We headed out this morning from Kingman, AZ, headed west. In the middle of the Colorado River, we saw the California border sign. Our truck clock moved back an hour--which it did not need to do, since Arizona does not follow Daylight Saving Time, so this time of year, Arizona and California are at the same time.
Our destination was Barstow, CA, where I-40 and I-15 meet. Traveling across I-40 today, we saw lots of rather barren desert. Some of it is in the Mojave National Preserve. We even started to see Joshua trees. We passed through areas of cinder cones and lava fields that reminded me of El Malpais in New Mexico.
We ended up stopping for the night at Peggy Sue's Diner in Yermo, which is just north and east of Barstow (sorry, Barstow). Peggy Sue's is heavily advertized by billboards and such. The restaurant and gift shop has large level parking lots and offers free overnight parking. We decided to eat at the restaurant.
It was quite an entertaining experience. The walls are covered with memorabilia from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and music of that era plays throughout the various areas (gift shop and ice cream fountain, diner counter, and two separate dining rooms, pizza shop, and outside, the DinerSaur Park. The DinerSaurs include a Brachiosaurus, a Spinosaurus, a Stegosaurus, and King Kong (one blogger says the place is very educational--he never knew that King Kong was a dinosaur!).
Unfortunately the food didn't live up to the atmosphere (small, tough pork chops and a minuscule portion of canned green beans), and the service was a bit lacking. Our server never offered to refill our cokes, and during most of the meal, someone was sweeping the carpet loudly. It turned out that the dining room we were in was being closed early, but no one mentioned that to us. We did get to entertain ourselves with some nostalgic trivia about the movies, TV shows, and music of a bygone era, some of which we even knew.
After dinner we took our walk through the adjacent desert. The experience was marred by the traffic noise from I-15 and the incredible amount of trash caught in the shrubs and cacti. Apparently our night's sleep will be treated to a special lullaby: an amalgam of truck generators and I-15 traffic noise. We can't shut the windows to close it out because the weather is pretty much reminiscent of Phoenix.
Tomorrow will be better. We're headed to the Victorville area to visit Rebecca and Catt, and we'll definitely stay somewhere with electricity.
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