For Christmas this year, we really were more focused on gratitude for the gifts we have of our travel life, health, great relationship, awesome families and so much more! We marked this day by chatting with those we love including parents, kiddos and grandkiddos…and even figured out how to make an actual bundt cake in the instant pot! And it wasn’t mushy, but very tasty! We love learning how to cook using only electricity. They sell little bundt cake pans specifically for the instant pot, fyi.

California has a nonprofit conservancy called The Wildlands Conservancy. They protect over 178,000 acres in 22 preserves and reserves throughout the state. We visited two, and they were incredible. We did some hiking at the Whitewater Preserve not far from Palm Springs. We saw actual wild bighorn sheep hanging out on the mountains! The scenery was amazing. We then hiked three miles at Mission Creek Preserve which was a few miles down the road. Very rugged area with mountain lion and snake warnings. I started to get a little creeped out when the sun started getting low and we were still a couple miles from the truck. 

It was lovely there and had a really nice, fresh scent. Sounds weird, but it’s true! Maybe from being in the desert for a few weeks which  has very little scent, the few plants and trees around us suddenly awakened that sense again for us. It was nice!

We spent a little bit of time actually inside Joshua Tree National Park. Don’t let the serene photos fool you. That place is packed in December! Temperatures are great this time of year and people are visiting during the holidays. Touron behavior was on full display: Someone in a Mercedes past us going at least 70 mph on the two-lane road through the park. In the process they nearly hit someone head on. No parking signs were completely disregarded. Cars were randomly left all over the place including on top of nature. Some will stop at nothing to get a “perfect” photo for some version of social media. If you are at a national park with a Gucci backpack, heels and a dress walking through an ancient cactus garden, how desperate are you for likes? We didn’t stay long. It’s beautiful, but we found it a tad stressful to be in the masses. 

Near the end of our stay I finally met the ladies camping next to us at Twentynine Palms. One of them is an active duty Marine. She had an interesting angle on some things. For example, it is much more difficult for women to buy new uniforms than it is for the men. They often aren’t available at all, so they have to go to surplus and thrift stores! That seems ridiculous. I noticed a ton of maternity sizes in the uniform section at the Exchange, though. I guess their gamble that female Marines would get pregnant all the time didn’t pay off. Get them the supplies they need to serve our country for crying out loud! This seems like a great nonprofit opportunity for someone with connections.

Marine Corps Logistics Base in Barstow, CA

Our two-hour trip to Barstow went smoothly. We drove through mountains on a couple of very long stretches of road where in some places we could see no sign of humans anywhere, a big part along Route 66 with its kitschy roadside motels of yesteryear…most abandoned and suffering at the hands of bored vandals. It was fascinating, yet would be scary broken down in the dark. We past a dormant volcano that was a big tourist attraction along Route 66 back in the day, Amboy Crater. We found out later that all the black rock that was around it was hardened lava from its last eruption about 10,000 years ago. We would love to stop at some of these places as we pass them, but with the cats in the truck I’m not sure that is a good idea.

This base has a modern, well-equipped fitness center, super nice tennis court, clean, well-maintained bowling alley, a cafe  and a very nice, well-stocked commissary appropriately sized for a smaller base. The RV park itself is nothing special, but is safe and pretty quiet except for highway noise. Our site was level and the hookups worked well. There is one working washing machine and two dryers that are free to use.  It’s right off the highway and a convenient spot to hunker down through another holiday weekend. 

We did some minor camper maintenance while in Barstow. We ordered a few supplies on Amazon and picked them up at the Amazon locker at a Love’s Truck Stop. I felt compelled to change our ClearSource water filters after dealing with the weird arsenic water in Gila Bend. I disinfected the filter holders and added the fresh filters. Greg repaired our water hose, replaced our water regulator (on-demand water heater doesn’t work well if water pressure is too low), fixed a cabinet and made sure to have a fresh supply of tank valve handles on hand. Those suckers break fairly often and they are definitely a necessity.

There are big ravens in the west. They look like they have enough brain power to make plans, so we respect them and give them their space! We have noticed a couple of times that they like to check out the catio and its contents. They haven’t blatantly harassed the cats, but they have buzzed the tower a few times. More adventurous catio views are upcoming as our next two stops are a Boondockers Welcome and a Harvest Host along “the five” as we head north on the final leg of our journey to Port Orchard, WA.