A lot of California people move back and forth from Palm Springs and Wilderness campgrounds--three weeks in each one at a time. They will do that all winter, and sometimes longer. About 80% of the people in the Park have California license plates.
As soon as we started setting up when we got there, we had visitors. I was sitting in a chair taking their pictures and they came right up to me.
Terry decided maybe they would make a mess on our rug, so he came and shooed them away! We thought they may be a nuisance, but they really never came that close after we had been there for a day or two. We just made sure we didn't feed them close to the Condo!
This is the first Thanksgiving we have not had family with us. But, I put a turkey, all stuffed with homemade dressing, in our little oven and it cooked just fine. We kept it for leftovers because we ate dinner in the lodge with about 50 other RVers. We met two very nice couples who ate at our table. But, it wasn't the best Thanksgiving meal we have ever had! Actually, we both agreed that my turkey and dressing was the best!
Wilderness Park is unique in that it has a series of canals that wind through it. They stock the canals with catfish. In fact, the fish truck came while we were there and we got to see them dump several hundred catfish into the canal. We got a spot where we backed right up to one of the canals.
This is pretty much what we saw out our big back window, except there were usually people fishing all along the canal. We even had our own water fountain. They had these fountains all along the canals that were put in to keep the water moving. The only bad thing was that it was kind of noisy right at our back. The water was nice to hear, but the motor was quite loud. We got used to it, though, and hardly noticed it after a while.
There were lots of ducks wherever you went in the Park. The Park is a preserve for ducks and geese who come each winter. Some stay all winter and some just use it as a stopping place on their way further south.
The park has a really nice miniature golf course, but sometimes the ducks use it more than the people. Some of the campers complained at a Managers Meeting that the course needed to be cleaned more often because the geese were camping out on it overnight!
Another uniqueness to this Park are the dairies. There use to be quite a few dairies all around the park, which caused an odor that was a little offensive to a lot of people (Terry just says it smells like $$ to him.) Well, the area is slowly turning into housing developments and there is just one active dairy left. The smell wasn't ever too bad while we were there. I guess that the flies are pretty bad if you come to the Park in the summer months.
A few miles from the Park is a man-made lake called Diamond Lake. It was finished in 2000 and has three dams to hold the water in. There is limited fishing allowed along the bank, but they allow boats. They really want you to rent their boats, but if you use your own, there is an inspection process to go through. There is no "body contact" allowed with the water because this lake was built as a reservoir to hold water piped from the Colorado River and other water that comes from northern California and it supplies water for a lot of southern California.
There is a 21 mile trail that goes all around the lake. The parts that goes over the dams are paved, but the rest is gravel and dirt. It is a great bike trail. We had been riding our bike from 9-12 miles a day so one day we decided we would try out the lake trail. This is the first dam we went over. It is more than a mile long, which was nice because it was paved.
We thought we might see more wildlife, but the only thing we was with this lonely little coyote and some quail.
There were restrooms along the trail and several canopies they had put up that had picnic tables under them. They were nice to stop and rest under and have a little snack.
This was our second stop. We were about halfway around the lake and at the beginning of the second dam. The third dam is just past the pump house you can see in the picture and it was paved trail on the dams and also between them. The only bad thing was the "big" hill between the dams. The trail went up over the mountain between them. I do admit that we had to get off and push the bike the last part of the hill. We decided it just wasn't worth it to hurt that bad!
We have never ridden our bike 21 miles before. In fact, that morning we had taken a 5-mile ride before we decided to ride the lake! So, needless to say, the last five miles or so of the trail was pretty hard. We were glad to see that 3-mile sign.
And then, suddenly, we rounded the bend and there was the parking lot and our little red hippo was sitting in the parking lot! It looked pretty good. Even though the trail was supposed to be 21 miles long, the odometer on our bike said we had ridden 22.5 miles from the time we left the hippo until we got back to it! But, we are ready to do it again, after a few days of rest. Hopefully we can find another trail sometime at one of the next campgrounds we go to.
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