Day 24 - Acton, California KOA

Today was a travel day. Originally the plan was to go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Since the higher elevations were effecting all of us, I decided to change up our trip a bit. So looking around I noticed we were only about 252 miles from Los Angeles, CA. I also looked at going to Yosemite National Park. Then DH said to me, we should go to Hollywood, although I had already planned to. And from there the plan is to go to Yosemite from here. Then make the turn to go home.

The Gremlin was trying to get us in trouble before we even left the campground in Las Vegas. It routed DH to turn right in the campground and I said that he needed to turn right on to Circus Circus Blvd. He decided to listen to the Gremlin and so we drove needlessly around the inside of the campground. So after we made the loop he was ready to listen to me. I directed him to Circus Circus Blvd. and once he made the right turn, the Gremlin came to life as it didn't know where the heck we were prior to this moment.

Onward & forward! The terrain kept endlessly changing. We saw a 1,668 acre solar farm. DH was on a mission for jerky after he saw a sign advertising it on a billboard.We stopped at gas station and I bought him some brand name Jerky.
Ever since we had this amazing jerky in Arizona back in 2011, DH has been on a quest for some like it.
We then started driving down all of these grades constantly reducing our elevation. We stopped at a T T that had lots of jerky which DH did buy some of and decided it was very good. The T T had a Martian motif.
We pulled off the Interstate into a huge parking lot and I made us sandwiches for lunch. While sitting there DH noticed the DQ (Dairy Queen) also sold diesel and were advertising $255 on their sign for diesel. However, the pump was broken. So I bought DH and myself small peanut butter milk shakes and MIL got a hot fudge sundae.

We crossed into California and I was surprised that there was no check point Charlie for agricultural products. It was almost 10 miles or more before we came across the check point and all the inspector said to DH is where did you come from, and DH said New Jersey. He asked if we had fireworks and DH said no. With that, he waved us through.

We saw Joshua Trees in abundance for several miles then, they totally disappeared for several miles and then one or two would show up. We also saw numerous dirt devils. They still excite me but not DH so much. He said to let him now if I see a tornado. I told him I don't want to see one of them! Later he pointed out another dirt devil that was most impressive as it had a lot of sand in its vortex and was almost 100 feet in the air. Of course it was twirling harmlessly out in the middle of the desert.

As we were making our way to the campground, I received a phone call that said some canyon, California. It was the campground calling to see if we were still coming in? There was a problem as the trailer next to the space I reserved had pulled into the site next to us backwards and had inadvertently used our sites hookups as a result. All the RVs were supposed to face toward the dry creek bed and forest. The people weren't at their RV so the campground staff were unable to rectify the problem. When we arrived they discounted our price which was nice.

The campground was almost a total victim of one of the recent forest fires.
The mountains across the road and the land surrounding it is all scorched. Trees are blackened, bushes and grass are gone. They lost some of their group sites, electrical wiring and are working on restoring everything. The only green in the forest are weeds that have recently popped up. The campground itself is full of old growth trees with green leaves and green grass. Except that we have no phone service, it has little to none on wifi access and no cable at all, it isn't that bad. It has a beautiful pool and spa. Due to the drought and dead wood all over, fires are prohibited. I imagine that come Winter or the rainy season there will be mudslides due to the loss of so much vegetation.

Before dinner I brought out our book of DVDs and DH appeared to choose one but it was left in the DVD player from who knows when? So we began watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade until the scene when both Jones characters are going into Berlin, Germany to get the elder Jones' diary. Bam it freezes! So DH, monkeys with it and skips the a scene or two and it starts working again. We watched it until the end. Next movie I selected was True Lies. Darn DVD player froze the movie a 1/4 into it. DH after trying to get it to work finally rebooted the DVD player. And it was like magic! So we are currently watching Kindergarten Cop, so we will see if the DVD player is in cahoots with the Gremlin or not.