Wilderness Lakes Campground and visiting friends

We arrived at Wilderness Lakes Campground, a Thousand Trails campground, on Monday the 9th. The park is located about 5 miles out side of Menifee, Ca. This park is quite large with 523 sites. There are a lot pull-through's that made it easy for us to park. The sites are fairly large with picnic tables and a barbecue pedestal.  This place has about everything you could want. 2 swimming pools, one is adults only, two clubhouses, one adults only, and tennis/pickleball courts--we play every day we are in the park-- large pool hall, workout room, card room and a nice store for things you forgot to bring. If the place has a draw back, all sites are 30 amp. They are installing 50 amp service to part of the park at this time. They say these sites should be ready to rent by the end of this month.  There are lots of activities for every age group.  We keep busy with pickleball in the mornings.  Duane plays pool after lunch while I usually swim in the adult pool.  In the evening Duane plays pool with a different group.  I play games with whomever shows up.  If no one comes I work on jigsaw puzzles.  

Our site

 They have 4 pickleball courts.

 The adult pool.

 This place should be called Wilderness Canals. The lakes are laid out more like canals with back in sites all along them. The canals are stocked with cat fish but there is an extra charge if you want to fish.  I passed.

 On Friday the 13th we took off on the bike to visit with long time friend Danny and his wife Sally. We rode about 50 miles to Oceanside, Ca. where we walked out on the pier and a great lunch. 

I first met Danny when my family moved to Dayton, Oh when I was in the 7th grade. We became very good friends and spent a lot of time together. We took several trips to Florida and one trip to California together before he headed off to college and I got married. We have kept in touch every since and try to get together when ever we get close enough to each other.

Ruby's restaurant on the pier.

On Monday we saddled up and headed to Danny and Sally's house for a couple of days. The ride their house took us over the Ortega Highway. After going around Lake Elsinore, we started the climb up the mountain.

The base of the mountain

 First level view of the lake

 Here come the curves

 third level view

 Still going up

 Leaning into the curve. Louise is taking this picture over my shoulder holding the camera level.

The pass tops out at 2665 above sea level.  After climbing up you have to go down, all the way to sea level. The curves kept coming and while I was busy setting up for the next one Louise was enjoying the scenery and snapping pictures.

 This is the road leading in to Danny's house.

 Pulling up to the house.

 Sally, Danny and me

 Tuesday morning we headed in LA to visit the Gene Autry Western Museum.

 The first room we went into was a traveling exhibit on Route 66. This room brought back a lot of memories of when I traveled this route with my Grandmother years ago. This is the route that Danny and I traveled when we went to California in 1967.  In this room and several others photography was not allowed. In the rooms that you could use a camera, you could not use flash so I didn't take very many pictures inside. They had a lot of movie/tv cowboy memorabilia which I really really enjoyed since I grew up watching most of the westerns on display. There was a large gun room with a lot of guns used by famous people such as the Earps and Annie Oakley . The next room was Indian bead and quill work. What magnificent work this was. The last room western saddles, cowboy wear  and antiques. This museum is very well done and I would recommend it to anyone interested in our cowboy/western history.

Wednesday mourning we were back on the bike and heading back over the mountain to our little house on wheels. Friday were off to Big Bear Lake for the day. 

Til next time

Duane and Louise

Last day at Jojoba Hills

Sunday was our last day at Jojoba Hills SKP Resort.  After playing pickleball, one of  the park tour guides (resident and volunteer John Macon) took us on a golf cart tour of the resort.  We enjoyed our tour and every day we spent at this beautiful and friendly park.  After lunch we drove to Temecula for some groceries and to top off our fuel tank for our trip next day.  On the way we stopped to photo someone's wonderful metal art.  These were incredible works of art. We were unable to photograph all of the pieces because some of them were placed where there was no pull off.  This road--CA 79--is two lane twisty curvy with lots of traffic. The art is about 5 miles east of town.

Back home we traded the truck for the bike and rode over the Santa Rosa pass to Thousand Palms.  In the valley the temp was triple digits.  We were really sweating by the time we arrived at our destination, which was

 There were a lot of curves on this ride. You can see the road snaking down the hill in the picture below. Louise was taking the pics as we were going through the curves. I had to ask her to stop because her twisting to get good pics was making it hard to handle the bike in the horseshoe bend curves.

the Coachella Valley Nature Preserve.  We work camped here 6 years ago.  We were returning to meet up with fellow volunteers Dave and Donna.  We arrived in time to help Donna celebrate her birthday.

 The Palm House

This house is made out of palm logs set on end. If the logs were on their sides they would rot. Standing them on end allows the moisture to wick out the bottom. This house was built in the 40s if I remember right. The visitors center is in this building.

Happy Birthday, Donna!

Donna is on the left.

After enjoying the party and the company, we took ourselves back over the mountain.  Once we reached the top we were cool for the rest of the trip.  We arrived home safe and sound just before full dark and tucked ourselves in for the night.

Next stop, Menifee.  Later,

Louise and Duane

California bound

We pulled out of Congress, Arizona Tuesday mourning about 7:30 AM. That is early for us to get on the road but I was all loaded and wanted to get on the road before it heated up to much. We had about 300 miles to go to get to Jojoba Hills RV park in Aguanga, California. Jojoba Hills is an Escapees RV Club Co-op park. The park is really nice with a pickleball court right across the street from where they parked us.

Our campsite til Monday. 

Looking left across the street

Looking right across the street. This is a pickleball/tennis court. They play pickleball at 8 am, tennis is played in the afternoon. There were 6 of us that showed up to play on Wednesday. We were told that like a lot of campgrounds in the southwest, people leave when it starts to get hot. We were told that in the winter there are 20 to 30 people that show up to play everyday. Now they play 3 days a week. Louise and I go over to practice every day.

The road heading out of the park. This park is built on a hillside and the sites are tiered. There are 283 sites in the park. They have a great rec center with pool room, exercise room and a large outdoor pool. . I played ping pong last night while Louise played cards.

Wednesday after pickleball, we took off on the bike for the little town of Julian. Route 79 south is really curvy which made the ride a lot of fun. 

We passed a glider airport that offered rides. 

We passed through a lot of range land.

Our first stop was The Julian Pie Company. The Julian Pie Company was started in 1986 by Liz Smothers. They have 2 locations now.

I had apple crumble pie and Louise a 2 berry pie. Both were delicious. 

They have a pretty big selection of pies.

They also make donuts. We may have return June 6 lol

A winery on the way.

 This is in the town of Julian. Julian is old gold mining town. There are 2 mine tours that are open to the public but we thought the price was a little high for us. Louise took this pic and didn't check to make sure it took right. The sign reads "RONG BRANCH" saloon. We will try and do better next time..lol  (I thought  it was funny because of the Long Branch Saloon on Gunsmoke)  Julien is a big town with a school, gas station, drug store, grocery, church, a couple of restaurants and a couple of places to spend the night in addition to the usual tourist antique shop and sweet shop!  

On Main Street

The big town of Aguanga, California. One general store and a post office.  We passed through a lot of little towns like this with one or two businesses and a smattering of houses.

It was a great day for a ride. The temperature here is a little cooler then in Congress, AZ.  Today we rode to Temecula to the Walmart, the Harley shop and the Barnes and Noble. Now Louise is doing laundry and I'm working on the blog. We have a couple of other rides we would like to do before we leave this park. Monday we will head about 50 miles north to a Thousand Trails  park for a couple of weeks.

Til next time

Duane and Louise