Homeward Bound

Mar 20th

We parted ways with Margie, Shannon and Sequoia (the Canadians) this morning. They are heading to Sequoia NP and Yosemite, and we are heading home. It was sad, but they have plans to come and visit us at home in a couple of weeks. Our route home took us on Highway 14 to Cedar City, Utah. Little did we know that the pass over the mountain is 9,900 feet in elevation. Lucky for us the weather was good, and the road was clear. We stopped at the summit and let Mia play in the snow. In Cedar City, we stopped to get groceries, and as we started heading west again, we were confronted by big black clouds. About 10 miles outside of town, it started snowing. Within 5 miles, there was over an inch on the road. We turned around in a panic and drove back to Cedar City to wait it out. We parked at Walmart, but the snow just kept accumulating. It started getting dark, so we decided just to spend the night in the parking lot. That’s when our “neighbors” started having a dispute. In the very trashy skoolie (school bus converted for living) beside us, we heard screaming and yelling. A man was screaming in pain, and a woman yelling. “Ooowe! Stop it! Help!”,screamed the man. Followed by the woman yelling for him to close the door to the back of the bus. At one point we saw the man scrambling to climb out of the back of the bus, only to get pulled back in by his hair. He managed to escape out the front door. A few minutes later, he slams the front door open again and climbs back in, but is immediately shoved back out into the snow. He starts pounding on the door and now they are both screaming. He finally walks off toward Walmart. At this point Kathy starts calling RV parks, because we are not feeling very safe. They were all full because of the snow storm. Within 5 minutes we were surrounded by police cars, and officers were pounding on the skoolie’s door. We packed up our stuff and left. On the other side of the parking lot there were several other RVs, so we drove over to join them. Safety in numbers. We still didn’t sleep well because of all the traffic noise.

Mar 21st

Almost all of the snow that fell last night was gone when we took off this morning. Our route through Nevada on Highway 93, is known as the Silver Trail, or the E.T. Highway because Area 51 is somewhere out here. We stopped at Kershaw-Ryan State Park to empty the trailer tanks, and we talked to the ranger there. The park is gorgeous and it was devoid of people. We will have to come back here to stay. We camped at 20-mile beach on Walker Lake. It is just outside of the town of Hawthorne, NV. Hawthorne is an army munitions depot, and the landscape is covered with hundreds of bunkers.

Mar 22nd

The temperature is so nice that we were able to wear shorts again. We drove all the way home today, and it was pretty uneventful. It is nice driving where you know the roads by heart. We have realized how much we like Sonoma County, and that no place across this country would satisfy us like Sebastopol. It’s good to be home. We have missed it. We will be here for several weeks, and I will not be updating this blog while we are here. Hopefully, more to come. Bye for now.