We departed Indio, California and headed to Gila Bend, Arizona. Another new state in our RV journey (we’ve been there before, but not driving).

Here’s the map route; 252 miles, a four or so hour drive in our coach. (That marker in the middle is where we’ll be spending the holidays.)

The first step for a travel day is to load up the truck bed with the outdoor stuff; it’s quite full, with chairs, rug, griddle, fire pit, propane tank, cleaning equipment, and other stuff. But great to have that extra storage:

Hills and part of the Colorado River aquaduct:

Paladin:

Being passed by another RV:

Date palm trees:

Arizona state line sign:

Welcome to Arizona sign:

Arizona centennial sign:

Quartzsite and Phoenix sign:

One of the first sightings of cacti:

Love’s fuel stop:

Yes, that top number is dollars; $295 for almost 69 gallons of diesel (nice)… less than half our tank capacity (150 gallons). Though we get a discount off that via our fuel card:

Desert:

Paladin:

Sitting in his box on the counter:

More cacti:

Stay tuned tomorrow for a timelapse dashcam video (with music!).

We departed the Orange Grove RV Park in Bakersfield, California, and headed to Indio, California (near Palm Springs).

Here’s the map route; a six hour drive in our coach. The default route was down CA-395 to I-15, but when examining the route, I saw very heavy traffic just before I-15 reached CA-138, so we decided to take a different route to bypass the worst of that:

It was very foggy in the hills after Bakersfield:

But soon cleared up:

Paladin sat on the kitchen counter again most of the time, except a few times when he came forward to say how he didn’t enjoy travel days:

Hills and wind turbines:

Flat desert highway:

Not so flat desert road, with lots of dips, plus Joshua trees:

Interesting rock formations:

The aforementioned heavy traffic on I-15 after merging from CA-138; we missed the worst of it:

Hills:

More wind turbines; going for quantity rather than size:

Out destination, the Shadow Hills RV Resort entrance:

Stay tuned for a timelapse video of this drive, with music!

We departed Thousand Trails San Benito Preserve, and headed to Bakersfield, California.

The map route; a six hour drive in our coach:

Heading into the hills along the CA-152 freeway:

We followed a couple of car carriers transporting Teslas through the pass:

Another couple of views of the very empty San Luis Reservoir:

A stop at Love’s for some diesel and DEF (and cleaning the windshield!):

Paladin spent most of the trip on the kitchen counter:

He seemed more relaxed about it than previous trips:

A rest stop between two other RVs:

A nice thing about a motorhome is we can easily make lunch (and use the bathroom) while at a rest stop:

I put Paladin’s dash bed on the kitchen counter, so he’d have a more comfortable place to sit; he seemed to appreciate that:

The I-5 freeway was primarily populated by big rigs:

Bakersfield city limit:

The Orange Grove RV Park campground entrance:

Stay tuned for a timelapse video of the journey today (with music this time!), and a tour of the campground tomorrow.

We departed Coyote Valley RV Resort near San Jose, California, and headed to Thousand Trails San Benito, California.

This was a short travel day, less than two hours.

Here’s a map of our route for this leg:

After zipping down the 101 freeway, it was time for some highway driving:

Paladin came up to see us:

He had opinions about driving:

On the step cover:

I picked up Paladin, and held him on my lap for a minute, before he wanted to retreat:

More highway driving:

Then we turned onto a more narrow road:

Reaching the Thousand Trails campground entrance:

Stay tuned tomorrow for a timelapse video of this journey, and pictures of the campground the following day.

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