The Sandcastle

“Rerouting,” is what my GPS says when we take a turn off our preplanned route. Those of you who’ve been following my blog know I said we were going to be leaving California via Highway 101 north. If, however, you check the map that shows where we are you will find us far from there. And if you noted the location of the campgrounds I complained about in my last blog you will have a clue as to which direction we did take.

So here, for Gary France’s A Blogger’s Centerline Day photo challenge (http://garysusatour.blogspot.com/2011/04/abcd-will-you-take-part.html) is a picture of my foot pointing towards the centerline of Interstate Highway 80 as we travel east through Nevada in our motorhome.

No, I don’t normally put my foot up there. It’s much too far away. I had to slouch way down in my seat to reach that far but the rules of the challenge said at least part of me had to be in the picture so what you see here is me engaging in risky behavior. Not very risky, though since there was no traffic anywhere near us. If one of those famous I-80 wind gusts had happened to come along just then, though, you might have seen a picture Dave took of me rolling in the aisle after having been dumped from my precarious perch. Fortunately, the wind gusts came both before and after I did my slouching bit for the world of bloggers while I was safely buckled into my seat.

For those of you new to this blog, we live full-time in a 35-foot motorhome traveling all over the U.S.A. At the moment we are headed to Minnesota but we have a ways to go yet before we get there–1607.82 miles according to my mapping software. Since we only drive a couple hundred miles a day it will take us at least a week to get there. I hope all those days turn out to be as pleasant as this one.

TTYL,

Linda

Why is it campgrounds don’t feel they have to honor their advertised prices? Twice in a row now we have picked a park partly based on their price only to have them charge more when we get there.

We stayed here the night before last.

The fairgrounds does not have an RV park per se. What they have are various places on the grounds where there are hookups. They parked us right outside a restroom where we had a 50 amp hookup. Which would have been excellent if they charged us their advertised price of $20 per night.

They didn’t. They charged us $25. A 25% increase!

Last night we stayed at Desert Rose RV Park in Fernley, Nevada. Desert Rose is a member of Passport America, as are we, which means we get to stay here for half their advertised price of $28 per night.

Except they charged us $18 instead of $14 per day an increase of 28%!

I have no problem with places raising their prices. I do have a problem with them not changing their advertising to reflect those price changes. Without those changes to the advertising they are, in effect, pulling a bait & switch which I really don’t like. If any other business increased their prices at that rate without advertising the change the Consumer Protection people would come down on them like a ton of bricks. Why do campgrounds feel they are exempt from fair advertising?

TTYL,

Linda

Julie and Lisa own an RV similar to the View we used to own. We are blog and forum friends who actually managed to meet face to face once in Virginia. They live in California. When Julie read that we were headed up I-5 to Oakland, California, she sent me an email recommending we stop for lunch at Andersen’s in Santa Nella. Now these two people know good food so we took their recommendation after checking Google maps to be sure we’d be able to park our RV there. No problem.

Only this far from our RV to the restaurant.

Andersen’s with -sen not -son. That means it’s probably Danish. I learned that from our former neighbor. (Hi, Karen.) So I wasn’t surprised to see this sign out front.

These two characters are Hap-pea and Pea-wee. They are splitting peas for Andersen’s famous split pea soup.

Julie recommended the split pea soup, fried chicken, burgers, and milk shakes. So Dave had a French dip with potato salad and I had a California grilled chicken sandwich with a fruit cup and we both drank Diet Pepsi. Hey, isn’t it enough that we stopped at their recommended restaurant?

In case you are wondering a California grilled chicken sandwich is a BLT on a bun with a chicken breast, cheese, and avocado plus Ranch dip.  The fruit cup was mostly melons which I don’t eat so I had a few grapes and a piece of pineapple then Dave added my melon alongside his potato salad to his lunch. So, for a change I ate all my sandwich and Dave brought home half of his.

We ate too fast to remember to take pictures of the food but here’s a couple more treats they offered.

The gift shop.

And the bake shop.

I was too busy taking pictures to think to buy something from those baked goods cases. Dumb!

TTYL,

Linda

We are at Sommerville Almond Tree RV Park near Coalinga, California. The closest places to eat are one exit north on I-5. But if you want the scenic route, take CA highway 198 north from Coalinga instead and among others of similar type you’ll see:

and:

.

Career? Bandit was a career option? No school counselor mentioned that one to me.

TTYL,

Linda

We’ve been very busy the last few days working on a couple of projects you’ll hear more about later. But, today Dave left me working while he took some time off to go explore the Tehachapi Loop. He took my camera with him so we could share his adventure with you.

Just before he left the campground he heard the whistle of an eastbound train. He caught up with the train in Caliente.

The he got ahead of it a bit so he could see it again as it crossed under Bealville Road.

Then he drove on to Tehachapi to see the tunnel and the tracks around it. Here’s the lower end of the tunnel.

And here’s a satellite view of the area.

The Woodford-Tehachapi Road leads to a parking area with this view and historic markers.

But, look at this terrain view of the map.

See the dirt road leading up from the paved road to a turn-around? Follow it and you’ll find a parking place with a port-a-pot and this view.

If you leave your car there and hike up to the spot where the purple pin is you get the best viewing spot of all for watching trains travel around and through the loop.

And here comes the same train up the hill with Highway 58 in the background.

Eventually, we see the lead engine coming out of the top tunnel–

and nearly disappearing into a cut.

This train is so long we see part of it coming out of the tunnel on the left while the lead engines are still climbing the loop on the right; yet further to the right we see more of the same train still back by Highway 58.

This track is so convoluted here we see the lead engines passing their own mid-train helpers. Now that might not seem so odd if this was a case of the engines meeting as they  come up a switchback but this is a pass which means both sets of engines are traveling the same direction much as if one vehicle on a freeway was passing another vehicle.

Now we see the lead engines passing over the tunnel while more of its train is coming through the tunnel.

Then we see the smoke of the mid-train helpers as they emerge from the tunnel.

If you look closely at the above picture you can see a signal bridge in front of the mid-train helpers that marks the beginning of a passing track while in front of the lead engines you can see the other end of that siding. While the tunnel has only a single track this siding at the top end of the tunnel is there so downhill trains can wait for uphill trains to make the climb. But our train today is so long it laps both ends of that siding so it would have to be a much shorter train than is typically run nowadays for it to be stopped there to safely meet our train.

Finally the last car of this particular train exits the tunnel marking the tail of my tale.

I hope you enjoyed your ride.

Now I must go back to work on our projects since they need to be fully functional before we leave here tomorrow.

TTYL,

Linda