USA Today

We leave Palm Springs tomorrow, after a glorious week, to travel to Las Vegas where we are booked into The Bellagio for one night of decadence. We have mixed feelings about Vegas but are prepared to take a look and Mr FF is looking forward to the all you can eat buffet. Then we hope to go on to Grand Canyon and return to Palm Springs for our last few days and my birthday. Are you getting the message we love Palm Springs, life is so easy, the weather is perfect and we have been much lazier than we expected, but in a nice way. We did manage a very long day trip down to Mexico, crossing over at Mexicali we wanted to return via the central border post but this was closed because of the fires and we had to drive right over to the coast at Tijuana to get back into the States. We were shocked by the huge contrasts between the USA and Mexico, though we had expected the poverty it was much worse than we'd imagined. We drive over a stunning mountain road carved out of the rock but were stopped en route at a military checkpoint, complete with tanks, machine guns and young soldiers who tried to question us while we waved our UK passports and they eventually let us through and we have no idea what they were looking for.
The knitting isn't making much progress and what I do is generally in the air conditioned car, its far too hot otherwise. I shall be off line for a while now I expect and hopefully not pushing all my money into the Vegas slot machines. Now I need to search out some bling so they'll let me into that hotel.

How Lucky am I

I'm sitting in the public library at Palm Springs with half an hours free internet. We arrived here Friday and on Saturday managed to meet an English bloke who introduced us to a friend who had a property for rent. We got a real bargain and are now staying a week at Ocotillo Lodge, a small complex of condos, as we call them, in central Palm Springs with a great pool, 2 hot tubs and beautiful grounds. We are told that Frank Sinatra has played the piano in the lounge, that the Kennedys and the Rolling Stones have stayed at our resort, but I bet everyone gets told that kind of thing, we are in the playground of the stars. We have a neat place with our own private patio, where Mr FF is serving bacon eggs and hash browns around 8 am every morning. The weather is fab, blue skies all the way. We've paid Rich, our landlord up till next Saturday but he says we can stay on if we wish, really tempting, though we'd like to get to Grand Canyon if we can. Unfortunately a lot of the walking trails are closed around Palm Springs because of the dreadful fires in Southern California, we watched on tv this morning the properties at Malibu being engulfed in flames and shuddered to think we were there a few days ago.
Yesterday we took a walk round the local area and noticed a House Open so we went for a look. We were shown round a wonderful home with pool and resident cat and having got the property bug proceeded to view a condo and then some new desert homes costing around $2 million, I was surprised they let us in. I promise we shall not be purchasing property here, but a little fantasising is good, we are on holiday after all, and loving it.