7 days 1700 Miles through Washington, Oregon and California

We did it, we finally made it to Arizona. 7 full days of driving, and 1700 miles later, we made it. We had planned to go to Death Valley and then to Lake Mead to meet my son. But his world changed so he couldn’t make it there. So we kept heading south on I-5 through Bakersfield, Barstow, and Palm Springs. We thought about staying for a little while at Joshua Tree NP, but when we hit the Palm Springs, Palm Desert area it was blowing 50 MPH and the dust was unreal. Not to mention terrifying to drive in with the RV. There is a huge wind farm there, so obviously this happens a lot in that area. So we kept going until we got to our spot in Quartzsite.

In my blog post last week, I said we had made it to just past Sacramento on Wednesday. We spent the night in an RV park, got up the next day and kept going. The central part of California is very, very nice. It wasn’t at all what either of us expected. This is truly the bread basket of America, or at least the nut basket. Almost all of the almonds and walnuts sold in the US are grown in this area. We passed so many orchards, and green rolling hills. It was a very nice drive, except I-5 will about knock your teeth out with how rough it was. Thursday night we ended up in a Walmart parking lot in Bakersfield. Who says traveling is glamorous. We were beat, went to bed super early, got up and on the road by 4:30am on Friday and rolled into Quartzsite around 2:30.

7 long days of driving, something we never do, and I hope we never do again. The dogs and Al agree with that.

Would I do this trip again? Maybe.

The Oregon and California coast were very pretty, even though we only had one day of sun, it was still very nice. I would like to do the drive without the RV though. It was impossible to stop at all the quirky little towns along the way, and see some of the sights. I would also like to go further south on the California coast. We didn’t want to take the RV through San Francisco so we missed a lot of beautiful coast line south of there. We were also in a hurry to escape the rain, and the 101 is slow going to say the least.

I have to give credit to Oregon, they have state parks all along the coast. Some are day use, and some are for camping. All of them are very nice, and the camping is reasonable. It’s wonderful that so much of the coast here is accessible and not just built up with houses.

I do think it would be a lot harder in the summer to travel this road, there are probably WAY more people than we saw, and you wouldn’t be pulling into a campground and finding a spot. If I did this drive again it would be with the intention of taking our time, and seeing more stuff along the way. I would also just do the Oregon, and California coast, all the way to Southern California and in a car.

So there you are. We went from the far north, to the far south and we are just so happy to be here.