West to California

On Monday, we continued our trip west into California, adding a state to the "States Visited" map (see right frame of blog page online) for Gracie with Carl and me...

Before leaving Quartzsite, Carl got some pictures of Gracie in morning light...

... he said the colors aren't showing up as brilliantly in the photos as what he saw when he was taking the pictures...

... but I still think they look nice!

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the skies were clouded over overnight, so we did not get to see the Milky Way -- something we can look forward to doing in the future...

On our way west, we stopped at one of the last exits in Arizona to top off our fuel tank with diesel. There were a lot of other truckers there filling up too, either just after they had left California or before entering.

It is at least $1 higher per gallon for diesel in California than the cost in Arizona (and other surrounding states). We figure that we're going to be driving Gracie about 1000 miles in California, and since she gets 6-8 MPG, we figure that we'll be putting 150-200 gallons of fuel in while we're in the state, costing us $150-$200 more than if we had chosen to stay out of the state... but... we have the opportunity to stay in Thousand Trails campgrounds, for which the campground fees are already paid for by our membership, so... we figure it works out to our benefit in the end.

This is Palm Springs RV Resort, the Thousand Trails campground in Palm Desert, CA. It rained just briefly and the sun was out, so you can see one end of the rainbow just over that small teardrop trailer...

... and the other end on the other side of Gracie.

We're looking forward to a relaxing two weeks here. We have a number of projects we'd like to get done (some items we picked up at the FMCA rally that we'd like to get implemented), but we're also looking forward to seeing the area and having nothing particular scheduled on our calendar. While I have been to this campground with Dwayne a few times in the past, Carl has never been here, so we'll enjoy visiting the area together!