Kate and Sandy Return to Their Blog for 2019!

Have you been wondering what the heck has happened to Kate and Sandy?

After we got home from our big summer adventure, we had a few weeks to get Boxy, the RV, winterized and into storage. We then got our house in Edmonton all ready for winter, and started to think about heading ourselves south for the season.

As the temperature outside started to fall, Rockie began spending more and more time laying if front of the fireplace, willing the flames to come on to warm her up .

Where’s the heat? 

Then, the snow began to arrive and we go into serious packing mode.

Time to go!

It was not quite as cold when we left as it was last year, but we again got into pretty lousy road conditions, especially in Montana and Idaho.

We gotta get out of this stuff soon!

Into southern Idaho, we came upon a small cattle drive. This was a unique sight as this was a first time we had seen cattle on the move during any of our fall migrations.  

As the previous photo proves, there is usually something interesting to see, if one just pays attention. Rockie and Benny, however, were very disappointed when we did not take the next turn so they could go exploring.

When the scenery turns dramatic, there is no mistaking that one is venturing through Utah.

 After three days of travel, we finally pulled up to our house in La Quinta, California. It always seems so welcoming to us, and this year was no different.

Home, sweet winter home!

How, exactly, did we get here? Well, we just pulled out of our neighborhood, headed south on Anthony Henday Drive, exited onto highway 2, and pretty much kept on heading south. As you can see from our route map, we have to swing around the mountains just before we get here, otherwise it is a pretty straight forward trip.

Edmonton to La Quinta

 After three days, the dogs were happy to get out of the vehicle. While you would think they would be excited to run around the yard a bit and have a good stretch, the first thing they both did was check that their beds here were still okay!

Bed check, all is good!

A nice walk around the neighbourhood let us get catch up with some neighbours and see which of our snowbird friends were back and who were yet to arrive.  It is always great to have the gang back together.

Our beautiful neighbourhood

When we arrived, we found that our lemon and tangerine trees were absolutely loaded with fruit that was still green.  Usually, our tangerines ripen when we are gone and we never get any. Since early December, we have been having fresh fruit off that tree everyday. They are almost done now, but we have enjoyed every single one we have had. Juicy, sweet, and so darn fresh when they go from tree to mouth in a matter of minutes! What an amazing treat.

Delicious perfection!

I have been going out with our community hiking club, again, this year. Just before Christmas, our friends, Heidi and Deb from Vancouver, were down to spend some time at their place in Palm Springs. They joined my hike one day as it started not far from their place. The weather was perfect and we all enjoyed a 10 mile (16km) hike with enough climbing that we had some pretty nice views over the city.

Heidi, Kate, and Deb

Again, this year, we joined our neighbours, Ron and Joanne, to spend some time building Christmas bicycles for needy kids. A retired physician pays for all the bikes, as he thinks no kid should have a childhood without a bicycle. Lots of volunteers help put them together. We spent a day bike building, and that was all my back could tolerate. Ron and Joanne helped for a full week!

With just some of the Christmas bikes for kids

Over 600 bicycles were assembled by the volunteers. As chance would have it, one of the local news channels came out to do a feature story about these special gifts. Guess who, quite unknowingly, were in the background?

TV stars!

I know you may find this hard to believe, but from the lack of blog updates, you have probably figured out that we have hardly been on our bikes. We did managed to get a couple of consistent riding weeks in a couple of times, but nothing like we are used to.

Yes, we have been out riding (a bit)

This winter season has been quite unusual.  I realize how brutally cold it has been in Canada and the eastern USA, but we have been having rather atypical weather here, too.  It has been much cooler than usual, and at times down right cold!  In fact, when we got up January third, it was warmer in Edmonton than it was here!!

We have had a few nights of frost, with lots of damage to plants and shrubs, and no doubt the cold nights have been playing havoc with harvesting the produce from the local fields.

Just last week, we had more frost, as evidenced by the frosted roof of our neighbour’s vehicle.

And the weird weather just continues. Rain, rain, and more rain. Last year, we had one day of rain all winter. This year, we have about 8 days … so far. My rain gauge is just about worn out with a total of 4.5 inches of rain in our back yard since just before Christmas.  Last week, we had a major downpour with the most rainfall in Palm Springs in over 70 years. About 4 inches fell there, while we had 2 inches in our end of the valley (we always get less rain out here).  We have already had more rain so far in 2019 than is usually received in an entire year.  And more to come later this week!

With the cool and damp weather, you can see why we haven’t been spending as much time out on our bikes. Sandy has been doing lots of puzzles, I have been taking Rockie to school (nose work and barn hunt), and of course, I have been doing some baking. Due to the cooler weather, our lemons are just now getting ripe enough to use, so soon I will be baking anything and everything lemon. In the meantime, I have been trying my hand at baking bread … from scratch, not using a bread machine!

Kate's whole wheat bread

We have one bossy little hummingbird that won’t let anyone else near our feeder. With this cool weather I am making sure there is always fresh food available to keep its little furnace going.

Our bossy little bird

I hope you enjoyed this installment. We do finally have some adventures planned, so hopefully you won’t have to wait too long for our next update.

Hi from Rocket and Benny!