Day 8 -- Santa Clarita, California to San Diego, California -- 191 Miles

Today's goal was to drive to San Diego in time to make our evening reservation at the Santa Fe RV Park about two hundred miles away. We had only two other goals in mind and that was to fill the petrol tank and to drop off three sacks of California-oriented books at the library in my hometown of Altadena, California.

The old Altadena Public Library on north Lake Avenue (photo left) was just about my favorite place on earth back when I was too young to drive. Mom would tell me she was headed down Lake Avenue to the old "Market Basket" store, and if I wanted to come along she'd drop me at the library, and I could shop for books while she was shopping for groceries.

My main areas of interest back in those elementary school days was history in all its forms. I loved reading about Mel Fisher and Robert Marks and their separate searches for sunken Spanish treasure ships. I also loved reading about western history including everything from the Civil War to western mining camps and ghost towns. Thanks to Dad being a sailor in World War II, I loved reading about that epic conflict as well. For a time I loved science fiction, but that area of interest waned about 1962. Every time Mom would drop me off, I'd be ready with an armload of books when she came back to retrieve me.

The old Altadena library was the epitomy of what I loved about historic library buildings. It had tall ceilings, heavy wooden tables and chairs, subdued lighting, and knowledgeable librarians who demanded absolute silence. Even now, some 65 years later, I just adore that type of library. Unfortunately, along came the 1960s and libraries decided they needed to evolve with the times. The feeling of solitude and silence of the libary experience was banished in favor of a brightly-lit, single story building with modern plastic library tables and orange plastic chairs. Silence was still sought, but was not rigidly enforced. Consequently, yours truly never again visited the library with the same sense of research fascination and intrigue.

But lately, as I was combing through my many stacks of history books at home, I found I had quite a large collection of California-oriented tomes that probably should be made available to some history-loving current Altadena resident. Knowing that the Altadena library had a small area for the sale of such donations, I put together a score of books dating from the early twentieth century and foreward, and Concetta and I dropped them off this morning. As an added bonus, we visited the sales corner ourselves and came away with three books on CD that we hoped would entertain us while we're cruising in the RV.

The day was pretty bleak and foggy as we cruised through my beloved Altadena, so I wasn't tempted to shoot any photos. Sadly, it continued to stay that way through lunchtime and into the afternoon. Finally when we were getting close to San Diego County, the sun finally showed its face, but it was way too late to be stopping for photos.

So, tonight we're holed up in the Santa Fe RV Park which seems nice but which has no cable TV available for us to watch the Master Tournament of Champions games tonight on Jeopardy. But the site was reasonably level, and we have a freeway right next door to provide a continuous volumne of "white noise" for our sleeping comfort. As an added bonus the light rail trains going by are a tad less noisey and not all that frequent.

Tomorrow we'll be visiting relatives which will be fun but probably won't generate blog entries so it will be a few days before I get back to you my loyal readers. So ciao for now and happy travels of your own.

Day 7 -- Trip from Valencia Travel Village to the Ronald Reagan Museum and Return -- 100 Miles

Today we did something we've been wanting to do for many years and that is to visit the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum. Traveling in California is ALWAYS a chore with its super high gas prices, zillions of impatient drivers buzzing you on every side, and "freeways" clogged and tedious to drive. Still, since our main objective this trip was to visit relatives in both our extended families, it seemed like the best time to visit President Reagan's domain high in the hills near Santa Clarita, California.

Concetta worked hard to find the closest full-hookups camp to our quarry, but it was still an hour away by freeway. But we dutifully packed up this morning, assured the camp hosts that we'd be back, and set out into the unknown. The first thing I did was turn the wrong way right out of the park which had us approaching the Reagan facility from the east instead of the GPS-recommended west. No matter, we easily found our way and only irritated a half dozen speeding drivers in the process.

We knew a problem awaited us when we got to the museum because their website clearly said that RVs were NOT to park in the regular parking area. We were directed to park on the approach road which unfortunately was on a hill. Well, we try never to park on hills as the refrigeration system is only happy on level ground. But when we reached the parking lot, it appeared that only about 25% of the spaces were occupied, and we could easily park across a measly three or four and inconvenience no one.

So, parked safely in several spaces and as far away from the other vehicles as possible, we made ready for our walk across the grounds. And that's when a knock sounded on the door. I stepped out to find a couple of security cops smiling at me and all set to inform me that I had to park elsewhere. But when they saw my U.S. Navy hat and a smile that matched their own, they backed off telling me I had to move.

Of course I informed them that my refrigerator was not going to be happy if the rig wasn't allowed to remain level, and that caused them to scratch their heads and look around for a possible solution to our problem. In the end they allowed us to back the RV into a single space that had lots of room behind it for the extra-long tail end of our rig to hang over (see photo top right). That done, they could see that the forward part of the RV didn't really take much room over what a large car would occupy.

They asked if they could have my name and phone number just in case they ran out of spaces, and I gladly supplied them with the information. In the end the rig sat just where we parked it for the entire day and the lot still wasn't nearly full when we got ready to leave.

This afternoon, as we were about to leave, we ran into one of the two cops whom we'd talked to that morning, and he turned out to be the lieutenant in charge. He was so friendly that he walked us all the way back to our rig and talked about his life and his career and

the two kids he was raising as a single parent. His name was Tony, and we certainly enjoyed his company and the obvious concern he professed that we should have a terrific day at the museum (photo bottom left).

The Ronald Reagan Library and Museum is 430,000 square feet of the most incredible experience you'll have anywhere. They have everything from the President's personal journal and quotation collection, to his Airforce One Boeing 747 and his Marine Helicopter. The grounds are beautiful, the displays are creative and not too overwhelming, and the staff is perhaps the most friendly and helpful we have ever encountered on our many road trips.

They have a shop full of wonderful books and other memorabilia and they have a cafeteria that produced a lunch for us that totally knocked our socks off. We split the Rueben Sandwich and fries and I had a cup of coffee. We thought our lunch was the best cafeteria food we'd had in years.

Day 6 -- San Luis Obispo, California to Piru, California -- 153 Miles

Today turned out to be a fantastic day, not because we got anywhere particularly exciting, but because of the scenery along the way. Last night we camped in San Luis Obispo at, of all places, a California National Guard facility. There were only five rigs in the camp, and one of those belonged to the camp host who, we discovered, kept up the grounds, greeted new arrivals, and served as the go-to person for camp amenities.

Since Camp San Luis Obispo has only a skelton compliment of soldiers, well, unless the Guard comes for drill weekend, the grounds were as quiet as a church and not a soul disturbed the peace and quiet. That changed this morning when Mike the Camp Host hopped on his riding mower and began cutting a couple of acres of grass around the camp sites.

Our goal today was to jump back on California Route 101 after breakfast and head south. And that, thanks to Concetta's IPhone GPS, was pretty easy. The traffic was brisk even though we didn't break camp until after 10:00 a.m. But we observed the posted speed limit and managed to keep up with the flow of traffic.

We got a surprise just after our curbside lunch in Carpenteria as the GPS informed us that it wanted us to leave Route 101 and head inland on Route 154. When we got a chance to pull over and consult the map we discovered that the GPS had routed us away from the seacoast and the town of Lompoc, and sent us down the most scenic and pleasant "bypass" we've seen on this whole trip. The road was slender and winding but the roadside display of everything from beautiful farms and orchards to wild natural vegetation full of bright yellow wildflowers just took our breath away.

Speaking of Lompoc, once upon a time when I was attending the University of California at Santa Barbara, I lived for the spring quarter of 1973 in student housing in that town. I had a roommate named Dale who, like me, played the guitar. Dale also played the Banjo and we would often play togther just for fun. I dropped out of college and went to sea after that quarter, but I would sure like to learn what happened to Dale. Dale and I were matched by computer for our first Quarter together in one of the campus co=ed dorms. We turned out to have exactly the same likes and dislikes and got along fantastically.

For the whole day we had been keeping an eye out for a grocery store and a gas station that would allow us an easy offramp and onramp next to Highway 101. Naturally, we saw neither. We made a valiant attempt when we reached Santa Barbara but ended up trying to thread our way through the impossibly narrow streets in old town as other drivers tried to be patient with us. Thankfully, though we didn't find our quarry, we did make it back to Route 101 without sideswiping anyone or stranding ourselves down some deadend alley.

Our next departure from Highway 101 came when it was time to head cross country toward Simi Valley and our intended destination of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. To that end, we segued over to California Route 126 East. Once again we kept our eyes out for a grocery store and a gas station. We like to fill the tank whenever it reaches the halfway mark as some gas stations limit purchases to just over a hundred dollars. In addition, the sticker shock is noticiably lessened. Plus, we were out of several grocery items which mandated a stop for supplies even if it turned out to be one of the smaller markets.

We hadn't gone very far when we encountered the town of Santa Paula and there we found a gas station. Tank filled, we rolled around town but found no grocery store. The next town down Route 126 was Fillmore and there we found a small, sort of one-horse grocery. We knew we would probably find a better store down the road, but we decided to take advantage of the bird in the hand. Thankfully the store had most of what we needed. Naturally, just a couple of blocks further east we saw not one, but two giant stores, but we just kept rolling.

Our final stop for the day was the Valencia Travel Village near the town of Piru. The camp was truly magnificent and came complete with its own large grocery, TWO swimming pools, a hot tube, propane fill up, remote dump station, and an amazingly pleasant and helpful staff. We liked it immediately. The cost was about $85.00 a night and they take the Good Sam card.

So, showers done, Concetta is cooking dinner and I'm, well, you know what I'm doing. Tomorrow we're headed for the Reagan Library where we plan to spend the better part of the day. Tomorrow afternoon we'll be back here at Valencia for our second night's stay. And the following day we'll be headed to my home town of Altadena where I intend to donate some California books to their little sales shop. After Altadena, we'll be headed further east and south and will eventually end up in San Diego. So until then, we wish you exciting and happy travels of your own.

Day 5 -- Clovis, California to Camp San Luis Obispo, California -- 142 Miles

The number of miles we traveled today is sort of a guess since I didn't note the odometer in Clovis, so you'll have to forgive my guestimate. Clovis, where my cousin, Vickie, lives and where many of the children of my cousins gathered this past Monday for the funeral of Vickie's brother, Fred, is just off Route 41 to Yosemite and adjacent to Fresno, California.

Cousin Fred Jones Junior, who has born in 1932, lived to be 92 years old and was the oldest son of my Uncle Frederick Preston Jones Senior who was the second oldest son of my grandmother, Emma and my grandfather, James Franklin Jones. I put this down both for you, my reader, and to help me keep this straight in my mind.

Anyway, Fred indicated he wanted no funeral but would rather have a graveside service. Concetta and I thought the cemetery setting was truly serene and was more parklike than the cemeteries we're used to in Nevada. Funerals and even cemetery services usually seem overly flowery (no pun) and even somewhat insincere to us. But Fred Junior's graveside service was amazingly sensitive and appropriate for the gathered family members and is one we'll never forget.

So, after a two-day hiatus from traveling, we were back on the road this morning headed west on California Route 41 and enjoying every mile. Exiting the Clovis/Fresno area was easy thanks to Concetta's IPhone GPS, and before we knew it we were cruising through mile after mile of a great variety of farm products from fruit trees to onions and grapes. Concetta and I are probably among the rare individuals who enjoy the vista of mile after mile of crops. Today we even saw olive trees grown for oil.

Over the last few miles that we rolled down Route 41 toward San Luis Obispo, we followed a two-lane country road. It dived up and down, twisted around tight bends, and meandered its way past weathered farms and dusty fields that probably date back over a century. As we neared San Luis Obispo, Concetta began researching possible camps for the evening and surprised me when she came up with a National Guard facility that allowed non-military campers as long as you had proof of military service.

Well, after our being refused entrance to the Navy base in Millington, Tennessee back in the fall of 2022, this year I brought along my DD214 Navy separation document as proof should the need ever arise to access a military base. In 1970 I spent four months attending a Navy "A School." My duty station at the time was at the Glenview Naval Air Station near Chicago, Illinois. The Navy had consented to my attending the electronics school in Tennessee in preparation for my becoming an antisubmarine warfare equipment operator.

Today, when Concetta found the Camp San Luis Obispo reference on her phone, I readily agreed to give it a try. When we arrived at the front gate, we handed my DD214 and I.D. to the gate guard and, after he briefly scanned the information to see if my I.D. matched the Navy document, he let us right in and directed us to the Billeting office for the camp.

Inside the registration office, I encountered a good natured chap who obviously was not meant to conduct secretarial duties, but he dutifully stuck with the job until he got us checked in. Then he gave me a map and told me to have a nice day. The camp sites turned out to be easy to find and within mere minutes, we were parked in Space 8 and were ready to set up.

We found the National Guard camp was comprised of a dozen full-hookup campsites and about as many "dry camp" sites where one can pitch a tent, or park your RV without hookups. The rate for each full-hookup site is about $31.00, and the camp comes complete with a 79-year-old, ex-Vietnam vet named Bill. Bill's a very friendly, helpful, and amiable chap who turned out to be great fun to talk to, and I immediately knew I could count on him to be a straight shooter.

Tomorrow we're headed south toward Los Angeles and our intended visit to the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. We will be staying near the Library for two nights before we travel on to San Diego on the 17th. So until then, we're wishing you happy travels of your own.

Day 2 -- Angel's Camp, California to Oakhurst, California -- 110 Miles

Traveling in east central California has been quite a change for us because of the warmer-than-Nevada temperatures. While our home town's morning temps usually hover around high thirties to low forties, here in the Gold Country as we travel Highway 49, the morning temps have probably been close to thirty degrees warmer. It's not so startling for breaking camp in the morning, but by afternoon the temps have gone up another ten degrees so that the post setup activity definitely calls for ice cold cocktails of some sort to cool off.

Today, as we traveled south along Highway 49, many of the village names seemed so familiar that it occurred to us that we might have traveled this same route way back in the late mid 1980s when we were just a newly married couple. I remember us taking a stagecoach ride in the heavily tourist-visited mining town of Columbia, and I'm pretty sure we wandered the Sierra Railroad property in Jamestown as well. No trains were running that day, but back then I was always up for photographing anything railroad related. Later that evening we had dinner in Jamestown, and I distinctly remember the chicken pot pie as being outstanding!

Part of the reason you see only 110 miles racked up today is because of the challenging nature of Highway 49 between Angel's Camp and the town of Oakhurst near the entrance to Yosemite Park. To say that the road is narrow is like saying Yosemite National Park has a few nice trees. Concetta informed me that the route is nicknamed "The Golden Chain" highway, probably because it links all the old gold mining towns. Or perhaps it's because the tiny winding road whips back and forth, up and down, and around dozens of hairpin curves making it hard to see long stretches out ahead.

The entire route is festooned with acres of wild flowers including California's famous poppy. There's so many "edge-of-a-cliff" drop-offs that you can't really focus on the geology, though I think I saw lots of basalt, schist, and granite blur by us. I remember seeing a documentary on California's geology that said the state is overlaid with a great deal of ocean-bottom limestone and sediment that was scraped off the Pacific Plate as most of that plate dove beneath the North American Plate. This has resulted in ocean-bottom fossils being found at the very TOP of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

As per normal, we stopped often today to gaze at the wonderful views and one of the most startling was the Tuolumne River Canyon south of the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct facility near the town of Moccasin, California. Here one could plainly see that hydraulic mining from the 1850s had turned the pristine and wooded river canyon into countless piles of rubble stone once the top soil had been washed down stream. The original use for the waters dammed in the Hetch Hetchy Canyon was to provide water for the hydraulic mining.

When I was a child of about twelve, I had two consuming interests in life and hoped to pursue them further when I was an adult. The first was reading about pirates and diving on treasure ships with men like Mel Fisher and Bob Marks. The second was the exploration of ghost towns and doing lots of ghost town photography. As fate would have it, I never really got to pursue either of those interests outside of briefly using a metal detector in search of old coins, and digging for old bottles in the San Gabriel Mountains when I was attending Eliot Junior High in my home town of Altadena, California. I found a few neat old coins and I still have a shelf full of old bottles, but the only ghost town I really ever explored was in Bodie, California.

We had a few tense moments early this morning after leaving camp when we rounded a bend and ended up right in the middle of some sort parade in the town of Sonora. The parade looked to be countless blocks long and every single access to mainstream had been blocked. Now if you've ever been in any of the gold country towns you know that they have a fairly passable main street through the heart of the area, but once you get on any side streets or bypass routes your chances of success drop precipitously.

When we finally reached the intersection where cops were diverting traffic around town, we found it was basically built largely for compact cars and bicycles. When we rolled up, the cops had to remove all the traffic cones to give us the best chance of making the turn without flattening them and whatever else got in the way. It took quite a few twists and turns and reroutes and detours to finally get out of town, but we made it without incident.

After we finally had been on the road for five hours and Concetta had set us up for a campsite in Oakhurst, we were certainly ready to do a little kicking back. The camp turned out to be a bit dusty and raggedy, but it will do for the night. There's a nice "babbling brook" nearby for sound effects and I think the fact that we're a block of the main highway should give us some peace and quiet. We topped up the gas tank before we sought out our camp, and Concetta is busily cooking chicken for dinner. Tomorrow we're headed down the mountain toward Fresno where my cousin is waiting to welcome us to her house in Clovis on the outskirts of Fresno.

Day 1 -- Carson City, Nevada to Angel's Camp, California -- 127 Miles

Today began our summer vacation to California for 2024. Granted, California is not a state that we normally try to visit, but we decided that it was high time that we paid a visit to some of our relatives, both mine and Concetta's, as we had not seen any of them for a long time. To that end, we started by assessing our 32-foot Fleetwood Jamboree to see what damage it had accumulated on our last several, very long distance road trips.

The first thing I did was turn the ignition key to on and operate the buttons that caused the living room and the bedroom to expand, a feature that's called a "slide-out." The rooms seemed to operate as designed, however when the living room slider was fully extended it finished with a rather alarming sort of tearing sound. Naturally I dashed outside to see just what obstruction the room had encountered. There, to my dismay, I could see that the awning material that sort of shields the slide out from rain had neatly separated from the coach. Once I studied the fabric of the awning I could easily see that both needed replacing.

Next I discovered that the automatic step extender that had quit working on our 2022 trip to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, that we had paid $450.00 to have fixed, quit working again. The RV fixit company had replaced the computer board which, I suppose, didn't turn out to be the issue at all. So that was the second thing that I put on my list to have addressed before we could leave.

The third thing was something I discovered when I went onto the roof to look at the torn awning. When I approached the edge of the slide-out where the awning attached, I chanced to step on a portion of the roof adjacent to the air conditioner and discovered that the roof felt soft and spongy like a rafter was perhaps broken. So that went onto my list as well.

When I stopped in at the fixit shop they were able to give me an appointment date in April that was amazingly soon. It was so soon that I breathed a sign of relief thinking that they would be able to solve all my problems before we wanted to hit the road in early May. We even dropped the rig off a week early so the crew could jump right on our job if they had a spare hour here and there.

As you might guess that didn't happen. Not only did our rig sit on the back lot up until our appointment date, it actually didn't move until the day after. Naturally I took to stopping in from time to time after that for updates. "Well," they told me, "they had the awning material in stock so that job would be no problem." They went on to say that the automatic step problem was no doubt a bad motor so they were sending for one. The problem with the roof really didn't seem to interest them and I decided not to push it in the interest of time.

Sadly, things only got worse from there. Although the awnings went in about two weeks later, there was no explanation as to why they didn't jump right on that job since they had the materials and my appointment had come and gone. They didn't seem to think that getting the new motor was all that important so when they should have expressed mailed it to themselves, they sort of sat back and waited for the regular mail to show. The roof, well, the roof was never even brought up.

Finally we got the rig back about the time we desperately needed it and we set about getting it ready. In the course of that duty I decided to try and get the step to work myself. Once again I pulled the clevis pin and tried timing the step so when it wanted to retract it was in the retract mode and not the extend mode. once I had done that I reinstalled a pin, though not the original pin as it was so difficult I couldn't manage it. I just got an old nail, secured the two step components together and slid the nail into place. I then bent both ends down so it wouldn't slide out again and voyla, it worked.....sadly in one direction only.

But hey, one direction was better than none. And it was certainly better than using the rickety PVC ladder we had been forced to use on the last trip. I discovered that the step would lower on its own but needed a great deal of help to retract. So now I just help it and all seems to go well.

So this morning we were finally ready. The rig was loaded with every possible accoutrement that we could possibly need for the next month. Two days previous I had taken it to town to fill the gas tank -- a sobering experience -- and then stopped at the Propane dealer for a top up. The rig performed as expected, the new awnings looked good, and all seemed right with the world -- not counting the step and roof -- as I rolled out of the back yard where we customarily park it, and headed for the front yard driveway to pick up Concetta.

The only sticky part of taking the rig from the back to the front is a tiny point were I have to clear the overhanging garage roof before proceeding down the side of the house toward the gate. I always have to swing way wide and just barely clear my neighbor's fence in order to safely slide by.

As you might guess at this point since I brought up this subject today I didn't quite get close enough to neighbor Dave's fence and the very tip of the fascia board and tile roof clipped the starboard side awnings just firmly enough to rip them entirely off. Only the barest thread of fabric, sinews, and shattered superstructure kept the entire assembladge from landing on the ground.

Not only the newly installed bedroom awning was destroyed, but the 16 foot awning that provides shade when extended from the side of rig on hot days was violently dismantled. With a heavy heart I stowed away the various sad components, put on an equally sad, but determined face, and we rolled out of the yard on our vacation bruised by not deterred in any way. After all, an RV Trip costs a king's ransom every time you hit the road and we weren't going to let mere money -- sob -- ruin our trip.

So we set off down Highway 395 south, segued onto Route 88 south in Minden, and followed the path of the gold-seekers of 1849 as they picked their way across the Carson Valley, bolder-hopped their way up the impossibly rugged Carson River Canyon, and crested the mighty Sierra Nevada at Carson Pass with their incredibly sturdy covered wagons.

Slowly, so as not to tempt the Fates any further, we crested Carson Pass ourselves, passed through Tragedy Springs where the three ex-Mormon Battalion gold seekers were murdered, and rolled on toward Jackson, California. We stopped for lunch at a handy pull-out near the very top of the pass.

Once in Jackson we called ahead and secured a spot for the night in Angel's Camp then spent a lovely hour just cruising California Route 49 to our nightly destination. Once when we had to pull over anyway to let the more time conscious drivers pass, we stopped for time to stretch our legs and enjoy a few minutes just taking in the view and the nearby carpet of wildflowers.

Briefly we thought about staying an additional day in Angel's Camp and would have if the camp had offered a shuttle back to the old town section of the town where we had seen several nice restaurants as we passed through. But sadly, no such shuttle was available, so tomorrow we will be traveling on to see what accommodations we can turn up on our way to visit my cousin in the Fresno area and pay our respects to her brother who has recently passed.

So we bid you exciting and happy travels of your own and perhaps slightly better luck in the mechanical category.

Day 44 -- Tonopah to Carson City, Nevada -- 237 Miles

Day 43 -- Kingman, Arizona to Tonopah, Nevada -- 314 Miles

No narrative. Sorry.

Day 42 -- Tuscon to Kingman, Arizona -- 307 Miles

Nothing to report today since all we did is drive. But I did take the photos below when we stopped to stretch our legs on the run between Tuscon and Kingman, Arizona:

Day 41 -- El Paso, Texas to Tuscon, Arizona -- 320 Miles

Since the push is on to get home as expeditiously as possible, we stopped today only to grocery shop, top up the gas, and eat lunch. Consequently, we didn't visit any interesting attractions, and I never even got the camera out. Our target destination today was the city of Tuscon, and we handily made it by 4:30 p.m. after starting our 320-mile run in El Paso, Texas, at 8:05 a.m.

At lunch today in the city of Lordsburg, New Mexico, we made our evening camp reservations by phone, but we had no idea what the camp would be like since we'd never stayed there before. Little did we realize that the camp had been set up specifically to cater to the famous "snowbirds" who come to Arizona from the very coldest and snowiest states in the union to escape winter's worst.

It soon became obvious when the KOA counter person issued us camp spot number 1639 that we would be keeping company with more RVers than we have in the last ten camps combined. And that's not all. The camp has its own restaurant, fitness room, game room, fireplace sites, and miniature golf course.

And even that is not all to be seen at this Shangri-la of RV parks. Over many of the longterm campsites, perhaps those which cater specifically to snowbirds, the camp owners have erected sun-filtering, steel slatted roofs to ward off the winter sunshine presumably! I guess it's also possible that some of these long-termers simply stay here year-round and would need the slats in the 120-degree summer months.

Anyway, since I did drag out the camera and take photos of this camp before the sun went down, I thought you might like to see what "fancy" looks like in the way of RV camps. Enjoy!

Day 40 -- Big Spring to El Paso, Texas -- 344 Miles

Today was the BIG PUSH to get across Texas as fast as possible and expedite our return home since the snow started falling there. Since there's no heat on in the house we're a little concered with how the pipes will fare if they experience even colder temperatures.

As you know, if you've been reading our blog for any length of time, we usually try to keep mileage to about 150 miles a day. Sometimes if we can't quite find a camp where we need it to be, we'll push it up to 200 miles. Beyond that distance, it's just too tedious.

However, the distance from McKinney, Texas, where we visited with family, to the Texas/New Mexico border totalled just under 700 miles, a mind-numbing figure for our tolerance for long days. Still, towns in between seemed to be few, and we couldn't really find many camps advertised.

So yesterday when we left Mckinney we ended up driving 315 miles, and today we wracked up another 344 Miles to reach El Paso. Tomorrow we will probably have to do another 340 miles to reach Tuscon. It's not something I'm looking forward to, but if we get an early start it is doable.

The worst part about high-mileage days is it prevents us from visiting any off-the-highway points of interest. Today we passed the Museum for the Pecos, which I feel we would have enjoyed. The history of Judge Roy Bean, known as "The Law West of the Pecos" in the 1880s has always been interesting to me.

Still, even though we didn't get to visit any fascinating points of interest, we did get to witness one of the most fascinating cities we've ever seen, albeit from our RV seats, as we passed through the Midland/Odessa metropolitan area of Texas.

If you're unfamiliar with the Midland/Odessa area, you probably have not been paying attention to what insiders are calling the Permian Basin oil deposit. For a discussion of the Permian basin, I turned to Wikipedia: "The Permian Basin is a large sedimentary basin in the southwestern part of the United States. The basin contains the Mid-Continent Oil Field province. This sedimentary basin is located in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. It reaches from just south of Lubbock, past Midland and Odessa, south nearly to the Rio Grande River in southern West Central Texas, and extending westward into the southeastern part of New Mexico."

"It is so named because it has one of the world's thickest deposits of rocks from the Permian geologic period. The greater Permian Basin comprises several component basins; of these, the Midland Basin is the largest, Delaware Basin is the second largest, and Marfa Basin is the smallest. The Permian Basin covers more than 86,000 square miles (220,000 km2), and extends across an area approximately 250 miles (400 km) wide and 300 miles (480 km) long."

"The Permian Basin lends its name to a large oil and natural gas producing area, part of the Mid-Continent Oil Producing Area. Total production for that region up to the beginning of 1993 was over 14.9 billion barrels (2.37×109 m3). The Texas cities of Midland, Odessa and San Angelo serve as the headquarters for oil production activities in the basin."

Personally, I've been pertty worried about the anti-oil attitude of our present government. It seemed to me that they were on an accelerated path to destroy our oil industry. But after riding through Midland/Odessa, Texas today, I'm feeling more confident that our oil industry is NOT down for the count and is going to outlast our shortsighted government leaders.

Today, we saw dozens and dozens of brand new buildings, housing every imaginable form of business, lining both sides of the Interstate for miles. Many of the businesses obviously catered to the oil business, such as those that provided drilling components. But most of the businesses couldn't be tied directly to drilling.

For instance, there appeared to be litterally thousands of work trucks of all descriptions, from pickups to large flatbed mainenance trucks dashing hither and yon on the frontage roads. And lining those roads were the dealers to sell them. There were dealers providing the tractor component of tractor-trailer rigs. There were other dealers selling the trailers or vans that could be pulled by those tractors. We even saw about three dozen brand new oil tanker trailers sitting in just one spot on the south side of the Interstate.

On the construction side, there were all manner of businesses providing the materials needed to build all the new buildings that housed the burgeoning number of small businesses. Businesses offering electricians, sheetmetal work, boiler and HVC work, plumbing related, hydraulics related, and, well, you name it and it was there.

But the part that amazed us the most was the veritible "explosion" in the number of dwelling units for all the workers who have moved to Midland/Odessa to work in the oil business and the various support businesses. Every single block contained a subdivision of tiny houses of all descriptions, prefab apartments on wheels and on foundations, or sophisticated apartment buildings three and four stories high. There were also RV camps for those who brought their own housing which were tucked in behind many of the newly-constructed businesses. We even saw three HUGE, four-story apartments that were being constructed on an elevated steel girder system that, presumably, would allow the entire apartment building to be relocated at some point if the need arose.

Naturally, getting through Midland/Odessa was a bit hairy because of the crush of traffic and all the work trucks merging onto the Interstate. But we didn't really mind as we were getting to see an American economy going gangbusters that was simply too good to miss. All too often on our travels we see countless towns where the economic viability vanished years ago. Seeing Midland/Odessa was a very welcome change.

By the way, the photos of Midland/Odessa were not shot by me, but were captured on the web in order to provide some visual backup for my narrative.

Day 39 -- McKinney to Big Spring, Texas -- 315 Miles

First of all I'd just like to say that we've just set up camp here in Big Spring, Texas, and the outside air is cool and sweet and DRY!!! Over the past half century, Concetta and I have grown quite accustomed to our lovely dry air in Nevada. But for the past three weeks we've been traveling in the southeast, and we've experienced nothing but moisture-laden air.

Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and most of Texas are like one giant sponge. Sometimes it rains in these states like pouring water out of a boot. But most of the time the water is just hanging around like the invisible man. We suspect that you could slice a cubic yard of air in any of these states, wring it out into a basin, and survive for a good week in the driest of deserts.

Unbeknownst to us when we picked out Big Springs as our probable stop for the night, and called in a reservation, we didn't realize that the camp would prove to be a climatic heaven on earth. The camp is pretty rustic and the Internet sucks, but we don't really care. The desert air is so wonderful we may just decide to stay here until spring.

But first let me tell you about the years we lost off our lifespan today while trying to navigate our rig out of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Looking at the map this morning, it all seemed so easy. We were camped in McKinney and, in my opinion, all we had to do was drop south a few rural miles after leaving our camp called Sugar Hill RV Resort and catch the east/west arterial labeled Route 380 on the map. Once on Route 380, we could drive swiftly west and catch Route 35 and 35W going south. Finally, we would leave Route 35W and head west to Interstate 30/20 for El Paso. It all looked so simple on paper.

Here's what really happened: we trusted Concetta's iPhone to guide us, and the attention-demanding lass in that tiny machine decided that the easy way was just boring. So for the next hour she stair-stepped us down every rutted country lane that claimed any proximity to McKinney, Texas.

We had rutted pavement and potholes. We had steep roadside dropoffs. we had all four cardinal directions fed to us making us think we were actually going in circles. We even had a collection of roads where repaving crews were limiting traffic to one direction at a time. Finally we had had enough, and we dug out the tried-and-true super duper GPS with a screen half the size of a loaf of bread and put that lady to work.

Fortunately, the large-sized GPS quickly got us on Route 380 which had been lurking just a few miles south of where we had been playing ring around the rosie for an hour, and we sped off in the correct direction.

Now that all the fun and games were behind us, we certainly thought that our troubles were over and we could navigate our way out of the insanity of metropolitan Dallas without further adieu. But that was not to be. All too soon we came upon more constuction work going on and unfortunatley right in the middle of where we had to catch Route 35 south.

Still, we made it finally to the onramp and the GPS set our course south -- and right into a super collossal remodel of the entire west Dallas freeway system. Immediatley all the lanes became as narrow as they could make them, and it wasn't long before we just knew we were in for it.

By the time we got out of the west end of Dallas we had missed at least three turnoffs, narrowly avoided construction debris scattered in our lane by some fool in a beatup pickup truck, and had to reverse direction at least twice. All I wanted to do was pull over somewhere and have a good cry. But there was nowhere to pull over.

The sad part is that we left camp at 8:30 in the morning and by 10:30 we were still trying to escape the melee in the center of Dallas. Back in 2016 we tried driving through the middle of Dallas and the horrifying experience was so traumatic that we haven't gotten over it yet.

Finally we managed to bumble our way to Interstate 30/20 west, and I glanced at my watch to confirm that, yes, it had taken us over two hours to drive perhaps 40 miles just trying to LEAVE THE CITY!

Thankfully, the rest of the day passed uneventfully. Because we had a little trouble finding a camp on the Internet or in our Good Sam book, we decided to try and get half way to El Paso, if possible. That decision brought us to Big Spring, Texas, about 315 miles from last night's camp. Our day turned out to be long, but we did find a fairly nice place for lunch just off the Interstate where I took the photos herein.

And that's it for now. Concetta and I wish you many exciting adventures of your own on the highways and byways of our beautiful country.