Travelogue

Pea Soup Andersen'sWe had decided to drive the Mojave Road from East to West, as that is how most people do it and the guidebooks are oriented that way in terms of mile markers. Plus, the roads are so narrow that you really don’t want to meet someone coming the other way, so going in the more popular direction would help our odds that that wouldn’t happen.

Mile 0 for the Mojave Road is in Laughlin, Nevada, on the western bank of the Colorado River. Since that was a 10 hour drive from our house, we decided to drive 7 hours the first day and stay in Barstow overnight, so we would be fresh for starting our drive across the desert.

Barstow, at the junction of I15 and I40 in Southern California, has become a common overnight stopping point from us whenever we travel to the southwestern deserts.

The drive down I5 from the Bay Area to Bakersfield can be quite boring, but we did break up the trip stopping for lunch at Pea Soup Andersen’s in Santa Nella on the way down. That windmill had been beckoning me for years every time we whizzed past it on I5.

Lolo enjoying her split pea soup at Andersen'sThe restaurant was quite warm and cozy, with an old-world Danish charm. I couldn’t help but miss my Mom. She would have loved this place - cozy booths, friendly staff, a gift shop, a 6-page menu.

We really weren’t that hungry, but we went ahead and ordered the pea soup in a bread bowl anyway - probably a mistake. It was really good, but next time I think I would get it in a plain bowl, as the delicious soup was absorbed into the bread quicker than I could get to it.

We were still full by the time we got to Barstow.

The next morning, from Barstow we made the 2 ½ hour drive to the town of Laughlin, Nevada where we stopped at a Vons for some last minute supplies and filled our tank with gas (a good thing when embarking on a desert crossing).