6/8/2017 - Around Bishop

Thursday - After our incident-free day yesterday, today we got hit with a double whammy - before 10:00 a.m.  The first was funny but may have far-reaching results.  We started our morning by going to the famous bakery for breakfast.  My oh my, such sights!

Such choices.  SUCH DECISIONS!!!  We finally settled on breakfast sandwiches to share, and a pastry to share -- One for Dave and Mazie, one for us.  So I carried our treats to the table, and Joe followed with two coffees.  Well, just as he got to the table, his shorts slipped down around his ankles.  Of course, I didn't have the camera ready for that.  Everyone erupted in laughter.  I thought Mazie was going to have her own accident, she laughed so hard.  Joe quickly sat the coffee on the table and pulled up his pants, but it was a good thing he had on new whitey tighties!  I'm thinking tomorrow there may be a sign in the window:  "no shirt, no shoes, no pants, no service."  That's the far-reaching effect I'm expecting.

As we came back to the parking lot, there were two awesome motorcycles parked by the building.  One was a fancy Harley, but the other was a restored Indian, which drew a lot of attention from my group.

So we enjoyed our breakfast, then drove across the street to the Visitor Center, where we collected lots of brochures and information.  Armed with that, we headed back to the RV to get ready for a day trip back South to see some of the things we missed driving through yesterday.  We loaded up the back of our car, and just as Joe pushed the button to close the lift gate, I came out with another load and walked right into the corner of that lift gate.  I saw stars, Joe grabbed me and held me until I could get my bearings and he could get something on the bleeding.  I may have shed a few tears, it hurt so bad.  He took me inside, laid me down and cleaned my wound.  (He's the doctor in our family, as many of you know).

(Although I may look like death warmed over, I really did survive this little incident.)  Anyway, Dr. Joe got the bleeding stopped, cleaned the wound, and decided it just might need stitches, so, against all my pleadings, off to the hospital we went (Mazie went up to the office and learned there was no Urgent Care in town but there was an excellent hospital, and she got directions).  We got right in, and the doctor decided either stitches (3-4), or glue and steri-strips.  Since we won't be in the area very long, he went with the glue and steri-strips so I don't have to come back to have the stitches removed.  And they gave me a tetanus shot (DPT shot, actually).  So now I have a sore head and a sore arm!

 




 So we got me all fixed up, and back to the RV we went.  However, along the way, we stopped for sodas and got the car washed.  I told Joe I didn't know why we were rewarding the car since it beat me up, but I guess he thought it might behave better if it was clean.




I laid down for a while, I had a pretty good headache, but then off we went on a little adventure.  We postponed our day trip to tomorrow and opted instead to stay in town and explore Law's Railroad Museum and Historic Site.  It was much more than about railroads, In addition to train "stuff," it was 11 acres of indoor and outdoor exhibits, a Pioneer Village, and some old shops such as blacksmith, printing, repair, schoolhouse, and beautiful rock exhibits.

I had never seen a hair contraption like this, but Mazie said she had actually gotten a perm like that.  Joe thought it looked like a good way to get electrocuted.

I see a lot of these grindstones (or whatever it's called) when we go to old museums or ghost towns.  My grandparents had one of these and my sister and I would pedal away on it (although it we never got anywhere).  It was one of the few "toys" we had to play with there and I have no idea what happened to it.

Actually I see a lot of things my grandparents had -- victrolas, antique chests, wood cook stoves, etc. Anyhow, we wandered through the rest of the buildings.

From here, we headed back to town, had lunch, and went back to the RVs so I could lay down for a little while.  My headache had gotten a lot better, but my eyes seemed to be pretty sensitive to light, so we decided to take it easy for the rest of the day.  In the meantime, Dave's Honda is in the shop.  He called about it and they told him they had run into a problem because of the wiring on it, probably what was done to make it towable, and it probably wouldn't be done before tomorrow.  We had already decided to extend our stay here in this beautiful mountain town, so we hope tomorrow to get back to exploring.

6/7/2017 - Calico Springs to Bishop

Wednesday - Today was a good day, and I think it was "incident-free."  We had a plan -- breakfast at Peggy Sue's 50s Diner which was just up the road about a mile.  Before we left though, Joe presented David with a new tool which he called a key, since he has to use a screwdriver to get his car out of Park.

.Peggy Sue's lived up to its reputation, breakfast was very good, and Elvis, Marilyn, James Dean and other stars were represented.  The waitresses also dressed in period costume uniforms.

I had one surprise in the restroom.  For some reason, they had a replica of a man using a urinal in the women's restroom.  In fact, when I saw it, I looked around wondering if I had entered the wrong one.  Then another lady came out of one of the stalls, so I was reassured.  She said she had gone out and checked the sign on the door when she came in.  Just not sure of the significance of this one.

 Next on our agenda was a tour of the Calico Ghost Town, one of the few remaining original mining towns of the Western United States.  It was the best we have seen of these, for number of buildings and for the condition of the buildings.  We spent a little over an hour here, wandering through the old exhibits and checking out the shops.

The only wildlife we saw today was a roadrunner on our way to this mine.  From the mine, we returned to our RVs and got ready to hit the road, which we did about 10:45.  We had to fuel so that was the next stop.  There was a Shell station just off I-15 with gas for $3.85.  Just around the corner was a Food for Less with gas for $2.79.  Fortunately, we figured this out before we pulled into the Shell station.  Then we really began our drive, on Highway 58 from Barstow to Mohave, then Highway 14 to U.S. 395 to Bishop.  On part of this section, a part heavily traveled by trucks, the center double line was a double-double.  Joe and I thought this was a good idea and should be that way on all two-lane highways.

Although most of this drive was marked "scenic," it really didn't get scenic until we turned north onto 395.  There were a lot of different views to absorb, lots of different colors in the mountains.

We made a couple pit stops and I even collected a few rocks.

We drove past several miles of white flats.  I think they were salt flats but it could have just been sand.  Will try to check that out at the visitor center tomorrow.  Death Valley National Park is way off in this direction, and there are a lot of salt flats there, so I'm just guessing this is the same type of thing.

We saw some real blue lakes occasionally, very pretty.

But what was really exciting was the snow-capped Eastern Sierras!!!  Hard to believe we are driving in 95 degree heat, looking at all this snow right beside us.

The mountains were picture postcard perfect!  We saw several hikers in the town of Lone Pine, and we assumed they had just got back from hiking these mountains.  As we came through Big Pine, there was a very pretty Sock Cap welcoming us to town.  It says Mammoth on it, which I guess represents either Mammoth Lakes or Mammoth Mountain, both of which are in the area.  It was quite pretty, whatever it represents!

We didn't take any of the drives back to the mountains, which Joe regrets.  We drove all the way to Bishop, 245 miles, and arrived about 4:15.  We are camped right behind the world famous Schat's Bakkery, which I intend to check out in the morning.  Dorothy Hadler had told me about this bakery, so I was watching for it.

After we got settled, Joe and I went shopping, had dinner, then drove through town and out to a county park campground just out of town.  Joe is the only person I know who can drive all day, then want to "go for a drive."  But we are both ready to call it a night.  We are spending 2 nights here so we can do a little exploring tomorrow.

6/6/17 - Into California

Tuesday - Today was a travel day, although not too many miles.  Joe and Dave took the RVs down the street for a fuel stop, and Mazie and I drove our vehicles separately to make it easier to navigate the gas station.  I ran on up to Circle K for drinks, then met them back on the parking lot.  Joe had a little incident -- when he pulled into the parking lot, he didn't see the second bump so he hit it a little hard.  The cabinet door flew open, dishes hit the sink and the floor.  One of my unbreakable plates broke.  Joe said it sounded like refrigerator was coming out of the wall.  About the same time, I skinned my leg on the hitch when I came out of the Circle K with our sodas, so my leg was bleeding when I got to the car.  We both had a bit of a rough start this morning, but all was well and we continued on.

We drove across I-40, crossing the Colorado River and the California state line about 10:10 a.m.,and drove on to Daggett, California, about 7 miles east of Barstow.  We diverted back to Route 66 for a little while, but our first attempt at that met with a road closure so we had to turn around between the construction pylons and merge back onto the interstate.  Fortunately, we caught David on the CB and told him not to turn, so he was able to go straight across the exit and back down the ramp onto I-40.  (Mazie blew the fuse on the CB again this morning, just after we took off.  But now she knows how to rig it up with aluminum foil so she was only out of contact for a few miles.)   We picked Route 66 up about 20 miles later, but it was so rough we got back onto I-40 at the first opportunity, about 30 miles later.  We were running between 45-48 miles an hour for that period, and the scenery didn't change since we were right beside the interstate, so that was not a good idea.

After our successful wildlife viewing yesterday (all those burros), all we saw today was one lizard, who safely made it across the interstate in front of us.

Tomorrow's destination is Calico Ghost Town so Joe picked out a campground just a few miles from there.  We arrived at the campground about 1:30, driving 202 miles today.  Temperature is really hot - 100 degrees.  It's hard to get our RV's cool during the heat of the day, although we are a little more fortunate because we have two air conditioners and we can run them both at the same time.  After we got set up, we went over to the little restaurant here for lunch, came back to the RV and played cards, and then we got in the very refreshing swimming pool here.  That was the best idea of the day!  The water was refreshingly chilly and we felt much better afterwards.  Unfortunately, David did not join us so he did not get to reap the benefits of our cool down.  In fact, he had a problem with his car -- he can't shift it out of park.  So he worked on that while we were in the pool but was not successful.  After we got back, Joe went over and helped him and was able to resolve the problem by overriding the safety switch.  Mazie said if they have one more problem, she's just going to go home.  Right now, Joe is their Knight in Shining Armor!

We drove into Barstow for pizza at the Route 66 Pizza House, and then settled in for the night.  We are all ready to head for a cooler climate.  Maybe tomorrow night we will end up somewhere in the mountains.

I failed to report one of Joe's "incidents" from last week while at the Brundiges.  We went out for dinner Friday night, and Joe went to the restroom.  While he was using the facilities, some kind of air freshener right above the urinal released its spray, right on his hat.  He said he ducked. (He says he was shot between the eyes)   I think he thought he was being attacked by aliens, and it may have scarred him for life.  When he came back to the table, he had all of us smell his "sweet-smelling" hat, before he told us his story.  He insisted I step into the restroom to see this contraption and its location, and even one of the waitresses stuck her head in to see what he was talking about.  It's the little black thing on the wall.  This could only happen to Joe.














Tomorrow is Collins' doctor appointment so we are all hoping for a solution to his leg pain that will allow them to get on the road and join us.  In the meantime, we will continue moseying along, trying not to get too far ahead of them and hoping to get out of this heat!