Dec 5th
Desert sunrises are pretty spectacular, and this morning’s did not disappoint. Mia had school this morning and then we went for a hike. We walked down the dirt road toward a distant mesa. We went off the road to try and hike up the hill, and Oreo started yelping. He had stepped on a small piece of cactus, and now he was trying to pull it out with his teeth. However, when he put his mouth on it, the little needles impaled his face. I turned around to help, and had several of pieces of sharp cacti stuck to me. Mia and Kathleen had them on their shoes too. I lifted Oreo out of the immediate area, and we started removing needles from his face first. They were hard to remove, because they were barbed, and he yelped. As we were pulling them out, they would get stuck in our fingers. They were extremely sharp and painful. Once his face was clear, we started working on his paws. Oreo was screaming and gnashing his teeth at us, while we pulled them out. It was heartbreaking to see him in this much pain. We got them all out, and we all found a safe place to sit and lick our wounds. Our fingers were sore and there was some blood. We abandoned our hike, and walked back to the trailer. Oreo would not stray from the road. I looked up this particular plant when we got back. This devil plant is called hanging chain cholla, nicknamed jumping cholla because the slightest brush of the cactus, and these sections would fall off onto you or jump on you. Oreo was traumatized, and wouldn’t wander away from our trailer. We had to force him to go out on bathroom walks. I did walk around our campsite and verify that we did not have any of that plant near us. Someone had built an elaborate fire ring out of rocks near our site, so we had a small fire tonight. It was the first of our trip. Of course, Oreo would not come outside to join us.
Dec 6th
We spent most of the day on the road. At each stop Oreo was being very cautious about where he stepped. We did stop for gas in Quartsite, AZ. It is fascinating. There are hundreds, if not thousands of RVs scattered in the desert, and this small town is overrun with people. I hadn’t realized how many people come here in the winter. We stopped tonight on BLM land at the south entrance to Joshua Tree National Park, CA. There were at least twenty other campers at this spot, but there is so much room, that everyone still has a lot of privacy. I took Oreo for a walk tonight, and he refused to leave the road.
Dec 7th
We drove a lot today. Our plan was to drive up into the Central Valley and find a place to stay, but plans don’t always work out. We had sticker shock when we stopped to fill up the tank. We had just paid a $1.50 a gallon more than we had anywhere else in the country. The Los Angeles traffic was bad, but even worse was the brown air. As we drove up interstate 5, we started looking for places to stop for the night. There aren’t many options on 5, without paying for an RV park. At 5pm, we pulled over at a rest stop, and I made dinner while we thought about our options. The rest stop was too loud to sleep in, so we started driving again. We decided to drive all the way back to Sonoma County tonight. We didn’t want to try and back the trailer up next to our house late at night, so I called my parents and asked if we could park in front of their house, in Petaluma, for one night. We arrived in Petaluma late, and after a very short visit with my parents, went to bed.
Dec 8th
Mom made breakfast for us this morning, and we drove home. The neighborhood kids were so excited for Mia to be home, that they had a party for her tonight. Pizza and pinatas. This will be the last entry on the blog until after the holidays. Stay tuned. We should be on the road again by Jan 15th.
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