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bt3.com/Baz's 1992 USA Holiday
California and the Golden West.
Where and how?
Day 7: Tuesday September 29

 

 

 

The USA. As I mentioned at the time you clicked the link to this page?

To be precise, a fully escorted coach tour, starting in San Diego CA and thence stopping in Phoenix Arizona, Williams AZ, Las Vegas Nevada, Visalia, Merced, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo before finishing the tour in Anaheim near Los Angeles (all California).

Marvellous.

No, better than that, the Holiday of a Lifetime.

Do yourself a favour, and navigate through this holiday using the hyperlinks scattered throughout the text. If you want to go back to the start, or feel a need to go to my site homepage, well, by now you should know what to do? :o)

 

Getting up early again I arrived at the Dennys restaurant, for breakfast, at 6:15. Today, I decided, my appetite not yet being fully recovered, that I would have a reduced version of the previous day's breakfast. I had 2 eggs, bacon and pancakes with maple syrup, washed down with coffee and iced water - superb even so. As a side note on American culture, the waiter or waitress will periodically walk round the tables with a jug of coffee, refilling at no extra charge, as a measure of the hospitality of the establishment. At 7:15, we left Dennys and returned to the Travelodge to get ready for and await the departure for Visalia.

Today's journey left Las Vegas for the 348 mile journey to Visalia, California, on Interstate 15 which seemed one of the least interesting routes of the excursion. Reaching the Nevada and California state line, we stopped at 'Whiskey Pete's' casino resort. This has the gruesome claim to fame of housing the very automobile, or 'Death Car' in which Bonnie and Clyde were finally run to ground and killed, and is complete with bullet holes and crazed glass. The owner of the gas station which used to occupy the site prior to his designs for its redevelopment, is actually buried, standing up in his coffin, somewhere in the locality. The next 100 miles consisted of the most uninspiring scenery, punctuated only by the odd dry or soda lake.

The second stop on the journey was at Calico Ghost Town, a tourist attraction based in a genuine ghost town from the 1800's, another town complete with white sign, this time the full town's name, displayed on the hillside above. As we arrived, a 'cowboy-deputy' got onto the coach with an 'arrest warrant' for a surprised member of our tour party. After a unhurried wander to the top of the town and a look at the schoolhouse, then a wander back down to the bottom of the hill, we all met up again for lunch in a covered, open air cafe. Here, I tried something unexpected - bubble gum flavoured ice cream, quite a novelty. Unfortunately, when the time came to leave, the bubble gum got stuck to my lips and moustache, the heat and lack of humidity combining to remove any moisture.

After a short stop in Barstow, we left Interstate 15 for highway 58 past Edwards Air Force Base, the place where the Space Shuttle made its first few landings. This base is so large that the majority of the 'action' takes place literally miles away from the road. Arriving on the outskirts of Mojave, we came across the biggest aircraft storage facility in the world, row upon row of both civil and military aeroplanes being visible from the main road. The reason for the choice of this location is the extremely low humidity, the aircraft needing minimal preparation for their period of storage against need.

Twenty miles further we pulled off highway 58, past a helicopter water bombing a grass fire, past a high school football practice, into the town of Tehachapi for a coffee break in an archetypical American small town roadside cafe. Tehachapi, a town of some 4,100 inhabitants, is supposedly famous for the rail loop to the west, and has the railway line running slap-bang through the centre of town. Forty miles along highway 58, we reached the outskirts of Bakersfield, to be greeted by a prime example of the famous automobile-generated southern California smog. The atmosphere here, as well as being misty had a distinct yellow cast.

Leaving highway 58 for highway 99, and finally highway 63 into Visalia, population 49,700, we arrived at the hotel, the Holiday Inn Plaza Park, to be greeted by the duty manageress, who advised us that after leaving our bags in our rooms we could meet in the hotel's atrium for complimentary drinks and snacks. After having a couple of most refreshing drinks of iced tea, we sat chatting for a while. After agreeing to meet for dinner, we went for a rest to try to recuperate from the day's tiring journey. 8:15 came and we sat down in the restaurant. At 10:00, we said our goodnights, being the last few guests in the restaurant, and retired.


To Day 8

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