With each holiday season spent in this part of the country we experience a plethora of gatherings, parties, and festive occasions. Each with the goal of socializing, meeting new people, entertainment, trying out new (and sometimes sketchy) foods on the guests, gaining weight, and trying out new and wondrous libations.
This year was no different!
The season started with us helping our sister, Kathy, and MFBIL (most favorite brother-in-law) Leo, with their annual open house in Rancho Mirage. The Fountain of Youth RV Park that we are in is only about a sixty minute commute from their place so we do visit quite often. The open house was a huge success with all the guests lauding their hosts’ preparations and table spreads (as well as the copious amounts of alcohol).
One of Leo’s long-time friends and associates – Erik - volunteered for the open house as the bartender/wine supplier/wine expert and sommelier. Or in short “The Wine Dude”. Here you can see him as he attacked one of the local candidates for the evening sacrifice and festivities. His efforts and selections were appreciated by all who attended. (Some a bit more than others.)
The preparations for the open house went on for most of the evening prior and the day of the party with many snacks and delicacies prepared and laid out. We even tried our hand at decorating the ugly sweater cookies – I do believe I won that one based strictly on lack of talent and (also lack of) hand/eye coordination.
My sister does love to decorate their place to the max, so to speak, with nothing overlooked. This poor fellow, which is normally an outstanding piece of art, got an extra set of antlers for the holiday season and is now a very confused Bighorn/Moose/Reindeer thing with bunny fur growing out of its head.
The next occasion was the arrival of my youngest sibling, Beth, and husband, Kirk, to the Southern California area. They stayed in Rancho Mirage so we traveled in to visit and enjoy Christmas with them at Kathy and Leo’s home.
No trip to the Palm Springs area during the holiday season would be complete without a nighttime side trip to the attraction known as “Robo Lights” (or “Robo Christmas”). If you can imagine an artist, Kenny Irwin Jr., dressed in full Islamic garb creating extremely bizarre Christmas scenes (in his mind anyway) out of millions of lights, old electronics, plumbing fixtures and trash – you have “Robo Lights”.
Ken Irwin, Sr. once owned a pristine two-acre spread in a prized part of town known as the Movie District. Then he made the generous, or foolish decision, depending on your point of view, to hand over the property to his son as a place to build and display (to the angst and despair of the neighbors) the eclectic over-the-top sculptures that he makes by fusing his treasures together with cans of spray foam.
He has worked on this sci-fi holiday spectacle since 1986 and over the years it has turned into a year-round event viewable from the street. But it is during the holiday season that Robo Lights really comes to life with millions of lights and public access to the whole celebration. There's a post-apocalyptic scene with "nuclear elves" in the tennis court and Santa's sleigh, or in this case, his "battle wagon" which is pulled by a team of 12 robot like reindeer. Nearby, what looks like three wise men come loaded down with microwaves. One robot is really tall, while others have microwaves, computer screens and other bits of trash embedded in their chests. There’s a huge pink 
I kind of wondered, as we were walking around this very weird creation, if this guy was really a trash collector or a one-man recycling center early in his life. He has collected old phones, cassette tapes, wood, many,many toilets, slot machines, garbage cans and lids, pool filters, vacuum cleaners — anything he can get his hands on. Then using multiple cans of spray foam sealant and gaudy paint, gave life to his visions.
This one is just too weird not to go and see if you are in the area!
After a bit of research, Leo came across one of the more interesting trends for cooking the Christmas Turkey and decided to give it a try. It’s called “Spatchcocking” and no it is not one of the menu items from a Nevada Brothel. It is a way of speeding the cooking time of a whole turkey down to 45 minutes by removing the backbone and flattening or butterflying the bird. The whole process turned into quite the comical affair with Leo trying to resurrect the bird after he had squished it. This all to the remarks by Kirk and I of “Ooooh – wrong end!”. While that last part didn’t happen outside of my mind, the whole process did turn out quite well. The spices were very simple and the 45 minute cooking time versus the normal 3 hours was a chef’s delight with the taste and moisture (juicyness) results in the outstanding category.
During Beth and Kirk’s visit, the sisters got a bit of snuggle time in between the visiting, dinners, and sight seeing. Linda and I were able to visit with them one day as they headed back towards Mesa, AZ for the flight home. We took them out to some of the sights I mentioned in the last Blog such as Salvation Mountain, the Mud Pots and the Sonny Bono Wildlife Preserve.
After a short rest from the activities, we climbed back into the truck for a couple day stay in Las Vegas with Kathy and Leo. The plans were to relax, enjoy, see a show or two, a couple of dinners and relax some more.
Did I say relax? Didn’t get much of that in but we did see two excellent shows. The first was with Kathy and Leo and was called “Love” - a Cirque Du Soleil show which kind of relives Beatlemania in a rather madcap way. It was outstanding! The next day on one of our jaunts we headed to The Fremont Street area and along the way we stopped at the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop which has turned into quite the tourist attraction since they made it on TV with their show “Pawn Stars”. It was a bit of a disappointment though as it is really a small place, none of the stars were around, and it was full of (yuck!) tourists. Go figure!
Then it was onto Fremont Street and the main attraction for the day. Somewhere along the way I had talked Leo into going along on a rather interesting ride called the SlotZilla Zoomline through the upper canopy of Fremont Street. It was AWESOME!
The SlotZilla at Fremont Street Experience is a 12-story, slot machine-inspired zip line attraction and is one of the cooler things to do while you're in Las Vegas. If you like that type of thrill that is. They offer two ways to fly, the lower “Zipline” and upper “Zoomline”. We chose the Zoomline that starts 10 stories above street level and launches you face first (kind of like Superman) down the entire length of Fremont Street at close to 40 miles per hour. The experience is rather quick with a short walk up to the first floor where we were weighed and fitted with a harness and relieved of any items in our pockets or otherwise (no glasses, cameras, phones or things like that).
The first words out of my mouth once we were on the landing platform was “Let’s do it again!”
Then it was onto the second show, The Million Dollar Quartet, which was another over the top show experience that Vegas is so good at. I would go to it again, and again - it was that good.
The biking group we ride with - “The FoyKers” - are always looking to put a bit of fun into what we do. Riding through mostly barren desert can get rather boring unless you find little side venues to explore and partake in. This particular ride involved riding out to the Shoe Tree to make a sacrifice to the “Nike God” and the “Fruit of the Loom God” at the Underwear Tree. Yes, us old farts can have a little “tongue-in-cheek” fun every now and then as we hang a crusty old set of used boxers along side a lacey filigree thong.
On this trip we did discover a new attraction in the desert and promptly dubbed it the S.S. FOYKER. Future trips and plans are already in the making for this tourist attraction in the rough. You just never know what you will find in this part of the desert.
“The Wisdom of Oreo”
Oreo - our 15 year old Tom Cat, has lived and traveled with us for quite a few years. He has been part of the Blog for some time and has provided a few purr-fect bits of wisdom with a cats eye view and observations for all the blog readers out there as well as a few off-paw comments about the antics of his pride members and life on the road.
My pride members told me they took a trip the other day to the largest kitty litter box they had ever seen. Cats like me can only dream of what they described – miles and miles of clean untouched (and un-pooped in) sand! The things I could do on such a huge canvas.
The sand dunes which are known by a couple different names such as The Imperial Sand Dunes, The Algodones Dunes or Glamis are located west of the Chocolate Mountains in Imperial County. Not that it matters, but just the pictures make me want to go use my litter box and fantasize about having one this big.
From what my pride members told me these dunes are also a huge playground for humans and their smelly gas powered wheeled things. On the big weekends, I’ve been told that there are hundreds of thousands of humans and toys out there and from what I’ve seen when we have traveled around here I would say that’s an underestimate.
To give you a bit of feline history, the dunes have frequently been a barrier to human movement in the area. Foot travelers frequently diverted south into Mexico, and in 1877 the Southern Pacific Railroad was diverted north to avoid the dunes, but in 1915 Colonel Ed Fletcher built a wooden plank road across the dunes to prove that cars could cross the dunes and to connect San Diego, California with Yuma, Arizona. This trail eventually became part of Interstate 8. During World War II, the U.S. military conducted desert warfare training on the dunes, (if you remember General Patton from the last Blog) which were part of the California-Arizona Maneuver Area. Humans have been driving on the dunes for recreation almost since vehicles first reached the area, and may have been the proving ground for the first dune buggy, a modified Ford Model A. After World War II, when surplus jeeps became available to the public, this place really took off as the place for “The Duners”.
Just the vastness of this super-sized litter box makes it a preferred terrain for many off-road wheeled things. Motorcycles, sandrails, ATVs, and 4-wheel-drive vehicles go zipping across the dunes. They come from all over the place and can plug up all the roads and freeways leading into this place during the more popular holidays. Open camping is permitted (boondocking), and on major winter holidays, it is really a mess.
My pride members told me that the dunes were used to film parts of the Tatooine scenes in “Return of the Jedi” which just happens to be my favorite movie. I’ve seen it many, many times and I really like Chewbacca – he is such a good actor! Other movies filmed at these dunes include Road to Morocco, Flight of the Phoenix, Stargate, and Resident Evil. I didn’t watch those.
Time to go – got a weird little barky Chihuahua next door that needs to be taught about old tom cats.
Oreo
Once again we leave you with a sunset picture taken from our back window at the Fountain of Youth. I hope you enjoyed the Blog and perhaps – just perhaps - it has inspired you to put a bit of “Kid” in your life and have a bit of fun.
Home is where we park it!
Lee & Linda
