[VAC] 03/09/01 Friday - EEWCRC

["Terry Tyler" <tylerbears@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Exploring East & West of the Colorado River Caravan"

Today's tour is to the Oasis Date Gardens & Salton Sea Beach. Before leaving, our caravan leaders
asked meal group #4 (our group) if we had a large pan with a cover for cooking tonight's supper. We
did and were looking forward to helping with the cooking. 

The line up for today's tours was at 8am. Everyone was there. This is a prompt group of caravaners.
At the date gardens, we were given a personally guided tour, enjoyed a free date shake while
watching a video presentation about the history of this date garden and its' owners. We learned more
about dates than we ever dreamed possible. For example, they can only be grown in certain soils and
with certain temperatures. Indio, CA is one of the few places in the world where this is possible.
Date trees are one of the most labor intensive trees to care for; they require years of growth
before the first dates can be harvested and they require specific patterns of watering. There are
male and female date trees. There is even a sex life for date trees. 

Because we had visited Salton Sea Beach earlier in the year while staying overnight at the Slabs in
Niland, we skipped that part of today's tour. Our US Mail was waiting for us at the post office.
This afternoon was mostly mops and brooms = paying bills. 

Collecting our email at this Fairground is the easiest yet, but the adapter plug for my laptop acted
like it had a loose connection (inconsistently recharging the battery). Putting all timidity aside,
I cut open the adapter plug and sure enough, the solder on one wire had parted. Borrowing our
caravan leader's soldering iron, I re-soldered the plug, used a straw as a splint to keep the wires
from shifting or bending near the solder points, wrapped it all with electrical tape and voila` -
the adapter plug works fine.

About 3pm, our leaders brought supper ingredients (beef, kidney beans, chili seasoning and diced
tomatoes). It'll be a slow cooked meal, savory and delicious (we hope). At supper, we sampled the
other batches cooked by caravaners. I couldn't tell any difference (so much for slow cooking). All
the serving dishes were cleaned out. It must have been good. We heard no complaints. 

After dinner, there was a Fairground Party in full swing with an outside group of revelers who
parked their vehicles near our parking area. Like most teenagers, they partied loudly. We were
teenagers once and didn't mind it a bit. Around midnight, they headed home. It was a good day for
everyone. 

Terry
mailto:tylerbears@airstream.net