Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.Helen Keller
Just before Thanksgiving, TwentyTwenty.
I probably don't need to say anything else, and everyone in the world would have the same reaction. My daughter and I were living in a thousand sq ft apartment just outside downtown Portland, Oregon. Sheltering in place.
I don't know if it was being cooped up or landing a job that shook up my future in the best way possible, but sometime that summer, I took most of my meager savings and bought a little bitty, home-made tear drop camper.
There's a thousand stories I could tell from the weekends I spent roaming around Oregon solo camping with my bike and an inflatable kayak, but that's for another day. This story is about the time I convinced my ride-or-die, college-student daughter to go on a self-contained, cross-country adventure in the middle of a global pandemic.
Back then I drove the CR-V Naida's driving now. It's a compact SUV with only 4 cylinders, so it can't tow much. Before the teardrop, I'd been so desperate to get out of town I replace the back seats with a sleeping platform. It had storage underneath and just enough room to rollover during the night. I got myself a bucket potty and 4x4 pop-up tent, and just like that, it qualified as self-contained and safe for travel. I named it the CaR-V.
Naida would sleep in the CaR-V; I'd sleep in the camper. We'd make good time, and even if we couldn't afford to stop and smell all the roses, we could at least enjoy the view through a bug-spattered windshield along the way.
Things were pretty tense the first day. Naida studied for finals, but wifi hadn't crossed our minds. Service was spotty, and she couldn't turn in her assignments. The CaR-V was packed and heavy with camping gear, and towing long-distance on the interstate made me hypervigilant in a way I've never been before. I concentrated on balancing our small haul against the much larger traffic flying past. But we started making our way, one KOA at a time.
We hit the road hard those first couple days. Naida was wrapping up some assignments and studying for finals, and we made good time. Internet was an challenge we hadn't considered though, and by the time we got to Los Angeles, Naida had run out of patience for spotty service, school stress and small quarters.
When we checked into camp, the man mentioned a lion and chuckled through telling us not to worry. We were stressed, we needed consistent internet service, and now there's some lions and tigers and bears bullshit? We'd showered and set up camp when out of the darkness came the sound of the hill behind us hacking up a furball. Holy hell, that's the lion!?! What a terrible sound. My heart still breaks for that poor creature, caged in the hills, likely victim to some local Joe Exotic, lonely and hungry, waiting to die.
We snuck in this quick side trip. Zero regrets. You should go.
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I'll never understand how WH hasn't made it out West. There is no replacement for the comfort of hashbrowns, smothered and covered. One time we searched for the nearest WH and discovered it was about 16 hours from Portland! The first one we came to on this trip was in Tucson, AZ, and we stopped and feasted like hungry travelers.
Tucson was my pick. I don't know why, but for some reason Tucson seemed like a terrific place to be, and for a while, I researched living there. So I planned a two night stay just outside town where Naida could finish her school work using our upgraded cell service plan, and then we could enjoy some time exploring the desert. My google search led us to a half mile hiking trail. That's perfect! We'll enjoy the day, stretch our legs and relax a little.
Ha! That half mile was like, straight uphill. I've never been much into rock climbing, but I got a little taste of it on this trail. Luckily, the view was worth the climb. I wish I could offer a picture, but I was so out of breath. Sometimes in order to win, you have to negotiate your own personal finish line, and I think we leaned into that concept at Picacho.
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Naida's Google search took us to this gorgeous Mission which was founded in 1692 and was still a functioning parish in 2020. Photo creds go to Naida.
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I have never seen such beautiful skies as I saw the desert. It's hard to describe, but the setting sun created a deep salmon background washed over with lavendar sky and varnished with a deep night sky sparkling with winter stars. It was unreal. As soon as the sun went down we got so cold we opened up a gazillion hand warmers and stuffed them in our beds. The thing I like about the desert is that everything is there on purpose. Living in the desert must be, by necessity, the most intentional way of life. Even so, driving through the next day, watching the towns pass by on the sides of the interstate, the scarcity frightened me. After that, I stopped looking into living in the desert.
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Texas, seriously, was nothing but a long straight road either climbing up or drifting down one hill
after another so many times that eventually, at the top of each hill, we exclaimed with great exaggeration,
Oh look, more Texas!
It was long. It was boring. If I have to do a long drive, I'd prefer driving west
through Kansas where you follow the interstate through so many fields of corn you start to think you're on
Dorothy's yellow brick road with the Rocky Mountains waiting magestically at the end like Oz.
We listened to Sonya Renee Taylor's The Body is Not an Apology and worked on improving our self-images. Eventually we faced the moment we'd dreaded. We needed to stop for a bio-break and there was nowhere for miles. We found a rundown gas station with an empty lot on the side, pulled up and popped our potty out like we did it every day of our lives. It's not what we preferred, but self-contained does have it's advantages.
Out of Texas and into Louisianna was the most rain I have ever driven through. I knew there was a leak in the back corner of the camper, and by the time we checked into camp, the entire camper was soaked through and through. We found the laundry so I could dry my bedding, and the people stared so hard at us that we were instantly uncomfortable. Have you ever seen Deliverance? We checked out a day early and enjoyed New Orleans before pushing on to Alabama where, thanks to my mother, there were the warm, soft beds waiting for us. It was exactly what we needed to get us through the last day of travel.
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Driving through Georgia was nostalgiac, as always, but uneventful. I'm glad we made it safe and sound. We spent the entire month in Georgia, had a New Year's Eve party and headed back home to Oregon bright and early on January 1, 2021.
Of course we had no idea then that we'd turn around and move back to Georgia six short months later, but that's a story for another day.
