In the Land of Mercedes and Porche

11/16 to 11/21 Palm Springs
Camping at Lake Cahuilla outside of LaQuinta with the Canadians who flock here for the winter.  Lake Cahuilla is a recreation area with a huge man made lake in the desert.  Lots of interesting shore birds hang out here.  We are camping here for the week while visiting Jan’s Aunt Marg who is in Hospice Care.  Have spend time sitting by her side and having slow conversations. She is getting ready to check out, but we’ve still been able to communicate some. Glad we are able to be there to pass on our love from our family to her.
Palm Springs is something else.... miles and miles of walled in golf course/gated communities and everyone has a shiny new, expensive car. We are quite the sight tooling around in La Tortuga.
11/21-Heading home for Thanksgiving. 
A huge wind came up in the night which literally blew away the tents surrounding us in the campsite.  Tortuga was rocking like a boat most of the night and made for a difficult sleep.  In the morning we took a desert walk and had intended on leaving for Ontario and our plane ride back to Portland, but the wind was roaring with 50 mile and hour gusts and sand flying everywhere.  So we hunkered down to wait. The wind finally died down in the afternoon, and we made a run for it up through the pass to San Bernadino (Tortuga is not so fun to drive in the wind we’ve found. Puts up a bit of a fight.)This drive was an intense freeway experience surrounded by fast moving trucks (we were going 45 mph  up the pass) and driving through an alien landscape of thousands of wind turbines.  We finally arrived at our friends place and after a nice dinner with Barb Plunk and family we overnighted in their driveway.  Barbra dropped us at the Ontario airport the next morning and we flew to Portland up over the Eastern Sierras. Watching the road below which we had just driven, now covered with snow, we were glad that we had gotten south before the storms.

First week on the road, Husum to Susanville to Joshua Tree

Tom Changes the tire in Lone Pine

Joshua Tree National Park

Sign in Lone Pine California

11/12/10  Left Casa Rio at 1:00 pm   We are finally on the road after two weeks of preparation.  Don't know why it took us so long to launch!  When we got to Bend (in the dark) we called our friend Deb Henry and spent the night in Tortuga in her driveway. As a bonus, Gail Phares was there for the weekend and we went out to good Thai dinner at the Typhoon Restaurant with Deb's friend Jim the builder/photographer.

11/13/10  Bend to Susanville
Got up around 8:00 and went inside for a fabulous breakfast cooked by Deb. Headed out at around 10:00 south through LaPine and off to Lakeview. Weather is cold with some light snow on the  hills. Beautiful muted winter desert colors:  Yellow grasses, multicolor brown hills, cottonwoods fading into their bare winter branches,  empty homesteads long forgotten along the way.  Highlight was the stop near Summer lake to see 100 or so swans, and a myriad of colorful little ducks on a large pond.  The butt ends of half the geese and ducks eating weeds off the bottom of the lake was all you could see.
Got to Susanville after dark.  Looked around for camping spot and settled on the free parking lot at Wallmart. (We promise not to make a habit of this, but it is FREE.  Went in and bought a trailer hitch lock and checked out a Redbox DVD for $1 for the night. We ate TacoBell and watched Robinhood. Ah America!

11/14/10 ‘Susanville to Lone Pine
Left Susanville and headed south down the Eastern Sierras.   Viewed some big vistas coming out of the pass down into Mono Lake, reminiscent of Polychrome pass in Denali.   Nice sunset over the Sierras.  After making burritos in Tortuga on a side street in Lone Pine (This is what we like about carrying our home with us) we headed south in the dark.  Jan was driving and we got a flat tire about 5 miles out of town.  Tom checked it and we drove on to where we could pull off the road for the night.  It turned out that we toasted the outside left rear tire.  The wind was ripping (Maybe 50 mph gusts) and Tom didn't want to repair the tire until daylight.  So we slept on the side of the road to the rocking and rolling wind.  It was noisy and Tortuga felt like it had gone back into the ocean for a surf.

11/15/10 Lone Pine to Joshua Tree National Park
Got up about 7:00 to sunny skies, no wind, and warm!  We've finally crossed the "cold line" where we can take off our long underwear. Tom put the spare on the van and we headed back the 8 miles to Lone Pine for a new tire.  The first place we checked wanted $200 for a tire. So we looked around and found a $20 tire that will get us to Palm Springs. We walked around Lone Pine while waiting for the tire to be put on the rim.  It is a cute little western town with a DROP DEAD backdrop of Mt. Whitney and the Eastern Sierras rising right behind the town.  I guess Lone Pine is famous for shooting Western movies there, and we did see a movie crew out, with a director wearing a beret and all. Very classic. Drove south along the East Sierra to Joshua Park. Arrived about 4:30 and found a campsite at Ryan just before dark. Great boulders and wonderful joshua trees which look like alien, furry creatures.  Had wine under the stars and the quiet of the desert night to celebrate finally being somewhere warm.