I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday season. I spent Christmas with my son and his family in the Bay Area, then headed south to Pasadena for a few days to open more presents with my daughter, her husband, and their two energetic sons. From there I drove to the California desert to explore a part of my state that was too hot to be in when I drove through last September. Here is the link to my YouTube video.

By the way, for those of you didn’t get the memo, I set up a new YouTube channel so that I could have one for my personal/writing vlogs and another for my RV travel vlogs. This video is on the “Rambling in Ramsey” channel. The other channel is simply called “Mary Ames Mitchell.”

If you don’t feel like watching a video, here are the pretty pictures. The first two are of North Shore on the Salton Sea. I wish you could hear the seagulls.

I think this next one is of Slab City. I didn’t realize I missed that eccentric town until it was too late to backtrack.

I spent the night boondocking at a BLM (Bureau of Land Management, i.e. free) camping area called American Mine Road.

Then drove around Yuma, Arizona the next morning. I also bought gas there. Gas in Arizona is a dollar cheaper per gallon than in California.

From Yuma, I cruised through sand dunes swarming with zooming dune buggies. It looked like fun.

Then through the Anza-Borrego Desert.

And through Julian, elevation 4000 feet (so check out the snow). There was no place to park, so I couldn’t pull in and walk around as I had planned.

I spent the night at the Vail Lake RV Resort in Temecula. Very nice.

Here is the view from my van the next morning.

A lovely, peaceful place to enjoy a cup of coffee. Annie liked it too.