Rain in the desert is a good thing. After months of drought, brilliant sunshine to a fault, temperatures that can reach 120 degrees, I would imagine that local folks in the Coachella Valley are drinking in this storm and loving it. I used to love the rain those long decades ago when I lived in Southern California. I played in the washes as a kid, filled with wild rushing chocolate brown water, leaping among the boulders and pretending I was Davy Crockett in a storm. I lived through all that somehow, and my daughter would gasp in horror if her kids tried the same thing.
I’m not so sure I will live through this storm, however, without some serious self talk. It is raining just about everywhere in the west, or at least anywhere we could manage to get to in our eleven days of MoHo time. It is snowing hard in Klamath, the power probably is out often enough to be a pain, and the satellite will no doubt need a bit of brushing to keep the channels up and running. Here in the desert, we don’t have to shovel the rain. We are somewhere new, seeing new sights, (through the rain of course) but new sights.
Yesterday we drove east through Indio, (in the rain) to visit the Oasis Date Farm. We read a couple of reviews on the internet that made us laugh out loud. If you find those reviews, read them for entertainment, but don’t let them stop you from going to the original. The place was small, charming if not fancy, and I tasted at least a dozen kinds of dates and had a classic date shake. I’m not sure just what I think of the date shake, but the date palms are beautiful, stately and graceful, with a history that goes back 5,000 years and a sex life that seems to need the constant intervention of dedicated date farmers to function. I took a ton of photos, including a really cute one of Mo and Abby, and lots of graceful fronds against the dark skies. We drove back west to the larger, more fancy Shields Date Farm and as nice as it was, we were glad to have experienced the Oasis, even though it was many more miles east.
Our evening was filled with fun and friends and truly good food, sharing dinner with Laurie and Odel at the Fisherman’s Market in La Quinta. I was surprised at the reasonable prices and the truly fresh seafood. The menu was huge, with almost limitless choices, and I settled on a plate of Mahi Mahi, Salmon, and Shrimp, all grilled and teriyakeed to perfection. Not quite Key West, but close. I took more photos. including a really great shot of Laurie and Odel.
The rain pounded all night long, and the thick dark clouds made viewing the full eclipse of the moon impossible, even though I was awake at midnight, at the time of the most shadow. Yes, there are internet photos, my daughter took some great ones, other bloggers are posting as well about the beautiful night sky show. That’s great. Glad I didn’t take a photo.
This morning I went for another great long swim in the steaming pool, with rain falling on my face. It was wonderful. Thought about taking a photo of that as well, and almost ran back to the MoHo for the camera, fantasizing water level shots with the cloudy sky above the steam. Sure glad I didn’t. Later this morning, we drove over to the Sands RV Resort to play some great table shuffleboard with our friends and forgot to take some photos. Good thing.
This evening, settling in to the twilight, I carefully took the SD card out of the camera, selected all the photos to move, and somehow hit a key, an unknown key on the LEFT side, NOT the delete key, and BLIP! Gone. Every single photo, just gone. How the heck does that happen? Of course, they are nowhere, into the ethers. External stuff doesn’t delete to the recycle bin, we all know that. I have no idea where they went, but they are truly gone.
Ah well, I have entirely too many photos anyway, something like 43,000 just here on this computer since 2001 or so. Who knows what I will find hiding there someday, but it won’t be photos of the Oasis Date Farm or Laurie and Odel at dinner.
5 comments:
RickDecember 21, 2010 at 8:12 PM
I sure would like to be down there right now to meet you guys as well as Laurie and Odel - sure sounds like fun.
You can recover all of those lost photos from your memory card too. I use a program called PC Inspector File Recovery and it works just great.
I also wrote a blog about the process here
You might want to give it a try and see if you can get those photos back.
pidgeDecember 22, 2010 at 5:42 AM
Looks so relaxing there. Do you ever use a USB cord with your camera? I have never lost any photos that way.
I was going to suggest you contact Rick about photo recovery, but I see he has already contacted you.
Al BossenceDecember 22, 2010 at 6:01 AM
Sure hope you can retrieve your photos. I have never taken those chips out of my cameras since the day I bought cameras years ago. I always use a USB camera cord to transfer between camera & computer. Most people I know seem to pull the chips though. Just a preference I guess. Will be interested to hear if that recovery program works for you.
Laurie and OdelDecember 22, 2010 at 7:57 AM
I, too, use the USB cord to connect camera to computer. Getting the card in and out just seemed like too much work.
A good photo of Odel and me? A miracle! :)
Just one more day of rain, Sue...pidgeDecember 24, 2010 at 11:43 AM
You are braver than me taking that tram ride. Heights are not for me, but you sure got some beautiful pictures today. Love the snow-capped mountain. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
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