After getting our power and phone situation taken care of we have settled into a routine. Dianna has spent some time with her folks, taking them to Dr. appointments, etc, but they are now past the latest issues and seem to be settling back down to normal. We plan to go down there again this weekend to spend Mother's Day.
When the weather has cooperated we have done some hiking and scooting. Just a couple days ago we hiked up the McGill trail on Mt. Pinos. We started at 6,200 feet and finally turned back at about the 7,100 foot level when the snow banks became too deep to cross. It was good exercise and we found a couple geocaches along the way. We have had three separate overnight snowfalls since arriving here, but they have all melted off the following day, even though the temperatures sometimes did not get out of the 30's. Other than costing a lot for propane and electric, this has not been a bad place to stay.
We usually travel to Bakersfield to do our shopping. There is a Wal-Mart Supercenter and a Costco on the south end of town, so it is only about 40 miles. The road is much better than the road south. We have taken the scooter on those days when the weather is nice. One day while Dianna was staying overnight at her parents, I rode the scooter down the back way to Ojai. The roads were all twisty and over a few mountains. They were perfect scooter roads, and I saw far more motorcycles than cars.
The other thing I wanted to get done before traveling this summer was some repair work on the truck. It's hard to believe we have already put almost 70,000 miles on it. It now has 650,000 miles on the odometer. When we originally purchased it, the ABS system was disabled during the removal of the third axle. I have also been experiencing some issues with the Jake brake system, so I took it to a Cummins dealer in Bakersfield for the Jake repair, and then up to Fresno to a Volvo dealer for the ABS repair. I left the truck in Fresno and rode the scooter back, a trip of about 180 miles down highway 99. We were notified yesterday that it was ready so we drove up to get it. Dianna called her cousin Carrie and we arranged to meet her in Fresno for dinner. The girls were very glad to have an opportunity to see each other. We got home about 9:30 last night.
That's about it. It's hard to blog when there really isn't much going on. On cold days we often don't leave the trailer, but we have plenty to keep us busy with internet access, TV and Dianna's crafts.
Our tentative plans are still to leave here about the first of June and head north and east. Dominic will probably fly to Minneapolis around the first of July to meet us. We will explore the area around Lake Superior and the UP of Michigan as we make our way toward Boston for Patricia's wedding on August 8. After that we may head up into Maine, but who knows for sure.
