Needles, CA

DAY 4:
We left our campsite in Bakersfield this morning in the hunt for a nearby Walmart and Starbucks.  We had finished our case of water and were in desperate need of more, and we needed our morning cup-of-joe to get us over the Tehachapi Mountains. What should have taken 10 minutes to find turned into 40.  We had a good idea as to where this Walmart and Starbucks were supposed to be so we just headed down Hwy 99 until we could see it. The only problem was that the fog was soooo thick that you could barely see the car in-front of you, needless to say a Walmart that was on the opposite side of the road.  We ended pulling off the road and engaged the Apple Maps app.  We now knew which exit to take, followed the directions, got our necessities, and headed over the Hwy 58 to Barstow.  We were grateful that it was a quiet Sunday morning or the detours of the hunt could have been a lot longer.

Our rig has a standard gas gauge and a window that shows how many miles 'till empty.  This window has proven to be very accurate. It stated that we had 243 mile until empty.  Barstow was just under 170 miles down the road so we figured we were good to go!  And, I think we would have been fine!  However, climbing those steep mountains probably used more gas than the little "gas window" had accounted for so, rather than pushing through to get cheeper gas, we opted to be on the safe side and gas-up some 20 miles west of Barstow, the first gas station we had seen in over two hours.  Later we realized that we paid about 35 cents per gallon more at this lone station.  That is not too terrible for a car that takes 12 to 15 gallons, but our RV was thirsty.  It gulped 73 gallons!  Next time we venture across a desert we will have our tanks filled to the rim.

Today's drive from Bakersfield to Needles was pretty much all through the Mojave Desert.  It was beautiful how the color of the mountains change in places, but it was also very barren.  We cruised at 70 mph for much of the first half and saw many of the mountain ridges were covered with windmills. During the second half of the trip we found out for ourselves just how windy it can get there.  The wind kicked up forcing us to slow down so that we would not be blown off the road.  We arrived at the Palm River Resort (http://www.palmsriverresort.com) around 3:00 pm.  Teddy and Otis don't seem to mind the driving too much, but Pippa is not too sure of the whole RV thing.  She sits in the same spot and pretty much pants the whole time we are on the road.  She then reluctantly climbs in after having been outside for a while.  We hope that a few more days of this will get her to realize that this IS fun!

The Palm River Resort is on the Colorado River. After leveling the rig we took a nice stroll along the river's edge with Otis and Pippa before heading back to our home-on-wheels.  We talked to several people that are staying here, and many of them are true Snowbirds, staying from mid December until mid March each year.  There are also quite a few modular homes that "flying Snowbirds" use for their stay, as well as the used as vacation homes.   After dinner I settled down with my computer and John with an atlas, studying our route for tomorrow.