Mainly on the road …

With a longer drive today we made a fairly early start, checking out of the Gateway Lodge (and startling one of the staff who heard my footsteps and thought I might be a bear as she had had a previous very close encounter!)

We stopped for breakfast just down the road at the Sequoia Coffee Co (blueberry scone and proper coffee) then set off on the longish drive to Ridgecrest. The first part of the route was through flat agricultural country, with lots of fruit trees in particular. We stopped for petrol/gas in Terra Bella which despite the name was a nondescript town but with a friendly gas station attendant who told us he was from Yemen and was keen to chat about London.

A little south of here we cut across country on a more rural and very scenic road. We stopped briefly in a tiny place called Woody as I needed a loo, finding one in a small, local store run by another friendly immigrant, this time a lady from Lebanon. She told us she had come to the US to escape the previous war and that she was originally a city dweller, unused to this rural setting. We didn’t get the chance to ask her how she ended up in Woody however.

We also stopped to take photos of Lake Isabella, from a marina near the town of that name.

Soon after this we turned off into a small community called Onyx (really just a couple of streets of housing), attracted by mention on Google maps of a Tiny Village. We weren’t sure what to expect, but what we found was a large collection of model houses, shops etc., created by one man beside the road opposite his house.

We took lots of photos here and I was going to make a donation, as a sign suggested, in the box outside his home. But when I saw another sign on that home, ‘We don’t call 911’ complete with an image of a gun, I cooled towards him rather!

From here the road climbed and wound through a semi desert area, with Joshua Trees dotting the landscape. We stopped for photos again before continuing on to the less interesting main roads that would bring us to Ridgecrest.

We arrived in the town too early to check into the motel I had reserved, the Baymont by Wyndham, so went to visit the local museum. This was less extensive than I’d imagined from its website, with very few of the Native American artefacts I’d hoped to see as that section was being remodelled. But we had a warm welcome and were given some useful leaflets to help plan our visit to Death Valley tomorrow.

We thought about exploring the park around the museum, which has various sculptures and exhibits, but the 96F / 36C heat was draining so we decided to see if we could check-in a little early. We could, so we settled in to relax, catch up on messages etc.

We went out for dinner later to discover a beautiful sunset. While Ridgecrest may not have provided a traditionally beautiful foreground, it did make for some interesting photos.

We ate in a local casual Mexican restaurant, Olivera. The food was tasty (my chicken mole was as good as any I had in Mexico), the service friendly and the prices very reasonable.