A brief 2x timelapse of driving through downtown Palm Springs in our truck.
Author: David
Downtown Palm Springs, CA
Some pictures from a quick drive through downtown Palm Springs, California. (We had planned to stop for lunch and a wander around, but didn’t feel like dealing with crowds; it doesn’t look very crowded in these pics, but the restaurants were all packed.)
Tomorrow, a brief video of driving through here.
Jack pads
A recent addition to our RV is a set of high quality jack pads — heavy duty pads to go under the hydraulic leveling jacks, to provide better support on soft ground like dirt, or protect more fragile surfaces like asphalt from the weight of the jacks.
Here are the pads under the back jacks:
And the front jacks (yes, those jacks are smaller):
Peeking behind a front wheel, you can see the whole jack mechanism:
While there, a bonus pic of part of our 150 gallon diesel fuel tank, which can be filled from both sides:
And a front air bag, which acts as suspension while driving, and can be used as alternative to hydraulic leveling for short stays:
A couple of jack pads after removing them:
I store two on each side of a basement compartment, for easy access when setting up at a campsite. I don’t need them when on a concrete pad, and not so much on gravel, but on sand, dirt, grass, or asphalt, they are a useful addition.
A perhaps better (certainly more convenient) option for jack pads are permanently attached ones, like SnapPads, but unfortunately they are not compatible with our coach, as there isn’t enough clearance between the back tires and the jack when it is up in travel position.
National Parks in 2022
Along with exploring every state, another of our many objectives of this full-time RV lifestyle is to visit all 63 national parks. It’s long been one of Jenn’s life goals.
We’ve already been to several, and in 2022 we have planned our route to hit about 22 more. See yesterday’s 2022 plans post for the route map.
Jenn has a book to commemorate our visits to each park. She has added flags for each of the parks we plan to visit this year, color-coded by state:
The book includes a map with locations of all of the parks; there are a lot on the west side of the country, where we will be all year:
For each park there are some factoids, a sticker to add, and space to write some notes about our experience (and for Yellowstone, Jenn added a Junior Ranger sticker she got from a nice ranger who stopped by our campsite):
Here’s one of the ones we plan to visit this year:
We also have a road atlas book with more national park info and lots of maps:
We generally use our Macs, iPhones, and GPS units for navigating, but it’s useful to have paper-based tools, too.
Follow along as we visit each of the national parks!
2022 plans
[I previously published a variation of this at the end of the 2021 travel post, but thought I’d re-publish it separately and update it, since I know some people missed it after all the stuff in that post.]
We started 2022 in Arizona, and are currently in California (and will shortly head to Disneyland for Jenn’s birthday in February, and to the coast), then will go back to Arizona, including the FMCA convention, then north into Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming to hit more National Parks. Then via Idaho into Oregon to visit doctors and dentists. After that, we’ll head north to Washington, east to Idaho and Montana, then south through Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico (including the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta!), ending up in Texas for next winter, as we slowly make our way across the country.
Places book out months in advance nowadays, so we like to have about six months booked, where possible (or longer, though many popular places only allow six or fewer months). Currently, we already have reservations up till late-July, during the Oregon portion, plus a few busy times later in the year, but the rest of the year is subject to change.
Here’s the current route and stop map for 2022 (updated since the 2021 travel post); starting from the Phoenix area, heading to the coast, then going basically clockwise:
Still a lot more of the country to see, but we’re working our way across, with trips back to Portland each year. The maps for subsequent years will be similar to the 2022 one, but heading north from and ending up further east each time:
I hope you’ll enjoy following our journey!
Hike in Coachella Valley Preserve
While staying at Catalina Spa & RV Resort (look for a post about that later), we took a hike in the nearby Coachella Valley Preserve. We wanted to explore the Thousand Palms Oasis Preserve within the Coachella Valley Preserve, but were misled by their map, and ended up doing a longer hike than planned.
The Coachella Valley Preserve sign:
Entrance to the Thousand Palms Oasis Preserve:
The very inaccurate map; we thought the Hidden Palms Loop hike looked interesting, and allegedly fairly easy for us novice hikers at 1.75 miles roundtrip, according to the table in the map:
But it was full of lies; the Hidden Palms Loop was in fact more like five or six miles, and very badly marked. We went about halfway (mostly on loose sand) before we lost the trail, and turned back; a total of about three hours. Not a long hike for most people, but we’re not really in shape for such a journey, especially not in the heat of the desert. (Yes, we did have hiking boots, hats, suitable clothing, water, and snacks; we weren’t totally unprepared. But there’s definitely improvements we could make.)
We better know our limits now, that’s for sure:
Palm trees in the oasis at the start:
Following the trail; a nice path to start:
More palm trees:
The path crossed the road:
The trail continues:
Inside of a cactus:
Birds circling; we’re not dead yet:
The trail became soft sand, and less clearly defined:
A stream:
A wash from heavy rains:
Interesting texture:
Me with a trail marker, but not much of a trail:
So much desert:
The less-clearly-defined trail:
We saw several of the lizards that are a focus of the preserve:
More desert:
Not the most interesting hike, and the hidden palms were so well hidden that we didn’t find them. We looked at a better map when we got home (there wasn’t enough cell signal to see much while out there), and found where it went. But it definitely wasn’t what we were expecting.
We turned around once we lost the path, and got some tasty breakfast for dinner on the way home (i.e. back to our coach), then headed to the thermal pool for a couple hours soak for our tired muscles.
We also bought the AllTrails app, so will have better access to maps for our next hike.
States map
A fun tradition for many RVers is to display a map of the places they’ve been on the side of their RV. We’ve had such a map for a while, but finally got around to installing it. (You may have spotted it in some of the Xscapers posts; I actually wrote this post before the bash, but pushed it out for more timely topics.)
We mounted it on the side of our front slide out, next to the entry door. A fairly common location.
The map consists of a self-adhesive base map of the United States, plus corresponding stickers to add on top as each state is visited. Our rule is for it to count, we need to camp at least one night in the state.
Here’s me adding the base map, trying to avoid bubbles:
The base map:
Adding state stickers for the places we’ve been since buying the coach:
So far we’ve been to Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona in our coach. Plus we decided to include the Yellowstone trip, since we were camping in a rental travel trailer while our coach sat at home (only because our coach wouldn’t fit in Yellowstone National Park). So that adds Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming (we’ll visit them again in our coach in a few months time anyway):
A view of our coach and map from further back:
As mentioned in the 2021 travel post a few weeks ago, in 2022 we plan to add Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas to that map. It’ll be years before we visit every state. Alaska and Hawaii will be particularly tricky; Alaska we can reach via Canada, but we’ll have to fly to Hawaii — we have been there in the past, but won’t count it until we visit again… and may have to rent an RV there if we want to be strict with our self-imposed rules.
Video: timelapse of coach driving from Buckeye, AZ to Desert Hot Springs, CA
A timelapse of driving the coach 22 miles from Buckeye, Arizona to NIRVC in Phoenix, Arizona, then 262 miles from there to Desert Hot Springs, California, with a stop at Love’s for fuel and a couple of rest stops. See if you can spot when the dashcam fell off the windscreen!
Travel from Phoenix, AZ to Desert Hot Springs, CA
Three days later, we picked up our coach from NIRVC in Phoenix, Arizona, then headed back into California, to Desert Hot Springs.
NIRVC successfully fixed the driver chair power issue, fixed the slide-out glide block issue, and serviced the slides. They didn’t get to the remainder of the (lower priority) items on my list, so hopefully we’ll get those taken care of when we visit them again in March — I had already made that appointment in anticipation of needing more time, plus generally like to schedule service appointments every few months, just in case, since things inevitably break, and there’s regular servicing needed.
I admit, I had high hopes for NIRVC, based on their excellent reputation, so was a bit disappointed that they didn’t get much done. But they only had a short time, and they’ll have another chance to impress me soon.
Here’s the map route for this travel day (going from right to left); 262 miles, about six hours drive in our coach. A bit longer than we prefer, but we didn’t want to add another interim stop:
Our coach at NIRVC:
Heading west out of Phoenix:
We were passed by three of these oversize loads (going rather fast):
Paladin still wasn’t pleased with travel, but not too bad this time, perhaps because it was only a few days after the last time:
Lots of trucks on the freeway:
Funky mountains:
Goodbye cacti; fewer and fewer as we head west:
We stopped at Love’s in Quartzsite for diesel; it was pretty busy, and some trucks were being inconsiderate in blocking the exit, resulting in some honking by other truckers. It’s the last fuel stop before the California border; diesel was about $1 more across the border:
While waiting for trucks ahead of us, I snuggled with Paladin; here’s a view of the coach in travel mode, with the slides in and the GPS mirrored to the overhead TV:
More of Paladin:
Back on the road, crossing into California:
A stop at the agricultural inspection station:
They didn’t actually ask us if we had anything this time. We were wondering if they’d object to the little cacti we bought in Arizona.
Welcome to California sign:
Heading down the freeway:
Paladin looking relaxed at a rest stop:
Downhill:
The overpass bridges around the desert cities have nice decorations:
Snow-capped mountains; pretty sure there wasn’t any snow when we were here a month ago:
The highway nearing our destination:
A cell tower nicely disguised as a palm tree:
Our destination for 17 days: Catalina Spa and RV Resort:
Stay tuned for a timelapse video tomorrow. If you haven’t watched them before, they’re a fun compressed view of our journey; watch a few hours of travel in mere minutes. With music! If they aren’t fast enough, you can also tell YouTube to play at 2x speed, or jump ahead, though you may miss interesting sights. Or slow them down if too fast.
I enjoy making the videos; I hope you enjoy watching them. And everyone please do subscribe to the Sinclair Trails YouTube channel; I need a bunch more subscribers to be able to get a nicer URL.
Coach to NIRVC and a second stay in an Airbnb apartment
We had an appointment with the National Indoor RV Center in Phoenix, Arizona to fix the driver chair issue, a slide-out glide issue, and a bunch of other stuff. So we drove the short 22 miles (half an hour) from the nearby Buckeye campground to NIRVC to drop off the coach. Here’s the route (going left to right):
The colorful front of the NIRVC building:
In the reception area:
The waiting room:
We had the option of sleeping in our coach on-site (with a power hookup), and hanging out in that waiting room while it was being worked on, but that wouldn’t really work with a cat, and we’d be more comfortable staying somewhere else.
So again, we rented an Airbnb apartment; see that listing for more information. Here are a few pictures:
The carport was a bit tight for our truck. The apartment was upstairs:
Pool, grill, table:
Pool (we didn’t use it, but it seemed popular):
We’ve recently booked a third Airbnb for another visit to NIRVC in March, to (hopefully) finish off the items on the list.