From Knightrider360,The past month has been quite and adventure. We have put a lot of miles on, and have found ourselves in some wonder places, and others that were terrifying to say the least.
While we were at Prom Night for an hour or so in the Slabs, Journey decided she was going to play with one of the cushions we have on our couch. We came back to the unit to find a popcorn explosion of foam from one end of the unit to the other. Puppies! She did not chew or rip it, but had obviously shook the darn thing silly until the seams slit and then she found gold. Foam Gold that is! LOL….. silly girl. So when we left the Slabs we made a quick dash back to Yuma so we could go to the market there where we could have the sofa repaired. Ca-ching….. again! At least we got to spend a night or two with a a few remaining people in Yuma. Doug even came up with a great plan that he passed by a few people that we will be working on next year to help feed the homeless in Yuma. I think the idea will really catch on!
From there we headed up to Idyllwild to see our friend Mark. Idyllwild is about 6500 feet above Palm Springs. Google took us on an interesting road because the one normally used had been washed out by the previous years fire and rain. Half way up, we saw signs that no one should be on that road unless they did not exceed 30 feet. Yeah ok… no where to turn around. Seriously? There were warnings all the way up about flash floods, and some of the hairpin corners we had to take caused the windshield in the unit to creek. We found out later that it was a miracle it had not twisted and popped out.
At the very top is a 1000 Trails campground. Now it is absolutely stunning up there, but if you have a big rig, I would think twice about going in there. They do not assign sites according to your size… but we were fortunate enough to find one single spot that we would fit into. Thank goodness for that! Mark was pretty excited that we had come to visit so for a few days he served as our tour guide and showed us through the main town and various lakes in the area. It’s a part of the Pacific Coast Trail… and eclectic! The Mayor of Idyllwild is a dog named Max. No kidding! You should see the size of the pine cones up there! The one pictured here is small compared to others that we found. Mark say’s if you drive over one, you will probably end up with a flat tire. Amazing! We had such a great stay, and completely enjoyed our time with Mark, whom we had met in the Slabs over Christmas and New Years.
From there, yes….. we headed back to the Slabs for one final visit. Doug, myself and another fellow took on the project of making a sign from the church out of an old headboard. After going to a few camps, we actually got a paint brush, paint and some stain. It’s amazing what you can find out there. Anyhow, I think the sign turned out pretty good, and Pastor thought it was pretty cool too. Other than running around and grabbing video, we helped people get to food banks, Dr.’s appointments, and Doug help several people fix their vehicles or flat tires. On the 25th, a lot of our friends came over to our camp and we had a birthday party for Doug. Connie was pretty quiet for most of the day. I know it is hard for her to see us go because 6 months can feel like ten years to her. On a great note, it was so nice to see Pastor up and about. He is looking so much better and is able to get around a lot more 😉
The following morning as we were starting to fold everything up, I saw Tomahawk off in the distance, just standing there. We had invited her down for a camp fire the night before but she didn’t show. Finally she came over to the camp and broke out in tears. She told us she had come over the previous night, but instead of coming over to visit, she sat in the dark and spent the evening crying. This season, Tomahawk and I have become fast and tight. I just love her to the moon and back. After we both stopped crying she gifted us with a few pictures she had drawn that she wanted us to have. One was of our rig with Chicago and Journey 🙂 She also gave me an awesome arrow head that she had found in the desert while looking for gem stones that she barters for food. It was a very precious gift!
Doug and Tomahawk are also very tight friends. I have to smile because he went on his own a month ago when we were in Palm Springs and bought her a rainbow colored hammock. She had been telling us that it freaks her out to lay on the ground with spiders and bugs. I wish I had of caught the look on her face when he gifted that to her. It makes me smile to know that she will be enjoying that over the summer while we are gone.
I almost forgot to mention that Pastor Sean came by to see the Slabs. He had never been there before, so he wanted to take a look around. He arrived on his very cool Harley, and then was gracious enough to take my guitar and lead the worship for our morning Bible study. It was pretty cool!
After saying our final goodbyes for the season, holding our friends tight and wiping away some tears, we headed back up to the 1000 trails at Palm Springs. We wanted to go to church there with Pastor Joshua and check in on the Tent City we had found earlier in Indio.
Sadly, when we got to the huge Tent City we had taken meals to a month or so ago… it was gone. Poof! We drove around a bit, and saw scattered camps along some of the roads, behind dumpsters and in the brushes in vacant lots. So we headed over to the Rescue Mission down the road to see if we could locate any of the people we had spent time with on our previous visit.
One exciting thing happened!!!!! While outside of the mission, a little brown dog ran up to Doug and started to bark at him. When we looked up, we saw Vivian coming through the crowd of people to get her dog. It was Baby! Now we do not always get to see the fruits of our work, but on this rare occasion, we believe God wanted to show us that what we were doing was in fact helping people, and in some cases, changing their lives!
About a year ago, I wrote about an incident where we drove Journey from the Slabs into Indio to see a vet because we thought she had contracted Parvo. While we were there, Doug saw 4 dogs euthanized who had been attacked and shredded by roaming pit-bulls. It’s an every day occurrence in some areas 🙁 Anyhow, Journey was Ok, but while we were there Doug ran into an hysterical woman who was yelling and screaming because the Vet Center would not attend to her own little dog who had been mauled by a pit bull. Vivian had a lot of stitches in her arm, wounds that she got while prying her dog from the jowls of the pit bull.
You can read all about if if you scroll back through the Blog, but to make a long story short, Doug and I talked with the Vets, and decided we would cover the surgery, medication and pain pills to save Baby. Now here we are a year later standing in front of Baby and Vivian at a Recovery House!!!!!!
Vivian knew who we were right away, and started yelling to everyone that we were the ones who saved Baby’s life! After she settled down a tad and we shared some of the best hugs ever, Vivian told us the following:
The night she was at the Vets with Baby, she was high on Meth, and had been a drug addict for years. After we took care of Baby’s medical needs, and she came down off of her high, she couldn’t wrap her head around why two strangers would help her in the way we did. Then she looked at the business card we left her and read “By The Grace of God We Go.” Within a couple of days, Vivian had checked into rehab, and when we met her again, she had been clean for almost nine months and looks like a whole new woman! She said, without you, without what you did, without your compassion….. I would probably have died on some street from an overdose. You guys changed my life! (wow…. what do you say to that?) Doug and I thank God for that one brilliant moment of clarity, that what we do, is what we are meant to do. God is soooooooo good.
The following Day led us in a direction I never in my life would have believed we would be in. Smack in the middle of a Drug Cartel chop shop, women held hostage for disability checks, and a sex and drug trafficking ring.
Now I am not sure how much I want to get into this, but yes, I did see a Chop Shop run by the Mexican Drug Cartel, in fact I stupidly drove right into their compound to help someone totally unaware of what I had walked into. I saw a compound of old RV’s where women were kept drugged so the “landlord” could take their disability checks…. and yes we did help one woman escape after she had been chained in one such unit for over a month with no power, AC or sewer. They would pass her food and some water through the small windows in the RV they had her locked in. If you think this stuff is fake news or does not exist….. trust me it does.
For now, I think that’s all I will say about this. I thought I had seen some pretty scary things, but this one is now at the top of my list. I am sure Doug and I will be extra cautious now that our eyes have been opened a bit more. Thank goodness for Angels. Amen.
In case any of you are wondering if we tried to do anything about what we witnessed, yes we did call Adult Protective Services, Social Workers, Agencies, Animal Control and the Police.
Actually, on that note, I am gonna sign off on this post. It really rattled me to find ourselves in this crazy twilight zone…. and I am sure it will effect me for sometime. There is no point in re-living the next four or five days again. We did what we could…. the end.
So when we left the Slabs we made a quick dash back to Yuma so we could go to the market there where we could have the sofa repaired. Ca-ching….. again! At least we got to spend a night or two with a a few remaining people in Yuma. Doug even came up with a great plan that he passed by a few people that we will be working on next year to help feed the homeless in Yuma. I think the idea will really catch on!
Idyllwild is about 6500 feet above Palm Springs. Google took us on an interesting road because the one normally used had been washed out by the previous years fire and rain. Half way up, we saw signs that no one should be on that road unless they did not exceed 30 feet. Yeah ok… no where to turn around. Seriously? There were warnings all the way up about flash floods, and some of the hairpin corners we had to take 
caused the windshield in the unit to creek. We found out later that it was a miracle it had not twisted and popped out.
Thank goodness for that! Mark was pretty excited that we had come to visit so for a few days he served as our tour guide and showed us through the main town and various lakes in the area. It’s a part of the Pacific Coast Trail… and eclectic! The Mayor of Idyllwild is a dog named Max. No kidding! 
You should see the size of the pine cones up there! The one pictured here is small compared to others that we found. Mark say’s if you drive over one, you will probably end up with a flat tire. Amazing!
We had such a great stay, and completely enjoyed our time with Mark, whom we had met in the Slabs over Christmas and New Years.
After going to a few camps, we actually got a paint brush, paint and some stain. It’s amazing what you can find out there. Anyhow, I think the sign turned out pretty good, and Pastor thought it was pretty cool too. Other than running around and grabbing video, we helped people get to food banks, Dr.’s appointments, and Doug help several people fix their vehicles or flat tires. On the 25th, a lot of our friends came over to our camp and we had a birthday party for Doug. Connie was pretty quiet for most of the day. I know it is hard for her to see us go because 6 months can feel like ten years to her. On a great note, it was so nice to see Pastor up and about. He is looking so much better and is able to get around a lot more 😉 
One was of our rig with Chicago and Journey 🙂 She also gave me an awesome arrow head that she had found in the desert while looking for gem stones that she barters for food. It was a very precious gift! 
if you scroll back through the Blog, but to make a long story short, Doug and I talked with the Vets, and decided we would cover the surgery, medication and pain pills to save Baby. Now here we are a year later standing in front of Baby and Vivian at a Recovery House!!!!!!
of old RV’s where women were kept drugged so the “landlord” could take their disability checks…. and yes we did help one woman escape after she had been chained in one such unit for over a month with no power, AC or sewer. They would pass her food and some water through the small windows in the RV they had her locked in. If you think this stuff is fake news or does not exist….. trust me it does. 
