A brief desert interlude

Day 25

There is a lot of desert between the Grand Canyon and Sequoia National Park, our next destination. We allowed ourselves three days for the 600 mile drive. And once again, once we hit the road, we just kept going. We ended up just short of Barstow, CA at a small RV park in the desert with less than 250 miles to our final destination.

Day 26

The RV park was not really special, but it was quiet, had full hookups, and was convenient to the freeway, so we decided to check out the area since we had less than four hours of traveling to go. (The place we are staying in near Sequoia National Park was booked for Memorial Day weekend, so arriving early was not an option.) We decided to spend the day checking out the area around Barstow.

Calico Ghost Town was a been there, done that, definitely don’t need to do it again place. Maybe with kids. We ate lunch at Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner, a huge, very busy place off the freeway in the middle of nowhere in Yerma, CA. The place was full at 2:00 pm and probably seated at least 200 people. We checked out a couple of free museums in Barstow and did some grocery shopping.

I’ve had an interest in trains since childhood, and although I’m not a serious train fan, I do have an interest in the history of railroads and enjoy some train watching. Barstow has a yard with some nice locations to watch trains from including a bridge. Unfortunately, things were quiet in the yard over Memorial Day weekend. I did spend an hour at Daggett, CA, where Union Pacific trains enter BNSF track and caught four trains (one UP, three BNSF) in about an hour. Definitely lots of traffic, even over a holiday weekend.

Day 27

There was no need to rush, but we were still on the road by 10:30 for our drive over to the Sierras. We saw the largest wind farm I’ve ever seen, and it was interesting transitioning from desert to the farms of the central valley, which mostly seems to be irrigated desert. But we’re clearly back in civilization.

Got to the campground which will be the base for exploring Sequoia National Park with no issues and, after a couple of loops of the campground to get arranged properly (they sent us the wrong direction to back into our site), eventually got situated. What the campground map didn’t show when we reserved our site is that there is a dump right in front of our campsite. Fortunately, the majority of the sites have sewer so there was not a lot of dumping, and it did not stink while we were there, so it ended up being more of a maneuvering challenge than anything else.