Sunday, April 10, 2022 Los Altos to Rand Desert Museum
Odometer 15958 @ Eileen’s house. 1019.6mi on trip odometer. 50˚F, partly cloudy at 7:45am. Forecast is for cooler weather. OTA antenna scanned lots of channels including at least 12 Vietnamese language channels. Fresh water reading 1/3. Black 1/3, Grey E, LP 3/4. Topped off fresh water with hose at Eileen and Tony’s.
We left Eileen and Tony’s place at 8am and stopped at a gas station in Sunnyvale to fill up, but discovered that station sold only B20 diesel, which is 20% biodiesel. Our Sprinter can only use B5 or less, so we didn’t fill up. Yet another new diesel refueling issue to contend with. Our trip computer said we had a 285 mile range, and 225 miles to get to the Bakersfield Costco, so we headed out. We took Hwy 101 South from San Jose to the Central Valley where it joined up with I-5. There are several roadside fruit stands along the foothills between San Jose and the Central Valley advertising avocados 15 for a dollar, but we discovered on a prior trip that these were culled fruit that were barely larger than an avocado pit. So we didn’t bother to stop. It is a scenic drive winding through the foothills and then descending into the valley where San Luis Reservoir comes into view. This appears to be a major source of irrigation water for the Central Valley farms. Water rights are becoming a major political issue. There are tractor trailer sized billboards urging California Governor Newsom to “Stop dumping 75% of our dam water in the ocean!” and “Farming water makes food and jobs”. The extent of the farming in the Central Valley is quite impressive, with fruit or nut tree groves and vineyards extending from east to west across the entire width of the valley.
Whether due to the pandemic or poor state planning, all the state rest stops along I-5 were closed. Thank goodness for the town of Kettleman City, which has numerous restaurants and gas stations. We had lunch at their In-N-Out, which was mad-house busy. There were tour buses full of passengers being disgorged into the parking lot. Across the street was a new tourist trap called Bravo Land, which had an old Wild West facade and extended along the full length of the block. It had theme park level children’s play areas including multistory playhouses, arcade games, gift shops and restaurants very much like Wall Drug in South Dakota.
As we continued our drive, Ben kept an eye on the trip computer Fuel Range on the dash, and Miles to Destination on Apple Maps to make sure we had an adequate buffer, which was about 60 miles. However, once the fuel range dropped to below 60 miles, the display then changes to “Fuel Reserve”, no longer displaying a miles to empty estimate. This made the last 60 miles into Bakersfield a little more anxiety provoking, but we did manage to get to the Costco without running out of fuel. The RV took 22.9 gallons out of a maximum 24 gallon rated capacity. That was as low as we’ve ever gotten the fuel tank before, but it’s good to know we were able to go 340 miles, even winding up and down through steep foothills. The calculated to 14.9mpg. Janet went into the store, which was crazy busy, to grab a chicken for dinner, but there were none ready, and it looked like the rotisserie had at least a half hour wait, so no Costco chicken for dinner tonight.
As we approached the Mojave desert, we made a last fuel stop in the town of Mojave, taking on an additional 4.55 gal, with a calculated 13.9mpg. The drive from Bakersfield to Mojave was unexpected hilly, like climbing into the mountains with lots of steep grades with semi trucks crawling up in the right lanes. There were a few where the cruise control wasn’t able to maintain 65 mph towards the top, but most of the other traffic was also slowed to 55mph. We didn’t end up causing any traffic behind us at any point despite the grades. As we crested the foothills, we encountered the largest wind farm we had ever seen or could possibly imagine. Not only were there turbines as far as the eye could see, but along the crest, the turbines were stacked with little ones below the huge ones. There were also massive photovoltaic solar panel farms covering hundreds of acres. We did cross an area of Joshua trees as we left the wind farm zone, but as we headed further north, the Joshua trees disappeared as mysteriously as they had appeared.
We arrived in Randsburg, an old gold mining town that now appears to exist to support a thriving ORV community that makes the surrounding desert their playground. We did see a side by side UTV blasting through the desert kicking up a trail of dust as we approached the town. The Rand Desert Museum is a Harvest Host site, but the museum has very limited hour. Fortunately, the host is quite friendly and seems genuinely happy to have guests come visit their little town. We will be making an online donation to support the museum. The winds really picked up in the early evening, so we’ll see if we end up being rocked by the wind all night long.
There was no wifi at this site, but we did have 3 bars of AT&T cell service, so we were able to keep our standing Sunday Zoom meeting with our kids from the Randsberg site. We made some Birdseye Chicken and Garlic Pasta with added fresh asparagus and toasted English muffins for dinner. We used the induction cooktop and toaster running off the lithium batteries and inverter to see how they would perform. That drew the batteries down to 75%, but after shutting the inverter down, the projected battery run time with the refrigerator, chargers and lighting was over 22hrs. Once the sun comes up in the morning, they will recharge via solar.
Tomorrow, we head off into Death Valley National Park.
