It’s been quite a few years since I was in Eastern California, that strip of the Golden State wedged between the Sierra Nevada and the Silver State.
The direct road to Yosemite National Park through Tioga Pass is closed by heavy snow and fears of avalanches. So we will visit Layne’s nephew, a park ranger, by way of Highway 108 well north of the park allowing us to approach from the west by driving over the north of Yosemite. There’s plenty of visible snow in the mountains:
We’ve covered a lot of desert since we left our moochdock with a friend in Clarkdale Arizona. There was one peculiar moment as we climbed Mingus Mountain toward Prescott and I-40…I saw a Vespa as we entered the historic ghost town of Jerome far above Clarkdale.
By the time we crossed paths with three more scooters ridden by properly dressed serious riders I remembered the Scooter Cannonball, a coast-to-coast rally was in Arizona. I never did participate though I would have liked to have had the time off work to join the biennial event.
All wearing proper protective riding gear.
Eight continuous days of riding at four hundred miles per day must be exhausting.
I am glad to be in the van with my family but I enjoyed seeing these strangers give it their all on machines generally unappreciated as long distance rides.
We pressed on, chewing up the miles on I-40 toward Kingman.
At the Pet Smart in Kingman Rusty got a new bed which produced much tail wagging.
The roads were lumpy and potholed occasionally and I thought of the stuff we had handled in Mexico. Highway 95 was being resurfaced in Las Vegas so we diverted onto a freeway bypass that swept us out north of the sinful city. I had wanted a quick picture of GANNET2 on The Strip, but it was not to be. I like Vegas even though I don’t gamble and Layne and I have enjoyed our visits to see Penn and Teller and Cirque de Soleil among all the performances offered.
We stopped near Indian Springs, home to an air force base, but also home to a turn out, an ideal informal stopping place for a self contained camper van.
Oddly enough someone had put up a temple in the desert open to the public, a place to mediate and enjoy a pause in your journey. I found it rather sweet.
Sekhmet I found is an Egyptian goddess who enjoys war and disease and also curing said diseases. There’s lots of stuff swirling around the goddess if you are interested and it’s all online.
I love how the desert gives free rein to those impulses you could never satisfy in suburbia. I’m not religious or spiritual but I enjoyed the driving force that produced this place.
It was a good free spot and the traffic noise faded away after dark. GANNET2 is very well insulated which serves us perfectly to keep noise and temperature fluctuations at bay. Insulation in an RV is a critical factor and often overlooked.
Death Valley National Park was not as screaming hot as you might think. I have fond memories of this place, it’s famous enough I wanted to see it on my first cross country trip on my Vespa. Then when I lived in California I’d come out here and camped in the backcountry in my Volkswagen van. I think back to the drives I took with that unreliable thing and never did it leave me stranded when most I needed it!
Zabriskie Point made famous by a second rate movie of that name. I still find it fascinating.
The place was busier than I expected. A dutiful Asian daughter was pushing her Dad in his wheelchair up the hill bent back and straining legs. She accepted my help gratefully despite our language barrier. I couldn’t understand why no one else stepped up to help; it was a long way on a steep hill.
I enjoyed the drive across these old familiar places. I remembered as we went and though the road doesn’t look the same it made me glad I was still alive to see the highlights again. I trust it won’t be the last time I drive through Stovepipe Wells though I doubt I will ever again sleep on the ground between my Vespa and the store. I won’t be 22 again either I doubt. The sins of youth… These days the fine is $230 for sleeping in a national park parking lot. 1981 was much less rigid in that way and I slept on the ground wherever darkness found me.
We ate lunch, a Layne sandwich special, in the desert and cane out of the Panamint mountains into Lone Pine. We were in California again.
We drove past the internment camp from World War Two. We had places to go and tourism was on the back burner worst luck. I remember Manzanar as much less lush, more desert-like. I suppose that’s what happens after a record wet winter.
The town of Bishop is inextricably tangled in a Baby Boomer memory with Charles Manson who recently went, one hopes, to a suitably toasty reward.
We camped in national forest land, past crowded expensive campgrounds alone among the pine trees on a sunny frosty evening.
Meat and vegetable stir fry over rice. We had to remember how to generate heat in our home because it’s been a long time since it’s been this cold.
The promise of an overnight low near freezing at Mammoth Lakes. Definitely a one dog night.
