Denise and Rick Cunningham

Like many boomers we're planning the "next chapter". We live a fairly chaotic life in Georgetown in Washington DC. I'm a former fashion executive and journalist. Rick's an engineer and computer scientist. We're about ready for a little change of pace. Travel... perhaps moving to warmer climes ...and definitely savoring more moments. We never set out to buy an RV...matter of fact, we had never even been in one and I definitely don't camp. But, now, with more time and a growing aversion to the insults of air travel, we bought a 40' motor coach. Our grandson, Ian, named it Gigantor. We call it Tor for short.

We're seeing things you just can't from the air and finding that we've so much to discover on this continent. In the past two years, we've taken three marvelous six-week trips. This time, we're "chasing the sun for as long as it fun". We left on October 5, 2009. We'll see how long we last!

We're searching for great places to stay, sights worth seeing, golf courses worth playing, great restaurants, shopping, farmer's markets. We're on the road in search of the high road.


Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Strip and Frank Gehry

March 25~30

We're working our way through the Strip a parcel at a time.  These new hotels are pretty amazing.  Lunched at Wolfgang Puck's Postrio in the Venetian Hotel (venetian.com).  Shared a good charcuterie platter and a mushroom, leek, rosemary and goat cheese pizza as we watched the action on "St. Mark's Square", thankfully, minus the pigeons! 


The whole Grand Canal thing is pretty Disneyesque, but fun.



The Bellagio (bellagio.com) is definitely the crown jewel of all these properties. It is famous for its fountain show....and there's good reason why....it is amazing, magical and just makes you smile.  Have only seen it during the day so far, but definitely need to come back at night.  (That's Paris in the background)





As much as I love their fountain act, the conservatory is right up there.  The spring display is gorgeous and wonderfully whimsical.
Had brunch in the Cafe Bellagio overlooking the Conservatory.  It's a massive restaurant and the food was better than we expected.  Rick had a belly-buster hamburger, I had Crab Cake Benedict....a crab cake and Canadian bacon on a bed of hash browns with poached eggs....it was huge and delicious. 

Such attention to detail is paid in every inch of the hotel.  Even the area behind the hotel registration is stunning. 
We still lost money in their casino!

Some other street sights along the way.








A Frank Gehry Building

Took a little side trip north of the Strip to see a new building designed by Frank Gehry under construction.  It hurt my head!  Think there is any coincidence that it is to be a center for brain studies!




Saturday, March 27, 2010

Hoover Dam, Lake Mead & Boys From Jersey

March 19 ~ 24

Hoover Dam (usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam) is listed as the fifth engineering wonder of the 20th century world...I have to look the first four up, 'cuz I can't believe there are others that compare to this feat begun in 1931.  And get this, it was completed two years early (in 1935) and well under the $165 million budget.

Neither one of us is particularily scared of heights...I would call it more of a healthy respect.  But a waist-high wall is the only thing that protects you from the 726 feet drop and it gave both of us a severe case of the heebie jeebies!

And I really didn't realize before that you can walk across the entire expanse of the dam and that it's top is a regular road that moves traffic from Nevada to Arizona. It is very cool to see it and the resulting reservoir, Lake Mead, from so many different vantage points....all the while hanging onto the wall!





Loved this view from the back side of the dam...expect to see Flash Gordon or Ming walk out at any moment!






Though Rick had been here a couple of times before, he opted to go again on "The Dam Tour"....a trip down 530 feet to the generatoring system.  I, as a mega claustrophobic, sat in the sun and waited.



The ticket I opted for allowed us in the Visitors Center, another exhibit building and an observation tower that took you a couple of stories higher...those were all fine, but frankly the coolest things to see are all free. 

What I found quite striking were all the beautiful Art Deco touches to the structure.  Doors and brass trimmings that were reminiscent of the Chrysler Building and two towering "Winged Figures of the Republic" representing "eternal vigilance that is the price of liberty".



Much of the traffic congestion( which I'm sure is monumental in the summer) will be alleviated when a new dam bypass that will remove traffic from the dam itself is completed by the end of this year. That construction is fascinating to watch in progress.















Took a brief drive around a loop bordering Lake Mead on our way back to town.  Checking out whether it would merit a separate trip back.  In our opinion, no. We asked the park ranger at the visitors center where to go and what there was to see....he said, not much...it's the desert!  Perhaps if one took a boat around it might be more interesting...to us the landscape looked like a bad paint-by-number painting.




Jersey Boys

Remember when Vegas was a bargain?  Not anymore! Tickets to shows are Broadway prices and fancy chef restaurants are higher than DC.  There are ways to get some discounts....but they really make you work for them.  Reduced price tickets can be gotten for the same evening or sometimes a day in advance at a place called Tix4Tonight (tiks4tonight.com).  There are 12 locations throughout town.  The catch is you don't actually get the tickets then and you can't pick your seats, just theater section....you get a receipt which you take to the box office and then figure all that other stuff out.  Advice...we bought Jersey Boys tickets the day before and went to the box office the next morning when it opened at 10 a.m.  Ended up with good orchestra seats at about $40 a ticket off.  Box office also gave us a coupon for a free drink at Lavo (lavolv.com) an Italian restaurant/bar/club in the Palazzo Hotel (palazzolasvegas.com) where Jersey Boys is playing.

Sat on the terrace on a lovely night, had a couple of appetizers and watched the glammed up Treasure Island pirate boat go down once again.

Pretty good food, though I would stay away from the calamari, very good wine and a great way to kick-off a theater night.

Play was good fun.  Really funny thing is we could have seen the real Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons in Palm Springs for half the price! 

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Still Glamping...Arriving Las Vegas

March 17~19

Dreary.  There is no better word to describe the what should have been a 5 hour drive from Palm Springs to Las Vegas.  The landscape is bleak. Granted we are driving through the Mojave Desert, but geez, there is nothing!  The only thing of interest are a series of trains with hundreds of cars winding their way through the valley. But we are still chasing the sun...everywhere we want to go is still too cold, so Vegas it is.



It took us eight hours instead of the expected five to make the trip because Gigantor kept overheating as we climbed steep hills up to the 4,000 foot elevation.  We had to stop several times along the way to cool down and will have things checked out properly in Vegas. 

We enter Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort (lasvegasmotorcoachresort.com) with a sense of deja vu.  While each of these Outdoor Resorts of America have their own personalities and level of amenities, the bones are very similar.




This one is very pleasant and we manage to score a great site again....#188.  Huge outdoor kitchen that can seat 18.  And I've learned a new word....palapas...those are the grass skirt looking umbrellas over the tables. Really quite interesting in their efficiency and construction.



The resort overall is very nice, but we have become so spoiled.  It's not up to the level of either of the ones we stayed in Indio. But it's pretty convenient to the strip, about 15 minutes, and we pop in the evening after our arrival to have a little fun and try our luck.

We go to Caesar's Palace (caesarspalace.com) because we want to try Mesa Grill (mesagrill.com/lasvegas), Bobby Flay's place.  Way laid a bit by the slots and I'm up $63.  Grab appetizers and drinks at the bar which were terrific.  Split a "rough" cut ahi tuna tartae with a mango habanera sauce and a smoked chicken/black bean avocado quesadilla.  Very pleased with the choices.  I really have to learn when to fold them...back at the slots end up losing my winnings plus another $10.

The Mirage volcano show is still cool.




Haven't decided how long we'll stay here....kind of waiting the weather out...booked us here for a week and then we'll figure it out.  Lots we want to do....Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, some golf, see a couple of shows and see all the hotels that weren't here 10 years ago. We've also been in contact with Habitat for Humanity to see if we might be able to volunteer while we wait out the weather here.


Tuesday, March 16, 2010

I've Created a Monster!

March 13~16
Rick has flung himself headlong into golf!  He's out on this par 3 course all the time.  And it's paying off.  He was previously short-game challenged....now he's getting it.  He even signed up for the weekly scramble, had a great time and made quite a few of the points.

Took it out to a real course, Desert Willow (desertwillow.com) and it's still working....for him....for me, not so much.  My game is nothing short of horrid...have got to get some help.  Not much fun playing like this. Regardless of how  bad I played, I was bit disappointed in this course.  The facility is lovely...we had a lunch overlooking the course with friends when we were here in December.  However, the  Mountain View Course is visually appealling but pretty tame and rather uninteresting. Huge greens, super wide fairways and most holes are straight away.

What I did enjoy from this round was the flora and fauna....so different from the east coast. 


Guess I've never seen a jack rabbit before...they were amazing and the big ones rather intimidating.  There were literally hundreds and hundreds of them on the course.  The biggest one we saw, truly, no exaggeration, had to be two feet tall on all fours. Couldn't get to my camera quick enough for that one, but this is what the average sized ones looked like.




We've really enjoyed our time in the California desert.  The whole outdoor lifestyle is very appealing.  Went to some open houses just to get an idea of what you can get out here....compared to where we come from, there are amazing values here.  And they all have outside living areas like this!  Love it!







Leaving for Las Vegas in the morning. Must admit it's a double-edged sword.  We really like it here, but I think staying in one place for so long is probably not a good thing.....losing a bit of the wanderlust.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Hit For Haiti

March 11 ~ 12

News junkie is a good way to describe me..have always read several newspapers a day and even when I can't get my NY Times, I find the local papers wherever we are interesting....and we find out great things to do that we would never have find out about.

Hit for Haiti was announced a couple of weeks ago in one teeny little paragraph about a tennis tournament here in the desert.  The BNP Paribas Open is held in a fabulous facility, Indian Wells Tennis Garden (iwtg.net), that's second only  in size and fabulousness to the Arthur Ashe U.S. Open venue.  Holds over 16,000.  Anyway, following a lead from Roger Federer at the Australian Open, it was announced that Federer, Nadal, Aggasi and Sampras would play an exhibition match before the March 12 evening matches for those who held a ticket for that night.  Read that....hop in the car....head to the stadium box office....secure two good seats!

Lo and behold!  A week later it's announced that Sephie Graff, Martina Navratilova, Justine Henin and Lindsey Davenport will play a ladies match that night.  Needless to say the tickets sell like wildfire....but we've already got ours!!!!  Then the day of the event, I read Tony Bennet is now going to sing.

What an evening... quite a treat.  It begins with a lovely Salute to Heroes honoring our military and first responders.  The Palm Springs High School Band puts on quite a show and is joined by active marines in a moving tribute.










The women play first and they're all miked so you can hear every word they say.  Martina needs to start a road tour stand-up comedy routine.  She is hysterical....lightens everybody up and the chatter is non stop.

Stephie keeps losing her mike pack during play and that leads to a duct tape fix that leads to inneuendo remarks.


While the banter is quick fire and the laughter frequent, this is still great tennis. And although this has the feel of country club tennis, you are often reminded of the heights these tennis greats have achieved.  Navatrilova and Henin take the eight-game pro set 8-6. Everyone of the 16,000 fans are totally appreciative.

The men take the court and the place explodes in applause. Then Rod Laver walks on court for the coin toss!

Agassi needs to join Martina on the road tour...he keeps the trash talk going while the other three, particularly Sampras, are much more serious.  Federer gets in the mix and the verbal slings and arrows fly along with 125 mile serves and amazing gets. Sampras and Federer win 8-6.



Larry Ellison, the Oracle guru, bought this tournament last December.  The firm donates $1 million to the Red Cross Haiti relief efforts and the contribution buckets are passed throughout the stadium. Be interesting to find out later how much was donated.

Oh, Tony Bennet was terrible and sung what I thought a totally inappropriate song...."Smile" while pictures of ravaged Haiti were on the jumbotron.  That was the only downer. 

Forget about him, the evening was a total blast!


Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Where Next ~ A Moving Target

March 9~10
Chasing the sun in this inordinately bizarre weather year is not easy!  After three weeks in the desert, I'm getting bored.  It's a totally bratty thing to say; where we are is gorgeous and the weather, mostly lovely, but this trip is all about exploration and adventure.  I'm normally totally into wonderful, luxurious resorts, but right now I would like to get moving.  We're committed to be here until the 17th....have spent many hours trying to figure out the weather patterns so we can get to some of the places we want to see.  Everywhere is cold and some still snowy!

It's not particualarly adventuresome, but Las Vegas seems to be the answer for the next leg.  The Las Vegas Motor Coach Resort (lasvegasmotorcoachresort.comis a sister property to the Motorcoach Country Club in Indio so it should be very nice and there are numerous things we'd like to see around there....Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and a portion of the Grand Canyon. 

We've also been in contact with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity.  As long as we're still hanging out waiting to chase the sun, we might as well do some good.  Rick is planning to help on the build, I'm so not into that but plan to work in their retail shop.  Plans still shaping up, but have made reservations for next week. 

After that is still in flux, but here's what I'm thinking right now.  Vegas to Sedona to Bryce Canyon to Salt Lake then back to Boulder to visit Rick's family.


All of this is so weather dependent and because of the rather dicey mountain crossing, we're even considering leaving Tor in Salt Lake or thereabouts and driving the car to Boulder.  It's a moving target and will need to be regularly tweaked.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Tweaking Tor

March 6 ~ 8

Rainy weekend....good time to catch up on wash, ironing, cleaning including cleaning the carpet which was getting pretty gross looking.  We also have a long list of smaller projects that we think will make Tor even more conducive to comfortable living.

The closets have always made us nuts.  Instead of a rod, they have a rail with individual hanger spaces...187 of them to be exact.  And if you fill everyone of those 187 spaces, which of course I am, you end up with a tangle of things that cannot be hung properly since you cannot push the other clothes out of the way and straighten what you're  hanging....leads to lots of wrinkles. 

We thought this configuration had something to do with being in a RV or motion or something.  Well, we've been in some very fancy coaches recently (the last one $2.2 million!....gorgeous!) and they all had regular closet rods.  So thanks to  this rainy weekend, now we have them too....makes all the difference in the world....wish we had done this ages ago.






The other "life changing" project was actually done a couple of weeks ago...pre-Olympics.  I am an Olympic freak, have been my whole life except I will admit now it's not quite the same with every athlete drawing down hefty paychecks ....I digress.  Inexplicably the Olympics, even though they were being held in the Pacific Time Zone, were being delayed until 8p.m PST.....11 p.m. Eastern time.  Old news!  And NBC in an effort to recoup their enormous investment in the Games seemed to have about 50% of the broadcast devoted to commercials.  Even though I reaped many benefits by spending years creating ads , I can't stand it anymore. 

We have tried to have satellite TV installed in Tor and other variations on the theme....but nothing had the DVR component.  Rick solved that with the purchase of a $65 gadget that records on the laptop and works just like a TIVO.  Olympics were watched on our schedule and took half the time as we zipped through all the ads!  Downside, Rick still hasn't figured out how to hide all the wires....big prob...need a solution.

Can't believe this month that we were afraid was going to be way to long too stay in one place has passed so quickly.  Just 10 days left....a few more things we'd like to see/do here and I need to find someplace to get my hair cut again and we need to figure where we go from here!

Friday, March 5, 2010

Joshua Tree National Park

March 1 ~ March 5

We didn't know much about Joshua Tree National Park (nps/gov.jotr) until we arrived in the desert.  It is a 794,000 acre area that was proclaimed a National Park by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 at the urging of a local desert-lover.  It is wilderness!  And filled with  Dr. Seuss  plants! 

The park spans portions of the Colorado Desert at the elevations below 3,000 feet and the Mojave, at the upper heights.  It's signature plant and namesake is the Joshua Tree.

Actually it's not a tree at all, but a variation of a yucca plant.  It has a tree-like bark, but it's "leaves" are definitely like the cactus.  We thought we were visiting during the blooming session, but were a couple of weeks too early.  Would have loved to have seen them....big spikes chocked with milky white flowers.  These trees only branch after blossoming and can live to 500 years.

Particularly interesting to me is the way certain vegetation only grows in certain areas and where certain rock formations only crop up in specific areas.  It's almost as if it were designed as a theme park!

The Cactus Garden was probably our favorite.  This relatively small area is populated with the cholla (choyya) cactus or popularly known as teddy bears.  You can see why. They look real cuddly..but beware...the soft-looking silver bristles are not soft at all and have microscopic barbs that penetrate even shoes.  We missed the magenta flowers they sport in April.

It also appears there has been a desert fire looking at all the brown, seemingly dead cholla spines on the plants and the ground.  We learn that this is a means to natural reproduction.  The older ones simply fall off and re-root to form new plants.  Also since they attach to anything that touches them, the spines are said to "hitchhike" on unsuspecting desert animals.

Ocotillo is another extremely interesting find.  From afar it looks like a tall, willowy cactus.  

In fact, it is a deciduous tree that's covered with lush green leaves and gives off a showy display of bright pink flowers in spring and sometimes again in the fall.  They were budding when we were there.





The rock formations that a scattered about are fascinating.  Geologists believe they were formed over 150 million years ago through volcanic activity.  We find a large outcropping near Arch Rock for a picnic.  Glad we packed a lunch...there are no services in the Park, though restrooms are available at their various campsites.

To me, Arch Rock looks like a huge keeled over alien!

You could spend a whole afternoon making up names for some of the interesting formations you see. 


Driving through over 75 miles in the Park, there are  many small turn-offs they call "exhibits".  A major departure off the main road is Keys View....it's an extra 20 minutes to get there, but worth it.  From this summit you are able to see the Salton Sea (to the far left in the photo) and the Mexican border just behind it.  Unfortunately crystal clear days are very hard to get, haze usually covers the Coachella Valley.








As we near the end of the park, for some reason we decide to stop at another rock outcrop.  We find a few guys climbing that were fascinating to watch.  One had full gear, another, much older and wizened gentleman, told us he was "free-soleing"...not sure that's how you spell it..but it means he just walks up!





We've been here for well over 5 hours and could've poked around longer.  But it's a good hour back to La Quinta and we're beginning to fade. 

Encountered a very interesting sight on the way.  We've seen wind farms in California before, but this was amazing.  Looked like many thousands.  Also looked like an alien turbine invasion.


I've read you can tour the wind farm.  Rick would love that....will check it out further.