Thursday and Friday, March 16 and 17, 2017 (Travel to Oasis Palms RV Resort, Thermal, CA)

Thursday morning we were up bright and early and on the road a few minutes after 8:00. We had an appointment to drop the fifth-wheel off at CJ's RV Repair to have the brakes, bearings, suspension and awning motor looked at. It was only about a five minute drive from Fortuna de Oro...another reason why we decided to stay at that RV park...so we were there in plenty of time for our 8:30 appointment.

After unhitching the trailer the tech immediately started working on it. We then drove to the Denny's restaurant in the same parking lot as Fry's...how convenient is that? We had breakfast, fueled the truck up with diesel ($2.52/gallon) and then I popped into Fry's to pick up a few more groceries. While I was doing that, Steve, who was sitting in the truck using his iPad, received a phone call from CJ's. The other tech checking out the awning motor couldn't duplicate our problem...it had needed a helping "hand" when we retracted it the other day. Apparently he had run it in and out and it worked fine..."murphy's law" right? Steve explained that it had become very sluggish and would stall out intermittently. We would be back there shortly, so the fellow was going to do a little more troubleshooting. Even though they had the motor in stock the tech didn't try to sell us one. Instead he suggested that they check the spring tension in the awning tube. It only had 6 turns on it so they added 3 more turns. It definitely rolls back in quicker but is still rather slow rolling back out. He thinks it should be fine now but time will tell. Just in case Steve had him show us how to manually operate the awning in case the motor does fail. So all in all they had us back on the road in about 2 1/2 hours. Everyone at CJ'S were friendly and professional so we wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. In fact Steve makes a point of sending in his reviews good and bad to rvservicereviews.com. He wishes more people would because some of the reviews on this site are quite old.

We got hitched up...and were on the I-8 heading west...and it was just going on noon! We went past the Imperial Sand Dunes

Looks like their trying to flatten the dunes out :-)

See the dark line? That's the fence on the border with Mexico...

Brand new section of I-8 highway..

Just before El Centro, we took highway 111 north, over to highway 86 that goes on the west side of the Salton Sea.

Date Palms...

At the junction with highway 78 that goes west to Borrego Springs, is a border patrol station. There was a long line up we had to wait in to get through...

The desert here is very colourful as well....

On our left is the Ocotillo Wells State Recreational Vehicle Area that we've stayed at a couple of times before. Ahead before the mountains is the other turnoff to Anza Borrego Springs, and on our right is...

...the Salton Sea....

We pulled into Oasis Palms RV Resort around 2:00 and after checking in, we followed Mike to a grassy pull-through site (P-4).

We got unhitched and all set up...again, it was into the 90's (30'sC) so we quickly got the AC running.

We sat outside in the shade for a bit but the flies got the better of us and we headed inside to the coolness of the AC...

The view out our back window...

We were up early Friday...I was hoping for a quieter night's sleep since we were not next to the I-8 but it seems that highway 86 is just as busy all night too! These last few nights have been tough after the quietness of La Posa South!

We really didn't do much of anything today. We got out for a walk, taking the camera to get a few shots of the park. We chose this park because of a review friends of ours did on their website Love Your RV.

Beautiful little pond with a fountain in it...

 The swimming pool and hot tub....

 Recreation room...

The office...the building also has the recreation room, showers, and laundry...with the pool at the back...

 They are expanding to the south...

Another shot of the lake...that's us directly across in the middle...

The rest of the day was spent reading and watching TV...a very lazy day!