12/10/05 Our activities this week involved going with some of the group of Boomers here at Sidewinder Road to a place called the Graffiti Plains, just north of Winterhaven. This is a fairly large area where many people have used the larger rocks to write their names, the dates of their visits, and some messages. Ed & Jolene Northup helped Elaine and me learn how to program our GPS receiver to find some hidden containers called geocaches. It involves following the directions of the GPS to the place where the container is hidden, so it is fun and helps us get a nice walk too. The hilarious part occurred when I programmed in the second one and the GPS told us to go 6885 miles to our left. Ed checked everything and discovered I had entered East instead of West for one of the coordinates! The other funny part was when we found the first geocache and then realized that the rocks at the site spelled out "geocache".
Once again there was a carload who went recreational shopping at garage sales and Elaine returned home with many treasures. The best one is in a picture below - a small fiber-optic Christmas tree for the dashboard of our rig. Below it in the picture is our lighted and decorated ceramic motorhome which we got last year from our friends Bob & Nancy Colbert. We have a few other decorations hung up, including some beaded snowflakes made by Elaine, so our rig is looking quite festive.
The last picture below is a sunset picture taken tonight. It was a beautiful sunny day today, with no wind, and this colorful sunset. There are still about 8 rigs here, although some have left and more have arrived to take their place. We will probably leave sometime late in the week to drive to Tucson to spend Christmas with Elaine's sister Penny, and her family. But we have certainly been enjoying our laid-back time here on the desert!