4-8-09 Wednesday (Somewhere Over The Rainbow)

First off, some back tracking to last nights events. Actually 2 events.

ONE- I made a pitcher of my Crystal Lite Peach Tea, and it tasted icky. Bad water, bad. A few weeks ago, I bought a cheap electronic water tester. The water quality here shot off the chart to 999, the worst end of well water quality. Off to Walmart we went (for a second time yesterday) and bought 4 gallons of bottled water. Just for the hell of it, I tested bottled water at 117 which was on the best end of the filtered water scale.

TWO- Jim and I haven't been sleeping that well lately. New pillows? Mattress? During last night's Walmart visit, we purchased a memory foam 1.5" thick mattress topper and 2 new memory foam pillows. Memory foam is very dense and feels firm. We knew we might be resistant to the pillows. Surprisingly enough, we both slept a little better last night. Who would have thunk it? We haven't tried the mattress topper yet because for packaging purposes, it's been severely flattened. The package instructions say to wait 24 hours to allow it to regain it's shape. I put it on the bed this morning. After 3 hours, I'm tired of watching it. I don't see it move much. I should get a chair; my legs hurt.

OK, on with today's activities. Walking the dog today was not fun. Again with the wind and sand in my eyes! Argh! It is so damn windy. Hell no, our awnings are not out! Glad I could get that out. As I've mentioned, this RV park is on a county park. The ghost town which is full of stores and shops is right up the hill. We only went there to get some information about something Jim had heard about... Rainbow Basin. We got directions, spotted a BBQ restaurant and decided to have lunch there. We were impressed with what little we saw of Calico Ghost Town but knew we'd be back after Rainbow Basin. Excerpt from desertusa.com >> Northwest of Barstow, California, lies one of the most beautiful and mysterious locations in the Mojave Desert: Rainbow Basin. It’s a mishmash of shapes, colors and fantastic formations, a place where water and wind have worked magic, sculpting layers of sandstone and sediment to expose brilliantly colored formations. It changes moment by moment with the passing day, with shadows falling deep into canyons and cuts. Rainbow Basin is surrealistic, other-worldly, seemingly a land that couldn’t possibly exist on the same planet that holds forests, lakes and lush meadows. The Rainbow Basin was incredible. The colors of different rock layers were amazing. Just when we thought we had seen it all. The greens, the reds, oranges, browns, within the rocks were pretty awesome.

After Rainbow Basin we headed to Calico to take a short 8 minute train ride near the old mine shafts. What a neat village they have set up. A few things we did of interest:

We stopped off at the Leather Store, then went onto the bath house and eventually came upon a glory hole. All of this, in a ghost town! Sweet! You'll just have to watch my video.