We woke up early and headed out for California.
It was a beautiful day, as all our days had been...except for our trip through
Arkan-hell....the sun was beating down on us pretty
hot....we touched our windshield and couldn't believe how hot it was...but, in
the shade, it was wonderful. I never broke a sweat.
We stopped for lunch in
the Mojave Desert....now,
you may find this hard to believe, but the best breeze through the windows of
our camper at lunch time were right in the Mojave
Desert....who knew? Would you have believed that? It was wonderful. We
loved our lunch times....pulling off into truck rest areas and going into the
back of the camper....sitting at the table and eating turkey
sandwiches....listening to the traffic....feeling the winds....relaxing. And
on the road like that, we didn't get to turn on the air conditioner...but we
never needed it. We only ran it until the evenings when we were settling in.
We are soooo spoiled.
At around 1:00 in the afternoon, while in
route, we had to stop at a California Inspection Station....they wanted us to
declare our fruits and vegetables...why? While parked and waiting for the
woman to ask us the 'question'...we saw a couple hand over their
apples....all four of them. Oh, yeah, California is not to be messed
with....they will bust you in a minute for trying to take apples into the
state. What criminals they are!...apple smugglers!
Yeah....they are really
cracking down on the on-going problem California has with people bringing
their own apples into the state. We felt quite superior, having only potatoes,
tomatoes, and lettuce with us. We did not declare our fruits and vegetables. I
don't know what got into us...felt a little rebellious and laughed of our
deception all the way into California. Every time we saw a cop we'd think we
were being caught. We made up scenarios of our 'impending arrest'
and how we would explain to the folks back home.....we were on the
lam....fugitives....harboring fruits and vegetables.....the nerve...You know,
it's folks like us who ruin it for everyone else.
You know the lonely stretch of road you
always hear about and see on TV on the way to California? They always show the
'last gas' service station and a long, barren stretch of
road...seemingly endless.....off in the middle of no where...for hours and
hours you are to see nothing but desert....
Never experienced that.
We were never alone on any given road. We
did see endless stretches of road ahead of us.....but we did not see any 'last gas' stations....we did see some areas that had no
electricity...like in upper Texas and New Mexico...but we never saw the
proverbial stuff we had anticipated. I had gone through the drill with
Les...."If you see gas stations, top the tank off....I do not want to be
stranded in the desert."....but, it was never the case. Just goes to show
how far things progressed since the 'Route
66' days. Oh, and we were on and off that road many times.
We did experience more bad head winds,
but we were in no hurry, so, we weren't too upset about it. Here are some
pictures of California that we took. The desert was very interesting.
Yes, we are aware of the reflections of
the windshield, but this is how we saw the desert. The red thing in the
picture on the right is a sign...the wind was vicious. We were about 60 miles
from Los Angeles
and we were not sure what all the 'white stuff' was on the
mountains....was it fog, smog, dust?.....So, when Les stopped at the KOA to
park the camper he asked....and they laughed at him. They told us that it was
just low-level clouds...that's all. Boy, did we feel stupid. Well, we didn't
know. Neither one of us has ever been this far across the country and we don't
know how things are here.
After parking the camper we headed for Hollywood,
California. The low level clouds made it nearly impossible to get a good
picture of a lot of the things we saw, but we did the best we could. The sun
was setting fast and we had so much we wanted to do. But the first thing on
our list was to see Hollywood!
