From There To Here

 Beautiful downtown Indio is still here after three years.  Honestly, if anyone has been here before, the only really beautiful thing is the sun ... which hasn't shown up for the party yet.  It's been cold and overcast all day long, with a slight breeze thrown in for good chill measure.  

Here we are in the Walmart Parking Lot.  Well actually, it's the Floors and More lot now.  I used absolutely no power other than the kitchen sink light, so I would have plenty of battery for the nighttime Jonathan heater.  At 4:30 am my batteries were at 12.4.  Thank God for solar!!  It works even when it's cloudy.

It was a pretty confusing afternoon because people showed up who had not SIGNED up.  In no time my "guaranteed" number to the manager of Floors and More changed from 5 rigs to 8, adding in one couple we didn't know, who didn't want to pay an RV park.  The more the merrier I guess!

I got a little nervous when the Sheriff stopped by, but he was only after the stolen car parked down the lot a bit.  The car on the other side of me never saw any movement, with the windows completely covered.  I imagine it's a homeless vehicle, but I never saw anyone.

At 10:00 on the dot, we were off to the fairgrounds.  To my amazement, there were only two rigs in the staging area to be parked.  For my friends who have attended this rally in the past ... we waited TEN MINUTES to be parked!  TEN MINUTES!!!  Can you believe it.  Not the normal 2-3 hour wait time.

To make it even better, the electrical lines were already in place with huge boxes for plug ins .... and they WORK!!!  How could that be?  We are parked in the front row closest to the buildings. YAY!!   Then things kind of went downhill for a bit.

Two couples said they didn't get the message, so they went with another group.  No problem there, but now they all want to come eat with us at our big barbecue tomorrow night.  We're going to have to slice that pork loin REALLY thin.  Turns out they DID get the message, they just didn't tell ME they wanted to park with us.

More troubles when the free Volunteer dinner which is always on Monday (and so I scheduled it that way) is now on Tuesday.  Juggle juggle ..... I had to move stuff around on our schedule.

Then I made a mad dash to Costco to pay for that ice cream.  Another problem to deal with.  I checked before I left about the number of rigs, meaning how many bars do I need to get.  The estimate was 700 rigs, which is what I use when ordering the ice cream two months ago.  

Come to find out, only 500 have registered, and they may only have 400 in the end.  Ugh ... now I have to break the news to Costco, who won't be any too happy.  The 170 boxes was reduced to 150 and I'm going to have LOTS of leftovers.  Oh DARN!  The worst part is my teeny tiny fridge will only hold ONE box!

So here we are at 4:00 am when I took Cooper out to the humming of generators bigger than my truck.  I promise I'll get some pictures today as I now scramble to figure out how to pick up that ice cream at 8:00 tomorrow morning while baking two big casseroles and setting up breakfast for 20 people.

I think I'm going to become pretty good at delegating, a trait I have yet to master.