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♦ Quite a few people were able to make it out for all or part of the March trip, and it looks like they had a great time. If you missed out on the fun, don’t worry because it is just a preview of what’s to come Easter Week at Gordon’s Well.

♦ The Spring Break Easter trip will again be to Gordon’s Well. We have done this the past many years, and it offers a chance to ride in a slightly different spot. For a map of the Gordon’s Well camping area, see page 4.

♦ The first weekend of the April trip does fall on Easter, so we will once again be having our now traditional adult Easter egg hunt in camp on Sunday morning. Plan to bring goodies to hide for the adults in camp to find. Look for more info on

page 4. ♦ After having lack of oil pressure (due to lack of oil volume)

issues over Presidents week, P.J. has replaced the Shortstar in his car with another one from a wrecking yard, and this one made the trip from Indiana. It is in the car and running now, and will be thoroughly tested at Easter.

♦ Not to be outdone, John Cole started looking for a V8 for his car, and found one in a storage unit that his brother in law’s boss owns. It turned out to be a 2003 5.3 out of a Chevy truck, and he got it for $100 plus taking away the rest of the junk in the unit, which was a few mattresses and a TV. Nice job John! Now he’s collecting the pieces to put it in.

Gordon’s Well, March 8-March 19 by Jim Kastle Recognizing the error I made waiting to write up the President’s Day trip, I’ll attempt to update this each day. Thursday- I arrived at Gordon’s Well to find the Tranthams and Steve Strum had already arrived. Steve was on a ride with a group from a neighboring camp. I dropped off my trailer and headed back to Glamis to pick up the yellow trailer. I made the 100 mile round trip with no prob-lems. Steve was not back from his ride when I returned. I did some needed welding on my sand rail, and when I thought I was done, Steve found several cracks that needed at-tention. Friday- I started the day with a breakfast from Duner’s Diner. They were exceptionally friendly with the owners taking the order, and cooking it. They asked how my breakfast was, and even offered a

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April 5th: First day to call 1(800) 322-3770 to make individ-

ual site reservations for the en-

tire Coral Pink trip. You can

book nights for the first part of

the trip, up through 7/18, start-

ing March 22nd.

April 5th - 16th: Easter Week at Gordon’s

Well. We’ll have the Easter egg

hunt on Sunday morning, April

8th.

May 18th –20th: Weekend trip to Dumont.

Come out for one last trip be-

fore it heats up. (Yet we still

avoid Mother’s day the week-

end before).

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free refill on my coke as I left. Back in camp I finished up the welding. Steve, Jerry, and I went for a ride on near perfect sand. The only problem was that the sand was so smooth I had trouble seeing the edges, and had to go slower than I would have preferred. We made a fast run back to camp from test hill in the old canal. Don and Shirley arrived while we were on the ride. I then headed off to Yuma to get some bolts to allow me to redo my rear suspension. As I was leaving, Steve and Sharon Porter arrived. I got back to camp and Don helped me install new rod ends and bolts on the right side of my car. This in an attempt to eliminate a vibration I have felt since replacing my CV axles with universal joint axles. As usual, the job took longer than I expected, and we only did the right side before quitting and going to the campfire. Walt arrived and reported a trouble-filled trip including two delays due to hazmat spills, and another due to a blown out trailer tire. Lots of other camps arrived Friday night. Saturday- We went for a morning ride and met the ladies in the RZR’s at Patton Valley. The sand was pretty smooth, but a lack of shadows made for another slower than nor-mal ride. We duned to test hill where we watched the traffic on I-8. Again we headed back to camp via the old canal. Walt and I fixed the other side of my rear suspension. Steve Sturm, Walt and I went for an afternoon ride across the highway in Buttercup. For the first ride of the trip we were able to get some decent speed. After the ride Walt and I went to Yuma for gas, Sam’s Club hotdogs, and grocery shopping.

Sunday- We went for a morning ride, the sand had some tracks due to the number of duners, but we were able to go pretty fast as the tracks gave a point of reference. I watched the NAS-CAR race. We all went to din-ner at Texas Roadhouse. The service was better than usual, and the food was great as al-ways. Monday- We went for the usual morning ride. There were actu-ally 2 rides, Walt lead the

RZR’s and I led the buggies. We met the RZR’s and Kevin Fegan’s buggy at Patton valley. It seems Kevin arrived just after the buggies left, so he followed the RZR’s in his buggy. Upon leaving Patton Valley he followed the buggies. Apparently Sharon Porter decided to add some excitement to the RZR ride and rolled her RZR on its side. Several passing quads stopped to help right it, and except for some bruises and a cut on her arm from her watch, Sharon was fine. We met back in camp and heard about Sharon’s roll. Monday afternoon we did a few minor repairs and went for an afternoon ride in But-tercup. The shade of the I-8 Bridge felt good while Kevin reattached a brake rotor that had loosened on the ride. We returned to camp and had a campfire. Linda Trantham’s knee was hurting, possibly as a result of the 8 hour RZR ride from Don

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and Shirley’s house over a week ago. Her knee kept her out of her RZR until Friday. Tuesday-We went for a morning ride with the buggies, while the RZR’s stayed in camp. While taking a break at Patton Valley we met a group of duners from Yuma who told us about several landmarks in the dunes. They reported a trampoline, a call box, a park bench, and some traffic signs are located in the dunes west of test hill. We spent a little time looking for them on the way back to camp, but didn’t find anything. I just spent an hour with Shirley’s I-pad searching for GPS coordinates, and only found them for the call box. We’ll try to find it tomorrow. After the morning ride Kevin, Walt, and I went shopping in Yuma. We had a great Five Guys lunch The weather has been great, with highs in the low 80’s and cool nights. We hear the weather in the Inland Empire has been cold. Wednesday- Today is Jerry’s birthday. We started the celebra-tion by taking a morning buggy ride in search of the call box and the other points of interest. We were about half a mile from the coordinates of the call box when Walt’s right front wheel and tire departed his sand rail in a cloud of sand. The right front corner of the car was buried, but Walt was ok. Walt got in my car and we, followed by Kevin, returned to camp to get his spare spindle and remove the remains of the old one. While we did that, Jerry, Don, and Steve removed the spindle. When we returned, the car was ready for the new spindle. In just a few minutes Walt was up and running. Following the GPS we drove right to the call box. Walt took some pictures. We then headed off in search of the other landmarks. In just a few minutes Kevin saw the trampoline. Next to the trampoline were a park bench, a stop sign, and a memorial to a deceased duner. More pictures were taken. We then continued to Patton Valley and test hill, then back to camp. Kevin had to head home. The remaining eight of us had a birthday dinner at Famous Dave’s in Yuma. We finished the day’s celebration with a campfire-side birthday cheesecake prepared by Sharon Porter. Thursday- Again, we went for morning buggy ride. We headed for the Ogilby tower, and went through some untouched sand, but it wasn’t as good as you’d think. The sand was extremely “rolly” with steep inclines and drop offs. We were in sand that no vehicle had been in for a long time. We finally found a path through the sand that lead towards Ogilby. There were few campers, as it WAS Thursday. We went to Patton Valley and then duned back to camp. In camp nearly everyone worked on something. Walt repaired trailer damage from the blowout he suffered on the way down, Don made a mount for his Trans cooler, Jerry repaired a small crack

in his right front shock mount, and I tried to cure my continu-ing first ride of the morning sputtering issue. Pete Hagan ar-rived with reports of a transmission repair by RAW Mo-torsport, and California Performance Transaxle, both of Te-mecula. RAW motorsports R and R’d the engine and trans-mission, and arranged for the transmission repair. The entire project took only 11 days, and the work seems first class. The price was quite reasonable for the amount of work involved. It seems to me RAW motorsports is a business to remember if you need buggy repairs. The day ended with a campfire, just as nearly every other day of the trip. Friday- The morning buggy ride was on the south side of the freeway. The ladies took their RZR’s to Buttercup as well. This was Linda’s first RZR ride since Monday. The sand was unusually rutted, so the fast long runs typical of Buttercup were just a memory for the buggy group. We spent most of the afternoon just sitting around camp enjoying conversation. The weather forecast called for high winds and up to a 60%

chance of rain for the weekend. Don and I skipped the campfire and headed off to a local casino. I had a good time, but lost my allotment while Don was much more lucky, netting a profit for the evening. We finished the day with a Blizzard from the Yuma DQ. Saturday- The morning buggy ride was on the north side of the freeway. The sand was quite rutted, making the pace of the ride un-

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Walt doing the three wheeled pose after a spindle broke.

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Bridge

Camp

Gordon’s Well Off Ramp

I-8

Below is an aerial photo of the flats at Gordon’s Well. We usually camp near where the arrow indicates. Look for Jim’s blue over amber strobe, the yellow shop trailer, and the Fords’ and Trantham’s rigs.

This year we will once again be having an Easter egg hunt in camp, and with how the calendar worked out we will have opportunity to have it on Easter Sunday. In this now-traditional Inland Empire event, the adults in camp search for eggs that the kids (with help from some others) have hidden on the buggies in the middle of camp. The eggs contain items (or certificates for items if they won’t fit in the eggs) that the adults would be happy to get. If you would like to partici-

pate, just bring 6-12 plastic eggs filled with inter-esting items. Part of the fun is seeing all the unique items people come up with to donate. Past favorites include carb cleaner, ice cream, candy (since you never outgrow sweets!), and of course money! It is great fun to search for the eggs and to see what prizes everybody gets. Peo-ple will compete pretty hard to see who can find the most hidden eggs, and inevitably we will find a few still hidden in the cars when we’re out on a ride later that day.

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even as we searched for relatively smooth sand, but spent way too much time being jarred by ruts. We took Pete to the recently found trampoline and bench and while taking a break we heard Walt on the radio. He and the ladies were in the area looking for the trampoline. Don and I went looking for them, and almost immediately Walt found us and headed for the trampoline. All of us took a break at the trampoline. Of course, our resident retired kid, Shirley, took a turn on the trampoline. Walt and I took a trip to Yuma, and as we walked out of Wal-Mart were treated to an air show by the US Air Force Thunderbirds. For half an hour we watched their spectacular display of flying skills. One of the most impressive to me was when one of the jets flew a circle, part of which was directly over our heads, with in a 90 degree bank with full afterburners. I could clearly see two circles of fire from the rear of the plane, and it was VERY loud. Walt and I then took the yellow trailer back to Glamis and went to dinner at Mama Jeannie’s. On the way up, we ran into some rain, the first of the trip. It was extremely slow with no other customers when we got there. Jeannie invited us to the family dining area and we had a great time visiting with Jeannie, her brother, and Mary, a long-time employee and wife of the bartender. We headed back to Gordon’s Well, and had just a little rain on the way back. As I type this, we have yet to have any rain at Gordon’s Well, but the wind is beginning to blow. Sunday- Overnight it was very windy. It let up some by our 9:00 ride time, and Walt and Pete suggested we try the now virgin sand south of the highway. That was a great suggestion, and the sand was very smooth and the ride was the fastest of the trip. Part way through the ride, Pete’s engine developed a miss at 4000 RPM. We did some trouble shooting, but were not able to find the cure. Don escorted Pete back to camp while the rest of us contin-ued the ride. It became more and more windy, and rather cold, so we headed back to camp. I had already done most of my packing, so in about an hour I had the car loaded, said my goodbyes and hit the road. We’ll be back at Gordon’s in just 17 days for the Easter trip. I can’t wait. –Jim

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After talking to duners from Yuma, they found a trampoline, park bench, and Stop sign together in the dunes.

A Wonderful President’s Day Week By Mike Bacon

I was lucky enough to have the entire President’s week off work, although I was monitoring my phone the whole time and did get a few sales during the week. I arrived on Friday around lunch time and got the trailer set up. Don was working on installing Shirley’s new RZR doors so I spent the afternoon generally making a nuisance of myself and getting in Don’s way under the guise of being helpful. Mona was able to get off work early and arrived about 7 o’clock Friday night. We had dinner together then went out to the fire for a while. Saturday morning we were ready to ride! We gathered up the SxS Faith-ful and toured the usual spots, Hill 3 and Olds. The dunes were nice and smooth with only occasional tracks, but the ride was a little rough for Mona, so later in the day I took her for a slow ride over by Olds and through some of the smaller dunes. Sunday we went for a ride to the dunes behind Hill 3 and just cruised around enjoying ourselves. Mona had to go home for work so I was on my own the rest of the week. On Monday we rode out to Hill 4, and while taking a break Shirley mentioned we should try to get to the flag-pole. Not having been there before I was trying to follow GPS directions and we ended up in some very big hills behind Hill 4. It was pretty hairy for us, and Janice and Shirley hi-centering on steep hills didn’t help, but we eventually made it back out to the valley. Just another great SxS adventure! By the time we made it back to camp the wind had picked up. We all kind of hid out and everyone except me left to go to Yuma. At least I thought I was the sole camp guardian, until I found out the next day Steve Sturm was there too! With the wind blowing neither of us ventured outside. Good thing no one came by to cart anything off, we wouldn’t have heard or seen them. Camp guardian my …! With the wind the dunes were just perfect on Tuesday morning. We rode through the small dunes between camp, Olds, and the Flats.

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In fact, the dunes were so perfect we were all upset when we came across the very occasional set of tracks! How dare they mess up “our” dunes! As it turned out some of the tracks we came across were actually our own! Yeah, we always know exactly where we are going! Later in the morning it started to look like rain so we headed back to camp. Wednesday was a low-key day as the weather had turned cold and rainy, and then it rained heavily Wednesday night. Thurs-day morning was still cold, and Mona came back to camp later in the morning. With the wind blowing we decided to go in to El Centro for the day. While in El Centro we stopped at Famous Dave’s BBQ for lunch. They had a rib special going in the bar so we both ordered a half dozen ribs for lunch. The people at Dave’s must have thought we were hungrier than that and brought us four full racks of ribs! Yeah, 48 ribs! Well, in the end they couldn’t give them to anyone else after we touched them, so they ended up giving them to us and only charging us for the 12 we ordered, so when we got back to camp a number of people got free ribs. Friday we rode the small dunes south eventually ending up at Wash 30. On the way back we got in to some rougher dunes and I wasn’t as easy on Mona as she would have liked. She ended up hitting her bad knee on the dash a couple of times, then bit her tongue on a particularly hard hit. She finally yelled “That’s Enough! You Need To Get A RZR!” Fortunately (for me!) she said it in front of four people so I have witnesses! That was the hard part, now all I have to do is come up with money! Saturday we went south again. We went past Wash 30 until I started feeling we might be going a little too far. We detoured out of the dunes to the Wash Road to see where we were and passed a Closure sign on our way. Turned out we were right on the border of the South Closure, so we turned around and worked our way back through the dunes. While on our way I came across a drop-off that had a big dip at the bottom. I didn’t see the dip in time and hit it pretty hard. It bounced me up in the air a couple of feet and while trying to get everything under control again I was trying to signal those behind me to look out. Linda hit the dip before I could alert her, and then Sharron hit it too. I saw Sharron bounce at least a foot in the air when she hit it. Shirley had seen what happened to us and slowed way down and was able to drive around the dip, with the rest of the line following her. Good thing Mona wasn’t with me for that one! The big hit did knock my Ranger for a loop though as it started to run very erratic. I worked my way out through the washes to the Wash Road and was trying to nurse it back to camp but it was just getting worse. I finally gave up at Wash 10 and Jeff mercifully towed me back to camp. I let everything cool and dug in to it after lunch finding a broken wire. Once I fixed the wire we were back up and going again.

Sunday was photo day. I invited Melissa to go out in the dunes with me to photo the buggies as they came by. This was a major mistake on my part! I used to think my action pictures were pretty good, but Melissa put me to shame! Her pictures were outstanding! Well, I guess the RZR budget is going to have to get bigger because a new camera is going to have to be included. Thanks A Lot, Melissa! Sunday afternoon Shirley, Janice and I went for a very fast ride through the dunes over to Olds. That was a lot of fun, but my Ranger started acting up again on the way back so my wire fix was-n’t as good as I thought. I guess I’m going to need that new wiring harness I ordered. Monday Jerry and Linda’s sister and niece ar-rived and we took them for a very low-key ride to the Flats, Comp Hill, and Olds. They had a good time, and the easy ride was very relaxing. All but a few of the group left Monday so there were only a few of us left Monday night. We had a nice quiet fire Monday night, and I went to bed early as I was leaving very early Tuesday morning. My usual routine involves leaving around 5 AM and going to the

Shell station in Westmoreland to dump my tanks, then taking HWY 78 home through Ocotillo Wells. The dump station in West-moreland was closed this time so I went up HWY 86 to the AM-PM in Salton City to dump, then took S-2 through Borrego Springs home. While climbing the hill outside Borrego Springs a big horn ram sauntered across the road right in front of me! I couldn’t stop anywhere to get a picture, but it was the perfect end to a Wonderful President’s Day Week!

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Glamis, President’s Week, by Jim Kastle It’s Friday of the first Gordon’s Well trip, and I decided to give a few details of the President’s Week trip. It’s been so long I won’t recall details of who was there or when they arrived, but the big story of that trip was the weather. Nancy and I arrived Thursday and it was very warm. We didn’t need the air conditioning in the trailer, but it was a comfortable switch from Big Bear’s cold. Friday I put on a black T-shirt, and within minutes it was too warm for a black shirt. Later in the trip we had a lot of wind, and one morning ride was on perfectly virgin sand. Later that day it was quite windy, and it rained that night. Rain on smooth sand made for a very memorable morning ride the next day. The sand was perfectly smooth, and quite slippery. We were able to go fast, and slide like a tuner car on a drift course. With the rain and wind, it was no longer hot, but not miserably cold. We had a pretty large camp, and made use of the air horns on the yellow trailer to an-nounce rides. The horns saved lots of time that would have been spent going to each

rig and announcing the trip. They’re kind of impersonal, but they sure expedite the organizing rides, and no one can complain they didn’t know a ride was about to start.. We made a couple of trips to Yuma for dinner, with my favorites being Famous Daves and Texas Roadhouse. It’s interesting to me that the service at the Yu-maTexas Roadhouse is often very poor, much worse than at other Texas Road-houses, but the food somewhat compensates up for it. On this trip our waiter disap-peared for 10-15 minutes at a time leaving us with empty drinks and unplaced or-ders. The manager usually asks how our meal was, and we complain, but seemingly to no avail. The good company still makes the Yuma trips worth the drive. So much for the restaurant review. Again Mike led many side by side rides, and on this trip Mona rode with Mike on

one ride, and decided that the ride in the old Ranger was rough, and it is time for a RZR. I don’t know who created the RZR, but Polaris should pin a huge medal on his/her chest, they’re everywhere! Those are a few of my recollections of the President’s day trip. I hope that we can get some others to write up reports of future trips. It’s easy, and I’d like to read about other’s trip experiences. Remember, If no one submits articles, the newsletter shrinks to a list of upcoming trips.

We found the cat artist Shadow was look-ing for in last month’s newsletter. It turns out that when someone picked up their mat from outside the motorhome, it left a big un-touched area that proved to be an irresistible canvas. The artist was related to Shadow’s first suspect, Allison, but it turned out to be a couple generations older, as it was Nancy Kastle. She thought Don and Shirley saw as she doodled in the sand, but Jerry and Linda didn’t notice it until the next day. The part on the right says, “Rock and Roll” since we know that Shadow can be one wild kitty... Could you resist drawing a picture on this canvas of

sand?

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Original Chevy Wheels for sale: Chevy stock aluminum rims from a 2005 3/4ton subur-ban. They are 16x7 with a 8 lug on 6.5 bolt pattern. They came with the caps and lug nut covers. They are in mint condition, no scratches. Asking $200. Contact Pete at 760-451-0845

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This month we’d like to thank Mike Bacon and Jim Kastle for writing trip articles. Also we’d like to thank Walt Fisher for taking Gordon’s Well trip pictures. Like Jim said, the newsletter would just be a list of future trip dates without the articles to make it interesting. If there’s anything else you’d like to see in the newsletter, hop on a computer, write it up, and send it on in. Also, if you have any plans for upcoming trips that we don’t have listed let us know so we can put them on the calendar and on the website. -PJ, Melissa and of course Allison

With the growing popularity of Apple iOS devices (iPhones and iPads) in camp, and with a half page to fill, we decided to throw in some news, tips and tricks for portable computing in the dunes. Let us know what you think...

Apple releases The New iPad: On Wednesday, March 7th, Apple held an event to announce the March 16th availability of what they are calling “The New iPad.” Instead of calling it the iPad3 or iPad HD, they are just calling it the new one. It has the same size screen as the first two generations, but has double the resolution, so images appear particularly sharp. It also has a much better camera, with the same optics as the iPhone 4S. This makes it pretty neat, al-most like you are looking through the device when you have the cam-era on. The other major improve-ment is “4G” LTE wireless data, which is very fast, but only where the new faster service is available. I doubt there will be 4G at Glamis anytime soon, so it would use the current 3G wireless there. They are also allowing the Verizon iPads to share their data con-nection, so they serve as a WiFi access point for other devices like computers. Finally, Apple announced that they will continue to sell a basic version of the iPad 2 for $399, which is a $100 dis-count. The pricing on the new iPad is the same as before, at $499, $599, and $699 for WiFi models with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of storage, and adding the 4G wireless adds $130 to the price of any model.

Simple Tips Double Click Home Button: This is a REALLY basic tip, but it makes life a lot easier. Once the iPad is unlocked, pressing the button on the front twice brings up a scroll bar of open apps on the bottom of the screen. You can switch to any one of them by touching it. To close an app that is having problems, press and hold over it in this scroll bar and then press the - that ap-pears in the top left when the icons start to wiggle. To stop the wiggling, press the home button. This does not remove the app, it just closes it. Multi Finger Swipe: To switch between open apps, place 4 or 5 fingers on the screen and slide them to the side. The next open app will scroll onto the screen. To go back to the original app, swipe your fingers in the other direction. Take a Screen Picture: To save a picture of anything on the screen, hold the home button and press the power button on top The picture will be saved.