Monday, April 02, 2007

At last, a connection. We are in Corning, California, at the Heritage RV Park. We only arrived ten minutes ago. I thought I had better write something, lest somebody send out the cavalry.

When last I wrote, we were in Yuma. I rather overestimated the distance we could do from there in one day. We were sidetracked by a sign that read Desert Hot Springs. Unable to resist the lure of the spring, even in hot weather, we stopped there. At least, we tried to stop there. It turns out that Desert Hot Springs isn't the charming little oasis it may once have been. If we wanted to use the hot spring, we had to go to one of the big hotels. There were signs everywhere advertising this spring and that spring, but they all turned out to be new housing developments. There were two RV parks in town. The respectable one was full. The other one looked like the RV park equivalent of the Bates Motel. We decided to move on.

We drove alongside the Salton Sea. What a beautiful area, we thought. Big blue sky, mountains in the distance, the sea deep blue. Why wasn't the shore packed with tourists? Why were there no big resorts? We pulled off the road and parked at a state rest area. Robin got out and went down to the shore. He came back and reported that the water was the colour of diarrhea, and that the beach was strewn with dead fish. This I had to see. He was right. The fish are pupfish, if I remember correctly, a species adapted to withstand extreme temperatures. The water was an unfortunate shade of brown, and it had an oily look to it. Most unpleasant. Well, that explained the lack of resorts. As we drove away from the shore, the sea again took on a deep blue colour, reflecting the sky. The Salton Sea is a beautiful place, but only from a distance.

We spent that night in Victorville, California, at a bare-bones sort of KOA campground. We played cards. In the morning we drove on to Bakersfield, where we stayed at a clean but rather boring place called A Country RV Park. We were lucky to find a place at all. The northern migration is on, and we only got in because the park had a cancellation.

That brings us to yesterday, April 1. We drove and we drove and we drove. I had it in mind to get to Corning. Robin said it was an awfully long way. What with the dearth of suitable places to stay, we ended up driving about 650 kms. We stayed in Orland, which is only twelve miles south of Corning. We would have kept going, but it was late, and we didn't want to take a chance on finding nothing but full parks in Corning. This morning, bright and early, we came here (there would have been room for us last night), and here we'll stay for two nights, I think, before heading for Seattle. I hear the Olive Pit calling me.