Southbound & Down (Red Earth Casino – Thermal, CA)

Happy Monday!  My new favorite day of the week since retirement 🙂

We’re on the road again headed south to the “dirt farm” in Casa Grande, AZ.  The “dirt farm” is a term of endearment that my Mom, Stepdad, brother Steven & Cheryl call their ~5 acres where they keep horses, chickens, dirt, etc., 🙂  We need to be back there before Thanksgiving because we have a lot of family coming to visit over the holiday, plus we are making plans to leave the Urban Escape Vehicle parked there while we travel to Germany to visit Stilla’s family over the Christmas holidays.  We need to be in Germany for Stilla’s fathers’ birthday on the 8th of December.

We sure would have liked to stay at Bill & Patti’s but we have to hurry down to Casa Grande as I said earlier.  We’ve dawdled enough and better get down to the dirt farm to help out with things before Thanksgiving.

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Thanks again to Bill & Patti for their hospitality!  We said goodbye with hugs and ‘see-ya-laters’.

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Bill & Patti Figge.

We traveled about 200 miles yesterday (Sunday) after we left Bill & Patti Figge’s house in Thousand Oaks, CA.  We needed fuel… Bill turned us on to a nearby Chevron station that had easy access.  Thanks again Bill!  We put in a couple hundred dollars worth of diesel and continued on.  We stopped at the Red Earth Casino (map below) for an overnight stay.  It’s free as long as you stay away from the slot machines 🙂  We stayed here once last year on our way to Pomona… it’s not bad here, but there’s dry-camping (boondocking) only.

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The fine (sic) roads around Los Angeles took their toll on the drivers-side sun shade (below).  The little bolt that holds the arms to the shade loosened itself up and fell out due to all the bumpy roads and vibrations from the concrete freeways.  Luckily, a rest stop wasn’t too far away.  I was able to find all the pieces and put it back together 😐  I also took the opportunity to tighten the others, i.e., side-window shades and the passenger-side windshield.

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Drivers-side view after the sun-shade fell apart.

And here we are at the Red Earth Casino (←link).  We made the rest of the days trip without incident 🙂

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Red Earth Casino (Thermal, CA) dry-camping.

Here’s the rest of our intended route for today (map below).  291 miles to go… check back later to see if we make it 😉

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