Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Time With Friends

While we're in Desert Hot Springs, we met up with some good friends from the Northwest, Bob & Maggie Lawlor. They were staying at Desert Pools also. They invited us over for a delicious dinner in their motorhome. They have it very nicely decorated, and were the perfect hosts. We're learned some tricks about organization and entertaining in a motorhome that we'll put to good use in the future.
We went to the Living Desert Museum in Palm Springs. Its a wildlife & botanical garden with examples of deserts around the world. At the entrance we met a docent with a snake to introduce us to. For some reason the women didn't want to hold it. We really enjoyed walking through the park viewing the many different types of cactus, and the animals that inhabit the deserts.
Some of the highlights included the eagles, wolves, big horn sheep, mountain lions, walk through bird aviaries, a high tech hospital with videos of different procedures, and an entire African section that included zebras, giraffes, and ugly peccary. It was a weekday so we had the park mostly to ourselves.
One of the highlights for John was a huge model garden railway with many different settings and lots of operating trains. We had to pry him away or he would still be there.
After the Living Desert we had a late lunch at the Elephant Bar where John had his favorite coconut shrimp. It was a great way to end a fun day.

On Saturday we visited the famous Palm Desert Street Fair that takes place every weekend at the College of the Desert. It features a lot of different vendors, from arts & crafts, weekend retailers, garage sales, to many different food offerings.
Of course, being in the heart of high end golf resorts, there were a lot of vendors with golf clubs, millions of balls, golf clothes and other gimmicks that golfers would like. Bob found a terrific deal on a new driver that the vendor guaranteed a lower score.
Linda & John got away with minimum damages, probably because they couldn't make a decision. Linda did say she wants to go back soon.

Sharing these experience with Bob & Maggie made to visits special. We look forward to sharing more fun times with them.

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