TRAVEL DAY
From: Palm Springs/Joshua Tree KOA Campground, Desert Hot Springs, CA.
To:Glen Helen Regional Park Campground, San Bernardino, CA.
Day 127 – “TRAVEL DAY” became “TRAVEL NIGHT”. What a day we had today!
We had planned to leave this campground as early as we could in order to arrive at our next campground by noon. We had so much we needed to get done this afternoon before Wednesday when we had plans for some fun (lunch at a popular restaurant with a close friend followed by visiting baby puppies – who wouldn’t want to finish their chores for that?!)
When we woke up, it was 54 degrees, cloudy and very windy. We looked at our weather app, Ventusky, to see what the wind was going to do. Not good. A high wind warning was in effect until 1 a.m. tomorrow morning. Sustained winds high with gusts possible from 60 to 80 MPH. There was a mountain pass we had to go through and all the wind was concentrated there. We knew we couldn’t leave in an RV with winds that high.
We were supposed to check out of this campground by 11 a.m. We called them to book another night. Our current campsite was already booked, so we had to move to another site. We packed everything up and moved to another row; the girls were confused – that was a short journey, why can’t they always be that short? We called the two places we were supposed to visit in our upcoming location and told them we wouldn’t make it today; could we come tomorrow? (We’d ordered several cases of our hard-to-find cat food in advance, and they’d set them aside for us.) We called the campground we were traveling to today and told them we would have a late arrival, how late depending on the wind and when we could leave here. They said no problem, but we lock the gate at 5 p.m.; we could get in after 5 p.m. by using the gate code they’d e-mailed to us. We said, that is a problem, we did not receive an e-mail with a gate code. They said they would send us an e-mail by noon. Come noon, no gate code e-mail. We HAD to have that gate code or we couldn’t get in to our campsite tonight or tomorrow morning. We called and left a message. Finally, we got a gate code e-mail.
Meanwhile, the wind was truly howling away! Really heavy gusts. There’s no way we would drive an RV in that! But, as we sat in the RV and waited, wondering how we could get everything done AND have our fun day tomorrow, too, we decided we could safely drive the Honda, so why wait around in the RV and waste time? Off we went back to Palm Springs and vicinity to do more shopping for things other than cat food – that would at least be one less thing we had to get done. We did lots of important shopping. You know, Beer, Tequila, Bourbon, Beyond Burgers, things like that, and propane for the RV, plus a new shower valve to replace our leaky one in the RV.
As we were returning to the RV with our haul, the wind continued. We could see dust storms forming below the clouds that were covering the tops of the mountains. Nasty looking. Wouldn’t want to be a trucker on the mountain pass!
Back at the RV we put up our goods, fed the cats and had dinner like a normal night. The wind began to let up after dark. We departed the campground at 6:50 p.m., MUCH earlier than we thought we’d be able to do. It was a bit hairy – the wind was high, just not deadly high, and the temperature was dropping rapidly. It started raining before the mountain pass; we wondered if it might snow. The light rain continued beyond the pass. Traffic was heavy for evening in most areas, but not too bad for southern CA.
When we finally arrived at our new campground, setting up camp, even finding the campsite, was difficult in the dark. It was a new experience for us. We did it all by flashlight. When Rob disconnected the Honda and moved it alongside the RV, we hoped he didn’t run over the fire pit. We really didn’t have any idea what the campground looked like until in the morning. And no, we didn’t run over the fire pit or drive into the picnic table. The campground was a San Bernardino Regional Park. We had never been here before. The pictures below of our campsite were taken the next morning when we got up.
