Evie and I met some pretty interesting people in our tour of the country.  But we really topped it off near the end of our Western leg.  We were staying at the Soledad Canyon RV Park in Acton, CA one night before parking the RV in their storage area for a couple of months so we could fly home for Christmas.

As we were setting up for the night, a hefty fellow with a white beard and red clothing went zipping by in a golf cart.  Acton is one of the largest Thousand Trails camps we stayed in, so you can understand the utility of one of those things if you are there long term.  I said to Evie “I have never seen somebody who looked so much like Santa Claus”.

The next morning we were breaking down and it was more of a production than usual as we had to load stuff in the car that would come back east with us or stay at Robbie’s place (Evie’s sister).  And there comes Santa again on the golf cart along with a brown chihuahua that looks suspiciously like a miniaturized reindeer.  This time he stops when I say hello.  And I tell him that he looks quite like Santa Claus and he tells me that I also could pass.  The white beard you know.  And also maybe something shining from inside.  You never know.

At any rate we strike up a conversation and he gives me an incredibly detailed cover story.  He is Santa D whom you can see on santaforever.com. He built up his business in the Pacific Northwest and is now taking the show to Arizona.  He does Sana for major clients including Mercedes Benz. He made a convincing case that he makes his living doing Sata appearances in the season and then can goof off as a full-time RVer the rest of the year.

He had a lot more of a back story including being a tanker in the Army and spending some time in Korea.  Finally, Evie had to intervene since we were facing a deadline to get the RV into storage and still had stuff to do.  She took the picture above, which I think makes my case.

The Santa D business is an elaborate cover story.  A brilliant hiding in plain sight ruse.  The truth is what he tells kids.  Santa has to vacation somewhere and why not somewhere warm?  I actually met Santa Claus in the RV park.  I’m not falling for the cover story that he uses for adults.  The reason he can’t fool me is that I went from kid to senior citizen, pretty much skipping adulthood.

You can get a more mature view of our travels on Peter And Evie Go RVing, which is almost entirely written by Evie.  You can see that Evie fell for the Santa impersonator story.  She is so gullible sometimes.

Peter J Reilly after a career in public accounting now claims to be a writer.  In your own Christmas shopping consider buying some of his gear.