Pea Soup Andersen's in Santa Nella

This morning we got ready to hitch up and hit the road. We took one last walk around Garden Grove, enjoying the many flowers and plantings. Here's one that caught Ken's eye--a juxtaposition of roses, cactus, and palm trees that epitomizes Southern California in some ways.

We had a long drive today, mainly up Interstate 5. Unfortunately, the highway surface has deteriorated, and much of it is extremely rough. We were jarred and shaken and tossed about. If I said the ride was uncomfortable, it would be a major understatement. Ken added more air to the hitch, and that helped a bit--but not as much as we'd have liked.

We drove much farther than we usually do--308 miles. We left the Elks Lodge at 11:00 a.m. and arrived at Pea Soup Andersen's in Santa Nella at 7:00 p.m. We were battered and chilled by then, so some bowls of the famous pea soup really hit the spot.

We're spending the night here in the parking lot, along with several other RVs. We took our evening walk around the parking lots of Love's, Wendy's, Carl's Jr.'s, the TA, and Andersen's Inn. There are an amazing number of trucks here, and every parking lot is large enough to accommodate semis--even the restaurants.

Partly of course we were out for a bit of stretching our legs, but partly also we were checking out the driveways to find the smoothest exit from the lot in front of the restaurant and the best fuel station driveway. It doesn't take much of a dip to bring us perilously close to banging the underside of the fifth wheel on the truck, especially if we're at an angle. We had to back up and try a different approach to one driveway today to avoid hitting.

Our batteries seem to be low on charge, so we turned the inverter off. We're wondering why the solar panels apparently didn't charge the batteries during the day. The BMK is essentially useless, since it is saying 0% SOC. We keep hoping it will readjust itself, but no luck so far.

When I lit the cooktop burner to boil water for tea, the burner came on but was burning much too low--so low that I figured it was about to run out of gas, but it just kept on burning with a very low flame. Ken went out and changed to the other propane bottle. That restored the gas pressure to the cooktop, but left us puzzled. The outer propane bottle was still reading nearly full on its built in gauge. We'll try measuring it with our portable gauge tomorrow and see if we can figure out what's up.

Altogether the long drive, the extremely rough ride, and the worry about hitting the truck rails made this a very bad day for me. Here's hoping tomorrow will be better. We're headed for the Elks Lodge in Redding (we hope).