DAY 1 -- DRIVE TO CALIFORNIA

I decided to make the drive in one day instead of two.  This would have been a great idea except that it was a holiday.  The drive from Provo to Vegas was uneventful and I made great time.  However, take my advice, you never want to try driving from Vegas to California on a holiday when all the Californians are going home from a weekend away.  If you have ever been in stop and go Southern California traffic, you can relate to what I went through.  This was however, stop and go traffic clear across the dessert.  ARGGGGGHHHH!!!  Lesson learned the hard way.

So now that you have your first lesson for driving to my new abode from Utah, let me give you another one.  Being an older, grandmotherly type woman I naturally need to stop rather frequently.  Add my penchant for drinking copious amounts of liquid; water, ice, diet coke, and I had to stop very frequently.  I was going to take pictures of each facility I stopped at and let you know which ones were preferable.  Having not had a camera for years, I have to get used to using it. 

The first stop was at the Texaco on the south end of Fillmore.  Not a great idea.  It looked like they had a very hard night of use and the facilities were a mess.  No one seemed concerned with cleaning anything up.  Even the tables at the attached Burger King had crumbs all over them and the employees were busy watching TV.  The other really bad stop was the Valero in Victorville.  It was in a nice area of town and very busy because of the rush of traffic on the freeway.  The facilities were very dirty and there was a line of people to use them.

Loves Travel Center just before Las Vegas takes the top spot for number of stalls and cleanliness. This place was amazingly clean for the amount of traffic it had. The fact that gas was $2.75 a gallon didn't hurt either. Incidentally, Utah has the highest gas prices I paid all the way down. Even gas in California is cheaper than Utah. Shame on all those greedy grinch gas station owners.

The other two stops tied for second. The Chevron station at the southern most edge of St. George was very well maintained. Also, kudos to the State of California for maintaining two great rest areas across the dessert. There is cleaning and maintenance staff on site. These rest areas are probably the busiest in the nation and they are kept very well.

If you drive from Utah to California, you probably won't need to stop as often as me, but if you do need to stop, just remember where the best stops are. 

Tomorrow is my first day at the new job.  For now I'm just chilling in my room on the computer.  Here is the view from by bedroom window.