Our last couple of days at Anza Borrego happened to be New Years Eve day and New Years day. Actually, it is no coincidence that we are for New Years. We had planned to meet up with a few other Airstreamers to come here and spend the last night on 2010.
Here’s me meeting Roger from Nuestra Casa Rodante for the first time. We had been reading his blog for awhile and never managed to meet up until now even though he is a California local. We had not been expecting him but it was a nice surprise to meet Roger and his wife Roxie.
Another Airstreamer that we had not planned to meet here is Bill K who is in the process of restoring his vintage Airstream. He told us that he had been reading our blog for awhile and followed us through our cross country trip earlier in the year. We love talking to people about our trip and it is especially fun to chat with people who have read our blog along the way.
When we made our reservations to come here, we couldn’t get the same spot for the entire time. We had to book a separate spot for our last 2 nights here starting on New Years Eve. We had no idea this was such a hot spot to come to this time of year but it makes a lot of sense now that we are here. It is breathtakingly beautiful.
Our new spot actually worked out pretty well as we ended up all lined up along the edge of the campground with some of the other friends that are joining us here. Rich and the Luhr family from Man in The Maze made it here along with their friends Alex and Charon who full-time in their vintage 1960s Airstream Safari.
Ava was excited to see Rich and Eleanor’s daughter Emma who she always adored since she met her a couple of years ago. I am not sure Emma shares the enthusiasm for drawing in the sand with Ava as she is now 9 years old and playing with a 4-year old toddler is probably more like babysitting than playing.
Since the weather is finally clear we decided this is our chance to make that ‘1 mile’ walk to the visitor center. Maybe things in the desert are what they appear but that walk along the path definitely felt much longer than a mile.
We got there just in time for a little guided tour from a ranger. We thought this might be a cool little experience for the girls so we decided to stick around and see what we get to do.
Here you go. You are looking at it. The tour is an overview of sorts to the local plant life here in the California desert. It was interesting for us but the girls had no patience to hear about how the sediments from the Grand Canyon carved by the Colorado river displaced what once was part of the Sea of Cortez here in Anza Borrego. Ava did however play along with the ‘Smell the Creosote Bush’ game. There you go. That is why the desert smells the way it does. Thanks to the creosote bush and its many medicinal benefits.
We excused ourselves from the rest of the tour and decided to check out what the visitors center had in store. It is usually more exciting for the girls than listening to some adult talking for 45 minutes. Wouldn’t you know it, here she is imitating the mountain lion perched atop this boulder.
Don’t worry, the mountain lion is not alive. In fact, in the room next to him is a full display of dead animal hides representing many of the residents of the desert. I think Ava is at the age now where she feels a little creeped out by it and Mila is still completely oblivious of what they are. Most of these hides are complete specimens meaning it includes everything from the tail all the way up to the ears.
Shortly after realizing that human hide was missing from their collection, we bolted out of there in short order. Well, you just never know.
During our trip to Julian, we saw these metal statues in the desert off the side of the road. We have seen pictures of these but were excited to see them in person. These are made of mostly scrap metal welded to resemble many beasts of nature.
Here are a couple of full scale elephants.
Here are a couple of awesome larger-than-life wild horses. And two rusted metal statues behind them. I am not quite sure what exactly these statues are depicting here. Is this a playful scene or is some stuff about to go down? Well, we didn’t stick around to find out.
Since tonight is New Years Eve, we figured that we should at least try to do something exciting. Being parents of a couple of toddlers, our nightlife is practically non-existent. Especially while we are on the road, it is a little hard to drop them off at grandmas house or find a babysitter.
Bill K told all of us Airstreamers in the campground that he would host a New Years Eve potluck at this site which we were happily glad to bring our apple pie to that we bought from our trip to Julian.
The overnight temperature by now had dropped to near freezing but a bundled up Ava happily ate her slice of apple pie.
This is the last shot of us as family in 2010. What a year it has been. We spent this last night exactly the way we would have wanted to, in the Mali Mish.
We loved our time here in Anza Borrego and can not believe it took us this long to make a trip here. We spent the first day of 2011 by hanging out at the campsite taking it all in.
Our last night here we joined Roger and Roxie for dinner at a Mexican Restaurant in the little town center of Borrego Springs. Roger and Roxie are very much like us in that they enjoy eating out at the local restaurants wherever they go. We do it because we like to experience the city that we are in but also when we are not connected to sewer, making meals in the Mish means doing dishes. And that is bad news for our gray water tank.
How could you refuse a wet burrito like this.
And I didn’t. You know what this means. Bad news for our black water tank.
Roger had been following our trip through the blog and he told us during dinner that the biggest surprise after meeting us in person is that I am smaller and Marlene is quieter than he’d imagined. I think I am on my way to living up to my expectations after polishing off that giant burrito.
We returned after dinner to spend our last night here before heading back home but Ava developed a croupy cough that she has had periodically since she was just a baby. As a matter of fact, during our first camping trip to Tucson back in 2008 when Ava was just a year old, she had her first croup encounter and was hospitalized for several days. Lucky for us, Tucson has one of the best children’s hospitals in the area.
For those who are not familiar with croup, it is usually a viral infection of the airway that constricts it to the point of being difficult to breath. It also causes the person to cough but the constricted airway makes the sound of the cough similar to that of a seal. The telltale sound of Ava’s cough appeared a couple of hours after she went to bed. We carry a nebulizer with prescription inhalant to help with the symptoms with us for just this purpose. Although after administering the medicine, her symptoms did not improve.
Here is where things got a little interesting.
Being 90 minutes away from the nearest emergency room, we made the decision to drive to Indio in case her condition got much worse. On the way there, we decided that since it is our last night at the campsite, I would just drop Ava and Marlene off at the emergency room and drive the entire 90 minutes back again to Borrego Springs to pack up the Mish.
It was a difficult decision but ultimately I think it ended up being a good one. We didn’t want to have to bring Ava back to being that far away from the hospital in case if the cough came back again. I have never packed up our camp by myself, let alone in the middle of the night in complete darkness. It took me almost 2 whole hours to get everything put away and hitched up and I ditched out of there to drive yet another 90 minutes back to check on the girls.
As I got closer to Indio with phone reception back in range, I was surprised to find out that since the 4 hours of me being gone, she had been sitting in the waiting room this whole time. The good news is that it appears the nebulized medicine had finally taken effect and she was no longer coughing like she was earlier that evening.
This is Ava after 3 hours of waiting in the Indio emergency room. Rosy cheeks and all.
I can’t imagine what that place is like during the day if no one can get examine by a doctor at 3 in the morning. We gave up and decided to head north back to Morongo Casino’s free RV overnight parking about another hour away.
Fortunately the dramatic end of the trip ended uneventfully as I finally got some Zs exactly where we started about a week ago. Hopefully our new Airstreams friends didn’t mind us camping-and-dashing on them.
over and out,
dan
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