Travels with Twinkles: Adelanto and Victorville, California

April 16 - 17, 2016

I learned a valuable lesson at the dump station today when I pulled the black tank drain handle and my drain hose ruptured. I now know these things don’t last forever, it’s plastic and after a few years of exposure to the sun they deteriorate, even though it may look fine. It was a pretty nasty experience, although no one witnessed it (luckily) and I didn’t get much on me. Luckily, I had a short extension hose to use and save the day. The lesson learned is to replace this hose annually, this is something you don’t want to experience to save $30.

The ride was hellish today due to the high traffic, the California drivers, an air show traffic slowdown and the gusty winds.

Our destination, the Adelanto Campground was much better than expected, roomy, clean and Twinkles much impressed with the cleanliness of the laundry room. The WiFi also is usable, which is something that has improved greatly since we started RV’ing.

Adelanto is in the Mojave Desert, this is very barren country, there isn’t much here, the big attraction is the aircraft graveyard, but you can’t go there to see it. Actually it’s much more than a aircraft graveyard, all sorts of high tech aviation stuff happens here and they are the largest employer in town. The next largest employer is the federal Prison complex. This is a poor ass town, but the sign coming into town proclaims Adelanto as "The City with unlimited possibilities”, I’m not so sure about that, but It does have a new shopping mall area, so perhaps there is hope.

Big sign, big possibilities ?

I shouldn’t say the desert here is totally barren as it is populated by many Joshua Tree trees. Joshua Trees are impressive members of the Yucca Family and can grow for hundreds of years and attain heights of 40 feet.

The Joshua Trees are super cool !

The El Mirage Salt Flats are about 12 miles away which is a playground for the off road vehicle crowd. The Southern California Timing Association also monitors land speed racing events during the year. We rode over to look, but due to recent rain, the salt flats are flooded and closed.

EL Mirage sign

The largest town in the area is Victorville with a population of over 100,000. It started out as a crossing on the Mojave River and amazingly the river still flows although it is hardly visible from the I-15 highway bridge. I walked through the No Trespassing signs to the old bridge to verify. The BNSF continues to run frequent freight trains through town and Amtrak even has limited service.

Victorville was a busy vibrant town, before the interstate highway, when Route 66 came through. Remnants of Route 66 remain although the old downtown buildings are now mostly vacant. There was a plan to renovate the old downtown some years ago but California’s budget problems put that on an indefinite hold. I visited the route 66 museum which had a really knowledgeable young docent and nicely done exhibits. I highly recommend you stop there when in town.