Friday, September 23, 2016

Two Short Days

Since the next leg of our journey was 370 miles, we decided to split it up.  Leaving Visalia, CA on Tues. we said goodbye to the beautiful CA hills and continued driving CA 99 south.

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At Bakersfield CA 58 took us east through the Tehachapi Pass  with its thousands of wind turbines

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and down into the Mohave Desert where CA was putting all of its sunshine to good use.

(solar panels)

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Usually the word ‘desert’ conjures up pictures of huge sand dunes baking under a relentless cloudless sky. Forget about that.  The Mohave is basically flat with thousands of plants growing everywhere.  It gets water too.  This is a riverbed which fills up when the rains come.

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After the pass we didn’t have far to go to our first stop.  Between Barstow and Yermo there are two rv parks.  We picked this KOA because it was just off the highway.  The park has some nice facilities.  Along one side are tent spaces and these covered hammocks.  There are a couple of big tents like the one on the left which hold two sets of bunks, a fan, electric light and lots of space.  There are a couple of nice cabins, back ins with 30 amp and water, and full-hookup 50 amp pull thrus.  Since we were here for a quick on and off, we opted to pull thru and not unhitch.  That’s the back of our rig between the cabin and that colorful Class A.

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The pull thrus were nicely shaded.

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Facilities included a nice (cold) swimming pool, a tv room, game room with two of the four game tables needing replacement, a small playground, a nice basketball court, “free” wifi, and an extensive rv store.  There was also an archery range and beautiful views of the sunset,

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and surrounding mountains.

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The sunset last night lit the mountains in glorious color.

The KOA (or as we say Keep On Addin’) lived up to its name.  Our one night stay cost us $53.  Ouch!  That’s California for ya!

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Leaving Barstow/Yermo 58 ended and I15 took us east through the ever changing Mohave.  Some people may think that driving through here is boring, but we found our drive to be interesting and beautiful.

This sign caught our eye.  For 30 miles we wondered what it meant.

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Even those ‘bare’ mountains had bushes growing all over them.

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You never know what you’ll see in the desert.

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You’ll be driving along thinking that there’s nothing out here but creosote bushes when a town will pop up.  This one’s Baker and is the gateway to exploring the Mohave National Preserve where you will really find out what deserts are all about.

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Baker also provided the answer to our burning question. In Baker we took CA 127 north.

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Ok, we thought we were surrounded by loose gravel, but good to know.

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Beautiful contours

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Rock mountains that look like hills of gravel.

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The occasional blinding blowing dust.

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I marvel at the forces that made these.

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Mesa suddenly appear.

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Shoshone, the gateway to Death Valley.  Here we took 178.

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That hole in the rock is a window.  There is a wooden door beneath it!

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What’s over the horizon?

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Nevada, and the town of Pahrump, Nevada.  

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Our home for the next 4 days.

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Later,

Louise and Duane

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