Traveling Thru The Tonda Zone!: Santa Barbara to Aguanga and beyond...

Pine Cove, CA in the Fern Bluff Camp Ground: Elevation 6327

N: 33.79031 W: 116.73354

I did not leave Santa Barbara as planned because I was offered an excursion to go sailing the following day and decided to take in the wonderfully warm weather and gentle breezes.

My friend’s buddy has a twenty foot Flicka and he and his wife, along with my friend and myself went out for a three hour jaunt around the marina area, circle the navy ship that was anchored off shore.

Later, my friend and I spent the evening drinking his homemade mead and meeting up with some of his friends who motored over in their boats (like this home made electric one) and shared friendly conversations and smiles. It was a very pleasant way to spend my last night in Santa Barbara for in the early morning I left the parking lot of the marina and ambled my way south into the confusing Los Angeles freeway system.

Taking Highway 101 south to Highway 126 where I headed east in a pleasant valley full of orange trees and a plethora of fruit stands offering the orange globes for a mere three dollars a five pound bag; such a deal but unfortunately, I was traveling too early trying to beat the heat, and most of them were still closed.

I had turned south on Interstate 5 and passed many sights in the mid-morning as the sun became hotter and hotter. I saw Six Flags and took a picture or two of the huge display of the many roller coasters they have filling the hillside until they disappeared behind me and I crept up on the city of Los Angeles through the many suburbs until I finally saw the towering skyscrapers of the core of the city of Angels.

I tried to get a glimpse of Disney Land off to the west but the concrete slabs that separate the freeway from the houses kept me from observing the entertainment playground but, I recalled my couple of visits there and it held me over as I continued driving further and further southbound trying to find Interstate 15.

After I left the southern suburbs of Los Angeles I drove into a valley that became stiffening hot causing the cab of the van to heat up to over a 110 when finally we came out around a large set of hills and found the ocean pushing cool salty breezes into the van and the temperature dropped back down to a mild 90 degrees as I finally decided I need to use the next rest stop. I thought I had read my map correctly and was under the impression I could link up with Interstate 15 from Interstate 5 and found my error in map reading only a mere twenty miles south of my intended destination.

I found no shade to pull into at the rest area and quickly finished my business before taking out the map and realizing I had read it wrong and Interstate 5 never intersects with Interstate 15 but that only a couple of miles ahead was eastbound highway 76 which would intersect me to Interstate 15. Continuing south before heading east, I was pleased I had looked at the map when I did as I was a mere forty-four miles from San Diego, far from where I was trying to get to.

I followed highway 76 east for ten miles until I intersected with Interstate 15 northbound where I drove another ten mile to Temecula, CA where I turned off onto highway 79 north and found myself in a heavy traffic area of mini malls and shopping centers.

I grabbed a quick drive-thru meal and drove to a small park where I parked a very hot and tired Matilda in the shade of tree as rain suddenly came down, adding to the already high humidity that filled the 98 degree day.

Resting under the shade of a tree with the rain and thunder coming and going as it pleased, I passed a three hour wait period I needed to give my childhood friend, who was traveling home from a weekend trip, before I could drive another forty-five minutes to her house.

I met my childhood friend when I was five and she was three and our friendship continued until our late teens where life leads people in different directions causing rifts in time that sometimes take thirty-one years to be crossed, just as we had.

I discovered I needed to be on highway 79 South so I situated myself in that direction, following the four lane shopping mall road until it became a two lane highway leading out into a boulder rock desert. I came to highway 371 and turned east and climbed up three thousand feet in four miles before I came to the red pole fence with the huge red barn and my childhood friend sitting out on a huge boulder waving at me as I rounded the bend in the highway.

A huge turquoise gate opened up and we drove up past two houses before pulling up to her large casa in the mountains of southern California. After our hugs and our excitement of seeing each other, she quickly gave me a glance over the 77 acre property that held three ponds, three houses and three horses, as well as many out buildings and other animals.

The property was on the edge of an Indian Reservation and the huge boulders on the property had been used by the natives for hundreds of years, leaving grinding stones and petroglyphs along with a fertility site that include ‘cock rock’ and a ‘vulva stone’ that used to be sacred grounds for them.

My friend showed me her 80X40 foot fenced garden that she and her mother-in-law worked very hard maintaining during the spring through fall season. She proudly showed off their dune buggy’s that she and her husband share as a favorite hobby that fill their winter months as they go down to southern California to Glemis where they spend weeks playing in the sand dunes.

We spent the next two days catching up on the last thirty-one years and then we celebrated her husbands’ fiftieth birthday by taking him out to lunch at the local Mexican restaurant in Anza, where he owns the feed shop in town, and then later that night he and I shot my revolver into the tender flesh of aluminum cans that danced off into the pond behind.

We drank champagne and ate steak and crab legs that my childhood friend expertly prepared for the special occasion. Later, after dishes, we all sat down with my California map going over the next leg of my journey.

Seeing as I am in southern California I thought I might go over to the Salton Sea and Slab City, both a tourist attraction of the oddity kind. Slab city is an old military base that is now a free camping/RV spot where people from all backgrounds coexist in Death Valley. The Salton Sea is a huge salty lake that is plagued with sulfur odors and dying tilapia fish and is in need of some serious preservation.

Then I saw the news on the television, the Salton Sea going through an extreme sulfur stage and possible eruption of underwater gases and the odor is wafting as far as Los Angeles, while the tilapia are dying off by the thousands, followed by a major drug bust down in Slab City where many people were arrested.

I then checked on the internet and found out a heat wave was washing over the area and the temps would be getting close to a hundred and ten.

Taking all of this information in, my childhood friend suggested she and I go camping up in the mountains an hour from her house where the temperatures usually were ten degrees cooler than most places, so this is where I am currently staying.

We left on Wednesday morning and drove the hour up three thousand feet from her home and found a treed and cool campsite with lots of shade and gentle breezes. We settled into space twenty and set up camp before sitting down and spending the next four hours talking and laughing until our sides ached. We built a fire that finally decided to burn after much coaxing on both of our parts before we settled down for a short nights rest in the quiet woods.

In the morning we shared coffee and cereal before we hugged and said our goodbyes; she leaving to go back to her husband and life while I decided I would stay for the next two days in the cool mountains and breezy trees of Fern Hill camp ground.

The weather is supposed to cool off by Sunday so I have decided that on Saturday I will wait until evening time before going down the east side of the mountain into Banning, CA where I will hook up with Interstate 10 and head up and over the huge mountain range and desert highway towards Lake Havasu in the cool of the nighttime, hopefully beating the heat and giving Matilda somewhat of break from driving in this hot weather.

Well, off to bed for now...dreaming of where I will go next while ‘Traveling Thru The Tonda Zone!

~Peace~