Our Travels
This is our first full day in Dublin, Ireland. We arrived yesterday with our friends Jay, Wendy, and Cindy. Starting tomorrow, we will begin a bus tour of Ireland, North Ireland, and Scotland. Following Scotland, we will fly to London and then sail home on the Queen Mary 2.
Today we took a Hop On-Hop Off bus. For today, I used the camera on my phone for pictures. It was a little bouncy, so some pictures are on an angle.
Quartzite is a small town in Arizona., There is a population of about 2,500 people, however, in January and February the population can exceed 200,000 people. We were shocked with the crowded city. The have a giant RV show, gun show, gem and rocks, acres of vendors and Quartzfest which is a giant Ham Radio get together this year exceeding 690 people, which we attended. We dry camped on BLM land with the other hams for the week. Out most exciting time was a four-wheel-drive tour where we saw petroglyphs, the original town buildings from the 1800’s, and a tungsten mine.
Joshua Tree is located in both the Mojave and Colorado Deserts. As the name depicts, the park is home to thousands of Joshua Trees. As we traveled the various trails and roads, the landscape changes, where creosote became the most common tree. We also hiked to petroglyphs and drove on a four-wheel-drive road for a geology tour.
The zoo is in the Palm Desert. It is a zoo and botanical garden. They have over 500 animals with 150 species. Many of the enclosures are several acres in size giving the animals plenty of room to wonder. The wallabies are in an enclosure which allows them to interface with visitors. There was also a model railroad demonstration covering about a half an acre.
We continued to explore the park and the surrounding area. We drove to the Salton Sea and then explored the park visiting the Inspiration Wash Drive, which in places was a rough 4-wheel-drive road and the Fonts Point Drive where we watched the sunset. It was interesting to watch the change in colors as the sunset occurred.
The park is located in San Diego and Riverside counties in Southern California. It encompasses approximately 600,000 acres and is mostly desert wilderness. There is evidence of Native Americans from the Kumeyaay and the Cahuilla tribes, inhabited the park. We drove on a four-wheel-drive road to a pictograph. I was able to make the mile hike in which I had to climb over large boulders to see the site. While driving to the pictographs, we found five big horn sheep grazing on the side of the road. We also drove to the town of Julian, founded in the 1870’s as a gold mining town. The gold is no longer mined but the town discovered they can grown apple trees. All the restaurants serve apple pie. We had a great dinner at a small restaurant and the apple pie was delicious.
These are the boulders I had to climb for the pictograph trail
Our visit to the park was very limited due to a large wildfire in the park. A lot of park access was close. We lost power for five days (thank god for our generator) but we were still able to visit some of the coastal areas and some of the forest. It was quite smoky, sometime like a fog. This was our last stop with Boomer; he died after our visit.
R. I. P Boomer
Astoria is a port city founded in 1811. It is the oldest city in Oregon and is the first permanent American settlement west of the Rockies.We drove across the Megler to Washington and back.
This museum is in McMinnville, Oregon about 60 miles from Salem. There are a number of planes including the Spruce Goose.
We went to Goose Island State Park which is a beautiful wildlife and bird viewing area. We saw nesting birds, some of which flew at us to make us back away from the area. All of our photos were taken with telephoto lenses. The park is on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It covers over 320 acres and was founded in 1931.
