Monday, December 14, 2009
Dec 14 - Santa Barbara
Today we slept in a bit then headed into Santa Barbara to stroll along State St. and do some window shopping. It was a nice day today, they said that it had been raining here for the past few days, so we were lucky. When it began to get close to lunch time, we got back in our car and went down to the pier where there were two pretty good seafood restaurants. We ate at Moby Dick's and had a table right at the window! The view was great!
After lunch we did a little shopping, and Barbara bought a Santa Barbara sweatshirt. The walk along the bike path was really nice. Next time we should rent one of those bikes that have bench seats and look like rickshaws - that would be super fun!
We drove back to our campground to hook up to our RV and left Santa Barbara around 4pm. Stopped in Paso Robles for dinner then headed home :(
It's always sad when we come to the end of a fun trip, there is so much still to see, I always just want to keep on going! It was fun sharing this journey with my Mom and Barb, we'll have to do it again real soon!
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Dec 13 - AZ Territorial Prison, and on to CA
Today we got up early and went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Then we headed to the Arizona Territorial Prison. We walked around the old cell blocks, and looked at several artifacts from the actual inmates. One interesting thing is that when they closed the prison, it was then used for the Yuma High School for a short period of time. The school's team was even called "The Prisoners"! Looking out from the prison grounds, you could see the Colorado river.
The scenery leaving Yuma was very pretty with lots of planted fields and dairy farms. Again we were very close to the border of Mexico, so we encountered 3 Border Patrol checkpoints. This slowed us down a bit, but it was exciting! We even saw the officers pull over a few cars, take a lady away and the really cool sniffer dogs!! I guess that everything was OK with the lady because we saw her later down the road with her Mexico license plates :)
Almost as soon as we left Yuma, we saw the Imperial Sand Dunes. There were several ATV's scurrying up and down the dunes and it sure looked like fun! The next point of interest as we entered CA was the Sonny Bono Salton Sea. Yes, I did say the "Sonny Bono" Salton Sea - lol. It was HUGE! It seemed to go along for miles and miles. Even though we were pretty far from the border by this time, we still went through one more checkpoint just before Palm Desert. After waiting to get through, we decided to stop here for lunch (Palm Desert, not the checkpoint).
Coming into the LA area, we saw hundreds and hundreds of windmills and snow in the mountains. Then it was on to Santa Barbara. We made a quick stop in Calabasas at Johnny Rockets for dinner and enjoyed all the Christmas lights at the mall.
About 10:30pm, we pulled into the OceanMesa campground at El Capitan for the night.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Dec 12 - Tombstone (again), and drive to Yuma
Since Tombstone was only a 30 min. drive from our KOA, we decided to go back this morning and see Boot Hill, the visitors center and catch a glimpse of the shoot-out site at the OK Corral! We also saw the house that Wyatt Earp actually lived in. We could have spent the rest of the day seeing everything, but we had to get on the road. It's always good to leave something for next time!
Todays drive was about 6 hours, and we didn't see too much along the way. We did see a couple more border patrol checkpoints and passed through a little bit of Tucson. This is where we had lunch. Well, sort of - we had McDonalds in the RV! Finally, we came into Yuma about 15 minutes before the Territorial Prison closed :( Our camp is only about 20 minutes away from the prison, so we decided that we would get up early and have breakfast at Cracker Barrel, then see the prison first thing in the morning on our way to the highway.
We had a great dinner at Chretin's Mexican Restaurant in Yuma! It seems that we can't get enough of the authentic cuisine!! Then we drove back to the KOA that was located far out in the middle of farm land! Only a few miles from the CA border and there are huge dairy farms, and cotton fields! This is kind of cool because until Yuma, all we saw was desert and scrub.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Dec 11 - Silver City, NM, and Tombstone, AZ
We woke up really early today so we could spend some time checking out the town where Billy The Kid was born, lived, went to school, robbed his first bank and was jailed - Silver City, NM. When we got there, the lady at the visitors center was new and did not know much about where too find these historic sights. We read the brochures but nothing was very clear. We did see the site where his boyhood home once stood however. There was a replica of his cabin on the site that was donated by Ron Howard from his movie set from the "Hiding". Billy the Kid's mother is also burried in the cemetary here. We still had a a bit of a drive to get to Tombstone, so we made sandwiches in the RV and ate in the parking lot at the visitors center.
On our way to Tombstone, we crossed the Continental Divide at an altitude of 6388 feet. We stopped at the site of the McComas incident. This was where Judge McComas and his wife were killed by Apache Indians, and there son was kidnapped and never recovered. Tombstone is a one block area that is closed to vehicles and allows you to stroll among the historic buildings. There are markers that tell the history, and exact locations of famous events including The O K Corral, Wyatt Earps home, Boothill Graveyard, and the Bird Cage Theatre. We looked in a few gift shops and took pictures of the stage coaches and wagons. Things were starting to close up, so we decided to have dinner right there in town at the Crystal Palace Saloon. On our way back to the car, we heard Christmas Caroling at the Historic Courthouse, so we stopped to listen. As luck would have it, they were having their annual Holiday cebration that included the lighting of the Christmas Tree, carolers, the Old Arizona Brass Band, refreshments and the lighting of luminaries that encircled the whole building! Mom really enjoyed the band!! Inside there were some exhibits about the O K Corral, a gift shop and display cases with Indian and western artifacts.
We headed to our campsite in Bensen, AZ for the night. Had a little difficulty finding it, got caught in a parking lot and couldn't get out without unhitching the car! Oh well, I followed Rich in the Honda and made it to the camp by 8:30pm, a pretty early night!
Dec 10 - San Antonio to Las Cruces
Today was another day of driving. We headed out of the campsite in San Antonio to begin one of our longest trips of this vacation. On the way to Las Cruces, NM, we stopped in Ozona for lunch at Subway, then on to Walmart for a few supplies. Again we followed the Mexican border for several miles, and went through another border patrol station. Before we left Texas and entered New Mexico, we stopped for dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. We all enjoy this restaurant at home, but how cool to eat at a Texas Roadhouse in TEXAS!! We pushed on to Las Cruces for the night. In all, it was 14 hours on the road - Yikes!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
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