Goodbye, California

Thursday 3/7 – Monday 3/11: We spent the last couple of days at the Welk resort quietly. Thursday while Jan and Charlie took a safari ride at the San Diego wildlife park, Ron and I wrote a blog post, took a walk to the shops and checked out the menu at the Canyon Grille, where we ate when the Stoffers got back.  Friday and Saturday we mostly read and chatted.  It’s been chilly and cloudy – not much of an incentive to spend too much time outside.

We left on Sunday (after a nice brunch at the Grille) and went our separate ways.  Ron and I drove east to begin the final leg of our journey; pretty much the first time we drove in that direction since beginning this trip. We’ve mostly gone west, lots of times north or south but only east once last fall when we left Yellowstone for our visit with Diane and Jim in Colorado.

Our first destination was Joshua Tree NP where we camped just south of the park on BLM land.  We had planned to stay inside the gate but between spring break and super bloom, we hadn’t a chance to score a site. And the super bloom did not disappoint.  Mile after mile the yellow, purple, white and pink flowers rolled from road to horizon.  Less crowded than Sunday, when we first arrived, but still packed with people with cameras all along the drive.  I kept hopping out of the van to snap just one more photo, while Ron used our small camera from the driver’s window. And when the flowers quit (in the higher northern section of the park) the teddy-bear cholla and Joshua trees took over.  Quite a sight.  At the end of the park drive we entered the town of Twentynine Palms, where we ate a delicious lunch at the inn of the same name, recommended highly by our friend Howie. We weren’t sure we would find it at first but thanks to Google maps we located it immediately.

While eating we contacted Emily and Bill, fellow campers we met last fall at Lake Meade NRA to find out if they were in the area.  They were and we drove another 100 miles (or so) to join them at their site in Craggy Wash BLM dispersed camping area, just north of Lake Havasu City across the Colorado River in Arizona. The Lake Havasu area is a magnet for campers from all over the country, particularly the northern states.  RV parks line the river, fill the state parks, nestle in the wildlife refuge and pretty much take over the town itself.  The city is of recent vintage, its growth fueled by the re-creation of the London Bridge which spans a man-made canal off the river itself.  Brought over from London (where it had outlived its usefulness over the Thames)  brick by numbered brick in 1971,  it is the main tourist attraction in the area. Because of the heavy rain we passed it by and headed right to Craggy Wash where we spent the night co-camping on Bill and Emily’s  site, two miles on the rutted dirt road into the campgrounds.  The weather did not look likely to improve so we left the following morning after chatting for an hour or two with our friends.  Hope to meet up with them again some day.

Our plan has always been to follow Route 66 – the “Mother Road” – as much as we could so we drove to Kingman AZ, had breakfast at the famous Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner and got some info to lead us on our way.

The volunteer at the visitors center warned us that bad weather lay ahead; cold temperatures, wind and snow were forecast foe the following couple of days – right on our route! Forty miles on we landed in Seligman, the town that Pixar used as the setting for Cars, and took a motel room for the night.  Maybe two, if the forecast doesn’t improve.