Every fulltime RVer gets asked one question from almost everybody they meet – “What’s your favorite place in the country to visit?’ I always tell people that I don’t have just one favorite. That’s like asking me which one of my kids I love the most. It’s impossible to choose just one.

But I always tell folks that I can tell the one place I don’t like the most – the Rio Grande Valley in Texas! We know a lot of snowbirds who just love the place, and that’s fine for them, but one short visit a couple of years ago convinced us that we never need to go back.

Well, guess what? I’ve found a place I don’t like even more than I don’t like the Valley. That would be most of California between San Diego and San Francisco, with the exception of the area around Morro Bay.

Just like the Valley, I know that there are a lot of people who like this place. There must be, because there sure are a lot of them living here! But it’s just not our cup of tea. Prices are high, the stores are always crowded, traffic seems frantic all the time, and too many drivers have a kamikaze attitude.

I don’t mean to offend our friends from California, but I don’t  think we’ll be in any hurry to return. But that’s the beauty of the RV lifestyle. Everybody can find places they want to spend their time, and not go to places they don’t care for. It would get pretty crowded if we all wanted to go to the sames places, wouldn’t it?

We were getting to the point where we either needed to check into a nudist park, or get some washing done. I was all for the skin and sun option, but Miss Terry is more conservative, so yesterday we found an open coin-op and did a couple of weeks’ backlog of laundry. We also had dinner at Applebee’s and stopped at Kohl’s so Terry could buy some shoes for her son’s upcoming wedding.

There are eight RV sites here at the Gilroy Elks lodge, and when we arrived late Saturday afternoon, the place was almost full. By the time we got back from running around Sunday evening, it was almost empty.

We have decided to cut our California visit short, and instead spend a few days in Salt Lake City, Utah so I can do some genealogy research at the LDS Church Family History Center. We are not Mormons, but anybody can use their facilities and resources to trace their family tree. The collection includes over 2.4 million rolls of microfilmed genealogical records; 727,000 microfiche; 356,000 books, serials, and other formats; over 4,500 periodicals; and 3,725 electronic resources. Their database contains more than 36 million names that are linked into families, as well as the names of over 600 million deceased people. There must be somebody I’m related to in all of that! I’m not sure where we’ll stay in Salt Lake City yet, as there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of options when it comes to RV parks.

The roads are sure to be busy today with everybody going back home from their long holiday weekend, so we’ll sit tight until Tuesday and then head out. We’re ready to put California in our rear view mirror.

Thought For The Day – Regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, passion fades, and there had better be a lot of money to take its place.

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We spent yesterday getting to know two of my favorite artists a little better. One is known for the pictures he paints on canvas, and the other is even more famous for the pictures he paints with words.

We started out in Salinas, at the National Steinbeck Center, where native son John Steinbeck is honored for his work and for the recognition he brought to this region of California.

I have been a Steinbeck fan ever since I read The Red Pony as a youngster, and over the years I thought I had been through all of his works. How wrong I was! Besides such well known classics as Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, and The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck wrote a total of 27 books, as well as short stories, a few screen plays, and numerous magazine articles.

Exhibits throughout the Steinbeck Center illustrate many of the author’s best known books, including a red pony that kids can touch, produce crates much like the Dust Bowl Oakies would have filled with crops, and a Chinese grocery store from Cannery Row.

It is interesting to note that while Salinas celebrates John Steinbeck these days, at one time his depiction of the plight of the Dust Bowl refugees in The Grapes of Wrath outraged the movers and shakers in this farming region. The book was banned in libraries throughout California’s agricultural communities, and  twice the book was publicly burned in his old hometown. Steinbeck wasn’t the only author that was once vilified in his own hometown. Sauk Centre, Minnesota once burned Sinclair Lewis’ book Main Street because they felt the author showed the community in a bad light.

I learn something (usually a lot of things) new every day, and at the National Steinbeck Center, I learned that the author served as a war correspondent during World War II, and was known to shed his identifying armband that showed him to be a noncombatant, and pick up a rifle when things got ugly.

My favorite John Steinbeck book is Travels With Charley, his road journey epic, and National Steinbeck Center has the GMC truck and camper that the author and his canine pal made their trip in. And yes, I know, Charley was, dare I say it, a French poodle! But at least he was a standard size poodle, not one of those yappy little mutts that aggravate me so. Since he was such a great and prolific author, I’m willing to give Steinbeck a pass on this one indiscretion. The truck and camper are behind protective shields, but we were able to get a picture of the outside of the truck and the inside of the camper.

John Steinbeck was born just two blocks from the National Steinbeck Center, so once we finished our tour of the museum, we walked down to check out the handsome Victorian style house, which is now a restaurant.

From Salinas, we drive to Monterey, where we had planned to tour the Monterey Bay Aquarium. But somehow, communications broke down, and the person who was supposed to leave our passes and media packet at the front desk was unavailable, and the receptionist I spoke to obviously didn’t care enough to look into it, so we scrapped that idea.

Yeas ago, we spent one night in Monterey while on our honeymoon, and we quickly left to return to the slower pace of Morro Bay.  Yesterday, traffic was so hectic, and everybody seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere else, that we both found ourselves getting uptight. With the aquarium visit canceled, we decided to get out of Dodge. Or at least, out of Monterey.

But then we spotted this sign for the Thomas Kinkade National Archive, and decided to stop and check it out. Just as John Steinbeck is my favorite author, Thomas Kinkade is my favorite artist. Known as the “Painter of Light” for the way he incorporates colors to illustrate natural sunlight on a country lane, or the light of a fireplace glowing in a cottage’s windows, Kinkade speaks to my soul, and I could just stand and admire his works for hours.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have hours, since the gallery, which is housed in this beautiful 1886 mansion, would be closing soon. But the very nice young man on duty allowed us to take as much time as we wanted to, and we enjoyed seeing a nice selection of Kinkade prints, as well as some of his original works. Due to copyright laws, we could not take any photographs of the works on display, but you can get an idea of how beautiful they are at the artist’s online gallery.

By the time we stopped for dinner and got back to the Thousand Trails campground, the place was a zoo, with weekend campers, kids, and dogs everywhere.

Everybody seemed to be having a good time, though I did have to go across the street and speak to a group who are camping together in two RVs. Having fun is one thing, but when we’re in our motorhome, with the windows closed and the air conditioner on, and we cannot hear our television because of a loud boom box, Bad Nick gets aggravated and needs to get off his leash. One person’s rights end where another person’s rights begin.

Thought For The Day – If at first you don’t succeed, try again. But this time, do it the way your wife told you to in the first place.

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I try to be upbeat in this blog, but anybody who knows me knows that I don’t pull any punches either, and I give you the good with the bad. Not to be a downer, but today I have a couple of the bad to share.

Even though I am married to the best cook in the world, I enjoy dining out, and we do it a lot. It just seems to be a basic part of the RV lifestyle. Put the fulltiming occupants of any two or more RVs together for the first time in a campground, and once they discuss where they just came from and where they are headed next, the very next question is “Where are we going for dinner?’

When we are in a new area, I frequently refer to the Yelp website for reviews of local restaurants. Overall, I have found that if you disregard the obvious cranks with an ax to grind, and the guys who sign in to pump up their own or a friend’s place, when you average the rest of the reviews out, you get a pretty accurate idea of what to expect.

We have been wanting to find a good Chinese buffet ever since we left Apache Junction, Arizona, and the Yelp review showed a place called Best Empire Buffet in Gilroy, about ten miles away. So once we got settled in at the Thousand Trails campground in Morgan Hill on Monday, we drove back to Gilroy to try it out. The reviews were very positive, but as it turned out, they were wrong in this case. We’re still looking for a good Chinese buffet.

At this restaurant, I accomplished two “firsts.” I had the very worst Chinese buffet meal of my life (and we eat at a LOT of Chinese buffets coast to coast), and I paid the most I ever have at a Chinese buffet. The selection was huge, but everything was cold, and a lot of it was stale. I complained to a young lady monitoring the service line, and she just nodded and stood there.

If it wasn’t late in the day, and if we had not been tired and very hungry, we would have left. Once we got our bill, we wished we had. For two people, with me having a Coke and Terry having tea, the tab was $32.91. When Terry told the girl at the cash register that we were unhappy with the meal, she just said “Okay, thank you for coming!”  Hey, life is a crapshoot, right? Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.

Then yesterday, I had another unpleasant experience. Terry needed to make a WalMart run to stock up on some things, so while she did her shopping, I sat out in the van cruising the internet on my iPad. It was in the upper 80s, and Terry’s shopping took longer then expected, so when it got too hot in the van, I started the engine to let the air conditioning cool things down.

So there I am, reading the Escapees RV forum, when somebody knocks on my window. I look out and there stands a pissed off policeman. Did you know it is illegal to let a car idle in California? I sure didn’t, until he explained it to me in great and forceful detail. Apparently it’s a crime that ranks right up there with armed robbery and peeing in public.

He sternly told me that I was wasting precious fuel and adding to the state’s pollution level, among other things. Did you know that if all of the millions of drivers in California did the same thing, nobody could breathe? I didn’t, but I do now. I’m not sure, but I may also be responsible for the current budget crisis, and for the fact that French poodles are such ugly dogs, too.

Okay, I get it. I was wrong. I was wasting fuel, and I was properly chastised. But that wasn’t enough, he ran my license plates and drivers license, apparently to see if I was recently featured on America’s Most Wanted, or in any way affiliated with terrorist cells Then he told me I was very, very lucky he didn’t give me a ticket, or arrest me.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am a strong supporter of law enforcement. The men and woman who take on that job deserve all of our respect for everything they do to keep us all safe. And again, yes, I was wrong. I should have gone inside the store to cool off. But gee, a simple “turn the engine off” would have worked just fine.

I don’t think I like California.

Thought For The Day – Life is not always fair – get used to it!

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America really is a land of contrasts, and probably no more so than in the American West. That fact was brought home to us yesterday in our drive from Williams, Arizona to Bakersfield, California.

We left Williams, at almost 7,000 feet, about 9:30 in the morning, and before long we had begun to drop down into the desert, with scrub brush and cactus replacing pine trees.

A few miles outside of Kingman we stopped for fuel at the Loves truck stop, and then we continued west on Interstate 40. Just before we crossed the Colorado River into California, we came to a long construction zone, with traffic down to one lane as they painted new centerline stripes.

Unfortunately, whoever they gave the job of placing those orange plastic cones on the roadway to must have been having a bad day, because the cones were about 1/3 of the way into the only lane we had left, forcing big rigs to run with their left wheels on the narrow shoulder. Most of the cones has been run over and were laying down, several right in the road where there was no way to avoid hitting them. Most were crushed flat, but one stuck up enough to thump the front of the motorhome, leaving a scratch that we hope we can rub out.

It was 72 degrees in Williams, and in Needles, California it was 106. We sure were glad we had our air conditioner to keep us cool! Interstate 40 through the Mojave Desert is mile upon mile of nothing. Some mountains, lots of semis, bumpy roads, and not much else.

Interstate 40 ends in Barstow, and from there we took State Route 58 west past  a stretch of black lava beds, then an expanse of desert covered by salt/gypsum deposits, near Boron. 

We passed Edwards Air Force Base, and then began the long uphill climb to Tehachapi. Here the scenery became much better, as the barren desert gave way to yellow grass covered hillsides.  In the spring, when they have had some rain, this area is green and beautiful. But even now, the scenery is pretty dramatic.

Lines of windmills top the hills, generating electrical power, and railroad fans love to come here and watch the trains wind their way up and downhill, and through the tunnels.

From  Tehachapi Summit, we had a series of 5% and 6% downhill grades, and our exhaust brake did a fine job of holding our speed in check. I just stayed in the right lane and let faster traffic go around me.

As we dropped down into the Central Valley, we entered a land of irrigated farms where they grow everything from grapes, almonds, and citrus, to every kind of produce.

Traffic was frantic in Bakersfield, where we got on State Route 99, and we were glad to get through it safely and put the city behind us. A few miles north of Bakersfield we stopped at the Flying J to top off our fuel tank, and they had one of the tightest entrances I have ever seen at an RV fuel island. The entrance was narrow, there was a deep hole cut into the pavement, and sawhorses were intruding into the entrance to make matters worse. Even though I tried to avoid it, my rear tires ran over the curb getting in. We’ll avoid this stop in the future.

From the Flying J, it was just a few miles to the Elks lodge outside of Wasco, where we got a back-in RV site with water and 30 amp electric for $10 a night. Nothing fancy here, just blacktop, and unfortunately, lots of dog crap around where you have to plug in your utilities. Why can’t some people clean up after their critters?

According to our cell phones, we have excellent high speed Verizon EVDO signals here, but we had a terrible time trying to make or receive calls, and even with our Wilson external antenna and amplifier, we could not stay online for more than a minute or two at a time.

There were three other RVs at the Elks lodge, but except for brief hellos with our neighbors, we didn’t have time to visit. I had covered 468 miles since we left Williams, but we weren’t done yet. We drove the van back 15 miles to Bakersfield for dinner at Hodel’s Restaurant, a very nice buffet style place that has been in business for decades.

Ben Langworthy and Sandy Atwood from Teepee Creepers met us at the restaurant. Terry has been corresponding with Ben ever since she ordered us both a pair of his super comfortable moccasin style slippers a while back. Ben and Sandy have a fifth wheel, and we had a nice visit as we discussed their company, the RV lifestyle, and life in general.

I’m afraid I wasn’t great company. I was worn out from the long miles behind the wheel, and my energy level still is way down from the crud I had over the weekend. After we said our goodbyes to Ben and Sandy, Terry drove back to the Elks lodge, and I wrote the blog and tried to get it to post on the poor internet connection.

Today we only have about 130 miles to Oceano, and if we can indeed get into the Elks campground, as the host assured us we could, we plan to play tourist, eat more seafood than they can catch, and just have fun for a few days.

Thought For The Day – Every mother hopes that her daughter will snag a better husband than she managed to do, but she’s certain that her boy will never get as great a wife as his father did.

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Our old hometown of Show Low, here in Arizona’s White Mountains, was first settled by Mormon pioneers, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) still has a strong influence on the community. However, not everybody here is a member of the church, and I guess the owner of this Jeep wanted to be sure folks knew it.

In our RV travels around the country, we have seen hundreds of funny business signs, and even more bumper stickers, vanity license plates, and signs on vehicles that have had us laughing out loud. If you do much traveling, I’m sure you have too. Here are some we just couldn’t resist taking a picture of, and a few that our readers have sent us from all across the nation.

I think we camped next to these folks at least once.

When we spent a few weeks down on the Texas Gulf Coast a couple of years ago, we spotted this mural on the side of a home built RV.  I wanted to peek!

Some of the funniest vehicle signs we have seen have been on septic tank pumper trucks.  One of our readers sent the top one from California. I’m not sure which administration was in power at the time, but does it really matter?

We took this one in Indiana last summer, while staying at Elkhart Campground.

I think I may have been married to this lady at one time.

And to this one too!

My buddy, Jim Gass, sent me this picture, and when I showed it to Miss Terry, she made me sell my motorcycle.

Now this is a girl with a Bad Nick sense of humor!

We slept in yesterday, and then ran into town to do some banking, drop off some orders at the post office, and then popped in to see my daughter Tiffany for a while. Son-in-law Jim is working two jobs to make ends meet in this troubled economy, and we have not had much time to visit with him since we’ve been in town. We did get to chat for a few minutes when he came home from one job, but it was obvious that he was worn out, and we urged him to get a couple of hours sleep before he headed to his night job.  I have a tremendous amount of love and respect for Jim, and I’m glad my daughter is married to such a hard worker who gives so much of himself for his family, but I worry about the young man.

After we left Tiffany’s place, we stopped for an early dinner, and then came back to Juniper Ridge RV Resort. It was warmer than it has been all week, and the wind wasn’t blowing much, so Miss Terry took the opportunity to cut my hair and trim my beard. I’m glad she did, because I was sure getting shaggy!

Then it was a quiet evening, doing some work on the computer, watching TV, and just relaxing with my best friend. Life is good!

Well, at least I had a quiet evening. Bad Nick was busy posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled So What Should We Do? Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Those who don’t beat their plowshares into swords will be ruled by those who do.