April 13, 2007 by Rick and Tinka.

We didn’t rush to get up as we were in Pomona, CA.  No sense getting up early and get into the LA freeway rush hour.  We got on the road about 10 AM.  The wind was still blowing but not gusts of wind.  The lanes of the freeway looked just like Dallas or Houston freeway lanes, narrow.  They are narrow because they had 4 lanes once upon a time and changed them to 5 lanes without using any more land.  Even though Rick is used to driving our rig through Dallas we know which lane to be in to change freeways.  In LA we had to really pay attention to the signs plus pay attention to all the traffic and the wind. 

We drove down the San Bernardino, Ventura Freeway and the Pacific Coast Freeway.  We saw the Pacific Ocean.  We didn’t take a picture because our eyes were glued to the road.  Once we got above Santa Barbara the traffic eased up.  We went down some 6% and 7% grades.  We know what that means (straight down!!!!) and now we look to see the signs for how many miles we will be driving that grade.  We are relieved when we see only 1 or 2 miles rather than 12 miles.

We arrived in Buellton around 2:30 PM.  We came here to attend a Montana (the make of our 5^th wheel) Rally.  2/3rds of the people attending the rally were already in the RV park.  They were all standing around just watching all the Montanas drive in and park.

It is a very impressive sight to see 35 5^th wheels parked together that look almost alike.  There were rows of them.  See if you can locate us.

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April 13, 2007 by Rick and Tinka.

A low pressure system came in from the Pacific Ocean bringing 40 to 60 mile per hour winds, which brought a lot of swirling sand to all of southern California.  Rick white knuckled it down the mountain road that had signs everywhere reminding drivers of strong wind currents.  Yes, we could feel those strong wind currents as we made our way down to sea level.

Rather than going from San Diego to LA towing the 5^th wheel on a crowded freeway with the winds blowing we opted to drive back to El Centro, through Palm Springs and then we spent the night in Pomoma near LA… 

What did we see on our trip?  Lots and lots of sand blowing in the air.  Reminded me of west Texas sandstorms.  The visibility in Palm Springs was about a quarter mile, and for brief moments, zero.  I am sure there was not any golf being played in Palm Springs the last 2 days.

The mountains near Pomona could only be seen through a haze of sand.

A few days ago we did a blog on windmills.  On the other side of Palm Springs we came across millions of them.  Okay, Okay, I exaggerate!!!!!  But there were thousands.

Then we came down the mountains into the LA area.  There was a steep grade of mountains but nothing like we had been through in the morning.

Tomorrow we are heading to the coast.  We will be in Buellton, CA, about 40 miles up the coast from Santa Barbara.  We hope the wind and sand has died down by then.

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