Friday
The fear and loathing? Well, that was mainly the driving our RV out of town on the freeway during Friday evening rush-hour, with everyone heading for the mountains or across the border, but we made it and found KOA (Kamp of Amerika?) site just north of Barstow . No, we never heard of it before either, but may have to go back there tomorrow to pick up a Rough Guide or something similar. The last few weeks before we left the UK were spent planning Australia. For New Zealand and Japan we relied on Margot’s prior knowledge and contacts. Somehow we never got round to planning the USA and Canada except that we hired this RV to do the south-west and would drop by and see Adrian in Kentucky and Ed in Ann Arbor, ending up in Nova Scotia before flying out.
We have a list of ‘must-sees’ from various friends and a KOA map with barely legible maps of each state but no indication of which ‘must-see’ is in which state, or which direction we should take tomorrow. We are on the Interstate to Las Vegas but Vegas is not high on our list, so its coin tossing time, left to Nevada or right to Arizona.
We had eaten across the road the night before in LA in a food mall and tried to stay up late to get back into a routine and the day started well with a lazy morning as we didn’t have to check out until 12. Our shuttle to the RV rental was at 1245 and we shared the first leg with a couple of young guys from Tasmania. They turned out to be a ‘super-cross’ team. Peter nearly embarrassed himself thinking super cross was a mountain bike sport, but not really so dumb as the rider had said they had their bikes in their luggage. Turned out they built their own machines and had just brought some particular magic components from OZ and would cobble together the rest from borrowed or off-the-shelf bits. We stopped at another hotel and picked up an older couple who overhearing our conversation, recognised the name of the rider and turned out to have a son in the same sport – and was intending to go to the Isle of Wight to look up some ancestors graves – maybe in the same graveyard the Huxfords lie. Small world double helpings.
The super-cross rider was filming the racing and the trip (they had popped over to China on the way as they get their components manufactured there), so it could be made into a film. Peter told him about Matt’s film abut the World Stone-Skimming Finals in Scotland and the forthcoming Tron-Bon-Jovi banger run and he was very impressed. Peter was angling for a film-editing contract in Australia for Matt (with him as assistant of course) but nothing definite yet. We are in Hollywood after all.
Once out of LA we pulled over for a bite- it was 7pm and we seemed to have missed lunch. As on the night before it was huge portions of heavy food. A real shock after Japan and we are going to have to watch our weights. Off to the supermarket tomorrow to look for sushi.
The Mojave Desert
Although the smallest on the menu our RV is still pretty big. In OZ and NZ we had to make the bed up each night but this baby has a permanent double bed, permanent dining table with bench seats and an over the cab double bed, not to mention a proper cooker, fridge, mocrowave, toilet and shower. Not very energy efficient unfortunately but certainly comfortable. We arrived late at the campsite and had to go on the overflow section but as it is pitch dark we may wake up to find we are someone’s front lawn.
Saturday
In the morning light it became clear that the only reason to be on this site was to get out of LA ASAP on a Friday night. The only difference from us was that everybody else had bought their trail bikes and we were woken by groups of bikers heading off into the desert. We headed back into Barstow to get a Rough Guide and some groceries. We found a supermarket and gas station but whenPeter asked abut a bookshop he got one of those “You’re not from round these parts” looks with which we are becoming increasingly familiar.
The next major conurbation was Bakersfield but that was way back to the West so we headed North on 395 across the desert with a view to eventually crossing the Sierra Nevada into Yosemite. If you would be hard pressed to think of a reason for living in Barstow then its even harder to imagine why anyone would want to be out in the desert (except to make it difficult for the police to find you) but every now and then we would come across a community of trailer homes. The main industry seems to be car wrecking but if you look at the map you can see the huge China Lake Navy Weapons Range and of course Barstow is next to the US Marine training grounds so maybe there are jobs as extras in street warfare training exercises.
A few miles north, at Pearsonsville (consisting solely of Pearson car wrecking emporium, a Shell gas station and a family diner plus assorted trailers) we bought a phone card and called the National Parks to discover that the Sierra Nevada roads were all still closed through snow so we did a U-turn and headed back to China Lake, then west towards Bakersfield, aiming to stop at another KOA at Lake Isabella.
Although skirting south of the Sierra, 178 climbs up and over a mountain pass and at last some vegetation. The camp site was well short of the Lake but had all the facilities including free WI-FI. Deciding that we needed to rest and plan our trip we booked in for 2 nights.
Sunday
The area around the site was in fact the southern tip of the Sequoia National Park and had a certain stark beauty, but when we asked the site super (long blond hair, moustache and washed out blue eyes that had stared too long at the desert sun) about local walking trails we got that look again. The favoured activity of guests and staff alike seemed to be sitting in the bar drinking cold beer and watching baseball on TV, but as everyone looked like an extra from a Cohn brothers movie we drank our own beer alone alongside the RV. There was one gate out of the coyote fence marked ‘pet walk’ so as the evening sun cooled down we went for a stroll watching not only for dog poo but also tarantulas, rattlesnakes and cougars as promised by the Park leaflet. It seems that after 100 yards the pets couldn’t wait to get back in front of the TV as the path tailed off in some long grass between trees just big enough for a cougar to hide behind.
The evening was well spent in the RV catching up with emails and the blog, and Peter had the brainwave of googling Borders to find they had a branch in Bakersfield which by now was a mere 44 miles away and only a slight detour from our planned route north to Yosemite
Monday
Of course, Bakersfield not only has a Borders but was the eponymous location of “Bakersfield PD” one of Peter’s favourite TV cop shows of the 90s(?). In the show Bakersfield seemed to be a place where there was no crime and not much else and maybe it was the lack of violence that meant it didn’t get beyond the first series. However, it was a really good series and Peter misses it so if you ever come across a DVD in a thrift shop please grab it for him.
The road into Bakersfield was the first really impressive bit of scenery we had come across (the desert was a bit bleak for our taste) with the Kern River tumbling down a narrow gorge with huge boulders and towering cliffs. Government budget cuts seem to have hit the road safety industry as there was a distinct lack of barriers on the corners, so Peter had to concentrate on the road rather than watching the scenery. He’ll have to look at the photos later.
Eventually we found Borders in a shopping mall and got a copy of Lonely Planet ‘USA’ and a copy of Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope”. Since we missed the inauguration and most of what has happened since it seemed a good idea to find out what had been promised before reality and the recession stepped in. (on the radio today he was being cheered by the CIA and asking for deeper cuts in government expenditure). The cashier claimed to love London more than anywhere else in the world, having been there twice. She had just moved out from San Francisco where it was foggy every day “just like London”. Seems like she’d been very unlucky or not been there since Dickens died.
Interstate 99 north out of Bakersfield runs straight and true through the flattest biggest plain we have ever seen all devoted to agribusiness, and with the sunshine (today was in the high 70s) and cheap Mexican labour it becomes clearer how America can feed itself and so much of the rest of the world. The endless blue sky was only broken by a layer of cloud over the eastern horizon, clouds with pointy tops which we eventually realized were the snow covered peaks of the Sierra some 40 miles away. Once through Fresno we swung right and headed towards Yosemite with the landscape getting more mountainous and green until we at last reached Mariposa, the first town that seemed to be a real town and not just a series of shopping malls in the desert (and that includes LA).
So, sorry to our American friends if we seem to be down on the US. Maybe watching “No Country for Old Men” before driving through the desert wasn’t such a good idea. Tomorrow we will be up in the mountains and we can begin to lean back and enjoy ourselves.
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