PEOPLE IN THE “TRAILERHOOD”

As the song “Trailerhood” by Toby Keith says, “there’s always something going on, down in the trailerhood” and that’s certainly true here at the Palms.  We live in close proximity to so many people that we get very familiar with their routines and sometimes quirky behaviour.

click on this for the song: Trailerhood    

For example, there is a guy whose tow vehicle is a big Freightliner semi and he takes it out every morning to have breakfast or coffee somewhere outside the resort.  Now he also owns a small Suzuki vehicle that he can drive but taking the big truck is part of the ritual.  He dresses up in his jeans, plaid shirt, leather vest and cowboy hat and most days, he picks up his friend down the street who also wears his jeans, plaid shirt, leather vest and cowboy hat.  Perhaps they are meeting at a cowboy club and the one with the biggest truck wins??

Aside from the quirky ones, we’ve met some really nice people from the USA and eastern Canada but most are from western Canada, mainly BC and Alberta.  The folks right beside us own their lot and come here every year from their home near Sacramento, California.  They have landscaped their lot with paving stones, a curved stucco wall and have a 3 tiered water fountain in the centre.  Many of the owned RV lots have extensive landscaping like these ones:

Other owned lots have one and two bedroom villas built on them and some have casitas (spanish for small house) which have usually have just a kitchen, living room and bathroom.  The people with the casitas park their RV on the lot and split their time between the two locations.  Sounds like more work to us but they like it.  Here are some villa photos:

Here are some casita photos:

We’ve met so many people in the past few months that I started a database to keep track of their names, where they are from and where we met them (i.e. here at the RV resort, at golf, at pickleball, at billiards, at the burger bash, etc.)  I have over 100 names entered so far and the list keeps growing.

We made friends with a couple from Missouri who are not retired yet but he is able to conduct his business from any location.  We’ve shared stories with them about some of our travels and have learned about their backgrounds which includes her growing up on a farm in Kansas (no, her name is not Dorothy) and about the landscape and vegetation along the Missouri River where they live.  They have ATV’s and go out driving on the Imperial Sand Dunes near here but he had a rollover a couple weeks ago and is suffering with fractured ribs.  They are heading back to Missouri tomorrow and are not looking forward to the long drive.  They plan to be back here next season so we’ll find out how the journey turned out for them.

One of the most fun groups we’ve met are 6 couples from Quebec who play mixed billiards (the men are more experienced than their wives) and only a few of them speak English well.  They host the Tuesday night event and we always need an interpreter to explain the rules to anyone who joins the event for the evening.  Partners are chosen by drawing names out of a hat so there are times when a French speaking and English speaking person get paired up and they have to use a lot of sign language to communicate.  Makes for a fun evening and those Quebeckers can really talk and laugh loud!!