Dodging a Bullet

After spending the month of June back home in Virginia, we flew to Las Vegas, got the Ciaowagen and the Fittata out of storage, and resumed our travels.

On July 3, we left Las Vegas, driving west. We overnighted in the parking lot of the Walmart in Ridgecrest, CA. The next morning, we got underway again, traveling north. An hour later, this happened in Ridgecrest [photos courtesy of CNN]

You may have read about it in the news - the strongest earthquake in California in 20 years - and the epicenter was in Ridgecrest!

Fortunately, driving north, we felt NOTHING. However, if we'd decided to sleep in that morning and left later, who knows what would have happened to us and the Ciaowagen?

OK... let's rewind.

We arrived back in Vegas on Sunday morning, June 30. We decided to stay in Vegas a few extra days, using the time to repack the RV, buying groceries, stowing our gear, etc. We also decided to get the Ciaowagen detailed (wash and wax). While we'd done a little cleaning in the year we'd had the RV, we were concerned that the finish had lost its shine before we bought it, and we wanted to see what we could recover and, more importantly, protect our investment going forward. We were pretty happy with the result. Also, the roof, before and after, was like night and day!

Much shinier then before!

The Roof - Before Detailing

The Roof - After Detailing

We did have some fun while in Vegas, including going to see Trevor Noah perform at Caesar's Palace. He did a little political commentary, but mostly it was just hilarious stand-up.

We also splurged for one night, finding a great last-minute deal at the New York, New York casino.

On Wednesday, July 3, we left Sin City and headed into California. We decided to drive through Death Valley National Park. We'd been there in the winter two years ago, when it was in the 40s. This time, it was already 106 and steaming by 11 am and headed up to a high of 116, so we decided NOT to camp there, but continue our travels. It is a starkly beautiful place, though, and we'd like to come back.

As noted above, we stayed overnight in Ridgecrest, CA, just north of the Mojave. We went there so we could visit the Trona Pinnacles, a set of gigantic tufa spires formed underwater 100,000 years ago in what is now a dry lakebed. Some of the spires are almost 150 fee high. Tufa is calcium carbonate that crystalizes around underwater springs. For those of you who are fans of HBO's Westworld, the Trona Pinnacles are the site of the portal to "The Valley Beyond" where the hosts hope to escape the theme park.

Dodging the July 4th earthquake, we headed north on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains and reached the small town of Lee Vining, where we were booked into an RV park for 3 nights. Lee Vining is the gateway to the eastern entrance of Yosemite National Park, and is also situated on Mono Lake, a huge saltwater lake famous for its own tufa towers (much more recent than the Trona Pinnacles).

We toured the tufa fields on our first day. In the 1950s the City of Los Angeles began diverting a number of streams in Northern California for its water needs. The surface of Mono Lake dropped more than 50 feet in just a couple of decades, exposing the tufa towers. Some are still out in the lake, while others are now high and dry.

During our time in Lee Vining, we also popped into Yosemite on two different days. We stayed in the upper areas of the park, since it was Independence Day weekend, and the crowds down in Yosemite Valley were (we heard) awful. Still, the upper areas still offer massive granite domes, beautiful lakes, alpine meadows, and giant sequoia trees.

On Sunday, July 7th, we pulled up stakes in Lee Vining, and set off for Lake Tahoe. We are there now, and excited to be here, since neither of us have visited before. It's beautiful, and you'll learn more about our visit in our next blog posting.