Ick

 

Yesterday, Thurs, we left the cool weather and beautiful towns in the area around Clayton, CA and drove 30 or so miles south to pickup our rig in Tracy and spend the night in a mobile home/rv park there.  We needed to get all of our stuff put away and restock the fridge.  The rv part of this park had nothing for us but a place to park and a small laundry.  We had to park across from our spot.  Across the fence is storage.

Sun glare makes this hard to see, but we are backed up against two mobile homes.  This place was hot.  We were parked on gravel with a concrete patio pad.  The tree next to us did nothing but hinder parking.  The afternoon sun baked the side of our rig.  The air conditioner worked hard all afternoon until sunset. 

From Tracy we headed 150 miles south on CA 99 to the town of Visalia.  Our stay in Tracy set the tone for this  trip through the San Joaquin Valley—hot and ugly. 

A lot of the road was grooved which made for a very bumpy ride. There are very few places to pull over to take a break along this route.

There is no scenery along here.  We passed quite a few orchards, quite a few fields of corn and other stuff, a few newer looking stores and businesses,

but mostly there were run-down looking buildings,

unimproved roadsides,

and a lot of trash.

In Visalia we pulled into the Elks Club and parked for the next several days.  This is our base for exploring Kings Canyon National Park and the northern unit of Giant Sequoia National Monument.

I’m sorry for such a bad report this time, but after all of the months of beautiful scenery we’ve seen daily for the last six months, this trip was a real downer.  Duane got bored and I read a book.  We are looking forward to our explorations in the next few days.

Louise and Duane