Snowbirding in Palm Springs

My aunt and uncle from Canada love wintering in Palm Springs at the Happy Traveler R.V. Park , which is perfectly located less than a mile from the downtown core. They always have a great time, but spending months in a small 20-something foot trailer can wear you down.

The trailer park has many snowbirds who leave their trailer at the park year round and pay reasonable storage fees during the off-season. A large (35+’) park model trailer came available at the beginning of 2020 and they snapped it up. They were only able to stay in it for a month or so before it was time to go back to Canada, but they were looking forward to all the space in the winter of 2020.

In the meantime, COVID raised its ugly head and all the borders were closed. They weren’t able to enjoy their new winter home, and they still had to pay the lot fees for peak season to make it worse. All of Lina’s family lives in the area, so they generously offered to let us stay in the trailer until the borders re-opened. So we headed down in November to scope out the situation to see if it would work for us.

It turned out to be great, so we went back to Denver to get everything we needed for an extended stay. We ended up staying in the trailer from November through the end of January. It’s been a looong time since we’ve taken any kind of trip, so the change of scenery was nice.

Our new routine started with a 3-8 mile walk in the morning as we explored Palm Springs and the architecture. We started keeping track of our walks with GPS, which Lina turned into a challenge. How much of Palm Springs can we see? At some point I had to set a limit: we could walk three miles out before we started heading back. Otherwise, Lina would have gone on forever. Later on, we needed to bike and drive to remote locations because we ended up spending more time walking to an area than exploring it.

We started keeping track after the first couple of weeks and recorded 245 miles of walking or biking, which means the real number must be another 30 miles, or so, higher. I needed six Google maps to keep track of it all. You can click on the map to see all the different routes we recorded.

Walking started to get old, so we also made bike trips to get to some of the remote areas. Tequila has become COVID-spoiled and CANNOT be left alone for any amount of time without howling at the top of her lungs, so that meant she had to come with us:

She got in to the trailer relatively easy the first time. Then she realized what was happening and it took some brute force to get her in it the next couple of times. By the end, she started liking the trips and would go in by herself.

Here’s some of the pictures we took on the walks:

My aunt and uncle’s trailer was quite spacious with real household appliances and toilet because it is a park model. It was about the size of the first trailer that I used to full-time in before we got married, which we lived in for almost the full first year we were married. These pictures are what the trailer looked like after we summarized it to keep it moist until my aunt and uncle get to enjoy it this winter.

We had to re-arrange the floorplan a little bit to give me a work area, so this is what it looked like while we were there, including our new Christmas tree:

This was the longest trip we’ve ever taken away from home! I usually get antsy about 2-3 weeks into the trip because there is a looong list of projects that aren’t getting done, even though I probably wouldn’t be doing them even if I was home. My aunt and uncle barely used the trailer for a month before they had go home last season, so they didn’t have time to find all the issues and put their stamp on the place. Therefore, there were some projects to keep me busy, including:

• The water heater sprung a tiny leak that meant it had to go out of service until a replacement could be installed. There was only one left in the country and a comedy of errors delayed the replacement for a couple of weeks. I had a lot of cold showers and Lina had a few Filipino showers because we didn’t want to risk the communal showers and bathrooms during COVID, especially because it seemed that most of the trailer park people thought they were immune and didn’t seem to take any precautions.
• The trailer manufacturer cheaped out and didn’t install a bypass system, so I had to create one out of Ace Hardware parts so we could user the water system while waiting for the new hot water heater.
• The thermostat for the electric heater part of the new water heater malfunctioned within a week and I had to order a new part because tech support was useless. Luckily, we could use the propane side while waiting for that part and we had hot water!
• The kitchen is pretty small and we mostly used electric appliances, so I bought a cheap kitchen base from Habitat so that we would have a kitchen island outside. I wanted a counter as well, but the Palm Springs Habitat sucked, so the counter ended up being part of a sheet of melamine. I made some shelves from the sheet and Lina covered them up with a curtain rod and cheap curtains. Now we could most of our cooking outside. I’m sure that’s where the margarita machine will be when my aunt and uncle move back in!
• We were going to work out on this trip, so I brought some weights and built a portable chin up bar if inspiration ever struck.
• The original stair had rotted away and my aunt and uncle didn’t have time to replace them, so I learned how to make stairs and built a sturdier version.
• We covered the new stairs and old stairs with green carpet because it matched the existing gold trim. These happen to be the colors of my home-town (Edmonton, Alberta) football team, so hopefully it will remind my aunt and uncle of the Edmonton winter weather they’re missing.

In the end, we had a great time and Lina may have been converted into a snowbird. We can’t thank our aunt and uncle enough for the opportunity!