The alpaca tour was at 8am, which is way earlier than any of us like to wake up, so we bribed the kids with pastries and got coffee all set up the night before. It was definitely worth waking up for:
The "alpaca farm" is just this couple's house, where we parked in their front yard, and they have a big property where they do airbnb, hipcamp, and harvest hosts, and a couple years ago they decided to get 4 alpacas because they thought it would be a fun attraction to draw people in. It totally worked on us. Our host said that airbnb traffic has decreased with covid, but camping and especially RV camping are way up, because camping at the state parks is closed so people are looking for alternatives, and everybody's getting an RV and touring the country with online school. She told us most of their guests are people who just bought an RV and are taking it out for the first time and don't know how to drive it. I said, "That's us!" Apparently we are just jumping on the bandwagon and everybody's doing it!
After the alpaca tour, we had a long day of driving planned, so we hit the road quickly and drove most of the day, eating lunch on the road.
Our big excitement for the day was when another driver on the freeway kept signaling that we needed to pull over, and we looked out the back window and one of our bikes was hanging off the back and dragging down the road. I forgot to take a picture of the bike dragging, but here's a picture of the aftermath... about an inch of the handlebar got worn off, but otherwise the bike seems ok. After that we stopped and bought some better ratchet straps.
In the evening we decided to keep with our dinosaur theme and stopped at Cabazon Dinosaurs, where they have a bunch of giant dinosaurs and surprisingly good wafflesaurus ice cream.
Then we settled in for the night at Chiriaco Summit, where there is a free campsite nestled in between a General Patton museum on the side of the highway and the south side of Joshua Tree National Park. Lucy and I went for a nighttime walk and it was pretty amazing out there. I'm pretty sure we walked right up to the edge of the national park. We won't make it inside the park this time (other than Lucy slipping inside the fence just because she could), but it's probably as beautiful on this side of the fence as on the other side.
Today's Route:
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