Soon I move on to Beaver Utah for a 3-night stay…what a relief to break the every-day-we-travel cycle just to get out of California/Nevada. I’m glad I’ve planned the rest of this four-month trip with at least 2- or 3-night stays. Many stops are a relaxing week at a time.
The Mojave desert in July is all about heat. Heat and wind and parched Joshua trees. Sand and stone and hot brown hills dotted with drought-tolerant bushes. Heat that dries wet hands in seconds and makes Patchouli do a funny little dance-and-dash to escape the hot concrete pad beside the rig. It’s the kind of heat that turns Nestle’s mini-morsels into a single mega-morsel right in the cupboard. The exposed insides of a croissant, broken open and left on the counter, are crunchy-stale within two minutes in the dry air.
Driving through this desert in July is all about protecting the truck from overheat by blasting hot air through the cab as we climb through 4000 ft elevations and jockey with semis in slow-moving truck only lanes. Living in it in an RV is about protecting the trailer’s a/c unit as it gasps and heaves to bring 105+ degree air to a livable temperature inside. It fails in that attempt, and I decide to just leave the fan blowing to keep the hot air moving.
The heat is keeping Patchouli very close to the floor, where he’s currently sprawled out as long and lean as his body will go, just to remove any folds where body heat can trap. I joined him there today at a rest stop, Valley Wells, California mile marker 270, a few miles shy of the Nevada border. The floor was the best place to take a lunchtime catnap from a sweaty morning of driving.
Am in Las Vegas now, to the east side of the strip, far miles from its lights and noise. The Riviera RV park here is like the Shangri La in Yuma—hot asphalt, wanna-be shade trees, gravel-dirt spaces, unrelenting sun. Add a hot, hungry wind that whips the flag on a neighbor’s rig and rocks the Flying Heart on her jacks and stabilizers. It blew Patchouli’s fur around right down to the skin when we dared a walk at 7pm. It was something like strolling through a convection oven.
Barstow yesterday was a good stop. Cooler temps there (mid 90s), and an early arrival gave me time to take in the Mojave River Valley Museum and Calico Ghost Town before sundown. Both are full of interesting history, and the ranger let me in free to the ghost town because I arrived an hour before the shops and restaurants closed.
This area of California is steeped in memories of its own heydays—silver mining and 20-mule team borax mining in the mid-to-late 1800s. A major stop on the Atchison-Topeka-Santa Fe railroad at the turn of the century. Throughway of Highway 66 in the 1950s (today, “Berma shave” signs, Peggy Sue’s Diner, 50s-themed attractions, and other hoppin’ establishments cater to oldsters who remember traveling that road). Barstow still calls itself the Gateway of Opportunity.
Calico, an 1881 town tucked into the side of the Calico Mountains east of Barstow, was silver boom, silver bust, borax boom, borax bust. Eventually the remains were bought up by a fellow named Knott (of Knott’s Berry Farm fame), and he helped keep the place on the map by turning it into a tourist attraction that represents Life In An Old West Mining Town. They do a pretty good job of it, if you don’t mind a bit of schmaltz and romanticizing of the era and some unabashed Hollywood-like mockups and merchandising.
A few of the buildings are original, like a two-room outhouse and the restored Lane House (home of a 67-year resident of Calico). These make for interesting wandering and wondering. Antiques are everywhere, some derelict and rotting, some still usable, mostly scattered between buildings or collected into groupings that show aspects of mining life, such as an apothecary’s shop, a barber shop, a livery stable, blacksmith, leather shop, Chinese bath house, etc. Buggies, wagons, and a horse-drawn hearse, all in decay, give glimpses of the travel of the time.
A few “attractions” are there, such as a mock-mine railroad, a mini tour of an actual mine, a wild west dress-up photo shoot, and a duplicate of the Haunted Shack that’s at Knott’s Berry Farm. The faux town hall is lined with photos of employees in costume, as well as of weddings that are still held at the town—bride and groom inevitably in period dress, but with the bride often hiking up her skirt to reveal white leather cowboy boots.
A brief hike up a hill gives a grand view of the town’s layout, surrounding hills, and valley. Knott ultimately donated Calico to the County of San Bernardino. There’s a sad little RV park on the property…hot, dusty, treeless, mostly rubble and rock-strewn sites, few hookups, looking forlorn today, with only four rigs on an area that’s built for a hundred.
There was lots of shade at the aptly-named Shady Lane RV park in Barstow, despite its shabby appearance and weathered old proprietors…Mary the thin old woman limping sideways and laughing through a face full of wrinkles as she checked me in, Ron the stubbled, heavyset old man who drove me in the golf cart to show me the site, and Jim a younger man of middle age and a crooked crippled body who escorted a late-night arrival, via a flashlight flitting distractingly in the dark, into the campsite next to mine.
Haven’t met many people to interact with on the trip yet…too much being on the road and not enough being among others for any length of time. I still get the wisecracking middle-aged fellas who see me setting up the trailer and ask, “Why don’t you get your husband to do that?” (“I like doing it myself”), or “Why are you doing all that work?” (“Because my cat hasn’t learned how”), or “OK, so when’s the man gonna come out and pop open a beer?” (“Who needs one of those?”). Funny how being a woman traveler draws congratulations from other women for going it alone, while men work from the assumption that I must have some fella hiding around somewhere.
Patchouli’s latest batch of indoor grass is finally tall enough for him to nibble on. It’s the most green we’ve seen in days. In San Diego, the air was so moist that dew would be on the blades in the morning. Since leaving, I’ve needed to water it daily just to keep the stuff growing. Every time we go out, Patchouli makes mad for the nearest plant, in hopes that it’s grass. He tries to chew everything remotely blade-like, so I’m constantly encouraging him elsewhere in case he’s near something harmful. He yowls a lot when I do that.
Have spotted a small hole in the bathroom vent cover, which I need to tape over before I hit bad weather. I think a bird may have pecked at it…ravens, crows, sparrows, grackles, and all kinds of other birds like to explore the roof, and they often wake me up with their pattering feet or pecking beaks. One of them even came in under the vent cover above the bed one morning. Its toenails scraped along the screen barrier of the vent and it pecked and poked at whatever had fallen along the edges. The dang thing flew in and out of the space several times, but zipped off before I could get the camera on it.
No wifi access in Barstow, and the linkup in Las Vegas is failing this evening, although it was working great this afternoon. Must be something atmospheric. Will need to post the blogs as wifi allows, even if they go up days after I’ve left a place.
Truck sighting of the week: BIMBO, with a plump white teddy bear in a baker’s hat. You’ll get a laugh out of the site: bimbousa.com.
