Bakersfields CA, 10-19-2018

We are up early before employees start showing up at Barry’s RV Outlet, excited to get the awning fixed and continue on down the road. Mike Hernandez the tech who will be installing the spacer bar for the awning shows up and pulls Happy Trails in to a bay. We decide to make good use of our time and look for a BMW dealer to help answer the key in or out question on the Cooper. We head down car row in Bakersfield to find dealer after dealer, hard to believe all these cars will be sold. We find the BMW dealer it’s a Friday and I head to the service department looking for a tech to answer the key in or key out question on the Cooper. I’m approached by a young man and I give him our dilemma, he is unsure and sends me to the manager, I repeat the question and he does not know and says his Mini Cooper service guy is out today so we leave empty handed. At this point I’m leaving the key out so we do not have to keep jumping the Cooper. We go to find lunch at a healthy market called Sprouts, we are very impressed with the selection and pricing, we do our best to find things that don’t need total refrigeration as our cooler bag is very limited on space. The deli has a build your own sandwiches menu and Angela even found a sandwich she liked. We sit outside and soaked up the sun. Heading back to Barry’s RV the traffic is busy and everyone is going way over the speed limit, most of CA seems to be in an extra big hurry. Back at Barry’s and they have completed the work, Mike has done a great job and even painted the brackets to match the RV. I push the button to accurate the slide out just to make sure it’s working and it is. Off we go hoping to get out of CA today. Angela is on her new best friend the AllStays app to see where we might end up tonight, looks like Needles, CA. on the Colorado River.

Gas is always an issue even though we have a 57 gallon tank, we are averaging about 8 to 10 miles per gallon so we can go about 450 to 550 miles per tank but don’t like to go until we are empty, Costco gas stations are our favorite because they are usually have the best price by a lot. The weather is getting hotter and the highway we are on has a number of steep grades for us to go up. Our route is Hwy 58 towards Needles CA. We are playing leap frog with the semi-trucks, they go slow going up and fast going down. Angela calls the Needles Marina and RV to let them know we will be late arriving and they say just pick a spot and pay in the morning. We arrive and its dusk, tired as usual and ready for some rest, we can see the river but don’t want to take the time to explore, I get us hooked up with mosquitoes biting and then off to sleep.