Day 32

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October 14, 2009
We left Santa Clara this morning at about 9:15 heading east…away from the coast and I guess in some ways…toward home. Although we have many more places to stop, our direction has changed and points us back to the beginning.
Today is what we officially call in the business a “driving day”. It means just that; we get in the car, usually with our morning coffee, and drive until lunch. After a brief stop (Bill is usually tapping his toe) we drive for several more hours until the late afternoon. We are headed to Vegas, through Death Valley, and that will take 2 days to reach. Our route (for those interested in geography…which I, although interested am very very bad at) took us south, through the San Joaquin Valley and then east.
The weather was rainy as we traveled through what really appeared to be farmland. We saw areas that had groves of trees that went on for miles…we think they were almond and fruit trees. There were many fresh produce stands. The terrain was very similar to some of the plains we saw in both Canada and other parts of the U.S. except that always in the background was the low lying mountain range, the Sierra Nevada’s…looking like hills really. Originally we headed for a town called Bakersfield where we thought we’d spend the night but we made such good time that we stopped there only for lunch (a little sandwich shop where the lady asked “Would you like a whole sandwich, a half or three quarters”…I’m not kidding …three quarters!!) and drove on to Ridgecrest, a town about 250 miles southwest of Vegas. One other thing, we drove through a town that was the “Energy through windmill” capital of the world. It was amazing…hills filled with thousands of beautiful windmills!
After visiting several hotels…we’re cheap and the prices seemed high for a town like Ridgecrest, we settled on “Budget Inn”…basically a truck stop…”no phone, no food, no pets” (Roger Miller) but the price was right. One did have to pay 25 cents for ice and there was a bit of scene when some of Bill’s 25 cents worth of ice fell, not into the container, but around it…but we had cocktails ate at a pizza joint and went to bed. It wasn’t until later that I discovered calamity number three (the hard drive and the pillow were one and two respectively!!!); I lost the wire (not the correct term) that goes from my camera to the computer so I’m unable to download pictures. Now the search begins.
Today’s Road Lesson: Three quarter sandwiches are funny looking!

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