We had been planning this vacation since early December – when we had to cancel our normal winter vacation because of my back surgery. Now that it is over, and all the classes I teach are on spring break, we decided to escape to the desert.

We left on Sunday and drove through the rain. The weather back home was due to rain all week, which wasn’t going to make for a fun time. We are expecting rain here tonight, but then sunny with occasional clouds for the rest of the week.

Given the situation with the Corona virus, we figured we’d set things up so that we didn’t need to see people. We have enough food for a week, so can happily stay in one place. We have a lovely campsite – where we have pretty reasonable cellular connection (good enough to do conference calls on Zoom as needed), located just outside of Barstow California. We had planned on going to Joshua Tree but it is unclear whether or not that will be possible.

We headed out for a short walk today, mostly just so we got out. There are a couple of other people at the campsite – which means there is a lot of space between us. We are the only one in the area where we are camped, and the outhouse near us still has toilet paper!

After returning from our walk we learned that the Governor of California has ordered a shelter-at-home until April 1st for the county that we live in. We are not currently in the county, rather we are several hours south in an area that is not very populated. Since we have a weeks worth of food, our plan is to stay here and enjoy the peace.