When your lip salve lives in the fridge...

you know it's a hot autumn in southern California. In addition, my chewable vitamin supplements have fused together into one giant gummy.

Given the current high temperatures (high 90's F/high 30's C) we decided to visit Palomar Observatory on Saturday. We tried to visit back in December 2013, but snow closed the road which was not a problem this time. The observatory is owned and operated by Caltech (California Institute of Technology). There are three active telescopes, the 48 inch Samuel Oschin Telescope, the 60 inch scope and the 200 inch (5.1m) Hale Telescope which we got see up close. The observatory was conceived nearly 100 years ago by George Hale and has been in continuous operation since the mid 1930s.

I tried to stitch some photos together to show the size of the scope, but it was just too big!

We're currently staying at a nice RV park in Menifee, about 60 miles inland from the new brush fire in Anaheim. This is the view from Badger:

Lots of geese and ducks making noise but much rather have them the hooting trains :-) 

Film locations

We finally got to visit a couple of areas that we didn't get around to the last time we were here in California.

Last week we went on a 5 mile hike in Malibu Creek State Park which is where the TV series M*A*S*H was filmed from 1972 - 1983.

There were a few props and information boards and it was amazing to see how small the filming area was - the cinematography made it look much, much bigger.

Yesterday we went to Vasquez Rocks. Formed by uplift about 25 million years ago and later erosion and exposure by activity along the San Andreas Fault, they are named after Tiburcio Vasquez, one of California's most notorious bandits who used to hide out here. As the location is within the "Thirty-mile studio zone" for Hollywood, many movies and TV series have been filmed here. These include Star Trek (TV episode and movie The Final Frontier), Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Blazing Saddles, The Flintstones, Paul, The A-Team, Planet of the Apes, just to name a few as well as many Westerns

Tomorrow we head further south...

Lakes and Volcanoes

Two years ago we visited Crater Lake National Park in the Cascade Mountains of southern Oregon, and the views were breathtaking. The lake was formed by the now-collapsed volcano, Mount Mazama. This is what we saw then:

At the time we couldn't drive all the way around the lake as part of the road was still closed thanks to the winter snow. We made it around his time although the smoke from all the wildfires hindered our views somewhat: 

From Oregon, we traveled south into California and the insane heat that was around at the end of August. With over a week of 100F+ / 40C+ temperatures, we were so glad to have the aircon in Badger. We visited Lassen Volcanic National Park and the drive through was amazing.

We hiked through an alien landscape littered with rocks from the last eruption to Bumpass Hell and the bubbling hydrothermal pools and mud pots

At 7,000 feet there was a cool breeze off the mountains and it was a mild 68F/20C so a lovely day for hiking. As we descended into the valley we could feel the temperature rising to 106F/41C, so a dip in the pool finished our day off nicely. 

We've been in Sacramento for just over a week and now its time to move on again and head further south

Au revoire Terrebonne

Having enjoyed this view for the past 10 days chez Pris and Bill it's time to hit the road and head south to California to put Badger up for sale.

As Maria mentioned before, we first met Pris and Bill almost 4 years ago in Palm Desert - it was the first campsite I drove to and they moved into the site next door to us the day after and we got talking to them and just couldn't stop. They have been RVers for most of their lives and have forgotten more about travelling in the US than we will ever know, and they taught us so much and have been such good hosts to us on both of our visits to their Oregon butte home. Hopefully we will get to see them again this autumn when they come south for the winter if we have not managed to sell up by then.

We have a few days on the road via Crater Lake and Lassen Volcanic national parks, then we start covering our old tracks again in Sacramento and we can start to chill out and relax and hope for a buyer      

Eclipse Chasers - 2017

We made it to Oregon and are currently staying with our friends Pris and Bill who we met on our first trip in Badger in 2013. We remember discussing the eclipse with them at the time and discovering that the path of totality was going right over their house. Four years later, we are here again and had a fantastic view with clear, blue skies as the show started. Mark set up the telescope with the sun filter and we all got to see the sunspots slowly disappear as the moon crossed its path.

Pris and Bill live on a butte (an elevated ridge) and we can see across to Mount Hood, 85 miles away to the north west. As the shadow of totality made its way across the flats between the buttes, we could see the sun glistening off the snow on top of the mountain which was outside of the path. The temperature dropped from 85F/29C to 65F/18C in about 15 minutes and this is what we saw

(Photos are courtesy of NASA as mine weren't as clear)

We were so lucky to have clear skies as the next few days saw smoke from the local wildfires blowing in across the ridge, blocking out the sun.

This was our third total eclipse (Plymouth in 1999 and Cairns 2012) and we are looking forward to the next one. We probably won't see the one in Argentina in 2019 as we are planning to be home by then, however, on April 8th 2024 there is one that crosses Mexico into Texas and central US before crossing into eastern Canada. Two years later on August 12th 2026, there is another one across northern Spain and the Balearics which we are definitely hoping to see :-)

Last supper

As most of our London friends know, the weather last Wednesday was horrendous with torrential downpours, the likes of which we hadn't experienced in a long time. This didn't deter us from visiting the local curry house with our friends Knees and Clive for one last blow out supper. As you can see from our attire, we were well equipped for the challenge with me sporting an exotic, hand crafted black bin liner and Mark in a custom fit rain poncho.

And as you can see, Mark was very happy with the end result. ..

third time lucky....

Finally made it to Glacier National Park and the Going to the Sun Road after our two previous visits to Montana last spring and autumn when the park was mostly closed due to snow....and it was worth the wait. Cloudy and very hazy, partly from smoke blowing south east from wildfires in BC according to the ranger station, but it's still an impressive landscape and referred to as the Crown of the Continent as from here water can flow to the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico or Hudsons Bay....

They let us back into the US Saturday with no hassles, and the guy even chose to give us a year on the visas, which takes the pressure off getting rid of Badger and Toad - we still hope to sell as soon as possible but if we haven't sold by the end of the year we can still try for another month or so privately and then still make it to Hawaii before heading to Mexico and the south.

Badger seems to have survived his 10 months in storage quite well - had to change the wiper blades and service a microswitch on the kitchen slider but apart from that he started ok and everything still seems to be working. Tarpaulins did their job keeping any water and snow ingress at bay, although they have rubbed the paintwork in a few patches flapping in the wind, but I need to finish a couple of fibreglass repairs and get an airbrush for those anyway, so a few more touch ups will not be a big deal.

Flight back was a bit of a pain - sat on the tarmac at Gatwick for almost 90 minutes due to a late arriving plane and then missing their take off slot, and Calgary seems a very slow airport for approach and baggage handling, but again they let us in with no hassles. And the flight will always be memorable as it overflew the Greenland eastern coast with clear skies so I could see the icebergs becoming more frequent and crowded and then a couple of the glaciers that flow down into the fjords and calve them, and then up into the icesheet.... magical.

Enjoyed the time back in the UK catching up with everyone. Thanks to all who put us up and put up with us ( well, me) - especially Chris and Philip for the use of their places. Next trip we are hopefully planning a bit better and we will actually have the use of our own home for the duration....but lots to do before then.