That’s a Whole Vibe! An Account of an Old-School Trip Out West
I was finishing my Czech beer and TVP tacos at a table outside Escape Velocity Brewing, Lafayette, Indiana’s new and bustling – and only - vegan place, looking out over the summer clouds and adjacent empty strip mall, feeling, despite my impending road trip, the longest I was to undertake in more than eleven years, fairly calm. On the table beside me were a Rand-McNally road atlas and F-Woman, an obscure novel by an obscure British writer called Warwick Collins.
Two girls, probably in their early twenties came out, happy and well-lubricated. One of them looked at me. “Are you reading while your drinking? That’s a whole vibe!”
“Um, yeah,” I said.
“That is soooo cool!”
“Thanks.”
“They’re very spirited,” the waiter said when they had departed in a murmur of giggles.
I agreed. I also thought they were right. And this sentiment would become the theme of my whole trip out west.
Patricia, my wife, has been in Carlsbad, California since early April, taking care of her recovering mother. I had been out a couple times, and we planned to spend the summer together, but still, it’d been a hard go, for both of us. I missed her terribly, and vice versa.
That being said, however, I wanted to do the road trip right, which meant, amongst other things, for the first time in either of our lives, buying a new car…so it was a couple of weeks after school ended before I was ready to go. Also, I’d no intention of just going hell for leather out west. I wanted to see things that I’d wanted to see for years.
Hence my sitting at Escape Velocity Brewing on July 6, well out of way of my intended destination, watching the sun going down. With many miles to go before I’d be able to sleep.
I also wanted to do the trip as I used to, when I was in college or just out and less well-heeled…I wanted to camp on the way out, all four nights, and I wanted to buy food and eat all my meals in rest areas and campgrounds. Not only would I save money, but I’d feel hardcore, adventurous. I’d not done anything like this in years – I usually just went for Comfort Inns and pizzas, breakfast sandwiches from Dunkin Donuts in the morning, etc.
No more. I was going to go as my dad and I did on our trip to California in the summer of ’86 (though I would not sleep at rest areas). I would also be taking much the same route.
*
I bought our new car, a 2021 Subaru Crosstrek, on a Friday at the beginning of July. There is currently a shortage of new cars on lots, and most dealers were out. Ziegler in Merrillville, Indiana had two Crosstreks, in red and plasma yellow. I told them to hold on to the red for me (not a fan of yellow) but when I got there, the yellow looked all shiny, and more green than yellow, and turned all golden with the sunset. I loved it. Patricia did to, from afar. We talked terms, and then I was out, with a car that has great air conditioning and a stereo through which I can play Spotify, that stops automatically if there is an obstruction ahead (I’m used to cars that don’t stop even when I want them to). It also gets terrific gas mileage, which came into play right away. All of this was new and exciting for me, and I felt happy and ready to go.
After a few days of packing and preparing, ‘twas time.
Tuesday, July 6, 2021
I went first to Lafayette, Indiana because I wanted to. The quickest way to get to So Cal from the Chicago area is, of course, all interstates – 80 to 76 to 70 to 15 to 5. Boring! I had gone down to Lafayette for an American Federation of Teachers (Union Presidents’) meeting a couple weeks earlier, and had discovered Escape Velocity Brewing, and had had a great massage in a little quiet, lonely store in the Tippecanoe Mall, and I wanted to do both of these things again before going west. So, after loading the car and dropping our unhappy gatos at my parents, I headed southeast.
I got my massage and then went to an adjacent grocery store (one that I love because it feels so out of the way) and bought groceries for the entirety of my trip ($59, all vegan). And then, hence, to Escape Velocity (fitting name). I finally got on the road about two hours before sunset.
It made me happy that, in the face of such a huge trip, I had done something so illogical.
My destination for the night was a state park in central Missouri called Graham Cave. The directions there, on account of my having driven 100 miles out of the way, were a bit convoluted, but I now had a screen that displayed them for me. I was due to arrive after midnight, but what is time when one is having fun?
Moving through rural country roads in western Indiana and then east-central Illinois, I played a litany of summer music, Atom Heart Mother by Pink Floyd and “Holly Holy” by Neil Diamond and various Radiohead songs. The sun hung just above the horizon and everything was green and sultry and orange-lit, summer-beautiful.
The sun went down. Night came. I talked to Patricia (through the car – wild!) as I moved west, through the St. Louis metro and into the starry dark beyond. I began to grow tired, and hungry, but it was getting late and I didn’t want to stop.
When I got near the park, I missed the exit – the directions sent me to a truck pullout a few miles past – and had to drive eight miles up and then back (I cursed passionately) but when I got to the park, just before midnight, I felt instantly at ease. The night was lovely – warm and humid but not unpleasant, very summery – and the campground was pretty much deserted. I had a quiet meal at my picnic table and then set up the tent. A walk up to the bathroom (it was at the top of a pretty high hill) and a spell of reading rounded out the day.
Before sleeping, I planned the next day’s drive. I usually make for state parks, but there were none a good length away (all were either too far or not far enough), so I decided on a KOA (Kampgrounds of America) in Limon, Colorado, some 670 miles hence. I had never stayed at a KOA before, in all my years of traveling, so I was excited. And I felt I was truly on my way.
Wednesday, July 7, 2021
I slept well – fantastically, in fact. I had not the previous two nights (too much pre-trip anxiety and trying to cram things in) so, on waking at nearly eleven, I was more delighted than chagrinned. (I would be crossing two time zones in the coming days, anyway, so, really, it was only about nine in the morning…right?)
I made breakfast (Folgers and Quaker high-protein oatmeal) on the camp stove and then tore down camp, drove to the bathrooms, shaved, and took a shower. (I love camping shower houses…they are another whole vibe.) Then, though running late, I headed off to see the eponymous cave…it can’t all be driving and sleeping. Luckily, the cave was only a short jaunt from a parking lot. I hiked to it…it wasn’t deep but was very broad and impressive looking, like a mini Uluru. I snapped a few obligatory pics and then strode into the humid, heavy summer trees, onto a trail that led onto the top of the cave and then around to a little waterfall. Everything was so green. Storm clouds were building and the day was already hot.
Once back in the car, I cranked the AC and prepared for the road ahead, stopping first at the camp office. There was a self-registering station for campers who arrived after hours, but I did not have any cash, so wanted to pay in person, hopefully with a credit card - but they were closed. Vowing to mail in a payment when I reached Cali, I put the Secret Machines on Spotify and remerged back onto 70 west.
Traffic was heavy and, for the first time, my Crosstrek began to irritate me. When the cruise control is on, and there is someone ahead of you in your lane, its Isight Technology automatically maintains a huge distance…perhaps ten car lengths. You can manually override this, but it’s annoying. If I didn’t stay on it, plenty of jerks would merge into my lane, making the car slow more and more.
I stopped for my first rest area lunch at about 2. I had packed so that I would have literally everything in one box, so that I could just grab it (and whatever I needed from the cooler) and go, without hunting for anything. I loved it. Cooking chili and flour tortillas and tea on my stove, eating a meal while watching the travelers come and go…I hadn’t done this in far too long. I ate to satiety and then took my time over tea and ginger cookies, perusing the atlas.
Traffic (and the weather) worsened as I approached Kansas City. A thunderstorm broke right as I reached Kaufman Stadium (the lights were on and, from a distance, I could not figure out what it was – it looked like a big, lit-up spaceship). I talked to my friend Chris (it was his birthday) as I crawled along in heavy rush-hour traffic. We discussed baseball and teaching (he is a teacher, too) and new Subarus (he has a 2021 Forrester). At one point, I freaked him out…rounding a bend, I thought a heavy rain shaft was a tornado. “I’m going to let you go,” he said. “I don’t really feel like hearing you die.”
The weather broke and the sun came back. I stopped at an oasis on the eastern Kansas toll road for gas and ice – a 22 pound bag this time…things were getting serious.
Kansas, my friend Jeremy’s least favorite state, actually impressed me. It was flat, and mostly farmland, but there was a desolate but profound beauty to the landscape. I got Starbucks in Junction City, a small, nowhere place I’d set a story once because I liked the name. I played a Pink Floyd concert from 1971, and “Echoes”, all 25 minutes of it, really hit as the sun went down.
I stopped for dinner at a remote, quiet rest area just east of Hays, Kansas, and ate as the sun sank into the corn – it looked like a ruptured orange ball.
Back on the road, I called home and talked to my dad about the trip until dark. Afterwards, in starlight, I played a Joe Frank radio show (Joe is profound…his shows incorporate repetitive, often droning music and narratives that are moving, funny, disturbing, absurd…often all at once; check him out if you don’t know who he is) as I moved into eastern Colorado.
About fifty miles from the park, I decided to stop for gas. My gauge estimated I’d be able to make it to the KOA in Limon, with about ten miles to spare, but it was rural, and late, and I didn’t want to take any chances. So I went to the first gas station I found open…The Loaf ‘N Jug. I thought I had misread the sign. I was glad I hadn’t.
I arrived at the KOA, which was right by a Pizza Hut, about midnight, and found my registration and my campsite. I was happy to be there, but thought it a poorish value at $41 for a tent site which was small and really just grass, a small tree, a picnic table, and a tent pad with awning. I liked it, though, because it reminded me of campgrounds we’d stayed in in Spain and England.
I set up and then set out to explore. Patricia called but the campground was too quiet to talk, so we exchanged texts.
I loved the bath house – it smelled more like a hotel than a campground – but was a little worried that there were only two toilets for a full campground of more than fifty sites…especially because my penchant for eating five to ten hot sport peppers with every meal had rendered me rather…regular.
There were a few cabins that looked neat, and a few so-called mini-houses, and a ton of RVs. At the edge of the grounds, there were tent sites…and then, nothing. The place had a frontier vibe. Fields, a faraway strip mall, hills in the distance. I loved it. My dad always said he hated eastern Colorado, but I’ve always liked it…it’s not quite plains, dry but not deserty, hilly but not yet mountainous. It is lonely and windy.
I had a snack and then lay down in the tent, listening to the wind and someone’s adjacent snoring. G’night.
Thursday, July 8, 2021
I woke earlier than I would have liked. In the summer, when the western sun is up, and you are sleeping in a tent…you are up. I tried to move the tent into the shade of my site’s one stumpy tree, but this was ineffectual, and so I gave up and got up.
The campground was buzzing and noisy anyway. I tore down and then went for a shower and then had breakfast. I gazed at the distant hills over the mostly empty sites as I ate. The campground was a way station, not a destination, something I found both inspiring and somewhat sad.
After gassing up at a Sinclair (I’d only put in ten bucks at the Loaf ‘N Jug, not sure a place with such a funny name would sell good gas), I played Leonard Cohen’s Death of a Ladies Man and made miles through the lovely eastern Colorado scenery. Though mostly treeless, there were several watercourses, their ways marked by big shade trees. The sky loomed, large and impressive.
I talked to Patricia as I crawled through construction traffic in Denver, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that this was the same place I had stopped in and had dinner on my flight back from San Diego in late April…that place was only a couple hours away…I had had dinner in the airport (while watching the Cubs game) and been home before I’d even digested. And now, here I was, rolling in after two solid days of driving. How could it be the same place?
After Denver came the mountains, and the beauty, and the glory, and the hundreds of miles of tough driving. Immediately after the city, the road rose precipitously, and the peaks around it more so; I corkscrewed up and up and then scarily down and then up again and around, then down…miles and miles and miles of this. The scenery – peaks, valleys, cascades, cloud panoramas, bridges, tunnels (one nearly two miles long), little towns, forests of pines – was literally awesome…but if you looked at it for more than a second, you died.
I stopped near Vail for lunch at a rest stop. Looking around, I was reminded of a lunch I had had in the Alps in Switzerland. It was a bustling place, with a few picnic tables in a small yard of aspens, and I got the last available table. I cooked and ate and responded to texts and waited for my head to stop buzzing.
Back in the car, more of the same: awesome vistas, hard going. Miles of huge climbs and straight drops, with nary a straight line in sight. I stopped at another rest area to clear my head and stretch my legs… Colorado, you are beautiful but exhausting. Shortly thereafter, I stopped in a gas station for a can of coffee, just as the first drops of a summer storm began to fall.
After another hour or so, I reached the Utah border. The sun had regained dominion by this point. Though there were still climbs and drops (some steeper than in Colorado) the road was rather straighter, and the speed limit was 80 – yikes! – so the miles came quicker. I worried a little about the car, however, as some of those climbs were major and the temps, despite it nearing twilight, had climbed to well over a hundred. Where I stopped to get gas and a Diet Pepsi, in Green River, the place with the famous sign “Last Service for 107 miles”, it was 109 degrees, at 7:15 p.m.
I found the desert heat, at least at that hour, inspiring rather than oppressive. Adjacent, there was a Comfort Inn, with a Blimpie Subs nearby. I thought how cool it would be to unpack into an AC-chilly hotel room, saunter out for some subs, and then take a desert walk through the silence. Getting back into the car, I pontificated on how hotels mean more when you aren’t staying at them than when you are.
Utah is so frigging beautiful the road planners, wisely, set up numerous scenic overlook parking areas so people could take in the vistas without snarling traffic or becoming statistics. I stopped at a few, marveling at the distances and the way the setting sun looked on the spires and mountains and turrets and open spaces. I also passed a few and lamented that decision each time. I kept thinking how Utah is not fucking around, and how, when one recalls that this was once the floor of an ocean (!), it is almost overwhelmingly gorgeous.
Dinner was peanut butter on Ritz and Diet Pepsi, while driving, in lieu of cooking in the tremendous heat.
I departed 70 onto Highway 50 near Salina. One of the things I had long wanted to see was Highway 50 through Nevada, which, in 1986, was dubbed “The Loneliest Road in America” by Life Magazine. They had meant it as an insult, but Nevada’s tourism department had seized on this and had advertised it as a destination. It had worked on Stephen King, who set his flawed but very scary novel Desperation there, it had worked on literally millions of other travelers over the years…and it had worked on me. Thus, my departing the interstates into the unknown near the end of the day.
The first stretch of 50 I drove, in Utah, a 20-mile span between Interstates 70 and 15, is high in the running for the most beautiful road I’ve ever seen. The sun was going down over a range of mountains to my left (they looked close, but trees that marked a distant watercourse looked so tiny I realized this was far from the case). Cows dotted the gently sloping expanse up to the mountains, as did a few interspersed homesteads and copses of trees. I played ancient Chinese music and felt as though I were in a dream.
After passing through the tiny but pretty town of Scipio (and again gazing longingly at the lit-up hotels there) I was again on an interstate, 15 South this time…but only briefly. After ten miles, I exited again, at a place with no services, back onto Highway 50. It was almost dark by this point, and I fully felt as though I was stepping out of the world as I knew it.
I made the 27 miles to the distant town of Delta, Utah fairly quickly, marveling at the strangeness and the weirdness and the isolation of it all. Delta, despite being so remote, was fairly large, and also fairly pretty. As I passed grocery stores and hotels and restaurants, and houses that were dark, I wondered what it would be like to live in such a place.
After Delta there was…the nothing. I thought of the T.S. Eliot line, “We all go into the dark.” A sign informed me that there was 89 miles of road until the next services (a service station and hotel on the Nevada border). Another informed me to be wary of…something. It looked close to a deer but was far too large, with too many horns. Chupacabras maybe?
That stretch of 50 in Utah was, without a doubt, the loneliest road I had ever been on, despite not being designated as such. For 90 miles, the distance between Chicago and Lafayette, Indiana, I was not passed once, saw only a handful of cars from the other direction, and saw exactly one building – a shed that stood sentinel on the edge of a quarry that may well have been abandoned. I worried about hitting one of the deer-like creatures I had been warned about, but enjoyed myself nonetheless.
I passed into Nevada, saw the afore-promised combination hotel and gas station (with a few rental cabins flanking it) and then…nothing again. There were a few more cars now, but not many, and still not much when it came to signs of human habitation.
I was making for Cave Lake State Park, near Ely, and hoped to be there before midnight. I had no reception for Spotify, so had to settle for right-wing talk radio (a recurring thing, I’m afraid) so got to hear the same non-issue talking points rehashed repeatedly. I got the impression I was supposed to come away with the idea that America is worse than it has ever been and is spiraling out of control into a chaos of Fascist Socialist Commie-Nazism, but was not moved in that direction somehow. (Maybe it was my being alive during the previous Presidential administration?)
I reached the park, via fifteen miles of even lonelier secondary roads, just before midnight, and got almost the last spot. (I was amazed that so remote a place was so filled on a Thursday.)
I set up in the dark, with the aid of my solar lantern, and had some Ramen noodles with some NA beer, and then sauntered a bit, looking up at the absurd star field above me. Never have I seen the Milky Way so clearly. Stars stretched brightly, all the way down to the horizon.
I washed up, and read for a bit, and then the wind took me into windy dreams.
Friday, July 9, 2021
Again, when the sun rose, I had to, too. I set up the hammock in the shade of two juniper trees, and snoozed for a bit, but, as on the previous morning, I realized pretty quickly that sleep was over. Contributing to this realization: some dudes in an adjacent camp had loud, carrying voices, and liked to talk, and also rose as early as they went to bed late; also, I was a little nervous because, again, there had been a self-registering station for campers and, again, I had rolled in sans cash. I didn’t want any of the park guys to yell at me, and, every time I heard an approaching car, I was sure that was what was going to happen. So, yeah, I was awake for good, whether I wanted to be or not.
I again had breakfast and tore down, gazing at the distant ranges of mountains I had not seen the previous night. It was already hot. I drove to the shower house and shaved and had a shower (vibe). Afterwards, I looked at the map display outside, agonizing that there were so many trails here, all of which looked awesome. I thought about hiking, but it was nearing 100 and I had almost seven hours to go before I got to Donner Memorial State Park in California (which I really wanted to see), so I reluctantly decided to just drive around the park (several of the trails paralleled roads anyway) and have a look before departing.
I drove alongside a river, and through a few deep valleys with high sides, and then to another campground, where I walked around a small, blue lake, snapping pics of the water and some surrounding peaks, and then…it was time to go. As I left, I vowed we’d be back, and would allow enough time to hike a ton.
I made it to Ely quickly, and stopped for gas at a Pilot Travel Center that was an absolute madhouse. This was the beginning of the Loneliest Road in America? It felt more like the entrance to a huge summer music festival.
I freaked out for a bit while I was waiting for a pump and someone said they were out of unleaded…I had about a quarter of a tank, but that’s not enough when heading into the abyss, even with a new car that gets good gas mileage. It turned out, though, they were only out of 87 Octane. They had 91, though, so I spent three dollars more to fill up and called it good.
I bought ice and a Gatorade from the travel center, and longingly pondered a Beyond Meat Burger from the attached Carl’s, Jr., but settled instead for a granola bar and a resumption of travel. Had to stick to my guns.
Ely was quite becoming, obviously a well-known tourist place, with casinos, some inviting looking hotels and restaurants, and plenty of views of the nearby mountains (which towered over the town). I decided I wouldn’t mind staying there sometime.
The buildings and the traffic fell away pretty much right at the edge of town…though, in the case of the traffic, not as completely as I had hoped it would. Apparently, the designation “Loneliest Road in America” has made 50, well, much less lonely. There is even talk of its losing this designation, as Highway 6, just to the south, is far less traveled.
It was still pretty desolate, though, and quite pretty. I cranked up the White Stripe’s Get Behind Me Satan as I passed the census-designated Ruth, where Stephen King was told an old legend that the ghosts of Chinese miners crossed the highway at night, and then…nothing but the old highway. The lonely road movie Vanishing Point was filmed here, and I could see why. The road ran straight as a line for scores of miles before twisting up and over and down passes through various ranges of mountains. And it did this over and over and over again.
I was repeatedly surprised at the number of cars, though. Highway 50 was not well-traveled, per se, but it was certainly used.
About an hour after passing through the crap-ass town of Eureka (which calls itself “The Loneliest Town on the Loneliest Road in America” but is, in actuality, just the ugliest) I stopped for lunch at a roadside picnic stop that promised facilities (without delivering) and so had to pee using my car door as a shield. There were two picnic tables with roofs. One was taken, and I got to the other just before another group of travelers pulled in. All the time I ate, and drank, and pondered the map, and squinted into the far distance where the road rose into yet another mountain range, cars came and went, came and went. So many RVs, not a single ghost. A black dust devil formed over a field to my right, stretching from the ground up to a height of a few hundred feet - that was cool.
I got back on the road, listening to Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s “new” live album (from 1990) called Way Down in the Rust Bucket and Ray LaMontagne’s sublime Ouroboros. I passed a hay truck just in time to avoid being stuck behind it up a particularly steep and twisty pass, and rolled through the evocative mountain town of Austin (which refers to itself as “A Living Ghost Town”), wishing I could stop and stay.
Out of the mountains, more flatness, more crappy right-wing radio screech weasels, more cars coming in a stream from California. I was nearing the end of the Loneliest Road feeling far from lonely. I stopped at a roadside store for Gatorade and Chapstick (the western air had chapped me something fierce) and also added a six pack of O’doul’s Amber, mostly because I couldn’t imagine anyone coming into that tiny, old-looking, dimly lit store in the middle of nowhere and buying non-alcoholic beer.
The town of Flagler was pretty enough, under a mantle of threatening rain clouds, and bustling. I realized, as I passed into its heart, that I had “done” the Loneliest Road in America. Yippee.
It was now on to another place I had long wanted to see, Donner Memorial State Park, where I had a reservation. So, like the Donner’s, I headed up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Unlike them, I did so in an air-conditioned car, in heavy traffic.
I called Patricia. Spatters of rain fell intermittently the higher up I went. Like Colorado and Utah before it, the road climbed, dropped, and twisted precariously, but, this time, I hadn’t long to go. I reveled in the pine-scented, cooler air as I climbed.
I arrived at the park at just after five. Adjacent Donner Lake is a huge tourist trap and the surrounding area looked like Woodstock, with cars lined up alongside the road for miles. Thankfully, I had, just the previous week, booked the last remaining campsite for the night, and so was welcomed into the park like an expected guest. I found my site and immediately set out to explore.
I have taught a lesson on the Donner Party for years in my class (as part of a project exploring the dark side of Manifest Destiny) and absolutely loved the Ric Burn’s documentary about them, so was very excited to see the park. I was especially stoked when I realized that the campground was pretty much right were the Donner camp was, just a few minute’s walk from the lakeshore. How cool is that?
I had a snack and an O’doul’s and then donned my hiking boots and set out for the Lakeside Trail. It was about two hours before sunset, at the golden hour, and the air was hot, dry, piney, and wonderful.
I snapped a few pics of the lake when I reached it and recalled the last time I had been here, 16 years earlier – I’d not been in the park, but had stopped briefly by the lake, for reflection.
I wrote then: “I got off at Lake Donner (formerly Lake Truckee) to see the sites. I’ve been fascinated by the story of the Donner Party (the pioneers who were snowbound in 1846 and had to resort to cannibalism) since I saw the Ric Burns documentary ten years earlier, and it felt very cool to traverse the shore of the very lake where those grisly events had taken place. But there were so many cars! People swarmed like gnats. I had considered stopping at Donner Memorial State Park and doing a little hiking and seeing the museum, but there was a line of cars along the side of the road that stretched for almost a mile. (Isn’t it ironic that a place of such profound suffering became such a tourist trap?) I drove until I found a parking space and then stood upon the banks, watching the bright clouds stack upon each other over the trees. Jet-skiers crisscrossed the waters - such odd juxtaposition. This was where the old woman, Mrs. Breen, had emerged from the snow, regarded the haggard party who had come to rescue the group, and asked, “Do you men come from California, or do you come from heaven?” Canoes floated beneath cloudless spaces, cabins peered from promontories. This was where people went mad and died where they lay. I could smell grill fires and hear the sounds of distant laughter. This was where a boy had to watch his mother die and then see her heart roasting on a stick.
I felt touched by it, felt as though the revelry were merely an afterimage, a colorful banderole hung on a coffin; there was a brooding spirit there, a sense of permeation that all the Kawasakis in the world couldn’t dispel. This beautiful place was a haunted place (and why did I feel as though I’d been there before?).”
The trail was lovely, affording several expansive views of the lake. Even at that sunset hour, the shoreline was absolutely thronged with picnic-ers and swimmers and sunbathers. I hiked to the end, texting with my co-teachers back home about it, and then up an incline where I could see the steep ramparts that had essentially trapped the Donners in. I doubled back as the light failed and hiked the rest of the trail past the campground, fighting some especially huge and tenacious mosquitoes as I did so, to the park entrance and the famous pioneer monument I had first seen in the Burn’s film. Near it was a plaque marking the spot of the Breen cabin. (I had misread and thought the cabin was still there, but cest la vie.).
The monument towered above, the figures of a pioneer family, in bronze, standing atop a plinth that was 22-feet high. (Here, I thought I had misread, but had not: 22 feet was the height of the snow that winter! Not drifts – the actual height. Whoa!) I snapped a few pics, stopped at the gatehouse and bought shower tokens (California State Parks, to conserve water, have pay showers), and found out that fires were allowed in the campground. Unfortunately, the wood was cash only and, per usual, I had none. Thus, I headed back to the site and drove into town for money.
I was annoyed at myself but glad that I took that drive. Donner Lake is touristy but quite pretty and then, at dusk, when the daytrippers were clearing out, and the lights in the roadside restaurants were just taking effect, it was doubly so. I stopped at a little swanky deli/ store for money and drinks and gaped at how pretty everything was.
Back at the site I set up camp and cooked dinner. As I ate by the light of my solar lantern, I kept noticing these big shadows moving fast along the ground. I thought, at first, that they were mice, but it turned out they were enormous bugs that were attracted to the light. I mistook them for cicadas, but those are diurnal and not attracted to light. Then I thought they might be June bugs, but these were a pale color, with tentacles extending from above their eyes with what looked like fingers at the end of them. Whatever they were, they were beyond nasty, so I moved my lantern to a wooden shelf by the fire ring. Within minutes, there were perhaps twenty of them sitting on the light, crawling slowly over it, resting beneath it, and having sex. That light was now useless to me.
I set off on a walk of the campground and to call Patricia, using my nearly dead headlamp – it was just bright enough for me to see if I was on the road or grass. Many of the campers had strung up pretty lights, making the campground glow, and I thought of walks through lit up campgrounds I had taken as a kid with my brother, sister, and dad. Afterwards, I made a fire and lay back on the picnic table, pondering it and looking up at the California stars (not quite as thrilling as the stars the night before, but still grand) and, in the process, losing two of my four shower tokens. (Each was for three minutes so I knew I’d have to be fast.)
After washing up, I retreated to the tent. It was cool and there were trees and I hoped I would be able to sleep a bit later into the morning.
(Just before dawn, I had to close the tent flaps, put on a jacket, and wrap my sleeping bag with my emergency blanket. The night had grown cold.)
Saturday, July 10, 2021
A couple hours after dawn, I had to unzip the flaps, thrust myself out, and move the tent into a spot of pine shade. Damn. Sleep was over again. Well, it was almost nine this time, and I had slept well enough.
I made my last breakfast of Folgers and oatmeal and tore down camp and then took an economical shower (six minutes is plenty, if you plan) and, feeling refreshed, drove to the entrance for a gander at the park’s museum, which I had really been looking forward to seeing. This is where all the Donner Party’s artifacts were housed – diaries, dolls, bones – right?
Wrong. All of those artifacts had been moved to the Sutter’s Fort Museum in Sacramento, and, furthermore, the focus of the museum was on immigration, not on the Donners (though they were included). I watched a 20-minute video about them that left out most of the R-rated stuff and felt more like a Disney film, and then wandered for a bit. It wasn’t a total wash – there were a couple of Donner party relics, and cool displays about Chinese workers (and the great things they accomplished in spite of how badly they were exploited) and the early days of automobile travel. I ended the tour by buying some massively overpriced souvenirs and postcards.
After hiking a little loop trail to the lake for one last goodbye and dropping off all of my accumulated recycling in a bin, I headed out, stopping first in the store I had gone to the night before for a Pepsi (Saturday noon and the lake was utterly thronged). Then, the highway. Towards Patricia! I wanted to make time, so lunch was again Pepsi and Ritz with peanut butter as I drove. The road first climbed, up over Donner Pass, and then sank like a stone down into the Central Valley. The last time I was here, the temps in the mountains were in the upper 60s, in the valley a robust 111. Today, it was 91 in the mountains – and as high as 117 in the valleys. Dude!
I left 80 and merged onto the 5. I was a bit worried because I was getting seriously low on gas and the 5 seemed to traverse nothing but fields and plains. When I was down to 20 miles worth of gas, I saw a sign for a Chevron and pulled off.
Per usual, I stared off into the distance as I put the gas in (evidence of my upper-lower middle class status)…so didn’t realize, until I was almost done, how flipping expensive it was. $4.70 a gallon! That was more than premium was in the middle of nowhere in Nevada! Dude, again!
I snaked south listening to Kid Cudi and giving thanks for my air conditioner and engine. I talked to my parents for a long time as I rolled through a largely population-less landscape, keeping one eye on the dashboard thermometer’s staggering numbers. Near the city of Los Banos (“The Baths”, not “The Bathrooms”) I stopped to pee at a rest area and was stunned by the heat. On the walk back to the car, I had to squint as my eyes were burning; it felt like sitting in front of an oven with its fan blowing on me. I wondered how I was going to cook and eat dinner in such conditions.
I listened to an Oakland A’s broadcast and a bunch of excerpts from comedians on the radio (no cell reception for miles) as I descended the hot spine of Cali. Near Grapevine, I entered the mountains and, thankfully, it cooled off…into the upper 90s. Near Lebec, at eventide, I pulled off for my last rest area meal.
Chili and tortillas and the last soy dog and a cold O’douls as the desert light dropped. What a beautiful place. My propane tank ran out right as I cooked the last tortilla – how’s that for timing?
I walked around for a bit – the desert air, on account of the altitude, was inspiring rather than stultifying, hot but nice. There was a huge bank of still-working payphones outside one of the bathrooms.
Back into the car, I sped southward, reaching the mountains (and reservoirs) above LA at true dusk. Thousands of feet below me spread a valley of lights, twinkling. I put on a Leonard Cohen live album from the mid 90s I’d not heard in years. Usually (always) I hate when I accidently put Spotify on shuffle but, right then, when Leonard’s beautiful, Middle-Eastern-y version of “Who By Fire” came on unexpectedly, it was almost absurdly profound.
I got stuck in accident traffic for a spell, lamenting how my ETA kept getting later and later on my screen, but, thankfully, I found a way around, and lost scarcely any time. I talked to Patricia and kept my eye out for a Starbucks. It took a while but I found one, with the aid of Google Maps, well off the highway.
Iced brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso drink in hand, I zoomed into the home stretch of the 5, cranking Love Bomb by The Tubes, an ‘80s album that I have loved for many years and that reminds me of the trip my dad and I had taken to California 35 years earlier. Side two is one uninterrupted suite of songs, like an ‘80s Abbey Road…talk about a whole damn vibe!
I ended the trip with Grimes and then…Tamarack Avenue, Carlsbad, my waiting wife, home.
I wanted the car to sparkle when Patricia saw it for the first time, and so went first to a Shell carwash. It helped a little, but the bugs that had hit the windshield and grill at 100 mph and then been baked on for several days by western sun and 115 degree temps were cleaned rather than removed. Ah, well. It still looked nice.
Patricia came out to the driveway, and we embraced for the first time in 40 days, and I was home.
“I want to drive it,” she said.
“Okay.”
She drove us out to the sea and I put on the last song of Ouroboros as we looked out over the waves. “When I am with you,” sang Ray LaMontagne, “I’m right where I belong.
“Right where I belong.”
Postscript
It is late at night, or early in the morning I should say, on Saturday, the 17th of July. I am typing by the open window and I can hear the somehow soothing sounds of traffic on the 5.
It has been great spending time with Patricia these past few days, and going to the beach (despite my losing my sunglasses there), and hiking, and reading, and writing, and doing yoga, and eating in restaurants and at home, and exploring lovely Carlsbad. We are planning a trip up to Santa Barbara and then backpacking in a week or so, but, right now, it’s nice just being here.
It feels like home in a way that So Cal never has before.
And that is a whole (and wholly unexpected) vibe.
Goodnight!
Carlsbad, CA
July 11-July 17, 2021
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