Holidays

You would think a flight out of the airport in downtown Los Angeles, on the Friday night before Christmas, would be chaotic. It was surprisingly smooth. We had allowed lots of time for traffic, lineups, and potential problems. What a shame that we had to use that extra time at the airport sitting over wine and beer, instead. Taking off after dark, we had a view of the prettiest Christmas lights in the world out our airplane windows, reaching from coast to horizon.

Our car rental, California style - a Mustang convertible - was waiting in San Francisco. Of course, with temperatures in the high teens over the next four days, we couldn't resist going with the top down at least once!






We only spent four days in San Francisco, having a quiet Christmas with family and enjoying good food and many walks up and down the hills. We will return in a few weeks when we aim our trailer back towards the north.

The flight home was a bit rougher, but still on time. We got home to find a new set of residents from the park - ants. They had managed to invade the trailer and seemed to be coming out through the drains. The sinks were full of them and there were very orderly lines running along the walls and the edges of the counter. Even though I consider myself a pacifist, this called for a trip to Home Depot for the latest in ant weaponry. While hubby wielded the WMD (think George W Bush), I resorted to guerilla tactics and carried around my all-purpose spray of vinegar and water to catch any advance parties in other areas. Hopefully we can subdue the main battalion and push back the enemy lines before we execute our exit strategy. No hitchhikers on this bus!

Next stop: Pasedena Rose Bowl Parade!

City of Angels

California hasn't been quite what I expected. Except for the traffic. It was quite the experience, driving multi-lane highways while towing a 34' trailer and having little sports cars trying to cut us off because they thought they could save 2 seconds getting to the off ramp in front of us instead of behind us. This wouldn't be mentionable except that it happened several times.

Between the others on the road and the mountains looming ahead of us, I had some anxieties coming into the Los Angeles area - and I wasn't even doing the driving! But I was distracted by the views around us, and as usual, hubby managed just fine to get us where we were going.





And that was to a regional park on the outskirts of the big city. There are a lot of residents in this park, and only a few of them in RVs.

The largest group has to be the waterfowl. They even have their own crosswalk! There is a flock of black American Coots that has to number in the hundreds. In the small lake onsite we have also seen grebes, cormorants, geese, mallards, and one beautiful Bufflehead diving duck that just pops up from underwater occasionally.



What with travelling over 10,000km in all kinds of weather this last month, we figured a good wash of both truck and trailer was in order. After all, we were headed for sunny California, right? So, after we left the banks of the Colorado we stopped at a truck wash and scrubbed as best (and as high) as we could. The day after we arrived at this regional park, the high Santa Anna winds picked up and a massive dust storm rearraged the surrounding desert areas. Much of it on our vehicles. Ah, the L.A. version of a blizzard.


So, do you remember our fun with the electricity? Well, after 10 days the warrantied part finally caught up with us. We picked it up at a UPS store near the park. Up to now, we had been managing on very little light, as the lights work off the battery which was draining pretty fast. The hot water and fridge controls also need battery power, so we had heated water for washing and used our plug-in cooler (the plugs worked fine).

New part in hand, hubby went back under the couch and into the rat's nest of wires. Everthing was reattached with no drama and the power plugged back in. Nothing. Oops, back to the drawing board, or in this case, the electrical schematic. It was very late, and well past my bedtime before the break in the system was found and fixed. Celebration! Just in time for us to have hot showers before our flight to San Francisco. Christmas is coming.

And no suntan yet

Well, I haven't yet sat under a palm tree with a drink. After some hectic preparations to leave Albuquerque, we drove straight past Flagstaff and on south towards Phoenix. Enough of this cold and snow! Off with the winter boots and on with the shorts .... um, not yet. Although it did get a little milder as we travelled south, and the snow left us as we came down to lower elevations.

This was the sign that greeted us as we came into Arizona. Looks like the tables have turned, and I'm not the one going to be nervous on our hikes in the wilderness. As far as I know, bears are not indigenous to desert areas.

I figure we must be in desert land. If you look at this picture, you will see a huge saguarro cactus on the corner of the adobe house. It is taller than the house, and even the light pole!

On the way south from Flagstaff these tall cacti were everywhere we looked. Some were just a straight pole, others had multiple arms.



We came into Phoenix just before sundown. The campground we chose was outside of the city, but convenient to the highway. It was the fanciest place we've stayed in so far. It boasted a swimming pool and a hot tub, which we took advantage of!

And it had trees, which private RV parks often don't have. These were lovely citrus trees. I even sampled a grapefruit and a couple of oranges before we left. We only stayed a couple of nights, despite how nice it was. It was pricier than what we've come across so far, but this is southern Arizona, so I guess it is to be expected.




We've now crossed the Colorado River into California. We are staying at a regional county park just across the border. It is a lot more rustic than the Phoenix park, but the folks that stay here are very friendly. One couple even put on an ice cream social for the whole campground, around thirty people in all.

I finally got a close look at the cotton fields we've been passing. The area around us is mostly agricultural and there are numerous canals coming up from the Colorado River for irrigation.







We will be here for a week and hope to get our canoe wet again. The river appears to have quite a flow to it, so if we get our exercise going upstream for a couple of hours, we can float back easily and call it a day!

Who needs a palm tree to drink under, anyway?

W

The science of Electricity

Electicity is very complicated when it comes within the box of a trailer. It is comprised of wires that go through tiny spaces in the walls and under furniture and carpet alike. Our system also has two batteries that connect somehow to solar panels on the roof and a generator, and yet can also connect to the battery in our truck and the 120V power supplied at campgrounds.

Electricity is a mysterious power that I stay away from. But hubby has experience with it, and was willing to tackle the loss of power that started to plague us. As usual, he was very thorough. He studied the diagrams that were in the trailer manual, and crawled under the couch to label the wires he could reach. He carefully turned off everything and unplugged us from the campground service. He even double checked the sockets with the volt meter and tried the lights. Then he went back under the couch to detach the batteries, setting off a heart-stopping display of fireworks, smoke, and curses. I learned the evacuation drill that day: grab my purse and the fire extinguisher on the way out the door.

Two important things I did forget - our passports from the hidden cubbyhole, and my husband. He was still frantically disconnecting wires and turning the air blue. Not just with smoke.

The day ended with us running to local auto shops at 5:30 on a Saturday evening to replace the melted heavy gauge wires and connectors. And, although everything is now put back together and secure, the slight loss of power that started this has now severely affected our 12V systems. Our trailer battery refuses to recharge from anything but the trickle charge from the solar panels. This affects anything that is directly powered from our batteries: our lighting and the system controller for the fridge, for example. Good thing we are experienced with lanterns and flashlights.

We are now waiting for a new converter to be shipped to us. On the plus side, we flew through the New Mexico and Arizona snow belt and are far enough south that we are not getting any snow or freezing temperatures. The only threat could be an electrical storm.....

W
Disclaimer: any inaccuracies in the technical aspects of the text above is solely the fault of the writer.

Left turn at Albuquerque

When Bugs Bunny utters his famous phrase, "I knew I shoulda made that left turn in Albuquerque" he is always popping out of the desert. So I guess I had a few misperceptions of the place. For one, it's a pretty darn big city!

For two, there are big rocky hills all around it. It is in a valley that is indeed a hilly desert to some extent, but it is overshadowed by this great rocky ridge.

So, if you're looking at our direction of travel, if we had've turned left at Alburquerque, we wouldn't have pictures like this. We would be along the border of Mexico, and hopefully a little warmer than it is right now.

Instead, we decided to play tourist. It's actually a fun game. We hiked the Petroglyphs National Monument, which is just a huge pile of black lava rocks with etchings on them - some very old, and unfortunately, others that are new. We also toured the Museum of Nuclear Science (you can take the man out of the lab, but....), and the Old Town of Albuquerque, a delightful mix of boutiques and restaurants.




But now the online weather reports are calling for more snow. So we are going to dash (slowly, 'cuz it's mostly up and down hills) to Flagstaff, Arizona, to make our left turn there. So hopefully the next time I post a blog, I'll be sitting under palm trees with a drink and a suntan!

W

Gotta get ourselves a stetson hat!

We are definitely in Texas - big ranch houses, and lots of space, cattle and oil rigs. We even saw tumbleweeds along the highway!

The one thing we didn't expect in Texas was the cold weather and the snow. As we drove up to Fort Worth and on to Amarillo, we knew we were going up in elevation just from how many more times we had to stop to get gas. But we didn't expect the below freezing temperatures and the 2 inches of snow that we found in Amarillo. We had planned on staying at the Palo Dura Canyon State Park just outside of the city, but when I called them for an update on the park, the road into the canyon had been closed because of the ice and snow conditions. They said that the 10% grade with hairpin turns down to the bottom of the canyon made it a touch dicey in this weather, but that the road would be open later in the afternoon once the sun melted the ice. With that news, we opted to find a campground in the city.

The next morning was spent thawing our our water lines after it dropped to -10C overnight. This was the man who didn't want me to bring my hair dryer. Guess who's using it now?



After hubby got the water lines emptied, we took the truck and went down to the Palo Dura Canyon. The land is flat and wide open, and the first sight of the canyon is a surprise. The land just drops away and suddenly you are driving along the rim. There are no fences to stop people from just walking off the edge, and no signs of warning like what we expect in Canada.

We entered the park area and drove down the winding 10% grade. There was less snow at the bottom. There were also very few campers! Which is probably why we saw so much wildlife while we were there - deer was everywhere, and we had a quick glimpse of a bobcat.

The canyon is 120 miles long, and the colours of the rocks are beautiful. We hiked about two and a half miles along a trail, all the time wishing we had come earlier. Frozen lines be darned!

But soon enough the sun was getting low and we had to get back to Amarillo. At the top of the rim, we finally got to see true longhorn cattle. There is a small herd of them just within the park boundaries. The park ranger told us their names: Biscuits, Gravy, Brisket and T-Bone.


With that on our mind, we stopped at the Big Texan Steakhouse after a quick shower and cleanup. They offer a free 72oz steak (four and a half pounds!) to anyone that can eat it within one hour. We wimped out and asked for something much smaller. Between that and our Tilley hats, I'm sure we were easily identified as tourists. Maybe with Stetsons we won't stand out quite so much.

W

Another one off the bucket list

We left Louisiana, although reluctantly. All that fresh seafood at our fingertips was too tempting. But San Antonio was near the top of my bucket list and our next stop.

We were right beside the Alamo and didn't even recognize it. It just looked like a walled Spanish garden, and indeed they have made the back of it into just that. They have walkways and koi ponds and benches. The facade of the Alamo is widely recognized, but coming on the side, this is what you see.

The other thing not widely publicized is how close to all the downtown buildings the Alamo is. You can see the top of the courthouse on the other side of the old barracks. It is on the other side of the street, and there are highrises and office buildings and hotels all around it. It is literally in the middle of the city. But when you step inside, you enter a whole different world. The old mission chapel is a shrine and you are not allowed to take pictures or talk loudly, and men must take off their hats. The old barracks had been made into a museum with all the artifacts and history timelines. Anyone who has had the misfortune of waiting for us in a museum (sorry, D4!) will know that we read every written piece presented, and scrutinize the artifacts. Thus, it was well after lunch before we came back out into 2011.

Lunch was taken at the famous RiverWalk. San Antonio has made pathways along both sides of the river, at a level lower than the street so the traffic noise doesn't intrude. There are cafes and bars and shops all along the river and boats motoring quietly up and down. There are also no handrails along the waterside of the walkways, and weekends can be relied on to have at least one partygoer fall into the river. Good thing it is only three feet deep.

By the time we finished walking up and down the river, the lights had been turned on. It became a fairyland of Christmas lights on all the trees, boats and bridges. We walked to a outside concert area to sit and watch a performer singing Christmas songs on the other side of the river. It was a very full day, and we drove back to the trailer pleasantly tired.




The weather has now turned, and it is drizzling. Our tourist day was beautiful weather, but today is a good day to travel. So on we go.

W