Rowkin Rovings Blog

One more day left on the road before we make our destination of Phoenix. Apart from two nights in Vancouver, we have only spent one night in each location. We left on the 17^th November, so it has taken us two weeks to make the journey. We will give you the total mileage once we get into Phoenix. We are certainly ready for it to come to an end and it has been a good learning experience as to what kind of travel suits us best – not sure this is our thing.

We set off at 8.00am to cover the 450 kilometers that we needed to do. We hugged the coast for the first 110 kilometers going through beachy enclaves such as Malibu and Santa Monica.

This rather insubstantial residence in Malibu on the coastal highway is the J Paul Getty Villa which is now a museum. It is free to go into but $15 for parking. It is full of artwork, friezes, busts and mosaics along with old cut and blown and coloured glass. It is set in 64 acres with courtyard garden and reflection pools. Would liked to have had time to stop as Di is very much into blown glass and coloured glass but you just can’t do everything.

It was very difficult to secure any photos of the very beachy homes that hang over the Pacific Ocean as you only get to drive past their garages. There was a huge amount of visual pollution from the power poles with masses of wires strung between them and then the huge thick black cables with enormous black boxes hanging down. To add insult to injury, it was rubbish collection day, so we had all those bins to avoid as some of them protruded into the road.

We came into Santa Monica and made our way to the pier there. We did not realise that it was the end point of Route 66 which originates in Chicago. It covers 2,448 miles or 3,940 kilometers. Today we passed 4,500 kilometers so we have done our Route 66. The route was established in November 1926 with road signs erected the following year. Di worked out that she had probably covered 80% of it on a Greyhound bus back in 1983 which was also when they still had segregated buses. That in itself is another story.

Some of the flashier hotels that you can stay in right down on Malibu Beach where all the beautiful people hang out, but not today.

Fras imitating David Hasselhoff – not sure if one of his life guards was a 12 year old Havanese though.

It was then back in old Gertie for the push through the guts of Los Angeles and onto Palm Springs. We were dreading this part of the drive, and we knew it was going to be intense and one wrong move would see us ending up in Mexico or back to San Francisco. It looked straight forward on the map, and according to google, so we inhaled very deeply and set off.

As we said, we went right through the guts of the city. We could see the Hollywood sign from this part of the freeway, but no way were we going to make any detours.

It was just after midday when we set off and we very wrongly assumed that the traffic would be lighter. We were wrong in every way. It was extremely busy and at times we came to a standstill. If we were not at a standstill, you were careening along at 120k an hour and with winter tyres on that don’t like temperatures over 6c we were concerned that we might shred one.  It was a bit of a tough call as to whether we came away with our winter tyres on the car or our all-season ones, but we were concerned about the mountain passes in the north plus on our return trip in January through Utah and Montana, we are sure to get very bad weather conditions. The tyres have about 15,000 k left on them, so we decided it would be safer for us to have them on the car. It makes for more road noise plus anything over 110k/hr does create a shudder and she shuddered all through LA today.

It was pretty hairy today because of the sheer volume of traffic doing 120 and for us not being familiar with the roads just added additional stress.

We went through, over, under multiple interchanges with huge flyovers going every which way but were unable to capture a good photo to give you some perspective. This is definitely one to tick off the bucket list.

The scenery has changed significantly, and we are into very dry barren landscape with the only trees being palm trees and eucalyptus. The terrain is also flat though we are near the tail end of the Sierra Nevada’s which do get up to 10,000 feet around here.

We rolled into Palm Springs at 3.00pm and once settled into the hotel we headed out to explore. The main shopping street was closed for a pop-up market, so we wandered around until it was time for dinner. The weather here is about 18c, so everyone is still eating outside but with heaters on. Fras thought it very prudent to get into the swing of things by trying out a margarita.

Many of our Calgary friends who golf, fly down to Palm Springs for a four-day trip as the area is known for its beautiful courses. It is of course now falling prey to the scourge of shortage of water. It is very reliant on the snow pack each year in the Sierra Nevada’s which of late has been very lacking. It also pulls a lot of water from the Colorado River but this year there has been a severe drought. When we drove past all the fruit and vegetable growing areas in the last two days, you do wonder what the future holds for the region. They grow a lot of almonds here which are thirsty trees. They require three inches of water a week to be able to produce the nuts and now many growers are pulling out their orchards due to how water intensive a crop they are.

They are very tolerant of dogs here and we were allowed to take Toque onto the balcony with us whilst we had our dinner. It’s great that she is a calm dog and loves to be covered up, so she is never a bother, and a lot of the time no knows he is even around.

On our way back to the car we came across Marilyn. It was an excellent statue of her most iconic photo. It was then back to the hotel for an early night as we need to cover 470k before 2.00pm tomorrow. We are very keen now for the driving to be over with!!!!