Hello from San Dimas, CA.
Sunday morning; March 2, 2008 (Fourth travelogue of this trip)
We are currently located here.
I can’t believe that it has been almost a month since I updated this travelogue! We have been on the go at full speed since I wrote last.
As has been the case in the past, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Shoshone, a very small quiet community. At one time I found a good website on the town, but I can’t find it now. This website has some information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshone,_California.
On Wednesday some great friends spent the night in the campground. Sean and Louise have a great blog: http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/. They have a beautiful, unique bus with the living quarters above the drivers compartment (hard to describe, but their blog has some details). Folks often describe it as a “double decker” bus (not technically correct, but it works. We had planned to have dinner with them at the only cafe in town. However, a terrible windstorm came up and the whole area lost power. We cooked a large pan of frozen lasagna and had a great meal in our bus.
On Friday we made a long trip into Death Valley and visited the very unique “Scotty’s Castle”. This is quite a structure and has a ton of history. Some information is contained at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotty’s_Castle. We took two tours and were absolutely amazed at the structure and history. We had dinner in Furnace Creek in the park. We left our campground around 9:00 AM and got home about 11 hours later. I think the trip was over 200 miles. We continue to be amazed at the beauty and drastic geology variations within the park.
Saturday we went to the Amargosa Opera House. This is a very unique building/hotel in the middle of nowhere. Their website is: http://www.amargosa-opera-house.com/operahouse.html. A lady by the name of Marta Becket restored the building and painted beautiful murals in the Opera House and motel lobby. She has performed in the facilities since the early 80’s. In those days it was a melodrama. Today she is too feeble to perform, so she sits on the stage and tells some great stories and sings a little.
The rest of our stay was filled with trips to Pahrump, swimming, working, and just plain goofing off.
We left Sunday 2/17 and drove to Chino, CA where we were scheduled to do a system install at a company called “The Paint Department”. I was there to train an installer. The person was good at detail work, but I ended up doing a lot of the work, since he did not have any experience and we got way behind schedule. It was a very difficult install and we did not get it done ( I will finish the install in the next couple of days).
From Chino we drove to Hemet, CA where we met up with other members of the Converted Coach group. We ended up missing most of the first day, but we still had a great time and got to see some old friends.
On Saturday (2/23) we caravaned over 60 miles to the Fairplex (Los Angeles County Fairgrounds) for the FMCA International Convention. We parked with the CVC group rather than with the vendors (who often are not friendly to bus conversions that are not “up to their standards”). We set up the booth on Sunday and Monday. The vendor area was open Tuesday through Thursday. The attendance, as has been the case for the past two years, was down considerably from past years. In years past, there would often be 5,000 to 7,000 motorhomes attending. This year there were a bit more than 2,300. Pat did two craft seminars and I did my safety seminar. Her attendance was great, mine was OK.
This was our best show. We had reasonably good sales and booked three of our systems for future delivery (confirmed sales). We also had great interest and one person is having a special handicapped motorhome built and is going to have the factory install the system (the factory engineer came to the booth to get information on the system). If this works out, it could lead to working with OEMs to offer the system as an option.
On this trip we also sold four systems via phone and Estore ( including one to the military). Maybe we are beginning to see the light (headlight?) in the tunnel.
Friday night we tried to be sneaky and stay at the fairgrounds, but the security folks came by and made us move (at 9:30 PM). We moved to a Wal Mart in San Dimas. Yesterday, we got a bunch of critical errands done and moved into a great “campground”:
East Shore RV Park. You will see from the satellite map that we overlook a lake. We have a very panoramic view of the colorful hills, valleys, and distant snow capped mountains. We also overlook Brackett Field, a small airport. We have been watching planes take off as I write this.
I have included one photo that I took yesterday when we moved in. It was foggy and the photo does not show the views. It is clearing today and I will post another picture and some more travelogue in a day or two.
That is all of now.