Leaving Doe Mill Ridge, Leaving Cali

Boy was that a project! We wrapped up, tried to clean up, prepared for the future (taxes, bills, etc.), and happily introduced our caretakers, Megan & Neil, to our home, farm, dogs, neighbors, etc. We feel really good about leaving everything in their hands, especially since Verizon came through and they can successfully do their jobs remotely from the ridge.

Our first stop was Casa Lafa to visit Janet, my mom, on Friday night. We had a quiet belated birthday dinner, with Dana joining us. The next morning, we secured the new ebikes on the rack, filled the View up with fresh water, hugged & kissed mama bye bye, and made it down to Redwood City in time to go help at Lucy’s school’s Saturday work day. It was also John’s birthday, so to celebrate that, Will & Amanda came down and we all celebrated at Ryan & Christelle’s with champers, Alaskan King Crab, Big Green Egg smoked steaks, and lots of laughs. It was our first night on this trip in the View, parked right off the driveway, and very luxurious.

Sunday got us up and out, and on our way down to Paso Robles, where our dear friend, Jeni, lives. We haven’t seen her for years, but were so happy to pick right up where we left off from the last visit. We went to school with Jen back in our Chico State days, and when we moved down to SLO for John’s grad school, she came down and got her MS as well, and ended up settling in the area for life and career. It was so great to see her. She even surprised us by inviting Jim Mena, another long time friend that we originally knew in Chico, over to see us! We met his girlfriend who was lovely, and just like old times, we picked up right where we left off so long ago. There really is nothing better than old friends.

Monday morning: destination Joshua Tree National Park! This was really exciting, as neither of us had been there. It was early afternoon when we arrived, and we found a nice site at the Black Rock (of course we had to go to a camp called that) Campground, which is actually not really inside the NP. We didn’t know that when we reserved it, but no matter, it was gorgeous, and we did a nice 5 mile hike the next morning, saw a chill coyote (4-legged kind), packed up and moved on over to the main part of the park. We were waved right through with John’s Senior Lifetime National Parks Pass – free admission to all National Parks for life! Also, half off all camping within the NPs!

We decided to move on over into the main part of the park and were able to slip into a sweet campsite at Ryan Campground (of course we had to stay at a camp called that). Our site was nestled up into the giant rocks that Joshua Tree is well known for, and we had a gorgeous view across the valley to watch the sun set. JTNP is famously known to attract rock climbers of all caliber. The formations are huge and many, and some even have names, like Skull Rock. This area really reminded us of the Catavina area in central Baja California. Arid desert with unique geological features, and of course the Joshua Tree, so many Joshua Trees!

We finally got to ride the ebikes more than around in circles in the street, and went on a leisurely 10 mile bike ride up to one of the big rock climbing and camping areas, Hidden Valley Campground. There were many climbers and people camping there, and I’m actually happy we got our little spot farther away; ours was so peaceful and quiet. When we left on Wednesday morning, the forecasted wind was howling, chairs were falling over, poor cyclists were practically standing still pedaling into the headwinds. It was the perfect time to leave.

We drove through the center of the park, heading southeast, and stopped for a little stroll through a cool park feature called the Cholla Gardens. It was a weird area within the park where this one type of cactus grows densely, and the park service has created a little walking trail so people don’t go doing dumb-ass stuff and hurt themselves. There is a first aid kit at the beginning of the trail, so you know very well that the dumb-asses get hurt anyways, but there you go – they’re out there anyways!

Quite a drop down out of a deceptively high elevation, we exited JTNP where the road intersects Interstate 10, and hung a left and headed east. We stopped off at a spot for fuel (ultra low sulphur diesel, or Diesel #2), and there happened to be a General George S. Patton Museum right there, so we got out of the wind and went in for a look. Nic Carlon (John’s dad) was in Patton’s 3rd Army and John recently was going through some of the correspondence and other items that Nic had saved from his tumultuous time in multiple campaigns in WWII, so this was interesting to us. It was also interesting that the Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles had a ginormous graphic display of water distribution in the lobby of this museum, and that they were a major donor for it.

Back on the road east, the View was bounced around by the super high winds, the ones that were so strong that they blew Trump’s (new but not new) border wall over onto the Mexican side….