Stuck in Indio Again

We left Joshua Tree National Park on Monday morning headed for Arizona.  As we headed up the I-10 towards Chirioco Summit, a vehicle drove by us with the passenger gesticulating wildly at us.  Leo looked in the mirrors and saw smoke coming from the trailer.  We had blown a wheel bearing.

We turned around and limped back into Indio to the nearest RV repair shop.  While we waited for the excellent and reasonable Benlo RV Repair to do the work, we decided to check out downtown Indio, neat as a pin and totally devoid of pedestrians.  We decided to have lunch in the first restaurant we came across, the Rincon Norteno, which turned out to be full of locals.  Our meal turned out to be the highlight of a day otherwise utterly devoid of highlights.Did I mention it was pouring rain most of the day?

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The only other action we saw that day was a drug deal taking place right in front of the Indio Courthouse, as we were driving by.  The goods were passed off just like in the movies and on television.  Of course, who am I to cast aspersions on the fine City of Indio, as a resident of the Crime Capital of Canada, who had drug deals going on right down the street from her own house (till I phoned the cops on them).

To top it off we were nicely settled in at the Walmart parking lot when the security guard very politely kicked us out.  I had to haul Leo out of the very long lineup at the single cashier.  Take that Walmart, lost our sale. We drove in the dark back to Joshua Tree and stayed in the campsite there.

Oh, well, tomorrow is another day isn’t it?

The next morning we headed back up to Chirioco summit, and made it another 10 miles, when Leo spotted smoke coming off the trailer, again.  This time 2 springs had broken.  This time we had to get towed back to Indio from the busy metropolis of Desert Center.

The only thing open here is the Post Office.  Every other business is closed and derelict.  Truckers park here to take their required rests.  While we were waiting for our tow several desperate travellers drove in looking for a bathroom.

At least it was a warm and sunny day in Indio.  We had lunch again at the Rincon Norteno. Then did a tour of downtown Indio’s historic murals.  We felt like we may have been the first tourists ever to tour the murals as there were no other people around and the few stores had no customers.  We did pass through a very neat and friendly Hispanic neighbourhood, but every house had a guarddog or a security system.

We killed the remainder of the afternoon hiking in some desert wasteland.  

After all the recent rain the desert was in bloom:

Once the trailer was repaired we wanted to make some distance, so drove into the night till we got to Blythe, CA, just across the Colorado River from Arizona.