Birthday on Location

This morning it was time to move on and we bade our friends goodbye.  But not before they fed us a good breakfast, complete with bacon.  Lots of bacon.

Thank you, Scott and Karen for your hospitality, for opening up your home, for allowing us to air our dirty laundry (literally, not figuratively), and for inviting us into your church fellowship yesterday.

I was not really looking forward to piloting a big rig on five-lane LA freeways for a couple hours, but we did manage to break it up with a visit to The Donut Man in Glendora.  This little donut shop sits right on Route 66 and is somewhat of an icon in its own right, having been featured on numerous TV shows and interviews, and famous for their fresh peach or strawberry-filled donuts in season.  Unfortunately, this was not in season.  We were told that there is always a waiting line, and there was, although it was just three people.  We ordered four donuts, a couple for right now and two more for later.  Not having a birthday cake to celebrate my birthday, a couple of donuts will have to do.  I started with the crumbled sugar glazed donut.  It was amazing.

Happy Birthday to me.

More freeway driving until we left State Route 210 behind, going east on State Highway 62.  This circles to the north side of Joshua Tree National Park.  Our goal was the entrance in Twentynine Palms.

We took a detour to Pioneertown, a town built especially for the filming of old western movies.  The town was built to look like the 1880’s complete with a dirt Mane street that only allows foots and hooves (no cars allowed).  This town comes alive on weekends, with gunfights and everything you would expect from a western movie.  On a Monday, it was rather quiet.  We did add an item to the “World’s Largest” collection, with the appropriate editorial license.  The post office here claims it is the most photographed post office building in the US.  OK, maybe a bit of a stretch for this list, but we’ll allow it.  This time.

Leaving here, we headed into Twentynine Palms, then into Joshua Tree National Park.  We found a campsite at the Belle Campground nestled into the rock piles in this section of the park.

Late afternoon already, so we took a walk by just striking out across the desert, climbing some of the rock formations and dodging cacti, sage brush, and, of course, Joshua trees.  Other than these, it’s fairly featureless, if you ignore the mountains in the background.

We made dinner, complete with a bottle of sparkling grape juice bought from one of the grocery stores along the way.  The juice was disappointing, but we enjoyed the dinner sitting outside as the sun was beginning to set.  Beautiful setting for a birthday dinner.

Happy Birthday to me.

After dinner, we went for another walk, striking out across the desert in a different direction.  When we were a couple hundred yards away from the RV, we noticed a pink tinge in the sky.  At first I wasn’t going to do anything as this was probably not going to be a decent sunset because there were too many clouds in the sky.  But then Deb told me to get the camera at the same time I had the same thought, so I sprinted back to the RV and grabbed the camera.  No sooner had I done so when the sky exploded into a riot of color, and I managed to capture it.  A few minutes later, it had already started to fade, but what a fitting end to a birthday on location, at Joshua Tree National Park.

Happy Birthday to me.