Traveling Days 12-15

Sunday morning we got up early so we could get moving on down the road. We left at 8:17 from Ukiah, it hadn’t rained all night so the slides weren’t dripping wet, it was warmer, but this wet cold makes it just as miserable. Breaking down or setting up in the rain and cold is NOT fun.

Being Sunday there wasn’t a ton of traffic or big trucks, so going along highway 20 was nice and we could enjoy the changes that have been happening along the north shore of Clearlake. It has been interesting watching them slowly give the area a well needed facelift; new parks, better roads, new motels and just cleaning up some really dumpy looking places…it has been a slow process, but the differences make going through there more enjoyable.

Getting through Sacramento wasn’t bad, we took 5 to 99, it is just more interesting and there are more RV parks along the way. YEARS ago it was slower going, but now most of the towns are bypassed and in many areas there are 3 lanes (in one direction) versus 2 on I-5 AND I-5’s condition is so bad because of all the trucks that 99 is a smoother ride. 99 also has a lot of truck traffic, but currently it seems to be better maintained.

We hit some rain here and there but it wasn’t horrible and we didn’t hit any fog. We got to Tulare around 4:10 and stayed at Sun and Fun RV south of Tulare…nothing fancy, but it is paved and a pull through. We can hear the highway of course, smell cows and a train went by that rattled us pretty good, but so far it has gone by only once. OOPs, it came by a couple times during the night and the whistle sounded like it was being blown right outside our window. When we left the next morning we could see why….it practically was right outside our window!!! We traveled 364 miles and we stopped and fueled up once in Rincon.

Monday we got out even earlier at 7:50. We were concerned that we might hit nasty ground fog on the way to Bakersfield after all the previous days of rain, but we lucked out…we hit a couple of stretches of fog, but it stayed just above the traffic…mostly.

Another annoying thing about traveling in Southern California is they don’t put signs before the exits telling you what gas stations, etc. are down there. We were hoping to get fuel before we got into the “hub of it” as we call the populated areas, but we would wonder…should we try this exit, nah, doesn’t look like anything is down there, don’t see any signs and as we go flying by we see that, yeah, there was a place that we could have gotten diesel and pretty easily. We aren’t adventurous enough to just take any exit and take our chances…the few times we have done that we have wasted a lot of time and caused ourselves a lot of stress by being in places that you don’t want to be when towing your home. Yes, big semi delivery trucks run through some of these places, but they have amazingly tight turning radiuses, which we are sorely lacking. We ended up getting fuel in Pasadena, which was definitely not truck stop easy, but the station we finally found had pretty easy access in and out, we just had to make a big circle getting to it and getting back on the freeway.

Once we got over the mountains and dropping into the foothills and headed east on interstate 210 it was warm…low 70’s….soooo nice! Oh, we chose to take 210 east off of 5 to avoid any snowy mountain passes. From 210 we took highway 57 from San Dimas to Pomona where we picked up Interstate 10 heading east which we stayed on the rest of the day.

We pushed on into Arizona until almost dark and decided to dry camp along the highway somewhere. There are a lot of places to do that between the border and Quartzite and this time of year they aren’t crowded. We landed about 5 p.m. Pacific time and it was dark but we got set up pretty easily. We lost an hour when we went over the border and we were tired, but the night sky out there was beautiful and it was 65 degrees. The lights from Blythe were really pretty in the distance and the highway was noisy, but we were happy where we were. We had traveled 413 miles.

I had been knitting most of the day both Sunday and Monday and I stayed up and finished this blanket. I get a lot accomplished in the truck…no distractions…laugh…no Facebook, no e-mail…

We went to bed early but even with the time change we didn’t get up as early as we wanted. We were up before sunrise, but as the sun didn’t rise until after 8 it wasn’t really early.

This morning we were on the road by 9:09…a beautiful sunny, clear day. Almost immediately we were seeing Saguaro cactus…we love them!!! They are all so unique and some are really tall, I think it would be fun to do a pictorial some day of them. We saw one on a rise right next to the highway that had two arms that were in a hugging position…it was really big, I wish I could have gotten its picture, but it was on Larry’s side…dang it.

Arizona has closed many of its rest areas due to budget cuts…they claim…as always the public gets the shaft. One article I had read claimed they were closing the ones that were near “services”, which doesn’t help those of us that tow and big rigs that are self contained and just need an easy place to pull off the road and park.

Anyway our day was pretty uneventful, we had a major detour out through the countryside of Wintersburg (50 miles west of Phoenix) and down near the Palo Verde nuclear power plant due to the highway being closed to a traffic accident. Once we got back on 10 it wasn’t too far to state highway 85 which we took to I-8 so we could bypass Phoenix. We hate towing through Phoenix and it is probably quicker, we come out on 8 at Gila Bend. We stopped there for a break and then on we went. Highway 8 runs into 10, which we continued on until we stopped here in Benson, Arizona for the night.

We landed at 3:20, which was kind of early, but we had traveled 314 miles and we’ll have about that to travel tomorrow, so it seemed like it would be nice to stop, rest and being “hooked up”, I could get caught up on my blog and other stuff.

So any of you traveling to south east Arizona and the Benson area from Ukiah, California will travel 1091 miles…which is how far we have gone so far. LOVE this sunshine and warmth in December!

This place we are staying is right below the highway, but isn’t horrible because we aren’t near on/off ramps where the trucks make tons of noise slowing down or speeding up and though there is a train nearby it doesn’t sound like it will be running through our bedroom. The traveling life is by no means perfect my friends…laugh! If you look through the trees you can see the truck whizzing by on the highway under the bill board!