Friday, April 4, 2008

4/3/08 California, Here We Come!

We left Phoenix this morning around ten after closing up the rig and getting it ready for travel. We said so long to Bill and Peggy and were soon heading west. It was a long drive today as we had to cover about 260 miles. It's been a long time since we've been in the truck this long.

It was good day for traveling, sunny and not too hot.

The scenery along I-8 was typical interstate scenery. Open fields and mountains. Typical until we came to this! (Click on picture) This is just HUGE!

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I almost missed this picture a short time later.

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The scenery changed almost immediately. SAND! Huge sand dunes!

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We were getting low on fuel and as soon as we crossed the California state we saw a Shell station that had diesel fuel. I took note of the sign as we were pulling in and saw that diesel was........are you ready for this? $4.48 per gallon! YIKES! We drove right back out! There's got to be cheaper diesel somewhere! We did find a more affordable (?) price in El Centro. We filled up at $4.07 a gallon! Oh that hurts!

We finally reached our destination, the El Centro Naval Air Facility.

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This is our first FamCamp as the RV parks on military bases are known. We will certainly make use of the benefit we have from Bob's military service from now on! Our daily rate for staying here is $15.00 per day. We would be hard pressed to find to find a commercial RV Park this cheap.

After we received clearance at the gate we proceeded into the base to find the RV Park with directions we were given.

On the way we couldn't help but notice these planes. One of the Blue Angel planes!

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We made the left where we were supposed to only to find the road closed with orange cones due to water. It didn't look that deep and we surely could have made it through. I called the RV office and asked them what we should do and the fellow says to make a U-turn and go to the next block and make the left. I explained to him that we were 53 feet long and there would be no "hangin' a U-y" going on here. We did find a place we could turn around and proceeded to make the next left. When we got to the next corner we saw a guy in a golf cart and were going to flag him down for further directions. No need for that, he was the camp host and was out looking for us!

We checked in and were told where the swimming pool was, where the restaurant was, where the movie theater was and by the way the movie theater is FREE to us. In addition, we can eat in the dining facilities with the Navy Airmen at $3.00 per meal. If their food is as nice as this base is so far I may not be doing any cooking while here!

We got into our space with no trouble and got set up. It didn't take long after that when our neighbors started coming out to meet us. I think we're going like it here!

Since I haven't done grocery shopping in awhile and didn't think to take anything out of the freezer we ordered a takeout dinner from the Mirage Restaurant here on the base. Oh yeah, we're going like it here!

We have a good Internet connection and that makes us happy campers! We were somewhat dismayed to find out that most of the TV channels we could pick up with the antenna were all spoken in Spanish. HELLO! This is America, we speak ENGLISH! Thank heavens my weekly fix of Survivor came through in English. Bob will put our satellite dish up tomorrow.

So here we are in sunny California. I have mixed feelings about this. I've always shunned the idea of coming here because I'm afraid the "big one" will happen while we are within its borders. Keep your fingers crossed for us that we won't even have a little bitty earthquake while we are here.

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