California – Page 12 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

From hard to soft, canyons to badlands

Wednesday was all about hard granite, steep canyons, rugged mountains and wide alluvial valleys formed on the western edge of the park in beautiful granite full of quartz, mica, and sparkling fools gold. Our extra day of exploration at Anza Borrego led us into an entirely different environment of barren dry lake beds, and badlands formed in soft sediments, riddled with complex arroyos, and washes, and sudden surprise overlooks.

The skies were clear when we left in the morning, with just a slight breeze in Borrego Springs. Even with our 9am departure, we weren’t early enough to catch the early morning shadow light and by the time we rolled onto the Clark Lake area the winds were blowing hard. Right away we found the oven Al mentioned last month and Laurie and Odel wrote about. I had just started following Laurie’s blog when she wrote about camping here and building this oven, so it was with a special fondness that I took a photo of the well known boondock site.

We continued east on Highway S22 to find Font’s Point. Even with the recent rain the wash was filled with deep sand, enough that we were glad for 4 wheel drive. We wondered about the suggestion to come here for sunset, since driving back in the dark might be a bit challenging. I think someday I might try sunrise instead. The view was worth every moment of the drive through the sandy wash. Each of the geologic formations are immediately distinguishable and I wished for a good geology book to remind me of what I had read in the park visitor center. “Hmm, bottom tier clams. Top tier mammals. Wonder if that one has the horses and camels? Miocene? Sure is lots of stuff around the west that is Miocene era formations…yadayadayada….” Mo just said, “Pretty!”

The cliffs are extremely steep and the drop offs sudden on the soft barely coherent rock. Abby was all excited, and since we were alone, we didn’t leash her up. Next time we will. She rarely unglues from Mo’s side, but for some reason the expansive views got her all excited and she kept getting way too close for my comfort.

We continued along Fonts Wash to another turn east on Short Wash looking another viewpoint ahead. The map I bought from the visitor center was excellent, and we were both impressed with the small and simple, but effective signage out there in the middle of nowhere. In just a few more miles of sand, and one major drop off that required a bit of maneuvering, we were at Vista Del Malpais. The view from here was a bit different, not quite as high, but more from a vantage point within the badlands rather than completely above them. Here again I wished for a good geology book to ferret out the details of the formations.

Another examination of the map showed our wash continuing farther east to the 17 Palms Oasis. “Wanna try for it?” “Sure, lets go” It would be an in and out trip, past the primitive campsite at Arroyo Salado, but who knows what we might find. We haven’t seen an oasis palm yet. We hadn’t read anything about this site previously, and were surprised to find that it had a great little story. It was an historic stopover for weary badland travelers, and sometimes people would leave glass jars of water sitting about since the spring wasn’t always reliable.

There was also the “Oasis Post Office”, a wooden barrel wedged between two palms, where travelers could leave communications and notes for each other, a tradition that has continued. We found the “post office”, filled with journals and notes, and three bottles of water. We added our own little note to the journal, and noted that Libya was exploding, Fukushima was radiating, and the palms were still here, safe in the desert.

We reversed our route to the highway and continued east on pavement to Salton City. Ugh. Salton City was all the ugliness of the desert that we have seen too many times. Dirty, brown, with some new housing developments of low flat ugly houses surrounded by telephone poles and wires and no vegetation. It was the worst of the desert very close to the best of the desert. We didn’t bother to go down to Salton Sea, since we knew about the smell and the dead fish lying around.

All along the route south back to highway 78 the desert looked dry and barren, with no sign of flowers anywhere. To the west of us, stretching all the way to Anza Borrego was the Ocotillo Wells recreation vehicle area. Another word for 4-wheeler heaven. I have nothing against 4 wheelers, in their place. I have used them for soil survey, I totally get it, they are indispensable for farmers and ranchers with large acreage to manage and animals to care for. Tearing up the wilderness with a vehicle is another story. I am truly grateful for places like this huge area of Ocotillo Wells for 4-wheeler folks to play and have fun with their toys. It’s great. There should be more places like this, where I can stay out of their way and they can stay out of mine. Perfect.

As we continued south and then west, I noticed on the map that we were 175 feet below sea level. Looking a bit closer I saw a fine line called “ancient beach line”. 38 feet. A bit more research led to the fact that we were in what was once the Gulf of Mexico, the Sea of Cortez, extending all the way north, creating the Imperial Valley with all it’s rich alluvial soils. Rich and fertile, but still ugly at the moment. Once west of Ocotillo Wells, however, we breached the old beach line elevation and the landscape filled with gorgeous desert, unscarred by ORV tracks, and covered with the red haze of blooming ocotillo. Anza Borrego State Park is huge. We had only tapped the northern half and very little of the mountains. What an amazing treasure this park is to the state, the country and to the world. I’m so glad the powers that be haven’t let it be destroyed or lost to temporary budget troubles.

Once home, we were fairly worn out after all the bouncing around in washes, and just settled in early for a good spaghetti supper (from home again) and a movie. We decided to dump the tanks and get ready to go for this morning’s departure so it would be quick and easy.

This morning we were up early enough to see a magnificent sunrise punctuated by rainbows over the mountains and we were on the road by 7:30, heading for Tucson. A lucky break for us, however, that we didn’t leave earlier. Just as we started around the Christmas Tree Circle, we noticed that the Farmers Market mentioned by Kelly had already begun. It was so simple to pull over and park on the circle while we walked across the lush green grass to the vendors. I had read about the 3 buck bags of grapefruit, and the farmer from just north on Borrego Springs road was happy to give us a taste of his sweetest. Of course we bought a bag, along with two kinds of hummus and some soft pitas from a Moroccan man, and some local orange blossom honey. Yay for the Farmer’s Market! On to Tucson and a new experience camping at one of the Military Family Camps at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base on the northeastern heart of the city. We have friends and family to visit in the Tucson area, so this should be a good central location, and cheap!

At the moment we are crossing wide, open, rather boring land between Yuma and Tucson, and the air is thick with smog or smoke or what they try to pass off in the West as haze. It could be dust from all the recent storms, or it could be the sad state of air quality around Phoenix, but either way, I am especially grateful for the extra time we spent in the pristine world of Anza Borrego.

Anza Borrego State Park and Coyote Canyon

As expected, I took nearly 200 photos, if you want to check them out here.

Our rig faces northeast, with an open view of the mountains past the low lying, almost invisible buildings of Borrego Springs. Watching the morning sun stream in the windows, listening to all the birds, sipping morning tea in all that desert light was delightful. The day stretched ahead, with predicted temperatures in the 70’s and clear skies until late afternoon, when a bit of wind and showers could appear.

We knew that the park was huge, with miles and miles of dirt roads, some we could manage, and others maybe not. We also knew hiking is something we love but not sure where we could go with Abby. So first stop on the agenda was the main Anza Borrego State Park Visitor Center, just a hop up the road from where we are staying here at the Holiday Borrego Mobile Home Park. After a couple of nights near freeways and truck stops, the silence and darkness of Borrego Springs makes for amazing restful sleeping. In fact, Borrego Springs is listed as one of only two “dark sky” communities, and one of the ten best places for viewing the heavens in the United States.

The visitor center is beautifully done, with interesting displays, excellent volunteers providing information about where flowers are blooming, what roads are passable, where the sheep are located, and yes, where we could walk with Abby. All park roads, dirt or paved, but no trails. I especially enjoyed the geologic maps and prehistory of the area. There is so much to see here, and after buying a hat for Mo and a tee shirt for me, (oh my, will it end up in a quilt someday? I just can’t seem to resist those gorgeous park tee shirts.), we walked around the lovely naturally landscaped grounds before embarking on our chosen journey.

Coyote Canyon seemed to be the best choice, with many flowers in bloom right now after the rains. There were several people in the center, many of whom had only two wheel drive vehicles, but with our little Tracker we thought we could manage at least some of the 4 wheel drive routes.

The road north from Borrego into the park is straightforward, that is until the prehistoric animals start to appear. I recently saw photos of these critters on another blog, but it still didn’t prepare me for the surprise. With the sponsorship of Dennis Avery, a Borrego Springs philanthropist, the Mexican artist Ricardo Arroyo Breceda has created amazingly intricate and detailed iron sculptures that appear as though they just emerged from the landscape as it was a couple of million years ago during the Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Miocene eras. We hope to explore other areas of the park where fossils of this time period have been found, but today our journey was into the granite batholiths of the San Ysidro Mountains along Coyote Creek.

When the park says 4×4, high clearance, they mean it. Although that can mean two different things. We saw sedans crawling along the sandy wash road with success, and then we saw them turn around at “first crossing”. The Tracker made quick work of that one, and on to “2nd crossing” without a hitch. Good little Tracker. We saw a few Jeeps, real ones, not the SUV kind of Jeep, with explorers heading for the deeper reaches of the canyon, but when we reached “3rd crossing”, we decided it might be prudent to check it out and walk. We wanted a good hike today anyway, and this was perfect.

	Park volunteers warned of soft sand, but it wasn’t a bit of a problem for the Tracker
	This was second crossing, still no problem for the Tracker, even though there are some good sized rocks hidden in that foot deep water
	We started walking at third crossing, where the road followed the creek, but had no real clue just what was ahead of this part

Third Crossing was a bit of a surprise, since it followed the path of Coyote Creek, quite full after the recent rains. As we walked (and Abby swam) along the road, we came upon a young man walking back checking for parts that might not be as deep as others. He had driven across, but it was up to his tail pipes and he wanted to avoid an engine cutting out. We watched him plow back through the water and thought, “Good Luck!”

Continuing on with our hike, we noticed a trail of oil running down the center of the road. UhOh. Wonder if he knows he broke something. Then as we hiked up a couple of very steep very rocky grades, we knew that 4×4 definitely means something other than even a little 4 wheel drive Tracker in some parts of this park. We hiked high enough above the Lower Willows area to look down into Collins Valley and up the wild open distance of Upper Coyote Canyon. We didn’t make it as far as the hike into Sheep Canyon or Salvador Canyon with it’s hidden palms. In fact when we looked at our excellent purchased park map, it looked as though we just barely tapped into the wild distance of Coyote Canyon. The best part about all this was the perfect hiking temperatures, and the fact that Abby could be with us, and enjoy the refreshing stream. Not often you see and hear burbling water in the desert.

Once back to the car, and driving out, we saw many more vehicles, some parked having picnics, another big rough jeepy tour thing with six folks hanging on for dear life as he dropped down into third crossing. We wondered just how it might feel for those folks bouncing around in the back of the open jeep when they started up the steep bouldery road into Collins Valley.

This park whetted our appetite for a lot more. Like many others who come here, we looked at each other and said, “This place calls for at least a month in the winter” . We want to come back and explore so much more. Before settling in to our home, we drove around some of the neighborhoods around town. There is a stillness here, even in town, that is so rare in the desert any more. It reminds me of the California desert I knew as a kid, before the sprawling thing happened to Lancaster and Palmdale and Palm Springs. The buildings are low, there are no stop lights, no big box stores, very few stores at all, although we did find the ice cream store on the way back to camp. We loved the way homes here are scattered about the desert in a pleasing manner, that feels as though they emerged naturally.

It’s much different than the overgrown trashy desert rat kind of desert that is becoming the rule rather than the exception. Looking out over the landscape here, we saw no trash, none anywhere. From the quiet dirt roads around town, the desert vistas expand all around in all directions, clean and clear and silent. It is all that I dream of when I dream of desert in winter. It’s a place to soothe the soul and quiet the spirit.

After putting together a great supper with some of that pulled pork I made before we left, we enjoyed sitting out behind our rig on the edge of the park watching the light play on the mountains. Our plans were to leave for the Tucson area Thursday morning, but that just seemed silly. “What is the rush, I said? Why don’t we stay here one more night and take some time tomorrow to go find some of the places we couldn’t see today?” Mo was up for that idea, and we went to bed with the great feeling that the next day would be relaxed and fun, and we would have time to go find all those “points of interest” that we saw on the park map.

No drama, not one bit!

The Great Valley surrounded by snow from the eastern slope.

On the road this morning by 9, we looked up the road ahead and in spite of the heavy clouds and snow peeking through here and there, we weren’t the least bit worried. Snow level 4,000 feet, pass level, something just below that. Our outside temperature reading was something like 48 degrees. No ice at that temperature for sure. By the time we actually drove into Tehachapi, most of yesterday’s heavy snows had melted, with dirty brown piles around on the sidewalks, but the roads were perfectly clear.

West of the Tehachapi’s, green valley rangeland

It only took an hour, and suddenly we were on the east side of the mountains, looking back at the beautiful snow and basking in the brilliant sunshine coming through the windshield. We decided again to skip Barstow and go directly south on 395, varying our route from last December to just add a little bit of interest. After gassing up at Kramer’s Corner, still just 3.89 per gallon, I took over the driving duties.

…

East of the Tehachapi’s, open desert

Relocating Garmin Girl to the middle of the windshield where I could drive and navigate at the same time, I settled in ready to tackle LA traffic. The southern route crossed Cajon Pass, and it was fast and steep. I had forgotten how much of Southern California is really mountains rather than the basins that I remember. The wild crosshatch of faults running in all directions, with uplifts and mass wasted hillsides, huge crevasses of eroded slopes, and wild shifting geology makes for an incredible landscape. Today, for the first time in more years than I care to remember, Riverside was crystal clear and we could see mountains all around us in all directions. Almost as amazing, the traffic all the way was light and easy, with many folks kindly making way for the MoHo to change lanes when needed, and giving me plenty of room to navigate.

Garmin Girl did a great job getting me through the interchanges, and Mo tackled the I-phone and paper maps to try to figure out why the GPS units kept wanting to take us all the way east on I-10 to Indio before going south to Borrego. I kept saying, “The GPS is programmed for fastest, I think the phone does shortest, and the map isn’t detailed enough.” Mo was determined that we should go south and cross on 79, but I was a bit worried about that route since I knew there was a pretty steep drop-off into Borrego Springs. What the heck, it’s an adventure anyway, and we crossed Highway 36 last month and we decided it couldn’t be any worse than that.

So south we went, turning east on the Temecula Parkway and traveling through the beautiful wild country toward Warner Springs and Julian. Just before Warner Springs, in a huge broad valley, we came upon huge drifts of “goldfields” a common wildflower in the California foothills. The sheets of yellow stretched all across the valley, and with the snow covered peaks all around it, the contrast was incredible.

The 22s route east from Highway 79 is paved, two lanes all the way, and not nearly as narrow as the coast mountain range roads we traveled last month. The grade IS steep, and the hairpins are dramatic, but it’s over fast, maybe fifteen minutes from the summit to the basin floor at Borrego. The automatic downshift transmission, “torque converter” Mo thinks that what it is called, but whatever the name, it does a great job of holding her back and keeping us from having to use the brakes. We rolled into the State Park just in time to hear that the last spot had been taken.

I know there are a ton of places around Borrego to boondock, but without an internet connection, I didn’t have access to all that information at the moment, and it was late. Instead, we stopped in at the Borrego Holiday Home Park, reviewed by Laurie last month, and by 5 we were settled in to a nice site on the east side of the park facing open desert for 27 bucks, full hookup. I originally planned to stay at the State Park, but this was so simple, and we are only going to be here one more night, so tomorrow will be a day of exploration and we will just come back home to our little cozy spot here.

I told Mo that from now on I need to try to remember all those places I have read about, and if we even have a slight chance we might boondock, I need to have maps and locations and coordinates! Especially late in the day after driving freeways.

Tomorrow we will explore Anza Borrego State Park, and with a good weather forecast, I am really looking forward to a day in the sun.

A gorgeous day on I-5 (and a few minor glitches)

Gotta thank everyone for all the encouragement yesterday, both on Facebook and as comments on my blog post about the break-in. I was even surprised at how comforting it felt to have people noticing and sending along good thoughts. A couple of folks mentioned our good attitude toward it all, but again, as we looked around last night at how unscathed we were, it was impossible to not have a pretty good attitude.

This morning, even though there were huge clouds all around the San Joaquin Valley, we saw promises of brilliant sunlight peeking through. Although we didn’t get up till 6:30 or so, I had been lying awake since four, watching the perigee full moon through the sky visible below the back bedroom shade. All sorts of scenarios went through my mind, still trying to figure out just how they managed to do some of the weird things they did. So yeah, that good attitude held up fine with the lights on, but in the dark of night, not so much.

We got up, neither one of us much in the mood for breakfast, and checked out the weather on the internet. Didn’t look real good for us no matter which route we follow, so we just decided that driving down the open country of I-5 on the west side of the valley was more agreeable than bumping along on my least favorite road, Highway 99, even though 99 would have been a shorter route. Our latest plan was to amble toward Bakersfield and then check again about the passes, and probably camp somewhere this side of Castaic and the Flying J on the interstate.

Of course, with so many little things missing, we also decided that a shopping trip to Camping World, south of Bakersfield on 99 was a good plan, and we still hadn’t completely let go of our wish to travel via 58 to Tehachapi and our friends. Speaking of friends, Loree is at this very moment sitting in Tehachapi, and her photos of the snow there looked a bit daunting. Either way, a night of boondocking was on the agenda.

The drive south on I-5 was actually breathtaking. With all the storms, there isn’t a bit of smog or pollution in the air, and the wild cloudy skies with brilliant sun breaks only intensified the spring green of the annual grass rangeland of the western perimeter of the Great Valley. I said to Mo, “I have to get some real photos, not windshield shots, this is just too gorgeous>.” She replied, “Well, I can’t pull over here in the middle of nowhere, but I’ll keep watching.” In less than 2 miles, we saw a sign indicating a “vista point”. Perfect! The exit wound up a high hill right next to the interstate with an amazing 360 degree view of the entire valley north, east, and south, and the coast range rising to the west. In addition, we found ourselves looking down on the California Aqueduct just below us.

A true engineering marvel, whether you love it or hate it, and stretched out to the horizon parallel to Interstate 5, it was all that made California what it is, especially Southern California. With my 3G connection and 5 bars on the I-phone, I managed to learn more about the aqueduct that I even knew growing up in California when it was being built. In a nutshell, the magnificent snow melt of the Sierras flows down the Feather River to Oroville Dam, west to the Delta of San Francisco Bay, then south through a mind-boggling array of pipes, tunnels, pumps, over mountains, through mountains and ending up supplying the outrageous water needs of the bread basket of the world in the San Joaquin Valley and the entire metropolitan area of Los Angeles. I even read that the water Rick and so many others are drinking while supping at Palm Springs restaurants comes from the gorgeous Feather River high in the Sierras.

Once again on the road, the pavement was smooth enough for me to knit, and the storms coming and going made for great entertainment. A bit after noon, we thought lunch might be nice and stopped at a quiet rest area with thoughts of starting up the generator and cooking some grilled cheese sandwiches. Mo said, “Probably would be a good idea to start up the generator anyway, since it’s been sitting awhile”. UhOh. Good thing we did. She started easily and then ground right down to a stop and wouldn’t start again. Mo checked under the rig for any sign of what might be the problem, but no luck. She did say that the intruders were messing around in the generator bay, and who knows what they actually did. The sound felt like it wasn’t getting gas. Maybe something is cut or gone, but either way it wasn’t something she could figure out so we called Camping World. Wouldn’t you know, they are booked up until Friday! We don’t have our battery charge indicator, and certainly aren’t comfortable boondocking without the generator, so Camping World gave us the number of Pacific Power in Bakersfield, and thank goodness they said to come on in.

It was another hour and a half in to the shop, and lo and behold, it was a shop dedicated specifically to generators, with Onan on the window signs. We pulled around to the back bay as directed by a crusty old guy who wasn’t the least bit talkative. He pulled off the cover to the generator, harumphed a bit about how Dynamax didn’t make it easy to work on, and made some mumblings about us having it in storage too long and the carburetor was probably just glazed up.

Mo told him about our vandals, and he crawled under to find the fuel line to the generator was cut. Seems as though the robbers couldn’t manage to siphon the gas directly from the gas tank, so evidently thought they could get it out of the generator gas line. Must not have worked, but they weren’t completely awful people because they actually plugged up the cut hose with a piece of pipe so all the gas wouldn’t run out on the floor and cause an explosion. Our fixer man re-connected the hose, pushed the starter, and the generator roared to life. Perfect. Only after all this, did the guy actually start to talk a little bit and laughed with us about the good outcome. I told him I was part of the RV blogging world and would put in a good word for Pacific Power on Buck Owens Boulevard in Bakersfield. Great service where we least expected it.

Back on Highway 99, we traveled just a few miles south to camping world to check out some goodies, and found another voltage meter to replace the one that was stolen. By this time is was after 4pm and we were definitely ready to settle in for the evening. Looking at the snow ringing the entire valley, we finally decided that we would take our chances traveling 58 directly east to the desert tomorrow morning. A quick search on Streets and Trips yielded an RV park not too far out of town along our route and within an hour we were parked and settled in, just in time for the huge thunderstorm to hit.

You wonder why I am so amazed at our good luck? I have had other times in my life where something that looks like a streak of really bad luck is combined with amazing good luck that gets me through it all by the skin of my teeth. This has been one of those streaks for sure, a time when I know someone is watching over me. As we left Pacific Power this afternoon, Mo turned to me and said, “How likely would it be for us to just randomly decide to use the generator in the middle of the afternoon?” How likely that we would be within a few miles of an Onan specialist. How likely that the vandals didn’t let all the gas drain out after cutting the fuel line, and how likely that the whole thing didn’t just blow up completely. How likely that we would decide to travel highway 58 and then hear that there were heavy snows and landslides on I-5 and it was closed down anyway!

Yup, so far, this has been one heck of a lucky trip.

Vandalized!

Anyone who has ever been robbed will understand the sick, sinking feeling that hit me when I realized that something wasn’t right as we opened the door to the RV storage shed in Redding.

Our trip south this morning began right on time, even though we had a good six inches of snow dumped on us last night. We were packed and ready and on the road by 8, making our way down our unplowed roads to the highway. Traveling south toward Mt Shasta and Weed on Highway 97 was a bit challenging, with long rows of trucks lined up putting on chains. We saw a few California Highway Patrol enforcing the chain up, but with four wheel drive, we were waved on through. For quite some time, I noticed that there wasn’t a single line of tracks through the snow coming toward us and we were the only ones on the road. As we approached Weed, however, the traffic got a bit crazier, with some folks flying through and others crawling along. We actually saw a few unchained trucks going very slowly, and wondered how they got past the CHP. After we stopped for the mandatory agricultural check at Dorris, I hit the button to roll the window back up and nada, nothing. The window was not going up. I had Mo put Jeremy back in his cage, we donned hats and gloves against the wild snowstorm coming in the driver’s window and continued south. I wondered just what this trip was going to be like if we couldn’t close the window to the car, but the wondering only lasted an hour or so, because with some extra coaxing and a prayer on my part, the window finally went all the way back up. Silly.

Mo and I don’t do fast food a lot, but it’s a bit of a tradition to pull into South Weed for a McDonalds McMuffin breakfast. This morning the trip took so long that we almost missed out, and once there, we were amazed at the deep, wet snow. Inside the store we found dozens of Japanese families, with kids running and playing everywhere and long lines for the food. What? Weed? It is never busy!?! With coffee in hand, we asked a young woman next to us if she knew where everyone was going. Seems they were all on some kind of tour bus from Vancouver, BC,which didn’t have chains,and they had been sitting around for over three hours waiting to get back on the road.

The drive over the pass was a bit harrowing, but not too bad, and it was with a sigh of relief that we pulled into the high locked security gates at Redding RV Storage. Mo unlocked the big doors and when we slid them up, I noticed that I smelled gasoline. “That’s weird,” I thought. Then I looked toward the back of the shed, and again thought, “Why is the door open back there?” “Wait, there isn’t a door back there!?” But the light was streaming in, the gas cap was off and drooping, and as I looked more closely, I realized that I was looking through a gaping hole in the solid metal wall at the back of our shed. We looked around in disbelief, trying to see what might have been taken, assuming that someone wanted the gasoline. Then we realized that the back storage area was open, the side storage areas were open, and when Mo looked inside the cab, we saw all the maps and papers strewn all about. With trepidation, we walked back to the main door, left ajar, and stepped inside to find the entire contents of the MoHo dumped and thrown all around the interior.

It took awhile to figure out what was gone, what was destroyed, what was left. The sick feeling and shaky knees didn’t go away for some time, for me at least. I called the Redding police, who were not available “because we need to deal with life threatening situations and don’t have enough personnel at the moment to take a report” Someone will call you later. I then called the owner of the storage facility, and got an answering machine. Within a few minutes, though, he called me back and they came right over to asses the damage. He kept saying,”This has never happened before!”, and then of course had to mention right away that our contract stipulated that we were the ones responsible for insuring the contents of the units.

He opened the back gate of the facility to check out the long wall where one set of units backed up to a long hill above the highway. Sure enough, a second unit had a similar hole where the burglars had used some kind of sawzall to get through the metal. In that case, however, there were boxes right up against the wall and they weren’t able to get in.

After the owner left, we began cleaning up the mess and listing what was missing. The more we looked around, the more amazed we were at what was taken and what wasn’t. They unscrewed the face plate of the DVD/stereo, but didn’t take the unit. They completely emptied our drawers and cupboards, but only stole my Leatherman tool. They didn’t touch the two bottles of whiskey or any of the food, they left the binoculars lying on the sofa, but stole a ring Mo had left in the dash that belonged to her grandmother. They stole the battery charge meter plugged into a socket by the door, the portable inverter, and all of Mo’s electrical volt meters along with our solar panel from the back storage area. For some stupid reason, they stole our fold up picnic table, the kind that has the slats on top that roll into a nice bundle, but then they left the two hundred dollar telescoping ladder right in place.

Much later this evening, the Redding police finally called for a report, and the officer wasn’t the least bit surprised at the erratic, completely unpredictable list of stuff taken and not taken. He said it was obviously a meth burglary, and that Redding was the “meth capital” of California. I wonder how so many different places can claim to be the “meth capital”. They said that about Sonora when I moved there, and they say that about the rural county in Missouri where my son lives, and they say it about Klamath Falls sometimes as well.

The officer said that people on meth are usually looking for money, jewelry, drugs, anything small and light that they can sell. What they take sometimes makes no sense at all because they are all drugged up and completely weird. That surely was the case here. Once we finally got the place cleaned up, it hit me hard that we were incredibly lucky. Nothing had actually been vandalized, no real damage to anything. They didn’t break things, tear doors off, put rocks through the windows, or scratch the paint. Everything seems to work just fine. They didn’t touch our house batteries, or take any of the engine parts, or bother the nice flat screen TV. They took down our little pillow that says “Home is Where You Park It” that we had pinned up on the wall and left it on the couch. ???

I am sooo grateful, and after we traveled south for a couple of hours, the heavy pall began to lift and we kept saying how incredibly lucky we had been. We slipped through the huge California storm without any major problems, even with torrential rains south of Sacramento. For the first time, Mo got to see the Yolo Bypass north of Sacramento in full flood stage, an amazing feat of flood control doing just what it supposed to do. By 7pm, the Technicolor lights of Flag City RV Resort showed up on the gray horizon signaling an end to this long, slightly crazy day. Everything again seems normal, and yet I still feel that moment of incredulous disbelief when I looked back at the gaping hole in the wall at our storage unit. I sure am glad we are taking the MoHo all the way home this time.