Borrego Springs

January 31st-February 1st, 2022 Monday

Trip log, 177 miles to Borrego Springs and 15 miles to the Vogt Family Historical Campground

We spent the night in a part of the Anza Borrego Desert State Park at a spot called Vogt Family Historical Campground, I actually met a remaining member of the family, if you look that name up on Google you should find it. Anyways it is a bunch of canyons and we parked about 50 feet from the edge, our friends Carol, Steve and Cindy were with us on this journey for adventure. We started by heading to Borrego Springs to view the metal sculptures of mostly prehistoric animals. These date back to 2008 and a very rich man who owned Avery Office Supplies had an artist build them. He built over 130 sculptures and most are actual size. He made them by looking at a picture and then proceeded to cut out, shape and weld them together. Everything from Trex’s to Elephants to sloth’s and even a vineyard with workers. It was most impressive and took us all day to find them all or at least I think we found them all.

After finishing that, we moved to the Canyon spot. There were lots of guys flying paraglider’s over us and into the canyon which was very cool to see. The following morning was when I met one of the Vogt members, he was camped not far from us, said he comes a couple weeks at a time and had been here for 11 weeks today since  October. Said for 60 years his family camped here and just last year his brother died and now it's left up to him to carry on the legacy.

There were only about 6 rigs camping here that night but he said next week a group of paraglider’s from Salton Sea were coming and spend the week there flying and there is virtually no change of finding a place to camp and the same with Thanksgiving week.

This is definitely a place we will return to, the view is beautiful and quiet and so serene, the sky is dark and the sunrise and set are awesome. If you ever want to come here just type the Vogt Family Historical campground into google and follow the map.

When we left there we were headed to visit Joshua Tree National Park and on our way we went through the Salton Sea area, we thought this would be very cool, it use to be a big tourist and happening area at one time, the Salton Sea is 34 miles long and 14 miles wide and quite impressive and with a very high salinity. So we thought we need to check this out so on the way past we saw a sign that said Salton Sea Beach, well, we were thinking this is great we can go to the beach and taste the water and check it out, well much to our surprise this was about the slumest area we could have imagined and actually a sheriff had followed us in and we don’t know if it was because they figured we may need them or just plum crazy. The road was horrible and when we got to the end of it we could kind of see the water but there was no way we were gonna walk 200 yards and leave the rv alone! LOL We turned around and got out alive. Never to go back. A note of fact , the one end of the lake was named after Sonny Bono for some reason.

2022 ALREADY!

 January 28th, 2022 Temp currently 49º at 8:30am

Time goes by so fast that you don't even realize it. We arrived here in Brenda back in October and here it is late January. Many things have happened. We purchased a 32' destination Palamino Puma trailer to set on our lot that will stay here, this is our winter home and the Ace RV is our summer home. After we got the Puma in place I built an 8' x 16' deck with the help of my friend Steve. We had a great time building it and had it finished in just 2 days. We then rented the lot behind us to keep the Ace parked in. 

The winter has been colder than in the past and seems to be lingering a while longer with  lot of nights dipping into the 30's, fortunately soon as the sun is out it warms into the 60's.

You see some of the weirdest stuff

December 10th, 2021

I was running up to the local store to get some milk and came across this just past our park. He had broke down. 

Buying an RV to leave on our lot in Arizona

November 23rd, 2021 

Since we no longer have a house that left us with living in the Rv full time which can be claustrophobic for Deanna sometimes so we decided to purchase an Rv called a Destination trailer to set our our lot for our winter home and then use the other rv to travel and live in during the summer. We purchased the trailer from a consignment dealer in Phoenix and it is a 2015 Palamino Puma 32'. We looked at it early November and had it delivered the 23rd right before Thanksgiving. 

After getting the trailer set up on the lot we decided to build a deck to accent it and keep Jess from laying in the dirt on the ground. The deck made a nice addition and then we also rented the lot behind us to keep the other RV on so both are here together.

My friend Steve helped me build the deck and we knocked it out pretty quick. 2 days and it was almost finished but Deanna and I spent the 2 previous days painting all the lumber before we built it. All in all it was a fun project.

Back to home in Arizona

 October 29th, 2021 Temp 82º

Well I have slacked this past year and didnt post anything so I better do it now. We are back in Arizona for the winter. Been an interesting year with Covid. When we got back to Ohio beginning of the year we got our Covid vaccine's. For me first of October we sold our house and I had a friend that I worked with help me move my gun safe, well he was covid positive and I still got it, it was mild and my Dr had me get the Regeneron infusion and in 36 hours I was back to normal. My friend Dave Greene on the other hand ignored all the symptoms and thought he would get through it. He did but not alive. Its real, get vaccinated!

So currently we are waiting for a closing on the house and hopefully it will be soon, we will close through a mobile closer they will send here. We gave all our furniture away and stuffed all our stuff in my office at the industrial shop building we own and next summer will go thru it as we have time. Right now we will just live in the Motor home, not anything unusual for us other than we will move around when back in Ohio to probably state parks.

Jess is doing fine but slowing down a bit but always eager to walk or ride, she will be 12 this November.

Got to go trail riding since getting here with friends Carol, Kurtze, Steve and Cindy. Had a great time and we rode about 20 miles, fortunately the desert got a lot of rain this past summer and the cactus are really loving it and the Creosote bushes are all green but the trails took a beating from all the rushing water. 

More later!

Back to Arizona, house sale.

 October 19th, 2021

So here it is October already and we are leaving for our Arizona winter spot. We decided back in September to sell the house since it was becoming to much for Deanna to try to keep up with, it was just too large for what we needed and too much upkeep and time consuming to be conducive to traveling. We decided on September 12th to put the house up on the market, that was a Sunday, the following Wednesday they posted it at about 5:30 and later that evening we had a request to view on Thursday. We had 2 views on Friday and 2 on Saturday and we accepted an offer on Sunday one week after deciding. The girl who bought it was the first to view and was one of the two on Saturday. 

Our realtor warned us that she was using FHA and it could be a drawn out process, which it turned out to be. Even though FHA was slow the more time consuming part was the description of the property, the people who sold it to us had the deed prepared and apparently it was not correct in the description on one of the lots, our title company didn't catch it but the girls did. This became a real issue and didn't need to be but the guy we bought it from refused to sign an updated deed apparently for fear of repercussion. Time dragged on and finally the girls lended convinced him to sign but he agreed only if his lawyer said it was ok. So finally on November 17th almost 2 months later we signed the papers. 

We had been waiting on the appraisal from FHA to come in and they were slower than molasses, we finally decided to go ahead and leave since if the appraisal didn't come in high enough there would be nothing we could do about it anyway. So we left on the 19th and the realtor called us that afternoon and said it was in. Sometimes you just have to not wait on things, we were able to close through the mail as they sent a closer to our lot in Arizona for us to sign papers. With that behind us we are now houseless and free to travel more