Paint Ball Camp

Driving along over the grape vine (CA) I saw this camp and couldn't figure out what in the world they would be doing there. Then Gary realized it was a paint ball camp.

Magic Mountain

We had the whole weekend to kill in california, we didn't consider Six Flags, but we did consider going to Disney Land and we will probably regret not taking this chance to go, later on,

Traffic

Here I go again sounding like a country bumpkin, this traffic? How do you people do it every day? You may only live 15 minutes from your work but it takes you 3 hours to get home because of the traffic? In southern california it doesn't seem to even matter what time of the day it is, ya got traffic? Give me my rural areas, my country dirt roads any day over, this traffic.

Bakers burritos

Here's one I hope somebody following this blog can relate to? When we lived in southern CA, we left in 88, we ate at Bakers quite a bit. Well when we realized what area we were about ready to drive into, we both knew that a Bakers burrito sounded really good. We had no idea if they were even still in business and if they were, they were only in the Rubidoux a suburb of Riverside, area. As we were driving along the highway we saw a Bakers sign and kept on driving, then we saw a second Bakers sign and kept on driving. Gary told me the signs were just out there to tease me. Gary had made an exit off of the highway, the reason escapes me, but there was a Bakers up on the right, Gary mentioned I wonder out hard it would be to get into there? And he decided to try, so he took off up the road, and he parked in the bike lane in front of the Bakers place, I'm sure we were being cussed out by people trying to get out of the drive way there. Anyway, Gary went on in and grabbed 3 burritos and came running back out to the truck! He jumped into the truck and made a u turn on the street and headed for the freeway, when we were finally on the freeway, he said we made a clean get away with the loot! I was worried the whole time Gary was inside, I was gonna see a chippie come walking up the side of the truck, asking me why we were parked there, I was trying to come up with an intelligible reason but couldn't, accept that I had a craving for a Baker burrito and had to have one! Well they didn't disappoint, they were as good as I remember, they had gotten a little smaller, but boy were they good! Do any of you boys remember eating here? Probably not you jason, I did scarf down a grimous proportion of them while I was pregnant with ya.

For our boys, Beaumont and Banning

Ok, this one is for the boys, how many of you remember Beaumont? Well not you Jason, you weren't born just yet, not till later that year. Andy, not you either cause you were under 2 years old. This is where it all started, I had an aparment in Beaumont and that's where Gary joined our family, "all because 2 people fell in love". Bob, you went to head start here? Do you remember christmas, when Santa showed up on a fire engine just to see you 3 boys? Steve, you used to follow Bob around and try to do everything he did and it always got him so mad because he thought he was a big kid and didn't want little brother hanging around. Andy, you kept crawling out of your play pen at night and crawling under Bob and Steves beds and falling asleep and, that's were dad would find you and pull ya out and put ya back to bed. All of us got sick and you boys kept saying "the germs are partying with the king", not quite sure what ya meant by that, but ya all thought it was pretty funny! Beaumont has grown up so much since we lived there, we moved away in the beginning of 1987. We lived on Pennsylvania Ave and as you can see by the picture I almost got a picture of the street sign. Don and Karen lived in Banning at the time.

Palm Springs

Beatcha thought I was gonna say the Mojave Desert again? You'd be wrong, this is Palm Springs. We've seen them all over and I was shocked to see so many thousands of them in Palm Springs, ya know how up scale Palm Springs is, they try disguising their wind mills by putting them on pedestals that you can see thru. Only thing Gary had to say, "This is where the big wind mills started and they weren't really trying to make power, they were just trying to cool it down cause it's so dam hot! They were just sitting around and said we need some big ol' fans and got carried away". This plan might work if they would ever switch all of the fans off of low to high, but then the dam earth would take off .

Those Indians

I mentioned how much I loved Arizona, but those indians, ya think they coulda come up with a better way to get us off the reservation then shooting arrows at us, how clique.

Winslow, AZ

We drove into a really bad storm in Winslow, AZ. It was huge balls of hail and when hail that size hits the truck you know it, it was so loud, I ended up covering my ears to muffle the sound, I was sure it was gonna come thru either the moon roof or the wind shield. The road had standing water on it, it was fine to drive but cars were pulling over and trying to wait out the storm.

Arizona

If I had to choose the most beautiful spot in the US, I would pick the beautiful mountains and especially the desert when it is in bloom, in Arizona, nothing beats it hands down. Of course I was to late to see it this year, but there is nothing more beautiful then when the desert is all in bloom, the cactus's have flowered and the red indian paint brush is in bloom, along with other yellow and purple flowers on the desert floor. The mountains don't have much vegetation to speak of, it's hard to see in the picture, but there are so many different colors in these mountains. It's beautiful to look at, but way to fricken hot to live there!!

Got dates?

We stopped at this fresh date and produce store, I got some really good dates. It was always a family tradition growing up, when we would take a trip to Arizona, we would stop and get dates in California. Of course we always got tamales while in Phoenix. You can't beat a fresh date, not like the processed ones you buy in the store or the ones I used to get in the bulk section.

Central California

We loaded plums and nectarines in central California headed for South Carolina. It took all day to get the truck loaded properly, we were right at our weight limit and they just couldn't get it right, it took us 6 trips to the scale to finally get it done right, stupid dock workers. We were headed for a Walmart Distribution Center in SC but we got a call from our DM and we ended up meeting another truck in Albuquerque NM and we switched loads, they took our plums and nectarines on to SC and we brought the rest of the strawberry daiquiri and margarita mixes to Phoenix and Sacramento CA. We delivered in Phoenix this morning at 6am and will deliver the rest of our load in Sacramento on monday morning 6/30.

Truck tour

I guess it's about time I gave ya a little tour of our new digs? Of course we have the living room (our 2 front seats), then there's the master bedroom (our bunk), the guest room (upper bunk), the kitchen (electric cooler and food storage), then the family room ( desk with lap top and tv), the basement (under bunk storage) Guess that's pretty much it, whatcha think?