And so...

The All Who Wander Tour wraps up its last night in style, staying at the Hotel D'Oro in Santa Nella after a long, uneventful run up Highway 5, the Highway of Extreme Monotony. This hotel is the oddest place, this huge mission style hotel in the middle of B*F* nowhere - it's really cool, and I always wanted to stay here and get the story. Apparently it WAS a mission, built in 1974 by a man who had a dream of establishing missions in California (unaware, perhaps, that the Spanish sort of beat him to it.)  It was then turned into a sort of small shopping mall which failed, and then was reconverted to a hotel. We have a very nice room on the second floor with a balcony, and intend to enjoy the balcony, spa, pool, and the grounds (which they light in the evening.)

In summary, it was a great trip - a great adventure, in ways I expected and in ways I didn't.  We saw an unbelievable amount of stuff, and wished we could have seen more. Both of us are a combination of ready to go home & ready to keep going; we're flat broke and coming in on 7 cylinders, but happy to have been able to make the journey.

M and I seem to be getting along decently, and Dapple and I are getting along decently, and M and Dapple - well, they're on again & off again, depending.  She never failed to get us where we wanted to go, never left us stranded, and M wishes we'd had cooler weather so we could have spent fewer motel nights and more camper nights - he likes the camper, and said I did a good job of making it home-y.  I'd have liked the chance to cook more camper meals, at least on the nights where we ate gutwrenching Chinese or Wendy's (since nothing else was open.)  But she has been rather a high-maintenance trip companion, finicky and capricious.  I used to have a friend who said "incrasyncrasy" instead of "idiosyncrasy" and that's what I'd say: the old girl has her incrasyncrasies.  Her behavior is unpredictable - just when you decide she only falters uphill, or in the heat, she'll run through the desert without complaint and then choke on the straightaway in the evening. She'll lock herself and refuse to open, or decide she doesn't want to start at all for a while, and has to be coaxed with a can of ether. M says she made her bones on this trip, but in the next moment he's ready to smack her with a hammer. (He probably feels the same way about me, but he ain't got MY pink slip.)

There are a lot of memories and impressions that didn't make their way on to these pages, and probably won't show up in the photos, but are mementos I bring home. The smell of the piney woods in Georgia.  The familiar sight of Dapple's dappled hood in front of us as we put in long car hours. The joy in using a bathroom without someone standing two feet from me on the other side of a stall door, blow drying their hair and asking me where we're from.  The kindness of the man who followed us off the freeway to tell us that our tahr was low and warn us that we were liable to blow out that sidewahl in this kinda heat, running a low tahr like that. The Sikh in the Needles convenience store, trying to figure out if the bean burrito was vegetarian, reminding us we were back in the melting pot that is our beloved California. Sonic drive-ins.  Fried chicken on every corner. Hand-lettered signs everywhere. Draped Spanish moss in the Carolinas, red cliffs in Arizona, ghost towns and Talavera tiles. It's all coming home with me.

Our trip notes, from a discussion in the truck today as we cruised Highway 5 to home:

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If we could go back to one city:

 M: Austin. I'd like to take a mandolin lesson from Ben at Fiddler's Green. I'd eat at food trailers. Check out music clubs.  Talk to Mrs. (friends) about Mr. (friends) and his railroad career and WWII.

Me: New Orleans.  I'd walk the French Quarter at night and listen to the music.

If we could explore one state or area:

M: South Carolina. Check out the Sea Islands, visit the Gullah people.

Me:  I'd start in Charleston and go back through Savannah, explore the Gullah culture, drive down to New Orleans and see the Louisiana bayou country.  (I changed the question to “area” so I could get away with this.)

They couldn't pay us to go back to:

M: Farmington.  

Me:  Farmington.

Most Interesting Stranger:

M: Leo the cab driver in New Orleans.

Me: Ditto. 

Most Novel Experience We'd Have Again:

M: Playing music with (my cousin in Charlotte.)

Me: Watching rabbits play tag in a graveyard next to the Waffle House.

Most Novel Experience We'd Never Have Again:

M: Seeing a !@&^%# church every two minutes. 

Me: Tornado.  In any form, anywhere, any time.

Best Meal: 

M: Breakfast at La Posada in Winslow. (Ed note: they have the most amazing cheese and green chili scalloped potato dish thing, you could feel your arteries slowing down.)

Me: Ribs with red beans & rice in uptown New Orleans. 

Worst Food: 

M: Ruby Tuesdays in North Carolina. It sucked. I thought that was generally the worst meal we had.

Me:  "Chinese" food in Holbrook, AZ.  Fried Pork Nuggets. Eyechhhh. 

Best Campground:

M: Carlsbad, New Mexico. Had the swings you liked. Nice atmosphere.

Me: Austin, Texas.  Shady and pretty and we had time to go for a swim in the evening.

Worst Campground: 

M: Ojo Caliente, because of the mosquitos.

Me:  The Zed & Jed's in Charlotte, because they had NO BATHROOMS and creepy people. But we stayed for free!

Best Hotel:  

M:  The Andrew Jackson in New Orleans. Ambience.

Me:  The Andrew Jackson, because it was so quaint.  But I loved that indoor pool in Taos.

Worst Hotel: 

M: The one that smelled like cats. I think it had grasshoppers.  Yeah, that was in Fuquad, Texas. Want me to spell that for you?

Me: Yeah, the Bates Motel with the plague of locusts. That was my birthday.

What we'd do differently:

 M: Fly. Much easier and cheaper. (Later amended to: No, I wouldn't have wanted to fly. But I would have put new tires on the truck before we left.)

Me:  Do it in three months, or six. Take a portable air conditioner.

Things We Missed from Home:

M: My old car. Would've been fun to have taken on the old roads.

Me: My kids. But they wouldn't have been fun to take on the old roads.

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Thanks for taking the trip with us.  If the three of us are still speaking in a year or two, maybe we'll run the All Who Wander Tour #2 - The Northern Route!

homeward bound

Got up early this morning, skipped the shar and hit the road, thinking we'd put on some miles while it stayed (relatively) cool.  The thoughts ran something like this:  if Dapple couldn't deal with the afternoon heat, we'd find a town, let her rest, and amuse ourselves sightseeing or junk shopping or even check into a motel, sleep some, and plan to run in the evening/night to catch the cool. We were gearing up - well, I was gearing up - for the long run across the Mohave desert to Barstow, where there's not much of anything on the highway and you KNOW the temps are going to be fierce.

We stopped in Winslow for brunch at La Posada, an enchanting restored railway hotel.  It would've been easy to while away the afternoon there - the grounds are charming and the restored inside featured several art museum rooms and a large traveling display of the Women of Winslow.  But we didn't have the day to spend, so we settled for wandering downtown and through a small museum, and of course visiting the famous Corner before we got back on the road.

The highway out of Kingman was a holy terror for me, steep, windy, narrow, and cliffside - replacing my roasted-alive and flash-fried fantasies with thoughts of tipping and rolling into a flaming ball of Dapple at the bottom of a canyon.  Fun, that.  Of course Road Warrior is amused no end by this, but HE'S driving.  I'M on the cliff side.  Dapple the Brave choked some, but made it to the top, where we BOTH took a rest.

The top of the road made it worthwhile, though - a totally unexpected little kitsch western town, right there at the top of B*F* Nowhere Mountain, and it's full of BURROS.  We did see some burros on the drive up the mountain, but I didn't get photos, and Road Warrior kept assuring me I'd see more, and of course I thought, "Well, how the hell does HE know?"  But he did know, because he's been to Oatman before.  The burros just wander the street and hang out, though from the look the one gave me I do not think they are exactly TAME.  Anyway, the town looked like a Disney town, way overdone, and the idea of wandering irritable burros appeals to me for some reason. 

It was downhill from there, literally and figuratively, as it had been a very long road day and M was driving through Big Rig Hell, where the trucks go by constantly at very high speeds, and dark is NOT your friend.  We crossed the border back into our home state at Needles, where we gassed up and noted the time and temp - 7 p.m. and the thermometer can speak for itself.

After failing to find an RV park in Barstow,  or any RV park farther on that had BATHROOMS (Hey, I don't ask for much, but...)  we found the Boron Motel and turned in.  A decent day for Dapple the Brave.  She does stumble some, and hills and heat are difficult, but she set sail across a long desert today and brought us all the way here.  A pat on the back for the old trooper.  Oh, and Dapple, too.

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Runnin home...well, limping home

Road Day #2, punctuated by Dapple the Brave's.....uh, issues.  M could not get the spark plugs out as they has been tightened beyond beyond, so we spent the morning getting a shop to do it.  Sailed out of Tucumcari with optimism, but it was short-lived.  Dapple began to hack and sputter shortly into the trip, and it became a matter of figuring out how we might choose to get home from the next major town.  We were getting up each slight grade at way below highway speeds, with a whole lot of psychic pushing.

Just prior to Albuquerque, the weather suddenly went rainy and cooler, and she straightened right out and ran like a Swiss watch. SHE DOESN'T LIKE HEAT.  Ran all right all the way to Holbrook, where we have settled into a KOA in very pleasant temperatures.

So...we are good for now, but it's gonna be touch and go for the next two days getting home.  Temps are very high in areas like Barstow, and there's no way out of crossing the desert.

We might be illustrating the old saw:  Did very well on our vacation, left in a $300 camper and came back in a $75,000 bus...

In the meantime, the Arizona skies were simply spectacular on the way. Also, I rescued a toad from the swimming pool at the KOA.  So all is not lost.

from the Tucumcareh KOA

Road Day today. Looks like the rest will be all road days as we run for home; one would think that nothing of interest would happen on a Road Day. One would be wrong. For one thing, Dapple kept us amused all day today - after the had the screw removed from the rear tahr, she then developed a shimmy, which proved to be messed up front tires - so two new tires went on. Then, as he day progressed and the heat increased, she started stumbling and missing like she was fuel-starved, which (checking my pocketbook) she cannot possibly be. Vapor lock? It's a mystery. What we know is she does NOT like the heat of the day.  We passed one bank tower that told us it was 108.  And I'm not sure that was the peak heat, either.

We called it quits in Tucumcareh, after I think M noticed my nose was pressed against the window in each new small town. Once it cooled, though, Dapple smoothed out and I gave up my fantasies about breaking down by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in the Texas Panhandle and being found as dessicated skeletons weeks later; still, I was ready to hang it up.  We'd drive alongside an amazing electrical storm for many miles, sheet lightning and fork lightning hitting the ground, so I was working on some new fantasies of being flash-fried in our metal camper instead of being slow-roasted into roadside jerky. We cruised some cute Route 66 motels but decided it had cooled enough to try camping again, so we're at the KOA, where we do not have the right cord to connect to power.  However, there IS a pool, and M is going to check and possibly replace spark plugs for Dapple in the morning, and I am going to SWIM.

Today's other highlight was stopping in the Jesus Is Lord Travel Center for gasoline. I do not think I could do it justice with words, and you would not believe me anyway, so I will post pictures.  I'll also go back to yesterday and add a photo of the Bates Locust Plague motel.

Incidentally, in Amarillo (along with the JIL Travel Center) there was a hand-lettered sign for The Bates Motel and Taxidermy Shop. I would've stayed there.

Note the temperature at 8 pm!

in Dallas

Two Men Enter...

A friend writes of the "heat dome" in the news - I guess we're under it.  I hope we're both able to leave!

I'm writing this in a tire shop in (pause to inquire) Wichita Falls, Texas.  And I don't have any words to describe this heat.  It's like opening the oven to remove food that's been roasting at 450, only you can neither shut the oven nor remove your head.

Of course, you CAN go inside and get out of the heat. People in the South (notes on "South" later) do love their AC.  For some unGodly reason, they like to run the AC right on down to about 52 degrees, I think. So moving in and our of doors seems to be a flip-flop pattern of death-inducing heat>freezer burn>death inducing heat.  Seriously. It's just downright weird. I had goosebumps on my arms in a restaurant night before last, yet it was well over 100 outside.  I go outside to take the chill off, and then run inside because the first few minutes of AC feels so awesome - but within a few minutes my teeth are chattering and outside I go.

So. We ran from wherever we were day before yesterday to Dallas, TX, to visit with a dear friend - we were later getting there than we'd thought we'd be, since Dapple was fickle and demanded several stops, including one to pull a screw out of one of her shoes.  But we did get there, and were offered gallons of very welcome sweet tea, and chatted for a while.  We then all took the light rail into the Deep Ellum district of Dallas and had a great dinner, walked a bit, and then took the rail back.  At that point we decided to put a hundred miles or so behind us while the air was cool (Dapple prefers cool weather).  M drove while I dozed, and we finally pulled into the Bates Motel (I don't recall the name, but that's descriptive enough) in Alvord, Texas.

Now, the Bates motel didn't have a king room, but they had a queen and it was around two in the morning, so we took it gratefully.  M parked while I unlocked the room.

Me:  Careful walking, they have grasshoppers so big they have to shoot 'em.
M:  Grasshoppers aren't that big a deal.
Me:  These are.
M: ......................Oh.

The Bates Motel seemed to be having an inconvenient plague of locusts. The proprietor ran right out and showed me to shut the door to the room quickly, you see. So the grasshopper plague doesn't get in.  Standing outside the room was an interesting exercise - the grasshoppers randomly arrive in your lap or up your skirt, seeming just as startled to be there as you are.

We were so tired we didn't even notice that the room had almost no lighting; we fell into bed and didn't wake until eleven when the innkeeper called the room to insist we check out.  M negotiated a half-hour for our shars, but we moved right along and were back on the road.

Dapple had developed a shimmy that makes for interesting conversation while driving - the sort of conversation you used to amuse yourself with as a child by thumping your chest while talking.  So we stopped at a tahr shop here, where they told us that the two fronts are shot, and they're now installing two new/used tahrs.  M has a theory about why those tahrs ain't no good, and if I get a chance to write a Dapplelogue, I'll explain that. In the meantime, the girl gets new shoes, and we're in a waiting room, waiting.

Under the Heat Dome.  Amazing.  And now, having dawdled and Dappled away extra days on the way out, we will be running for home, doing long driving days punctuated by gas stops. (In this terrain, on long driving days, a gas stop is very exciting.  I can get out of the truck!  I must need SOMETHING in that little store - look, they have Coke Slushees!)

now doesn't this place trip YOUR creep-o-meter?

 Testimonial to Gorilla Tape - put on in Utah & driven through high winds, tornado, torrential rain, and incredible heat, and still holding strong!!





















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Ninth Ward Tour

Leo Sam Johnson drives a cab in New Orleans, but he's only one part cab driver. He;s also a preacher, pianist, pool hustler, real estate speculator, autobiographer and general sage.  "I don't do a thing until I know all about it," he told us.

Leo doesn't have much on common with Mistuh Jim, the homeowner we met just outside the French Quarter yesterday afternoon. Mistuh Jim told us that he's a Libertarian, and he was sitting in a porch chair in front of a couple million dollars' worth of his prime New Orleans real estate. He offered to let us take pictures of his lovely side garden and told us tht the chain with the padlock was called a "smiley" - because if you whup someone with it, it wraps around their head and the padlock takes all their teeth out. There's no graffiti on HIS block, Mistuh Jim told us.

Leo used to have  piece of New Orleans real estate, too, but Katrina took it out. He sold it, apparently at an almost complete loss.  He says a friend told him it's fixed up real nice now, the nicest on the block, but he hasn't been back to see it. I asked him the same question I asked Mistuh Jim - where's the Federal money, the FEMA relief, that was supposed to help repair the flood damage? The question made him laugh. Nope, he said.  There wasn't any money, or there wasn't enough money, and he said some people got it that didn't even have storm damage; as I think back, I realize he didn't exactly tell me that he got money, or that he didn't, himself. He had a place up in Natchez, and that's where he lives now, but he still comes down to drive his cab.

Leo told us some of his story as he drove us around the Ninth Ward, the hardest hit by Katrina's aftermath.  Parts of it look somewhat rebuilt, with derelict houses standing right next to shiny new homes, evidence of building activity, homes for sale, and mostly occupied. Corner stores still stand, and churches, and signs for businesses say, "We'll be back," although when those signs went up and how good those promises are, it's hard to say. But as we go close to the levees, the landscape begins to change.

Mistuh Jim told us his story on the New Orleans street after a heavy rain - or more accurately, between heavy rains.  It wasn't really a story.  He gave us his politics and his philosophy. "Don't resdistribute the wealth," he said. 'Redistribute the poverty."  He has the idea that moving the very poor out of the urban environment and back out the countryside would solve a lot of problems. There would be work for people, and healthier lives.

"Loafers," Leo Sam Johnson told us. "They loaf here, they'll loaf wherever they are."  He and Mistuh Jim seem to agree on one thing - that many of the people in the Ninth Ward who were displaced weren't the sort you want in your town. Sam says the city owns many of the derelict properties, and they aren't in any hurry to rebuild and have the same population move back in. Sam tells us the Bible explains that, telling us that people grow up to live what they hear. He leaves us to imagine what they heard, down here.

He explains this to us as we drive into the surreal area down by the new seawall. This was once dense housing, neighborhoods, blocks of projects, businesses and churches and repair shops and schools.  It's now gone feral, concrete slabs all that's left of all those homes, mattresses and tires and oddly placed rowboats washed up when the water receded.  The trees and weeds have gone wild and taken over the roadways, which are made of deep wide pits, cracks, and huge heaves of asphalt. "The city hasn't repaired these roads," I comment. "They were like that before," Leo says.  It's hard to believe, but he says it is so.  How can a city leave roads impassable like that?  "Crooks," he tells us. He and Mistuh Jim agree on that, too.

I don't know Jim's full name, but I know his kitchen servant calls him Mistuh Jim. He told us that when he explained why he no longer supports school vouchers. "Mistuh Jim, a voucher don't do me no good. I cain't afford the other half of the money, and I ain't got a car to get my boy to a better school anyways."  Mistuh Jim sits on the board of several banks - banks he claims didn't make high-risk loans nor have to do any foreclosures. He's big, blond, well-fed, and came from Alabama.  He's certainly done well for himself in New Orleans, a city that the Catholic Church is ruining by owning so much land they don't pay taxes on, according to Jim.  Leo Sam Johnson is the 72-year old son of a Natchez sharecropper, out where Mistuh Jim would have us redistribute the poverty. He doesn't have an opinion on whether the Catholics cause the city revenue problems. "He might be right, at that," he muses.  Leo got stabbed in the head four times in a bar, fought a dishonorable discharge from the Air Force, teaches music theory. The autobiography he's writing will be vivid.

When he disagrees with is, he does it carefully, with charm. Of course we're  customers, and we weren't Jim's, and of course both men feel they've seen enough to know that they're right. What they don't know is much of each other. I wonder if Mistuh Jim got any of that flood relief money, and if Leo Sam Johnson has ever driven him across town. Same city, two worlds. I wonder if Mistuh Jim ever goes down to the Ninth Ward and looks at the apocalypse of all those lives, or if he's bought up any of the cheap flood-devastated properties that now sit decaying.   And I wonder if his two big solvent banks would approve a loan for a cab driver who would someday like to buy a duplex in this town where he used to live.







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Nawlins

We rode the streetcar line last night, uptown into the Garden District, and saw beautiful homes in a part of the city that was unaffected by flooding. This is olllld money here, and a rather gracious way of life. M enjoyed the working streetcar line, being used not for touristry but for transportation, and I enjoyed the animated conversation the driver was having with a passenger, who was explaining (as much as I could get through the syrup of the accent) all about women and how to handle them. M sneaked his camera out and filmed some of it.

We rode the Algiers ferry across the Mississippi River, and walked quite a bit, and then ended up catching a cab the last few blocks to the hotel.  The driver said it was a short fare but he was sympathetic to "you young people."  Man, I felt old, but was grateful for the cab anyway.

This morning are going to tour the 9th ward - M arranged with a cab driver last night to drive us around for an hour or so, since the idea of driving Dapple through that area really doesn't seem wise.

It rains here.  Understatement.  When we arrived yesterday, I was amused by the rain slickers and umbrellas for sale everywhere, and the shop signs asking you not to bring your wet things inside - but now I understand.  Supposedly it dumps rain every afternoon, but we've caught a storm front and it was dumping when I got up, too. And still is.  You can sit or walk out in it, because it's warm, but it's all very wet and you'll never dry - too much water in the air for any sort of evaporation; you just sort of steam off gently.

It explains why the gardens are so damn beautiful - my impression is that gardening here is a matter of discouraging anything you DON'T want.  I don't recognize much of the local flora, but I did recognize the loquat trees on the street.

I'd have liked to walk the streets of the French Quarter last night and hear some of the music, but it was late when we got back to the hotel from dinner (ribs, and the best red beans and rice I've ever had) so we  just turned in. I think M may have been tuckered out by an hour-long political argument he got into with a wealthy local homeowner - learned some things about local economy and as always, the chance to meet fellow voters of a different stripe is fascinating. Left M muttering darkly about West Coast secession. Not a bad idea.  Many of the places we've been feel foreign enough to require a visa.

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