Snow Line

“Do you remember the last time we saw snow?” I asked my wife as we stood next to the van in the pull out off California Highway 108 the only mountain road open in this area. We stared at the giant meringue pile in silence for a while. It felt like someone had left the refrigerator door open.

“It snowed last year at cousin Lynn’s in Chicago,” she said after some thought. 

“That wasn’t snow, it was a light dusting of dandruff,” I said. “She laughed at us for getting excited over nothing.”

I knew many people in Key West who grew up there and had never seen snow. I felt like one of them now as I watched Rusty see snow for the first time. He approached the drifts cautiously but soon, unlike me, he was running and jumping and rolling in snow like it was the most fun he’d had all year. He lay in it panting with a huge grin on his face. 

Traitor I thought as I wondered why my South Florida rescue dog was enjoying what I feared.
“Do you suppose we might get stuck in it?” We’ve got our Promaster stuck in some awkward places, sand clay and gravel mostly. Snow would be a new delight, a new concern to top the agenda of errors I might easily lead us into.
“Of course we might,” Mrs Practical said, “If you don’t listen to me and drive where you shouldn’t we’re bound to mess up again.”  

That was harsh but she had a point. Most recently we spent two weeks living off grid  in the bush in Belize, an uncomfortable place, after I drove us into a clay pit. I’d had the best of intentions but the experience has left us feeling somewhat vulnerable. Especially after we skinned the front tires raw winching ourselves out of a ditch in Guatemala. Not entirely my fault that one, but still.

I looked at the snow piled up at the side of the road pondering future encounters.

Here we were at 9500 feet surrounded by unaccustomed frozen water, stuff that in civilized parts like Florida is stored indoors only to be brought out in public in a cocktail glass.                                           Here it was everywhere,unruly and deep and threatening. 

“Do you suppose we could winch ourselves out of it if we need to?” Our Promaster has a 12,000 pound winch at the front. We have used it rather more often than we should have, to save us from  my enthusiasm for giving unlikely tracks a go. “We’ll be fine!” are my famous last words accompanied by a deep sigh from my wife of thirty years.
“We aren’t going to find out,” Layne said firmly sinking deeper into her jacket that she had pulled out of the winter clothes locker after a winter in Mexico.
Next year we want to improve our life as elderly retirees by  trying to  drive South America along the Andes a mountain range 7,000 miles long and 15,000 feet high. It sounded absurdly ambitious as we stood in the Sierra Nevada looking at modest left over snow from last winter’s blizzards. Biting off more than we could chew came to mind. My feet were cold and my nose was dripping; snow is for the birds, my Key West friends were right.
The van was fine, as usual. It hauled us up the hairpins slowly and steadily at a pace the pioneers would have approved of  in their ox carts. 
Downhill we went at last relieved to see the temperature rise to the civilized 80s and the snow to disappear back to the horizon where it belonged. 
We stopped for lunch at the side of the road pondering our first encounter with winter realities. 

“Do you want ice in your Coke?” Layne asked brightly from behind the fridge door. 

“What do you think?” I said unnecessarily harshly, as I thought of the cold that is to come in our van lives. I married a very determined woman, so if we get stuck in a snow drift in Peru … this time it will be her fault.

A prescribed burn: 

Retracing The West

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.