August 1st - Day 50
Day 50 already? It doesn’t seem like it. Outside of Oregon, we are now in the last state that we will visit on this trip (28 states in total) and are on the home stretch. Still lots of places and people to see though.
A few highlights/memorable moments from the day:
We left Las Vegas this morning. We seem to have a fairly good routine with getting the RV packed up and moving for the day on days we are camping, but we seemed to be less efficient with packing up our hotel rooms and leaving the city. We had to go find breakfast somewhere, two separate rooms to pack up, and I had to venture out to get the RV. The RV parking was offsite and took about 40 minutes round trip to retrieve and pick up the rest of the luggage and family back at the hotel. I guess I just need to learn that very little is actually efficient when traveling in an RV with 6 of us (well, except maybe Becca’s skills making us all lunch while we drive…).
After leaving Las Vegas, we drove to Barstow, CA where we stocked up on groceries and Becca did laundry. According to Becca, this was a combination of all the worst parts of the other laundromats she has been to on our journey - washers were expensive, clothes came out with bleached stains, dryers stole her quarters, most dryers were broken or wouldn’t actually dry, the whole place was filthy, and no one there to help, etc. It certainly makes us feel fortunate that we don’t have to use a laundromat on a regular when we are at home.
After leaving Barstow, we drove to Big Bear lake in the San Bernardino Mountains. The road there was certainly steep, narrow, and very crooked with some hairpin corners. Becca and the kids certainly don’t like it when we tower over the guard rails with a significant drop below us. I’m not sure it was the worst mountain pass we’ve been on, but it ranks towards the top. The others probably being Teton Pass in WY and the Zion-Mount Carmel Road. Also, when we were nearing Big Bear, we could certainly see evidence of flash flooding. There was mud all over and trucks with plows were literally having to plow the mud off the roads. We are thankful we weren’t here when that happened, but are camping in a washed out campground with crooked tables, paths that have disappeared, and deep mud everywhere.
A few pictures from the day (mostly from our drive):
