Wagons West to California

I have one note to add before I jump into this post: we are now actually in Denver for the summer. We’re in our RV at the local state parks, and getting ready for a blessed event! Yes, we are expecting our third grandchild within another month, and helping out the busy parents to (literally!) get their house in order by doing a lot of babysitting for the older two. The most traveling that we are doing these days is to shuffle between the two state parks every two weeks.

There are still plenty of memories to record for this trip. Once we were into the month of May in Las Vegas, the weather started getting very warm. Long rows of RV sites at our park stood empty. Did we stay in Vegas too far into the spring? As we traveled through California and beyond, there were times when I thought so. There were other times, though, when I was glad we waited.

Counting Desert Eagle at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, we had three military RV park stays back to back, with just a one-night stop at a KOA thrown in between for good measure. That’s rare for us. We traveled southwest from Vegas back into California on Interstate 15. We were farther north than we had been earlier in the season, but still traveling through the Mojave Desert. Our second military park was the tiny Marine Logistics Base just east of Barstow.

Cal was very excited about this stop as it was our first Marine Corps base. The only military branch we haven’t stayed with at this point is the Coast Guard. This base once sat on the old Route 66. The RV park wasn’t much, just a solitary road with a dozen or RV sites on either side, but it was OK for a night.

The real reason for being here is that I wanted to go to Peggy Sue’s Diner. I had found it on Harvest Host and it looked like a fun place to eat and then stay for the night. Harvest Host stops already have one strike against them in Cal’s mind, since they don’t have RV hookups. Add in a huge potholed concrete lot on the side of the highway where truckers also like to stop, and that’s two strikes. So, after unhooking truck from RV, we headed out for dinner.

You can’t miss Peggy Sue’s. With billboards back as far as Las Vegas, it is an I-15 institution. The place was opened in 1954, and this is the original diner:

These tables were full, but no worries: there are several more dining rooms. After we found a table and ordered, I was entertained by getting up to look around at all the rock-n-roll memorabilia while I waited for my dinner.

There’s even an outdoor garden:

We indulged our appetite for fried chicken, and the portions were huge enough to take home for another meal and then some. By not eating all of the dinner, we saved room to share a slice of delicious strawberry-rhubarb pie with ice cream.

There’s one more thing to note about this stay: in the morning, we walked over to the commissary for a few groceries. I saw this, for the very first time in my life:

Perhaps you’ve seen these before, especially if you live in California. It is a solar-powered electric charging station. Having one environmentally friendly power source charged by another is brilliant. Perhaps I’m being a bit of an idiot and they are everywhere. Later, in California, we found ones that were much bigger. It’s the wave of the future, recorded here! Is this the first time you’ve seen this?

We’d seen huge solar farms farther south and in Nevada as we’d traveled. The places I’ve lived in the past don’t have enough sun for a solar farm, so for me they are novel.

Moving on further west, there was the usual desert driving, more Joshua trees, and finally we climbed a mountain. At Tehachapi we entered a valley and that was the end of the Mojave Desert. When we parked at the Bakersfield KOA, we had grass on our site. That was a marvel! The grass was so soft. We thought hard about it and decided it was the first grassy site our RV had been parked in since we’d left Colorado the previous November.

We didn’t disconnect truck from RV in Bakersfield, so for some entertainment we walked down to the Camping World store about a quarter of a mile away. Across the road from the KOA were car dealerships lined up, one next to another. Each one had one of these cute little Bakersfield-themed pieces of art in front of them:

After Bakersfield, we entered the Central Valley of California. In the distance we could see barren hills. But in the valley were miles and miles of orchards. I don’t know what kind of trees for sure, but we saw signs for almond and pistachio. There were ranches with cattle and a couple of beautiful flower fields. Closer to Paso Robles, we began to see vineyards and many wineries. Now we turned south and the hills started to close in and become green with a smattering of trees. And then, all the hills became tree covered. Everything was kalaidoscopic green. Having been in the desert for seven months, I felt like we’d reached the Emerald City!

We stayed at a National Guard post outside of San Luis Obispo for several days. Everything looked like it had been built in the 1940’s and not much improved since then. Here, though, we found a place that we absolutely loved. There is only space for 12 RV’s, plus more room for dry camping around the edges, at Camp San Luis Obispo. The sites are wide and grassy. The whole time we were here there were probably less than five other RV’s sharing the park with us, plus the camp host.

Here’s a view to the green hills of San Luis Obispo:

An afternoon bike ride here felt like a ride through the countryside. And back at our site, there was plenty of wildlife to entertain us: a whole scurry of ground squirrels that resided in the field behind us, one or two deer strolling through, and a pair of turkeys that regularly visited.

On the last couple of days of our stay, a marine layer (fog) crept in over the hills, for the ocean was just on the other side.

We are learning that all of the military branches have diverse places to stay across the US. But near San Luis Obispo there are other places for RVer’s to stay. Why would anyone want to come here? I’ll explain in my next two blogs.

Next time – the Pacific seaside near San Luis Obispo