My Sister, Zenobia and her husband, Rush, sold their home in Fort Lauderdale, in the Fall of 1976, and bought a thirty five foot Coachmen fifth wheel trailer with the intention of making that their home. Louise and I were spending that winter in California and had our trailer parked at Skip’s place, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Shortly after the first of the year, Rush and Zenobia showed up, at the Holiday Park, in Scott’s Valley, where we had spent the previous winter. We got a space right next to theirs and moved our trailer down there. We had lots of fun that winter, traveling around, seeing the sights, and trying out the sea food restaurants.
The Adelmans left for their daughter’s place, in Greencastle, Indiana, before we were ready to leave, because there were some places that they wanted to visit that we had already seen. We did, however, make arrangements to meet them at a certain campground, on a certain date, in Taos, New Mexico. They arrived at the park about an hour before we did. That was not really a smart thing to do, in late March, but we had been living in the warm climate of California, all winter, and I guess that we must have thought that it was spring in Northern New Mexico, also, but it wasn’t. The morning that we left Taos it was four above zero and the wind was blowing a gale, in fact, the wind blew at almost gale force all of the time that we were there. But we all got through it and traveled together, from there to Greencastle, where we left them. Louise and I went on to Michigan.
The following year we were going to go back to California again and had left Three Rivers a few days before Thanksgiving. We stopped at Greencastle, to see the Adelmans and they thought that they would like to travel along with us, at least part way, however, they did not want to leave until after the holiday, so we made arrangements that we would wait in the KOA Campground at Arkadelphia, Arkansas, because there were some things that we wanted to see, along the way. We had our Thanksgiving Dinner in Arkadelphia and they caught up with us, two or three days later. We had stayed in that area before, so we enjoyed seeing things that we had missed, the other times.
We left the KOA together and a couple of days later we ran into strong head winds and threatening weather, at Deming, New Mexico, so we stopped at a not too good trailer park. In fact, at that time, there were not too many good parks in that part of the country. We had stopped about noon and spent the afternoon looking the country over and searching for rare rocks, in the Rock Hound Park. The wind got stronger and the temperature kept falling until, the next morning, it was almost zero, the wind was blowing a gale and it was snowing. We were in that park for, at least, three days before we could get on the road again, and then it was not as safe as I like to have it. We stopped, for gas, at Benson, Arizona, fifty miles Southeast of Tucson, where it never snows and seldom freezes. It had been eight below zero and they had gotten ten inches of snow.
It was a good thing that we stopped in Deming, when we did, or we could have been trapped, by snow, in one of the mountain passes. Many other travelers did get caught. We stopped, for the night, just a short distance north of Tucson and, by that time, the snow and ice was about all melted from our trucks and trailers.
The following day we went on to Yuma where we spent the balance of that day and all of the next one, then Louise and I left Rush and Zenobia and proceeded on our way to California. We went straight on to San Diego and spent that night in a park north of Escondido. The next morning, before leaving, we had breakfast at Lawrence Welk’s place. That is a beautiful place but it is not as elaborately over done as you might expect that it would be. It looks just as it did on his TV shows.
In the late winter we left western California and met the Adelmans at a KOA park, on the banks of the Colorado River, at Blythe, California. It must have been in February because we attended the Rock Hound Round-Up at Quartzite, Arizona, which is just a short distance east of Blythe. That Round-Up is another thing that you should see, if you get the opportunity. Quartzite is, normally, just a cross road on the desert, but when the Round-Up is in full swing, there are thousands of people there, from all over the nation. They are in trailers or campers, or vans or, motor homes or, tents and they are parked just anywhere, on the desert and they are buying and selling rocks and gems or jewelry or jewelry making equipment. It is, or was, the top gem show of the Nation.
We stayed in Blythe for a week and during that time we went back out onto the California desert, to Wiley Wells and hunted for Agates and Geodes. We found lots of Agates and a few small Geodes, but very few of the Agates contained any Fire. After leaving Blythe, we all went to Benson where we spent the balance of the winter.
We had, on a previous trip, spent a couple of weeks at the KOA in Benson and the Adelmans had previously spent some time at Casey’s Park, also in Benson, so we knew and liked the area. It is remote but the mountains and the desert are beautiful and the area is rich in early Western history. We first went into the Apache Park at St David, which is between Benson and Tombstone. Rush and Zenobia went back to Caseys.