Catching up at last

We have finally reached White Post Virgina the home of our dear friends Winkie and Mathew Mackay-Smith. Lots more about them later. We have had two days rest after a punishing schedule on the east coast of the United States and I am finally starting to catch up with photo filing and editing. I have gathered my thoughts, found some fast internet and will start where we left off at Meg and Jimmy's in Yucca Valley.
We left the four of them after dinner and drove back to Ontario to sleep in a hotel near the airport ready for an early flight out to San Francisco the next morning. The drive was into both the setting sun and a solid three lanes of head lights. Exhausting! So it was with great relief that we deposited our hire car and trundled into the hotel.
I have been carting my bathers around with me in the mistaken hope that I could put in half an hour of lap swimming most mornings while we were away. Somehow the plan has been thwarted at every turn, however when we reached our room and I got stuck into all the signage and hotel printouts I discovered that the Red Roof had a pool and spa. So down to the ground floor, into my swimmers and a quick plunge into an small freezing outdoor pool. My splash generated a round of applause from a small group in the spa who thought that the resident Aussie was quite off her head and no, Mike was not there with the camera - sorry :-))
PS these blogs are being published at huge speed and I know there are a few spelling mistakes and typos - please forgive your roving farm correspondent - I will clean up the errors (or not) at a later date - Jx

Slap Chop

There is such a huge amount happening every day that most posts on this blog get done very late - sorry. However tonight I just need to put up this note. We are at Four Season Farm with Barbara and Eliot and have just had the most amazing meal. The photo says it all.

Went upstairs to bed and checked my email and found Rory's comment if you have never seen it before it is amusing - go Rory!  His question was "is Jimmy using a Slap Chop?"

Joshua Tree Farmers Market

There are farmers markets everywhere in the United States. They can be on any day of the week and even in tiny towns like Joshua Tree where there are precious few vegetables grown.
There was a good array of early summer produce but very little of it was grown locally and just like the farmers markets in Canberra many of the tomatoes were hydroponic.

There were oranges from as far away as San Diego and these berry growers come from Nipomo which is north west of Los Angeles -  a five hour drive.

The fruit was absolutely delicious. Madison is a fan of raspberries, Gavin prefers strawberries.

Mexican Food

The first night at Yucca Valley we went out for Mexican food. Mexican restaurants are often a really great family affair in this country and it was another opportunity to sample some of the wonderful choices available. I am still trying to get my head around the names and styles of all the dishes but it seems that everything we try is delicious.

Mike had a sizzling meat dish and I just had to try the deep fried fish tacos. An unexpected combination which works.
There was live music too.

It was a bit too close making it very difficult to talk - Gavin sums up the situation perfectly.

The RV

For the uninitiated an RV is a 'Recreational Vehicle', and we were uninitiated. This is no ordinary carivan, it is huge and has an articulated hitch on the middle of the 4WD tray.

Inside there is the usual bedroom and bathroom area. The middle section has sides which move in while on the road but which expand out to provide a big living area when you are camping.

The back is a garage for Jimmy's 4 wheeler motor bikes. It doubles as a second bedroom and play area for Madison and Gavin.

The House

Jimmy and Meg have a single story house with a large veranda. There are a few fruit trees out the front but gardening basically consists of raking sand.
People use water but when I asked Meg where it came from she didn't know so I decided to research the matter.
Water comes from dams and reservoirs as part of the State Water Project, underground water is also used especially in drought years. More details on the Where does MY water come from? website.

Snapshots

Here are some snapshots taken at home, at the park and at the farmers market at the town called Joshua Tree.

Visiting Meg, Jimmy, Madison & Gavin

The reason we went to Yucca Valley was to visit Mike's daughter Meg and her family who live in the dessert east of Los Angeles. Here they all are from left to right Mike, Meg, Gavin, Madison and Jimmy.
The house is situated 30 mins from the base at Palm Springs where Jimmy works as a naval medic. It is also a commutable distance for Meg who is Principle at a primary school in Riverside but her trip to work takes an hour and a half.

The landscape is dry, sandy and arid. There are rocky outcrops on the side of the valley and as well as the usual small desert shrubs there are these amazing Joshua trees everywhere.

Driving From Los Angeles To Yucca Valley

We only had to drive once from Seth and Em's home to our apartment to know that if we were going to hire a car we were definitely going to need the GPS that we had just bought. The technical hitch - the USA maps refused to load and kept crashing my computer. It took a fraught six hours but I eventually worked it out and mention it here only because in my search for a solution I discovered that there were other people who had had the same problem with TomTom as me. I simply didn't have enough free hard drive space on my laptop to allow the maps to upload. We are traveling with plenty of portable hard drives so I did some spring cleaning and bobs your uncle.
So on with picking up a hire car. We were given a Toyota Yaris and as my mother and a couple of friends have told me they are roomy, comfortable and very fuel efficient. Very happy. Not so happy on my first go at driving on the right hand side of the road. Only one truly terrifying moment to report. In an indecisive moment on a downtown Los Angeles highway I couldn't make up my mind whether to peel off to the right or keep going straight. Sitting in the middle of a stripped piece of tarmac with streams of cars speeding on both sides of me and no room to accelerate so that I could merge got very tense. Mike just went very quiet and we did make it out of the city to visit Mike's other daughter Meg who lives in Yucca Valley, East of LA.

The drive is a steady climb towards the San Bernadino Mountains which still had a mantle of snow. Would have been really beautiful if you had been able to see them properly without the smog. Close to the top the smog starts to clear and the wind starts to blow. At the start of the pass that opens out into Yucca Valley proper there are wind turbines as far as the eyes can see. What a positive sight.