A Wallmart not to be believed! and other things too

With another Monday comes another change of venue. We got up this morning and broke camp. We had some trouble with the truck again but it seems to have straightened out. I washed the car in front of our camp site. The trees and the birds were not kind. The usually shiny blue Camry was grey, white and brown. You wouldn’t have recognized it. I washed it and got much of the mess off it. Then we headed up to the parking lot, hooked on the trailer and loaded the car onto it. We are getting pretty good at that.

If I had to do it again, I would buy a car specifically to tow behind the camper. The Camry doesn’t fit that category. I also wanted to be able to change vehicles depending on the trip. I think now that it would have been smarter (and much lighter) to buy a Jeep Wrangler and outfit it for towing. Buy the optional hard top and leave it at home. It would be towable with no special hardware (beyond the tow equipment) and would fill our requirement to have a 4 wheel drive vehicle for the winters. Then we would only have to have the camper and the jeep.

Jack gave us a route that he guaranteed would have a minimum of traffic. He didn’t tell us that it would climb a mountain with narrow steep roads. The road didn’t have any services on it. He told us there was a Flying J on the route but we missed it or something so we hit the big hill climb with a quarter tank of gas and 50 miles with no services. The motorhome worked so hard pulling its own weight and the trailer and car that I was soon on empty. I had no idea how much further Julian was and I was afraid that I would run out of fuel on one of these steep hills. Knowing that the breaks and steering would cease to work when the engine stopped, I found a turnout and pulled off the road.

We unloaded the car and I headed into Julian while Cheryl stayed with the camper. Three and a half miles separated me from the gas station but if I had run out of gas on that steep winding road (with drops on the side of the road, it could have been a real disaster. I had to buy a can ($23) and the gas was $4.88/gal but it could have been a lot worse. Route 78 from the Salton Sea up to Julian was a spectacular ride through 2 deserts. One had a state park that allowed off road vehicles to drive through the desert. It was empty being Monday but you could see signs of trails up and down the hills. It looked like it could be a real blast.

After getting gas in the motorhome, it took me a while to find a place to turn-around. I then drove down 79 toward San Diego for 5 miles until I came to the entrance to KQ Ranch: our new home for this week. Cheryl followed me rather than loading up the car again (we only had 5 miles to go). The 5 miles were spectacular. More narrow winding roads climbing more mountains. When we got to the park, they said we could have a campsite in the lower park where there was electricity and water but no sewer (there are several dump sites and they also offered a free honey wagon visit to empty the tanks on site) or we could have a full service site on top of the hill. “Be aware, though that it is windy on top of the hill!”

We thought it over for a minute and took the high/windy site. It has been over 100 degrees since the Mississippi so we relished a little windy cool weather. We were ready for the wind but not the view. The view here is amazing. We can see for miles. We can see the desert, the mountains and a lot of sky. We have pine cones that are 6 or 8 inches in diameter. The woman who brought us up to our site said that at night, we could see the lights of some town off in the distance and in the other direction should be able to see the lights of some town in Mexico.

Its 8:30 and the sun is setting. The sky was red and blue a few minutes ago but now it is just a layer of red along the horizon. Cheryl is out trying to get some pictures. We took a ride around the park and checked out the store (closed at 4) and the “clubhouse” (full of kids). We made some phone calls from the pay phone in the clubhouse. Our cell phones do not work at our campsite but we had a full set of bars down in the main part of the campground. My wireless modem does not work up here either. I will go down to the clubhouse and upload it from there. If the modem doesn’t work there, they have wifi.

We drove down to Julian and checked out the town. Most everything was closed but we did find a café and bakery that specialized in apple pies. Apples are big around here. They had a regular menu but we just had pie with ice cream (of course) and coffee. We had the apple/boysenberry. Cheryl had the crumb topping and I had the pie crust. We walked around town and looked in the windows and vowed to come back another day (we found 2 more pastry shops, one being another pie shop). There is also a restaurant/saloon named the “Wrong Branch”. We will have to check that out also.

When we went downtown, we considered getting sweatshirts but decided against it. When we got into the car, the thermometer said 101. Good choice. When we got back a couple of hours later, it was 73. The wind is rocking the camper even with the stabilizers down.

Don’t know what we will do tomorrow, we’ll figure that out in the morning. Good Night!!

It was cool during the night. We dragged out a couple of wool blankets and were toasty. It was really dark. The stars were clear and beautiful and you could see the lights of a small village in the mountains across the valley. If we walked around the trees a bit, we could see a whole string of lights. It looked like a small city and was right where the woman who directed us to our sight said we might see Mexico.

After a week of camping in well light Flying Js and a week of camping under the lights in Redlands, the darkness of this side of the mountain is refreshing. We awoke this morning to the sun shining brightly on the side of the camper. It warmed quickly and soon I was making coffee. I moved outside with the coffee. The valley was hazed in so you could not see much but as time passed, the haze lifted and you could see the mountains and the road we came in on yesterday. The wind was back but it comes from behind the camper and was not an issue. I watched a ground squirrel and lots of birds. There were even some humming birds. They were hanging around the pine trees with the huge pinecones.

I think we will venture into San Diego today. I had heard rumors that my favorite restaurant in the Old Town Historic District is something else. Some pictures I have seen makes me think that is true. If so, that is too bad. I really liked that place. It was a true Mexican restaurant with bathtub sized margaritas. They weren’t very strong but they were flavorful. They had a strolling mariachi band in the evenings and heaters for cool evenings.

Well, back at it. Talk some more later.

We headed into San Diego this morning. Along the way we needed to download our camera chips to see what we have from the first part of the trip. We found something we hadn’t planned on seeing. Catch this. We found a store that we are used to seeing everywhere. It was part of a large mall. It had 2 levels each as big as the store we have locally. The store anchors one end of the mall. It has escalators not only for the people but for their shopping carts. You roll the cart into the cart escalator and a chain below the floor catches the cart and moves it up or down between the floors. The stores of this type locally do not play well with others so they are always all by themselves. They are always on one floor so that they do not need between floor transportation. Have you figured it out yet?? Wallmart! Never have I seen such a difference between stores as this. The store was huge with each floor bigger than the Somersworth store. I am not a Wallmart fan (except that they have the Kodak equipment that allows you to download your camera chips to Kodak CDs.

There was a woman trying to make 5 X 7 prints from some paper smaller prints she had. She didn’t know how to do it and we weren’t much help since we had never done that either. The clerk finally helped her and within a few minutes they were done. By then there was a long line behind us and we each had a chip. Finally, we were done and hanging out in the coffee shop outside Wallmart. Off we went again on the 8 headed for San Diego.

Our first stop was Old Town San Diego. This is an historic state park full of Mexican shops and restaurants. We finally found a place to park and Cheryl immediately discovered a stamping shop….3,000 miles and she ends up in a stamping store. We could have stayed home and done that. Ok, that is unfair (her words not mine). She picked up a few things she needed immediately and we found stamps for our 2008 Christmas Cards. Some good came of that. Next we looked for my favorite restaurant. I had heard correctly. My restaurant has changed names and most assuredly owners. On the positive side, nothing else has changed. The food is about the same and the margaritas still come in 3 sizes. On the down side, where I used to order the giant margarita, Cheryl and I split a small one. We also split a dinner (steak fajitas). We were stuffed and both the food and drink were just as good as I remembered. We were even serenaded by the mariachi band.

Then it was off to Point Loma and the Cabrillo monument. It was beautiful out there. It was cool with breezes coming off the ocean. We watched a film about the gray whales migration and then sat and watched a big Naval Supply Ship heading into port. It was the Bob Hope. There were sailboats everywhere and the Naval Air Station at North Island was also busy with navy and coast guard helicopters. Some things have changed. At 5 pm, they lock up the shop. They used to close the shops and things but you could stay and watch the harbor but no any more. At 4:30, they announced they would be rolling up the sidewalk and shooing everyone out at 5…..sharp! (and they did). On the way back, we stopped at this little roadside stand (that was trying to close up) and bought a few pieces of fruit and some veggies. The only problem was that we were still full from the fajitas so all we had for supper was a grilled cheese sandwich at quarter of 10.

We awoke around 5 and opened the window overlooking the valley and the mountains. It was dark but the sky was brightening. Soon there was a point of fire red peeking over the left shoulder of the mountain. The sun rose bit by bit there until it was a fire red ball just sitting on the edge of the mountain. In a few minutes it went from brilliant red to an intense yellow. It was really pretty. All I could think of was the old saying “Red sun at night, sailor’s delight; Red sun at dawning, sailors take warning!” I will have to ask if this saying resides out here as well because if it does, I am going to start battening down the hatches right now. Somehow I doubt it applies.

We are laying low today. We have some repairs to make. The framework that holds the drawers in the hallway broke. I assume it was from the banging the whole coach took when I turned around in some bumps the other day. Here is another old saying: “A boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money.” Well, I am here to tell you that motorhomes fall into the same category. They are high maintenance and always require something.

Well, that is it. I have to go down to the “clubhouse” to send my blog, get my email and check on system updates (my security system seems to be melting down without regular contact with its central database. Up here on the back side of the mountain, we have no contact with the outside world. My wireless modem has no bars and will not even pick up enough of a signal to lose it. The cell phone falls into the same category. No bars up here but all I have to do is go down into the main part of the camp and I get a full set of power bars. We figured to make some calls from San Diego yesterday but didn’t charge the phone the night before and….yes, you guessed it, had a dead battery when we tried to make the first call. These new smaller phones are really great but since they are small, the batteries are small and they don’t hold a lot of power. With the old clunker, we could charge it every 4 or 5 days but this new one needs charging every night, even if we don’t use it much.

Well, off to the clubhouse!!!

Talk at ya later!!!

Clayton & Cheryl

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Lights, Camera, Action!! Hollywood...yessa

Another day over 100 degrees. We have been here in Redlands for 6 days now and every day has been over the century mark. It has cooled off at night and sleeping has not been a problem. That is a real upside. Sleep would not be as comfortable if we had to run the A/C all night. They say it should be cooler in San Diego. We are looking forward to heading down there.

I just looked back at my last session and realize that I didn’t write anything yesterday. There really wasn’t much going on. We took an in-camp day. We still haven’t found a place for everything. We have gone on 2 big trips. When we went to Alaska, we took too much stuff and we swore we wouldn’t do that again. This time we worked right up to the last minute we could on the house and then packed in a panic. The mantra was “Don’t Take Too Much! Don’t take too much!” Well the mantra didn’t work. We worked off some hastily prepared lists and were so afraid of forgetting something important that as we hurried out to the camper, we grabbed stuff along the way. Well, we still missed some important stuff and took way too much of everything else. Maybe someday we can prepare for a trip over a longer period of time and really think about what we need.

Of course, when you are in 110 degree weather, you wonder why you ever packed some of the clothes you did. Then you think, November can be cool even down here and we will most likely be nearer home the end of October and the first few days of November. Ok, I have beat that horse to death. NEXT!

Yesterday we toyed with the idea of staying in camp and catching up on some work. I have been studying the maps and listings of campgrounds and came up with a possible scenario for the month of July. There were some things I definitely want to do. The Grand Canyon is the biggest of them with Mesa Verde a close second. We want to stay in the government campgrounds there but with our change in plans that is difficult. There are some campgrounds that are not reservable but I do not like to head into very popular areas with no assurances. That is just the opposite of Alaska. We moved around on that trip with no reservations at all. This is a much busier area. I will be heading into the Grand Canyon with no reservations. The reservable areas are full and there are no guarantees for the rest. I did find a small private campground just outside the park but when I called they told me that had just taken over the park and had no reservation system. (Warning bell # 1). They said they did not expect any problems with taking us in but couldn’t give us a guarantee. “No Problem!” (warning bell # 2). Phil was the gentleman I talked to on the phone and I asked him if he had room in his driveway for us if his “guarantee” proved unworthy. He laughed and said he didn’t have a driveway but we would be allright. I guess I can check in with the National Park for the “first come” sites and then head over to see Phil.

He said they have a big turnover and that most people only stay for a day or two. They told me that when I made 8 days of reservations in Denali. People only stay for 2 days. The people around me were there when I got there and were still there when I left. Maybe they stay there one night so they can get into a line early in the morning at the National Park Campground. Time will tell.

I then looked over the 2 areas of Utah that we want to visit and decided that there wasn’t 2 weeks worth of things to do there. I checked the 2 parks I was interested in and found there was room in both so I called Mesa Verde. Availability there was the critical path for everything else. They had a stretch of 4 nights with serviced campsites so we had our time there nailed down. That gave about 9 nights in Utah. I reserved a campground near Zion, Bryce and Canyonlands for 5 nights and then reserved a place within striking distance of Salt Lake City.

I wandered into Salt Lake City several years ago on Government Travel. We ended up with a 5 ½ hour layover so we rented a car and toured the city. It was really a beautiful city. We managed to get a tour of the Mormon Tabernacle. That was really impressive expecially since the choir was practicing. I think Cheryl will really enjoy that. I want to see more of the city especially the Great Salt Lake. After making my Coast to Coast reservations, I logged into my account to make sure they were ok. Imagine my surprise when my reservation for next week in San Diego was not there. I called them up to see what happened and discovered that when I changed some dates, I cancelled that one. That would have been interesting to get there and have no reservation and possibly no room. We straightened that out. There was plenty of room.

We decided on the way out that we would take a minimum of 2 days off in each place we visited. This is our second day. We have been on the road almost 2 weeks and need to do laundry. That takes a large part of an afternoon. (exciting stuff isn’t it??) The lunch bar opened today. We went over for lunch (OK) and did our laundry. The laundry isn’t air conditioned so it was a pretty miserable afternoon. We tried to relax and read but there were a lot of these little flies. They didn’t bite, they were just annoying.

In the evening, they had a game called Bunko in the rec hall. They also had DJ and Karoake scheduled so we went over. We played Bunko. Cheryl won back our entry fee and would have won more but someone tied her. The DJ was from Maine. He was from Bangor and has been out here for several years. Everyone made sure he knew we were from Maine. We told him we were from South Berwick and he thought we were from Brewer. I couldn’t get that out of his head.

Since it was so hot, he set up his equipment on the lawn across from the rec hall. Some of the natives brought out their electric guitars and sang. A few brave souls sang karaoke but mostly we just listened to the music.

Before we left, we had our phone call forwarded to our cell phone. We have found a drawback to that. Some of these dumb phone calls you get in the morning when you are home, we now get at 6 am. I will have to shut off the cell phone when we go to bed. We were awakened this morning. It set off the day all wrong.

We eventually got up and headed into LA. This was our day in Hollywood. We were told the traffic into the city would be lighter on the weekend. I suppose I can’t argue with that since we didn’t go in during the week to compare it.

Armed with a big cup of Starbucks, we headed into the mouth of the beast. We drove around Hollywood Blvd and Sunset Blvd for a while and then decided the best thing would be to take a tour. We paid our money and climbed up onto the top of a double decker English bus. We could get off and on but did only have a short time. The sun was really bright and hot. It was 103 when we got out of the car. Armed with water, we set out to tour Hollywood. We parked near Grauman’s Chinese Theater and borded our bus there. They took us all over Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive. We saw the city hall building that played the police station in the Beverly Hills Cop movies, we saw the hotel that was in Pretty Woman, We saw the Viper Club where River Phoenix died. We saw the Beverly Hills Shields (honest that’s what they call them). It looks the shape of a badge and says Beverly Hills (what else). The city owns the rights to those signs. They show up in many movies and everywhere they show up, the movie makers have to pay the city of Beverly Hills.

We hit the Farmer’s Market and spent a couple of hours there. We found a Bryan’s Open Pit BBQ and split a half chicken. The sauce was good but the white meat portion of the chicken was dry. The dark meat was good. This is the first of what should be several BBQ reports along the way.

We were going to stop at Pinks for a hot dog but the line at 3:30 was out the door and around the building. We had seen Bobby Flay challenge the Pinks to a throwdown so we figured we had to try the place out ourselves. Unfortunately, the line was waaaaay toooo long for us to try them. Too Bad.

We walked along the walk of stars and looked at the names. Then we wandered over
To Grauman’s and looked at all of the footprints, handprints and writings in the plaza in front of the theater. That is always pretty neat. We have a few pictures.

On the way back, we took some back roads and found a large orange orchard where they sold some of the fruit in their yard. We bought a bag of naval oranges, 2 grapefruit and a couple of lemons. We each ate an orange when we got back to camp. It was so juicy and sweet it was sinful. They weren’t the prettiest things but the flavor and juiciness was great. This is pretty much the way oranges were in Florida. If you buy them sweetened on the tree and don’t make them travel too far, they are far superior to those in the stores at home. We had bought some things at the store the other day so we made a fruit salad with watermelon, grapes, mango and oranges.

Well, that brings us up to Saturday night. I am sitting in the dark outside writing and cooking a rubbed roast of pork. We will serve it on a green salad. It’s almost 9 pm so we won’t be up too long after we eat. Catch ya all later.

Clayton & Cheryl

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We’ll think of y’all at the time of church tomorrow. Have a great annual meeting. Take care of each other.

a human sea of poinsettias

We have arrived at Redlands California. We left Needles midmorning. We met some people who were camping behind us who have been on the road for the last 8 years. They were from Lamoyne (?) Maine. That is up somewhere near Bar Harbor. They move around and usually look for work in the campgrounds they stay in. They get free camping and the facilities that go with it and stay for a couple of months then move on to another campground. They belong to Coast to Coast and about 4 other similar groups so they have a large base of low cost campgrounds to work with. They seem to like the western desert areas. They will be leaving in a couple of weeks to move up near Las Vegas for a while.

Breaking camp has gotten easy. This time though we had connections to break and had to load up the trailer which we had taken off so we could get into the camping space. We headed out and immediately had the same old overheating problem. The temperature gauge did not show it but the oil pressure started dropping. I pulled off the highway and came to a stop just off the Flashlight Exit. There was nothing there. No gas stations, no stores, not even a wide spot in the road. I checked the oil and knew the overheating was happening again. Smoke came off the dipstick and you could just feel the heat coming off the engine. I let it sit for a while and then tried it again with no improvement. Eventually on the third or fourth try, the temperature gauge went up as did the oil pressure. It was a good thing because the town of Flashlight was about 30 miles away and there was nothing near for help.

We set out again but had to turn around in a space that was all dug up. I didn’t think we would have anything left on the shelves but eventually we got back on the road and then the highway. As we drove along, the oil pressure stayed up but the temperature started to drop. To my feeble mind, the “new” thermostat stuck closed to start off and eventually opened while we were parked. It remained open totally so the coolant never stayed at the normal driving temperature but it is better to have it stick open than closed. The only problem comes when you need heat and that doesn’t seem to be a problem.

We continued on and entered the Mojave Desert. What a spectacular area. It is hard to describe. It was vast and pretty much gravel and rocks with some vegetation. There were mountains in the distance and the road climbed up and up. This is one of the areas referred to as the “High Desert”. There were exits to the highway but they drove off into the distance with no visible sign of a town. Every 20 or 30 miles there would be an exit with gas and food and then back to the dessert.

The night we were in Needles, I wrote an email to Flying J’s corporate headquarters telling them about the $4.93 a gallon tank of gas that I got in Winslow, AZ. I told them that I had asked for an explanation and didn’t get much of one. I asked them if they could give me any reason for this sudden and isolated price jump. In the middle of the Mojave, my phone rang. It was Bob Barnet from Flying J. He was very apologetic about the problem and said that it was a mistake. He told me they would refund the difference. I drove into the FJ in Barstow, CA a couple of hours later and met with the manager Chris. He made a copy of my gas slip and gave me a $55 refund for the 54.5 gallons of gas I bought in Winslow. Then as a payment for suffering and pain, he treated us to lunch in the FJ restaurant. They have a decent menu and a really nice buffet. We ate, bought a couple of bottles of cold water, a bag of ice and hit the road again hoping we wouldn’t have truck problems again. We didn’t.

The FJ in Barstow was located on Andy Devine Road.

We continued through the desert finding a place in the distance that looked like it had been burned over. As we got closer, we realized that this was an area where volcanic rock was scattered over the ground. All of this black looked so out of place amidst the desert.

Soon we made the turn onto I-15 and headed into the San Bernardino Mountains. We climbed and climbed and climbed. Considering that we had just crossed the High Desert, I am not sure how high we got but the downhill was a spectacular 12 miles long, had a special truck lane and a special truck speed limit of 45 mph. That was agonizing. I felt like I was crawling down the mountain and the cars were flying by. I was in good company as all the trucks were going the same speed. Not too much cheating on the speed limit there. Halfway down, there was one of those runaway truck exits with the deep soft sand/gravel. There wasn’t anything in it but there were a couple of sets of tracks in the soft sand. Those are really lifesavers when you need them. They look silly but I once saw one with a truck halfway up mired up to the axles in sand. He had lost his breaks and most certainly would have been part of the landscape if it were not for the escape road.

After a while, we hit the city roads. Los Angeles is a city like no other. It has a complex highway system intertwined with other highway systems. We had some rudimentary directions but the lack of distances did not prepare us for the vast distances between their landmarks. We would make a turn then start looking for the next landmark and find it was a half hour away. That doesn’t do much for your self confidence. You start to think you missed it and doubt what you have done especially when you find roads named similarly to the road you are looking for. Our campground is in Redlands. We drove into Redlands, drove through Redlands and then out of Redlands into 3 other towns before we found the road we were looking for. We found the campground, unloaded the car and stored the trailer and got all set up. There are 3 fishing ponds here. We are in the third row by the first pond. We have these huge eucalyptus trees which provide shade throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Later on the sun drops behind our camper so our “yard” space is in shade most of the time.

We have our site and are set up. There are 3 fishing ponds here and we are near to pond 1. They have catfish and bass in them. I have not seen anyone catch anything but have been told that they do catch them. The little store here sells fishing equipment but I am not interested in fishing here.

We walked around the place on Monday night and checked it all out. We met some of the residents in the rec hall. They were gathering to play a card game called 65. They asked us to play but we were on our rounds so we moved off. We said we would be back for the Celtics game on Tuesday. There are several buildings here including a craft shop, laundry and a restaurant. It seems that nothing is open until Friday/Saturday/Sunday. There are relatively few people here during the week. It is quiet except for the trains. The tracks are right across the street from the campground and is a main trunk line coming off the docks at the port of Long Beach. There are 2 tracks and they are busy. About every 15 minutes during the day and a little less often at night. They haul mostly containers double stacked on the cars but also other things. There is one train that passes 2 or 3 times a day with nothing but gravel. That gets loaded on a ship and hauled somewhere. We also see lots of lumber, mostly in plastic wrapped lifts but some open to the air.

In the daytime, you just hear the trains with their big diesel engines (2 to 5 pulling the train and occasionally another 2 pushing the train). At night, they blow whistles at the crossing up the street. You do get used to it after a couple of days.

Tuesday, we took the day off. We did some things around camp and met some more of the denizens of Fisherman’s Retreat. Jack is the electrician for the camp. He is a colorful friendly guy that pulls up often in his golf cart and visits. He has lived around this area for quite some time and has offered advice on out of the way places to visit.

We took him up on one of them yesterday. We had a repairman in to work on our camper. He fixed the refrigerator and front air conditioner (tough to be without in this weather). In the afternoon we set off for Pioneer Town. This was a place built by Roy Rogers and other western actors as a place to film westerns. Several western TV shows and movies were filmed there and the buildings are still there. Many of them are private residences but on some weekends a group comes in and does reenactments in the town. It is a dusty dirt roaded town with wooden sidewalks. Most everything has seen better days but it is truly authentic. Nothing was open but the bowling alley. This was built in the 1940s or early 50s and has been open ever since. It is dingy but they have a bar and some great testimonial signed pictures on the walls. Roy threw the first ball on opening day. The original sound stage is still there but it wasn’t open. Jack says it is open once in a while. The post office (right next to the sheriff’s office, claims to be the most photographed post office in the country.

This town is set in a desert setting high up in a rocky area. It has a really winding road which climbs up from Yucca Valley in a really spectacular manner. The town suffered a fire a few years ago which didn’t affect the town but did devastate the surrounding area. Before we went up to the town, we stopped at a place called the “Jelly Doughnut”. We had a coffee and a huge jelly doughnut that was just brim full of red jelly. Jack had told us about the place but I think I have seen a reference to it on the Food Channel. After we visited Pioneer Town, we returned to Yucca Valley and had lunch at John’s. Their claim to fame is their pastrami sandwich. It is in a medium sub type roll and is just loaded with pastrami. One of the great sandwiches.

I need to regress slightly. On Wednesday, we journeyed to Pasadena for Ashton’s graduation (did I mention that it was in the Rose Bowl?). We met Ashton and his mother and brother in a nearby town and had a little celebration then headed for the Rose Bowl. There were 551 graduates and they were dressed in Red caps and gowns. There was a covered area on the field for the band and dignitaries but the graduates sat in the lower section of the grandstand. They stretched the length of the field and looked like a sea of Poinsettias. Behind them was the crowd of parents, relatives and friends. They did a pretty good job of filling the next couple of sections up the grandstand and a few sections beyond. It was a nice graduation. The principal spoke and gave us some history of the accomplishments of this class and then the Salutatorian (3.97 GPA) read Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” and related that to their futures. Then the Valedictorians (yes s, there were 4 of them all with a 4.0 GPA) spoke. One talked about how she had done nothing but work on school stuff and as she went along learned to reach out and find other things to do even to get a boyfriend at which time another of the graduates stood up and pointed to himself with both hands.

On a couple of occasions, students blew up beach balls and started to throw them around. Teachers ran after them and confiscated them taking them to one particular teacher who had some sharp object that he would stab the ball over and over again to the boos of the students and crowd. Toward the end, some of the lights came on and the graduation finished under the lights.

When we got there, a group of blue graduates were leaving. This is a busy place during the graduation season with several schools using the facilities. As we left (having only a rudimentary idea of where we were going), I picked out a sporty looking car that belonged to either a student or a younger relative of a student. I liked the look of him (or her) as they turned in the opposite direction to the exiting traffic and drove toward the opposite end of the parking lot. They u-turned at a blocked entrance (or exit as it were), took a hard right into a small special parking lot, drove over a sidewalk and curb and escaped out a side road with no traffic leading right up to an onramp on the 215. We were free. I waved thank you to the car that obviously didn’t see me and headed back for camp.

After pioneer town, we headed down the road a ways to Joshua Tree National Monument. We bought our National Park Pass (we have many more to enter and I am still 2 months short of my 62+ $10 forever pass) and toured the park. It was 103 degrees and that changed very little until the end of our tour when we descended several thousand feet towards I 10. It rose to 110. The park was spectacular if not desolate. We saw relatively few cars in our few hours there. We drove through one of the campgrounds and found 1 group camping there. Summer has either not hit high gear or the schools are not out yet. Several radio stations over the weekend said their schools were getting out so I do not know where everyone is.

Well, that about catches us up. We are still searching for our touring legs and are enjoying some relaxing time. We did head over to the rec hall on Tuesday for the Celtic’s game. In spite of hearing how big crowds gather for the games between the Lakers and the Celts, there was one person there and he couldn’t figure out how to change the channel on the TV. The remote didn’t work so you had to change it on the box.

As you may or may not know, the Celts took an early LARGE lead and never relinquished it. At halftime, he mumbled something about checking up on his dog and never came back (I was wearing a Celtics shirt). A woman wandered in during the third period, looked at the score, muttered some unkind words and left abruptly. She did drop into our campsite last night praising the Celtics and saying they deserved the win. Then she noticed my Patriots shirt and started talking about the Raiders. I asked her if she would like me to go get my Red Sox shirt. She said following sports in Boston must be really fun these days. I agreed but said we suffered long and hard to get here.

Ok, now I am really caught up. I think we will head into LA today and check out Hollywood…show Cheryl the Hollywood sign from close up and maybe head out to Venice Beach although Jack suggests that over the weekend would be better. Another dilemma??

See Ya

Clayton & Cheryl

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when is hot...Hot??? 118??

It seems like I just finished the last section but with the demise of our outlets this seems like a good time to write. Cheryl is driving and I can use the DC to AC converter that we bought for the Alaska trip to run some of our ac items in the cab. We use it mostly for the computer but also for the phone charger.

This is a part of the country that I have never seen. As a child, westerns were a big part of our growing up. Many of the tv shows were westerns like the Lone Ranger, Wanted Dead or Alive, Cheyenne and of course, Maverick. They showed us a world that was totally different from anything we had experienced. It was adventure but most of all it was an alien landscape. Many of the movies of that time were also westerns. John Wayne, Roy Rogers and many more were our fare for growing up. Movies like High Noon taught us about courage, Shane taught us to do the right thing and who could forget Old Yeller. Many of these movies were shot amidst some of th most spectacular landscape imaginable. Monument Valley was a busy place providing backdrops to these stories.

I have always wanted to see the west and this is my chance. It is a thrill just driving through it. It will be even more fun when we come back and spend some time actually becoming a part of the west. We have the hats and boots from our soujourn in the west 2 summers ago. That was the warmup for this trip into the heart of cowboy country! I hope the west is ready for us.

We are driving through the range. It used to be an open range but there are fences now. One of these fast moving semis could make a mess out of a herd of longhorns. Last night when we pulled into the Flying J, there was a truck hauling an open trailer with 5 young longhorns with these little footlong horns. I assume they were little but I suppose they could have been miniatures. They didn’t have that real young look, just small.

Cheryl drove for 2 hours giving me a great break. It got a little hairy at the end as we rounded a corner and found ourselves in Albaquerque. The road was under construction and there was no place to pull over so she soldiered on with little trouble.

We did see one dead deer but that is the best day the deer have had since we left town. There were plenty of other roadkill; armadillo’s, possums and some things that were unrecognizable. We started to see more ups and downs and lots of mesas. I am somewhat disappointed that we haven’t seen any of the famous western cacti (or is it cactuses). I am sure we will see them eventually.

We were headed for the Flying J at Winslow Arizona (where I don’t have 7 women on my mind). We weren’t going to make it so we stopped for a bit of gas. As I have said, the Flying Js have had the best prices for gas of anyone so I wanted to fill up there. We are getting closer and closer to California where gas is a whopping $4.50. I paid $3.92 and wondered by how much the FJ will beat that price. In another 45 minutes, I pulled into the FJ, glanced up at the sign and noticed it was .93. OK, I can live with a penny a gallon more. I took my card in and came back out and started pumping. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the pump until later when I noticed the meter cross $250 with only 40 some gallons. I stopped the pump and looked at the guage. It was only then that I noticed that the price was $4.93……not 3.93. I turned the pump on again and tried to digest what was happening. I checked out other pumps and then looked up at the sign. Yep…..it was close to $5. This has to be a mistake! I stopped the pump and turned it off and went inside to pay. I asked the girl how come the price was so high. FJs have had the best prices all across the country and now this. She looked at me and said that the price had taken a huge jump just 20 minutes before I got there. I told her that I guess that I shouldn’t have taken so much time at lunch. She laughed and said that people weren’t taking it very well but I didn’t notice anyone pulling away from the pumps without gasoline. Diesel fuel hadn’t gone up so now gas was a half a buck more than diesel.

We were thinking about going a little further but after than, we decided we need to get our money’s worth out of the free camping so here we sit. It is 103 degrees here in the desert. This would be the time to check out the suggestion the gentleman from Camper World made. We drove by a beautiful brandey new Camper World so we decided to pop in and give them a chance to help some pathetic travelers. Unfortunately, we forgot it is Saturday afternoon. There was some activity in the service area but we knew we were in trouble. We talked to a gentleman in the service department and he explained that the only people in the service department were setting up new campers for delivery. The repair techs were all gone. He asked about the problems and suggested that since I had checked the fuses and breakers that the breakers on the generator itself may be the culprit….breakers on the generator????? Hmmmm, I didn’t know that! After parking the rig in a space that was about 20 feet too small, I went out to the generator, removed the cover and found 2…count them……2 breakers and one of them was in the wrong position. I flipped it, came in and turned on the generator and voila! The A/c in the bedroom came on and all of the other outlets worked again.

So here I am, working on the blog while Cheryl fixes supper. We are both watching tiger begin to make his move while we try to forget that gas has reached $5 a gallon. It is still fun but our gas budget that was ridiculous to start with is now totally absurd. Maybe we will spend our time where the gas is still $3.72 a gallon……it is still the same….isn’t it?? Please tell me it is………Time will tell. It seems like it would be cheaper to buy a piece of land and just stay there. Actually, we could probably buy a piece on the ocean for this kind of money.

Things are still ok!

Catch y’all later.

Clayton & Cheryl

Ok, so I lied. I had uploaded this morning and the program only allows one upload a day so another day has gone by and I will tell you about it. We are in California, right on the shore of the Colorado River in Needles. It is nice to be off the road and out of the Flying Js. We were never able to put out the slides so we were pretty cramped. We were so tired when we stopped that we didn’t get much put away and were still crawling around things. Tomorrow we hit our first stay for a week place. We are ready. We will be in Redlands, California. That is near Los Angeles. Of course lots of things are near Los Angeles. We will go to Ashton’s graduation in Pasadena from there and fill our time with other things around LA.

Today was pretty neat. We rolled out of Winslow, AZ at some undetermined time. We were somewhat confused about the time. Clocks that we had adjusted were not the same and we were not sure which one was right. We did check the cell phone and assumed that it was correct since we were not close enough to CA to be picking up a CA tower.

It was in the high 90s when we pulled off the road last night. By dark, the temperature had dropped significantly and in the middle of the night we were scrambling for light blankets. It was about 80 when we pulled out. The scenery had been changing from the range through New Mexico with cattle spread all over. The land got poorer and poorer until we no longer saw any cattle at all. The terrain consisted of rocks and gravel with sagebrush. There was nothing for the cattle to eat here although we would occasionally (very) see a cattle pen area for loading them into trucks.

We saw small mountains that got bigger as we proceeded west. We seemed to be always climbing. The truck worked real hard to keep 50 mph and you would wonder why. They I would look in the mirror and it would be obvious that we had been climbing for at least 5 miles. Eventually, we saw a sign that said 5,000 ft and still we climbed. We stopped at a rest area to make breakfast/lunch and I was having trouble breathing. I realized that this happened in the Canadian Rockies when we were above 7500 feet. We even saw a mountain with snow on it. Not a lot but enough to leave white sections. I don’t think they will last the summer but for now they looked nice.

We drove through Flagstaff and stopped at Kirkland to fill up with the last non-california gas for a while. The price was $3.99 a gallon. I talked to the woman in the store and told her about my $4.93 gas at the Winslow Flying J. She was horrified. She said there must be something drastically wrong. Gas should never have been that much?????

The temperature continued to rise. It was 104 at the FJ. Coast to Coast has a resort right at the California border so we called them and decided to get off the road. We had extra miles in hand and could stop early so we opted for a real campground. By the time we stopped on the shore of the Colorado, it was 118. We made all the jokes about it being a dry heat and all but by the time we were out of the office, Cheryl was having real problems with the heat. The people here are real nice. They said we could use 2 or 3 sites to keep from having to take our trailer off but any configuration with the trailer didn’t allow us to use any of the hook-ups. We took off the trailer and set up. Cheryl got sick from the heat so the A/C was the first thing we hooked up. After a while, she was on the road to recovery. We are going to have to watch that sort of thing until we all get acclimated to the heat.

When we asked about swimming in the river, the manager told us it was ok but the water was cold. Yea, like he has been to York Beach or Bar Harbor in the summer for their warm water. Well, time to go see the place.

Clayton & Cheryl (for real this time)

and the skys are not cloudy all day (mostly)

Greetings from Joplin, Missouri. 3 days down and slightly more than 1,500 miles gone. We crossed the great Mississippi this morning and drove by the Arch. Then we proceeded across Missouri and landed here. These last 2 days have been a lot of work with little reward except for the sheer distance traveled.

We have an end point as well as an end time for this jaunt. We are headed for Pasadena and Cheryl’s neice’s son’s graduation (HS). He moved out to Califirnia to be with his father last year. He has been attending Pasadena HS and will graduate next Wednesday. We figured that since we planned to be in the area (at least within 3 states of the area) that we would attend. We would be the “other” family support and represent all of those who couldn’t travel to CA. It doesn’t hurt that the graduation is in the Rose Bowl; we may not get to see a game there but we will at least get into the place.

Two days ago we arose early and headed down the road. We had only covered a couple of miles when I noticed the oil pressure was really low. Somewhat distressed (to put it mildly), I kept the proverbial eagle eye on the gauge, hoping that it would not drop any further. As I closely watched the oil pressure, I noticed that the engine temperature ( the guage right next to it) had spiked to near the “red” zone. This was definitely not a good sign. I pulled off the next exit and looked for a (large) place to stop. I found an out of business gas station, stopped and opened the hood. I checked the oil (ok) and pondered the situation. After about a minute, I heard a metallic click from the engine. Figuring that the problem was with the thermostat and the click was the thermostat releasing, I started the engine up and the temperature dropped to 200 degrees with a rise in the oil pressure. I hit the road again and the temperature remained stable at 200 and the oil pressure returned to 40 lbs. It appeared to me that the thermostat had stuck driving the temperature up and causing the oil to overheat and to lose viscosity driving down the oil pressure. That crisis averted, I filed in the back of my mind that I would need to find a garage to put in a new thermostat before I hit the added stress of the Rockies but for now, everything seemed to be back to normal.

Deer continue to be victims of the interstate system. Add two more for Wednesday and an additional 2 for Thursday. Not the killing field of Tuesday but the total is now 8 for 3 days. We have started seeing more campers. I think we saw 2 the first day out and not too many more on day 2 but we must have seen a couple of dozen yesterday. We haven’t had many neighbors in the Flying J RV parking areas. Lots of trucks but few campers.

On day 2 we drove another 560+ miles ending up in western Indiana. More hills but we have gotten used to being passed very unceremoniously as we creep up. We are making good distance, even if the time factor isn’t all that good. I used to believe that if you could squeeze an extra 5 or 10 mph on a long trip, you would knock hours off the whole trip. My philosophy has changed to slow and steady wins (you know the drill). Putting in the extra time will win the battle (and save gas as well).

Day 3 started out decently. We got up late (6:30) and drove a couple of hours before we stopped for breakfast. The day was clear and bright, the air a lot cooler and the terrain flat through miles of farm country. The temperature gauge remained steady but low. We have been maintaining rather strange eating habits. Our refrigerator has stopped working! The freezer is fine but the fridge barely maintains English beer temperature. Things come in threes; this is our second temperature related problem. We have moved all of the perishable food into coolers and are trying to eat up whatever is perishable. We stopped at a couple of RV places along the highway with little satisfaction. The best we could do was “We can look at it in 4 or 5 hours.”

“No thanks. I have a problem with the truck that I am willing to wait several hours to fix but I can live out of coolers until I get someplace where I will be long enough to make an appointment.

The heating problem then began to resurface. After we stopped a couple of times, the temperature was back close to the red line. We saw a billboard for a chevy garage and decided to go find it. We asked some people in the town of Sullivan but they didn’t seem to know where the garage was. We did find a Pontiac/GMC garage who seemed willing to help until they saw our rig. They expected something a lot smaller and balked at helping us. They did spend some time on the phone calling around for someone to help us and the Chevy garage came to the rescue. They were the ones we had come to find anyway. They were located on the next street to the spot we had asked for directions. Go figure!! Maybe they were just visiting……..

Let me tell you…If you are ever in Sullivan, Missouri, look up Tom at Meier’s Chevrolet/Buick. You will never find a better and more friendly place to get help. They rearranged their afternoon schedule including calling a man with an appointment and asking him to reschedule so they could rescue some travelers from Maine. Of course, Murphy’s Law struck in several ways. Mikey’s (Michael Waltrip – the spokesperson for NAPA to you non-racing types) company gave them the wrong part and when they went to tighten the housing, it broke. Eventually, they got all the parts they needed and treated us like kings and we were off. We had a rather long break from the road, watched Tiger for a while and settled in on a Hogan’s Heroes marathon for the rest of the afternoon.

It felt good to get back on the road and we tried to make up for lost time driving until 9 or 10. we didn’t make our 500 miles but we were far enough ahead of the total that we still passed the 1,500 mile mark.

We fixed some supper and used up some more of the things from the coolers. Then we watched the Celtics beat the Lakers. Great game!

Its morning again. I decided to make coffee before we set off. The weather is brutal. Severe T-storms. You could hardly see the camper next to you. We had all of the windows closed and put on the generator to make the coffee. Unfortunately, the combination of the A/C and the coffee maker blew something out. The fuses and circuit breakers are ok but all of the outlets have stopped working. Something else to work on. We made the coffee the old fashioned way on the stove. When the weather started to let up, we hit the road and headed for Oklahoma. The travel was good. There weren’t many hills and the traffic was light. We cruised right along and were soon in Oklahoma (where the wind comes blowin……oh you get the idea). We started to see more farms and lots of cattle. Neither of us had ever been in OK so it was all new. The down side was that route 44 through most of OK was toll road. 8.50 twice and 1.30 3 times. The smaller tolls were to machines. In the first 2, there were no people at all, just cameras and exact change machines. The last booth had a real person who was not impressed when I noted that she was a live person. Not much of a sense of humor.

Soon (not soon at all, OK is a big state when you are going east to west) we were crossing the border into Texas. The geography changed severely once we entered Texas. The green fields and pastures with trees and rolling hills was immediately replaced by an arid wasteland. It was flat from horizon to horizon. There were few green things with the exception of the sagebrush(?). We are crossing the small nub of Texas that is right at the top. Later in the state, we started to see small mesas and other geologic features that time has stolen from my mind. We stopped in a roadside picnic area to take some pictures. The grass was brown and totally dead. It was so dry that it crunched when you walked across it. It is warm but there are constant breezes that make the temperature bearable. Dehydration will become a problem from here out. It is imperative to continue to drink liquids.

In the past, we have used the local water to wash and sometimes to cook but have always carried bottled water to drink. It is travel that makes us appreciate the water we have at home. The town water is great and I have a well which is even better. This year, we decided to invest in a brita water filtration pitcher. Chlorine is at the top of the list of things it takes from the water. We are not impressed. The filtered water still smell badly of chlorine. We will keep trying it.

We have had our third heat related disaster. We ran the coffee maker and the rear A/C at the same time and blew something. All of the outlets no longer work. I checked all of the circuit breakers and the fuses and found none out of order…..another project for the repair shop. Now we only have the A/C in the cab….of course we are pretty much only driving anyway. The days reach into the 90s and touch 100 but the nights (so far) have dropped into the 60s and 70s so we sleep comfortably, at least until the time for most of the trucks to leave.

We took a walk through the truck parking area last night. There must have been more than 200 trucks here, and this is only one place. There is a Loves truck stop across the street and many more along the highway. The trucks are lined up at the diesel pumps and there are a dozen of them. The gas pumps all have lines at them most of the day and night. They have some special RV pumps that are open. We have only had to wait once while a guy filled up his diesel truck and then filled up his (large) gasoline boat. A credit card will only authorize $75 at a time and this didn’t fill his boat. The $75 limit is archaic at this time as gasoline has gotten so high. I used to be able to fill the camper on 2 fills but now it takes 4 so I go inside and leave my card with them. They then allow me to fill the camper and put the whole thing on one bill. Even with the walk back and forth, this takes less time. I have to get a bag of ice anyway so I would go to the store once anyway.

We were going to stop at Amarillo, Tx but the flying J there was tiny. There were only 4 camper spots and they were all full (2 with cars who didn’t want to park in front of the store). I would have had to back in even if a spot existed and we were on the edge of the highway. We motored on and landed in Tucumcari, New Mexico. This is a new F/J with a lot of RV spots but you have to share an entrance with the truck population so it is kind of noisy. We slept late and were awakened when the camper next door started up then drove away allowing the sun to shine in our window. We groaned, figured out the time (every clock in our coach is a different time). We have yet to figure out how to change the clock on the dashboard and our bedroom clock is confusing even though we have changed it, we are not sure what we did.

We are slow starting. 2,000 miles in 4 days has taken its toll but we are still enthusiastic. We should navigate New Mexico today and end up somewhere in Arizona. I hope we can put some serious miles on today. Each mile over our goal of 500/day gives us more time to play in the high dessert of CA before we make our first reservation. We still have an extra day and hope to visit Joshua Tree and 29 Palms before settling in.

That’s about it from this end. We are, in spite of the disasters, having a good time. Oh by the way, 3 more dead deer in the road yesterday. That makes 11. We’ll check in with you in a while.

Comments to: estabrke@gmail.com
Send us your email if you would like to see pictures. We really don’t have any yet but we will.

Clayton & Cheryl

its just a start folks. good stuff later

Tuesday 9 June, 2008

On the road again…..I can’t believe I’m on the road again…..I thought the house would never be finished and I would never be on the road again!!!!! (apologies to Willy)

Well, here we are, sitting in the parking lot of a flying J near the Ohio border but still in PA. We finished the house yesterday and proceeded to “shovel” our stuff into the camper. We said we wouldn’t take as much food this time (yeah right!) and whatever clothes we have were chosen on the run so there are no guarantees that we will properly clothe our bodies. We have more games than we had in Alaska and more books. So why do I have this totally unprepared feeling?

The house came out great! It was a lot of work and took longer than this presidential election seems to be. Where we are going and where we are going to stay has taken priority to the actual preparation of our home for the next 5 (yea, 5 not 6…..the house took waaaaay longer than we expected but we stuck to our desire to do the job right rather than leave on time.

Regardless, here we are, trying to relax after our first day on the road. The camper is haphazardly packed…ok, its barely packed at all but we will put stuff away tonight and a little more tomorrow and then as the week rolls by, things will migrate to their newfound homes as we determine (for this trip) where we want things.

We headed out around 6:30 for our first stop at Hanscomb’s in Kittery for gas. Hanscomb’s is totally dug up. They are apparently building something much bigger than they now have. All we could find was diesel pumps so we wandered out the back through the construction site and headed south. Upon arrival at the Charlton plaza on I90, we pulled into the wrong line and were told to u-turn into another line, where the arrow pointed against us. These gas lines are not intended for people with 35 foot motorhomes and 20 foot trailers. There was no room to manouvre and nowhere downstream to park. We had enough gas to go further but breakfast was the real victim.

Thoughts on the road.

The extra 5500 lbs from the trailer and the car is making much more of a difference than I thought it would. We really creep up the hills. Connecticut was bad and Pennsylvania was even worse. I was not alone though, I kept company with several trailer trucks on many of the hills. The sporty little cars flew past. I can handle that. After all, I am bigger than they are.

The traffic was heavy pretty much all the way. We did have a few periods of thin traffic but not many. Life is very different at 55 to 60 instead of the usual 75 (or more). I think I passed 4 vehicles all da-y (they must have been really slow). Other cars blew by me, especially on the hills and there are a lot of them in Ct and even more in PA.

That made me think that they should institute “average” speeds. Those cars that slow down going up a hill should be allowed to go faster down the other side. I had to struggle up one side and then ride the brake down the other side because I was going too fast.

Gasoline…..There is nothing constructive that you can say about gasoline.

We saw 6 dead deer on the side of the road. It must be a tough time of the year for Bambi and friends. Many other animals met the same fate.

We are debating whether or not to run the generator tonight to watch the Celtics game. When I used to tent camp, I hated the motorhomes and trailers for using their generators but everyone here is a camper. Still it is rather un-neighborly. We will wait to see if anyone else turns theirs on. Hopefully, we can pick it up on the radio.

We will be out early tomorrow to put on some serious miles before we stop to make breakfast. It will be a few days before we have something real to report.

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Peace !

Clayton & Cheryl