Last time, I’d traveled from Myrtle Creek, to Redmond, CA, to Bakersfield, on my way to again visit my brother in Rosamond, CA. This first set of pictures is as I left Bakersfield.
This is one of the amazing valleys you find in California outside of Bakersfield. Once you add water, which is in short supply around here this decade, the place just blooms.
A couple hours later, and I was outside of Tehachapi, CA. This is that neat railroad turn about that’s famous for the elevation it makes in such a small area. The trains wrap around a hillock as they gain elevation. Sadly, this route is soooo busy with freight, there’s no passenger trains that I know of that take the turn around. In the picture you can see, off in the distance, another section of the same train you can see in the foreground as it threads its way up the hill. There is a road that overlooks the route and I’ve been up there with a friend to check it out. Pretty neat. There’s a museum in Tehachapi too. They’ll direct you to the overlook if you ask.
And outside of Mojave are these windmills standing guard over the farmland. I find them fascinating. 
Don’t know what that is, probably a mine of some sort.
And soon, around 30 minutes drive time from that last photo above, I was in Rosamond. Instead of turning west and heading straight for my brother Dan’s neighbor’s house where I’ve parked my rig before, I headed east on Rosamond Blvd and stopped at Norma’s Pub instead. This is the desert and the pub has a huge parking lot for me to park my rig in. And it was early afternoon. I already had called and gotten permission to park in my friends yard again up the hillside next to my brothers house, but the last time, I’d had to have his help pushing the living room slide in when I was ready to leave. It was stuck in the out position. Because of the unevenness of his side yard where I’d been parked. Took a bit of head scratching, with me operating the slide switch and his pushing on it to get it back in.
This visit to the area, I wanted to give my slides mechanical system a break and try the RV park across from Norma’s Pub. I’d driven through it before and it isn’t anything special, but at least it has flat ground. So after saying hello to friends at Norma’s, I walked over and yes, they did have a space for me at Desert Breeze RV Park. And they were trying out their WiFi setup so I’d be their first guinea pig. An hour later, I was all backed in, and hooked up. And…the WiFi sucked. The parks handyman came over and showed me his Apple computer was getting 13 Mbps inside my RV but I was only getting 0.5 Mbps download with my high gain antenna pointed directly at their AP, which eventually was placed right in the window of the offices mobile home. Gah!
The handyman and I did a back and forth WiFi adjusting exercise from Oct. 16th on and eventually, he let me install my private AP. From then on, I had 14 Mbps, and hardly any drop outs from the AP like I’d been getting. So my last 4 weeks there in Rosamond were fairly pleasant. Ended up staying until Nov. 29th. Even had my brother over for a home cooked turkey dinner that I prepared in my convection/MW oven. Something I’d wanted to try for a while. Also visited with my friend Brennan (and his new gf) over at Norma’s one night, and I helped my brother several times with his project car up at his place. Also worked on my own car. Actually made it worse but…
Below there’s a picture of where I set up…right across the street from the Desert Breeze office, near the middle of the park. See that old fashioned TV antenna on the right? My neighbor had satellite so he let me hook up to that to test for local channels. Didn’t improve the number of stations I was getting at all. Same channels I was getting with my amplified RV antenna. And none of them worth watching. Up in Brennan’s side yard, I could get all the major stations from Lancaster; ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, PBS. But we were up on the side of a hill there too. But, no problem, I could just walk across the street to Norma’s and watch my Seahawks games over there. Also, I finally broke down and ordered DirecTv through Winegard (the people that manufacture my satellite dish on the roof). Took until Nov. 26th for the box to show up. And I left there Nov. 29th. But it’s up and running and the Winegard Trav’ler automatic satellite seeking antenna system works great. So far it’s always found the 3 satellites it’s looking for. It’s a $2500 system that was with the RV when I bought it early this year and I hated to just let it sit there unused. So I’ll be paying $74/mo average to DirecTv for the next two years just to avoid letting it sit there idle.
All I have to do is push the ‘On’ button on the Trav’ler and the antenna lifts up out of store position on the top-front of the RV, than seeks out and peaks the three satellites DirecTv uses for programming. Takes several minutes but it’s worked flawlessly every time I’ve used it so far. When I’m ready to move on to another park, it’s just as easy to get it to store on the top of the RV, folded up nice and nearly flat. Safe from overhead wires and other disasters. For you non RV’ers, older roof mounted satellite systems had a unwieldy hand crank and a difficult to use satellite peaking system. Before that the dish was set up outside on the ground. And you had to calculate where the satellites might be, turn your dish to that direction, set the azimuth, and hope you’re close enough for the receiver to actually pick up the satellite. Then came the 2 satellite dishes, than the 3. Each step made it more difficult for the RV’er to set up and align. The Trav’ler is so simple compared to those older systems, you just press and hold the on button for a couple seconds, and it does it’s thing. When I’m ready to leave, just press Off and it stows itself. I’m happy to have it. Here’s a look at it in the travel position…
And a shot of it rotated around and deployed to pick up the satellite. Yea, it does work down in Mexico.
But right now I’m here in Rosamond set up without using the satellite. I did eventually sign up with DirecTv while I was here.
The RV park has some pretty nice cement picnic pads for chairs and tables, but the parking for the RV is on gravel, and soft dirt in some areas of the spot. A couple of my landing pads kept sinking into the dirt, even with those extra pads I put under them. But it was a slow sink, and when I’d notice it, I’d reset the RV.
One day, this guy showed up and ground a tree stump out of the ground behind my RV. Noisy machine that was kinda fun to watch. Whirling blade and grinders going at it and all.
What’s cool is that it’s remote controlled. The operator has a wireless controller. He had it roll off the trailer and come join him in my yard. Pretty neat. I remember the same machine years ago had a driver that sat on top of it. And had a hard time seeing what the blades were doing. This method is much better. After a half hour or so, the old tree stump was nothing but a couple buckets of wood chips that the workers left in the hole.
After the WiFi got fast, and with the great winter weather, mid 70F’s during the day, and balmy at night most of the time I was here, I ended up extending my stay over and over. Until eventually, it was getting to be close to freezing at night. And in the 60’s during the day. Time to leave.
So on the 29th of November I headed south. But not too far, or without difficulties. The day before departure, I wanted to dump my tanks and to make it easier, I pulled in my bedroom slide. It worked fine. And when I was done, it extended fine. So I was all ready to leave the next day. And when I got to that point the morning I was to leave, neither slide would budge. No click, no buzz, nothing. WTF! It had just worked yesterday!
So from 9 AM until 10 AM I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why my slides wouldn’t work. Couldn’t find any fuses in the 3 places where fuses reside in and out of the house. Found the book for my slide system, it’s an HWH Series 310, and it showed fuses on its box. So I crawled under the dash, found the box, pulled and tested a couple fuses. Both good. Than I noticed a two wire connector on the box was empty? Checked the book, and it was the slide switch connector. Why it decided to jump off during the night is beyond me. Found the unplugged cable just lying there, and when I plugged that back on, TAADAA! I had front and rear slide working. So that little issue cost me aggravation and 1/2 hour of time. Luckily, I didn’t have far to go. If I had needed to meet a schedule by leaving early, I would have just paid for one more night and left the next morning on time. But this time, no need, I didn’t have far to go, it’s just a 3.5 hour trip, and even with the late departure, I still had time to stop and shop.
My destination was the Salton Sea. I’d spent Thanksgiving of 2015 there at Oasis Palms and looked forward to staying there again because the weather there is so mild this time of year, and last year they had blazingly fast WiFi.
Here’s a few shots of the LA Hills. I go this way to avoid having to inch my way through LA. The trip takes me along CA-138 to I-15 to I-215 to I-10 to CA-86. Whew. Glad I have a working Garmin GPS.
Arrived at Oasis Palms RV park near the Salton Sea exactly at 4 pm. That was after stopping to shop for an hour in Palm Springs. And a couple other stops looking for a fuel station where I could fit my rig in and get diesel. Jeese. I didn’t know there were so many stations where I just won’t fit with the car in tow.
Never did find a station, but found out from the manager of the RV park that the best prices in the area are another 20 miles down the road. Well, I’m heading that way anyway so I’ll just hold off on the fill up of the RV until I head to Mexico. I’m going to need 3/4’s of a tank though. That’s about 70 gallons for $2.45/gallon. Whoa. Well, whatever, I knew that fuel was expensive when I started RV’ing. And here the rig is all situated on the parking pad.
Just back from a couple hours touring around the area. Something I couldn’t do last time I was here because I didn’t have a toad. Have to go 7 miles north to get to a cluster of newer restaurants. And 20 miles south to get to a casino and truckstop. This area is all farms. No little town anywhere nearby.
Nice cement pads for the RV to park on. They cost you though, but they come with full service; water, 50 amp electric, and sewer. I’m using the Passport America card and it’s still $160 per week. Up in Rosamond, I was paying $125 without using the card. Here they call themselves a ‘resort’ but they don’t even have cable TV at the sites, and the water carries a warning. They could treat it if they wanted but they don’t bother. My point is that many RV parks put on airs calling themselves a resort only to justify higher than normal prices. This place is miles from anywhere. And really has nothing spectacular about it. Sure it’s nice and all, but wow, people that pay $280 per week here are paying too much in my opinion. But, focusing on the good parts, I only pay $160 per week because they take the PPA card. Woohoo!
I can pick up several OTA (Off The Air) TV stations with my amplified antenna, and I have the satellite working too. 
They’ve got this little pond. Kind of nice. The water throughout the park carries a warning though. Arsenic and something else. It’s just a warning, don’t get excited. Tastes bad too. Lucky I installed my fine micron under sink filter a few months ago so the water tastes fine in my coffee.
That’s the clubhouse and pool in the next pic. They have a nice big pool table in there now. The TV room still has the giant TV, DVDs, books, games, etc. Everything is very clean and tidy. Bathrooms are clean, as is the laundry room.
Last year I was parked in a back in spot to the left of this fire pit. This is a tradition here that people hang out at the fire every evening shooting the bull.
So that’s it for now. I’m now all caught up with my postings. The next one will probably come from inside Mexico in a couple weeks.
Thanks for reading!