Well, it's been a few days apparently. We made our way to Yuma after a quick overnight stop in a place called Parker (I think it was in Arizona?....hard to say since we were zig zagging in and out of California ll the way down.) Anyhow, it was pretty neat. Right down on the Colorado river (post-canyon), we stayed at this regional park called La Pas. Huge park, right on the river's edge and right next door was a greasy spoon that made a great breakfast. We had burgers at another one the night before but both of them were actually floating on the river! Quite cool but definitely a watersports, drinking cold ones all day kinda place.
The next day we completed the trek to Yuma and of all the places in the world I had my first real taste of "artful sushi". It was crazy cool - made it super hard to pick something to have it all looked so cool. I had some Red Ninja something or other and it was unlike anything I'd ever had. So, so, so good!
After sushi we meandered our way around looking for a Verizon store, then a Walmart, then a UPS store, then Cocopah where we set up for the night with Bob & Dallas. Visited with them briefly that night and then went over to see where they call "home" for the winters and visited a bit ore before heading out.
That takes us to yesterday which saw us leave Yuma around dinner time and make a short trek just to get an edge on the drive ahead......we're a LONG way from home and, being able to only travel about four hours a day lest Anna get bored and make things miserable OR poor Holly just looking like she just can't take any more....well, we're managing as best as we can but staying happy is the most important goal ; )
Anyway - we made a short trek to a place called Yucaipa in California where we pulled into a regional park that was the most amazing place we'd stayed yet (sorry to Yuma and the Playa ; ) It was like Hawrelak park only better, bigger AND you're free to camp for the night. Even better was that we rolled in short on US cash, after hours and just happened to catch the gate keeper staying late to study in the quiet. We had enough cash for the non-serviced tent rate so he let us drive into the tent side and park in one of the group parking lots. Thing is - NOBODY else was there! Well, there were two other tents but they were way far away from us. It was amazing! (Except for the rattlesnake advisory Kathy found on the washroom door the next morning.)
So we went into the bank in Yucaipa to cash more travellers cheques - something we'll NEVER do again.....it's been a crazy hassle getting them cashed and NOBODY will take them as payment. Visa and some US cash from Canada is the way to go it seems. Anyhow, we got the cash and as we were leaving this sweet old lady said she overheard we were from Canada, chatted us up a bit and it turns out she had lived in Edmonton for 10 years AND attened the West End Christian Reformed Church where I do the anual nativity ice carving!
Small world.
And that takes us to today. Anna was sleeping as we passed Bakersfield where we had planned to stay and since we had just missed the office ofthe RV park we were gonna stay at and that meant staying in the "registration/check-in" lot for the night we decided to carry on an hour or so to this place called Tulare. Funny thing is that we turned down a night in the "reg/check-in" lot and got a "people live here and Tulare is the agricultural capital of the world" place. Meaning it's weird here - definitely not really a "RV Resort" and it......well........well it smells. Kathy figured it smells like manure which is understandably possible but it's not really that. Well, it probably is but it's weird....to me it smells like that smell/feeling you get in your nose when you dump the Kool Aid powder into the juice jug....you know that smell / feeling you get if you inhale some of that powder? That's what it smells like. Not bad really, just weird.
It'll be nice to get outta here.
So there was one neat thing about this place though. The fences along the highway were labeled with the crops growing behind them. I saw fields of Almond trees, grape vines, pistachio trees, orange trees and lemon trees. And trucks and trucks and trucks loaded with oranges and lemons. Kinda neat to be where this stuff grows. Makes me wish we'd have opted for the "Orange Grove RV Park" back in Bakersfield.......they said you could pick oranges on your morning stroll but I figured they'd not be in season. I mighta been wrong.
Oh well. I'll enjoy the charms this place has to offer ; )
So that's that. We're keeping it together for the most part. Not gonna try to fool anyone into thinking it's easy though. It's officially time to rethink what a "trip" is. This is most definitely a road trip - not a vacation. We'll get through, get home and start to come to terms with the "weekend trip".
Tomorrow is tentatively Sacramento I believe - or Alameda. It depends. We're up and out early - having breakfast in town and hitting the road so if I play my cards right and I don't have to stop midway through the day to work like I did today (normally I just push everything to the evenings) we might just make Alameda which means I MIGHT get the kite-trifecta and hit the water but I'm not holding my breath. I'm just taking it as it comes and have come to terms with the fact that this isn't the trip we all signed up for anymore. Not in a bad way - just the new way ; )
