RV Sabbatical Trip - Day 4 through Day 6

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Day 4 - Visit Knott's Berry Farm, travel to Ridgecrest, CA

 Day 4's Pictures

Today we traveled from the San Bernardino KOA into the Anaheim, CA area to get to Knott's Berry Farms. After some creative parking we assembled ourselves at Knott's Berry Farms and paid the exorbitant amount to get into the gates.

We immediately went to "Camp Snoopy" and Samuel went on the Red Baron ride which he thought was fun. He and his mom then went on a train ride which was fun too. We then had some lunch and walked around to see lots of other things there. Samuel and his dad stood in line for quite a while to ride the kiddie Ferris wheel. Once we got on it Samuel thought it was just a riot and didn't want to get off! We spent the rest of the day there walking around looking at the exhibits and the last ride we went on was the bumper cars which Samuel just loved again.

Gas money: $100. Fee to get into the Park: $80. Overpriced food: $30. The look in your kid's face when riding a Ferris wheel for the first time: priceless.

Then we headed towards Matt & Helaine Boggs' house and got caught in the worst traffic jam I've seen in a long time. It took us over an hour and a half just to move 30 miles out of the city. We arrived pretty late at Matt's house where he had a 30-amp hookup waiting for us . After we put the kids down to sleep we caught up on old times with Matt and Helaine and stayed up talking far too late!

Day 5 - Explore Ridgecrest, etc.

 Day 5's Pictures

When we woke up in the morning we had a big breakfast blow-out which included green chile eggs! Yum! Then John worked on the RV's generator changing the oil and cleaning things up while Jennifer did some laundry and Matt went to a farmer's market. Matt brought back the most incredible freshly picked strawberries. We guess that's one perk for living in California.

Then after Kaley's nap we decided to head up to the Lone Pine area to look at Mt. Whitney and stuff and try our luck at stream fishing. While we were there Samuel and Matt almost caught a fish--it just didn't land correctly. Oh well, hopefully we'll have a chance later on. As you can see from the picture at the right, Samuel enjoyed the simple pleasures of throwing sticks into the stream thereby scaring the fish away. Wouldn't it be fun to be 3 years old again?

We arrived back in Ridgecrest about 6:30 and took care of RV stuff and had another green chile blow-out dinner.

Day 6 - Travel to Bakersfield, CA

 Day 6's Pictures
On the morning of Saturday 9/1/2001 Kaley awoke with about a 101 degree fever. She had woken up the previous morning with a small fever and for the past two nights had had very restless sleep crying out every so often. We feared that she might have another ear infection. We had been swimming a lot this week plus she was cutting two more molars at once and she has a past history of ear infections with teeth. Helaine is a nurse and she looked in Kaley's ears with her "awesome nurse machinery" and said one of them "sorta looked pink" so not taking any chances, we went to the Drummond Medical Center urgent care and had Kaley looked over. Sure enough she did have an ear infection so we got some antibiotics and a healthy dose of aggravation and red tape from the staff!

Originally we were going to head to Death Valley today but given that Kaley was sick and the fact that it is a much longer trip than our software had originally thought, we decided to bag that idea and just cruise into Bakersfield this afternoon and rest.

After an hour or so of driving we got into Bakersfield and actually found the RV Park (yeah!). We checked in and didn't do much except visit the pool and cook hamburgers for dinner. The RV park (chosen at random of course) was nice, but coincidental with our luck over the past several days, was right next to a very active railroad. Trains kept going by making lots of noise. Did it stop after the sun went down? Of course not! Needless to say we both slept with pillows over our heads to drown out the train noise, but that technique didn't work very well. The kids slept through it like it didn't even exist.

We spent Sunday, 9/2/2001 in Bakersfield and attended church in the morning. The people were very friendly! One of the congregation members joked with us saying, "You're vacationing in Bakersfield? I could think of a lot better places than this!!!" The rest of the day was spent just relaxing, listening to music, reading, playing games, and watching TV. The Cowboys lost again so John didn't relish watching football very long!

It was on this Sunday when it finally hit us exactly how long of a trip this adventure was going to be! When you're out for a day or so, it seems like "vacation." When you come up on a week, it still seems like "vacation." As of Bakersfield we'd been out a week and this was only 1/5th of the planned journey! Samuel keeps saying "me want go home now" and we keep telling him "the RV is your home Samuel." It's been a lot of fun thus far. We've been able to see lots of cool things and visit with old friends.

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