We’re in the RV now and I’m determined to finish my updating tonight. We plugged the laptop into a converter which will allow me to type for hours. The laptop’s battery, however, wouldn’t let me type much more than an hour or two if even that.

The Barstow motel was the worst one of all. They mentioned they were doing a lot of remodeling there, and I honestly believed they were moving furniture around above us when we both got woken up at one point. Tom, a heavy sleeper, was able to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t go back to sleep for a few hours. I had to wait till people would quit slamming things around. I lay there wondering just why would they need to come and go so much. And why would they need to run around the rooms so much? You’d think they were moving in and setting up months’ worth of stuff. It was horrible!

This particular motel, the Desert Inn, had rock-hard beds, but a small refrigerator and a microwave. It was also cheaper than the Motel 6 which had softer beds, but no extras. They didn’t even give you Kleenex, let alone shampoo or lotion. The rooms in both places were so small, too. We stood in the Motel 6 in Klamath Falls, Oregon last night, as well as when we broke down in Merced, California.

After leaving Barstow, we passed some absolutely huge and breathtaking mountains. How I wished we had a decent camera! I took what pictures I could, but then I filled the card up and couldn’t take anymore.

We also passed an airplane graveyard, but I couldn’t see that from my vantage point. I could see the windmill forest, though. We passed a lot of cornfields and orange groves along the way. Some marshlands too, with cranes, geese and ducks.

We stayed at the Arizona rest stop the first night, the chaotic Barstow motel the next, then we broke down the next day. What was scary about it was that it was Sunday, but fortunately, his brother Steven came to our rescue. We could’ve walked or taken a cab to a motel, but it was nice of him to give us a ride. He and Carol live in Madera so it took him a half-hour to get to us. I swear he sounds exactly like Miss Perfect. The way he talks is a total carbon copy of her, but he was nice, nonetheless.

We had three scares along the way. The first day, some idiot nearly ran us off the road, making the truck wobble back and forth like hell.

Then in Merced, a center bearing on the RV broke and we didn’t know how long or how much money it’d take to fix it. Fortunately, a manufactured home dealer let us park on their lot and we were able to get it in there in the first place, and fortunately, the part only cost $16 and he could get a guy in a machine shop to press it on the next day. As bad as it was, it could’ve been much worse. We could’ve been rendered completely immobile on a dangerous part of the freeway, the part could’ve been expensive, and we could’ve had to empty out the RV with no place to put our stuff so it could be towed, ending up costing a grand. The thought of how bad it could’ve been makes me shudder. I was wondering if something was trying to stop us from getting here. Tom said he thought it might be a test to see how badly we wanted to get here.

As pissed as I was and as frustrating as being stuck in Merced was, I had to laugh when I thought of how I’d have killed to be stuck in California when I was all alone and lonely with no life back east.

The final scare was when we got stuck once we finally did get here. I said to Tom, “Well, this can’t be a test to see how bad we want to get here since we are here.” Yet when we drove up the mountain our land is on and was so close to the land, we took a wrong turn and went down a road that was squeezed in between some very dense woods. I mean, it was so heavily wooded that a person couldn’t walk through some of it, let alone drive through it. The pine tree branches were scraping alongside the RV as we went down the road only to come face to face with a locked gate! It turned out that the road was really someone’s driveway. Getting the RV and truck turned around was hell and it took us the better part of an hour. I had to go out and spot for him, and still, it was hard.

We ate at Denny’s a couple of times along the way and made it to Woodland, California on the 14th where we ate inside a Walmart. I got a refreshing salad that was way more than I could eat, so I shared it with the rats like I usually share most of what I eat with them scavengers. It was there that we picked up bottles of water, some snacks for the road, and a few postcards. One for Mom, Miss P and Dave, and two for Mary.

I mailed them on the 16th from our new mail place. It’s pretty cool. All you do is hand them your outgoing mail. You can also get to your box 24/7, 7 days a week. The main door is open during business hours, but after that, all you have to do is punch in a code. The only thing you can’t get just any time is packages. It’s a private business run by a pleasant family. The PO usually delivers mail by 10:00.

When we first got here, Tom pointed out that the people here don’t seem happy till we met the girl running the storage place who seemed uppity and told us she lived just 15 minutes past the California border. When we saw how friendly they were at the mail place, I jokingly said to Tom, “They must live in California.”

Anyway, it usually takes 10 days for mail to be forwarded, so if I’ve got mail from Mary waiting for me, it’s news to me. I just better get my damn incense without a fight! That I had sent here.

I haven’t yet found any postcards in this state because this particular area isn’t very touristy.

I’m getting better at psyching things out on command because, by the time we reached Willows, California, Tom asked for a vehicle vibe. I thought about it for a while and concentrated really hard. Suddenly, I knew we’d be okay and that we’d make it to Oregon with no more breakdowns. This he was as glad to hear as I was to sense.

With all the bad vibes gone, we stayed at a rest stop in that town. It was pretty damn hot but not as bad as the first rest stop was.

The most awesome scenery came on the final day of the trip as we passed through the Mount Shasta area. It was like, wow! The breathtakingly gorgeous green mountains with little wildflowers against the snowcapped mountain were quite impressive. We saw parts of Lake Shasta as well.