On the road again...and again...and again.

Functional wifi is still darn near impossible for me to get to...I think I'm going to break down and purchase satellite internet soon. Lack of internet access obviously puts a damper on real time blogging.

Biggie chilling in his back seat protector/dog hammock. He was such a trooper on this trip.

Let me start by saying that living off of interstate food, where the freshest meal I had was Subway, really has me looking forward to finding a plot of land where I can start growing my own veggies again. Preferably or with it's own fresh water source if that's within our price range. I'm talking kale. Lettuce. Artichokes. Carrots. Peas. Beans. Beets. Okra. Peppers. Melons. Berries. *drool*

Mitch and I have been bouncing a number of ideas off of each other about what kind of place we will create. Turning old train cars into tiny guest homes that we can (spray) paint on and maybe run some sort of alternative B&B...shipping containers with ceilings that are just one enormous sky light...who knows what we might do?

We made it into Arizona and crashed by the Grand Canyon. We arrived there just at sunset, so we didn't get to experience sunset at the GC as we had hoped. The next morning we decided that with so much driving left to do in order for Mitch to arrive at his first day of work on time, we should come back another day when we did not have to rush our first Grand Canyon experience. Disappointing, but a better plan in the long run.

Perhaps we would have made it if we hadn't taken a detour through the Petrified Forest National Park. Totally worth it. One of the most beautiful places I've ever laid eyes on. Cairo absolutely loved it there, and Biggie is happy about anything that involves him being with us.

When we first drove into the park...

Cairo and Dianne posing with a ~215 million year old petrified tree trunk that fell in such a way that it became a bridge.  It has petrified into quartz crystal.  Ancient, beautiful, and awesome!

Ancient petroglyphs, no big deal. You must see this in person, my iPhone's camera barely picked up on the intricacies.

About midway through the park, around where Route 66 used to cut through...

Stopped our caravan to walk a trail in the middle of the Petrified Forest National Park.

This one's a framer!

Petrified wood and mountains. The pictures don't do this landscape justice!

On Saturday we crossed the Arizona/California state line and were stopped by the interstate border patrol. I didn't realize California had border patrols for other US states. Border Patrol Lady Cakes tried to confiscate our organic honeycrisp apples, but ol' produce guru 5,000 Mitch knows his stuff and wasn't about to let that happen (Cairo really likes honeycrisps). Apparently they check for out-of-state produce and firewood, and because our fruit was from the state of Washington we were allowed to keep it. Washington state produce is allowed to go just about anywhere, unlike other fruits and veggies. Rainier was the particular brand...as in Mt. Rainier, WA...the more you know *****. Mitchell is convinced that lady just wanted to eat our delicious apples ("Oh, organic? *smile*  Honeycrisp? *smile, side eye* Um, I'm going to have to take these."). We are such conspiracy theorists sometimes.

Bakersfield, CA was our desired stop for that night, but the Mojave Desert's winds had other plans. Luckily we found the Sierra Trails RV Park on Google maps which indicated a cinderblock fence to help shelter us pikeys from the windy night. If those cinderblocks truly were assisting us, I'm afraid of what would have happened to us without them. I felt like I was about to pull a Dorothy up in there. Our little home was rocking and swaying, and the outer cover for the large window above our bed was rattling and knocking ALL NIGHT long. Lovely. -_- I recall waking up and telling Mitch I was scared, which of course he thought was funny because he's an undercover mountain man and whatnot. I have read about fierce desert nights, but really had no idea what we were in for. Needless to say, I will be planning my trips around the desert and its crazy evening forces of nature from now on. By the way, the owner/manager at Sierra Trails is a very nice guy, and if you're ever on the road out in Mojave, CA and get caught in a crazy wind storm, this is a great place to stop and wait it out.

Sunday morning came and it was our last chance to get to our destination of Gilroy, CA: Garlic Capital of the World, HQ for the grocery chain Mitch is now handling produce for. We only had a few short (but seemingly so very, very long by this point) hours to drive. We got into town (FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!) and set up camp, and our trailer's door handle broke and trapped us inside. I'm really, really glad I didn't make Mitch empty his tool drawer and put them in his truck bed to give me more kitchen space! After a lot of sheer brute force, my hero broke the door handle off from the inside out, managed to unlatch (i.e. tear out) the hardware stuck in the door frame. The plus side to this is that we now have a beautiful new door knob (I'm trying to think positive).

That night we ate dinner in San Jose with the gentleman who asked Mitch to come work with him who is a.k.a. "Uncle" Dean to Cairo. Uncle Dean at Uncle Dean's house (Cairo talk) is an awesome chef, and cooked up a load of veggies in homemade minestrone soup along with a delicious, super green salad. He was going to make us some steaks, but I had just posted about how I'm done with beef for a while after driving by a disgustingly overpopulated cattle slaughter farm that I could smell from miles away. Sorry for depriving you of meat, Mitch. Anyway, I bring this up not only because we're thankful to have such a hospitable host that welcomes our mutt, but because Uncle Dean told us something very interesting about minestrone!

It got denser and dirtier than this, and went on for miles.

Sailors often got scurvy when they were away at sea for long periods of time because their diets lacked fruits/veggies (particularly citrus). Preserved fruits and veggies just weren't around like they are today. So since they had lived off of dried meats and fish for weeks at a time, their first meal back on land was usually minestrone that was loaded with bunches of vegetables. I felt so revived after eating my plate and bowl of veggies; I can't imagine how much better those sailors felt after being deprived for so long.

This morning we got up at 4 something A.M. and packed up to drive all the way to Sacramento--another place I've never been to before. The company Mitch currently works for has their corporate HQ up here (the bigger company that owns the company he works for). All of this driving and not staying in one place for longer than 2 days has definitely caught up with me. I'm really do enjoy traveling, but I'm looking forward to some downtime.

We had some plumbing leaks that Mitch resolved on his own along the way, but now we need to disinfect our fresh/potable water plumbing because the water smells...bad. Not like sulfur, but bad enough that I think showering with it might make me smell worse, not better. *sigh* Thank goodness for campgrounds. I've learned that most people use chlorine bleach, but read that others have used white vinegar successfully. We'll have to let you know how well that works, since we definitely want to avoid drinking chlorine bleach in any amount if at all possible.

Well, I think I'm going to put the kettle on and have some tea...maybe even a french press of coffee since I'm so sleepy today. I hope you're enjoying these posts; I've received some positive feedback and we have unexpectedly fantastic numbers, but no comments and not many shares! We promise we'll have more posts about fixing up our trailer even more once we have a little time on our hands. Please feel free to comment or email us if you have any questions!

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Little G