November 16, 2005

November 16, 2005

Tehachapi, California to Pahrump, Nevada

YEAR 2 DAY 152

 

What a sunny, hot day. Well, it was hot in the afternoon driving across the Mojave Desert. I'm typing this at 7:00 P.M. and it's quite chilly now, up here in the high desert.

We wasted about an hour this morning driving around the town of Tehachapi, and the surrounding Tehachapi Valley area, looking for an orchard / produce stand that was open. We had a directory of all the orchards and produce stands in the area, and we went to 4 of them that were advertised to still be open this late in the year. None of them were. We were pretty annoyed. While driving around, I saw a gas station with a great price on diesel, so we filled up before leaving the area.

We headed out of Tehachapi, east on Hwy. 58. As soon as we finished crossing the Tehachapi Mountains we came down into the Mojave Desert. Goodbye, winter ! Catch me if you can ! The temperature was only in the mid 70's but the intense sunshine made it seem much hotter. We passed through the town of Mojave, then stopped at a road side rest area for a late lunch. The Mojave Desert looks greener than when we crossed it last March. I guess the spring rains had a lasting effect. There's a lot of sagebrush that's turning brown. There's going to be an awful lot of tumbleweed blowing around this winter. When Hwy. 58 met Interstate 15 at Barstow, we got onto I-15 heading east. At the town of Baker, we turned north onto Hwy. 127. Although I still had half a tank of fuel, I filled up with diesel at Baker. We were going to be driving along the east side of Death Valley, for a long stretch with no towns or fuel services.

We drove a long stretch of desolate desert along the eastern border of Death Valley National Park, which we will probably take a day trip to, within the next few days. Hwy. 127 passes through red rock mountains. Quite spectacular scenery. I stopped to take some pictures. The desert is soft sand. Most of the desert that we saw last winter and spring was like hard packed gravel. The mountains are red rock, devoid of any growth. I am certain that the long, straight stretch of Hwy. 127 along Death Valley is where TV commercials for automobiles must be shot. Framed by bright sun lit red rock mountains, I wanted to just push the pedal to the metal, and go like stink, although with Dee-Dee and Harvey that's not really possible. We passed by Tecopa Hot Springs and at the village of Shoshone we turned east onto Hwy. 178. At the Nevada border California Hwy. 178 became Nevada Hwy. 372. At dusk we could see the lights of Pahrump in the distance. It was dark by the time we arrived in Pahrump. With a bit of difficulty we found our way to Pair-A-Dice SKP Park.

The office at Pair-A-Dice was closed for the day, so we had to park in the dry camp / boondock area overnight. After getting settled in, walking Bo, and feeding Teddy and Bo, Joanne and I went down to the club house to check things out before supper. We returned to the trailer, Joanne made supper, and I did today's accounting and began working on today's journal. We had supper, then returned to the clubhouse. We wanted to watch some TV, Joanne wanted to "shop" at the bargain table, and I wanted to use the laptop, plugged into power.

Joanne "bought" a pair of pants. We watched The Apprentice : Martha Stewart on the giant screen TV in the clubhouse. Wow ... can I have one of those in the trailer ? We were surprised, as we walked back to the trailer, how cold it was. The high desert here is much colder at night than the Sierra Nevada foothills were.

DSK