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.