After Los Altos, we bumped into our next misadventure. Instead of listening to our friend and staying the night on a quiet little street as advised, we decided to make it to the next rest area. All I can say, is it seemed like a good idea at the time. We planned to get closer to the next destination and take a break in a well lit area. This resulted in sitting through hours of construction delays and related rest area closures. Once it hit midnight and we passed the third closed or inaccessible rest area I hit up the GPS to determine where the next putative rest area might be. It indicated that no rest areas existed along our active route. What?!
Plan B, find the next random Walmart. The GPS guided us to an unknown town at 1:00 am. Honey said, “I’ve never been so happy to lie down,” followed by a knock on the door and, “We are sorry sir, but this parking lot closed at 12.” I loath to admit that honey begged to stay, but there just might have been a little pleading involved… to no avail.
We found a nearby parking lot in a supermarket and it seemed the best place for desperately sleepy people to stay. Sleep for me seemed elusive, though I must have drifted off at some point, as I awoke to the sounds of opening and closing car doors, and loud profane voices edging ever closer to our camper.
I opened the window shade a smidge at 4 am, only to find two sketchy seeming characters examining our dirt bike rather closely. They appeared to be checking out the straps securing the bike from about 6 inches away. Not sure what to do, I whipped open the shade, resulting in saucer eyes followed by a rapid retreat.
Meanwhile honey continued to enjoy his slumber. I put a rapid end to that situation and we headed out right away. Finding nowhere else to stop, we made it to Sonora, at the base of Yosemite National at 5:30 am. We found a perfect Walmart, then slept pretty much all day in that parking lot. We found a campground on the internet and booked it for that afternoon, provisioned ourselves at Walmart (I always try to patronize when we stay for a protracted time), and went to the 49er RV Ranch. During the gold rush this campground was a working farm that let 49ers stay. So it’s essentially been a campground for over 150 years.
The campground was hokey and wonderful all at the same time. Sonora is just beautiful. After our campground, we stayed on our niece’s little farm. We had garden fresh veggies at dinner and farm fresh eggs to take on our way. We really didn’t want to leave… until we found out their dogs had been vaccinated against rattle snake bites. That’s a thing?!
Next stop… the Pacific North West at long last.
After Waco we traveled for an entire day through central Texas without any phone, internet or even text messaging. If that gives you the shivers, maybe drive down to Interstate 10 or up 20 when you leave Waco. We took state road 84 to 190 and caught back up with Interstate 10 around Fort Stockton, where we camped in a truck stop. Along the way we passed miles and miles of sparsely populated agricultural land. It’s beautiful, ringing with the song of cicadas, and virtually endless.
The lovely store, full of decore and fun little household things, held too many souls for me. My best intentions of finding gifts for the holidays flew out of my head, as soon as I spied the very long lines, resulting in a quick retreat back to the courtyard. My apologies to all of our would-be-gift-recipients. You may be sensing that crowds are not really my thing at this point, and thus the time to say goodbye arrived fairly quickly.
American Tiny 