Miscellaneous Items

Here are a few miscellaneous items from our travels this winter.

We were travelling from Arizona over to a campground for a few days near La Quinta CA close onto Palm Springs. Google often wants to take you down the Interstate and so we got out our trusty California Road Atlas and found a road that "on the map" connected through a neat place called Box Canyon and that would allows us to continue onto our nightly camp sight. So we took the back road indicated on the map and the road started to deteriorate rather rapidly. The shrubs and bushes were growing up through the now-not-maintained pavement and the road was narrowing. Nature was taking the land back. There were also a number of small bridges over arroyos that given the recent rains could have been damaged. Fortunately no other misdirected fools seem to have taken this short 5 mile road. About where we thought we should be connecting to Box Canyon we realized the pavement ended and we had this sign. Not good, since backing up the trailer a long ways is doable but not a pleasant task. Fortunately George walked about a half mile down the sandy track and realized that it connected albeit over a less than nice dirt pathway to our destination. So we gingerly drove through without any major problem. The map lies and we have noted in our atlas not to ever take this rodent trail again. Besides in a few years it will not be passable.

My sister, Signe, came over for a visit at our campsite and she loves rocks, all shapes and sizes. We suggested we take her over to see Box Canyon and she agreed since she had never been there. Here are a couple of images that give you a feel for box canyon. The canyon is the result of upheavals from the San Andreas fault that runs near this area. We are just a little north and east of the Salton Sea.

After touring Box Canyon Deanna and Signe wanted to have lunch. Chinese food they said, we want Chinese food. Not being familiar with the area they Googled up some restaurants in Indio and settled, finally, on a traditional Chinese eatery. This image shows pages from their extensive and well done menu. They also had more Americanized fare than you see here. They wanted Chinese they said however they did not get these more exotic dishes.

Staying connected in this digital world while out traveling can present some problems. Cell service is becoming more widespread, though depending on your carrier you may or may not have coverage in some areas. There is an increasing amount of Wi-Fi available at many campgrounds. Some of the Wi-Fi is great and sophisticated and much of it less so. We had campsites where each person got their own pass code that was good for a short period of time giving you a somewhat secure connection. We also saw public Wi-Fi networks. You can if you have a good cell signal use your smart phone as a mobile hot spot and connect your computer to that hot spot and perform your financial transactions. Just be careful when doing this and make sure you have a good strong password and only have the hot spot on for the limited time you are using it. So there are various options for connectivity.

We were staying at an RV Park called Stagecoach Trails just west of Anza Borrego. We stopped there and did a big batch of laundry. It is a great park and nice facilities. They advertise W-Fi but in actuality their W-Fi is really limited. You can sometimes do e-mail, just plain text no image no nothing. It kind of works in that mode. Unfortunately George needed to update a web site. In the picture below you can see the Wi-Fi antennae on the building and the laptop on the wooden spool. This is line of site and close proximity and it still took forever to get the limited update accomplished. We often get used to the high speed broadband connectivity but as you travel about you find out that is not always available.

Stagecoach Trails got it's name from the Butterfield Stagecoach line that came through this area in the mid 1850's. Here is a well done replica of a Stagecoach out of all metal. Someone took some time and put in a lot of effort to build this. It won't deteriorate much in this harsh desert environment. It is at the entrance to the RV park.

The RV Park is in a location called Shelter Valley. No cell signal here and not much of anything else. There are no stores, no gas stations, no Starbucks. It is remote. There is a small store at the campground and they have some basic staples. Here is half of the Ice Cream counter. They actually had 8 different flavors of hand dipped ice cream and it was wonderful. The store also has a small deli, makes sandwiches, and wonderful hand made pizza. We had one of their pizzas on the last day there.

In this image we have started our trek north towards home. Our first stop was at Mojave Narrows Regional Park in Victorville. We just barely made it to the campsite before the howling winds and blowing rain caught us. For all of the afternoon and most of the evening the reported winds were 25-35 with gusts to 55. The trailer was really rocking. This picture shows we decided to keep the slide out in so the awning over the slide out would not get ripped off. It got a little cramped but certainly livable for a short period.

This was the firepit by our campsite the next morning after the storm had lessened. We didn't want a campfire at that point and certainly could not have started one if we wanted. Lots of rain and standing water everywhere. At least the winds had died down.

Deanna took this Raven image at one point out the front door of the trailer. It sounded and looked like he was complaining about the miserable weather.

When we left Mojave Narrows the next morning we headed west. Our intended route was over to I-5 west of Bakersfield and then north towards home. There was some ugly but drivable weather around. This image is just above Mojave, CA. They have an airport there where many large commercial airplanes are stored. They also have a lot of windmills for power generation. There was a huge number of them as we climbed up through Tehachapi and headed west.

Hope you have enjoyed the travel blogs. we tried to give a little perspective on the places we went and some of the things we saw and did.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments. Stay Safe