High Winds and Burned Bridges

We are early risers, but not usually fast to  " break camp" and hit the road.  Today was an exception.  The local (LA) news last night was focused on the bridge under construction burning with I-15 underneath closed and traffic backed up for hours on this artery from LA to Vegas.  One route we were considering on our next leg would have been right through that mess.

Another issue was a high winds alert for southern CA, and we did wake up to the winds.  So, thanks to Google maps, we
decided on an alternative route on 2-lane roads through the high desert to Barstow and on to Bakersfield.  We hadn't traveled too far when we had to stop and tie down our awning. Gary had to do all the driving because handling the wheel in high winds has been a major issue for me.

Leaving 29 Palms we drove past a number of the murals on buildings in the downtown area.  When entering town on Sunday, we saw a sign about this being a town of murals, but became so engrossed with the NP that we didn't save time for local sightseeing [note to self - budget more time while visiting a locale; who knows if we'll be here again].

To help amend our lack of time, I grabbed the cell phone and began trying to capture the murals as we drove past.  Not the best way to catalog an experience, but worth a try.  Here are the results... 

We made it to Bakersfield, battling high winds and rain, and settled in to Orange Grove RV Resort.  This is a great stop that we learned about from the the Wheelingit blog.  More about this later. We spent the evening with Dana, a former co-worker of ours who is currently teaching at the California State University, Bakersfield.  

On to the Next Horizon.