USA – Bakersfield & Barstow

Day 17 – And now, what do we do???

Today, it’s Julia’s birthday but this morning, the sky is grey and it’s raining… She’s really unlucky. We should be in front of the tallest tree in the world right now but instead, the weather is taking us hostage and we don’t know what to do.  

So we decide to go to Bakersfield, a rather large city further west that allows us to avoid the high mountains and gives us the possibility to go to the National Park if the weather changes. Once in Bakersfield, we receive another weather alert on our phone. This time though, we’re right in the middle of an area that needs to be evacuated…

The alert sounds pretty serious but nobody in town seems to be concerned so we go to the Sheriff to ask for information. The Sheriff tells us that it is best to stay in town because the roads are unsafe and she also tells us where to park in the town’s heights to avoid potential flooding. So there we are, the rain is pouring and we’re stuck in this not particularly beautiful city on Julia’s birthday. Man! We can’t believe how unlucky we are… 

Still, we try to do come up with things to do. We visit a three floor antique shop. There are so many random objects, we don’t know where to look. In the basement there’s even an old mine tunnel and an old cinema. After this “visit”, we head to a retro diner to eat pumpkin pancakes and drink a nice thick chocolate milkshake. And then, we head to Walmart, to buy a chocolate cake and some candles… We’ll stay the rest of the afternoon in the van playing Uno and Julia will blow her birthday candles there… Doo promises her she’ll be entitled to another birthday because that one is definitely not the happiest one…

Day 18 – Back to the desert.

This morning, the National Park is still closed and the weather is still the same… Our hopes to visit the park are gone and we have to settle for another route. We can’t go to the coastline because the weather is pretty much awful there too. People are telling us they have never seen that in their lifetime. So we decide to go back to the desert. There’s not much to see there, but at least we know it’s warm and sunny…

After a short drive and a quick stop in a farm selling organic products, we’re already back into the desert. Even here, some parts of the road are flooded. We drive a bit more and stop in a city for a walk in a park with quite surprising cactus trees. We then drive a bit further and find ourselves on route 66 again. But there’s nothing glamorous or historic about this part of the route. Here, it’s rather ugly, abandoned or industrial.

By the end of the afternoon, we reach Barstow and stop at the old station where there’s a couple of museums: one on Route 66 and the other on the old trains and railways. The site is great!! There are quite a few old locomotives by the museum and Côme has a lot of fun climbing them. In the meantime, Doo is counting the wagons of the freight trains (he counted 124 of them. 124!!!! And most were double deckers). By the sunset, there’s no one around so we decide to stay here for the night.

But since it’s Saturday night and Julia didn’t have a real birthday dinner yesterday, we don’t eat in the van and head to an old diner a few kilometres away instead. The restaurant is really nice and we can finally enjoy the best burger of our stay. It only took us 10 burgers to finally enjoy a real American burger… 😅

These past couple of days, Côme:
Did not understand: why the locomotives were abandoned. 
Learnt: that back in the days you could choose the music that played in a restaurant (he learnt what was a jukebox).
Loved: climbing the wagons. 

Julia:
Did not understand: why Americans were eating so early. 
Learnt: that pumpkin pancakes are delicious!
Enjoyed: visiting the antique shop and eating at the diner. 

Doo:
Did not understand: why we are so unlucky with the weather. 
Learnt: that route 66 is not always pleasant.
Enjoyed: counting the wagons. 

Burger counter: 10!!!