Ruth's post - Shelter Island, San Diego

Ruth and Colin's Day - Sunday, December 9th

It's 3am when I wake up, I wake Colin and see if he feels like driving yet or not. We check at the truck stop to see if they know if the pass is opened, it's not so this means another detour. Luckily this isn't a very big detour,
probably and extra 50 miles or so altogether. We head towards Bakersfield on Hwy 46 then onto Hwy 58 to the Tehachapi Pass, then on down to Mojave and then on Hwy 14 that we bring us back to the I-5 just before Los Angeles.

Part of the Mojave Desert

Windmills in the Mojave Desert

We make it through the pass OK, have some tea and head on to Los Angeles. Right before Lancaster we hear a loud clunk kind of sound, we knew we didn't hit anything, at least we didn't see anything on the road, but there was a swish, swish kind of sound.  Colin pulled over and got out to have a look, when I heard him say oh no! We now have a flat front tire. Luckily it wasn't a blow out but a flat all the same. This was on one of the new tires that we had just bought 4 days ago, not impressed, seeing we had driven all across Canada on two old tires without any problems. Colin goes in search of help (today is a Sunday and it is only around 7:30am, hopefully we can find somebody to help us out). Sherman, does not come with a spare or roadside assistance as they will only replace your spare, so we didn't see a need to the extra cost, it wouldn't have helped a lot.  I'm starting to think that I am not suppose to make it to the Mexican border.  Poor Colin, not much of a holiday for him.  Kevin you owe us big time!!!!

Colin walks to the phone box that they place along the highways for emergencies and finds out it doesn't work, he later is informed that they were disconnected as they weren't being used because almost everyone had a cell phone, so he walks to an RV park nearby where someone there gives him a ride into town to an RV dealer, but it's not open yet although he was given a phone number to try later. Not much success. So he walks back to Sherman. In the mean time I was looking up towing and tire places on Sophie (our GPS unit), when Colin came back. I had a list of places and numbers to try. He some breakfast and he was going to bike back to town and see what he could do with the phone numbers I had given him. As he was about to bike away a SUV stopped and offered him a ride into town. Finally he was able to get someone to come out to fix it. Somewhere between 11 and 11:30am we were back on the road again with a $184 service charge ($92/hr., min 2 hour) and another new tire at $105, oh well, what can you do!

We stopped in town and did a load of laundry, while it was going I took Whiskey for a walk, then we had lunch before doing our drive through Los Angeles. It's about 1pm when we start out again. WOW what a drive through LA, luckily it was Sunday so it was a little quieter, but still a very intense drive. We entered through the mountains and then start hitting the traffic. Sophie got us through without any problems. Didn't really do much sight seeing as we're driving, instead keeping our eyes on the traffic and the road signs. At times there were 16 to 18 lanes of traffic, 8 or 9 going in each direction, straight across the road, no breaks like Toronto, where you have the express lanes and collector lanes.

Sunset on the Pacific Ocean near San Clemente

Ruth and Colin at a Vista Point

Sunset on the Pacific Ocean at Vista Point

When we get to San Clemente on the other side of LA, Colin said he would like to take the coast road and see the ocean, only problem with that is that all the expensive beachfront houses stop the view, so it was back onto the I-5 which actually sits up higher and you do get a great view of the ocean. We stopped at a Vista point and watched the sunset which was beautiful, then head down the road two miles more to a rest area where we had supper and relaxed a bit before heading to San Diego to met up with Glen and Steve. Once we finished dinner we heard from our friends and got directions to the spot that they were staying in San Diego, called Shelter Island, which is near the downtown area and right on the bay. Again with Sophie's help we found where they were with no problem, parked on the street for the night and had a drink with Glen and Steve, then headed for bed.

Total Nights Sleeping in the RV... 57...

December Fuel $ 639.24

December Grocery $ 145.82

December Overnight Costs $ 0