Next stop: Lone Pine

When we checked the weather report as we typically do before the next day's journey, there was a high wind advisory for sustained winds in the 20's with gusts over 50 mph today. Having endured gale force winds in the Mojave just a few months ago, we decided that wind avoidance was a better solution.  So we got up at the crack of dawn to get to our next destination, Lone Pine, before the winds picked up. It was a wise decision.

As we pulled away, dawn was just breaking, a red glow behind the hills in the east. We were crossing the Mojave Desert, a bleak landscape, just one gigantic sand box with a black ribbon roadway right through it. It was quiet and tranquil as we drove along watching the sun coming up on this Easter Sunday.  

The Mojave is bleak and barren. Only the hardy survive here, like the Joshua trees and scrubby bushes dotting the landscape ahead of us.
As Michael remarked, this is like driving through the Karoo, a similar desert in South Africa's interior, that his family drove through every year from Johannesburg to Cape Town during their Xmas holidays. There is basically nothing but sand, rocks, and sky.

Speaking of Johannesburg, we drove right through it along this segment of Route 395!  Well, not the one in South Africa, but the one here in California. And just a few miles beyond that was Randsburg. Both towns appeared on the California map during the gold rush days, aptly named after the same towns in South Africa by the miners who had worked on the gold mines there. 
The reason this is of particular significance to us is because we both grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, and met there. 
We had a good chuckle as we slowed down to take a few pics of this now godforsaken little town along route 395, a relic of the gold mining industry that once flourished here, wondering who continues to live here and why. There was a school bus sign so there must be children living here and going to school.  
Later, I read in a magazine we picked up about the area that there are in fact a lot of artists in Randsburg, and despite its current ghost town reputation, a handful of folks do call this home. I suppose that if you love wide open sandy spaces with no other distractions close by, then a cabin in this wilderness is a perfect place for your muse to freely emerge. I suppose I could finish a lot of quilts out here and finally sew down my sizable fabric stashes too! Hmm....

the main street in Johannesburg, also referred to as Jo'burg here 
in California, just as we too called the original city Jo'burg

the turn-off to Randsburg, which is just over the ridge from
Johannesburg

The scenery, though bleak and desolate, was quite stunning.  We were driving through a flat valley, encircled by "lumpy" mountains around us. The light created interesting shadows and colors. The variety in rock formations and strata added more interest and I remained quite content clicking away as we drove along.  

 

(this one is for you, Michelle!)

We pulled in to Pearsonville at what looked like the only building in town along the highway, the Shell gas station. Along this route, gas stations may be a rare sighting, and easy access for large motor homes even more rare.  










We topped up and and were soon back on the highway, driving past vast nothingness occasionally dotted with a home here and there, some long abandoned, others part of a working ranch. There was a DOT sign flashing a high wind warning, but so far the morning was still calm.  
At one point, we saw evidence of what must have been a massive volcanic event, with gigantic scorched boulders scattered about, and scarred spiny hill ridges. The variety in topography continued to surprise us.

an abandoned settlement with  For Sale signs

out of the blue, a mini oasis appeared with trees lining the highway - I wondered what
the source of water is to make this possible

an unexpected sighting - a Crystal Geyser factory right alongside the highway, and
a clue that there is a spring here after all

someone's home along the highway

vestiges of Owens Lake, mostly dry now and a source of ill-feeling for the residents
here, who were essentially conned into selling their land rights for the development
of the Los Angeles aqueduct which ultimately resulted in a dry lake and source of the
worst dust pollution in the US 

and on we drove, drawing closer to Lone Pine

on the horizon, an oasis of trees appeared and since we were approaching our
destination, we guessed it could well be our RV Park in the wilderness

We pulled in to Boulder Creek RV Park, and as if on cue, right around 10 AM, the predicted winds began to make their presence felt. It was perfect timing. We checked in and set up, and relaxed, glad to be off the road and in this pretty and secluded oasis in Lone Pine as the gusts intensified throughout the day.  

On to Adelanto

Today was travel day again and after a quick stop at Costco and Walmart to re-provision, we were back on the highway, heading east along 215 then 15 and finally north on 395. We will travel this scenic highway for the next several days, as it crosses the Mojave Desert and Owens Valley before hugging the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains further north, exploring areas along the way.  Several spots come highly recommended by our Alpine friends familiar with these parts of California. 

We decided not to push too far today - Michael is still recovering but feeling much better. We found an RV Park in Adelanto, more of a Motel 6 stop(truthfully more a Motel 3) along the way.  But the owners are friendly, and we had electricity, water, and wifi coverage.  

Here's what we saw on our drive out of the populated LA basin en route to Adelanto today:

leaving the LA basin

heading for the Sierras

climbing to Cajon Pass, elevation 4,190 ft

granite tops appear

a different world on the other side

giant sandpiles scattered around us

interesting rock formations 

two trains heading towards each other

Joahsua trees suddenly appear

we are in the desert now

a ribbon of blue in the desert, making life and living here and in LA possible

had a good chuckle about the optimistic view here... it's in the middle of nowhere

Look who else pulled in to the KOA next to us....

Later this afternoon, the coaches began arriving, as they usually do at this time of day.  I looked out the window at the coach pulling in to the site next door, and said to DH: That one looks just like an Alpine!
It was Sally and Ray Jeske, whom we met at the Valencia rally.
What are the odds....

They are here to visit family over the Easter weekend, and will continue on to the Grass Valley rally (lucky folks).
Another discovery I made while chatting with Sally is that she too is the mother of identical twins though hers were boys (we had girls).  I take my hat off to her, as she was a mother of four little ones under the age of five after her two-some arrived.  

Here's what else we saw at the KOA in Pomona today:

This is the Freedom angel that greets you as you arrive at this KOA.  It is a dedication to those who lost their lives in the 911 tragedy.  A fitting symbol for the Los Angeles KOA, and this Easter weekend too.

Best Laid Plans... (plus the Inverter Incident story I promised)

We are STILL in Pomona.  It appears that for Michael, catching up on sleep and chilling for a few days after the hectic rally schedule resulted in catching a cold.  There is no better remedy when you feel under the weather than to stay in bed and sleep.  I tried to extend our stay at East Shore RV Park for one and possibly two more days without luck.  They were fully booked for the weekend with groups coming in.

Though this is not a first for DH to get colds while on the road, it is a first for us to be told there is no room at the inn.

Luckily, KOA just down the road had plenty of space and we are now here.  And KOA assured me that should we need to remain longer than two days, they will not make us leave or move to another site.

The good thing about the KOA is that the wifi here is good.  East Shore, located in a wilderness area, had wifi at the office and laundry buildings (an inconvenience to lug computers there, but doable) and the cell phone coverage is weak, so our MiFi device was not as efficient.

This morning, DH is feeling better and thinks that tomorrow we will embark on our next leg along scenic 395.  He is busy entering overnight stays on our Good Sam GPS and checking that the mapping software transferred correctly.  We have been surprised a few times when Ginny led us to a different route than we had planned. 

Staying in Pomona one more day gives me the opportunity to tell you the saga about our inverter which we replaced in January.  And how in the process learned first-hand that this clever piece of equipment is in fact a rather important feature of this size RV.  Now, we are not new to RV-ing and our little 22-foot Rialta has functions very similar to our Alpine, but on a petite scale.  However, we have only owned our Alpine since October so we are still learning all about the various functions and how they interact in this coach.

As I tell you my story of the events leading up to the climax, all you experienced Alpiners will, I am quite sure, soon work out the cause and result of what occurred.  So here is what happened…  grab a cuppa’ –  my professor in grad school soon recognized that I lean towards prolix ;) 

After returning to Washington in late November last year from our maiden trip across the US, we took Alpine to our favorite spot in Anacortes and parked her at Fidalgo Bay RV Resort, about an hour and a half north of us. Rather than winterizing and keeping her in storage until our next trip, we decided that it would give us an opportunity to use our new-to-us coach as a get-away cabin.  Staying in the coach would give us the opportunity to figure out how we plan to use the interior space, organize the cupboards and storage areas, and move in all the things we plan to have on board.  It would also give Michael time to read and study about the inner workings of the coach and see to a few other issues he needed to take care of. 

This is when we discovered that the inverter plays a rather important role.

I noticed that our monitor panel, which I am in the habit of checking often, indicated that our battery level was down to ¼.  This had not happened before.  The batteries were always full or if down to ¾ on our homeward journey west, always returned to showing full after a day’s drive. 

It was a puzzle, but we assumed that since we were hooked up to shore power and all the 110 V appliances and plugs were working, everything was OK.  Michael planned to read up a little more about the various battery functions of this size coach to get a better understanding of how exactly all the systems functioned.

We had a couple of freezing spells this past winter.  Whenever an "arctic express" blows south from Canada, temperatures dip below freezing at night. Typically this does not last more than a week as the front marches through.  Luckily this time, there was no accompanying snow, only the clear skies and frigid temperatures. During the day, with temperatures creeping up above 40 degrees, we were able to rely on the heat pumps for our source of heat. At night, we switched to the furnace and also had a small space heater which we had used in the Rialta.  It was toasty in the Alpine, and we were reassured that the pipes and tanks would not freeze, always a concern. 

Well, I woke up at 5AM that next ultra-frigid morning when temps dipped well below freezing, and heard the furnace fan blowing.  It was a chilly 41 degrees inside the coach, and when the furnace fan kept on blowing, I began to wonder why, discovering very quickly that there was cold air blowing from the vent at the foot of the bed!  Not a good sign.  The small space heater was still working, but the gas furnace would not ignite. 

Our inverter and charger had failed, and the house batteries had been depleted.  Lesson #1:  The furnace needs 12V power to ignite its burners. 

I think I was too numb to complain (M knows precisely how I feel about being cold).  I do have a new love and respect for polar fleece, though.

This all occurred, of course, over New Year’s, when the repair folks were all taking vacation through the rest of the week and weekend.  With no heat and no repairman for another couple of days, we had to return home.  The kind folks at the office lent us a second space heater to keep the temperature inside just warm enough to prevent the pipes and tanks from freezing.  The freezing spell continued for several more days.

Part two of the story continues thus: We returned to Anacortes on Monday, only to discover that the fridge was dead.  Lesson #2:  The refrigerator also relies on 12V power to operate its thermostat.  Now we know.  Thankfully I didn’t have much in it because I always brought up food with us for the few days we were planning to spend in the Alpine.  The saddest and messiest part was the melted ice cream, my favorite mint chocolate chip. 

There is a terrific RV repair service in Anacortes and we were able to schedule an appointment that afternoon.  By now, Michael had contacted Sandy Johnson(what a gem of an Alpine guy to turn to with questions) who confirmed which inverter we needed.  Thing is that the inverter had to be ordered and would take a day to arrive.  But our friendly repairman, Tim, was able to hook up a battery charger so that the fridge was at least working again.  The next afternoon he installed the new pure sine wave inverter, and took the old one and the echo charger away, quite confident that the new inverter contained an echo charging function.

Everything was back to normal, and the control panel showed that the batteries were back to full capacity.  And only to the tune of around 2K. 

And so we turn to Part 3 of my story.  A couple of weeks went by and the next time we were back in the Alpine, Michael, who is diligent about maintaining all parts that need to work, decided to start up the engine after sitting idle for over a month. 

You know the result.  No go.  Engine would not start.  The engine batteries were flat.

Lesson #3:  The new inverter needs a battery combiner to keep the engine batteries charged. The rest of the story is that Tim too learned a lesson.  He installed the new battery combiner as soon as it was shipped and hopefully everything is now back to normal, running as it was designed and should be running. (If you are wondering, he only charged us for the new part since it was his mistake.)

I attended the seminar at the rally on electrical systems.  I have a slightly better understanding of how some of the functions work, but it still is not 100% clear. 
This is a complicated house, far more so than our one bolted to a foundation.  And it’s also a house that can multi-task a lot more than I can.  As long as the monitor panel displays five red lights, I won’t worry.  And if those red lights indicate that anything is below full, then I will know that it is a problem that needs to be addressed.  The consequences in frigid spells to heat in the house and ice cream in the freezer will not be pleasant.

In hindsight, our inverter was already failing ever since we took ownership of the Alpine.  There were clues – there was a buzzing noise coming out of the microwave when we hooked up to shore power and I always had to re-set the clock.  But I needed to set the clock in the Rialta, so we didn’t think much of it.  Now, if the inverter is on, even with no shore power, the microwave clock functions and keeps time. 

I suspect that over time, we will uncover more items and issues that will be lessons learned.  Hopefully this one will not need to be repeated any time soon.  Our Alpine is 14 years old, which means that the inverter has worked hard all these years.   

And so ends my tale of our failed inverter, the brain and heart of our Alpine electrical system.  Long may the new one live!

Catching our Breath

There is a gem of a county park just a stone’s throw away from the Fairplex.  In less than 10 minutes, we arrived at the Frank G. Bonelli Regional County Park, where the East Shore RV Park is nestled among the hilltops.  After the hubbub of the previous week, and camping out on a hot tarmac, it was a welcome and pleasant surprise to find ourselves in a pretty wilderness area.  Who would have thought this is located so close to Los Angeles.

campsite with a view

We parked and set up, checked in at the office, set up our lounge chairs and relaxed.  The RV Park overlooks Puddingstone Lake, and we sat taking in the view, gazing at the beaches below, a canoe quietly slipping through the water and one lone boat in the middle fishing.  

In the distance, smog hung over the valley and slowly drifted eastward.  

Across from us on another hill, huge mansions grew out of the hillside.

Above us, large hawks circled as they caught a thermal and floated effortlessly over the lake.  It was peaceful and perfect.  Nature's restorative effect at work.

This is where, for the past few days, we have re-charged our batteries, and caught up on sleep, laundry and chores, and slowly digested all the material we had learned in the seminars.

Michael installed our new smoke detectors, and his tire pressure monitoring system.  It occurred to me that RV-ing was a lot simpler ages ago, and today we arm ourselves with all sorts of gadgets to alert you about problems in our sophisticated machinery.  Having the warning systems may make us feel more secure as we travel, and that’s a good thing, but I hope they remain silent.

We have enjoyed morning walks.  This park is huge with miles of hiking and biking trails, and we have barely scratched the surface.  

a fishing spot at the campground

funny little black ducks with white beaks

Many prickly pears had lovely blooms.

We watched glowing sunsets.

We could easily stay here longer, but tomorrow we head out and begin the long trek back to WA.  Michael has mapped out our route along scenic route 395, which is known for its breathtaking scenery.  

I will keep posting as time and wifi allows  - some of the areas we will be traveling may be more remote.