The Ghost Town is anything but abandoned during the holidays.
Once again, we returned to our funky little stopover between travel days. The journey was uneventful and went smoothly. Richard got in a short ride up Box Canyon to get his ya-ya’s out. Then we cut through Joshua Tree to catch Highway 247 from Yucca Valley on the other side.
Hey! I spy a Safari Condo van up ahead. It’s a good bet we know who that is!
We knew Francois was in the vicinity with his travel buddy, who met up with him in SoCal. We scanned for vans as we headed up the road, and did in fact catch up with him right after the Cholla Cactus Gardens. His Safari Condo van is a particular shade of deep grey, plus, it has a snail logo on the back, so we knew it was him. We followed along after them on the main road, until they pulled off to park and go look at something. It was very crowded in Joshua Tree that day, so we didn’t want to try to find parking for Dory. Instead, we rolled down the windows as we passed by, and yelled at them to “Get out of the road!!” Waves and kisses were exchanged and I hope they had a blast in Joshua Tree. Now we know we will see him again in the summer, but in the parking lot/campground in Quebec. He promised wine. I’m just documenting that here to hold him to it.
Howdy partners and a Merry Christmas to ye!
We got an early start and made good time, so we got to poke around the ghost town a little bit. It is nicely decorated for the holidays and had more people walking around than we have ever seen there. The parking lot even seemed kind of full and I can’t recall ever seeing more than a couple of cars down there. Of course, there were the New Year’s ATV people, flying their flags and buzzing around in their brightly lit little off road buggies. Even our loop felt hopping.
We can’t skip this…
We rolled in with very little gas – not that we hadn’t noticed; we were monitoring the projected range and miles to go the whole way. So the first order of business was to fill up in town where there are lots of choices for gas stations. Then, it was a short hop around the corner to Penny’s. We would wonder if they were starting to recognize us, but it was a different server this time. I had fried chicken waffles and they were worth every logged calorie.
Fun little stop as we make tracks toward home. We will be dodging severe weather alerts all the way home.
Total miles from Anza Borrego: 243.7, 17.3 mpg, 6 hours 38 min. Site 9, hookups until kid tripped on power cord. Nice dump. Bitsy pieces of service until you get over the little hill bordering the loop. Excellent service above/beyond the hill. Also, Penny’s always has excellent wifi.
