CALIFORNIA PART 2
Our route
Pickleball among the eucalyptus trees with Travis.
(Click the links for more information)
Judy showing expert form.
More expert at miniature golf while Dennis is losing.
On the Granite trail in Santa Rosa.
And on the granite boulder.
We toured the Reagan Library in Simi Valley.
Part of the Berlin wall at the Library.
An the traditional pose.
We hiked Devil's Punchbowl on the San Andreas fault.
From the recent news, its a good time to be gone from there.
Heading to the fault.
We spent the day touring the Danish village of Solvang.
Judy with a bust of the famous Danish
author Hans Christian Andersen.
The oldest building the the village.
Coffee and Danish seemed appropriate, but had the special instead.
For dessert we had German chocolate cake
Famous? aebleskiver.
This is a sausage garden!?, but I'm sure I saw beer taps.
Rancho Oso Thousand Trails down in that
valley near the San Marcos Pass.
It's about 20 miles from Santa Barbara.
These plants are related to sunflowers
and are native to these islands.
Our 367th National Park visit.
Back at Rancho Oso RV
We lunched at Cold Spring Tavern.
This is an old stagecoach stop.
Cold Spring Canyon bridge was one of the longest
single span bridges when it was completed in 1963.
Our 368th National Park visited.
It was a cool and rainy day to visit.
In the museum.
Number 369.
The year old Castle Mountains National Monument (#370)
has no visitor facilities at all. It is administered
at Mojave National Preserve offices in Barstow.
On Route 66 in Barstow
The Rainbow Basin was an unexpected find just
8 miles north of our camp site in Barstow.
A scenic loop drive through Rainbow Basin
and a short hike gave reason for the name.
Still in the Basin with a blooming Joshua Tree.
Baker, CA
This entrance to the Mojave National Preserve
was just a mile from our camp site in Baker,
but 65 miles from the Preserve's headquarters.
We spent the whole day touring the Preserve (allows hunting).
This beautifully restore Kelso Depot is now the
Preserve's Visitor's Center.
It was originally used for the Union Pacific railroad construction,
later a hotel/train station, then abandoned and nearly razed,
saved by locals, and renovated by the National Park Service.
The Kelso Dunes are close to the visitor's center.
We decided to take only pictures here rather than hike the dunes.
Instead we hiked the Ring Loop Trail in the "Hole in the Wall".
Before the hike and after our dusty drive over
several miles of dirt roads, a picnic lunch.
This route through the Preserve allowed us to drive
through the world's largest and most dense
Joshua Tree forest.
Plenty of holes in the Bahshee Canyon's walls!
On the rings.
Looking down canyon.
It was a boring hike through the desert until
we got to the exciting climb to finish the hike.
So exciting that Judy almost had us turn around.
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