South Past Los Angeles

We took our time getting away, at about 10:00am, and traveled east and south down US395, and through the mountain range surrounding the Los Angeles basin near San Bernardino and past Riverside. It was actually all downhill into the basin as we had already climbed up to near 4000 feet east of bakersfield. It was getting quite warm driving by the time we finished this afternoon. The traffic was fast and heavy once we got near San Bernadino, but flowing really fast - too fast! We have camped at Lake Skinner (N33 35 16.6, W117 02 13.0), one of several Riverside County Regional Parks. It is a very large park with only a few campers, so it is quite quiet. Lake Skinner is quite unusual, because it actually seems to have some water in it. In the Campground Store, there was all sorts of fishing equipment too.

 

It would be quite a good campground for Eric & Sarah's kids, with this nice playground and miles of paved roads through the park for riding bicycles. And there is a long trail all the way around the park for us adults!

 

There are really neat trees in this park; they would be great for doing fancy woodworking!

As we sat out for our afternoon snack, there were all sorts of these black birds

 

with their brown coloured mates. We fed them a few Cheez-its, and that brought flocks of them to our campsite. The temperature while we sat out here was a quite pleasant 76 F (that's 25 C for you young Canadians).

 

I tried to convince Doreen to go on another cruise while we are down here, but she is too afraid she won't do well, just as she was afraid to start out on this trip to begin with. She really enjoyed the cruise we went on last year, so I hope she'll get feeling up to it.