California Living – and Driving

There’s #vanlife in theory and #vanlife in practice. In the first, the vans are parked and the residents jump into streams or swing on a hammock. In the second, vans are on the move, rolling down interstates or clinging to the edge of windy gravel roads along canyons. #vanlife is, if anything, driving. Lots of driving.

On our team, Spouse Bill prefers to drive and I prefer to navigate. But there are days when that labor distribution is decidedly unfair, as in the trip from the Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood , AZ to Twenty-Nine Palms, CA. While I am not unfamiliar with driving rental Camrys on California freeways, steering a 9’5” tall, 9,350-pound camper van past 18-wheelers and through fierce winds for hundreds of miles was new. And unnerving. The stove top rattled. The bathroom doors creaked. Olive oil and balsamic vinegar bottles clinked. Once off the 10, we still had nearly 100 miles of desert.

Somewhere near the rest stop in Blythe, CA, I began questioning the rest of our itinerary. SoCal thru Sequoia and Yosemite and up the Oregon Coast to Seattle, where a bunch of close pals await. Then back to Denver through Wyoming. Mile after mile. One night stays. Should this survey-of-the-west tour, as we call it, morph into something more focused? Should we have stuck to the Southwest for the four weeks?

But then we landed in the Mojave Desert, where the wind blew soft and the Joshua Trees stood guard. Since dispersed camping with a hound is dicey in searing heat, we opted for the safety of a campground. Friendly neighbors and full hookups, which never meant anything until this trip. Hooray for someone else supplying our electric power (Microwave! Music!) and water (Dishwashing! Toilet flushing!).

After a driving tour of Joshua Tree National Park (no dogs on trails, which was fine with Maisie since she refused even a walk through the unforgiving sun of the shadeless campground) we headed to Manhattan Beach to reconnect with Son #2, who has been working his Boston job remotely and surfing the Pacific for the past two months. More trucks. More congestion. A couple of accidents and breakdowns. And this was pandemic traffic.

By 3 p.m., however, reunited with our boy, we strolled the path that runs from Malibu down the coast. Mingling with roller bladers and beach bikes and barefoot babies, we breathed in that ocean air and felt the warm California sun heat our bones. We watched surfers and beach volleyball games and later ate burritos and drank Pacifico with Jordy and his roommates at an outdoor table overlooking a stream of Jags and Aston Martins and motorcycles blasting tunes on the main drag.

And all that driving faded in the rear view mirror.

Until Sunday, when we hit the road and head north to Sequoia National Forest.