Day 54 - Indio,CA

This morning, we headed into Indio to meet up with Tom and Lori of Tom and Lori RV Life. This is a link to their web presence and they have a very entertaining YouTube channel as well. I had met them about 20 months ago when they were camp hosting at Mt. Hood. At that time, I was on my way down to pick up the 5th wheel RV. This was the last stop before reaching Vancouver. WA.

We met them at the Starbucks inside of the Fantasy Springs Casino in Indio where they were taking advantage of the free RV parking. We must've talked for several hours. Incredibly entertaining, full-time RV couple. We were watching their Saturday coffee video and I mentioned to Bridget that I thought they were in Indio. She said, "you mean like a half hour down the road?". Yep, that Indio and I thought it was in a casino parking lot. But I wasn't sure. Several messages later, she made arrangements to meet up.

After that, we went to the Coachella Valley History Museum. It didn't open until 1pm so we went to a tiny, hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant nearby and I had their Mexicali special. Marinated strip steak with pinto beans, tortillas, and cactus. It was a fantastic meal. I ordered it just to see what the cactus was like.

The museum admission was free (on Sunday) and quite unexpectedly, we got a tour. Detailed explanations of life in the area from the volunteer couple staffing the museum. By detailed, I mean the tour was almost two hours long. Including several outbuildings like the old, one-room schoolhouse, the blacksmith shop, and the date museum.

The date museum reminded me of Shield's Date Garden. I remember stopping here several times back in the '70s and getting date shakes. After the museum, I programmed it into the GPS and Bridget headed for it. She is driving the truck in preparation for running me to the airport on Thursday. The date shake is as delicious as I remember. They used to carry a lot of citrus fruit as well but not anymore.

From the graph, it looks like we didn't have too many clouds in Chiriaco Summit. It looks like the system was in bulk-charge for most of the day. And the batteries are fully charged again and I haven't needed to run the generator yet.