Welcome back, faithful readers!
We had a lovely winter in California. Good weather, great times with Deirdre and her Jeff and kiddos, good weather, visits with old friends, wonderful walks in nature, bike rides, and did I mention the good weather? We mostly stayed in Santa Clarita with side trips to Hemet, the San Diego Zoo, and San Jose/Los Gatos. And Disneyland. Hemet was fun, there was a rally of Fleetwood owners, and I took RV driving lessons. I can now drive the thing forward and backwards through a safety cone slalom course and of course also on the road, so now I can take turns with Opa Henk on the long drive home.
Santa Clarita is a pretty new commuter community with little character, but the RV park was very nice. And full of supercute bunnies. My favorite thing to do was take long walks in the dry riverbed that borders the RV park on two sides. Most of the time there was some water running in a channel, and every time I went the channel had shifted. Part of the fun was wading through. I don't need to tell you what kind of weather it was when I did that... It was neat to see nature come alive in early spring and hear the birds dating each other with their best songs. There were lots of reed-type plants there, a few trees, tiny desert flowers, opuntia and cholla cacti. I had to get a new flower field guide... and a new bird book... I spotted a white-tailed kite (twice), red-tailed hawks, swainson's hawks, western bluebirds, the bunnies, and two coyotes. These are the smaller western variety, they didn't care much about me either way, sniffed me from across the riverbed, looked at me, and disappeared into the reeds. Really cool.
But finally time was up. We left mid-morning today and Opa took rte 5 north, through "the grapevine", where the two halves of the road go uphill steeply, split apart, and twine over and under each other before reuniting at the pass. Beyond the pass we took rte 138 east to the Antelope Valley Poppy reserve, past pink blooming cherry and/or almond orchards. The poppies were just starting to open up, but not many yet. So we went on. Luckily Opa saw a lovely little patch of orange poppies in between tiny yellow goldfields on a small south slope and stopped for me to take pics.
On towards Mojave on rte 14, and we passed Edwards AFB, where there were plenty of Boeings but I didn't see a shuttle. Pity. Did see a 4 loc train with 110 wagons though.
On rte 58 to Barstow, a scenic route, but along with the scenery we saw dumps, trash in the desert vegetation, borax mines, wind turbine fields, and a solar energy plant. Just lovely. Good thing the mountains in the distance were nice!
Finally on rte 40 things improved and it started to really look like desert. But because of the time of year, desert with lots of green in it, and the edges of the road were covered with lemon yellow, white, deep yellow, and purple flowers. We traded drivers after Barstow and headed for the Mojave National Preserve. I drove into the desert toward Kelso, where the dunes are - the most ginormous dunes we've ever seen... At Kelso we stopped at the restored train station for a chat with the park rangers, and they directed us back to rte 40 and to the next road into the desert to get to the campground in Hole-In-The-Wall.
And there we are now. It may be a hole in the wall but it's a really beautiful one!
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