In The Stone Age

Pacheco Pass

Welcome to Gilroy, California, garlic capital of the world. No vampires live here. This is a fabulous country.

We were talking yesterday and I told John that the Camry may be the best traveled Toyota in history. It was made at the Toyota plant in Kentucky and shipped to Oregon. I bought it in Oregon and drove it back to Kentucky. Four years later I drove it to back to Oregon, stayed for an extended period and then drove it back to Kentucky. Actually I made that trip from Oregon to Kentucky in three days blasting through Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa at warp speeds to get home. Now we have dragged the car across the country behind Mary and will drag it back sometime next month. It has failed me twice in 145,000 miles. Two dead batteries. At the very least the car deserves a medal. Perhaps it should be the first inanimate object in history considered for sainthood.

Okay. I'll call and make the appointment to see the therapist.

We traveled from Scottsdale to the Barstow area via Highway 60, to Highway 93 to Interstate 40 to Interstate 15 to Yermo, California and into the Yermo KOA. Our only issue came when we fired Mary up in the morning in Scottsdale. The new transmission pump monitor...the one that we replaced in Mesa and was supposed to actually work, went to howling and screeching worse that the last one. We did the drill (cuss, shut Mary off and start her again, start the car and let it run for ten minutes, cuss, sigh heavily, hook and unhook and re-hook the car repeatedly, shut Mary off again and start her again, cuss, sigh heavily, plug our ears, holler "What??!!" every time one of us tries to talk to the other, and cover Breezy's ears as she looks at me with that pleading look that makes me want to rip the unit out with my bare hands). Finally in desperation we just took off knowing that the pump was working but unsure what would happen if by some unhappy accident the pump actually stops working. Well, my mind has the entire scenario all ready rehearsed. It has a lot to do with replacing the transmission in the Camry in some backwater "Deliverance" burg in Mississippi on a sizzling humid day, swatting swarming mosquitoes and flies, and waiting for days for parts to be delivered from civilization as tobacco chewing toothless men leer at us...there's more but I'll spare you. So we drive. And we pray. Fifty full minutes later the monitor finally shuts up. Breezy, John and I breathe a collective sigh of relief.

John wants to call Remco again which is the company that makes the monitor. So far I've managed to avoid that confrontation through distraction ("Look!! Isn't that a Sasquatch!!" and "Rattlesnake!!!" and things like that take his mind off of chewing on some unsuspecting Remco employee who happens to have the misfortune of picking up the phone on that day). But it is coming. As it should.

Believe it or not the campground near the ghost town in Yermo was kind of cool. I thought we might have trouble finding it because when I entered the address in the GPS and in Mapquest and Yahoo and Google Maps they all said "Sorry, no such place exists". So I wrote down the instructions from the website and we drove right to it. The KOA had tall hedges between the pull through spaces so when we extended Mary's four slide outs we were looking out of the side windows directly into the bushes. There was a huge area in the back for Breezy to play Frisbee. For dinner we had talapia and rice and sweet peas and watched the last segment of Lonesome Dove. We started watching it on our way from Kentucky to Florida. That was about ten years ago wasn't it? Anyway, we did that and slept well in Yermo.

The next morning we go up and pulled Mary together in preparation to leave. John fired her up and once again the transmission monitor started whining. We did the drill and hit the road with my hands over Breezy's ears. This time it only took thirty five minutes and two more Sasquatch sightings to stop driving us nuts.

I was actually kind of dreading the leg of the trip to Bakersfield. It had been nearly thirty years since I'd been out that way and all I remembered was how desolate it was. I was pleasantly surprised to find the desert green and full of wild flowers. The mountain views were beautiful and the trip through the pass at Tehachapi was really pretty. There are lots of wind farms set up in the desert and in the pass and it was fun to see the wind turbines all lined up on the horizon, ready to produce energy for electricity when the wind blows. We passed Edwards Air Force Base where they land the shuttle. It stretches for miles and miles. There were views of several snow covered mountain peaks in the distance. It was really a nice drive. Until we got to Bakersfield. The birthplace of Buck Owens. The Bakersfield Flash.

When we got Mary, Monaco installed a neat new radio that was satellite compatible. John already had a small satellite unit that could be moved from vehicle to vehicle along with a subscription to XM Radio. We made countless trips from Kentucky to Florida and back in the 4-Runner while the XM Radio was entertaining...John. The problem I see with satellite radio is that you kind of get stuck on one station and that's it. John got stuck on a station called "America". I'm not a huge country music fan. I know a lot of people are and that's great but I'm just not. Some people like white wine and some red. Some like vanilla ice cream and others prefer Cherries Garcia (yum). That's life. I like some of the newer country music but mostly I'm from the stone age of the 1960s and 1970s and I tend to like that old rock music. John loves country. So I figured we could compromise on the music listening to some of what he likes and some of what I like. The problem was that I was always writing when we were traveling down the road and he was always stuck on "America". I would set it to the 60's decade and five minutes later it would be back on "America". It is a station that features music from the really old country genre, like Little Jimmy Dickens, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn and yes...Buck Owens. John mistakenly thought that because I was typing I went deaf.

Okay, I can do a little bit of the old country stuff without it grating on my nerves. Darn little. In fact one of the things I remember about working for John (back in the stone age) was that I would set the radio station to a local rock station in the morning when I got to the barn. When he came in he would change the radio to a country station. He was the boss so I didn't complain...outwardly. I would just get a horse ready, take it to the arena he would take it and I would do a fifty yard dash to the radio and change it back to the rock station and ready another horse. He would come in, I would take the horse and strip it while he changed the radio back to the country station. Then the cycle would repeat. This went on all day. We never discussed it.

Nothing much has changed in thirty years. So finally after making a few straight-through trips to or from Vero Beach (at 15 hours each) listening non-stop to "America" on XM I couldn't take it anymore. I was "America-ed" out. Endo "America". Breezy (as a puppy) obliged me by chewing the antenna wire in two, twice (apparently she was sick of it too) and I neglected to replace it the second time solving the problem. So when we got Mary and I found out that the radio was compatible with Sirius Radio I dashed to the Internet and scrolled through the stations and to my delight I could not find one like "America". Now we listen to one called "Outlaws" which plays a variety of country and rock music that is very entertaining. And of course, political junkies that we are, we listen to CNN Ballot Bowl and The Situation Room every day. Jack Cafferty is my favorite political commentator. Very funny guy.

Back to our trip.

Old 99 is a miserable mess of a road with pot holes and ridges and joints creating a noisy difficult drive. I was actually looking forward to crossing over to Interstate 5 via route 46. Normally the thought of I-5 through the central valley of California is enough to make me groan but after twenty minutes of bumping down 99 it was looking better and better.

I remember when they built the new Interstate 5 through central California. It was back in the 1970's (the stone age) and when they laid all of that concrete my mother thought they had made a personal racing surface for her and her 1971 Corvette. The car was made just before the lemon laws were put into effect. Too bad. It was a lemon of epic proportions. One time she made a trip down that new strip of Interstate 5 and got pulled over by a California State trooper who informed her that she had been traveling at 120 miles per hour and that it took two cops to catch her. They tag teamed her. She smiled, feigned innocence (with a rotten spoiled French poodle and a hand gun in the passenger seat...if you never met my mother you missed quite a character) and explained that the speedometer in the car didn't work. She went through 5 or 6 speedometer cables but the agency apparently kept putting the wrong one in and they kept breaking. It worked for her. She talked her way out of numerous speeding tickets with that excuse. And she knew how fast she was going. No question about it. I tried that one once and all I got was a lecture about keeping my vehicle in good working order and a fat ticket. Oh well. So the cop refrained from hauling her to jail, issued her a speeding ticket worth two weeks pay and sent her on her way. The beast had a 454 cubic inch engine (it loped at stop lights...made me crazy) in it and got the same mileage that Mary's 400 Cummins diesel gets pulling this bus, a car, all of our junk and us...about six miles to the gallon on a good day. She used to joke that it would pass anything but a gas station. True. At least Mary holds 150 gallons of fuel. But she was paying .50 cents a gallon for gas back then and yesterday we paid $4.11 per gallon for diesel in the central valley (now we're doing 120 miles an hour toward the poor house!). Think of that...back in the stone age when I started driving gas was actually .35 cents a gallon. Okay. I feel really old now.

So we drove across route 46 to Interstate 5 and made the turn onto the entrance ramp. That's when I realized how many years it had been since I'd been on I-5 in central California. It looks like a little old two lane cow trail and like old 99 it is full of pot holes and ridges. And there are no mile markers! They have the little posts up there but it appears that someone stole the little green mile marker numbers. John kept asking me where the next rest area was and I kept looking in "The Next Exit" but without mile markers it is pretty useless for distance. I would say, "Well if I had a clue where we were I would know where the next rest area is."

Soap box moment: When the presidential candidates say that the infrastructure of this country is falling apart THEY AREN'T KIDDING. We have seen it first hand. But there is massive construction going on in Texas. Go figure.

Okay, so we find ourselves Brailling it along I-5 looking for a rest area for poor Breezy who is looking a little desperate to get out for a pit stop. As far as the eye can see to the east and as far as the eye can see to the west there is nothing but grass and fruit and nuts and berries and more grass and goats and sheep and a giant concrete river to carry water to all of the fruit and nuts and berries and grass and goats and sheep. We bumped along in mind numbing boredom and finally found a rest area. Breezy and I made a dash for the dog walk area while I watched a man walk slowly around Mary and the Camry looking her up and down shaking his head. I guess they don't see too many of them thar buses in the central valley. I understand why. There are no decent roads on which to drive one. So Breezy and I are wandering around the dog area when a wind gust wafts by us and my nostrils fill with the smell of...cow shit.

Harris Feed Lot. They feed 180,000 head of cattle in one location. You can imagine the smell. We were somewhere between five and seven miles (who could tell without mile markers!) from the feed lot and I could smell it. The closer we got the stronger the smell. It took us five minutes to pass the concentration camp of cattle. I remember that in the summer the central valley gets up over 100 degrees every single day and that feed lot is identifiable much farther away. Mary filled with the smell and I was mentally freaking out that she might stink like a giant cow manure pile for the rest of her days. I'm sure that they can fertilize the entire valley from that one feed lot. They call it the fruit basket of the world. But it doesn't smell like fruit!

The stench finally left and we continued on our way toward Highway 152, Pacheco Pass. Our drive down I-5 was about to be rewarded. We made the turn toward the coast and the road widened out and smoothed out and the foothills lay before us. The sun was out and the sky was blue and the temperature was perfect. As we climbed into the foothills it occurred to me what it is about the west that is so impressive to people who don't spend a lot of time here. It is huge. Everything is BIG. The eastern part of the country is equally as beautiful but in a different way. It has gentle terrain and beautiful low deciduous trees. The "hills" that we passed through on our way to the garlic capital of the world were nothing less than breathtaking. Giant emerald green hills, each one higher than the next were covered with big gnarly black oak trees. We passed the San Luis Reservoir stretched on both sides of the road as we climbed through the pass. It looked like something out of a painting, soothing and captivating at the same time. They don't allow development around the reservoir so it is pristine. Mary handled the hills handily passing trucks that were grinding up the immense hills.

We dropped into Gilroy and found our way to Gilroy Garlic USA RV Park (for real). It sits next to a garlic farm and behind a shopping center. It is our first experience with a Good Sam approved RV Park. It is like a big parking lot with hookups and a patch of grass for Breezy to use. It's nice and sterile but I think I like our KOA parks better. They have character (and characters!). I'm on my way over to the shopping center to pick up a few supplies for Mary so that we can hit the road tomorrow and head to Oregon. We will pass through the Siskyou pass past Mt. Shasta. I'll try to get some good pictures and put together another photo album of our travels for my next post. We're off to Oregon!

Wagons hoooooooooooo! (that's from an old TV program called "Wagon Train" that aired back when I was a child, back in the stone age).