When researching how best to plan our trips both in the USA and Europe, one of the many books I found and purchased was Europe by Van and Motorhome, written by David and Patty. The book was very informative and written in a wonderful, easy-to-understand style. They had many great suggestions, places to visit, trusted companies from whom to rent or purchase, and had written this book (and many others) in an attempt for us to learn what not to do using their learning curve over many years of driving motorhomes throughout Europe.
Several weeks after purchasing this book, I was surprised to receive an email from David to see if we had enjoyed reading it; he also offered his/their assistance in any way if we had fixed plans and dates to travel through Europe. I responded by explaining we were planning to first experiment travelling as a family in a large RV within the USA. If the family succeeded in not killing each other in a 40’ RV, we could further advance the idea of exploring Europe in the maximum recommended size motorhome of 27’.
That 27’ also includes the driver’s and passenger’s seating area, unlike the 40’ long 5th wheeler that’s all living area, and when the rear (girls) slides are open, their bedroom alone is 15’ wide and 10’ long (apologies for causing you to search for a calculator to convert to metric – multiply feet by 0.305 to convert to metres) plus they have their own toilet, hand basin, wardrobes, television and entry door. Following an exchange of emails over the next 6-9 months, our planned route in the USA began to take shape and David & Patty invited us to visit them on their small avocado farm just south of Temecula. 
And so it was to be, our journey from San Diego to Temecula started on a beautiful sunny day, which was a wonderful change from all the rain. Everything looked, smelt and felt like it was fresh and extraordinarily clean – once we cleared the early morning San Diego traffic, the trip today was a very short one of just over an hour, about 50 miles. We decided to stay in Temecula for 2 nights as it would be too rushed to squeeze in our meeting and travel on the same day.
The following morning we ventured into the small town of Fallbrook which was close to their house, to see if we could find a little something to take with us and stumbled across a grocery store that had Australian wines in stock. We bought a bottle of red and a chardonnay, some drinks for the girls and had time left to have a little lunch before our planned 2pm meeting.
Once again, we’re so very pleased we’d left the Sierra at the campground as the road to their house was very narrow and windy, particularly the last few miles. We climbed their steep driveway in the Chev, and they’d obviously heard the engine’s grunts as they were both standing outside their house to welcome us with Bruno, their lovely labrador.
What a delightful couple they turned out to be and the view from the veranda overlooking the surrounding hills was magnificent. We had afternoon tea with them and while David and I chatted, Patty took Grace and the girls down to show them some of their many different fruit trees.
David and Patty have been writing travel books for many years and one of their earliest was Europe Free! the Car, Van and Rv Guide written in 1987. They’d also travelled to New Zealand and written a book about motorhome travel there. They were very easy to chat with and the time quickly melted – the ladies returned from their visit to the fruit trees with a basket laden with lemons, and while we had another “cuppa”, the girls were invited to browse through a large selection of books.
Patty explained that as she is also a book critic, she has many books sent to her for appraisal. She writes "The Sand in the Oyster" for Horn Book magazine, a column on controversial issues in books for teens and is a young adult editorial reviewer for Amazon.com online bookstore. Patty's been a teacher and librarian in the field of young adult literature for over thirty years.
The time soon came for us to leave and were surprised as Patty and David had found a couple of cardboard boxes and told the girls to select which books they’d like to take with us. As Meryla in particular is an avid book reader and Chantelle seems to be following her trend, they tried to temper their excitement by only selecting a couple of books, but following Patty’s insistence, we left with two full boxes of books and another box full of lemons and grapefruit! |
| Palomar Mountain |
As Bruno is usually taken for a walk at that time of the late afternoon, Patty left as we did and we waved goodbye as we slowly drove past them on our way home to continue our journey to Tucson. The route north through Temecula to join the I10 was probably our best path to cross a large mountain range to the east; the nearest mountain we could see was Palomar Mountain. There is a much shorter route to drive east from San Diego through Yuma to join our eventual path south of Phoenix, but that meant traversing the mountain range and missing our meeting with Patty and David.
Thus, the following day we headed further north to be within about 50 miles to the east of where we stayed in Los Angeles, then turned right on the I10 and headed east to Blythe, which lies on the border between California and Arizona. The good weather temporarily vanished and we drove for the 210 mile, 4½ hour journey past forests of wind generators in bleak, gloomy conditions with dark clouds and scattered showers. 
Blythe was only to be an overnight stop so we didn’t disconnect the rig and stayed in a "pull-thru" site. The following day was bathed in sunshine and was a glorious day to drive, most of it through Sonoran deserts with the occasional small ranges to break the plains. We passed the township of Quartzsite and saw hundreds upon hundreds of RVs both camped and for sale. I made a mental note that if we ever came back to attempt another journey, this would be the place to come to find a used RV – due to the competition of the huge number of vehicles for sale, I’m sure prices would be as low as you could buy anywhere in the USA.
It’s a sad day when you don’t learn something new. During our journey through Arizona and Utah, we’d seen plenty of tumbleweeds bouncing across the road in front of us blown by the wind, and from time to time, had seen a car or truck hit one that caused the tumbleweed to explode in a shower of dust. During a break at a rest stop, someone pointed out a large tumbleweed lodged under our Chev. This must have happened during our stop as it would have been crushed had we been moving. He told me we needed to be careful as they can potentially catch on fire with appropriate consequences.
Just prior to us leaving, I reached under the Chev to extricate this 60cm diameter weed and pulled on it. I then discovered they are made from thorny branches matted together, and those thorns are sharp little blighters. After a number of expletives, I removed the thorns from my hands and put on some thick gloves to finish the job – lesson learnt!
The balance of our 6 hour, 300 mile journey passed without incident, and we arrived during late afternoon safely into our campsite in Tucson.
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