Day 8

The air conditioner in the RV didn't turn off until 5am.  Brayden and Laney slept on the overhead bunk, Ryan and I slept on the couch, and Grammie slept in her usual bench spot. The blanket fair visited me and Ryan in the middle of the night because we actually got a tad chilly!

I had cell service at this spot so I got up early and wrote about the past 2 days and edited pictures. It was 5:30am and already 90 degrees. But it was completely bearable. Then about an hour later I was shade hopping and trying to upload everything so far. The lizards and birds seemed to have the same idea!

I opted for cereal this morning so we wouldn't have to cook. We'd bought two boxes at Trader Joe's and just about finished them. These kids are growing!













I was excited for a cold shower after I got the car situated to leave. And before too long we were back on the road. The views were just lovely for the first 30 miles. And we officially made it to California! Notice everyone standing in the tiny shade of the sign!

The sign I noticed next was cautioning 7 miles of "dips". I told Ryan to get in ready in the backseat as her stomach lurched and Brayden took a picture. It felt like a 5-minute roller coaster - so fun! The kids were playing a DS game together so they were focusing on their screen. I could see when a good one was coming up so I'd speed up just a little bit to make it fun. I giggled as they would scream when they lost their stomachs!

Our next stop was a quirky one about an hour or so down the 2-lane road we were traveling. It was in the ghost town of Rice, California where there used to be a tree everyone would toss their underwear on. The tree suspiciously burned to the ground so the Shoe Fence began. One of Brayden's assignments this summer for 4-H is to take pictures of shoes so he was excited to grab the camera for this stop!

After about 2 hours of back roads (with fun dips!) and interstate we were driving by Joshua Tree National Park and the Salton Sea. First, I had no idea we had a sea in North America. Second, it was now 118 degrees. We had about an hour left and I was getting nervous about the temperatures! That last hour of driving was so much fun though! We cut through mountains on some super fun winding roads that made me feel like a kid doing the pretend driving thing turning the steering wheel back and forth, over and over.

With about 30 minutes left we were still at 118 degrees but then we began to climb up to Julian, CA. The road zigzagged up a mountain as I watched my car's thermometer drop a couple degrees every minute. By the time we pulled into the campground it read 89 degrees. We could absolutely handle that!

We quickly set up and explored to Grammie's site to help her. The water hookup she was to use was broken so we waited while the host tried to resolve it. Maintenance and ranger staff had already left for the day so she opted to do without for the day and hopefully have it fixed tomorrow.

I brought over the last of our meals from the home freezer and we heated up a quick dinner that felt like home. Parmesan pasta with mushrooms, a ceasar salad, and nectarines. I'm thinking Dave isn't eating quite this well back at home!

And speaking of back home, Dave is our fake foreman overseeing all that is happening in the last month of the building of our home. He sent pictures of what we'd been anxious to see - the counters and flooring. We oohed and aahed for a little while. It's hard for all of us to be so excited to have our house finished and still be present on the trip and not wish it over so we could move in.

Once the dishes were done Laney and I grabbed some games from our campsite to bring back. We have noticed so many different and strange plants in the area! We are having fun trying to identify all the birds too! I didn't bring our bird book so we are guessing for now and hoping to ask a ranger tomorrow.

We played a few games of Quixx then I took Ryan and Brayden back to our campsite for a few games of our own. On our drive up the 2.5 gallon jug of water we'd been lugging around succommed to the elevation change so Ryan thought it was super fun to drink out of the tiny hole that leaked water over the backseat floorboard. We're going to need some baking soda soon for that to be bearable!



We played Golf and the kids version of blackjack until it was dark. It was already a very nice temperature outside so I knew our night would be a get-in-your-sleeping-bag-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of night. Instead of sleeping bags the kids opted to grab the quilts out of the cargo top I'd brought for the really cold nights. They were so excited! Who knew?

The cards we were playing with were from Key West so when we turned the lights out Brayden asked if we'd ever been to Key West. We'd been several times for work but I decided to tell the story of how I'd surprised Dave with a trip before we had kids and all the fun we'd had while we were there. So many of the stories we tell the kids were either about when they were little or when we were little so they enjoyed this one laughing the whole time.