As I mentioned in the last post, we woke up and kicked off our morning in the Walmart parking lot in Pomona, CA. We'd decided that while we had Marriott points to spare (thanks to Brian's work travel schedule), it would just be too much work to get sleepy kids out of Disneyland and checked into a hotel at close to 1:00 in the morning. So we piled them into the RV and hauled ourselves a half-hour to Pomona, where we scanned the near-vacant lot for a good place to put down our temporary roots.
It was a good thing that Brian had called ahead and confirmed with the manager that it would be okay to do this, because we'd been there no more than two minutes when the rent-a-cop cruised over to check us out. After first mentioning that there was no overnight parking in the lot, he listened to Brian's spiel (which amounted to, "I called ahead") and said "No worries, dude." We were free to shut down and go to sleep. Woohoo. It had been a long -- and hot -- day, after all.
So we woke at 9:00 in the morning to this tableau. And really, does it get more American than this?
We pulled on some clothes (well, most of us) and cruised across the lot to enter The Store. The kids were stoked at the prospect of a McDonald's breakfast, and I was happy to put off cooking for yet another meal. While in there, we picked up the movie "Rio," which was out that day (making us some of the first people in the country to own it, I think), plus some groceries and three Super Soakers. We're thinking that those will come in handy in Zion, where temps are pushing the high 90's this week...
ANYWAY. After that, we made stops at a nearby grocery store, ATM and gas station. Then we were ready to hit the open road. Here are a few snaps from I-15 as we made our way to Barstow and then off to lovely Arizona:
For hours, the view looked like this:
We also saw a few kooky sights like this:
I took this shot to document the INSANE gas prices at the place we patronized...
And this shot to document the 113-degree temperature reading...
And here are a couple of other snaps from that stop:
While driving, we also managed to blow the fuse on the RV air-conditioning, though we didn't exactly realize it. We just watched as the thermostat pushed into the upper 90s inside our rig. Fortunately, the air in the driver and passenger seat area worked, and we soaked up that while also positioning rotary fans throughout the back. And Arizona finally welcomed us, and the temps dropped a bit outside.
We stopped for some gas (for the third time that day, in part because we learned via a phone call to RV home base that the generator won't work if you have less than a third of a tank), and we picked up some cheesy Route 66 coffee mugs. The we pushed on for the final stretch...
When we reached Williams, we found the campground to be amenity-filled and scenic. We quickly got ourselves settled in and ready to stretch our legs and fill our bellies. Our first "real" camping dinner was flank steak, creamed spinach (I'd been craving homemade creamed spinach), pasta with parmesan, and corn on the cob. And while the boys explored and the parents cooked, Foxy set up Juliet in a fireside seat:
There were also horseshoes to be played... You may notice that the girlie is probably the fanciest camper around...
All in all, Williams was a great place to kick off our "real camping." After dinner and s'mores, we showered and bunked down so that we'd be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for our train ride to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in the morning. We were pumped!
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