Yep, We're Definitely in Sunny Southern California

There was a pretty sunset last night, and there was a pretty sunrise this morning! And as the day went on, the sun got warmer and warmer, to the point where we were running Miss Travelaire's air conditioner to keep things comfortable while traveling. It's a far cry from Victoria!

 

We took our time getting away from our campsite this morning. We walked around the campground a bit, and sat around in the sun, as you see Doreen heating up her neck and back here.

 

Tanner had a great run around the boat launch parking lot. Here he is jumping up and down. He does pretty well for an old dog!

 

It was about 11 AM by the time we left, and then we made a detour over into Bakersfield to a Camping World store to pick up a couple of things, including a new spare tire cover. As you can see, we needed one! The new one makes Miss Travelaire look a little jaundiced though; and I guess she needs a bath after several days of traveling in the rain.

 

The jaunt over to Camping World was further out of the way and a lot more time than we expected. So later on in the day we got into significant traffic, probably the beginnings of rush hour. We got back on Interstate 5 just south of Bakersfield, and traveled down into the outskirts of Los Angeles. Interstate 5, as it goes over the mountains surrounding the Los Angeles basin, has a very long hill called "The Grapevine." I had read about that many times on the internet, but we had never gone over it before, so this was a new experience. It goes up and up and up, with long lines of trucks in the right hand lane and speeding cars to the left. There are about 4 or 5 lanes, so the traffic moves along just fine. It was a warm afternoon, and I was watching the temperature of Miss Travelaire's transmission fluid, but it never got up into the too hot range.

 

Our destination was Rancho Jurupa County Park (N33 58 46.8, W117 25 02.4), in Riverside. Driving into Riverside, we were in the middle of the huge area of Los Angeles, with all it's freeways, but in the last half mile, we all of a sudden came into a beautiful large park where you would never know there was any built up area within miles. We sat out in the evening around a campfire, a beautiful evening under the stars.