3 March, 2000

SANDY IS BACK ON THE ROAD! And with a whole new look.

Spent the better part of the day doing finishing touches to the paint job- installing trim and locks as well as mounting a new bullbar. Also cleaned out the inside and re-mounted the roof rack. By 2 p.m. we were ready to roll. Returned the Ford Focus to Enterprise (we didn't like the car, but it sure beat walking) then Beebee and Todd went to do some food-shopping while Steve went to get a new stereo as the old one had been broken in the theft as well. He knew it was going to be tough- here he was at 3 p.m. on a Friday, trying to get out of town by 5. After negative experiences at the Good Guys and especially Dow- where the salesman started out by saying "We can get you out of here in less than an hour." But while the credit card was processing asked, "Would you like to make an appointment for tomorrow?"- idiot. Now 4 o'clock, Steve was getting anxious and discouraged but pulled into Progressive Audio and was delighted that after hearing about our hurry the owner himself offered to do the installation in 20 minutes. Now _that_ is why it is worthwhile to frequent business run by the owner instead of by big, national corporations. Thanks Progressive! We'll be back to you to do the rest of our stereo work.

With the stereo in, Steve high-tailed it out to Mudshack to get a new CB (talk about last minute!) and then PEP Boys for chains, where he stumbled into a $50 sale on light-truck chains. Unfortunately they were out of tensioners, but he went ahead and bought the chains as we didn't plan to use them until we got up to Mammoth anyway. By 6:30 Steve finally met up with Jocelyn and Todd and we headed off to Salton City for the Tierra Del Sol Desert Safari.

Steve installed the new CB while Jocelyn drove. Just in case you are thinking of doing it- electrical work in the rain, at night, with live wires in a moving Land Cruiser at freeway speeds is… interesting. Steve's only comfort lay in the fact that the hot wire for the CB is fused with a 3 amp fuse so it was unlikely that he would fry himself or short out the entire electrical system. Ten minutes later the CB was working great and off we went through the night.

We hit some pea-soup fog outside of Julian, but the rest of the drive was uneventful.

We pulled in to the TDS staging ground at about 9 PM and quickly found our friends Cris and Sonja, then met up with a few other members from the now-defunct Solar 4x4 club. The club still exists in that the people still wheel together- it is just that only one of them still works for Solar and the company no longer supports the club. After some hellos and setting up our tents we went off to register for the Safari and wait for the leader to show up.

Now here is an interesting tradition: every year, at midnight, the trail boss (who is not identified until he stops) drives out and around the wash a little bit before choosing the official starting point for the next morning's run. Once the boss stops there is a mad rush to be the first truck parked behind him. Odd tradition, but fun. Cris was on the ball and managed to get the first position in line. We were about three rigs back. Not a bad starting point at all, especially considering that we had no idea what we were doing. (The spots in the pictures are from the huge quantities of dust that were in the air).

Then it was back to camp for a poor-night's sleep as we were awakened about every half hour by blasting music, hurled epithets, or revving motors. At 4:20 a.m. someone took it upon themselves to announce to all of us that it was, indeed 4:20 a.m. Twice. But things quieted down a little after that and we finally got some sleep.

We did run into some nice-looking cruisers, a few people didn't recognize Sandy with her new paint-job, but some of them did.

With the evening came wind and rain, but that didn't dampen the enthusiasm at the raffle-drawing. Our number wasn't drawn, but we had a good time just the same.

While generally uncomfortable, at least the cold and wet kept the late-night revelers a little bit subdued and we managed to get some sleep. Our new tent performed flawlessly and we were dry and warm all night.

We'll be doing a much more complete writeup soon.

Ate at the Senior Center- good breakfast of biscuits/gravy, eggs, sausage, tang, and toast. This is probably the biggest fundraiser they have every year- there must have been a few hundred people eating there this morning!

We would have liked to stay and play with Crisonja and other friends on the TDS family run, but we were eager to push on to new adventures and get out of the washes before the rains started coming down. Wonder how many people got stuck in the desert mud that day?

From Salton we drove up to hwy 62, through Joshua Tree and stopped at Kymri in the midst of a torrential downpour for some rubbermaid storage bins because the rummage-sale conglomeration of partly torn paper and plastic sacks in the back of Sandy was driving both of crazy. We opted not to re-arrange there, however, as every time we opened the door the entire interior was getting drenched.

We then headed up the 127 through the Mojave National Preserve, we did a quick side-trip in the Rasor off-road area and did some driving on sand with baseball sized rocks throw in for fun. Todd tried to climb a little gully up a mountain but opted out when he got closer to the top and saw the tire-eating broken shale. Ate lunch with a beautiful view of a wide plain with sun-dappled mountains off in the distance under a forbidding dark-grey sky. We wanted to check out Rasor some more, but realized that our plans to camp were probably going to be a little colder and wetter than we wanted as a storm was rolling in, so we took off.

We pushed on to Baker for a great strawberry milkshake at The Mad Greek, Yum! Despite their emptiness, the motels in Baker had inflexible prices that we didn't want to pay.

After a brief consultation and map-review we decided to head up Hwy 15 to Primm, Nevada. Primm is a "town", about a mile into Nevada that consists entirely of three casinos with their associated hotels, a roller coaster, two gas stations and a truck scale. But they did have cheap rooms so we got two at the bargain price of $25 each. Steve and Jocelyn then proceeded to carry everything we owned through the parking lot, through the casino, and up to our room- about 4 trips each, heavily laden each time. Can't help but wonder what the slot-players and cocktail waitresses were thinking as we, dirty from 2 days wheelin' in the desert and carrying random-looking cargo, blundered our way through the narrow slot machine aisles.

Repacking everything into a somewhat organized state only took about an hour, thanks to Beebee's well-practiced packing prowess. After a hot shower and a beer we hit the casino floor for a while to people-watch and throw away some quarters on the slot machines. Nobody won anything more than a few "free" drinks, but had some fun just the same.

Sleeping in a comfortable bed with clean sheets sure felt good.

Next stop was the Devil's Golf Course . Interesting. Desolate. We opted not to hike out into the crusty-bumpy terrain to see what the signs called "delicate and marvelous salt formations" because it was an ankle-turn just waiting to happen and we were hungry. Next stop was the Death Valley gas station where we opted to pay $2.18 for 92 octane instead of $2.13 for regular unleaded. We figured that we weren't getting as grossly overcharged. On the plus side- that gas station had the best squeegee we've ever had the pleasure of borrowing, and our windows were an awful mess. We also borrowed their hose to spray some of the caked on concrete-like mud off of the brakes and driveline.

A brief visit to the visitor's center taught us a little bit about the natural history of the Valley, and relieved us of a $10/vehicle user fee. We grabbed a quick snack in the parking lot as Todd was eager to get out to Scotty's Castle. The castle turned out to be mildly interesting but not interesting enough to induce us into paying the $8/person tour fee. We had hoped to follow an "unimproved road" from Scotty's to the 395 but the park rangers said that one route was washed out and the other had 4ft+ drifts on 7,000ft passes. As we were considering the high road the sky darkened and the wind picked up. That was enough of an omen to take the paved, lower road. A long, steep hill climb to 5,000 feet got us over the Panamint Mountains, but kept Sandy struggling at about 35 mph. Then we were down in Panamint Springs. Not much of a metropolis. The next pass, full of switchbacks, made for much easier climbing. We kept it at about 45mph but it was because the road was an epileptic fit of hairpins and loops, not because Sandy couldn't go faster. The low speeds weren't much of a problem, however as the views were spectacular and varied from towering black hulks with white caps and multi-colored splotches on their flanks, high-desert mesas with lonely Joshua trees dotting expanses of scrub brush, tumbled building-blocks of green-white mica piled along the road as if some titanic toddler had grown bored with them, and fabulous magenta canyons with candy-stripes of yellow and caramel that twisted downward out of sight.

Near the top of the pass we stopped at a fantastic view point, tore past the tourists parked there in their rental wrecks, and took a little dirt road off to the right which led us through a nice-sized mud puddle (so much for those clean windows…) and out to this circular outlook. Complete 360 degree view. Wow.

Then it was down the mountain again towards Owens Valley, where we said a sad goodbye to Todd as he headed South to San Diego and we headed North to Bishop. It only took about 10 minutes until we missed having someone on the other end of the CB. The drive to Bishop, was uneventful other than seeing a herd of elk that we failed to photograph. Still not sure if they were wild or ranched (are elk raised commercially?) but they were fun to see. Owens Valley, for those who have never seen it, is a lot like most of the high valleys in this part of the Sierras- grassy/scrubby with some alluvial fans here and there and a river running down the length of it. The most impressive part of it to us was the occasional behemoth of a mountain that would poke its white head out of the grey belt of clouds as we drove past. Darkness fell as we drove through Bishop. As we passed the last Kragen in town, Steve remembered that we didn't have tensioners for our chains, and despite Beebee's assurance that "We aren't going to need them, Steve, there isn't any snow on the road." He insisted that we turn around to get a set.

As we got off of the 395, onto the 203 to enter Mammoth, the snow started falling. Shortly after watching the car next to us fishtail, we put it into 4WD and, true to Beebee's previous statement, we didn't need chains.

We pulled in to Dana and Greg Alexander's place around 7:30 and were greeted with wild enthusiasm by their two sons Elijah and Cameron accompanied by howls from Scotty, the gentle giant husky. After some food and conversation Greg told us that he had set us up in the Shilo Inn. It turns out that it was their first night moving into their new home and they weren't quite ready to host just yet. After five days of sharing our space with people, and four months of living under other people's roofs (other than our one-week stint in the dingy little Park Regency) we weren't about to complain. We drove down to the inn without incident, but were aware of the fact that Steve just doesn't know how to drive in snow yet.

The Shilo is pretty close to paradise to us right now- workout room, pool, free breakfast, coffee in the room, hot tub, laundry… We checked in with a soft-spoken, smiling, intelligent face behind the desk, ran up to our room to drop off our bags, then down to take a hot tub and off to bed, exhausted.

Finally drove through the snowstorm to Dana's around 5 p.m., (Have we mentioned it is FREEZING here?!)we learned that they had hired a sitter so that the four of us could go have dinner at one of the three restaurants they own in Mammoth: Whiskey Creek. We hadn't had enough time to try this one out last time we were in town. We played with the boys for a couple of hours, then took off for our hotel to get showered and dressed. Dane said that most of the crowd is up from LA and dressed like it, which made Beebee all excited to have a chance to wear her $8.95-at-a-used-clothing-store go-go boots.

Dinner was so fabulous that we barely had room to eat a respectable portion of the three wonderful desserts that we ordered. After dinner we were much surprised to see that there really is a dance club upstairs and it is obviously THE place to go in Mammoth, even on a Wednesday. It was packed, with a line most of the night. The DJ was actually really good and the three of us (Steve, J and Dana - Greg was still working, of course) had a great time dancing until nearly 1 a.m.

The moral of this story is: If you're ever in Mammoth, check out Angel's or Whiskey Creek for food and the latter for a great bar/dance club.

S and J then took Scotty for a walk which turned into a snowball fight, which turned into a tackle-Jocelyn-in-the-snow fest when she somehow managed to forget that Steve is both stronger than she and was a high-school wrestler. We came back happy and wet (and one of us had much snow in her underwear!).

Mid-afternoon we enjoyed the sunny weather on a walk around the neighborhood with Scotty and Elijah. Dane and Beebee then left an under-the-weather Steve nursing himself on the couch, dropped Cameron off at daycare and scurried to a kickboxing class. Then they ran some errands, one of which included finding a new hairstyle for Beebee. She found a picture, but no salons had any openings, so she's still waiting to get it cut.

The girls returned to find both Elijah and Steve feverish, but adorably cuddled up on the couch sleeping.

The 395 North took us to the 167 East and past Bodie- a ghost town that Jocelyn remembers visiting as a child. She finds ghost towns really cool, so we turned off the main road and bumped down a muddy, dirt one for almost 10 miles, but hit some 10-12 inch deep snow and in light of our lack of a winch, high-lift or other vehicle and with skies that looked suspiciously whitish-grey, we decided that we were A) too lazy to air down and B) not really prepared enough to push on to Bodie. So, we headed back out to the 167 and cruised out into the desert. Our trip took us into Nevada, past all sorts of fascinating and colorful rocks and a strikingly-blue Walker Lake.

Shortly thereafter we went through Walker River Indian Reservation. Having never been on or near a reservation before, Beebee was excited, but found that really, it was no great shakes. We even stopped in hopes (okay, Beebee's hopes) of finding some turquoise jewelry for sale, but no real luck there either, just expensive gasoline and cheap cigarettes.

As we drove into Oregon, the terrain changed from dusty-dry, rocky desert to Oregon "desert" that has enough scrub and greenery to support range cattle and even a few little rivers.

Ok… 7 p.m. and we just pulled into Jordan Valley, Oregon where there are two gas stations: a Texaco and a Chevron- both are full-service only and yet the gas is only 1.65, about 20-30 cents less than we've seen all day. Very odd. Jocelyn made Steve talk to the guy as she has no clue what to do at a full-service pump!

Night fell as we were leaving Oregon into Idaho. As we crested the last ridge to begin our descent into Idaho both Jocelyn and Steve were shocked to see the sprawling city lights that are Boise and its neighboring towns. We were both somehow expecting a sleepy little mountain city (yes, we do know it is the Capital of Idaho) but were instead greeted with a scene that doesn't look all that different from dropping into the San Fernando valley of Southern California! There were lights stretching over what must have been 40 miles. Amazing.

Our amazement only deepened as we rolled into a gas station outside of Boise and saw that they were asking a mere $1.56/gallon! Dreams of filling a small tanker and driving it back to the over-two-bucks/gallon areas we had been visiting danced in our heads as we regretfully drove on- we had only used a couple of gallons since Jordan Valley, OR and didn't need to fill up yet.

After negotiating a deer-filled hwy 21 up to "Wilderness Ranch", we finally rolled into the Dagley's driveway around 9 p.m. and were welcomed by Kelley, Lori, Bear and Chloe - J's brother, sister-in-law, black lab and blonde lab, respectively. Had ourselves a beer and some catching-up conversation and a tour of the house. Kelley and Lori have built it from the ground up, literally, and by themselves. It's not totally finished, but is very livable and beautifully built. The views are spectacular.

We drove up Highway 21 through Idaho City, which during the Gold Rush was the largest city in the Northwest - bigger than Seattle and Portland. Now it's a small grouping of mismatched antique shops, a new school and old store fronts which still have their wooden sidewalks.

We found the entrance to the hot springs, but the road was gated closed and knee-deep in snow, so we hiked in. It only took about 15 minutes and the dogs were ecstatic. This particular hot springs had a pool-sized, knee-deep bathing area fed by two or three falls of 105-115 degree water. All this right next to a gently rushing river, towering pine trees, patches and great stretches of snow. Once Steve and Kelley stopped playing "hydro-thermal engineer" and messing with the relative proportions of hot and cold water (boys will be boys) it wasn't a bad place for a soak, some wine and lunch. Not bad at all.

The silt on the bottom of the pool made for a great exfoliating scrub, of which Beebee took full advantage. As the sun went behind the mountains, we packed up, hiked out and decided on home-made pizza for dinner- Yummy.

Spent the day shopping in Boise. Gotta love the fact that all of the nationwide stores are in one place- Staples, Home Depot, Costco, REI, etc… very well thought-out from a shoppers perspective.

Bought an IOmega CD burner so that we can backup our computer.

What pain in the butt. Because Steve was impatient, he didn't read the installation directions for the CD burner. In huge block-lettering on the front of the software box it says "STOP! Install software before hooking up CD drive!" It meant it. Despite hours of deleting files and un-installing whatever we could find with Iomega on it, the CD burner won't install. Steve is pretty annoyed with Windows 98 and its supposed plug-and-play.

After gawking over Elk some more, we headed into downtown Boise so that Beebee could get her hair cut (the salon just happened to be 3 blocks from the capital). Steve was pretty nervous about it- he generally fears change when it involves Beebee and her hair… When she came bouncing out of the salon Steve was impressed by the new look. The stylist had styled it to look a little bit like something Alyssa Milano would have worn in the early days of "Who's the Boss?", but the cut is fantastic and it only took a little combing to make Beebee look downright wonderful.

In the afternoon we followed up on an invitation from Eric Vogt, who we met online, to do some wrenching on Sandy. We were supposed to stop by his wife's 6th grade class to do a little Central America presentation, but when we arrived in Mountain Home we were greeted by the local constable and informed that in Idaho the speed limit in a school zone is 20, not 29…. fortunately it appears that Eric (who is a teacher at the school) walking over and chatting with us may have helped our case a little. The kind officer let us off with a warning. Whew! Steve still maintains that there is no way we were going 29 as we had just turned the corner less than a block ago (from a stop) and were in the process of slowing down to turn into a driveway. How many of you out there think you can get an FJ60 with the 2F engine up to 20 mph in less than a block without standing firmly on the gas? Oh-well. No ticket, good news.

Eric took us over to the home of his pal Creig Matters where we met Renee Wilson (uncanny resemblance to Meg Ryan) and eventually were joined by Eric's wife, Ginger as well as David and Linda Gibbs and Jay. Creig, Eric and Steve spent a few hours under the hood further cleaning up the vacuum-line mess and stopping up a few holes that had been left behind from previous cleanup work. Looks much better now. Creig also adjusted the timing and idle- Sandy runs much better now, too. Thanks Creig!! And thanks also to Eric for his help and for orchestrating everything.

After getting Sandy back into shape we all sat down to a great lasagna dinner prepared by Ginger, Renee, and Linda. Despite the fact that we had never met any of them before that day, execpt via emails on the Land Cruiser Mailing List, we soon felt as if we had known them for years. We finally had to wrap up the evening and regretfully headed out for our hour-long drive "home".

On the way we spent some time driving through a fairly heavy snow-storm. This little adventure in the swirling white stuff helped remind us that while the Boise area is fantastically beautiful, there are some downsides to living here!

When we climbed above the snow, back into the mountains, and came upon a totally serene, snow blanketed valley illuminated by a nearly-full moon, we realized that the Boise area is awfully beautiful, and the snow isn't always a downside!

On top of the computer issues, Steve seems to have come down with some sort of stomach-flu. He had just finally gotten better from the Flu he had in Mammoth. What a hassle.

Kelley and Lori managed to convince us to head into Boise to shop a little. We needed some parts for the drawer that Steve and Kelley are building (Bear and Chloe helped) and Steve tried to find some new hiking boots. No luck. Steve is ridiculously picky about footwear so it was awfully nice of Kelley and Lori to endure his boot-hunting.

We also decided to get some dinner. After dinner we went to a little bar where we enjoyed a traveling Scottish/Irish band- bagpipes, drums, and a dancing maiden. Fun. Got home late and tired.