie is an RN who commutes three days a week (12 hour days) to Loma Linda where she works in Labor and Delivery. Pete is retired and it was amazing how much he and Forry are alike. Pete was also formerly a pilot -- they spent a couple of years in Liberia, Africa where he flew for a mission group while Dixie worked at a lepersorium. He flew Super Cubs AND a Cherokee Six, which is one of the airplanes that Forry had! (We used to fly it to Baja with the Franzes and the Kramers and all the kids...!)

We got back to the RV Park about 4:30 and had enough time before dark to get one side of Auntie Violet cleaned before dark. Forry has a cleaner that you wipe on and then just wipe dry.

This morning we did the other side and the front and back. She was filthy with the grime from the de-icer stuff and sand that she got went we came over the passes from Oregon. THEN, we decided we'd better do the car too as after the coach was clean, it really looked bad!

THEN, we decided to go for a walk as we hadn't walked yesterday. We are trying hard to get back into the exercise regimen that we sadly neglected over the holidays -- as did everyone else we talk to!

We are planning to leave for Quartzite and the Alpine Coach Assoc. Rally in the morning, so decided we should run into town for last minute groceries and to stock up on paper plates -- you need to conserve water out there as there are no hook-ups... I think Forry likes the idea of not doing any more dishes then you can help as the dishwashing is his job.

We did go out to dinner and had a great Mexican dinner at Dos Domingos in Barstow, but we are both pooped tonight!