Last Thrills at Red Rock Canyon (part 5!)

High Desert Weekend Trip-log #12
Red Rock Canyon State Park - Sun, 27 Mar, 2002. 2:15pm

Whew. Part 5. Five blogs just about this tiny state park in the middle of nowhere. We haven't even been here that long! But the time has been packed. After stumbling on and exploring the Old Dutch Cleanser Mine (previous blog) we drove back around to the main red-rocks area of the park. Rocks in brilliantly colored layers are exposed here because a fault line runs through the area. Layers on one side of the fault were lifted up by tectonic action then eroded over millions of years by rain and wind.



This particular area of the park doesn't require any hiking or even any offroad driving.



Despite the ease of access the area didn't have many visitors, even getting on toward mid-afternoon. I think that's testament to the park's remote location and the fact that most people passing through are zooming along the highway at 70+ mph trying to get somewhere else. On a Sunday that's probably "Home, to Southern California."



Speaking of home, we've got to start heading that way, too. But not to Southern California. Our trip back to the Bay Area is actually longer.

The Long Road Home (Let's Go Shopping!)

High Desert Weekend Trip-log #13
Back Home - Sun, 27 Mar, 2002. 11pm

We got home from our weekend road trip to California's high desert tonight around 10:15pm, 52 hours after we left. For a 52 hour trip it's impressive that I've written 13 blogs. That's a blog every 4 hours... including the hours I was asleep! 😅 The rate isn't really surprising, though, as when there's something fun and beautiful to do, I can write a lot about it. Five of these 13 blogs are about visiting Red Rock Canyon State Park, and we only spent 4-5 hours total there.

This final blog covers 8 hours of the trip. Those 8 hours were our drive home from the park. BTW that drive could have been faster than 8 hours, but we took a longer route & made several stops because... Let's Go Shopping!

Leaving from the park we made our first stop less than an hour later in Tehachapi. Tehachapi is a small town nestled high in the Tehachapi Mountains, in the pass between the Mojave Desert and the San Joaquin Valley. The small downtown is being revitalized to look like the old train station that used to be the remote town's main business. Today, though, we were only stopping for lunch.

Next up we stopped in Bakersfield. This was purely a shopping stop as we trolled a TJX discount store for more of those plates and bowls we've replaced our dinnerware set with. They didn't have any, so we got the hell out of Dodge. It's like the city motto is printed right on the signs: "Now leaving Bakersfield".

Bakersfield is where we faced a decision, though. If we drove north up Route 99 we could visit 2-3 more stores for shopping. But it would add time and distance compared to the fastest route home, crossing over to Interstate 5. We chose More Driving, More Shopping.

Our next stop was in Visalia. What can I say about Visalia? Yup, it's there. And their TJX store didn't have what we were looking for, either.

Our last major stop on the way home was in Fresno. Fresno has grown, surprisingly, into California's 5th largest city. With a population of 545,000 it has surpassed Oakland and the state's capital, Sacramento.

It's not just the city of Fresno that has grown. The metro area now tops 1 million. We shopped a TJX store in the city's fast growing northwest suburbs. Seriously, last time I was in this area (several years ago) it was farms. Now it's all shopping malls.

In Fresno we wrapped up the "Let's go shopping!" portion of our trip. Once again, we left empty-handed. Our next step to complete our dinnerware set will be to buy a few more pieces from eBay sellers at eye-wateringly high prices.

From Fresno it was still a few hours home. We made two more brief stops along the way, for gas and dinner. Thankfully traffic on the Sunday night return into the Bay Area was reasonable. We encountered minimal delays in the usual bottlenecks around Gilroy. We pulled into our own garage at about 10:15pm.

Total mileage for the day: 450 miles, including the drive to & around Red Rock Canyon.

Total mileage for the trip: 890 miles.

Off to Hawaii!

Hawaii April Travelog #1
38,000' somewhere over the Pacific - Fri, 8 Apr, 2022, 7:20pm

This evening we're flying to Hawaii!

"But wait, didn't you just get back from a road trip to the high desert?" you might ask.

Ha ha, it only seems that way because I got so backlogged with my blog that the weekend road trip we did two weeks ago I only finished posting about a few hours ago. 😅 In fact getting that done before leaving for Hawaii was a goal I set several days ago and had to scramble to finish. I posted our wrap-up of that trip barely 75 minutes before leaving for the airport on this trip. 🥵

Speaking of airports, and for that matter the whole game of planes-trains-and-automobiles, so far it hasn't been too bad.

→ We arrived at the airport to see a crowd in the baggage check area. My elite status got us into the short line where we were served next, waiting only 2 minutes or so.

→ The TSA PreCheck line was pretty backed up, but end-to-end the whole security check processtook barely 9 minutes. I remind myself, when I feel frustrated about such waits, that when I was traveling 150,000 miles a year back in the late 00s— before PreCheck was a thing— I considered getting through a security checkpoint in 10 minutes fast. Living in the future is awesome.

→ Once on the concourse, Hawk and I ate an early dinner before our flight. 4pm was too early to eat, but with our flight boarding at 4:55pm our choices were either eat then or don't eat for the next 8+ hours.

→ The flight is full. Like, full full. A butt in every seat. ...Or so they said. There's 1 seat empty, and it's the middel next to me! Total score! I've got an aisle seat in the exit row, with extra leg room, and nobody sitting next to me. Hawk is in row 2 with a window seat, her preference. We'll be together the next 9 days, we can manage 7-8 hours apart for now. Ahh, legroom in the exit row!

→ We left on time.

→ OTOH, wifi access has been very spotty. Almost 2 hours after departure I've just now gotten a connection. We'll see how long it lasts.

On the whole it's So far, so good.

Speaking of which, I think it's time to hit up the flight attendant for a second beer. 🍻