Yorba Linda, California - 1/23/2007

We enjoy stopping at Presidential Libraries. They are always fascinating. Nixon's Library was no exception. The building and grounds were beautiful and presidential - the only word I could think of to describe them. Similar to Truman's and Eisenhower's in a way, although Truman's has been compared to a post office. Johnson's, on the University of Texas campus, looked like an office building or a university library to me. We didn't go into Clinton's library on the Arkansas River in Little Rock, but from afar it didn't look presidential at all, probably because he committed a bunch of acts during his presidency that were not very presidential and one of his objectives during the design of the building was to make it better and flashier than all the other presidential libraries. The building is supposed to represent the Bridge to the 21st Century that he constantly talked up. This 'bridge' in Little Rock doesn't go anywhere either.

There were many interesting exhibits and of course we didn't have time to closely examine each one of them. I particularly liked the Pat Nixon exhibition area. I always thought she was one of the best first ladies and was interested in seeing memorabilia and pictures from her life.

Riverside, California - 1/24 - 1/28/2007

We check the Passport America book for camp grounds in the LA area that we might use as a home base while we checked out some things in LA we wanted to see. We found this delightful camp ground named Rancho Jurupa in Riverside. Riverside as it turns out is actually quite a ways from the things we wanted to see in LA but it was the only reasonable and secure thing we could find.

Rancho Jurupa is a county park and is sort of hidden away in Riverside. It has 67 sites with hookups and a dump site. It is along the Santa Ana River near the intersection of US 60 and SR-91(I-215). It has several lakes in the 200 acre park that are stocked with fish. It was a good birdwatching location.

Quartzsite 1/22/07

We loaded up the RV and headed for Quartzsite then on to LA, Las Vegas, and back home. We were going to visit the RV Show in Quartzsite to look for summer jobs at the job fair that was being held there.

We got to Quartzsite and pulled into Reed Springs camp ground. Calling Reed Springs a camp ground is a big stretch. They have some of the most unfriendly and unhelpful camp ground hosts I have ever encountered. It does have hookups I was surprised to learn but most of the 'sites' are just dusty parking places in the desert. The biggest benefit to camping there is that we are within walking distance of all the 'action' in Quartzsite. $5 a night.

We nearly froze to death for the first couple of nights because our coach batteries went dead. I got the problem fixed and the batteries recharged so we returned to normal.

At the job fair we got a job in Redstone Camp Ground in the White River National Forest south of Carbondale CO. We will start on May 17th and finish up right after Labor Day. We will only have 20 spots and 2 restrooms. The camp ground is managed by Thousand Trails. The people who signed us up live in Sun City Grand, about a mile from our Sun City West house. Nice people. The 'job fair' was kind of a bust. Only about 4-5 companies were there looking for employees. Several had already filled their slots by the time we got to the RV Show at 10:00am. It opened at 9:00.

Quartzsite is getting really bad. Dirty, unorganized. Huge traffic jams. We will not go back there .

We will head for California after just two nights. We do not have any reservations anywhere in the LA so we will have a challenge there.