Our journey is complete. (CA)

Our goal is complete - Roseville, CA to Oakland, CA in about 78 days.

We celebrate Thanksgiving 2007 at John and Carmen's home in Oakland, California.

Yes, we are home!

Yes, we arrived home today, safe and sound and happy, but a little tired.

Wednesday and Thursday we will officially end this journey by celebrating Thanksgiving with John and Carmen and many others in Oakland.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Cam & Marcia

Drive, they said... (AZ, CA)

We were undecided on what to see in the Phoenix area and with Thanksgiving approaching decided just to drive. This was a little depressing for both of us, as our trip exceeded our expectations and we could have happily instantly joined another caravan. Home will seem too routine.

On our way out of Tempe we tried to spot the Frank Lloyd Wright designed auditorium on the ASU campus. We saw one candidate but Marcia said it didn’t look quite Wright.

Today we drove over 520 miles in somewhat more than 9 hours – a long day, particularly dealing with traffic on I-210 and I-5, and the sad shape of California’s freeways. Our first tank of diesel on returning to California was $3.78/gal – a fine welcome home.

Tonight we are at the Orange Grove RV Park in Bakersfield, one of our favorite stops. It is in the middle of an orange grove and you can have all the oranges you can pick.

Good WiFi here, which is why I managed to post about a week of traveling in an hour. Fortunately no more than an hour - a big 5th wheeler pulled in the site next to me, blocking my WiFi signal.

We will be home tomorrow (Monday).

A desert museum and Saguaro National Park… (AZ)

Thirty-two degrees outside but our trusty electric heater kept things inside in good shape, with a little propane furnace boost on our rising. Outside it warmed rapidly and was up to 84 degrees by the time we reached Tempe AZ.

Today we went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, near Tucson AZ. It is aptly described as a zoo, natural history museum, and botanical garden all in one – very much worth the visit. Large creatures such as mountain lions, black bear, wolf, deer, coyote, and big-horn sheep are displayed naturally; each habitat provides two, sometimes three, viewing angles. Marcia suggested feeding is handled at night by opening the enclosures and allowing nature to do its thing. Smaller animals such as snakes, lizards, and birds are also easily viewed, and trails introduce botanical aspects of the Sonoran desert.

This is the land of the saguaro, the tall desert plant that from a distance might look like a large human. So we went to Saguaro National Park (west – the other part is east of I-10) and went on a 6-mile loop drive through saguaro forests. The park is within a couple miles of the Desert Museum and is a bit anticlimactic as the museum has many saguaros; nevertheless it is an easy trip worth the brief time it required.

Tonight we are staying in Tempe AZ, competing with the snowbirds for the available RV spots.

We paid $3.39 for diesel this morning and $3.46 in Tempe AZ in the evening.

Ft Davis, skip the PRADA outlet, go to Willcox AZ… (TX, NM, AZ)

During my shower the water rose in the shower pan. The trailer has electronic sensors that provide green-yellow-red status of the tanks.  The gray water indicated “green” prior to Marcia’s shower, and we both take navy showers, so having the water rise unexpectedly is annoying. We’ve had this problem before.

You can’t just drive to a dump station with water sloshing about the inside of your trailer, although I once read an account of a guy that tried it. So I drained to the ground enough gray water to empty the pan, then we drove carefully to the dump station and emptied the rest – deer watching us all the way, with disapproving looks.

What to do to cheer up?      Why, a hot breakfast and coffee at the nearby lodge, of course.   The Indian Lodge, a 1933 CCC project, looks quite nice, and we had a good breakfast with gigantic surely unhealthy biscuits. Neither of us had really needed being cheered up, but a break in our usual trailer breakfast routine was indeed nice.

We left camp at probably 9:30 AM, bought $20 of diesel in Ft Davis for $3.65/gal and drove a very scenic Hwy 118 to Hwy 166 to Hwy 505 to Hwy 90 to I-10 west.

On Hwy 90 we drove through the town of Valentine, a typical desert community of brown adobe or stucco wood frame structures leaning this way and that, and abandoned stuff all about. The sign gave a population of 468, but we couldn’t imagine 50. All the homes and businesses face on the highway and almost all showed signs of abandonment sometimes in the last ten years. Why did everyone so suddenly leave? We don’t know, anymore than we could understand why they were there in the first place. Ranching? The railroad?

But someone had a sense of humor: about a half mile west of town, a single white storefront stood with large display windows. We could see a few pair of women’s shoes, and the sign above the store said “PRADA”.  [In April 2011 I learned this was/is an art project supported by Prada, and it certainly got our attention in the middle of nowhere.  The article stated that it has been repeatedly vandalized and may have outlived its purpose, considering the costs of repair.  People seem to either love it - we are in that category - or hate it.]

El Paso was our only traffic snarl, complicated by a drizzling rain and a need for diesel ($3.25). But for some reason today our 15.8 MPG decreased to 15.7 and then 15.6. Marcia thinks a headwind.

We drove through Texas and New Mexico into Arizona, and spent the night in Willcox at the Lifestyle RV Resort ($26), maybe 40 miles into Arizona. Not a bad camp for gravel, but more than we needed on this 440-mile 9-hour driving day—exercise gym, pool, etc. Well, maybe we did need those things, but we didn’t use them.

Unfortunately, couldn’t get the WiFi to work.

McDonald Observatory: What’s up, Doc??? (TX)

The traditional looking telescope is the Smith 107-inch. The other, in the geodesic dome, is the 433-inch HET. The photo of the HET was taken from a glassed-in (but heated!) visitor area and is a little confusing. The top part is the inside of the geodesic dome that makes the walls of the observatory. The large crossed members are what link the top and bottom of the telescope and allow it to be focused and rotated – replacing the tube in a traditional telescope. At the bottom is a pair of jeans attached to an engineer; he is adjusting the mirror right over his head; that mirror is on the front edge of 95 mates that gather and focus starlight. The blue pipe follows the perimeter of the mirror array.

As part of the serendipity of travel, we stumbled into a nearly three hour tour of the McDonald Observatory, a short drive from our campground in this very sparsely population section of Texas.

Our engineer guide first talked to us in the visitor center about our place in the universe (insignificant, it seems, in case you hadn’t heard) and about our own sun. His technology allowed him to intersperse live telescopic looks at the sun, and that failing because of passing clouds, DVR images of what people saw on previous visits. Solar flares, sun spots, and such like. It was very well done and cool technology.

He then shuttled us to a 6900 foot peak where we enjoyed an inside tour of the 107-inch Smith Telescope Observatory, constructed in 1968. Our guide demonstrated practically everything – the aiming of the telescope, the rotating of the dome and opening of its doors, even the raising of the floor we were standing on – this designed to ease maintenance access. He said the nearest Wal-Mart is 90 miles away making this peak in the middle of nowhere a great place to stargaze. About 125 engineers, astronomers, and other support people live there fulltime. There are few school age kids, which is not surprising.

The only negative for us was the ambient temperature – about 38 degrees, inside and outside. This is less of a problem for modern astronomers because they are located in a distant heated space, images gathered and transmitted electronically.

We then toured the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, dedicated in 1997 and having a 433-inch mirror (Palomar is 200 inches). It looks unlike the traditional telescope as there is no visible tube, and the reflective mirror is made up of 96 separate smaller mirrors rather than one large mirror. This allows the gathering of even more and dimmer starlight at a lower cost.

Fort Davis in West Texas… (TX)

Officer Quarters across the Fort Jefferson parade grounds, taken from the enlisted barracks. The other picture is just of a nice agave.

Fort Davis is about 32 miles south of I-10 on Hwy 17, in the Davis mountain range, at about 5000 ft. This morning it was 36 degrees outside. Brrrr. Inside we are fine with our trusty electric heater.

We are staying in Davis Mountain State Park – nice, with good meal service at the adjoining Indian Lodge. The drive in was also nice, the topography changing from west-Texas rolling hills to a hint of low mountain, with vertical basalt-like rock pillars.

The fort is named for Jefferson Davis. At the time he was US Secretary of War, not president of the Confederacy. Built in 1854 it was a frontier fort protecting emigrants and trade lines on the San Antonio – El Paso road. With the Civil War it was abandoned by the Union and briefly held by the Confederacy, then abandoned again. In 1867 it was re-occupied by the US Cavalry but the fort was so decrepit it had to be rebuilt. The remains here today date from 1869-1891 and involve a lot of reconstruction. The fort was again abandoned in 1891 as no longer having a purpose with the conclusion of the Indian Wars.