musings

Today was spent driving all day in the intense unpleasant stuffy heat through boring miles of desert. Highlight: passing through the Nevada border into the promised land California. We stopped at Barstow on Route 15 for the inevitable Big Mac. They had two train coaches for additional seating-McDonald’s McDiners. Next stop was San Bernadino but we saw nothing of the city, we just decided where exactly in LA to head for next and then got on the appropriate freeway.

We stopped somewhere in Los Angeles to get a street map. After last night’s two hours’ sleep no one was capable of making decisions about where to go to spend the night. The streets were populated with Spanish or Mexican people, and the news stands sold many foreign-language newspapers. One also sold the Times and the daily Torygraph but $1 each was too much to read about England’s drought problems.

Also $1.50 was too much to pay for an LA street map. Went to a gas station and bought a map for 25¢. The guide told us there was a campsite ten miles into the mountains and as it was nearing dusk we set off straightaway. Twenty frustrating miles further on we were still wondering where the site was. It was pitch black and we could see the vast city of LA lit up in a sheet of white and yellow lights looking like the glowing embers of a fire. Overhead a flying saucer cruised slowly by, its rim flickering with light. As it got nearer we realised what it was - a small plane with its underside converted to a giant moving advertisement for realty company.

Some kind people stopped to give us directions; next site 12 miles. Our fuel gauge read 0 but there was nothing to do but press on. Drove the winding precipitous roads for ages until at last we found the place, one of those National Parks unmanned things where you put $2 in a box (or at least you’re supposed to). No facilities.

We pitched the tent and made friends with a raccoon which was after scraps of food from the other campers in our neck of the woods. Shôn took a picture of the creature and we all went to bed; John kept his boots on in case he had to escape a grizzly bear in the night. The raccoon was stomping around outside chewing our tent pegs. Got a fright when it blundered into the tent and started walking over me but I think my startled shriek must have scared is off for we heard no more that night.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 1976 at 3:24 pm and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.