California
December 26, 2017 – January 2, 2018
On Tuesday I headed to the airport to fly to Los Angeles. I wanted to break up the time change and to visit my friend Lee Madinger, whom I had not seen in eight years. I knew him at SMU, where he, too, was a theology student, a couple of years younger than I. After serving in United Methodist parishes in the New York Conference of the UMC, he bacame a Navy Chaplain. When he got out of the Navy, he went to law school and is most recently a retired lawyer, part owner of a motocycle dealership, and plays drums in a punk rock band. Whatever one might say about my friends, they are not boring.
Lee had got me into playing duplicate bridge in Dallas, and he signed us up for a team game for my first night. It turned out that one pair didn't show up, so we dropped out so that the game could procede smoothly. He proposed all sorts of things that we might do, and I told him that I was there mostly to wind down from Hawaii and to hang out with him. We did wind up going some interesting places I hadn't ever been. On Thursday we headed to Palm Springs to have supper on the top of a mountain. On the way, saw that they have wind farms in that area.
As sunset neared, even the parking lot was scenic.
We rode the aerial tramway to the top of the mountain. We arrived about 5:00, and our ride was scheduled for 7:45, toward the end of dinner service.
The décor of the restaurant at the top:
The lights of Palm Springs from the mountain:
On Friday we started down toward San Diego, but realized that we had too late a start to do any of the things we considered, so we headed to the campground where Lee keeps his new travel trailer. You can see part of his Mustang convertible parked the other side of the trailer. There is a fishing pond and a small lake.
<-Hawaii, Christmas Eve and Day