Leg 1 - Needles, California

Living in Southern California makes escaping to the wilderness somewhat difficult. From our home in Costa Mesa, it is a minimum 2 hour drive to get out of town. Our strategy for years has been to drive the first few hours in the evening to get out of the city and start the vacation properly the next morning at the edge of town. In this case, the kids were out of school at noon so we drive 4 hours to Needles at the California/Arizona border.

Along the way we stopped in Barstow and realized we were on Historic Route 66. Route 66 was the first trans-national highway to run from Santa Monica to Chicago. It has been largely replaced by Interstate 40, but this old highway refused to die. Today, it draws motoring and motorcycle enthusiasts into the numerous small towns and points of interest alongs its route - many them them still sticking with the 50's theme.

The McDonald's resturaunt here is also unique. Located in the old Barstow Depot and adjacent gift shops, you can dine in old train cars.

Do Your Kids Grow On Vacations?

Ours sure do. For this trip, the kids each received a Grandcell Alkaline Battery Charger and AA batteries for the powered toys (digital cameras, Gameboys, flashlights, etc). It was wholly their responsibility to ensure the batteries were charged up and ready to go each day.

We also asked the kids to keep a small daily diary to document their activites and memories. We had less success with it this time than our last trip.

At the Grand Canyon National Park and in Baker, CA at the edge of the Mohave National Presevation Area, we stopped at the ranger station and picked up Junior Ranger workbooks for the kids. For various ages there are guided activities for learning and discovery about our national parks, the local fauna, flora and geology, and conservation.

We also continued a tradition of awarding the kids with activity patches for our various adventures that they can keep in their scrap book

If we had more time...

Near Barstow are 2 solar power stations. The original station uses mirrors to reflect sunlight onto a target tower tank filled with mineral oil or salt brine. The concentrated sunlight heats the brine which is used to boil water into steam to run the power generation turbines, the cooled steam is condensed, recycled and reheated.