Day 2- Acton, CA


Some of us are falling into the road trip routine very easily; Dog knows, we've done it enough times.  Don hit the deck just awhile after six, and I was just minutes behind him.  I let him know that I was ready for work, and he had the phony newspaper ready for me.  Carefully hiding the paper from my sight (yeah, sure), he went to the coach door and tossed the paper on the grass, then beckoned me to do my "retriever" thing.  I bounded down the steps, gently took the paper in my powerful jaws, and ran back into the coach.  As he almost always does, he gave me great words of praise, then rewarded me with one of my favorite cookies.  When we're at home, and the newspaper is real, I can see a purpose in this routine; I guess he just wants me to keep in practice when we're on the road. 

So, I got my breakfast, we had our morning meeting, where we talk about what we'll be doing today and I get a back rub, and I laid down for my post meal nap.  Geri made her appearance about an hour later, and I was happy to see her.  Don was immersed in gaining some information from the computer, and was ignoring me, so her attentions were quite welcome.  We spent most of the morning rearranging supplies and getting some of the radio gear working right.  Don took me for a walk around the RV park, and I had to agree with him that the view of the San Gabriel Mountains from our location was very spectacular. 

After lunch, we all piled into the truck for an outing.  I'm now agreeable to the use of the folding ramp that Geri got for me last year, though I still want to exhibit my athleticism by jumping into the truck every now and then.  Since our address at the RV Park was in Acton, we went in search of downtown, to see where the Acton Action really was.  We rolled past many ranches, but couldn't identify a town anywhere.  We saw a couple of RV parks, but they didn't look as nice as ours.  Don took a detour from the main road up a route that he said would reveal the source of the Santa Clara River, something he's been obsessing about for years.  Geri has pointed out that the Santa Clara is hardly the Nile (whatever that is), and his fixation on this is a form of sickness.  As we headed up the hill alongside the puny little creek, Geri noted that there was no longer any water in it.  She reasoned that the lack of water would mean that we had gone past the source of the river, and that the quest was finished.  Don had to grudgingly agree, and turned the truck back down the hill. 

We got back to Soledad Canyon Road, and followed it through areas that looked pretty wild, with some abandoned mines and houses, a few trailer parks that looked pretty rough, and a few roads that led further up into the San Gabriels.  Geri didn't encourage Don to try them.  We finally stopped at a place called Lang, where Don had to photograph a historical marker that celebrated the Golden Spike ceremony that joined the railroads of Northern and Southern California, back in the 1880's.  I don't think a lot of people are aware of this event.  I'm not surprised that Don is.

We cruised up Highway 14 to Agua Dulce, where we turned off to visit a County Park called Vasquez Rocks.  The attraction here is a rock formation that we have all noticed while driving up 14, an unusual bunch of slanted layers of rock that are totally out of synch with the rest of the hills around them.  We parked near the entrance to a Geology Walk, and Don and I set out to learn the geology of the place.  We didn't learn much; I learned that it had turned very warm, and I was strongly drawn to shady areas.  Don had learned from his internet searches that the formation was the result of an unusually strong earthquake about 25 million years ago, though it's recent history centered around its use as a locale for movies and TV shows.  Driving further into the Park, we saw that a film crew was engaged in doing some production.  We parked in time to see a man carrying another person up the side of one of the rock formations, tossing the body to the ground, then throwing it over the edge to certain massive harm.  Fortunately, it turned out to be a dummy.  Don declined Geri's invitation to climb up one of the pinnacles so she could photograph him, so we left the Park. 

We made one last try at finding Acton, and were successful, with Garmy's help.  She guided us to the Acton Store, which we had not recognized during our first pass through as the the center of Acton.  They stopped and bought a few things.  Then back to the Californian RV Resort for dinner, which consisted of leftover Southwestern Chicken, one of our favorites.  Good plates (bowls, really)! 

Don is having difficulty getting photos from the new camera transferred to the laptop for inclusion in the Blog, so we might be short on pics tonight.  He promises to get the problem licked somehow, 'cause he knows how much our readers enjoy the photos.  So, I'll sign off and let him get to work on his difficulties.  So long for now!