Animals and Wine?

Today was a good day, knowing travels will involve animals and wine. After dealing with Social Security Administration (outstanding rep.,she was great), we went to a petting zoo. Actually the zoo was a small farm called Sugar Plum Farm. The camel, Zeus, was a definite people camel, he loves human interaction.
Carol is with Aurora the zebra. Carol and I were fascinated by the fact that her dark stripes are raised. or was it, her light stripes were close cut? Either way she was a beauty. Other critters that live on the farm include a water buffalo named Ophelia, a capybara named Eros,  alpacas, llamas, exotic birds, and a Juliana pig named Daisy. The petty zoo is small but fun, and when you're done petting the animals, you get a sample piece of chocolate. The petting zoo is only a tease to get one to buy chocolates, ask Carol, when she walked out with two flavors of truffles.

Our next stop was a little wine tasting at a winery we had visited in the past on a wine tour. Our philosophy is to have dessert before the main meal, to ensure we don't over order the main course. With that said we did some wine tasting. It is amazing how a relationship kinders a similar taste in wines.

We settled on the "Field Blend", "White Merlot", and a Port of course. One of the wine stewards explained how red wines get their color. The longer the red grape skins are kept in the mix, the darker the wine will be.

After dessert we headed out to try a new burger joint, that's new to us. The place is called Burger im, which has multiple meat choices for your burger, ranging from Angus beef to salmon.

Carol ordered the Angus burger, I had the salmon burger. Carol enjoyed her burger, I was a little disappointed with mine. The pineapple had a stronger flavor than the salmon, and the bun would have been better toasted. We do plan on making a return visit, and I will try the lamb burger.

After lunch we headed home for a nap before our night at the Comedy Club.

We received the tickets for the show when we ate at Kelsey's a couple of nights earlier.

The headliner was Murray Valeriano. He was OK, but I was turned off when the "F" word was slung around too much for me. Part of his show was scripted, but he was flexible enough to interact with the audience. After the show Carol and I walked back home to relax and prep for tomorrows events. Walking over to the show we were wondering what was happening tomorrow because there are all kinds of TV trucks here. During the show we learned that there will be a televised boxing event.

Good night.

Tortoise Tourism

GOOD MORNING folks. Remember that Buffalo Chicken Salad I brought home last night, well it made a fine omelette this morning. Our fun today began with a visit the Temecula Valley Museum.

Do you see yourself here?

The museum is located near Old Town Temecula. Inside is the history of Temecula valley, who's who in the valley, who took over the valley, and all the other good stuff. I'm sure some of you folks remember, and actually watched Perry Mason. How many folks know who wrote the Perry Mason series? This famous author wrote books too. If you said, Earle Stanley Gardner, you would be correct. I didn't realize he actually lived here from 1937 to his death.

Earle Stanley Gardner's Office.

He owned a 3,000 acre ranch here in Temecula. Part of his ranch is on the Indian reservation, and supposedly his home can be seen from the casino. The office on the left can be seen on the 2nd floor of the museum.

While traversing the 2nd floor children have on hands opportunity to touch history itself.

 How would you like your four dozen eggs delivered in a metal case? How about this lovely training tool?

 
After we enjoyed the museum, we took a long walk across the street for lunch at a restaurant that is basically farm to table. This place is communal eating from farmer style tables. Once you enter the

door, you pick up a menu, walk over to a counter and place your order. Take your number to a table and sit down, and wait for food, the prices are what you would expect for this style of food. Speaking of food... Carol and I kept it simple, we had sandwiches.

Carol had a turkey sandwich on ciabatta, with a spring salad. I had a more robust sandwich of turkey, ham, bacon, and cheese on a pretzel roll, side of southwestern chicken and rice soup. The food was very good, and came to the table in reasonable time. These folks are only open for breakfast and lunch.

After lunch we took a drive to Escondido to gift my Dad's flag to a friend that collects and displays memorabilia from veterans. The late afternoon was for relaxing.



GOOD NIGHT folks.

Pechanga

We made it. The drive up to Pechanga was pleasant, traffic moved fairly well. We arrived a little early and cost us a whopping $10.00 for early arrival. We learned a valuable lesson with our reservations... it is probably best to speak with a person because some spaces don't qualify for Passport America... we got one of them (that didn't qualify). The site is a nice site in what they call the "Buddy" sites, two sites share a common portico between the two sites. It was great getting here on a Monday because there were few rigs, and it was quiet, but I suspect it should begin filling up about mid-week in anticipation of the 4th of July celebration. Check in day was spent getting settled in and resting, it appears that I have bronchitis, but I don't plan to let it ruin the stay-cation, just have to pace myself.

 Last night  we walked over to the casino, checked it out and had dinner at Kelsey's. Kelsey's atmosphere was nice for a sports bar that serves dinner. 

The portions were good sized, Carol and I took home leftovers. I ordered a Buffalo Chicken Salad Wedge, Carol ordered Cheese Kurds. For you Mid-westerners, the kurds were done California style, battered and deep fried. Have no fear, they tasted good, the batter was not over powering. I was surprised when my wedge showed up, I was expecting the usual wedge with the sauce being buffalo wing sauce and a smidgen of chicken. Instead, the wedge was broken down and covered with a large quantity of chopped buffalo wings and their sauce. The cheese kurds were just a start for Carol, her main course was Tri-tip in a BBQ sauce. I ordered ribs with BBQ sauce, and fries. The BBQ sauce appeared to have a whiskey flavor to it. It was great on the fries too. Of course we made room for dessert. I could leave you guessing which ones we had, but I am a nice guy, so I will tell you. Carol had the cheese cake (bottom left with chocolate swizzle stick), I had the molten lava brownie (right center, the white is ice cream). Needless to say I finished my dessert because I hate to see a dessert spoil, Carol on the other hand was trusting and brought part of her's home.

We came home and started watching the Dark Shadow series (I slept through most of it). The series was kindly donated to us by our friends and fellow Escapees, John and Sue Ford.

Tomorrow we plan to visit a couple of museums in Temecula.

  

Bye bye Prescott Ave.

Our  farewell photo in front of someone else's home. We had a long drive to our temporary property rental, roughly 2 miles down the road heading east. The Elks lodge in El Cajon has space for seven RVs. The sites have electrical and water, there is a dump station on premises. The lodge is pretty busy with extracurricular activities. Since we arrived Saturday, this being a Thursday, there has been two wedding receptions, a flag ceremony, and dinner served most nights.

The peace and quit is only broken by bouncing basketballs until 11 pm., from the outdoor court at the Crunch gym next door. If you want to life in a vacuum, this is not your lodge, but if you still want to be in society, then this is a nice place to stay.






Sporty looking transportation huh? The first two days I rode to the trolley, and off to work. The ride from the lodge to the trolley station was approximately three miles, thank goodness it is a multi-speed bike. I was surprised that my journey to the trolley wasn't as bad as my mind told me. I was grateful for Wednesday, I went on vacation, no having to return until after the start of July.

Carol has been a busy bee as well. She used some string rice lights to create a hanging light fixture for the outside decor.
We were scheduled to visit the zoo today, but the retirement gods are getting even with me by providing me the opportunity to catch a cold, or some other bug. If you all were expecting us to travel the world here in El Cajon, forget it, we live here. Our big drive is to get the 5th wheel organized from the move in. I could have pictures but Carol asked me not to post any. Just imagine yourself moving into your new home the first week.

Good night.

Almost Kinda Sorta Full time RVers

A lot has happened since the last post. The escrow process went very well, the new owners were so excited. We knew they were excited about the house when we saw the hit list for desired repairs: caulk around tub faucets, leaking tub spout, caulk around kitchen sink, and correct slope of kitchen sink drain. We love our buyers.

No longer bedroom, only room.

If you remember my last post I told you all we had left to get rid of was our beds, TV, and recliners. Be careful what help you ask the Lord for, then be ready for it to happen, the first things out the door were the TV and beds, which meant we sleep in the trailer now. I had electrical hooked up already, now I needed water hooked up so we didn't have to run into the house to use the bathroom. I am still working so I got up at 3:30 or 4 am and went into the house to get ready for work because we still had not moved all our clothes into the trailer. I started riding my bike to the trolley station to build up my stamina for the ride from Santee Lakes to the trolley during the end times of my glorious opportunity to fit into society, working. I parked my bike in the house, that's right, in the house. A little over a week later the recliners found a home, now we are pretty much in the trailer, with exception of cooking, although most of our dry goods have been moved into the trailer too.

Where are the recliners?

Our new friends.

Remember those prospective buyers I mentioned earlier, and how excited they were to be buying the house... well we got a call from our realtor asking us if it would be OK for the buyers to come and do some measurements, (ya see the house had only been in escrow for a couple of weeks) our response was, sure it's OK. They are a nice young professional couple. When they arrived they only planned to spend few minutes getting measurements, we kept them for almost two hours talking about the house and answering additional questions they had, and yes they were still thrilled about buying the house.

To take our minds off the escrow the process, Carol and I decided to sign some other papers, I believe they were part of my retirement package, it was a good feeling. I also sent my application for Social Security in, I hope they don't expect me to be social just because I am accepting their money.

I wish I had thought about taking a picture of the wheat field (fox tails) growing in our back yard before I harvested it. When I finished mowing it I told Carol I had harvested my fox tails for the last time, and ready to pass the reins to someone else. Now the front yard was an entirely different story. Just before the house went on the market a gopher decided that he wanted to traverse our lawn... he is no more, First,I taught him how to swim, then I helped him into the after life, may the gopher god have mercy on his soul. Now, back to the front yard. For those of you who have never lived in Southern California in the late spring, early summer months, you may have trouble visualizing a nice green field of weeds and grass... not green, but brown and crunchy. Believe it or not even brown crunchy lawns need loving care, so I mowed it for the last time as well. Now the front and back lawns are  beautifully manicured. I washed the lawn mower, but did not wax, in preparation for turnover.

With being antsy about moving on, it was no problem for us to answer the question, "can we close a week early". With lots of discussion (somewhere around two minutes), we said it would be no problem. Now the issue for us is finding a place to move the trailer. The final walk through was set up, and our realtors came through the house and left. Their realtor made comment that this was one of the easiest transactions he had done, no escrow issues, and cooperative sellers, I think he was talking about us. It was helpful having a realtor that has been in the business for awhile with excellent connections for the process.

We are on our way to the Elks lodge for a week before heading to Pachanga Casino for a few weeks.