A good day birding. We’re done with everything else, so we went birding. We drove through the L.A. Basin and out the top, up the Angeles Crest Highway. Way up above 5,000 feet, we got Anna’s Hummingbird, Acorn Woodpecker, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Black Phoebe, Say’s Phoebe, Steller’s Jay, Western Scrub-jay, Common Raven, Mountain Chickadee, White-breasted Nuthatch, Wrentit, Western Bluebird, Spotted Towhee, Dark-eyed Junco, and a lifer, one of our two target birds, the White-headed Woodpecker! That was so cool. Got good looks at it. A little later we stumbled onto a flock of Lawrence’s Goldfinches, a lifer we hadn’t even started looking for yet! That’s a great thing about looking for a specific bird. Whether you get the target bird or not, you’ll probably get something else really good anyway. To get a new bird, that means you’re going to be looking in new places. We stopped for the night at the Holiday Inn in Palmdale. We’re out of the cruddy air in the L. A. Basin, but we can still reach the San Gabriel Mountains from the backside. One more target bird to go, the Mountain Quail. We’ll try again tomorrow. Here is our updated map.http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=205131835882428706345.0004a0e19bb8bf61d6456&msa=0&ll=34.234512,-106.875&spn=22.765444,56.118164
Update
No news on the motorhome.
We called for a tow on the Jeep and they were great. They had us hooked up and towed away in half an hour.
Luis towed the Jeep and me to Jack Powell Chrysler Jeep and dumped us off. It’s California. They have outside bays.
They were great there and had us over to Enterprise Car Rental in half an hour. Enterprise Car Rental put me in a Chevy HHR. It looks a lot like a PT Cruiser. In less than a half-hour, I was on the road back to the motel to pick up Judy and our luggage. We’re done with the Hotel California. We’ve moved on.
We’re at the Anaheim Sheraton next to Disneyland.
It’s a very nice hotel.
We met up with Matt, Lindsay and the boys at Disneyland. The dogs went to the Disney Kennel Club. We got to ride on Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain, the Haunted House, and Space Mountain. Space Mountain is always Judy’s favorite. She can’t enjoy roller-coasters because she’s afraid of heights. At Space Mountain you can’t look down because you’re in the dark, so she gets all the benefit of the motion of a roller-coaster without the paralyzing fear part.
The diagnosis on the Jeep is a bad U Joint on the front driveshaft. No projection about when it will be fixed yet, because they couldn’t connect with the Warranty Company. They’ll try again Monday.
I think we’ll just keep on driving in the rental car until it drops too.
Well.
Some days don’t turn out like you expect. Like today for instance. We met up with Chad for lunch. You remember Chad. Friends with Matt since kidhood. Chad is a Navy Lieutenant Commander now. He lives on Whidby Island in Washington. He happens to be in San Diego for a few days, because he is on his way to Afghanistan for his *fifth* tour to there or Iraq. It was good to hang out with him for a while and visit. No problem on the trip to San Diego and back. Traffic on the freeway kind of sucked, but this it Southern California. Traffic on the freeways always sucks. One last dinner with Barb before we leave. On the drive back home in the dark, we feel the wobble and clunking underneath us in the Jeep. Darn. We made it back to our room, but by that time it was worse. I don’t really know what the problem is, but my guess from the feel of the seat and feet is front differential. The Jeep is not moving under its own power again until it has had professional help. It’s not like we invited this. We’ve never missed a service interval. The motorhome had just had a full service about 1,000 miles before the engine blew. The Jeep had just had its 90,000 mile, very expensive, go-through-everything service, before we left Colorado. We had planned to check out of this hotel tomorrow, drive to Anaheim in the morning and meet up in the afternoon with Matt, Lindsay, and the boys, who happen to be at Disneyland for three days. The car died, so we’ve changed our plans. Now, we’re going to call for a tow-truck tomorrow, *then* check out of this hotel, drive to Anaheim, and meet up in the afternoon with Matt, Lindsay, and the boys, who happen to be at Disneyland for three days; but we’re going to do it in a rental car. We don’t care if we’re leaving a trail of wreckage behind us, we want to go see the grandkids on their first-ever trip to Disneyland! We’ll decide what to do next, after we’ve done that.
Motor update
It’s still on the bench. Photos have been sent to Good Sam, the warranty company. Good Sam has acknowledged the photos, but hasn’t responded yet. They still haven’t settled on the extent of the repair. We’re staying tuned.
Judy shipped more stuff back to Colorado. We can put both the back seats up now. It looks a little less like we’re living out of our car.
We think it’s a little tough on the dogs; traveling in the car and staying in hotel rooms. Not much time outside. No grassy yards lately. So today they got a play day at Dogtopia.
Judy dropped them off early. Annie slept off to the side by herself. Henry played with other dogs in the play-yard nonstop all day long. Tonight they’re both snoring.
I like to lie on Sue and John’s floating dock while the boats are zooming up and down the river in Parker. I like the motion when all the mixed up wakes hit. I’ve never had a problem with motion; boats, roller-coasters, airplanes, jumping out of airplanes. This trip, though, after lying on the dock for a while, I got vertigo when I got up. I had to walk sideways to the ramp to get back to the deck. That was odd.
We drove on the freeway between 5 and 6 pm to go get the dogs from the doggie day care. That wasn’t good. We found our way back to the motel on surface streets.
I describe our hotel here in Vista as “California Classic”. Judy’s description is a little less charitable. It’s old. Thin walls and ceilings. There are people here that seem to have nowhere else to go. Sometimes the working poor get to a point that they can’t come up with enough money for house payments or monthly rent. They’re living week to week. It’s ironic, that having got to that point, they end up in a place they can rent weekly, at a cumulative cost of more than they would have to pay monthly for an equivalent place, but they’ve lost the momentum it takes to get there. Some of them are here.
Meanwhile, Becky is having a fine time driving around the English countryside. The biggest challenges seem to be keeping to the left while turning at intersections, and shifting with her left hand.
Tony adopted a hat.
What a drive!
From the scorching triple digit teens of the Arizona/California Mojave desert to the cool misty coast in just a few hours. A 50 degree drop in temperature. We’re in Vista, visiting with Judy’s sister-in-law, Barbara.
Vista. That’s really close to Oceanside. And where do you suppose we ate dinner our first night in Vista?
ANGELO’S! In Oceanside.
And what do we eat at Angelo’s?
HOT PASTRAMI SANDWICHES!
(Well, I eat hot pastrami sandwiches. Judy eats taquitos.) Hot Pastrami Sandwiches. A blast from our childhood in Long Beach.