Where did you sleep last night? I slept in my bed.
And this morning Rusty and I went for a walk watching the sun come up over California and slowly push the marine fog back out to sea for another day.
This is California dreaming on a summer’s day, the wilderness, the insect free camping in a perfect sweat-free climate, the isolation of vast national forests and limitless open federal lands. Then there is daily reality for the 40 million official residents of the Golden State.
We saw that too, a blurry heatwave of traffic and badly corrupted tarmac roads shimmering in temperatures to make your hair curl. It was 85 degrees at 8 am when we left the Boron rest area on Highway 58 east of Bakersfield in the Mojave desert.
It was 90 degrees yet bearable as we sat down to a delicious al fresco breakfast with Henry and Maria. 
Layne began her law career as a fresh young public defender in Visalia with Henry decades ago and he is still in the trade unable to decide if he wants to really retire. We traded war stories when he related his appalling motorcycle wreck run down by an incompetent driver in the mountains and almost launching him into a canyon to his death. Instead he got up from the wrecked Harley Road King and walked away. A miracle. They want to retire to Mexico but their friends have filled their heads with stories of the cartels waiting in ambush for them. You survive a motorcycle murder so what dread do shadowy figments of the imagination hold? A lot apparently.
When you think of California, if you think of it at all, you don’t think of Bakersfield and the Central Valley. This is the unglamorous bit, the economic powerhouse where they drill for oil in the middle of town. Unabashedly they make money here in this railroad hub, this confluence of freeways, this industrial resource and warehouse of agricultural supplies.
They swelter in 108 degree heat and build the wealth California thrives on. Bakersfield sprawls so you can come west and find work and you can buy a house and you can live the California dream right here.
This is where the old money lives, the ranchers, the businessmen, the conservative California that lives in the shadow of the hippy coastline and the vast urban population centers that give California its world wide reputation.
When I lived in The People’s Republic of Santa Cruz I drove across the Central Valley to visit Yosemite or Kings Canyon which is inland from Bakersfield. I found the agriculture on an industrial scale fascinating then as I do now.
They don’t spray groundwater in a vast wasteful arc anymore around here but they irrigate more carefully still pouring groundwater in miles of fruit and vegetables to feed the nation. It doesn’t alter the fact that agricultural water is heavily subsidized and is running out. They turn off showers in campgrounds to conserve water but they pump out almonds by the ton and almond milk costs vast quantities of water to produce.
These fields make money so there is no chance of making change until change is forced by circumstance. The Central Valley embodies the paradox of climate change in which we shall change nothing until there is nothing left to change. I guess we’ll figure it out later. Meanwhile I keep driving.
Layne travels in hopes of finding Mexico in California but roadside stands here are far less interesting than down south. She came back empty handed.
I kept driving West seeking an end to the apparently endless desert. We’ve seen so much of the desert we are sick of it. We drove all Baja, we’ve cross crossed the Sonoran desert in Mexico and the US and we’ve been staring at cactus and mesquite for months. Enough I say.
California reserved a special treat for us as we lumbered west on Highway 58 after our eggy breakfast of sopes and poached eggs, a perfect combination of Mexico meets California on a plate. This was California now showing us what a real desert looks like. Neither of us had driven Bakersfield to San Luis Obispo on this highway before. Strain your eyes and you’ll see a salt flat but not a blade of green grass.
Because we are human we have a tendency to personalize everything and it felt like we were getting a desert spanking. The absence of life was giving us a royal send off, a Martian view of earth without life. No sage, no creosote, no mesquite. No nothing. It was stark and impressive. And very tiresome as we knew there were cool ocean breezes somewhere ahead.
We crawled up out of the Central Valley through a thousand hairpins and no guard rails and ridiculously deep canyons sprinkled at last with some live oak trees and I watched the air temperature gauge stick around 105 degrees. My first choice of wild camp was untenable.
Bollocks. Rusty was fascinated by the new and unknown wilderness of rustling dry grass speckled with shade. He prowled like a lion until the heat did him in.
My back up plan was a spot high on a ridge called La Cuesta (“the slope” in Spanish) between Santa Margarita and San Luis Obispo (“Saint Louis the Bishop” named for a Bishop of Toulouse, Louis of Anjou by California’s indefatigable mission builder Father Junipero Serra in the 18th century). The idea was to be bathed in cooling sea breezes even if the ridge was but two thousand feet high. A pimple by Colorado standards.
It was a scramble up a single lane road paved only part way and fortunately we met no traffic coming down. Passing would require backing up to find a tiny wide spot.
As I write this we have yet to go back down so we shall see how that goes! Luckily I’ve had lots of practice backing up the van as this is a well traveled spot and we shall probably encounter a Sunday driver.
Never seen a wind generator on an RV before like the red white and blue blades above. That was an example of carrying every possible thing you might need but below was the norm, young people roughing it very successfully:
We were up and about early on a Sunday morning as we do every morning:
The teal colored Geo metro next to us was driven by a nervous Asian man of apparently limited English who asked me if it was okay to park here. I smiled and said cheerfully:”I hope so!” He nodded and said “Okay?” repeating the word hopefully. And that was the only word exchanged. Camping here is serious stuff apparently everyone frowning and looking purposeful to enjoy serious exercise and text book outdoor living. I am feeling frivolous and overawed by the hard core as I always did when I lived here.
Passersby look straight ahead and rare is the wave of acknowledgment and rarer still a tight lipped smile.
I must look goofy as I’m having a grand time in the dirt getting my hair mussed by the wind, drinking tea and having a thoroughly excellent morning. I smile and wave from my ridiculously suburban van. Not a serious wilderness off roader at all.
I found a first rate Indian restaurant at the intersection of Highway 58 and I-5 where we bought vegetable biryani and curried goat to go for dinner. The old man in charge of taking our order asked how spicy we wanted it. “Indian spicy or American spicy?” I asked as I always do in Asian eateries. The levels are obviously different if they try to accommodate our feeble palates. He looked at me quizzically. “This is an Indian restaurant,” he snapped, “so it is Indian spicy,” as though instructing an imbecile, which perhaps he was. “Medium,” I said hastily as his waiter standing behind him tried to smother a smile.
It was good food, not salt laden, and it gave the already surreal evening views a further touch of other worldliness riding high above the lights of a city seen as though from an airplane. We were not eating cold muesli or dehydrated noodles in our preposterous home on wheels.
The sun set as it always does and the sea breeze in our face switched to a slightly warmer breeze blowing from our backs.
This was what we had driven two long days to reach with the prospect of ocean views, fresh seafood and a slow drive up Big Sur to remind us of the true wilderness of the coast of Michoacán, which we drove last winter thinking how much it reminded us of the Central California coast. Mexicans wave and smile as absurd tourists drive by, a bonus of good cheer and joy in life.
And so to sleep in my own very comfortable bed rocked by the wind and the loud snores of a very tired dog.
California dreaming indeed.
