Updates from Lennie: Road Trip to California, end of June

There was a lot to do before we left for California.

Of the seven chickens Lyssa had brought me many years ago, only two were left. They had stopped laying regularly three years ago. Our favorite was the beautiful, feisty little Wyandotte banty hen whom we called "Little Bit".

Dale Sr. did butcher the big black hen, but he found "Little Bit" a "retirement home" with our neighbors down the street. (Since then, Cam tells me she is his "favorite chicken" and he spoils her with the crumbs left at the bottom of Doritos bags.)

I also wanted to settle another issue before Dale Sr. left for two months. We'd bought the lot next door which had an old dilapidated trailer on it, a trailer which needs to have a lot of work done on it before our insurance company would be willing to let us have renters' insurance on it. So I asked Dale if he could ask Cam if Cam might have some time to start working on the trailer this summer, and, if Cam's answer was yes, could he take a walk through the trailer with Cam and figure out what it was that Cam could get started on while Dale Sr. was up north?

It turned out that Cam was very happy to find some work so close to home this summer, so they did the walk-through. We found that that trailer was still full of junk. Cam and I went up to the local garbage company and arranged to rent a trash container so that Cam could start pulling stuff out of the trailer and putting it in there.

Our neighbor Cam, Ziggy and Dale Sr.

The 4' by 4' by 25' container

    Meanwhile I was hard at work on cleaning out our lot across the street. Because I had been so busy in both the fall (getting ready for the big party we had in September, volunteering for the Hillary campaign more than 40 hours per week all October, and so much time with MCC classes all spring), I had gotten really behind on the yard work. (I feel the yard work around our place is my responsibility because I have planted all of the plants and trees which make most of the work.)

     And I was really worried about leaving any dry plant waste around, because ever since Arizona legalized fireworks, people in our neighborhood have been going crazy with them. Our vacant lot across the street is a tempting site to set them off, and has been used for it in the past. I wanted to get every bit of dry yard waste out of there.

So for about five days straight before we left for California, I was at it around five hours a day: from 6AM to 9AM in the morning, and from 6PM to 8 PM at night. I was so very, very tired! Then, Dale Sr. and I both got up on the roof and pruned any tree branches hanging down on it, and swept all the dry leaves off of it. By the last evening I still had not gotten to the front yard, and Dale Sr. raked it well while I dealt with the piles of mesquite litter.

Here are some of the piles of pruning I amassed. Soon after this photo was taken Cam had them all loaded in the trash container.

Piles of pruning from the lot across the street

We started out for California at 5:30AM Thursday morning, in order to avoid the morning rush-hour traffic. I really enjoyed riding along on this road trip again, and realized it had actually been many years since I'd done so. (For several years now, Dale Sr. has driven up to the Northwest during July and August, to spend time with his family and go fishing a lot with his sister Sue and brother Gary.)

Mountains west of Phoenix

Rest stop

I was quite sentimental about stopping at Chiriaco Summit. We had breakfast there. The place feels quite different than it used to, now that there is a Chevron gas station right across from it, but once you are inside it, it's just the same.

The lovely patio garden at Chiriaco Summit

     It was interesting reading about the history of this truck stop, on the paper place mats. The restaurant was started by Joe Chiriaco, an Alabama man, who decided to buy the land after driving through that way on the way to a Rose Bowl game, and hearing that the road would be paved. During World War II, General Patton established a training camp across the road from there, and many soldiers fondly remember hanging out at the Chiriaco Summit restaurant. There is a General Patton memorial museum on the other side of the road, which was established by Joe Chiriaco.

     On we went, past big trucks, the desert mountains around Palm Springs, and wind machines.

In the town of Mojave we drove past the chain restaurants and found the Mojave Cafe.* There was Motown music from the 60's on the sound system. The tall slender energetic waitress was singing along with it and the cook was whistling the melodies.

Dale Sr. at the Mojave Café

Decor at the Mojave Cafe

I complimented her on the music and asked, "Who chooses it?"

"We do! It's what we listen to at home."

We ordered meatloaf with mashed potatoes, Dale Sr. said, "You can't go wrong with meatloaf." It came with mushroom gravy which was tasty although it was made with boullion broth, but the meatloaf was very moist and the meal wasn't bad at all.

I asked the waitress if they got mostly travelers in there, or mostly locals. She said that they mostly got travelers, but that they had a rush at 11AM of workers at nearby plants.

"And we get a lot of French people, surprisingly," she said.

"French people!"

"Yes, they all want to see the Joshua Tree National Monument. They all go to see the Grand Canyon and then they come here to see the Joshua Tree National Monument."

Pistacio or almond orchards

We continued on through the green fields near Wasco as we and the pistachio (or almond?) orchards, then on to the oil fields.


Dale Sr. driving on the road through Waco

We got stuck behind these cement trucks.

The coastal ranges reminded me of that song, "The Red-Tail Hawk", by Kate Wolf:

The red tail hawk writes circles in the sky
There's music in the waters flowing by
You can hear a song each time the wind sighs
In the golden rolling hills of California

As we neared Paso Robles we started getting into wine country. We stopped at the Eberle winery to buy a bottle of wine to enjoy at the motel. I asked them why they used a model of the famous Florence statue as their emblem, and they said it was because the name Eberle means "boar" in German. (I looked up "boar" in Google Translate English-German, and they gave me "Wildschwein").

They had a lot of prize ribbons displayed in their tasting room, and actually the wine did turn out to be very good.

In Paso Robles, the restaurants which had been recommended on-line turned out to be impossible to get into because they were all in the down town area which was crowded because some kind of festival was in progress. So we ate at a place called "Big Bubba's Bad Barbecue."