Day 1

I'm on the road! Finally! My first destination was Red Rock Canyon State Park, north of Victorville, California. I originally picked it because it was a convenient four hour drive north of San Diego, but I got very lucky - the place is fantastic. In this post I share some impressions and photos of this hidden treasure. I know everyone is interested in the van, too. I'm still gathering my thoughts for a comprehensive post in the future, but I'll share some first impressions here.

I know, I know, at the crucial moment when I finally took possession of the van, I went silent, no posts for nearly a week. I can safely say that week was the busiest of my life. Lots of friends I wanted to spend some time with, lots of minor additions to the van (detailed in a future post), and LOTS of packing, plus doing what I could to help my daughter, Amanda, and her husband, Ben, get my house ready to rent. They'll be the resident property managers for three other renters; their agreeing to do that took a huge burden off my shoulders - I'll be a long time just trying to repay them for that blessing.

Having picked the van up on Thursday, September 25th, my initial goal was to hit the road by the following Monday morning. I spent a good part of Friday adding what might be called "doodads": baskets, tie downs, a spice rack, etc. I started sleeping in the van Friday night to try it out. Generally, I loved it, but the firmness of the mattress made adding a memory foam topper a necessity. My burgeoning social calendar for the weekend made it obvious Monday wasn't going to happen. So I started telling everyone Tuesday morning for take off. Monday, was a very productive packing day; I felt I was nearly ready. I had a farewell dinner with my daughters. As I lay awake that evening - not for long, I was exhausted - I realized that with the amount of work I had left, I could probably get away Tuesday, but I'd be completely stressed and late in the day, so I let departure slip to Wednesday morning. Even then, the final few hours were hectic, but pile after pile got moved from the house to the van, thown in with no rhyme or reason, and then I was off.

The drive north from San Diego along I-15 was mundane; I've been along that route many times in the last few months. I did notice and truly appreciate for the first time what a panoramic view there is out the windshield of the van; it's like watching an IMAX movie. I was also pleased how the van handled the climb up the Cajon Pass to Victorville; I easily maintained 65 mph and could have gone faster if I liked. I pulled into a truck stop on Highway 395 in Victorville to fix some lunch - just reheated leftovers from Mexican takeout the night before. The vast desert expanses dotted by Joshua trees north of Victorville never fail to impress me. Randsburg is the exit to take off Highway 395 - let's call Randsburg "quaint", just to be diplomatic. There's a fork in the road in town, be sure to bear right toward Mojave. About half an hour later, you take a right onto Highway 14, and the landscape starts getting interesting right away.

Red Rock Canyon is, in my opinion, California's own miniature Bryce Canyon; many of the same deeply carved cliffs with vertical columns. The difference is, Bryce Canyon you see from the top of the cliffs looking down, in Red Rock Canyon, you're driving along the base of the cliffs. Here's a photo to give you the idea:

The campground is particularly spectacular because you can camp right up against the base of the cliffs. Even if you have no intention of camping, you should take a side trip to the campground.

On the way in, I didn't pass a single soul; it was a bit creepy having the entire park to myself. But I soon found the two sites just past mine were occupied, and some more people pulled in later. But we easily spread out, maintaining the feeling of isolation. The sites were self-registered, which means I had to find a site I liked, then go back about a mile to enter the information on the fee ($25) envelope. A perfect excuse to break out my electric bike:

This is also my first shot of the hitch-mounted rack I installed; I'll cover that more in a future post.

The next morning, I was up early enough to shoot some cliffs in the rising sun, which gave everything a wonderful golden glow:

A bit later, I took off on my bike again, determined to see much, if not all, of the park beyond the campground. Two things got in my way. First of all, I'm a big guy, I've never denied that. On any sort of moderate uphill incline, the bike's top speed under electric power drops to about 7 mph. It can go faster than that if I help by pedaling, but I give out pretty quickly, though I expect to improve over time. Still, 7 mph is faster than I can walk, and well over half an hour of this extreme load didn't seem to put a dent in the battery. The second obstacle was that the off road path that I tried was deep sand and the wheels sunk in to the point where even the motor plus me pedaling could barely make forward progress. Also, though I could find no signs explicitly forbidding it, I wasn't entirely sure of the legality of taking a bike on a hiking path. So, when I got to the top of the first hill, I took a look around, then headed back toward the van. My deadline of getting on the road by 10am was approaching anyway. That didn't prevent me from coming across some more amazing formations:

Notice at the center of the lower picture is a free-standing rock, and another one (almost) to it's left. As I packed up to go, I felt that I'd barely scraped the surface of what Red Rock Canyon has to offer. I could easily have spent a week there, hiking the trails on foot, and sometime in the future, I hope to do just that.

On the drive out of the park, I had a bit of adventure. There were a couple lines on the map marked as dirt roads that led to points of interest, one to abandoned opal mines and the other to a scenic overlook. A dirt road didn't sound too scary, Sportsmobile makes a point of maintaining a high ground clearance on their converted Sprinters, so when the turnoff to the opal mines came into view, I ventured onto that dirt road. The first half mile or so wasn't bad at all - you wouldn't hesitate to take it in a family sedan. But, inevitably, it got worse the further I went in. Soon I was fording dry washes and squeezing between sagebrush. I learned some important things. If you take it slow enough, the Sprinter, even fully loaded, can negotiate some intimidating terrain. Also, if the wheels on only one side encounter a sudden rise, the top of the van whips sideways at a truly breathtaking speed and anything not nailed down ( 8-penny nails is my recommended minimum ) becomes a projectile toward the opposite side. Finally, it is an essential quality of any RV driver to have total focus on the task at hand, to the complete exclusion of anything that might be going on in the back. 

When ten-foot tall sagebrush simultaneously raked both sides of my new van, I'd had enough. But, of course, there was no place to turn around. Eventually, the road forked, and I formulated a plan that before the forks got too far apart, I would cross from one fork to the other, headed back the way I'd come. I waited for a spot where the path between was clear of sagebrush - the gap wasn't more than ten feet, I cranked the wheel. The front wheels reached the opposite track and... forward progress stopped, the rear drive wheels bogging down in the soft sand. I'm convinced it was the force of my screams - plus a little help from spinning rear wheels - that bounced the van across, pointed back toward blessed asphalt. Needless to say, the second turnoff to the scenic overlook held no allure for me whatsoever. When I stopped for lunch a couple hours later, I inspected the sides of the van. Sure enough, horizontal scratches from the sagebrush ran the entire length of both sides, on both painted metal and window glass. Refusing to accept this reality, I licked my thumb and rubbed; the scratch disappeared beneath it. Evidently, it's just a trail of sap and there's no real damage to paint or glass. Never-the-less, important lesson learned.

So, a rewarding and instructive first day, who could ask for more, right? My plan for the next post is to cover three more days, catching up to near real time.