Click on a photo to enlarge it.
After spending the summer in Canada, it was time for us to move south again and hopefully into warmer weather. The border crossing went very quickly and we basically
drove straight down to Auburn California to get our smog test done.
We stopped for a night at Goose Lake SRA for showers and electricity for a night and even got our shorts out in Reno! We managed to get to Auburn a day early and had a
rest before taking Winnie in for the smog test.
There was a new test added onto the smog test called a gas pressure test to check for fume leaks in the petrol system. The rules and regulations change all the time
and there isn't any choice. If you fail, you can't drive until it's fixed! The problem was that the man at the testing station had already warned us that a lot of
motor homes fail the test!
Hawk-eye Kirsten stood next to the machine as the gas test was done and when the machine beeped, she shrieked "passed"!!!! Needless to say we were relieved. But then
we had to get through the actual smog test as well. After all the work we've recently had done, including a new exhaust, we were hoping there wouldn't be a problem.
We actually only just scraped through. The same problem as two years ago - our EGR system isn't working again. We'd had a new EGR valve put in two years ago when we
only just scraped through the test back then and were told that it would cost around $200 to fix. We also have yet another oil leak when we've only just had the last
one fixed. Well, Winnie is 23 years old, what do we expect?
It took us 45 minutes at the DMV to get our sticker and then we were off on our merry way. We were about to embark on what we call the "Synnatschke tour" after Kirsten
has been reading up on Isabel and Steffen Synnatschke's website (www.synnatschke.com). They are travellers and photographers who have spent a considerable amount of time in Southwest
America, and Kirsten wanted to go to some of the places they've been to for photos.
This tour would last about four to five weeks and we had forwarded it to friends Edi and Jochen, Helmut and Agnes who are going to be in the area around the same time
to see if we could meet up.
There were eight destinations on the tour in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and Mew Mexico plus an extra two if Edi and Jochen joined us that we have already been
to. So it is quite an ambitious tour and heavily dependent on the weather as there are a number of long stretches of gravel or washboard roads that we would have to
negotiate.
Our first stop was Alabama Hills which is next to Death Valley, CA and has numerous arches and rock formations. We drove down through Mono Lake where it was already
-4 °C in the afternoon and hit snow!!
It was bitterly cold but there was a clear blue sky and a magnificent view of Mount Whitney. We got a print out of a driving tour from the visitor centre and set off
to find various rock formations with names such as "visible man", "batman" and "bullfrog". We managed to spot these three but it went downhill after that and we
didn't spot any others despite a photocopied hand-drawn map with mileages on it. Obviously you need a very broad imagination to spot them!
Helen is fighting the wind.
We did various short walks to arches and Kirsten went out for sunrise and sunset photos. And believe it or not, but we met the Synnatschke's!!! What a coincidence! We
spent a few hours at a sunrise for photos through the Mobius Arch and Helen was required to be the stuntman again and climb on top!
On the way thought Death Valley we had to stop for an hour as Winnie's temperature gauge was getting a bit too close to overheating on the way up to a high pass. We
just drove through the other side as we have seen most things in the National Park and went to Rhyolite ghost town.
Rhyolite was built in 1905 after gold was found the year before. Its heyday only lasted for 5 years and then most people left. A Belgian artist erected the "Last
Supper" near the visitor centre.
The next morning we got up early for the sunrise at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park.
Panorama
Afterwards we drove into Las Vegas. We got an email from Helmut and Agnes
saying they were at Lake Mead so we spent an hour trying to phone them, but they couldn't hear us and kept hanging up!
So we headed out there the next day only to find out much later that they weren't there after all! But we stayed for a nice relaxing day at the lake just in case they
turned up.
