The Trip South: Part 2

 We spent a little time in Red Bluff before we took off.  We needed to restock our groceries and make the coach our home again. 

 For those of you who have never been there, Red Bluff is a cute little town. This photo, taken from Main Street shows Mt. Lassen in the distance.  One of those neat little serendipity places we have often run into.

 This is the view down Main Street in Red Bluff at night.  to the right is one of our favorite Mexican Restaurants, "Los Mariachis".  The food is excellent and the prices reasonable.

 Lots of cute little stores, like this antique shop next to the Mexican restaurant.

 The next day was pretty routine, but the second day out, we were driving through Stockton, CA when alarms started sounding and lights started flashing.  We were fortunate to be able to find a place to pull off the road.  Here we are on the hook.  Another story for our memory book.

 We spent the next week in the Lathrop, California Comfort Inn.  Nothing wrong with it.  We've stayed in far worse places, but we've both become spoiled by the luxury of our coach.  Lathrop was a bit forgettable, but we learned where to shop and eat.  If we had known it was going to take a week, we would have gone to San Francisco, but ....  Thank goodness we like each other.  

 We did get back on the road, and continued to one of our favorite stops, Orange Grove RV Park, just outside Bakersfield.  As the name implies, and this photo shows, it is in the middle of an orange grove.  Yes, they do encourage you to pick oranges, and we took only those that had good sugar spots.  Looked bad, would probably have been rejected by your local Safeway, but they tasted great.  Reminded us of the oranges we got used to when we had trees in our back yard in San Diego.  We had to stay an extra day here due to snow and wind in the Tehachapi pass.  The temperatures were below freezing at night.  We felt sorry for the orange growers.  We knew they had some long nights.

 We finally did make it to our winter quarters here in Palm Desert.  Doors and windows open, short sleeved shirts, sandals, the company of friends and cousins who overwinter,  Penny's brother and sister-in-law not far, and good restaurants---

---and the company of Marilyn and others.  This sculpture was in Chicago, but now resides in Palm Springs.  We tried to catch the old man behind looking up her dress, but he caught on and returned our look.  Off to dinner with friends and a live musical at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Springs tomorrow.  Probably, at least one more show there or at one of the local casinos where several of the big names play before we leave.
Life on the road is good!