Wednesday, 5-14-97

We got underway a few minutes before 10AM. I was pleased to see more of highway I-5 being repaved. There may be a time in the near future when we can drive smoothly all the way to Los Angeles.

We did have one interesting thing happen. When we got to the Mojave desert, we saw the moon rise just before 1 o’clock in the afternoon. It was a quarter moon. I've commonly seen the moon go down after sunrise, but I can’t remember seeing it come up in the middle of the day.

I’ve been keeping a running check of the motorhome’s gas mileage. It has been pleasantly surprising. Between Bakersfield and Barstow, I saw the all time best gas mileage. We got 11.4 MPG. I couldn’t believe it, so I ran the numbers through the calculator two more times. It was true. So I had to analyze the situation. I thought maybe the high mileage was due to a down hill run. In fact, the altitude in Barstow is 1200 feet higher than Bakersfield. The only thing I can think of to account for the high mileage is the fact we had a strong tail wind during the whole test period.

Today’s trip was a routine drive and we ended up at our usual place in Needles, California. We arrived at the KOA campground a few minutes before 8PM. The office was about to close, so we were that last to register. The temperature was 84 degrees, but it had been up to 107 degrees. We will have to use the air conditioner tonight.