A Driving Day

We drove from Hemet, California, to Pahrump, Nevada, yesterday. As far as distances go, it wasn't so far...about 260 miles. Traffic was light, and the weather was good. Still, somehow the day seemed very long. The scenery was boring most of the way. We had to get through Barstow before anything of interest showed itself. The area between Hemet and Barstow is brown, dry, and uninteresting. We stopped in Barstow for lunch, mainly because there was a Carl's, Jr., that advertised "RV Parking" on a very tall sign. And, hey...count us in when it comes to easy parking.

Once we headed out again, we started seeing some green on the hillsides, an indicator of some rain recently.

We drove just a little ways down the road and then pulled off at a rest stop where we had our afternoon cup of espresso, three Dove chocolates each, and then Mike laid down for a quick nap. While he was napping, I stitched the day's inchies. Yesterday's were simple, and so there were two to stitch. The first was buttonhole stitch around the outer edge. The center was left blank. When everything is finished, a button will be sewn here.

The second has a little satin-stitched heart, and then stem stitch around the outside edge.

When we got back on the road again, we passed this familiar sign. Anyone who drives this road regularly will recognize it. My friend Sue, who once blogged at Zzyzx & Sue, named her cat Zzyzx, and so I posted this image to Facebook as a special nudge to her.

Actually, I was quite surprised at the number of responses my post got, including this link to the origin of the name of the road. It's interesting, and I would encourage you to click and read about it.

Moving on down the road, we were driving into this area just southeast of Death Valley at a good time of the day photography-wise. It was the "golden hour," and the hillsides were lit up with sunshine and shadowed in clouds. For such a desolate landscape, there is a surprising amount of color.

As one approaches Death Valley from the south, one approaches the Dumont Dunes. This is a popular off-road vehicle area, and we sometimes see events occurring here with lots of vehicles and lines of porta-potties.

Moving on, the landscape got prettier and prettier.

Off in the distance in the image below is the isolated little town of Tecopa, California. In 2010, it had a population of 150, and it seems to exist mainly as a hot springs resort community.

But we still had many miles to go.

The band of black in the image below gave us something to talk about. Was it evidence of some ancient volcanic activity? Or was it a band of coal? This whole area was once an ancient sea, and so coal is a possibility. We don't know.

As my mother used to say in our cross-country travels..."There goes the road."

The shadows on the mountains were due to some interesting cloud formations. Below, there are several layers with the edges lit up by the sunshine.

Rounding the final bend in the road, Pahrump, Nevada, came into view. I've given you a link to Pahrump's Wikipedia page. It too has an interesting history. If you've ever wondered about how it got its name, you can learn more at that link. I'd encourage you to click, but having done that once already, and I don't want to seem too bossy. Click or don't...it's up to you.

Shortly thereafter, we crossed the Nevada state line. Those are the Spring Mountains in the background.

As we got closer to Pahrump, we noticed tumbleweeds piled by the side of the road. Piles appeared every fifty yards or so, and they were weighted down by gravel.

With all those dead tumbleweeds, one would think these green ones are juvenile tumbleweeds, just waiting for their turn to grow up and blow away.

When we saw this sign, we knew our long day of driving was almost over.

And, whoa! Entering this round-about was about the most exciting thing to happen all day.

There was a pretty sunset last night, but I couldn't really capture it because I was hemmed in by RVs and structures all around. If tonight's sunset looks promising, I'll try to get a better vantage point.

After dinner, we were watching television when the wind started blowing. It blew fierce and hard all night long, making sleep difficult. I don't like big wind at any time, nor any place, but big wind in an RV is especially disconcerting. I'm not scared by it, but I worry that things are getting pulled apart and whipped around. It's hard to sleep while I'm lying listening for disaster. This morning, things are still intact, but I feel a nap is in my future.

The weather is changing rapidly here. When we drove in yesterday afternoon, the temperature was 74 degrees. Tonight's low is predicted to be 26 degrees, and this change in the weather explains the wind. We're hoping it will be over by this afternoon...but it will be significantly colder. Despite the chilly temperatures, we're expecting nothing but sunshine for the next week or more.

So that's pretty much all I have to say about yesterday's drive. However, it's time to set a goal for February's 

As I've already mentioned, we're expecting a meet-up with Erik and Mae next week, but for this first week in Pahrump, there's absolutely nothing on the agenda. It should give me plenty of time to sew. My goal for February is to sew my Tiny Tuesday blocks from last year's sew-along into a finished quilt top. I can't recall if the photo below includes all the blocks, but it's the most recent one I have. 

I'll sew them together and give them a couple of borders. The quilting will need to wait for now, but getting it sewn into a flimsy will be a good goal for the month.