THE NEW WINNEBAGO VIEW’S MAIDEN VOYAGE
A Learning Experience
November 2007
In September of 2007 I felt an upgrade RV from the BOX was in order. I was on my way to look at a used BT Cruiser RV when that morning I saw on Craigslist a used 2006 Winnebago View at a car dealer on the way. I stopped by just to look as I was familiar with this new model of RV by Winnebago but never thought I could afford one. They are built on a Dodge Sprinter chassis with Mercedes Benz diesel engine and drive components. When I saw it upon arriving at the dealer it appeared like new. They had just taken it in the previous day and hadn’t even detailed it yet. The previous owner had traded it in for the new 2007 model. It was priced at nearly twenty thousand dollars less than the new sticker price. I knew I would never get an opportunity like this again and it wouldn’t last through the weekend on the lot. I bought it and it has since proven to be one of the best investments I have ever made.
Now on with the story.
I am not sure what time we leave home as I am not feeling well having just concluded two weeks of being sick, coupled with the fact that this will be the longest time I will be away from my wife in forty years. I stop at Safeway in Healdsburg for groceries, $93.46 worth. I have not had any breakfast and my stomach is upset over leaving but feels I should have something in it. I see a Starbucks and a mocha coffee sounds good, so I do the unspeakable for me−I step into a Starbucks for the first time in my life. I have to admit the white chocolate mocha is very good. I make a stop in Santa Rosa at the stereo shop and pick up another antenna for the new Sirius satellite radio I installed in the motor home. I feel I have buggered up the original antenna installing it as I get intermittent reception. As I prepare to get onto the freeway I see a Valero station across the street with Diesel for $3.49. Not stopping and filling up there will later prove to be a fatefully bad decision. I plan on stopping at Catania for fuel but once there I see diesel is priced much higher. Ha, what a joke on me! The closer we get to the San Rafael bridge turn-off, the fewer stations I see. I pull off a couple times in a fruitless search for one. I am grateful for what I am driving though for if I were in a large Class A type RV or even the Box, I could not be making some of the moves I am around these city streets. The last chance I have I locate a Valero station at $3.90 a gallon! This kills me. I have forgotten that there is a direct correlation as to the closer you are to an oil refinery, the higher the cost of fuel, not to mention we are in Marin County. Mercifully, the pump clicks off at seventy-two dollars for I do not have the common sense within me to buy just enough to get me through the Bay Area and to some lower prices.
On through the mess of the East Bay we stop at Altamont Pass for a quick pee and a deep breath. I have to turn on the water pump in order to wash my hands, and then continue on the road feeling good about finally being on my way. A few miles further as I make the long sweeping turn onto I-5. I look into the mirror and see I am spewing a stream of water out the back! I quickly pull over and discover that the entire basin where the dump valves are located is filled up like a small swimming pool with my two new powder blue rubber gloves floating about like water toys. An open valve to drain the freshwater tanks is the problem and the fact that the pump is on, water now runs freely out at a steady flow effectively draining away all twenty eight gallons of my fresh water. I make a couple of stops in an attempt to find a water faucet, one being at a rest stop where I notice my first View, which is from Oregon. I motor on to Wesley where I finally am able to top off the fuel tank as I want to get a reading on my first miles-per-gallon usage. I joyfully discover a water faucet around the side of the mini-mart. With fuel and water tanks full, I celebrate by walking over to Carl’s Jr. and treat myself to a hamburger and drink. Now with my stomach full too and I get on with the trip, satisfied and unconcerned. Meanwhile, through all of this, Sinbad cannot be any less concerned.
The drive down I-5 is pure pleasure in this new RV. Three hours later seems like nothing as I pull off at Lost Hills to an RV park we have used before, only that it is now dark and I don’t remember exactly where it is. Finally, after asking at a fast food place, I follow a New Jersey pick-up truck and trailer into the park arriving just before the proprietor closed for the day. In spot #25, I reorganize groceries I hastily threw in, cook a microwave dinner and catch up on my notes all the while listening to symphony music. This Sirius radio, the microwave and the added space of the slide-out is pure luxury for me.
The next morning I wake up to new sights, new sounds and new smells. Be it a fancy RV resort campground or a stinky noisy old truck stop, this is what road tripping is all about and I love it. I look out my window and see the View from the rest stop next to me. They are a nice couple who have two homes, one in Oregon and one in Arizona, which is where they are heading to now. We exchange View talk; they soon leave, while we follow a bit later at nine A.M. The road today takes me through beautiful Bakersfield reputed by a former neighbor to have excellent restaurants (ah...right), over Tehachapi pass, the birthplace of Point Reyes peninsula and down into magnificent Mojave where I have never known the wind to NOT blow. Here I am able to hook up to the Internet sitting next to an Econo Lodge motel. I send off an e-mail to home and post my first dispatch on my new blog, Sinbad and I on the Loose.
The tailwind out of town is nice until I make the turn south at Kramer Junction at Highway 395. Now it is a continual broadside of thirty mph winds but the View handles it nicely. Driving the old Box would have been extremely nerve-wracking. Imagine steering your garage down a windswept road. In fact, every aspect of driving this new RV is so nice that at the end of the day I am no longer wiped out as in the past. Soon we are on El Mirage Dry Lake for the speed time trials. The racers are here and I look forward to a weekend of speed.
I love seeing all the race cars and motorcycles and wish I my friend Glen from Massachusetts was here with me as he was at Bonneville. I walk the pits admiring the machinery and taking a few pictures. It is not good for me to be around this stuff. I wish I could do it. There are so many things I wish I could do or would have done but it seems I am too late in life. Yet I see these old people out here racing and it is very inspirational. Take for example, a couple who run bikes...fast bikes...motorcycles that go 200 to 215 mph. She is sixty-nine years old and a great grandmother and sets a new record at 218 mph. Her husband is eighty years old and goes just as fast. There is another fellow running a two hundred plus mile per hour car and he too is eighty. Seeing a car travel two hundred is one thing but to see a motorcycle go that fast is amazing as they rocket past. Oh and the great grandmother, she crashed last month at 184 mph but was out again the next day.
At night, I try to find a quiet spot along the shore of the dry lake but that is next to impossible what with all the kids buzzing about on their motorcycles and quads. However, the View is well insulated and with the symphony music playing the outside noise is hardly noticeable.
The next morning the slide-out motor no longer works and I have to crank it in by hand. This I know will be on my mind most of the day as I hate to be without the extra space and the hand wrenching is a bit of a chore. I try to isolate the problem and I am sure it is not the switch as bypassing it does not solve the problem.
I walk the pits again then position myself on the opposite side of the course so as not to have the sun in my face, and the wind will blow the dust away instead of at us. It is windy this day, Sinbad wants no part of it and finally at ten-thirty they decide to pack it in. No runs today due to the winds. Needless to say I am disappointed as I planned to stay another night then hit the desert towns on a Monday and hopefully locate a Winnebago dealer/service center about the slide-out. What to do?
An hour later, I decide to move on to Victorville and fill up for the first time. 18.2 miles-per-gallon and I am pleased. I figure I am spending just a little over half as much as I would have for the Box at the same distance and buying half as much fuel. I celebrate with the purchase of a Green Burrito at Carl’s Jr. in Apple Valley. At two-thirty P.M., this burrito will ultimately serve as lunch and dinner for me all in one meal. I am amazed at the development of all of these high desert towns that I can remember being just a gas station and few buildings forty years ago. A few miles further we turn off for Lucerne Dry Lake and get lured in by Bureau of Land Management (otherwise known as BLM) signs to someplace other than I intended to go. This turns out to be another Off Road Vehicle area, but we should be okay, as all the weekend warriors have had to leave for their Monday morning jobs. With all the wind and dust, the motor home looks as if it has been dust blasted, but inside is nothing like what the old Box would have been like. The inside is still fresh and clean due to the tightness of the weatherproofing. This is very nice.
I awake to a new day and this morning before I go to leave I press the in and out button for the slide-out and IT WORKS! All I can think of is the rough road knocked some connection back into place. We putz along down the road to the town of Yucca Valley and send off e-mails and update the Blog. I am getting better at finding Wi-Fi internet hook-ups to pirate from. On into Joshua Tree National Park and we camp at Jumbo Rocks, space #71. In the afternoon, I go for a little walk down the wash but do not see anything photo-worthy except a shadow of myself on the rocks. I climb into bed soon after dark for I cherish this time snuggled up with my book and Sinbad.
In the morning, I do not have to turn on the heater, which is so nice to have. As I lie in bed watching the sunrise, I can hear coyotes in the distance. This is what I enjoy! I get out of bed, put on my sweat pants, sit on a rock with the sun in my face while I drink my coffee, and eat a granola bar. I walk up the road a bit to check out where the two large RVs are from (Michigan & Montana) when I notice a little cottontail who allows me to get about eight feet from him−and me without my camera! Then coveys of quail fly right by me. The sound of their wings beating is wonderful. I go back for my camera. While I get some shots of the little rabbit, a young man is sitting up in the rocks playing his flute. Perfect! This is why I choose to do what I am doing.
We leave camp at nine-thirty A.M. and make our way slowly the forty miles out of the park. I can go slowly as there are hardly any other cars on the road. We stop at the Cottonwood Visitor Center but it is closed for lunch, so I take that as a hint and eat my lunch too. Out the park, across I-10 through Box Canyon towards Mecca with the Salton Sea coming into view. It is getting warm. In Coachella, I get some groceries at a super market that you would think you were in Mexico if you did not know better. This is great! Another Internet hook-up then we are on our way to Anza Borrego.
All my destinations seem to arrive so quickly as driving this RV is so effortless and carefree. The arroyos we have camped in before at Anza Borrego, even with the old Box, are now just too unsafe to do so in an RV. Rains have deposited a lot of soft sand and after a couple of turn-offs I decide at each one not a good thing to do. Disappointed we move on down to the flats where we camp with five other long-term squatters: a woman with her German Shepherd from Idaho by herself, three old geezers (I don’t qualify as number four yet, I don’t think) and the last person I never see. At seven hundred feet in elevation and as far south as we are, the evenings are very pleasant but there is no moon and it is very dark. The silence of the desert; I always forget how it is. Sinbad loves each and every stop we make and is real good about going on walks with his leash. He goes along just like a dog would and is just as filthy afterwards too.
Morning dawns and we go the few miles on into the little town of Borrego Springs. I have always liked this town, as it is so peaceful and quiet here. I would love to live here someday. A stop to the store for hamburger, a steak, a cooked chicken and some little muffins for the after breakfast hunger I have been dealing with everyday. I am able to hook-up to the Internet then go up to the park’s visitor center for lunch of much awaited sardines and crackers. I sit in the shade at the Center writing postcards and watch tourists come and go. Why are all the Europeans so healthy looking? One wonders what they think of Fat America. We swing by the post office to buy post card stamps then head south, over the hill and down to Yaqui Wash where I discover we have the entire area all to ourselves. By now, Sinbad’s long orange fur is even filthier. When seven-thirty P.M. comes around, it is lights out.
In the morning I go for a little photo safari but about all I see are Phainopepla (a black bird) which really do not want me any closer than fifty feet. By the time I get back to camp, I have decided to move on once again. The nomadic urge in me is too strong to resist. We stop across the road at Tamarisk Campground where I find a pay shower. I had forgotten about it being there. The campground is empty and the shower is much in need.
I had plan to go to Bow Willow Camp further south for I had been there long ago with the Land Rover and always wanted to come back and stay, as it seemed so peaceful and remote. I pull in to Mountain Palm Springs just before Bow Willow to check it out and this seems ideal. There are three other vehicles: a fellow in a stand-up van pulling a car, an old couple in a mid seventies RV, and a big brown-skinned grey beard, who sits outside his small Chalet trailer with his headphones on or reads books. It is quieter here as we are far from the road and the view overlooking the Carrizo badlands is spectacular. In addition, this camp is free and Bow Willow I am told costs seven dollars a night.
The retired couple, Charles and Catherine, has a home in the San Diego area and come here frequently, as do the other two. She is a wisp of a woman while he is a big person. Their RV is squared away with that homey re-painted look as we did with the old Box. He took out the sofa along the side to make a fulltime bed for him and she sleeps in the overhead. Charles tells me all about solar power and concludes that I would not need it for I am always on the move.
There are palms up in the canyon I am eager to hike too. There are no birds or any other living thing to speak of. Bill says it has been so dry nothing is around. He tells me usually there is a big beautiful Golden Eagle in the palms. I hike up through another of the canyons and it is as just as the first. Bill is full-timing it and has been for six years. I cannot imagine living out of a little Chalet trailer, but my hat’s off to him. I learn he has not only just had the Chalet. He has been through four VW Vanagons, two truck and campers and a trailer or two. He finds downsizing to this Chalet the best yet. He tells me he has to go back to San Diego for back surgery in a couple of months. He is wearing a back brace at times and carries a cane about though does not appear to need it for support. I find out he weighs two hundred twenty pounds and just lost one hundred fifty. He is a very nice fellow and pleasant to talk with. The fellow in the van parked across from Bill I gather is somewhat of a pest from an off-hand remark Bill makes.
His name is Charles also. He walks by our camp the first night from the retired couple’s RV with laptop in hand. He has been sharing his photos of being a campground host in Washington State with them. I pray he will not ask me and as I am chowing down on my hamburger and I think this spares me the ordeal. Twice now, he has told me about volunteering as a campground host in Washington. He has been full-timing for three years after his landlord raised the rent four hundred dollars. (I later learn more about Charles from Bill the day after he left, and he had a strange side that I never was exposed to thank goodness.) Then there was the hiker.
Coming back from my first hike I walk by a small car parked in the lot. As I had not seen anyone, I was thinking dead person, Donner Pass. This stems from a Donner Pass incident years ago where when we returned to our car after a hike the guy behind the steering wheel in the car next to us sitting was dead. I check inside the car, there is no dead person, and the car has Florida plates. At dusk, here comes this college-aged girl hiking up the road with backpack and sleeping bag. She had walked on out in the wilderness of the valley down below and camped out over night! So much, I want to talk with her but it is growing dark and I figure I will catch her in the morning, as she did not appear to be leaving. Unfortunately, the next morning her car is gone. What was it like out there? How did she know this is the spot? Any concerns about a snake wanting to snuggle up to keep warm or scorpions visiting her in the middle of the night? What did she think about out there all alone? Had she been doing this all the way out from Florida? What other excursions has she done? I have so many questions. Very unlike a woman in so many ways but then, maybe I just have not been out that much to learn there are many like her out here.
After the two canyon hikes I decide to go out in the valley where the hiker had come in from. I start by following a coyote trail. Again, after being out there for two hours I see no animal life except one jackrabbit. Not even a bird. Things are rough here after the long drought. Even the cholla cactus is struggling. The only thing interesting I come across is an old encampment illegals used many years ago coming across the border. I cannot imagine them traversing this harsh country, all those miles. I feel the soreness from the other hikes and I think I better not do as much tomorrow. In fact, I may move on. It is now just me and Bill left as the two Charles leave today.
The next morning I say good-bye to Bill and leave Anza Borrego State Park with some reservations, thinking wherever I go I may end up wishing I were still at Palm Canyon. As the day progresses it shows itself not to be a good day at all. I should have stayed put. I cannot seem to get it all together forgetting to lock cabinet drawers, problems with the radio again, and more. We travel through El Centro, which is an Internet black hole with several failed hook-up attempts, wasting a couple hours. A stop at a Mexican market does not have what I need. I should have known they would not carry bagged salad for example. I stop at a Walgreens and back into a sprinkler system with the trailer hitch leaving a fountain of water spewing skyward. Oops! Finally, I come across a Vons Market and feel things are taking a turn for the better, well not quite, for I walk out the store leaving two of my three bags behind. Senorism is creeping in upon me ever so steadily
We continue on to Yuma, Arizona where Internet connections are plentiful and gas is cheap−like fifty to sixty cents a gallon less. I spend an hour online with my wife, which is nice, but have to cut it off at three-thirty P.M. for I only have an hour before sundown. Instead of going to a place up the Colorado River Bill had suggested, we backtrack on I-8 five miles to Pilot Knob, a free BLM site for the night. There are Border Patrol vehicles all along this Interstate−our tax dollars at work. It looks like a very boring and lonely job sitting in a truck all day perched on top of a knoll. The accommodations for “guests” in the truck bed have all the appearances of the local animal control vehicles back home. It is a nice night at Pilot Knob even though I can hear the traffic on the Interstate.
I clean up in the morning then drop off trash and recyclables at the Shell station. We go over the freeway to take a picture of a sign, which I may use for the Blog then drive a bit further to check out this place called Felicity – The Center of the World. It is the strangest place, like a monastery, a commune, a retreat, a cult. A woman is mopping floors and tells me it will open for the season this coming Thanksgiving weekend, but I am free to walk about. The buildings are all a light beige color and new looking, very simplistic and bare. There is a pyramid of polished gray granite, which you could go inside, if it were open. Behind are long rows of polished red granite triangular shaped monuments. Half of them are etched with writing and images. Some have listed the members of the class of 1949 at Princeton and the others another college of that same time period. Another row is devoted to famous French people of science, history, industrial inventions, the French Foreign Legion, a time line of history including descriptions of famous happenings and religions of the world and many more rows completely blank, waiting to be inscribed. All of this is at great cost for sure. Perched upon a hilltop is a new looking little chapel, very clean and sanitary in appearance. The whole complex leaves me wondering whom, why and what for?
We leave Felicity and drive the few miles south to Algadones, which I had read about long ago. Snowbirds flock here to go across the border to purchase cheap prescription drugs, eyeglasses, dental work, etc. I pass on going over the border for it would be more enjoyable to do so with my wife along rather than alone. From here we travel north twenty some miles out of Winterhaven to look for another long-term encampment Bill suggested. This is a nice little drive through agricultural land. I am not sure I end up exactly where he intended for me to go, perhaps it was just anywhere in this area. Some parts require a fee and naturally, I choose a non-fee area.
It is not as hot here as in Yuma, maybe due to the close proximity to the Colorado River although I cannot see it from where I am. This is a flat area with hills and mountains off in the distance. I count seventy six other units here widely spaced out on a bleak volcanic parking lot on a plateau. These are big coaches, fifth-wheels and long trailers−not the usual rabble I have been camping with. That may sound like a lot but this area is so vast it isn’t congested. It is very quiet with hardly little or no activity from its inhabitants. The occasional car will drive by either coming or going. Some people may be away (Algadones?) but many are here yet I do not see them. They are inside their coaches, but doing what? I can see they have set things up for a long time: shade structures, covers on tires, solar panels erected, and so on. Just what do they do all day long, day after day? One can only read so many books, do so many crossword puzzles, and knit so many items before eventually going mad I think. I have a lot to learn. These are not Slab City folk or old geezers. They are long term or full-timers in big luxury units. It is very quiet here too, except for the occasional bomb explosion in the distance from the nearby military grounds. At dusk, I go for a walk flushing out a Gray Fox not more than thirty feet from me. If I encounter no other animals on this trip, this fox alone is worth the price of admission. He is very cat-like as he trots away with his big full bushy tail outstretched. I think of Sinbad whose tail is the very same way. The moon is half-full and the landscape amazingly bright. I look forward to the full moon in a week’s time.
The next day we re-enter Arizona and travel up Highway 95 when I come across a sign MITTRY LAKE. This is the place Big Bill was telling me about I exclaim out loud to myself. I was on the wrong side of the river yesterday. So with no hurry to be anywhere in particular we turn off, drive the twenty miles north and find several neat little camp spots nestled in coves of rushes along a tranquil small backwater littered with scores of American Coots squabbling and fluttering about. Now this old coot and his cat settle in.
A cold front moves in and for the first time in over a week, and I am back to wearing socks and a flannel shirt, but I am not complaining. The word from home is that it is in the 30’s so I am smiling.
The urge to move on is unrelenting and we leave Mittry Lake in the morning, without breakfast. Within an hour, we are passing through the U.S Army Proving Grounds north of Yuma. With helicopters buzzing overhead, tanks and personnel carriers rumbling past and ordinance exploding off in the distance, this is a nice place to eat a bowl of hot oatmeal and observe my fifty-ninth birthday.
A left turn leads us north, bucking twenty mph plus side and headwinds the entire fifty nine miles to Quartzsite, Arizona. I am enjoying the drive though until all of a sudden a rock slams into the windshield from an approaching truck. Happy Birthday to me!
We pull into the first of the fourteen-day limit BLM sites (which are free) named Road Runner. As I fill out the form at the campground host’s site, another View pulls in. These folks saw us and stopped just to say hi. He introduces himself to me, Roy and Judy King from Texas. The names are familiar to me from the View/Navion discussion group I follow online. We exchange View notes and Roy shows me his Internet access card used through his cell phone. This may be the way for me to go in the future. I mention to Roy the problem I have been having with the slide-out working and not working. “Are you setting the emergency brake when you stop? The slide-out will not work unless the emergency brake lever is pulled up.” I slap myself in the forehead. I knew this safety feature before and had completely forgotten about it.
Quartzsite is the Mecca for RVers during the winter months. Snowbirds as they are referred to flock here in the thousands seeking warm relief from their frozen homelands. There are hundred’s here from all over the country and Canada. After the first of the year, the majority will arrive for the big RV show, big Gem & Mineral show, big flea market and other big things I am probably not aware of. I thought this would be a haven for me in the years to come but I see now, no way. I can’t do it. This is not my thing.
Quartzite too earns the distinction of being a Wi-Fi Internet dead zone along with El Centro for after an hour of searching I cannot find a hot spot. I pick up a few items at one of only two grocery stores in town then drive east of town to Scadden Wash. This camp area is closer to the Interstate and thus less desirable than the previous site.
I planned to stay here for five days hitting all of the free fourteen-day limit sites before moving on but there is nothing to do. Hikes in the brush reveal no animals, no interesting points to search out, nothing. I want to conserve money and stay put but the urge to move on elsewhere is too great. In looking over the map, I figure I can travel east towards Saguaro National Monument and loop back up to Quartzsite on one tank of fuel. I deserve that much I think. So on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving, we head out aiming east on I-10. Going fifty-five mph all the time I present myself as an obstacle on the road for the speed limit is seventy-five mph and the big trucks do not have a posted speed limit. I take all the two-lane roads possible towards our destination but at times, the Interstate is the only choice.
At Gila Bend, I find a Travelodge Motel right away and am able to get online, update the blog and send e-mails out. With this accomplished, we motor on south to Casa Grande for a few groceries and fuel. I drive over the Interstate towards the on-ramp when I see the top of an old RV ahead perched up in the front with all doors open. I think it is abandoned and pillaged. Once I turn onto the on-ramp, I can look down on the dirt slope and see an old lady walking her dog. The front end of the RV is jacked up well over two feet from the ground, transmission parts are scattered about on a blue tarp and an old man in greasy overalls is lying underneath the rig. These people looked down and out, late sixties in age and dirt poor from all appearances. I do not react quick enough to grab the little Nikon by my side for a photo as the scene stuns me. How long have they been here broke down trying to make repairs? No doubt for days I suspect. I wonder how they can sleep inside with it on such an angle as it is. I feel so bad for these people for here I am in my new Mercedes Benz powered motor home. This causes me to reflect while driving on that I have seen three or four old Boxes like what we had all of which were very rough looking, yet still rolling along. The characters inside were rough looking too, to a degree I could never achieve even if I tried.
It is now approaching late afternoon and I should stop at the first camp opportunity we find, which happens to be a private park before Picacho Peak State Park. The man here informs me that the State Park does have camping so I go the few miles further and check in at a very nice park. Arizona has everything over California: better roads, cleaner rest areas, no forms to fill out, free showers and they even rake the campsites clean−very camper friendly State Parks.
Saturday morning I am up for a shower before six A.M. and find other campers in the restroom/shower area. Why are other people up this early? Then while showering I realize they are on Arizona time...an hour later. Oh, the shower is so nice, the hot water streaming down my body. This is my second shower of the trip. It has been pretty cool these past couple of mornings. I do not know if it is a weather thing, altitude (I find out later I was at two-thousand feet, no wonder!) or that far north which is not that much. I am very grateful for my comfortable little home I have while I look outside and see people all bundled up around campfires. I try to imagine the cold in the tent on the ground and do not want to think about it. Those days are long behind me now.
Today we move on to Saguaro National Monument, which does not have camping so I do not know where I will go for the night. Saguaro is not a good idea, especially as I enter the visitor center. I see couples together and the loneliness of traveling alone sets in with me for the first time. I feel lost for all day. I need to move on.
Two hundred miles later, I am in Organ Pipe National Monument. I feel better having had a nice drive on a two-lane desert road through forested valleys full of Saguaro. I am happy being here. Organ Pipe is quiet and I am in the campground that we could not stay in the last time here in the Land Rover many years ago, for they close during the summer. I recall our camp then was in the middle of the desert. When night fell the ground was carpeted with mice scurrying about. This traveling alone is something I am going to have to learn to deal with and accept if I intend to keep on exploring the country. I do have concerns as if I should venture into the visitor center or not. I hope that not as many people will be ther