Heading North

It just poured on Miss Travelaire last evening and into the night, and there was some lightning and thunder.  This morning there were puddles around in the desert, and when we drove into Borrego, the dips in the road were filled with sand that had washed across, and they were removing the sand with snow (sand?) plows.  The sky had cleared in some areas, but there were still isolated pockets of rain.  With the sun shining in places, this produced some rainbows, like this (rather faint) one over Miss Travelaire.

We toured a bit more around the town, and took these pictures of another of the metal sculptures.  This one of a big dragon apparently took 4 months to craft and cost $40,000.

As you can see the detail is amazing.

We had a slow morning and didn't get away from Borrego Springs until after noon.  We headed north, out of Borrego via the Salton Sea, and we stopped at a Costco in Indio for gas, and a walk through of the store while we were there.  The gas, at $3.49 per gallon, was cheap for California.  Unfortunately, the nozzles they have here in California and the way Miss Travelaire chokes up if you feed her too fast, meant that she only got about 3/4 full.  By the end of our day's trip we are getting low on fuel again and will have to fill up in California further north here where the prices are somewhat higher.

We headed up US395 for Bertrand RV Park (N35 39 05.1, W117 46 02.5) in Ridgecrest.  The route took us sort of through the outskirts of Los Angeles.  There was a less busy route that bypassed this urban area, but our GPS lady told us it would take about half an hour longer, and we were already getting late because of our late start.  As it was, we got in just after 6pm, an hour after dark, and Miss Travelaire hates traveling when she has to use her headlights to see.

When got there at the RV park it was less than obvious where we were to park.  It was after hours and the instructions were to pick your spot and then deposit the money in an envelope and shove it through the crack in the door of the office.  But the places where we could park were not obvious, expecially in the dark, and when we tried one, we found there was no power in the electrical outlet.  Finally, after wandering around I managed to meet up with a fellow who just happened to be the guy that runs the park, and he was very nice and lead us to the proper place for overnight visitors.

The temperature here is getting a little on the cool side already, at 42F now and lowering.  The elevations will get higher tomorrow, so our warm balmy weather was short lived.