SouthWestSlide: _{Spring 2004}

Phase Zero_(b)
Wherein we think we're starting the journey

This is it! We're finally on our way. Sure, the first day is mostly spent taking care of necessities: final loading, postal stops, supplies, medical stuff, But then it's clear sailing to the open horizon, right? Right??

Following is the account of ... well, you'll see...

Day 1: Departure Day
(Tues 16 March 2004)

DEPARTURE: Early afternoon - start the engine in the RV and ROLL OUT!! FINALLY!!

It's gorgeous day to be heading out on a drive, skies are clear - at 3000 feet temperature's in the mid-70s. Meadows are green, trees are green, Petrushka the 14-year-old cat is green - no, she isn't feeling barfy right now. We have an old tradition on these trips: we start driving, and 15 to 30 minutes out Petrushka walks around, howls, and barfs. Then she heads for the cat dish and reloads. But Maureen still hurts so she's riding in the dinette seat and has the cat curled up with her. So maybe the cat won't go thru the hurling routine this time.

Ah, today isn't a CLEAN getaway - we have chores to take care of along the way, including (shudder) another run to Folsom. Folsom will be our real jumping-off point. (The prognosis for the Central Valley today is near-record high temperatures. Can we take the heat? Can we do otherwise?)

JACKSON: Ah, the tradition continues - 50 minutes out, the cat hurls.

Further down the hill at 1200 feet in Jackson it's hotter, temperature's around 80°f, it's starting to look a little murky out over the Valley. And again still there's NO CLOUDS. So it's a beautiful day if you like cloudless skies. If you want to do any interesting photography, it sucks.

Nearly two hours from home, we're leaving Jackson at the vantage overlooking the Valley and it is indeed murky. We can see the Rancho Seco cooling towers but everything else is lost in the schmaze...

The focus of this first stage of our journey has changed. No Mission Trail trip, instead we'll follow a coastal wildflower trail down past Big Sur, haven't been there for a long time. Monterey, Big Sur, maybe Paso Robles and the Carrizo Plain. Maybe over the Tehachapis (and even Carson Pass) to the Northern Mojave to see how the blooms there are doing.

IONE: Now down thru the rolling hills at the edge of the Great Valley. Everything's so green. We're rolling past our local railroad and all the wooden infrastructure of old mining and other enterprises gone bust. Stark wooden scaffolding here and there, black with time.

We're not taking the usual route on the drive from lower Amador County to Folsom, we're off on a network of back roads rolling thru the hills, a verdant interior oak woodland. Cattle grazing, birds hopping, cats skulking. Off to east where the hills drop away we see the Crystal Range and other bits of the High Sierra covered with snow, deep in snow. The snowpack is 150% of normal, last I heard.

FOLSOM: Into the same old town for the usual medical stuff, the usual stops for supplies, a usual dinner. Now 5 1/2 hours after leaving home, we finally quit Folsom, finish dinner and hit the road. Thus the journey has now BEGUN! We're going off into the sunset, it's getting dark; the sky's cleared, we can see the silhouettes of the Coast Range mountains, the red glow behind them.

Dinner: PickUpStix north of US-50 on E Bidwell at Broadstone in Bel Air Center, Folsom (916.983.5591) - Maureen gets chicken with veggies, I get garlic shrimp with veggies. Great and theatrical as usual. All fresh, lightly sauteed, very flavorful, and the cooks use big woks and throw stuff up in the air with bursts of flame - exciting! Another moneys-worth.

Just heard a story on MarketPlace (public radio) that validated what we'd heard about cars in Guatemala. Turns out that 70% of all cars imported into El Salvador are vehicles coming from the States that have been declared total wrecks. Then they get rebuilt and sold to the locals, with no standards of safety or suitability of repairs. No surprise. They say they have photos of said cars on their website - check it out! (page down)

LATER: We were only 45 minutes out of Folsom when fatigue claimed me. Yes, it HAS been a long day. Pulled over off the interstate, on the road to the old Chinese villages of Locke and Walnut Grove. Dozed for a bit, slept off the worst of it. Now we're back on the road in one of my least-favorite situations: rolling down I-5 at night. In the summer this is the only time to drive this road. Outside summer, it still sucks. So tedious...

Out under the inky sky with a few odd constellations visible, mostly inpenetrable but broken with suburban lights, flashing radio towers, giant truck stops and warehouse districts. Our right headlight is out. Hopefully this will be one of the few night-drives no this trip. But now I just feel DRIVEN to get away from the usual, to get outside our accustomed area. Thus this desperate roll down the interstate in the darkness.

STOCKTON: And in the darkness we swing past Stockton. I hear that Stockton has been rejuvenated, that it's no longer the old cow-town and collection of festering barrios. But I won't know now, will I? I cannot see either vigor or decay in the dark. My memories of Stockton certainly, but they go back to over 30 years ago when sister Marsha lived here and 25 years ago when Mom did. I really haven't been back much since then. Maybe once or twice almost 10 years ago, scanning dealers, looking to buy our first used RV.

Most vivid is the memory from probably 25 years back, around Christmas. We walked several miles thru rural areas near town on a frigid day under bare walnut trees and grey icy skies, bundled up like Eskimos and necessarily so. Brrr. But mostly I just think of Stockton as some place that's too hot and too smelly except when it's too cold to smell.

How those memories relate to the Stockon of today I don't know except that statistically the air here is still bad. I mean REAL bad. I mean like among the worst in the country. And it certainly all smells bad enough now. And THIS is the nice season here...

VERNALIS: At last, 9 hours after departing, 14 hours after getting up, we roll to a stop. We searched all over the southern outskirts of Manteca ('manteca' is Spanish for 'fat' or 'butter') looking for Caswell Memorial State Park. It turned out to be far from where we expected (damn map!) and when we got there all the campsites were like dank little caves in the willows, and it would have been a tight squeeze even for our short RV. So we cruised the side roads, found an amenable wide spot and we pulled over and that's it, goodnight.

Day 2: St Patrick's Day
(Wed 17 March 2004)

VERNALIS: South of Manteca CA, pre-dawn - I picked a good roadside for us to flop in, in farmland near the confluence of the Stanislaus and San Joaquin rivers. It's been dead quiet, can't even hear the fowl fluttering. But now in the distance dogs are barking, the sky's slowly lightening, Maureen's hurting. Yesterday's motions strained her muscles again. Ratz.

After sunrise we're rolling down Highway 33, the Central Valley's westside pike before I-5 was built. We're blowing thru little decayed towns like Westley, funky wee bars and garages there. Lookie see: by the little buildings we're looking at Old California, by the big infrastructure it's the New California, agribiz central. Lots of flattop orchards all with the trees planed-off at a height of about seven feet, a really strange manicure job if you're not expecting it.

The big excitement along Hwy 33 is when it jumps to the other side of the railroad tracks it otherwise parallels. Blacksmith shops advertise high-tech welding. Redwing blackbirds and whitewing mockingbirds pop-up all over. A big raptor sits on the rail, on the train tracks beside the road. Roadside wild mustards and radishes are blooming; don't see much else happening, flowerwise. Or elsewise.

A little later we whiz thru Gustine (Te Gusta Gustine!) heading south. On the east face of the coast range, the hillsides are all bright yellow. They're a mile or two away so that's an awful lot of wild mustard over there. MUSTARD CENTRAL sez Maureen. MUSTARDS ON STEROIDS sez I.

SANTA NELLA: Stop for a truckstop meal. Just across the street from here is the Andersen's Pea Soup restaurant, but somehow we just didn't feel like having pea soup for breakfast.

Brunch: TA Truckstop on Hwy 33 at I-5, Santa Nella - (phone?) - Well, the food won't kill ya right away. It was tasty enough, the omelette had real cheddar cheese and wee chunks of good ham, the potatoes were fresh, and we were kept endlessly refilled with decaf. Not exactly a health-food restaurant, but then again, it's a TRUCK STOP!

Leaving Santa Nella we head west on Hwy 152 towards Pacheco Pass. Ahead the Coast Range hills are still green; we see vast windmill farms up above us, harvesting the breeze. And the great earthen dam of San Luis resevoir which is not green, it's about as ugly as they come.

Pacheco Pass (overseen by Pacheco Peak) is a natural break in the inner Coast Ranges; the Diablo Range lies to the north, the Gabilan Range to the south, and ahead of us is Monterey Bay. San Luis resevoir is of not inconsiderable size. If we in Guatemala it would be ringed with villages, shark boats plying back and forth across the surface. In a few more years, with California's population growth, that may happen here too.

And now we're nearing the windmill farms. It must be a slow day for wind or energy consumption or both since none of the massive propeller blades are spinning, Just giant steel and concrete penitents frozen under the cloudless sky. Ah, our first poppy field - wow, they are BRIGHT!

HOLLISTER: Midmorning, we roll thru beautiful downtown Hollister. Some burgs would proclaim the HISTORIC DOWNTOWN DISTRICT. Here it's just the old downtown. An alive-enough place. On south of downtown, the main street goes thru zones of pleasant old bungalows and BIG old trees, all here for most of a century. These trees are absolutely necessary in the summer, but not sufficient. Some of the old houses still have pump-house towers out back; they predate town plumbing and maybe electricity.

We passed the Funeral Home and Crematory - I guess that's where ya get your fresh cream, heh heh heh.

There's evidence of yuppification here - kitchen utensil shops, toasted bagel shops, skateboard shops, psychic stops. An and there's the sign for the HISTORIC DOWNTOWN so they didn't neglect that...

SAN JUAN BAUTISTA: We crossed the San Benito River and it is dry as a bone, Figuratively. Bones are moister. All the rivers we saw coursing out of the Sierras were churning and boiling and frothing. No snowmelt down here. If only an icy meteorite would crash into Loma Prieta Peak!

We stomped around San Juan Bautista for couple hours, looking thru the state park and the grand old mission, the largest of the California missions and historically significant (but aren't they all?) and sitting right at the very edge of the San Andreas Fault - we soaked up the sights and scents and sounds - lotsa sounds, lotsa schoolkids being run thru on class tours, just like Pompeii.

We stopped for tasty Hawaiian ice cream and small-town ambience. Hey, look at that two-story outhouse! Hey, there are chickens in the streets! Hey, the high school is presenting The Vagina Monologues! Hey, we're somewhere in America!

FURTHER: Then we hopped back in the RV and crawled over the steep sinuous old San Juan Grade road to Salinas. Poppies bursting out all over the disturbed hillsides. Disturbed drivers popping out all over the narrow twisty one-lane road, almost all of them aimed directly at us. From the top we looked out over the approaches to the Salinas Valley and the peaks beyond, multiple-hued purple layers of hilly silhouettes rising beyond this verdant leafy arroyo.

The remark was made that this looks like the backroads behind Petaluma which is no surprise since we're in the same place, just 150 miles south. Same as that valley outside Nebaj in Guatemala felt an awful lot like Sonoma Cownty except for the chicken busses there.

SALINAS: Now it's early afternoon, we're going thru beautiful downtown Salinas. Ha. Past the SALINAS NATIONAL STEINBECK CENTER. Haha. They ran his ass out of town when he was alive. After he was dead and famous they figured they could make money off him. So behold Steinbeck Real Estate, Steinbeck Travel, Steinbeck Septic Service, Steinbeck Tattoo Parlor, Steinbeck Adult Movies. Hypocritical? Or just capitalistic?

Still pretty warm here, we're heading for Monterey now. Meanwhile downtown Salinas looks to have been a wee bit refurbished, but you can only put so much lipstick on the pig.

LAGUNA SECA: And just before 3:00, hot and tired, we roll into Rancho Seco, no Laguna Seca Recreation Area, which is right next to the Laguna Seca Race Track. Never camped near a speedway before. We're up on a green rolling hillside. Down below are sheep, range maggots, inching by...

Off to the east we have a grand view of... Salinas. Look down over the ridge to the west there's the race track. To the north, suburban Monterey and Carmel Valley. What the hell, it'll do, and there's showers. Even though it's way too expensive, $22 to park here without hookup. Focking thieves...

The sheep are baa-baa-baaing away. A great shout of baa-baa-baa. Around the hill someone's racing around the track but we don't see anything, just hear the mild roar. And the showers are too far to drag our exhausted bodies, we'll rinse off in the RV. We paid 22 bucks for THIS?!?!?

Day 3: Monterey Bay etc
(Thur 18 March 2004)

MidMorning: we roll out of Laguna Seca campground, WAY overpriced, no reason to come back here again... unless some other time we're WAY too hot and tired to go any further... Did I say it's hot? It's hot. Already. Supposed to have been in the 90s in San Francisco yesterday.

Laguna Seca is famed as a sports-car raceway. Today it's infested with motorcycles. Laguna Seca is adjacent to of Ft Ord which is no more. Much of Ft Ord is now BLM land but camping is not permitted. Other of its land is now a state university, underfunded. Other of its lands were dispersed to various public agencies. Not that it really matters to the trees.

In Carmel Highlands we see some architectual excesses reminiscent of the Amalfi Coast: castle-like stonework built down from cliff-top to ocean's edge. And VERY large villas behind tall fences. Yes, very like Amalfi except colder and the road's wider and less crowded here. But then this is midday midweek in March, not exactly high season.

BIG SUR: And now entering the Big Sur country, sere coastal hills - actually of course this all looks like the coastal Sonoma hills. It's been so long since either of us have been down the Big Sur coast. Most of our driving within accessible memory has been on the Sonoma-Mendocino coast which is... similar... eerily reminiscent? It's hard to find anything to really distinguish this from the more northern coast. Except there's more money near here.

Ah, we just passed a white pickup truck, the letters on its tailgate were YODA. It's good that Jedi knights know how to drive.

North-south differences: the mountains here, the Santa Lucia range, are steeper, shearer, wilder, and mostly preserved as National Forest. The mountains to the north are more cattle-and-sheep country, more private ranches than here. The Sur is more accessible to population centers. Down here in the Sur the road (so far) is wider and not as twisty and there are definitely more lavish estates. Nothing northward approaches these for lavishness, not even in the area just below Mendocino. Otherwise the aspect of the land is very similar. Areas that aren't developed or parklands are ranched, cattle pasturing between highway and cliffs. Farm structures here looks fairly old, well-weathered.

A little further there are areas where high dunes reach inland a bit, and no this doesn't look quite like anything up to the north. Not that Maureen sees any of this, she's knocked out by pain and fatigue. She'll have no good memories of this stretch of Big Sur.

I know I've been along here many many times before but that was 25-35 years ago, I was hitch-hiking and it seems like it was always at night and I was stoned or drunk and the countryside just blew on by. I traveled with a pack that was too heavy, too full of inconsequential crap. I was certainly not (mentally or physically) setup for crawling into the wilderness to camp out.

LATE AFTERNOON: At 5:00 we pull into Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, survey the many dreary campsites and pick one for an overnight stay, we'll be gone in the morning, we have not yet reached a point/place where we can kick back.

I walk up to the self-registration kiosk to pay our fare. A fellow drives in with a trailer-load of kayaks, asks if I know of a good campsite. An old Oriental gal in cammos asks if I know where she can get firewood, then tells me about trouble she had in Santa Cruz. She followed street signs and ended up driving down a railroad track, a local yelling DON'T MOVE, I'LL CALL THE RAILROAD AND TELL THEM TO STOP THE TRAINS! Three little kids in alien suits (or three little aliens) roll by on scooters. Maureen takes more Vicodin.

Day 4: Ignominious Retreat
(Fri 19 March 2004)

SEASIDE, CA: Halfway thru Big Sur we give up, Maureen hurts too much. We've turned around, we're headed back to Kaiser/Folsom to seek medical relief. But it's such a beautiful day. Yes, the coastal wildflowers are in bloom. Newspapers report that the heat has brought out blooms throughout the Bay Area. And we shall whiz past these blooms on the freeway, heading back to Kaiser as fast as possible. My mood sucks. Bummer.

Pfeiffer Big Sur park, although drab, was comfortable and peaceful, the sussuration of the stream softly sweetly murmuring to us all night. And the air was not nearly as filled with campfire smoke as I had feared. Still, we noted a great deal of poison oak around, no place to go tromping through the bushes thar.

Stop in Monterey for breakfast, then down the road as the planets align on the ecliptic and magma movements under Yellowstone portend a mega-eruption that will spew untold tons of material into the sky, blanking the sun and causing mass extinctions. Hey, I read it online so it must be true.

Breakfast: Grandma's Kitchen - 2310 Fremont Blvd, Monterey CA 93940 - (831.375.3033) - excellent, thumbs-up. I had a fine veggie omelette, fresh and tasty - fresh salsa and decaf, fresh homemade crumbly biscuits - great place. I thought it was a tad costly til I tasted it all - worth it. Maureen's pecan-and-cranberry sourdough pancakes were wonderful. Good quality, perfectly cooked bacon, she sez.

GILROY, CA: So we cut inland from Monterey Bay into the Santa Clara valley. This is a route that, before 30 years ago, I hitchhiked thru every week or two. And since 30 years ago I haven't been here, not at all. So my memories of the Carmel Highlands Inn and Castroville and Gilroy all just fade away... And thru the increasing haze the spiky peaks of the Diablo range thrust up on my right, rising like ghosts from my wasted youth.

MEMORY, CA: I have a vague memory of overnighting at Carmel Highlands Inn many many offseasons ago, some friends and I hitching a ride with a caretaker. We bunked in the library and frolicked around the crumbling gardens in our flannels and jeans, wine and cheeze and joints and french bread, the fog whispering past a campfire...

TRACY, CA: We stopped at Mission San Jose in Fremont, very nice restoration, very nice museum. Now we head back towards the Central Valley and the heat, the heat... a monster traffic jam around Livermore and Tracy... damn we hate the Greater Bay Area now.

LATER, CA: We crawled across the Great Valley, limping into Folsom on fumes, and found that our fuel tank holds 36 gallons. At US$2 per, you do the math. Then to Kaiser for an exam and bigger and better pills. Then to Jackson for the best Chinese dinner in town. Then up the hill, home, hope for recovery and reconstitution. Will we ever get away from here?

Dinner: The Golden Wok - 11984 Hwy 88, Martell CA 95654 - (209.223.1476) - best Chinese in Jackson, too bad we're too late for the buffet. Dinner #C, wonderful ginger beef and kung pao chicken, fresh and bitey. Piles of fresh veggies. Yum.

I'm too tired to haul everything back from the RV to the house. Maureen's too agonized to do anything. The cat's happy to be home. One outa three ain't bad. Orion looks down from the sky and laughs at us. Things rustle in the night. I'm going to sleep.

Cool Water by Bob Nolan

All day I face the barren waste without the taste of water, Cool water.
Old Dan and I with throats burned dry and souls that cry for water, Cool water.

The night are cool and I'm a fool each stars a pool of water, Cool water.
But with the dawn I'll wake and yawn and carry on to water, Cool water.

(chorus) Keep a movin' Dan, don't you listen to him Dan,
he's a devil not a man and he spreads the burnin' sand with water.
Dan can't you see that big green tree where the waters runnin' free
and it's waiting there for me and you. Water, cool water.

The shadows sway and seem to say tonight we pray for water, Cool water.
And way up there He'll hear our prayer and show us where there's water, Cool Water.

Dan's feet are sore he's yearning for just one thing more than water, Cool water.
Like me, I guess, he'd like to rest where there's no quest for water, Cool water.