Hello Friends,
On Wednesday, July 21st, we took a short trip around a scenic route near Oakhurst, CA, and the Bass Lake area. Then we returned to the nice studio apartment we were staying and packed up our things for the trip home to Sun City, AZ.
In the afternoon we planned the next part of our trip and had a nice conversation with James, our host in Coarsegold, CA. He is a very nice man and we became friends right away. He said my tongue tickled when I licked his hand.
On Thursday, July 22nd, we left Coarsegold early in the morning hoping to get past Fresno, CA before the morning rush hour. Fortunately, we did manage to do just that and traffic was reasonable with little delay.
Dad drove 274 miles over small mountains and foothills to get us to Mohave, CA, a rather unique town in the desert on a high plateau between mountain ranges in the Mohave Desert. The first thing we saw as we came down off the mountain was miles and miles of wind turbines.
It appears that California is ahead of the rest of our country when it comes to alternative power sources.
Next, we saw something that few people get to see, a commercial airplane parking lot in front of a small desert airport with several big hangers. There must have been nearly one hundred planes there of every shape, size, and color.
Not far away, is Edwards Airforce Base and Spaceport, where the Challenger spacecraft landed after each mission into space.
On Friday, July 23rd, we drove past Edwards Airforce Base and Spaceport in the morning, but couldn't see very much from the highway. We were told by the locals that the famous "Boneyard", a junkyard for airplanes, that was filmed in the action movie "Conair", was nearby, but we didn't take the time to go visit it.
Dad drove another 143 miles through the high desert to Joshua Tree National Park.
The temperature rose to 109 degrees, so we spent very little time outside our airconditioned car.
The trees were interesting and plentiful, miles and miles of them actually.
Along with these unique trees, there were many interesting rock formations as well. Many of the formations looked like some giants had decided to make huge piles of rocks in the desert to play with later and then forgot them.
This one looks like an elephant laying down.
Some of them even have names. This one is called "Skull Rock".
There were desert animals too, and some even have their very own crosswalks.
As we drove on through the park the landscape began to change and the Joshua trees disappeared as we dropped in altitude. Another species replaced them. Cactus plants called "Cholla cactus" were as abundant as the Joshua trees had been in the higher altitudes of the park.
It takes over two hours to drive through the entire park without stops, so it took more time than that for us to drive through to the others side. On the other side was the Cottonwood Visitor's Center where we stopped for a quick break.
So, we said goodbye to the National Park and pushed on to our next hotel in Indio, CA.
Tomorrow we expect to drive the last 200+ miles back into Arizona and on to Pheonix, and Peoria.
That's it for now, phase three of our Great adventure has ended.
We will be planning a new adventure into Oregon, Washington State, and the Pacific coast of California later this year or early next year😃.
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