A couple of weeks ago, 
Gord R Reece and his partner, Scott, “hired” me to drive them in a giant RV for four days, from San Jose to Lake Tahoe to Mono Lake to Death Valley to Palm Springs. I thought this would be a fun way to spend a few days, as I don’t get to indulge my passion for long road trips very often these days.
So, last Wednesday they (and their two Chihuahuas, Bruiser and Sparky) picked me up here at UGH in their heavily loaded station wagon and we headed down to San Jose to the RV rental place to pick up the Winnebago Journey, otherwise known as Caliban. We got the beast loaded up, the rental staff did a walk-through of the creature, showing us all of its monstrous features, and we hit the road.
Our first stop was Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where Scott had a date with the Harrah’s casino. We drove up 680 to 80 to 50 to the casino, and I drove that beast on US 50’s crazy curves at night! That was a real test of driving and nerve, that’s certain. But Gord slept through it all in the way back of the rig, so it must have been a successful quiz with a passing grade.
We dined at the Harrah’s buffet, and not long after, I crashed out and went to bed. Next morning, I woke up before the dawn and watched its rosy fingers caress the mountain tops, did some good stretching, took a nice shower, and waited for Scott and Gord to wake up and get ready to go. I texted Gord and he said Scott would be waking up at 10:30, so I chilled out in the room, watched some TV, updated my facebook, and relaxed, knowing that Thursday’s drive would be another long one.
After they got up and about, we went down to the VIP lounge, where their friend, Mary, hung out with us and chatted for a while. She works there in some aspect of marketing, and was a delightful lady. I mostly just sat there and listened to them all talk, but it was illuminating to do so. Listening is the best way to learn about people, I find.
We left Harrah’s and made a quick stop in the Safeway, broke our fast, then hit the road. In order to get onto US 395 from Tahoe, we had to surmount the Kingsbury Grade. Check out the map here. It’s a devious and treacherous stretch of highway that leads to Minden, Nevada and 395. Truly, it was a joy to drive it, even with Caliban’s behemothishness.
Our next stop was a quick fueling stop, then on to Mono Lake, and it’s otherworldly atmosphere. We took a lot of photos there, but the Visitor’s Center was closed, so we didn’t tarry too long. Our stop for the night in Lone Pine, CA and the Boulder Creek RV Park awaited. And here’s where our tale, gentle readers, goes horribly awry.
I got us situated in our stall, and Gord lowered the leveling jacks, electric-powered hydraulic jacks, which keep the RV stable for sleeping and cooking and what-not. Once that was done, we had supper and hung out for a while before we all went to sleep. Next morning, after coffee and breakfast were had, I started to get us underway, started up the engine, turned on the jack system, and hit the “retract” button. No response. I tried various other things, but didn’t get anything to happen, so I turned it back over to Gord, and let him try. Nothing, so we called the RV rental place, and spoke to someone there who walked us through essentially the same stuff we had already tried.
Failing that, the maintenance guy found a mechanic back in Bishop, California, roughly 40 miles back up the road. He wasn’t available until around 3pm, so we were essentially stuck in Lone Pine, hoist on our own… well, I wouldn’t say petard, since that’s nasty, but certainly we had hung ourselves up and there we stayed.
Our mechanic arrived pretty much when he said he would, a nine-fingered Cajun Katrina refugee named Monte. He quickly figured out the problem, and had us back on the ground in around 15 minutes.
But with all that time wasted, our itinerary was way off schedule, so we re-grouped, and decided to head to our next destination anyway, the ghost town, Rhyolite, Nevada (map). We didn’t want to see it in the dark, though, so we tried to get a space in Beatty, Nevada, the nearest town. But it was Amargosa Valley Pioneer Days, and all the RV Parks were full up, so we hit our alternative plan and went to the Longstreet Casino and RV Park in Amargosa Valley at stateline. It’s a fortunate thing we did, else we’d never have seen the tallest steer I’d ever encountered. It was as tall at the shoulders as I am. Freakishly huge!
Rhyolite was a real highlight of the journey. The empty concrete shells of this boom-bust mining town stood as eerie reminders of the transience of civilizations. I mean golly-gee willickers, some of those building weren’t even 100 years old! And, more to the point, but Beatty was only four miles away, so it’s not as if Rhyolite was such a poor location that it couldn’t have been sustained. Gord took tons of pictures of the town, I took a bunch which I’ll be posting soon, and Scott took a bunch of video, so hopefully we’ll get to see it again.
Once again, we hit the road, and headed back, past Longstreet and stateline, the Amargose Opera House at Death Valley Junction, and on CA-127 toward Baker. A few miles from Shoshone (map), we started to notice a loud hissing of air, and I saw that the air pressure gauges were going down. When we got to town, I pulled into an unpaved parking lot next to the Post Office and market. It seems the brakes developed a leak somewhere in their system, so once again we called the RV rental place back in San Jose. This time, though, the nearest mechanic was over in Las Vegas, around 90 miles away, and he wasn’t available until 6:30pm. Well, that meant I wouldn’t make my 5:30pm flight back to San Francisco, so we all decided to make the best of it. Luckily we were in an actual town, and the town was holding a craft fair with live music and yummy foodstuffs.
The mechanic turned out to be a Shoshone native who fled the tiny town (population 52 at the 2000 census) back in the early 1970s for the glamour of Las Vegas. When he arrived, he was able to quickly diagnose the problem, had the part in his service vehicle already, and after about an hour, he had me start the engine and check to see that the air pressure was increasing, which it did fairly quickly. Back on the road!
56 miles down the road, we arrived in Baker, home of the world’s tallest thermometer (and a state prison, but that’s not important to this story). I recommended that we have dinner at the Mad Greek Cafe, as I had been to Baker probably a dozen times with my friend Frank on our trips through the desert. Gord and Scott were agreeable to this, and I pulled into the parking lot and we dined.
While we were eating, we discussed how we should proceed to get most quickly to Palm Springs. My original intention was to take the Kel-Amboy road through the Mojave National Monument, get us to Twenty-Nine Palms, and from there to Palm Springs. This was geographically the shortest and most beautiful route, but also the most mountainous. Since it was well into night at this point, it didn’t make any sense to do so, and with Caliban having had two mechanical failures, I didn’t trust it to make it safely through the mountains. So, instead I advised us to head west on I-15 back to San Bernadino and I-10 east to Palm Springs. It was a longer route, but at least we’d be on a major roadway if something else did happen. With our plan in place, we finished our meal companionably, and prepared to get underway again.
O Gentle Readers, you know where this is going, right? Three miles on I-15, and I noticed what looked like a firefly shooting across the screen of the rear-view camera system. Zing! I thought to myself, that’s odd, I didn’t think fireflies lived in the desert. And I was right, because immediately after that, several more sparks flew from the screen, followed by more, and more, and more, until it looked like someone had lit one of those cone fireworks that you can buy at a July fireworks stand.
“Something’s wrong,” I exclaimed to Gord and Scott as I started look for a way off the road. An exit came upon us and I got off at Zzyzx Road exit, pulled over, and they rushed out of the RV, fire extinguisher and flashlight in hand. There didn’t seem to be any fire, but they did notice that it had gotten quite warm back in the bedroom.
I found us a “safe” place to park, but it was on the eastbound on-ramp for the freeway, and I didn’t feel safe there, so I told the guys that I didn’t feel safe, and we limped back to Baker, where Scott found us a tiny RV park attached to a mobile home park. I backed us into the stall, and we all just stared at each other, trying to fathom just how crazy this trip had become. Finally, there wasn’t anything to do but go to bed, and we did, dispirited.
In the morning, after we got a decent amount of sleep, and breakfast at the Bob’s Big Boy across Baker’s main street, there wasn’t much to do except wait for the mechanic to come back out from Vegas. Scott was on the phone with the RV place, rather upset at all of these developments, yet I felt strangely happy. Even with three breakdowns, we were safe, and each time we were near civilization. It was a grand adventure.
When the hot mechanic arrived (I neglected to mention his startlingly blue eyes and thick chest before), I was sitting in the pilot’s chair, and Scott and Gord had taken the mattress off of the bed, exposing the bonnet covering the engine compartment. They opened the compartment and he got to work.
“Oh.”
…
…
…
“Wow.”
This can’t be good, I thought.
He came back out and told us that some part of the turbo’s exhaust system had fallen off. But wait, there’s more! Not just that, but he didn’t have the part with him, his shop didn’t have one in stock, and no shop would likely have this in stock and it would have to come from the manufacturer. He thought he could get one same-day shipped on Monday, be back out here that evening, and we would be in Palm Spring that night.
I could feel insane laughter threaten, but I stayed quiet and started thinking about my escape plans. A couple of telephone calls exchanged with Frank and I had gotten him to agree to a rental car and drive from Monrovia to Baker. Scott bought me a flight from LAX to SFO for Monday evening, and Gord had bought a small grill at the corner mercantile a block away, and he grilled three big steaks. By the time Frank arrived, we were tired but still in good spirits.
Frank got to Baker at 9:30pm, and after a short visit, I bade Gord and Scott and Bruiser and Sparky farewell. Frank was hungry, so we went across the street to the Mad Greek again, then headed back into the desert and Tecopa, where we soaked under the stars in a hot springs for an hour, then made our way back to Baker and the 15 and pointed our way to Los Angeles.
We arrived in Monrovia at 6:00am, and after visiting with Frank’s housemate, Long Hair Bear, I promptly crashed out.
Frank and I had lunch at Pie N Burger in Pasadena, where I had the garden burger, fries, and a tremendously good piece of Coconut Meringue pie. After some more running around randomly, he deposited me at LAX, where I printed out my boarding pass and made my way to the gate. The flight home was uneventful, and David and John met me at SFO and we came home.
Gord and Scott finally got to Palm Springs on Tuesday evening, as the part wasn’t available until then, but from what I have seen so far, they have been enjoying the remainder of their vacation.
Even with all the craziness of the drive, this was a trip to remember for a long, long time.
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