With the kids sitting in the airport and having an end-of-the-trip, airport cocktail before parting ways and heading back to their homes, we were on the road again.
Leaving sin city behind us was pretty easy. Didn’t even think about going down to the casinos and trying our luck. Ann doesn’t like the new digital, thousand ways to win (lose) crap. She prefers the old school one arm bandit, 3 or 5 line machine, with real coins. You lose either way, but the old clinkclinkclink of quarters hitting the tray has such a deeply satisfying and rewarding sound to it. That sound sure lured in a lot of career gambling addicts as a gateway drug.
Ahem, Getting back on track…
So, our destination today is the Joshua Tree / Palm Springs, CA area.
We are planning to spend a couple days with our cousins who are camping professionals and who happen to live in California! We will be meeting Phil and Deb at our next campground.
We were both pretty quiet as we headed out solo from Las Vegas. It was a sad realization but in our rearview camera, there was no longer a brown and white 26 foot camper following us like a puppy, not far off our bumper at any given time.
We were just about to comment on it, and maybe even one of us got out a word or two, when the road, once again, got our full attention for the duration of the drive.
We have several theories about why they might make these roads intentionally barfy. One… maybe the endgame is to keep people away. Two… maybe the temperature swings are just so extreme, that the road is going to buckle either way, so might as well make it jacked up from day one. Three… there’s not much out here so maybe they’re trying to keep drivers awake. Either way, this was the BEST of the road conditions we were about to face today…
😳 ?!?! Hold on to your bladder, bowels and strap a pillow to your head! 🫣
And we INTENTIONALLY chose this road because I-15 supposedly had an 11 mile stretch of gravel. That is an awful big and busy piece of interstate to have that long of a stretch of gravel, so we figured we were doing ourselves a favor by avoiding I-15.
Heh.
Notsomuch.
The Fausto’s burritos we ate for dinner last night don’t stand a chance against these roads. Eeeeerp!
It wasn’t more than 80 or 100 miles of the burp machine road above before we turned on to our next highway.
Don’t remember which one it was, but this time, it was 43 miles of fresh chip and tar interspersed with very very rough patches and no lines painted in either direction. It was so desolate out there that we weren’t sure if we were even on the right highway.
We even pulled over once to grab something out of the camper and Ben, being a typical guy, just took a wiz right in the middle of the road. I kid you not, it evaporated in 30 seconds! Nobody coming for miles and miles in either direction. Nothing to see for miles and miles anywhere around other than the set of railroad tracks, with an occasional train, next to the road.
Ok, finally, after what seemed like DAYS, we are off the chip and tar road and on to another little two lane highway, this time it is paved! Hooray!
Wait a minute, what is going on up ahead?
What in the blue blazes is going on here? This does not look good at all.
There were an awful lot of signs in a very small space, but the gist of all of the signs was this “Just doing a little bridge work. We’ll just go ahead and take the whole bridge out for a while, y’all just go around, ok?”
Uhhhhh, ok?
I think this happened three or four times on this stretch of highway.
At this point, we just wanted to get to the campground and assess the damage in the airstream.
Our last stretch of road heading into the Palm Springs area was not too shabby, so we were able to finally enjoy the sce…ummm, enjoy the vie…well, enjoy each other’s company and admire the future tumbleweeds and dirt devils of Southern California.
Due to our poor choice of roads (which were NOT listed on the 2026 list of worst roads. Clearly, that list is NOT dependable 😒), we snuck into town through the back door, per se. We passed through well established, rural, desolate communities, just plodding along and doing their thing in the desert. We kept wondering how far some of these residents had to drive to get to their mailboxes, as we didn’t see any houses in sight.
We made it into the KOA at Joshua Tree / Palm Springs and we were delighted with the very midcentury feel of the place and of our campsite!
We also found out pretty darn quickly that this is THE HOT SEASON here and the PARK IS EMPTY and it is VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND WHY IT IS EMPTY.
It is quite hot here.
The heat is of an intensity that I do not think we have quite experienced before. Florida can get quite warm, typically upper 80’s and lower 90’s in the summer, but it’s a very WET heat compared to here. This place is LITERALLY an open air sauna!
The heat has a way of being intensely direct and unrelenting, with zero cloud cover to interrupt the sunlight scorching every surface and soaking into already heat saturated pavers and asphalt and one particular Airstream.
So, we felt ourselves rushing to get setup and scurrying around to get everything done so we could get inside the heat soaked airstream and keep cooking, but without the direct sunlight. It was wonderful to get out of the direct heat!
Additionally, we now had all the time we needed to work on all of the stuff that had been shaken out of the cupboards, rattled off of the walls, or broken off of its mounts on the long rough bumpy journey down here.
Of most concern was that the main power distribution panel had broken loose of its screws holding it in place. That was a bit alarming, but thankfully, we have the tools and parts we need to fix a lot of stuff, and Ben is pretty handy… plus he has youtube in his pocket, so he can look up anything that looks serious.
This was just a matter of reattaching it to the supports and it did not require too many quick dashes out to the truck to get parts or tools.
Airstream reassembled, air conditioning at full blast, awnings deployed to provide some sun cover, we settled in to the evening.
We were meeting Ben’s cousins in the morning, so we decided to do our laundry (we have to do this usually about once every five days or so) and while we were doing laundry, we were somewhat excited to check out the pool.
Holy guacamole…
The pool area was such a hidden gem!
Mineral springs fed each of the three separate hot tubs, as well as the big swimming pool.
And, did I mention that due to the heat, the camping season is pretty much over here? Yep! There were maybe 15 campers here out of about 250 spots.
So, we had the place almost all to ourselves, and it was such a relaxing setup!
Ann finally got to get some hot tub therapy going again, which really helps her immensely. And Ben got to cool down from the very oven-ish heat.
The next day, we truly enjoyed the opportunity to hang out with Ben’s cousins (Second cousins? Third cousins? Once bitten, twice shy? Twice baked? I can never get this right, so we will just stick with cousins). Deb and Phil drove down from the bay area in their camper and they hosted us for our two days of exploring the area!
It was also Ann’s birthday, so Phil and Deb thoughtfully picked up and gifted her a beautiful, genuine imitation plastic rhinestone tiara, fitting for Ann’s station! So thoughtful and fun!
She is officially a passenger queen now, so we set off.
The tram was a great way to spend some time exploring the area and also getting out of the heat on the desert floor.
This tram takes passengers from the Coachella Valley floor at 2,600 feet of elevation and about 100 degrees F all the way to the top of Mount San Jacinto at 8,516 feet, where the temps were much cooler at about 65 degrees.
Once up top, there were trails to hike and lots of expansive views of the valley below.
We also saw a bunch of dudes and dudettes with MONSTER backpacks and we could not figure out what they were doing. Turns out, these were crashpads and these folks were taking them up to do some safe bouldering, so the pads were there for when things didn’t work out so great with the climbing aspect. Were told that they work extremely well for the falling part, as long as you hit the target. 😳
It was kinda weird sitting up there and looking down at the San Andreas Fault.
On our side of the fault, the Pacific plate is slowly shifting northward at about 2″ per year, which is actually pretty significant if you think about it. That’s also about the same rate that fingernails grow. So, tension continues to build.
Our plan was to avoid an earthquake, so we had a quick picnic lunch and then shimmied back down via tram. We headed back to the camper to escape the afternoon heat with a nap before we joined Phil and Deb for a home (well, camper) cooked meal of burgers in the California desert evening twilight under the stars. Then we all hit the mineral springs tubs for a couple of hours before calling it a night!
Oh, we had a funny reminder from home. Our pool guy, Scott, who incidentally is the fastest pool dude east of the Mississippi, hits our pool in Florida on Monday’s typically. You have to keep an eye on the ring cameras, because he is in and out in about four minutes. Very efficient. No bleeping around.
We have a camera on the pool so we can keep an eye on the water level from afar. We can’t do anything about it, but we can watch it.
Ring apparently added AI to their software, so the camera will interpret what is happening on screen and convey that to whoever is monitoring the cameras.
So, we got an alert that was just a little bit cryptic…
We should really get our own cobweb stick if we want to maintain a cobweb free pool area.
We are off to bed and we are exploring Joshua Tree National Park tomorrow!
TaterTotTales 