Monday, 3-9-98

W e took a little extra time getting around this morning. We left our beautiful riverside campground at about 7:30 this morning. We stopped at the home of the manager to pay for one night of camping.

It only took a few minutes until we were entering California. The Agriculture Inspection Station was only 1/2 mile past the border. That explains something we saw last night. During the night I heard truck engines running in the distance. I looked out the window to see from where the sound came. I saw a line of tractor-trailer rigs backed up on the bridge over the Colorado River as they entered the State of California. The first time I saw the backup was at about midnight and again at about 2AM.

As we approached the inspection station there were only a couple of trucks. As I prepared to stop for inspection, the officer looked down at our FMCA plaque and motioned us on our way.

Heading out into the California desert

We then headed out across the wide-open desert. The valleys always seem bigger out here and the mountains seem to be farther away. The trip across the desert was uneventful with very nice weather. As we approached the Coachella Valley we again saw the big groves of palm trees. Once again we drove below sea level as we crossed the valley. At San Bernardino we transferred to the I-15 Interstate Highway to avoid the construction bottleneck on I-10 in Pomona.

After a short time on I-15 we connected with US 395 to take us to California Highway 58. Today I experienced another "More than." I saw more Joshua trees than I've ever seen before today. One tree was as big as a large oak tree. It would have looked nice in a front yard, but it was out in the middle of nowhere along US 395. We headed for Kramer Junction, located at the intersection of 395 and 58, where we turned west toward Mojave, California. In Mojave we drove past a large field of wind powered electrical generators. The large number of generators seemed to march toward the mountains, but in fact, they were first built in the mountains and now have spread into town. We now proceeded toward the mountains and the Tehachapi Pass.

Wind-powered generators on the edge of Mojave, California

As we climbed the road to the pass, We said our Good-byes to Barbara and Dave. They were going to try to find a campground outside the town of Tehachapi to stay for the night. Since it was only a few minutes past noon, Kay and I chose to press on toward home. When we arrived in Bakersfield we found a place to have lunch. A few miles north of Bakersfield, I filled the motorhome fuel tank for what was to be our last stop before getting home.

When we reached I-5, I was pleased to see the traffic was not very heavy. Fortunately we were traveling against the rush hour traffic, so we had a fairly smooth trip home. We did see the result of an accident along I-5. A mini-van had rolled over several times and ended up in the median strip. It looked as if there were eight people that had been in the van. They were all walking around the crash site. The California Highway Patrol was on the scene.

There is not much left of the rolled van

We arrived at our home base at about 5:30PM. It was nice to get home while we still had daylight. Now we start the process of turning our motorhome around so we can make it to the March RV club outing this weekend.

Dave and Barb said they didn't think they could get home in time to put their motorhome in storage. So they took off to find a campground as we pressed on. They stayed out for another night. Dick and Dorisdean are still out there somewhere visiting friends and relatives in New Mexico and Arizona. Tom and Nora are also still on the road visiting friends in Arizona.

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