The Trip That Lasted a Year - Journey

A four-day trip at the end of July would seal the book of Az, and let me begin anew. After hearing how I didn't have a dwelling of my own to park and live in, J's mom opened her doors to me, allowing me to stay in a room there, with bed and bathroom for my own. She loves Cat, having known her for the last decade of visits while J and I lived in WA, and has two of her own, so we would see how everyone got along. But first we had to get there.

July 18 Wednesday

I must pack up all my belongings in the truck while J is at work, and pick up Jon at the airport in Phoenix by 3pm so we can all enjoy this road trip together. Originally, we had asked this friend of ours to drive the Caddy, while J drove the truck and horses and I drove the RV, making a caravan up to WA. We all know how THAT worked out. Because he’d already booked his flight, he came down anyway, what could be more fun than four days on the road with friends you haven’t seen for a while? We’re about to find out!

But first we had to play musical cars. I could skip this, but why? I’m so entertained by it. I had my stuff in the back of the truck, but because Jon and I would wait for J to get off work and join us in Phoenix, I couldn’t bring cat with me, there was just no room in the truck for litter box, food, extra bodies… so J would bring the Saturn (we taped the brakeline by that time, but the poor door chime would forever ring when door was open) with Cat. But because J was flying back from WA to AZ at the end of the trip, we were leaving the Saturn in Phoenix at another buddy’s house, and picking up the Caddy from my friend’s house, also in Phoenix.

Fortunately for me, and probably Jon both, his plane was a whole hour late, and he got in at about 4. The loading of the truck didn’t go well, since I was doing it alone (in mid July heat), and I didn’t get to the airport until about 5:10pm! We ate and went back to the coach to get the mileage for the donation paperwork, so the AZ Kidney Foundation could perhaps profit from my loss. J got into town about 8, bringing very unhappy cat with him, and we picked up the Caddy from Lindsey’s house. So at this point I drove the Caddy with Cat inside, and the J’s were pimpin’ it out in the truck with all my stuff, and we stopped for some food before heading to dad’s place, three hours away, near Las Vegas. I didn’t have the A/C recharged in the Caddy since I was trying to sell it, so the windows were down, and while we were in some fast food joint to energize our drive, Cat decided she wasn’t going on the trip after all, and jumped out unbeknownst to us.

Only when we started our engines, and battening down anything that would inevitably get thrown around in the back of a speeding vehicle, did I realize that I was short a feline. She has already used up so many lives through the course of her then 15 years (that is yes another blog for another time), I knew her number would be up someday soon. But dammit, not before we see some trees!! It took a short while to find this 6 lb furball making her way along a low brick wall only feet from the six-lane road. Caughtcha!

The J factor was in full effect, he drove the truck with Jon at anywhere between 70-100 miles per hour without a single cop in sight the whole time, and I followed as fast as I could, and faster sometimes. Boy that car can move! That 3-hour tour took us two and a half. it was loud, and the temp, which had been upwards of 90 degrees, finally broke about midnight, after we passed Wickenburg. I will NOT miss that. We arrived about 1:30 in the AM completely wound up.

We hung out with dad for a bit and finally got to bed about 2:30 or so. When I say got to bed, understand it was one of the most beautiful and deliriously fascinating experiences, and I have had the pleasure on two other occasions: dad’s Santa Fe style house has a flat roof and a couple mattresses up there with blankets. Laying under a sky full of stars, the last thing I wanted to do was fall asleep. So many meteorites! So many stars! The edge of the Milky Way galaxy seemed to split the sky in two. Sometimes up there on the roof, with various empty beer bottles sitting around, and the gentlest of breezes at exactly the right temperature… the bottles would sound like a bass flute, and I told J it’s like Kokopelli himself was playing for us out there. It was truly magic.

Thursday, July 19

This is the longest day of my life.

9AM - I had the route picked out. It was about an 8-hr drive. Nobody was especially happy about going through Death Valley around noonish in the non-A/C caddy, but J said he would do it. Cat kept swearing she was gonna die if she didn’t get some air soon, so I wanted us to ride in the fully-functional truck. The horses were a little resistant to load. There was a wind, and that usually makes horses nervous, and they were definitely not about getting in. They didn’t – couldn’t – have known what lay in store for them, and were happy flitting about dad’s 2 ½ acres like wild spotted birds for the last couple weeks. But it finally worked.

10AM - We had breakfast along highway 68, and met a friend of dad’s that goes to WA on a regular basis to see his family. He swears by a certain route, and showed it to us and we thought it looked good. It cut out a large part of Death Valley, and would take us through the most beautiful parts of Northern Nevada and Northern California. So we agreed to amend the plans right then and there.

11AM - Understand we were less than an hour south of Las Vegas, but in order to keep from crossing the Hoover Dam, with that AWFUL traffic, tourists, and winding road, we had to drop down to Laughlin first, a twenty minute drive - and take an alternate way into LV which was an additional hour, at least. Except we weren’t exactly sure where we were going. We had two-way radios, which was very cool during shoddy cell phone reception, but only worked within a certain distance – and occasionally (well, often) we exceeded that distance. And so it was trying to figure out which 93 we were on, and which one we needed (there is one in CA not far from the other in AZ. Some mapmaker’s humor, I suppose), it meant me looking in the rearview, thinking I’ll give him another couple minutes before I just stop and go find him... Add that to I was pretty sure I knew where I was going, until we got to a dead end, getting turned around somehow – we couldn’t get hold of dad to help us out.

We didn’t get out of that hell until after 4pm, with seven hours of driving today’s leg in front of us. We had the camping grounds picked out and everything. And by Jove, or by gum, or by Jove’s Gums, we were gonna make it there!

We drove through some great country in NV, saw the gas station from an X-file episode (very cool!) and stopped at a restaurant/casino/hotel to eat.

9PM - Here they still allow smoking in restaurants—which was plainly obvious when the “greeter” at the front lounge (and I use the term loosely) had a cig hanging out of her pie hole when she told us how to meander through the rest of the flea trap to get to the food. What could be funnier than that, you ask? Jon asked the hostess seating us about –gee, I forget what it was now—something like, smoking is usually not allowed… but in getting a jibe from the hostess about his comment, he retorted with his hands in the air, “well EVerything must be legal here!” just as we sat down across the aisle from two deputies eating dinner. We got the dirtiest looks from those officers. Several of the dirtiest looks. And they make ‘em big there.

Then comes Hawthorne NV. Don’t ever go there.

12PM - I was on fumes, literally wondering not if, but where I was going to run out of gas, towing 7000 lbs of horsemeat at about 20 mph along a deserted road… I had radio-ed J, who of course had the super Northstar engine that got over 30 mpg on the highway, and asked him to charge ahead on the lookout for the nearest gas station. Several long minutes passed, me doing low speeds to hopefully preserve what was left in the tank, and we were even out of radio distance – I had never felt so alone and irresponsible in my life, there in that pitch black night. How could I let this happen? It is a teenager’s mistake. Finally the radio crackled with good news, and in a few more minutes we reached the edge of Hawthorne and a gas station. I was excited about that, not just to have survived my own dumbness, but also because of the plan to camp beside the lake just to the north of that town, out in the wild, with the horses tied to the side… quite a pastoral idyll.

After a few minutes filling up, we pull out of the gas station, not a soul in sight, and started through town toward the campground. Wait, what’s this? Where did those lights come from? J gets pulled over, the officer tells him it’s for not stopping at a stop sign - evidently the one inside the dirt lot separating the station from the road – there wasn’t even a road… dirt or otherwise… yet there was a stop sign, barely even aimed in the direction we came from. Geez. As J radios me looking for the registration, I tell him hold on. I forgot to put the registration back in the car when picking it up from Lindsey’s. I actually found it in the truck, but then it dawned on me: since I was trying to sell that car, as I mentioned before, I had let the tags run out. I put on the plates from the Saturn, and J was just going to take them back to Phoenix in his checked luggage, no harm no foul. Right? Uhh…

So because I know the cop will see that the registration expired, not to mention the plate is different, I figure in my mind that I’d rather pay for J’s failure to stop ticket than have my car impounded. I radioed back that the registration is a no-go. The cop even forgave the moving violation in place of a ticket for having no registration in the vehicle. We looked upon our fortune, and saw that it was good. He seemed a nice enough officer, and asked us about our situation. He told us exactly how to get to where we (thought we) were going. And even the speed limits on the way there. And even the speed limit on the way there. Can I say that enough times? The speed limits on the way there. Yes it was midnight, and we were tired of driving. We had cell service, and were talking about how we would find our turnoff, a mile up the road, when… the flashy lights came on again. Same officer. Poor J! He didn’t even think to hang up.

“Now I just toooold youuuu the speed limit was fifty through the res-i-den-tial area!” I could hear through the phone. The officer sounded like Phil Hartman doing a skit on SNL. “But wasn’t that how fast I was going?” J whined to him. Literally, whined. I think the J’s and the officer could all hear me cackling from the truck, even with the windows up.

“No, you were doing 65! You folks are obviously tired, just pull up another hundred feet to this first park entrance and get some sleep!” This was not the entrance we wanted but would take it. And here we thought our night was almost over.

1AM – We pull into this DIVE – I mean, drive – and it wasn’t the pastoral scene I expected at the side of a lake. No shrubs or greenery to speak of, all dirt, - gravel, really – and we could hear the crash of the tall waves on the shore some distance away. I mean, you could hear the crash of the gravel. They call this place ‘Sportsman’s Lake’ but it looked more like death than Death Valley, which had some things still living there at least.

We found the best place we could to pull off for unloading the horses and setting up our tents on the gravel. Well, moving gravel… what are all those bugs on the ground? Jon gets out his phone, we all get out our phones and use the light to see. Scorpions. Not the tail-in-the-air kind, the spider kind. The kind made famous in the pics of giant soldier-eating bugs in Iraq. We gave a collective scream of terror, and immediately began hippity-hopping our way to the vehicles, and jumped up on the bumper of the truck. The horses out and tied, and happily munching away, they seemed to be doing alright. We stood there grasping the implications of our scenario, when Jon broke out with horror, “I have to pee!” I wouldn’t have blamed him for hanging it out right there, our eyes averted, in fact that’s what I myself planned to do, when my time came. But gentleman Jon actually braved the bugs and found a trail. He traversed what may have once been a path to the restrooms, during the time of Christ, and took a picture of one of the bugs with his phone.

But he never made it to the bathrooms. Too many steel suspension lines strapping across the concrete blocks, all along the picnic tables and wood shelters… did I say suspension lines? No, they were spider webs. Some of the strongest, most visible I have ever seen, at night, throwing us backward if we walked into them… not really all because of the strength, but because these were some of the BIGGEST and most PROLIFERATE spiders… ever! One picnic table must have had a thousand. And they were all fat and happy. They were probably feeding on whatever was flying around or crawling on the ground… I don’t recall how he finally relieved himself. But needless to say, no tents were necessary.

2AM – The horses are standing still, the Js decided to sleep on the roof, of the horse trailer, and I begin preparations to sleep on top of the car. But not before I had to throw the blankets and pillows up to them from the bed of the truck, and in doing so, slipped off. I fell straight down, and landed on one foot… I thought I was getting off easy… but the one foot happened to be resting on the pigtail cord that ran the electricity from the truck to the horse trailer, powering everything from blinkers to brakes. And yes, it broke.

3AM – Again with sleeping under the stars. Never regretted that. With the sound of the lake. We were all acting punch-drunk, laughing at nothing, talking ourselves down from the events of the day. J was laughing particularly loudly, I think it was about him whining to the officer… and I heard something that seemed to be calling back to him. Ever since I moved to the desert and learned about El Chupacabra I have been terrorized at any unexplained night noises (now that I was over the Javelina scare) – and when I told J what I heard, he started up a conversation with whatever it was… scared me plenty! But pretty sure it was an owl. At least none of us woke up with scratches on our skin…

Friday July 20

6AM – We woke up hungry and grouchy, trying to figure out how to put the pigtail wires back into the socket. Just when things looked figured out, we put all the wires in, and voila! NOTHING would work. Over and over we tried. The damn outlet on the truck even had a damned diagram. What the hell?!? To hell with it. Someone in town will know. Let’s just load up the horses, and drive (gulp!) back into town and eat. We found a cozy little restaurant, full of knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, and other assorted homegrown items. Along with great food from the KITSCHen. And we had the best waitress ever! An ex-sheriff herself, she was the most helpful person we met on the trip, getting out a map of NV and showing us where is this and that. When my credit card was declined she let me use her cell phone to call my bank and tell them this trip was indeed on purpose, regardless of the satisfaction level. This because my cell phone had no juice left and I couldn’t make my car charger work. She told us those weren’t scorpions, but something called Vinegaroons. They are the same thing as Camel Spiders, made famous in the pics of giant soldier-eating bugs in Iraq. While not fatal, they do have a nasty effect that once you are pinched by them, you taste vinegar in your mouth for a few days. Hence the name. We felt comfortable enough with her to relate the intimate times we had with a certain officer the previous night, and she said (no surprise) she knew who it was, and even called him a dick for giving us a ticket – and told us we should see the city clerk, tell them she sent us, show our registration and we would be off the hook!! Which of course we couldn’t. But it was nice of her to try. We never did take care of that ticket. And haven’t been back through there since…

10 AM – Done with breakfast, we get some final advice from her where to go to fix our pigtail. The guy there at the parts store told us some things about hooking it back together, but said he was too busy to help us out himself… he pointed us to some other shop, the owner of which wasn’t due back for a spell… We had our food and coffee, and we were going to gas up and get the hell out, eager to put all this behind… so we just had to plug it in, and hope for the best. I think ultimately two lights worked, and we called it good, even though they were on the same side...

11AM – on the way to the gas station I asked Cat, aren’t we glad this is just about over. Cat? Cat! I pulled the truck and horses over and pulled everything apart in the cab, but she wasn’t there. Escaped again. But where? Which auto parts store? Which stop sign? Did I leave the windows too far down, or did she squeak out of an open door? I radioed J, already at the gas station with Jon, and told him she was gone. He left Jon there and came to where I stopped, and found me, in the middle of that little shit town on a little shit street, blithering my eyes out, making noises that were supposed to be words. Anything else could have happened on this trip, but losing her was not an option. She has been with me 14 years, survived the kitten sickness, the military life, and being bounced around from one relative to another—I would just as soon have cut off any number of body parts than lose my little friend.

J said she probably jumped out at the breakfast parking spot, so we drove back there, and began calling out the window… was that a meow I heard passing by that house? I did hear her meows, but they were getting farther away and soon I couldn’t hear her anymore. J somehow located her at an abandoned house, in the junkyard out back full of old rusty machines and, well… junk - and pulled her out from behind an old gas can. She figured she was just done riding in the truck. In any vehicle. I couldn’t blame her. But I could promise her a better life soon.

Just then an animal control officer pulled up asking about the horses, and did I have their health certificates? Thank the Norse deities I had it handy, or what would have happened next? My dear boys impounded? Hells no! He had the audacity (though he was very nice too) to ask how much longer we were planning on being in town. Heaven help me, with my cat in my arms, tears down my face, and my mental state the way it was, I laughed at him and said, “Sir, we have been trying to get out of this place since 7 am!” Without skipping a beat, he just replied, “Yep, you’re in Hawthorne!” J and I looked at each other and just knew it had to get better from here on out. And it did.

The rest of the day contained food from In & Out in Reno, just before hitting Susanville in NE Cali (never been SO glad to see my home state in my LIFE) – I had a headstart on the guys in the caddy. I was driving through THEE most beautiful place on earth, I swear. Lassen County. Mid 80’s and breezy, BIG trees, meadows and creeks, I couldn’t help it! I put down the window grates so the horses could stick their heads out and see what real life is supposed to taste like. And they did! The air smelled so good! We put the windows back up later in the evening chill to avoid any lung infections, which horses are so prone to when traveling, but every single chance we got, those windows were down, and those heads were out. No matter if it was just a gas station, or a coffee stop, they were curious as kittens and wanted to see everything. Big trucks flying by at the roadside, gas pumps, Harleys rumbling alongside—didn’t phase them one bit, they had to investigate everything. Love those guys. Fearless!

We arrived at Mount Shasta, one of the most beautiful little towns in Cali, about dusk, which was great timing since the pigtail wasn’t only not really working, but I think the electric brakes were stuck on, which became evident when I went through a quarter tank of gas in about 20 minutes… but that also meant no lights, not even brake lights… yikes! I parked the horses in a nice little spot off the road while J and Jon found a beautiful little place called The Woodsman – not so cheap, but a great night’s sleep. Never had such fluffy pillows or downy comforters, anywhere! The boys had to stay in the trailer all night, and were not so happy, we could tell! But we heard nary a peep all night. They were very well behaved, except for chewing off a foam pad inside overnight (which we duct-taped back up) and we received lots of compliments on them throughout the whole trip. They were a blast.

We showered and tried to get some late food at a charming little restaurant a block up the road—Lily’s, it was called. It was almost ten, and evidently they roll up the streets about eight or nine. There was still a whole bunch of people, which we mentioned to the lady waiting on the outside patio tables. She said, “oh, these guys are just the stragglers… “ and some of them laughed. She said try the (something) Bear restaurant up the street, and one of the men sitting outside said they are closed. I forget who said what comment but his reply was that he ought to know, he owns it (it was Papa Bear of the original Black Bear Diner) and some other dude sitting at the table had the air of being a local musician, or performer of some kind, could just smell it on him… and looking around at the rest of the ‘stragglers’ I got the idea that these are ALL locals, a very private intimate group who all knew each other, and the waitress too. She was a kick though, when J resisted her other attempt to forward us to a Denny’s-like joint, he flat out told her we were looking for a place we could have a little good wine with dinner, you know? So she went to one of the straggler’s tables and poured a beautiful red wine into a Styrofoam to-go cup, put a lid on it, and said, “here, from my private stock!” We never did find out what kind it was, but it was VERY tasty. We dined on KFC and Taco Bell back at the room watching Family Guy and got the greatest night’s sleep on pillow-top mattresses covered with down comforters. I am SO going back there as soon as I can.

July 21 Saturday

We loaded our things into the vehicles, including cat, who by now was more like a dog - when we stopped in an off-road location, I would let her jump out and sniff around a bit. When I was ready to go, I called to her and she would jump back in, and off we’d go. We still practice that for future trips, since the last trip to Seattle lasted 8 days and my already 8lb cat lost 2 lbs! I told her I would never leave her again.

We had breakfast, where else? Lily’s of course. The best food, like we knew it would be. And such characters we met. When we asked, like always, whether the water we received for breakfast was filtered, the teenage ego-sack that brought it to us just stared at us at first, and said, “I don’t think so, the water here is pretty good the way it is.” She was literally insulted! We gathered from our real waitress that in the town park, there is a spring that carries the water from Mount Shasta and an open fountain where people fill up their bottles, no filters present or necessary, the whole town is on the best water anywhere, they say. We’ll leave that discovery to the next trip. We had a mission!

So to fill up and be on our way. At the gas station was an RV in front of us with a bunch of peace stickers, alternate energy endorsements, and a bumper sticker that read “Iraq is Arabic for Viet Nam.” The man driving it was a living example of the 60’s and had an accent, English or Australian, didn’t hear enough to determine, but I did hear him explain to J that he doesn’t get more than 8 mpg in that thing. Isn’t that ironic.

The Finale

A few more coffee stops up through OR, and we crossed the border into southern WA. Now the plan was to call my horse trainer from AZ who just happened to move back to the same town where J’s mom offered me a place to stay for a while… another coincidence? But, like I said, I lacked a phone for just about the whole trip, so J had to call her and we waited for an answer… and waited… well, turns out she was away for the weekend! She had left me messages but I didn’t get them (stupid, stupid dead phone!). Don’t panic, she got back to J eventually, and gave him the number to the ranch just in time, cuz we were a-gettin close. We arrived about dusk, and just as I suspected, as we led the horses out to the 2+ acre GREEN-filled pasture, they swore they’d died and gone to heaven. One was rolling around and the other took off to the far side to observe a 300 year old cotton tree before they both discovered a small group of horses at the end of the pasture. Then it was really on! Running down there in such excitement, even though they couldn’t touch noses due to an access partition, that didn’t stop the lot of them from running up back and forth along the fence—from where we were standing it just appeared a herd of happy horses, full of speed, tails in the air, displaying their strength, joy, and grace. It would have brought tears to my eyes, but I was just too happy for them. Like Moses, I had finally led my people out of the desert! And it only seemed to take forty years!

Next: The Enlightenment, and The Rest of The Story.