Yes, it rained last night and everything got wet. Just wet, not drenched. It was just wet enough that I got to wear my brand-new raincoat Diane found in one of her thrift stores a couple of months ago. It’s really nice.
Last night was the second night in a row that it didn’t freeze. That’s good because I don’t know how many more times our water supply hose can withstand another freeze. So far, so good.
No plans for today. We did go to church at Bethany thanks to the internet. It’s pretty cool that we can participate this far away. It’s almost like being there.
Since it’s all wet outside we have a valid excuse to stay inside and watch football. It’s the playoffs, you know, and this is when it’s the most fun to watch.
So, today was almost like a normal Sunday back home in St. Helens: walk Max, Church, lunch, walk Max, football, walk Max, dinner, walk Max, popcorn & a noovie, walk Max.
Today was very windy so we didn’t do anything special. I walked Max a few times and Diane went to the commissary. Kind of routine stuff.
On one of our walks, Max took me to see a fake horse that’s parked close to our parking spot, so I took a couple of photos. He especially wanted the one I took of him posing with the horse. He kinda looks up to them. Really, he does.
This plaque explained the meaning.
On the way back home, I took a couple of photos of the entire RV park. It’s not big – just 30 spaces. We’re parked on the left side toward the far end.
The wind has been constant, all day. It sounds worse inside than it feels outside. That’s mainly because it’s blowing down the sides, hitting the slide out, causing the awning above the slide to flitter around in a very noisy manner. It already had a small tear on the side net to the main body, so I suspect it’s going to be worse after all this wind. I bought replacement material for it about 6 months ago but never got it installed so I guess that can be a job when we get home for real.
Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain if there’s any left after it dumps on LA. Diane, and I won’t mind. We haven’t seen rain since last summer and we miss it. There’s a chance that I might regret saying that.
Diane took Max and me a little bit southwest of Barstow to visit a couple of places that caught her eye. Both are on iconic Route 66. Before going to those places, however, it was unanimous that we stop for lunch. Diane pulled off the road so we could search for a likely place to eat. The only place to pull off the road was to the left because to the right are railroad tracks, lots of them, where trains whiz by going 100’s of mph. Some of the places were within a few miles of us but the one that caught her eye was the Cross Eyed Cow Pizza in Oro Grande. She looked up from her search and saw a sign for that restaurant about 100 feet ahead of us, pointing to the buildings directly in front of us. To get there she had to pull onto Route 66, drive about 50 feet, then turn left into the parking lot behind the buildings.
From the parking area we entered through the back door.
Once inside, the young lady behind the counter told us to take a menu and sit anywhere we wanted. So we did, and studied the menu.
The menu was interesting, with lots of choices, and the area on the right (black on white) was a list of everything that’s on the menu. Interesting. We ordered a 12″ pepperoni pizza and 2 root beer floats. Though the place wasn’t full, it took a long time to get our order. Sadly, I failed to take a picture. The pizza was one of the best we’ve had in years, and we ate it all. The floats were pretty awesome, too.
The booth dividers are adorned with butter knives.
Max watched me take every bite and managed to get a number of little bites for being such a good boy. He spent most of his time laying under the table watching everyone else.
After finishing lunch, we went back to the parking lot where I got these photos.
This was actually the highlight of the day because it was so unexpected. Then we proceeded to the locations Diane had on the calendar.
The first place was called Antique Station. From outside the building looks like a strip mall of sorts where there are numerous individual stores, side by side. But. no matter which entrance you choose, you wind up in one huge store that’s full of an amazing amount of stuff and it’s all well-organized.
The second stop was Elmer Long’s Bottle Tree Ranch. Somehow, Elmer either inherited an unlimited supply of bottles he had no use for, or he drinks a lot and needed to misdirect observers away from that thought, he had a momentary flash of insanity and decided to make a device on which he could stick his various bottles to make them look like trees. These might also be what’s left over from when Elmer built the bottle house in Calico. I doubt it, but who knows? I’m pretty sure Elmer didn’t build that house.
Elmer spent a lot of time building his trees and adding the bottles.
And he has a stockpile of jars and bottles to keep him going for a while.
As we were pulling out of the parking lot Diane spied a white box laying in the gravel that was totally out of place. so she stopped and I retrieved it. Turns out it was an unopened pack of Japanese cigarettes unlike anything I’ve ever seen for sale here in the good old USA. Of man interest to us was the warnings they put on the package. All the writing is in Japanese, but they make it very clear that smoking isn’t good for you. They use pictures.
Kind makes you want to light up, sit back, and relax, right? I’ve done a bunch of research trying to find photos of the pack we found but they just aren’t out there. They do, however, have these.
Very graphic, huh?
Moving on, we joined the crowds on Route 66 and headed east back to Barstow. There actually wasn’t very much traffic, so the trip was very pleasant. We stopped at the Walmart Superstore about a mile from the base so Diane could get some essentials, then got back home in time for this.
Drilling in on this photo reveals what appears to be an airborne tornado. That, or it’s an alien elevator created on demand so they can get from one cloud to another. Isn’t nature interesting?
Yup. We’re going on a field trip to this ghost town. You can see how excited Max is about that. He loves car rides, as you all know.
He’ll be more excited when he wakes up. Guess he wore himself out on that first walk this morning.
So far today I once again resurrected the bus’s furnace by resetting it. Doesn’t seem like I should have to do that every time, but I don’t mind as long as it keeps working. The inner temp was around 49 degrees when I got up at 0430 which I viewed as a good reason to go back to bed. Little Max weathers the cold temps nicely and I don’t know how. I guess it’s all that hair he hasn’t shared with us yet.
Just before lunch we loaded ourselves into the car and drove to Calico Ghost Town Regional Park so have a look around. It’s an interesting town that Walter Knott, Knott’s Berry Farm, purchased in the 1950’s and resurrected it. I know this is true because I saw a plaque up there, and I took a photo of it.
I actually took hundreds of photos but none of them will be any better than the ones you will see if you access the above link. I’ll add a few of my photos just for the fun of it.
We ate lunch in the Calico House Restaurant and the food was pretty good. Diane had a patty melt and I had a club sandwich. After that we let Max lead us around the main street where he made a bunch of new friends.
This photo op was built a little too close to the ground for us, but we gave it a college try.
There’s quite a bit of up and down elements to the ghost town so we took breaks often. Thankfully, there were lots of benches and chairs scattered around the town. From this one I took a hike to the top of the town where that teeny sign is in the distance.
Some of the stairs are visible behind Diane, but many of them are suggestions of stairs and could be very treacherous. Falling was a danger all the way up, and down, because there are no handrails to grab. Here’s what I saw.
From the top.
The structure where Diane rested was build of cement and bottles. Sadly, it wasn’t open for viewing, but I got a few photos of the interior through one of the windows.
After departing Calico, we stopped in Yermo where Diane found a Thrift Store. We looked around for a while, but Diane didn’t find anything she wanted which astounded me. It may be her first visit to a thrift store where she didn’t come home with something “new’.
An interesting thing about Yermo is that the base we’re on, Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow, stretches to the east far enough that Yermo claims part of it as their own. Specifically, they claim to be home for the Marine Corps Mounted Color Guard. Here’s proof in a Yermo mural.
We called it a day and headed home from Yermo to the safety of our trusty bus. Max was happy to be headed home.
Looking at a map it appears that Route 66 (I-40) transits right through the middle of the base so I suspect Nebo can claim a bit of ownership, too. Regardless, all the people around here love their Marines.
It’s almost 1300 hours; we’ve had lunch and haven’t left the base. Yet. Lunch was obtained at the Route 66 Cafe just up the street from the Oasis RV Park. It’s a nice facility but we took our food back to the RV so we could eat with Max. Diane had patty melt and I had some sort of chicken burrito. She had sweet potato fries, and I had wedge shaped fries made with mashed potatoes. The fries were pretty good. Never had anything like them before.
Diane insisted that we take a jaunt into Barstow because she promised Max he could go for a ride. Since he can’t drive yet, it’s only fair, and logical, for him to get his ride. We can’t let him lose trust in us. Sounds silly, I know, but we’re pretty sure he understands English very well. Probably Spanish, too. So, we’re very careful what we say.
Now it’s 1615 hours and we just returned from Max’s ride around town and that’s about exactly what we did.
Route 66 runs right through the base we’re on. The working side of the base is on the north side, and the housing area is on the south. Interesting. We’ll have to take a trip over there to look things over so we can report back with good information. I’m sure all of you will want to know about this.
I took a bunch of photos as we drove around the city, but the only ones of interest were the murals painted on the buildings. The town itself appears to be on a downward trajectory with many businesses boarded up all along Route 66.
Here’s a photo of one of the many pedestals that appear along the highway through town. Each one has a front and back view of period pickups and sedans, except for this one.
One very interesting wall mural where calvary is riding camels. The write-up included explains that this was a test to see if they worked out better than mules. The onset of the Civil War stopped this program.
Here we are hanging out in a sunny patch behind the bus. I didn’t have my selfie stick handy, so I positioned my shadow to be next to my lovely bride.
Here we are, level on a cement pad, safely tethered to power, sewer, and water at the Fam Camp on the Marine Corp Logistics Base Barstow. This facility is located just a little east of Barstow on I-40 (Route 66). Check the map here. There’s a ghost town a little further out of town that we plan to visit sometime during the week we plan to stay here.
Getting here was a breeze. As noted yesterday, I navigated the solution for allowing us to tow the car so we had each other to talk with. When Diane drove the car, however, she had the convenience of listening to satellite radio while all I had was the wind whistling on the driver’s window because I didn’t latch it. It was good to have company for the 2.5 hour trip, mostly uphill.
The uphill part, added to towing the car was an increased danger of the RV engine overheating. As it turned out, it wasn’t a problem. We went up and down a lot and the rig got along just fine. Jerrie is happy. I have new belief that replacing the leaking overflow tank will resolve the overheating problem for good. We may never know for sure because we hope to sell the RV when we get home and probably won’t be taking it on any more long trips. We’ll be taking short trips to the beach via other means.
There’s really not much to share about the trip to get here. Since I was driving the entire way, I couldn’t take photos. I think Diane may have taken one photo, but I haven’t seen it. I think I may have suggested that she take the shot, but don’t remember what it was. Oh wait. Here it is. It just magically showed up.
The reason for this photo is to let you know that 29 Palms has many, many barbers available along Adobe Dr., the road that takes you to the main gate at the base.
Max was happy for the short trip and we got to walk around a bit before dinner. Diane was the cook today and we had a pork loin, fresh beets, and baked potatoes. It was awesome. Should have taken a picture, right?
Oh, another thing we discovered is that the RV furnace works nicely. So far, the electric fireplace heater we have has been the only source of heat. Although it works Ok, it’s difficult to heat up the place when it’s 45 degrees inside, and 28 outside. We were a little leery about using it considering the dusty nature of our environment. We figured if it did work it would blow dust everywhere. That didn’t happen so that’s going to be my solution for the mornings. We’ve even agreed that we should have the furnace set to run at night to keep it from assuming the outside projected temps of 28 degrees. We figure 60 degrees at night is better for us than 45.
Right now it’s 1900 and we’re nice and warm inside. It’s 46 outside but will drop to around 27 tonight.
I’m sure talking about temperatures is very informative and entertaining for you. That’s a facetious statement so I think I’ll stop now before the hole gets any deeper.
I mentioned that Diane did our laundry yesterday. She does that once in a while. This time it was different because she had to compete with active-duty Marines to get a washer and dryer. She said the young male Marines were very accommodating, but the female Marines weren’t. She brought the clothes back all folded up, in the back of her car.
I can vouch for the willingness of young marines to help a young damsel in distress. When we stopped to get fuel before starting today’s journey, we were working at two pumps. Diane begged off reporting that she doesn’t refuel vehicles. The young man next to the bus immediately volunteered to get it going for her. She was pleased and grateful for his help. He was pleased, too.
The first thing I did this morning, late this morning, was bundle up and go to work on the 7-pin to 5-pin wiring that connects the car to the bus. I may have mentioned that, since we’ve only been making short little trips as we head north, we were OK with driving both rigs. So, I didn’t both with the plug. Here’s what happened …
While hooking everything up prior to leaving the Bone Yard, I must have tried plugging the 5-pin end upside down. As a consequence, all of the pins inside were pushed through the back of the plug making it impossible for any of them to make contact. Therefore, there were no lights on the car while towing. So, we didn’t tow it.
Yesterday Diane let me go to an auto parts store off base and I found exactly what was needed so I was obligated to make it work.
My main concern was pulling the old plug apart in such a manner that I could copy the proper order of how the wires were to be attached.
Then, this happened.
At this point I was a bit concerned that I’d never figure it out, but there were only 5 wires, right? Since it wasn’t plugged in to the bus, the only hot wire was red, and I had already disconnected it at the battery. So, what could go wrong if I got them mixed up a few times?
After giving it a little bit of thought I figured I should probably look at the wiring diagram that came with the new receptacle. After doing that the first thing I noticed was that the diagram matched all the colors perfectly. Originally, I thought it was different. but I’d mistaken a green wire to be blue. After studying it a little while I decided that it was definitely not blue. Believing it was green made me brave, so I just went ahead and wired it up, reconnected the red wired, and plugged it into the bus.
It worked perfectly. The first time. Amazing.
Tomorrow will be the test because I’m hooking it up to tow so my bride and ride shotgun with me. We’re only going to Barstow, a couple of hours away, so it will be a good test, both for the car, and for how well we get along with each other.
Max sleeping in his Serta Perfect Sleeper that’s full of his toys and perched on the steering wheel. Normally, it’s on the floor but he doesn’t sleep in it there. It’s been on the steering wheel lately to get it out of the way. He still gets his toys out of it once in a while, but this is the first time he’s slept in it;.
The trip to Joshua Tree only takes about 20-30 minutes because it’s just down the road a little bit. The road is California 62. That’s the main artery in this neck of the desert.
When we got to town Diane spied a lot of craft vendors at the western-most part of town, so we stopped to have a look. This is a relaxed young lady and some of the things she made. The was way more than you can see in the photo, so it was evident that she’s been very busy. I didn’t ask for a name so I can just make one up even though this is the only photo I have of her. let’s call her Laidback Lilly. That would be LBL for short.
This Winnebago was parked across the side street from the vendors. It’s a 1986 Chieftan. I wanted to stop and look at it as we were leaving the area, but Diane was driving and just ignored me. We just whizzed right on past it. The best choice, for sure. Besides, it’s priced well beyond our $500 limit. Or is it a $300 limit? Les?
Our next planned stop was to visit the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum. Turns out it’s located off the beaten path almost in the middle of nowhere. The road was paved for most of the trip, but toward the end it got real nasty.
You can check the link above for specifics and I’ll just toss out a bunch of photos I took. All of the art appears to be made from things you might find in a hoarder’s garage. Stuff that’s been laying around for a long time. In the weather. Since all of it is exposed to the elements, all the time, it just keeps adding to the ambiance. So, here come the pictures. You will probably recognize most of the stuff for what it is but if you’re like me, the reasoning behind how the pieces are welded, bolted, screwed, and nailed together might take a little concentration.
Which way to start?
This one is called the “Band Wagon”. They all have little signs for the names and date made, but most of them just read” no name”Untitled”. I kinda understand this one.
Not true for many others.
The home office, I presume.
The music studio.
The communications room.
The sports bar.
Spare parts.
Diane said this one looked like a wine bottle cork. It’s made from metal shavings from various size drills. Maybe from a lathe.
In my head I visualized Mr. Purifoy spending hours pondering about each piece, placing each of them exactly where they belonged.
Max was even confused by some of them, and he may have blessed them when I wasn’t looking.
I’ve been enlightened. Until recently, like two days ago, I plodded down a path where I believed that the base we are currently living on is a Marine Corps Air Station. I believed that in spite of the signage displayed at the base entrance was specifically Not MCAS but is MAGTFTC/MCAGCC. Digging a little deeper revealed that this base is the largest marine corps base in the world. Although I cannot find any information that this was, at one time, a MCAS, I will probably go to my grave believing I’m right.
Now, about Marines and integrity in general … it is our belief that pretty much everyone allowed on a military base (including us) are good people. I base this claim on one simple observation. At the base exchange, there are no shopping carts littering the parking lot. When the patrons are done with them, they put them in their proper place. I made it a point to look. As for including ourselves in with these stellar humans, we always put our carts away. Sometimes, off base, I put the carts near me away, also. It’s not difficult, and it’s the right thing to do.
It wasn’t hard to find because that’s where the traffic led us. We were able to find a parking spot close to the market so we wouldn’t have to carry our purchases very far.
In addition to many vegetable and fruit stands, there were also many craft displays. This one caught my eye. They are 3-D printed dragons mostly. The vendor said it takes 6-8 hours to print each one.
It’s like going to the fair in St. Helens where everyone brings out their best stuff for the public once a year. Here they do it every Saturday. How handy is that? We got some radishes, carrots, and beets. We also ate lunch at one of the many food vendors available. Sadly, I did not take any photos of what we ate but you can trust me when I tell you it was really good. We had a teriyaki chicken rice bowl. The rice was wrapped and cooked in seaweed which I tried, but I don’t recommend it. The chicken was awesome. Max got a taste, too. It was fun and all the people were very nice. That’s a plus.
After leaving the market, we wandered around town to see some of the murals painted on the buildings. There are a bunch of them, but I’ll only share a few of them with you. If you want to see them all, you’ll just have to plan a trip to 29 Palms.
Here is the description that you can see on the far fight of this one.
I think you get the idea. The artwork is amazing and many of the murals share historical information.
On the way back to the base, we took the road to the main gate and drove eight by Twighlight Dunes RV Park.
That’s our bus on the left.
This is the Marine who deemed us worthy of entering the base.
There’s no laundry facilities in the park, but there is a laundromat in the building where we gassed up Diane’s car. We peeked in and discovered it’s a popular place for Marines stationed here. Diane figured it won’t be so during the week. It’s convenient, too, because the machines accept credit cards, instead of quarters.
I was tasked to wash the bus windows. so I got busy at one point in time and did 3 of them. That means I’ll probably be done with all of them in a couple of weeks. Oh, wait! We’ll be traveling so it will take a lot longer. I suppose I should have washed them in Tucson. I suspect It was suggested, more than once, that I do that, but the timing was never right. Besides, it was dusty down there, so why bother. They will get done eventually.
Diane went to the commissary and exchange when we got back but Max and I stayed home and didn’t do anything. We just hung out. I sat in a chair in front of the bus where the breeze wasn’t blowing so I could stay a little bit warm, and Max could watch folks who happened to be walking past. He’s a real dog watcher.
Today we took a trip off the base to visit Palm Springs. We stayed there for a couple of weeks years ago and found that we really like the city and the people. So, we were looking forward to visiting again.
We were concerned about smoke blowing in from the LA area and as we started down the road into the Palm Springs area, we could see it. Diane’s health was our primary concern for this trip, and we monitored each other as we got lower into the valley where Palm Springs lives. Good so far. No sign of smoke yet.
The closer we got, the more evident it was that the smoke had indeed made it to the city. At this point, however, we could not smell it, so we kept going.
The road took us north of the hundreds of wind turbines that cover a lot of acreage west of town, then took us down the middle of the array to the main road into town. All of the turbines were turning full blast, faster than we’ve seen them turn at other wind farms. You can see where the strong winds created havoc along the foothills which isn’t a good thing because much of Palm Springs is in that area.
We almost made it to the center of town before the smoke became heavy enough that we decided to turn around and head back “home”. The above photo looks OK, but the smell was in the air and Diane’s lungs started objecting. It was time to vacate the area. We stopped first, however, to let Max leave his markers. It was the right thing to do. It was a 3-hour round trip so we couldn’t just turn around and leave without doing something in town. No photos, of course because although he’s not shy about PIP*, he’s very concerned about his on-line image. I honor that as best as I can.
Going back up to Twentynine Palms was a relief as the air cleared quickly, but we could see the smoke being blown over the mountains to the west. The wind was blowing very hard from the west, just like the news folks said it would.
Heading for the hills the air looked much better.
We thought about stopping for a sandwich somewhere but decided to just go back to the bus and cook something. Then we got routed to the main gate which meant we would have to drive right by Carl’s Jr. on our way to Twilight Dunes. Stopping for another hamburger just seemed like the right thing to do, so we stopped. Turns out we really like their food.
We took our food home and had a good late lunch. Max had his, too. Before eating mine, I diced about 1/2 a pound of his new favorite refrigerator food. He still did his prairie dog trick for a couple of French fries, but he finished off all his food.
It was good to be back in the clean air but there was a moment when we were reminded that maybe we should have left Diane at home. Thankfully, she got past a coughing spell quickly.
Temporary Sanity ... 