On Tour: May 2020

By the first of April most of the Canadians had left Indian Wells RV Resort for home and there were only about 35 residents remaining. The pools had been closed along with the fitness center, library and club house and people within the park were practicing social distancing. Despite the aforementioned closures, rising temps and the inability to cool off in one of the parks three swimming pools, it seemed as good a place as any to hunker down for a while longer and see what the next several weeks had in store vis-a-vis the Wuhan scourge.
I ordered a couple of toys with which to amuse myself and others during lock-down, one of which was a drone... the other a video projector and screen.
The drone was a lot of fun. I took a few in-flight videos and photos, none of which are worthy of posting here. When I get a little better behind the flight controls I'll definitely share some of my aerial photos and videos.
The drone is a Holy Stone HS-720. It has a 4K UHD camera with image stabilization and two batteries, each of which provide about 26 minutes of flight time. It's really a lot of fun... and was surprisingly inexpensive.
The video projector was an inspired purchase! We originally thought we might watch one or two movies a week.... but it ended up being more like four or five! Suzanne, our friend Tim and I had a lot of fun watching movies projected onto the 120" screen I attached to the side of the coach via ultra strong suction cups.
Ah... the suction cups.

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After our first movie I considered removing the suction cups but figured it would be much easier to leave them on and simply take the screen down at the end of the night. The screen has grommets at 12 locations around it's perimeter that I attached to the suction cups with metal key clips. The problem was that that side of the coach was exposed to the sun for much of the day - and temperatures were reaching the 105 degree range. A couple weeks later I decided to dust off the exterior of the coach and upon suction cup removal saw this...

I first tried rubbing one of the rings out by hand with rubbing compound... to no avail. Then I tried buffing with rubbing compound and my buffer (yes, I carry an electric buffer in the coach). No good. There had obviously been some sort of heat activated chemical reaction between the suction cup rubber and the clear coat. The resulting rings were set deep into the clear coat. I ended up wet sanding very carefully with 1000 grit, then 1500 and 2000 grit sand paper then buffing with rubbing compound and polishing compound. I still have a bit more work to do but I'm happy with the results. The more I did, the more comfortable I got and the more aggressive I was with sanding and buffing. Lesson learned.

I'm not sure if it was due to the hours of sanding and buffing, but the next morning I woke up with a severely pulled muscle and spasms in my upper back and ended up spending the next 5 nights sleeping in the recliner in the coach's living room. I was miserable. About a week in Tim hooked me up with his friend Vince at Avid Physical Therapy in Indio and with Vince's skillful manipulation and advice, I'm happy to say I'm feeling good as new.

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On May 16th and with heavy hearts, Suzanne and I bid farewell to Tim and his friend Kim and headed for the Interstate to begin making our way back to Virginia. We don't have to be home until June 20th when our daughter Allie and her husband Andy will be taking a three day vacation and Suzanne and I will be babysitting our grandson, Henry. We're really looking forward to seeing Allie, Andy and Henry AND our son Aaron and his wife Molly. We've been away from home since early January and miss them all very much!

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Since leaving Indio we've spent time in Camp Verde, AZ, Sedona, AZ, a brief stop on Winslow, AZ and Durango, CO. We are now in Colorado City, CO and will be continuing on to Cheyenne, WY tomorrow morning.