A moment of quiet appreciation for J. D. Salinger. I would say that he probably touched me more deeply and personally with Catcher in the Rye than has any other writer I’ve read before or since.
What was I like at that age? Read Catcher in the Rye.
Me and about a million other guys.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
More on the road
With the big storms coming in, we left Anza Borrego on Monday instead of Thursday as planned. We should have left Sunday, as we still drove through heavy rains and high winds, although there wasn’t any major flooding yet.
We took shelter for a full week in Mission Viejo, just east of Laguna Beach. My cousins Mary and Chris run a household that thrives on near-chaos. They’ve been taking in abused foster children and adult women for about forty years now and always have a house full of people and activity. Some of these guests stay for years, most of them get their lives off to a good start, and many of them stay in close touch. While we were there, live-in guests included Vera, a battered woman who has been with them for two years; Jason, their older son who has health problems; and Steve, a grandson of twenty who hasn’t quite figured out where he’s heading yet. Mary and Chris require that he have a job and be in college earning passing grades, and he goes along with the rules, although I don’t think he’s going to be a big success in college until maybe he gets a little older. Great kid, though. He turned twenty while we were there.
The weather finally broke on Saturday, and Sunday morning we left for Joshua Tree National Park. The western half of the park is high-altitude Mojave Desert, and that’s where we’re camped. The most interesting feature here is the granite rock formations. As they cooled and pushed up through an upper layer, they cracked and weathered, so that now they form massive formations of boulders, both giant and small, nested together in every imaginable pattern. They look like cushions stacked in perfectly fitted but wild disarray.
Our campground has the quite uninspired name of Jumbo Rocks. There is also the occasional totally unexpected palm oasis where water seeps up near the surface.
The downside here is that we hadn’t anticipated how cold it would be at this elevation, about 4,000 feet. The climate, though not the vegetation, is much like the Pinnacles: mid-50s during the day, dropping quickly into the twenties at night. We came down here to get warm, after all, and tomorrow, after only three days, we’re heading for some of the regional parks in the Phoenix area. Again, our guidebook, Southwest Camping Destinations, offers a number of choices.
We’ve saved a lot of money in camping fees over the last ten days. Staying with cousin Mary was free, of course, though I did insist on buying a few meals out in return for their hospitality. The camping fee here at Joshua Tree is only ten dollars a night.
Still, travel is expensive, and I’ll have to face the cold reality of my online bank statement tomorrow. It might determine how much longer we can run around out here in the desert.
But in four days when I turn sixty-two, camping fees in many parks drop to half the usual rate. I also start receiving Social Security next month, so I guess it pays to be old.
We took shelter for a full week in Mission Viejo, just east of Laguna Beach. My cousins Mary and Chris run a household that thrives on near-chaos. They’ve been taking in abused foster children and adult women for about forty years now and always have a house full of people and activity. Some of these guests stay for years, most of them get their lives off to a good start, and many of them stay in close touch. While we were there, live-in guests included Vera, a battered woman who has been with them for two years; Jason, their older son who has health problems; and Steve, a grandson of twenty who hasn’t quite figured out where he’s heading yet. Mary and Chris require that he have a job and be in college earning passing grades, and he goes along with the rules, although I don’t think he’s going to be a big success in college until maybe he gets a little older. Great kid, though. He turned twenty while we were there.
The weather finally broke on Saturday, and Sunday morning we left for Joshua Tree National Park. The western half of the park is high-altitude Mojave Desert, and that’s where we’re camped. The most interesting feature here is the granite rock formations. As they cooled and pushed up through an upper layer, they cracked and weathered, so that now they form massive formations of boulders, both giant and small, nested together in every imaginable pattern. They look like cushions stacked in perfectly fitted but wild disarray.
Our campground has the quite uninspired name of Jumbo Rocks. There is also the occasional totally unexpected palm oasis where water seeps up near the surface.
The downside here is that we hadn’t anticipated how cold it would be at this elevation, about 4,000 feet. The climate, though not the vegetation, is much like the Pinnacles: mid-50s during the day, dropping quickly into the twenties at night. We came down here to get warm, after all, and tomorrow, after only three days, we’re heading for some of the regional parks in the Phoenix area. Again, our guidebook, Southwest Camping Destinations, offers a number of choices.
We’ve saved a lot of money in camping fees over the last ten days. Staying with cousin Mary was free, of course, though I did insist on buying a few meals out in return for their hospitality. The camping fee here at Joshua Tree is only ten dollars a night.
Still, travel is expensive, and I’ll have to face the cold reality of my online bank statement tomorrow. It might determine how much longer we can run around out here in the desert.
But in four days when I turn sixty-two, camping fees in many parks drop to half the usual rate. I also start receiving Social Security next month, so I guess it pays to be old.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Anza-Borrego
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is California’s largest state park, and indeed the largest state park in the US. Most of it is Mojave Desert wilderness, set aside to protect native plants and animals, among them the endangered Desert Bighorn Sheep, of which only 750 survive. Around the borders of the park are a few scattered campgrounds, mostly undeveloped.
Palm Canyon, where we’re staying, is the largest and most developed, with about a hundred sites with power and hookups for RVs. We’re surrounded on three sides by mountains, and if you like dramatic desert scenery, you would love it here.
We’ve taken a number of hikes, most notably to Palm Canyon. It’s a two-mile one way, mostly easy trek up a desert wash, and for the last half-mile or so the trail runs along an improbable stream. At trail’s end is a beautiful desert oasis with palms and ferns and little waterfalls. Only the seventy-two virgins are missing to keep it from qualifying as a genuine paradise on earth. Despite it’s being the most-used trail in the park, we met only a few other hikers along the way.
One of the pleasures of travel during the school year is, not surprisingly, the absence of children. I love children, (no I don’t), but they’re noisy, and campgrounds are usually noisy places. Nine months a year, though, it’s pretty much just retired people like us that we meet, the exception being some weekends in some parks. We stayed here a week and had reserved another, but we realized Thursday night that this was the MLK three-day weekend (thus are our national heroes reduced) and by Friday families were arriving in large numbers.
Yesterday, Saturday, we drove five miles out a dirt road recommended only for four-wheel drive vehicles, (our truck is), and then hiked up a steep and rocky trail to Wind Caves, only to discover a troop of Boy Scouts camping there. We chatted with one of the adults sitting well away from the campsite, and he said he had to get away from the noise. Said he wasn’t sure he could make it through the weekend. Mary told him she had done it for thirty years, and he just kind of groaned.
The scouts managed to mostly spoil the effect of the wind caves, naturally sculpted sandstone caves used for shelter by Native Americans for thousands of years, but it was still a great view of the badlands, and the drive in up the narrowing canyon was exciting.
We have a reservation here until Thursday, but we’re leaving tomorrow, four days early because of a forecast for a series of storms that will hit the west coast starting tomorrow. The San Diego paper says this storm will join one of the four record storms since records were begun in the 1860s, and even allowing for a lot of media weather-hype, it sounds like a good idea to clear out early. Five days of rain are forecast, maybe more, and flash floods are likely, as are high winds. We can’t travel if the wind is much above thirty miles per hour, so we’re hoping to cut out early and make it over to the LA area, where my three delightful cousins live. They’re the last and the closest of my relatives I have any contact with, and I only see them every several years.
As I write, I’m hoping we didn’t wait a day too long as the wind is coming up fast and thick clouds are gathering. With luck, the wind will back off when the rain starts tomorrow and we can make our escape, much as we did when we left Klamath Falls, now five weeks ago.
After a week with the cousins, we’re coming back this way heading for Arizona, but we’ll probably stay in Joshua Tree National Monument a little to the north. Anza-Borrega, though, will be on our list of stops in years to come. We’ve talking to several people who have been coming here for years.
Palm Canyon, where we’re staying, is the largest and most developed, with about a hundred sites with power and hookups for RVs. We’re surrounded on three sides by mountains, and if you like dramatic desert scenery, you would love it here.
We’ve taken a number of hikes, most notably to Palm Canyon. It’s a two-mile one way, mostly easy trek up a desert wash, and for the last half-mile or so the trail runs along an improbable stream. At trail’s end is a beautiful desert oasis with palms and ferns and little waterfalls. Only the seventy-two virgins are missing to keep it from qualifying as a genuine paradise on earth. Despite it’s being the most-used trail in the park, we met only a few other hikers along the way.
One of the pleasures of travel during the school year is, not surprisingly, the absence of children. I love children, (no I don’t), but they’re noisy, and campgrounds are usually noisy places. Nine months a year, though, it’s pretty much just retired people like us that we meet, the exception being some weekends in some parks. We stayed here a week and had reserved another, but we realized Thursday night that this was the MLK three-day weekend (thus are our national heroes reduced) and by Friday families were arriving in large numbers.
Yesterday, Saturday, we drove five miles out a dirt road recommended only for four-wheel drive vehicles, (our truck is), and then hiked up a steep and rocky trail to Wind Caves, only to discover a troop of Boy Scouts camping there. We chatted with one of the adults sitting well away from the campsite, and he said he had to get away from the noise. Said he wasn’t sure he could make it through the weekend. Mary told him she had done it for thirty years, and he just kind of groaned.
The scouts managed to mostly spoil the effect of the wind caves, naturally sculpted sandstone caves used for shelter by Native Americans for thousands of years, but it was still a great view of the badlands, and the drive in up the narrowing canyon was exciting.
We have a reservation here until Thursday, but we’re leaving tomorrow, four days early because of a forecast for a series of storms that will hit the west coast starting tomorrow. The San Diego paper says this storm will join one of the four record storms since records were begun in the 1860s, and even allowing for a lot of media weather-hype, it sounds like a good idea to clear out early. Five days of rain are forecast, maybe more, and flash floods are likely, as are high winds. We can’t travel if the wind is much above thirty miles per hour, so we’re hoping to cut out early and make it over to the LA area, where my three delightful cousins live. They’re the last and the closest of my relatives I have any contact with, and I only see them every several years.
As I write, I’m hoping we didn’t wait a day too long as the wind is coming up fast and thick clouds are gathering. With luck, the wind will back off when the rain starts tomorrow and we can make our escape, much as we did when we left Klamath Falls, now five weeks ago.
After a week with the cousins, we’re coming back this way heading for Arizona, but we’ll probably stay in Joshua Tree National Monument a little to the north. Anza-Borrega, though, will be on our list of stops in years to come. We’ve talking to several people who have been coming here for years.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Adventures
We like to think of our winter travel as an adventure, but really, you can have about the same level of adventure at home by taking a warm bath. You could break your hip, but how many of us worry about that in the comfort of our home? I do.
A typical day in camp consists of reading, dozing in a chair, taking a nap (not at all the same as dozing in a chair), studying a little Spanish for me, sewing for Mary, going for a walk, and various other activities that will not raise your blood pressure more than a few millibars.
In fact, our trip to date has been so low-key and relaxing that I’ve been having roaring anxiety dreams every night, usually some variation of I’m still working and arrive at school totally unprepared to teach my classes. When I was actually teaching, I didn’t need this particular nightmare since it happened often enough in real life. Now that I get paid at the end of every month whether I even make the bed or not, my subconscious is punishing me by pretending that I still have something to worry about.
A few days ago, we thought we might be having an adventure when we drove our 4-wheel drive, high-clearance truck over a sandy two-track road five miles through the desert to a trailhead. What if we got stuck? Who would ever find us? When we got there, palms a little sweaty, there was a ranger in a jeep, probably ticketing offending dog owners for not having their dogs on a leash, which seems to be how the rangers spend most of their law-enforcement time.
(More later, maybe, on the changing official attitude towards dogs in county, state and national parks.)
In addition to the ranger, there were a handful of compact sedans with not-great tires which had somehow made it in.
The few occurrences which have reminded me that I’m no longer at home watching a Colbert rerun have involved coyotes. Back in Pinnacles, we were sitting around the campfire and our dog Nick grew increasingly uncomfortable and fixed on something just outside the ring of light. After telling myself it was nothing or maybe a deer or stray cow, I scanned the zone of anxiety, which is that area around me at night which I can illuminate with a powerful flashlight, and discovered not one but two Wileys moving towards us with the clear notion that Jack Russell terriers were excellent canapés.
Despite popular belief, coyotes do sometimes attack people, and they often pick off stray pets. In fact, their principle diet in the urban/rural interface where they are most numerous is the house cat, followed closely by toddlers. If a coyote has your cat, it’s best not to interfere, but most people will fight for a toddler. (Not everyone, apparently: “The dingoes got my baby!”)
We quickly took the dogs back inside Fort Arctic Fox (our trailer) and let the fire burn itself out. Later I went down to the flush toilets to make a poop but carried my walking stick with a sharp point and tapped it noisily on the ground while I made quick circles with the flashlight and occasional shouted “ bad doggies go home!. I actually did see another coyote which seemed to be considering whether or not my slight limp of late qualified me as one of the old and weak that it was his job to cull.
Last night I took the dogs out for a last walk before bed We ambled down to almost the end of our loop, several sites past where the last RV had left on its outside light, when some deep inner voice told me “go no further.”
“Farther,” I correct my inner voice.
We turned back to the trailer and both dogs made a poop, so I cleaned it up with a doggy bag and dropped them off in the trailer. Then I left my walking stick leaning up against the desert-weathered picnic table and made my way the hundred meters or so to the garbage to throw away the poop, but just before I got there a group of coyotes broke into full blood-clotting song, and they were very close, right in the campground I was quite sure. I kept my calm and didn’t run, which prompts the predator’s response to chase. With a great effort of will, I took the few extra steps to the trash bin, making sure to slam the top down as I started the fearsome walk back to safety.
The coyotes continued to howl, which could have meant “fresh meat!” or just “Is Colbert a rerun tonight?” but I walked determinedly back to safety and shut the door firmly behind me with a big exhalation of stressy breath.
Close call.
A typical day in camp consists of reading, dozing in a chair, taking a nap (not at all the same as dozing in a chair), studying a little Spanish for me, sewing for Mary, going for a walk, and various other activities that will not raise your blood pressure more than a few millibars.
In fact, our trip to date has been so low-key and relaxing that I’ve been having roaring anxiety dreams every night, usually some variation of I’m still working and arrive at school totally unprepared to teach my classes. When I was actually teaching, I didn’t need this particular nightmare since it happened often enough in real life. Now that I get paid at the end of every month whether I even make the bed or not, my subconscious is punishing me by pretending that I still have something to worry about.
A few days ago, we thought we might be having an adventure when we drove our 4-wheel drive, high-clearance truck over a sandy two-track road five miles through the desert to a trailhead. What if we got stuck? Who would ever find us? When we got there, palms a little sweaty, there was a ranger in a jeep, probably ticketing offending dog owners for not having their dogs on a leash, which seems to be how the rangers spend most of their law-enforcement time.
(More later, maybe, on the changing official attitude towards dogs in county, state and national parks.)
In addition to the ranger, there were a handful of compact sedans with not-great tires which had somehow made it in.
The few occurrences which have reminded me that I’m no longer at home watching a Colbert rerun have involved coyotes. Back in Pinnacles, we were sitting around the campfire and our dog Nick grew increasingly uncomfortable and fixed on something just outside the ring of light. After telling myself it was nothing or maybe a deer or stray cow, I scanned the zone of anxiety, which is that area around me at night which I can illuminate with a powerful flashlight, and discovered not one but two Wileys moving towards us with the clear notion that Jack Russell terriers were excellent canapés.
Despite popular belief, coyotes do sometimes attack people, and they often pick off stray pets. In fact, their principle diet in the urban/rural interface where they are most numerous is the house cat, followed closely by toddlers. If a coyote has your cat, it’s best not to interfere, but most people will fight for a toddler. (Not everyone, apparently: “The dingoes got my baby!”)
We quickly took the dogs back inside Fort Arctic Fox (our trailer) and let the fire burn itself out. Later I went down to the flush toilets to make a poop but carried my walking stick with a sharp point and tapped it noisily on the ground while I made quick circles with the flashlight and occasional shouted “ bad doggies go home!. I actually did see another coyote which seemed to be considering whether or not my slight limp of late qualified me as one of the old and weak that it was his job to cull.
Last night I took the dogs out for a last walk before bed We ambled down to almost the end of our loop, several sites past where the last RV had left on its outside light, when some deep inner voice told me “go no further.”
“Farther,” I correct my inner voice.
We turned back to the trailer and both dogs made a poop, so I cleaned it up with a doggy bag and dropped them off in the trailer. Then I left my walking stick leaning up against the desert-weathered picnic table and made my way the hundred meters or so to the garbage to throw away the poop, but just before I got there a group of coyotes broke into full blood-clotting song, and they were very close, right in the campground I was quite sure. I kept my calm and didn’t run, which prompts the predator’s response to chase. With a great effort of will, I took the few extra steps to the trash bin, making sure to slam the top down as I started the fearsome walk back to safety.
The coyotes continued to howl, which could have meant “fresh meat!” or just “Is Colbert a rerun tonight?” but I walked determinedly back to safety and shut the door firmly behind me with a big exhalation of stressy breath.
Close call.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Santa Cruz
Today marks three weeks on the road. We left Pinnacles a week ago and traveled to Santa Cruz, where we stayed for five days at New Brighton State Beach. Again, we were more than a bit shocked at the camping fees: $35 per night for a site with no hookups. We started to consider the possibility that we will have to return home sooner than we planned, but for now we’re still heading south and planning to be out for at least two months. I’m still thinking four months, but I’m happy just to be traveling and still moving south.
On the way to Santa Cruz we stopped in San Juan Bautista, less than an hour away but a town I never visited when I lived here. It’s a nice enough tourist town, the likes of which we expect to see lots of on this trip, but what makes it special is the Spanish mission, which dates back to the late seventeen hundreds and which has been in continuous use since then. We were lucky to visit on a Sunday because mass was in session and I was able to stand in the open doorway and listen for awhile. The service was in Spanish and I could follow it fairly well, and the church is magnificent. I was reminded how long the Spanish and then Mexicans owned this land and all of the Southwest until we stole it from them in the Mexican-American War of the mid-1800s. That culture has lived on uninterrupted here for over three-hundred years, and it reminded me once again of the foolishness of much of the anti-immigration rhetoric.
Also, there were lots of chickens, magnificent roosters which wander loose on the streets, just as we saw in Kauai when we visited there last summer.
We wanted to stay at New Brighton for a few days before going on to stay with our friends Sue and Marty so we could visit old haunts on our own without putting them out too much as guests. In fact we went into town only once to do laundry and catch up on email and such in a coffee shop/internet café. We did drive by the old house on 14th
Avenue where I lived for four years in the early 70s and where Mary and I lived together for a couple of years before we made the permanent move north in 1975. The house, amazingly, is still standing and occupied, a one-room cinder block ugly little thing that I still love. This in the middle of a now mostly upscale neighborhood where by all expectations the house should have been torn down to make way for a new expensive home or condos.
I always have mixed feelings coming back to Santa Cruz. Much as I love it, the years I spent here were hard in many ways, especially when I graduated and had a hard time finding a decent job. The future looked bleak for a couple of years, with me working first for minimum wage in a deli in Watsonville and then as an area manager for 7-Eleven stores, by far the worst job I ever had. Although I did a good job for them, I never fit into the Slurpy culture and was finally fired. I still feel the shock of that, but it led to our decision to move away and all the good things and lucky breaks that followed for the rest of our years up to now.
Still, I’m drawn to Santa Cruz for its amazingly beautiful scenery, its artistic and intellectual culture, and its total hipness. If a modest little home could be had for less than half a million bucks, I think we’d probably move back, but as it is we have to be content just to visit. I get back mostly every year when I come down for the motorcycle races at Laguna Seca, but it’s been about fifteen years since Mary was last here.
And here it is 2010, and I’m just amazed at how time flies, or seems to have flown when I look back.
After a cool, rainy spell at New Brighton, the weather has taken a turn towards spring, with temperatures in the 70s and sunny skies. It’s always wonderful to visit Sue and Marty. Sue, Mary and I all met here now nearly forty years ago, and Sue and Marty are the only friends left who have managed to stay in Santa Cruz with its astronomical home prices and scarce employment. Marty has mostly stayed employed in the computer industry, though now he has to make the dangerous commute to San Jose every day. Sue is an artist of growing reputation.
We’ll spend a few more days here (free camping in their driveway!) and make at least one visit to Mary’s brothers in San Jose. Then we plan to head south again for a hundred miles or so and stay at Corrizo National Monument. We’re both still very happy to be on the road and are taking our time getting down to southern Arizona, which is as far as we plan to travel.
On the way to Santa Cruz we stopped in San Juan Bautista, less than an hour away but a town I never visited when I lived here. It’s a nice enough tourist town, the likes of which we expect to see lots of on this trip, but what makes it special is the Spanish mission, which dates back to the late seventeen hundreds and which has been in continuous use since then. We were lucky to visit on a Sunday because mass was in session and I was able to stand in the open doorway and listen for awhile. The service was in Spanish and I could follow it fairly well, and the church is magnificent. I was reminded how long the Spanish and then Mexicans owned this land and all of the Southwest until we stole it from them in the Mexican-American War of the mid-1800s. That culture has lived on uninterrupted here for over three-hundred years, and it reminded me once again of the foolishness of much of the anti-immigration rhetoric.
Also, there were lots of chickens, magnificent roosters which wander loose on the streets, just as we saw in Kauai when we visited there last summer.
We wanted to stay at New Brighton for a few days before going on to stay with our friends Sue and Marty so we could visit old haunts on our own without putting them out too much as guests. In fact we went into town only once to do laundry and catch up on email and such in a coffee shop/internet café. We did drive by the old house on 14th
Avenue where I lived for four years in the early 70s and where Mary and I lived together for a couple of years before we made the permanent move north in 1975. The house, amazingly, is still standing and occupied, a one-room cinder block ugly little thing that I still love. This in the middle of a now mostly upscale neighborhood where by all expectations the house should have been torn down to make way for a new expensive home or condos.
I always have mixed feelings coming back to Santa Cruz. Much as I love it, the years I spent here were hard in many ways, especially when I graduated and had a hard time finding a decent job. The future looked bleak for a couple of years, with me working first for minimum wage in a deli in Watsonville and then as an area manager for 7-Eleven stores, by far the worst job I ever had. Although I did a good job for them, I never fit into the Slurpy culture and was finally fired. I still feel the shock of that, but it led to our decision to move away and all the good things and lucky breaks that followed for the rest of our years up to now.
Still, I’m drawn to Santa Cruz for its amazingly beautiful scenery, its artistic and intellectual culture, and its total hipness. If a modest little home could be had for less than half a million bucks, I think we’d probably move back, but as it is we have to be content just to visit. I get back mostly every year when I come down for the motorcycle races at Laguna Seca, but it’s been about fifteen years since Mary was last here.
And here it is 2010, and I’m just amazed at how time flies, or seems to have flown when I look back.
After a cool, rainy spell at New Brighton, the weather has taken a turn towards spring, with temperatures in the 70s and sunny skies. It’s always wonderful to visit Sue and Marty. Sue, Mary and I all met here now nearly forty years ago, and Sue and Marty are the only friends left who have managed to stay in Santa Cruz with its astronomical home prices and scarce employment. Marty has mostly stayed employed in the computer industry, though now he has to make the dangerous commute to San Jose every day. Sue is an artist of growing reputation.
We’ll spend a few more days here (free camping in their driveway!) and make at least one visit to Mary’s brothers in San Jose. Then we plan to head south again for a hundred miles or so and stay at Corrizo National Monument. We’re both still very happy to be on the road and are taking our time getting down to southern Arizona, which is as far as we plan to travel.
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