A WALMART RENDEVOUS

This picture shows a few of our fellow Golden Spike Chapter members & Patty, just prior to our departure from the La Quinta Wal Mart yesterday morning. Actually, about 15 rigs, including ourselves, parked in the adjacent, recently closed Sam's Club parking lot. This is where we agreed to meet, and spend the night, prior to driving the 4 miles or so, into the Riverside County Fairgrounds. The town of La Quinta is one of several towns that make up the greater Palm Springs area. La Quinta has an ordnance on the books that does not allow overnight camping in private parking lots, and signage at the entrance to Wal Mart states "No overnight camping". During our years of travel around the country, we have found several cities that have enacted local laws prohibiting overnight parking. Wal Mart has an almost universal policy that allows RV's to use their parking lots, and I suspect that from a business perspective, it's a good policy. Despite the signage, we all decided to risk being kicked out, and as we suspected, no local authorities bothered us.

A little after 10am, we left as a group, and drove about 4 miles to the Fair Grounds. After getting parked, we picked up our welcome bag of goodies, and sort of relaxed for the afternoon. I say sort of, because about mid afternoon, I lost all 12 volt power inside the motor home. No lights, no water pump, no water heater, just 110 power from our electrical connection. I traced the problem to a solenoid downstream from the battery cut off switch, and after tightening a connection, got everything working again. I suspect that this solenoid will act up again, and will eventually need to be replaced. If it fails again, I'll probably just bypass it until I get another one.

Our chapter is in charge of a few of the activities at this rally, so our group was part of the several hundred that were treated to a free volunteer dinner last night. That pretty much capped off the day, and the rally officially starts this morning.