(Note: thanks for all the e-mails and letting me know that the comments section is not working. I have a support ticket submitted and hopefully it will be fixed soon.)

Wow, I thought we had a lot of rain in Washington State. We drove three days in driving rain to Escondido. The weather report called it an atmospheric river. Yep, that pretty much sums it up. I’m not really complaining because the people of CA really do need the rain and we were plenty dry in the truck.

Not too many pictures of the drive down Interstate 5 but I did take a few. It was good to see the annual migration of Canadians was in full force. Camper after camper with British Columbia plates heading south.

As you can see the scenery wasn’t that great. We mostly passed the time listening to podcasts. Our new favorite is Ologies with Alie Ward. Super interesting interviews with experts in different science fields…. anything that ends with …olgy. Check it out.

For example, we learned the state rock for Utah is… wait I’m not going to tell you. But we were surprised that it is the rock for a state known for beautiful rock formations.

We took a detour to see the Elephant Seals along the coast. They have their own website HERE. We figured they didn’t care about the rain. It was a great stop and we took a few pictures.

We stayed at a nearby hotel that Google lists with two complete stars, the San Simeon Lodge. I sprung extra for an ocean view room. Probably shouldn’t have bothered since it was mostly a cloud and mist view room. Here is the view.

The bikes were getting a very thorough soaking all the way down.

That was the last picture for a while. We drove to Escondido and spent New Year’s Eve with our good friends Kevin and Jane. They gracefully agreed to let us park out truck and trailer at their house. It was fun catching up with them next to a roaring fire in the fireplace while the downpour continued outside. We actually managed to stay up to, ummm… 10 O’clock!

New Years day we were up early. It poured all night. The loud rain and wind woke us up a couple times and I was wondering if we would actually be able to leave. We had a slow breakfast and took our time preparing the bikes. By 10:00 the rain was letting up and we decided to give it a go.

Kevin prepared a route that took us over a 3,000+ foot pass near Palomar mountain and then dropped down to Borrego Springs. The rain picked back up as we neared the crest of the pass. The temperature dropped to 40 degrees but thankfully never clicked into the 30’s. The rain was pretty steady and we gave our waterproof gear a good test. It worked. Finally, we started to drop out of the mountains and the clouds gave way to sun. Sun! We hadn’t seen the sun in, what, weeks?? As the clouds broke we were greeted with an awesome rainbow.

And some nice views of the valley.

As we dropped down the temperatures warmed into the 60’s and we were starting to dry out when suddenly the wind picked up and we were getting blown sideways off the road. The desert sand was covering the road like a dry snow blizzard. I tried to flip on my helmet cam the the battery was dead. My GoPro was safely tucked in my panier so, no pictures. It was epic in a few places when we were in a full blown sandstorm with almost no visibility.

We finally got to interstate 8 just before Yuma, AZ and I stopped on the on ramp to take one picture with my phone. Only one because the wind was so strong Deby was having a hard time keeping her bike upright while stopped.

We made it to the hotel around 4:00 PM and were glad for the evening to re-organize our gear and get ready to cross into Mexico tomorrow.

I was on the phone with GoDaddy tech support and have a ticket open. Hopefully they get the problem resolved soon and the comments section will be working again.

Thanks for the e-mails, words of encouragement and thanks for following.

Donn and Deby