Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 11:23:48 -0700 (PDT)
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: "Tobin T. Copley" <tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca>
Subject: Big Trip report [Part 1, long]
Hi gang!
Here is the first part of our report on the circum-
continental trip (Jan-Mar 1995). I'll try and post a
chapter every Friday.
Tobin
-----
Part I: Canada to the Mexican Border
Because we live in downtown Vancouver (and because our
camper had been broken into a few months before), we didn't
load up the bus until the morning we left. And, because Dec
31 is Christa's birthday (and oh yeah, it's New Year's Eve
as well), and because we got kind of baked the night before,
we didn't get up until nearly 10 o'clock in the morning. We
were so excited we were shaking! Had a nice breakfast,
cleaned up the house, and started loading the van.
It's amazing how much you can fit in a westy. Keep in mind
we were going to be living out of the van for 3 months, and
had to carry clothes and bedding to allow us to be
comfortable from +30 degrees C to -35 degrees C. I had the
entire area under the rear seat packed with tools, spare
parts, a hibatchi (which we never used), and a huge
hydraulic floor jack. I also carried a copy of the Idiot's
Guide, a Bentley manual, a Haynes manual, and some stuff
Joel had photocopied for me on my gas heater. (Joel's stuff
would come in handly later).
Finally we had the bus all loaded up, did one last check of
the house for stuff we might have missed, and turned the
ignition key!
Our trusty westy fired right up, and we pulled out. The
odometer read 154,550 miles. It was a crisp sunny day,
clear and rather cold for Vancouver. As we headed south
over the Granville Street bridge we admired our beautiful
city. It was great to get on the road! Climbing the
Granville Street hill, Christa asked if I'd brought the
shortwave listening guide for Radio Canada International.
Uh oh. We turned around and retreived the guide.
Take two. South over the bridge again. Nice view. We
realized it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon, and we
still had the US border in front of us. We weren't going to
get very far today, oh well. As we approached the border an
hour later, I started to get nervous. What if they gave us
a hassle? What if they took everything out of the car to
search it? I'd heard some horror stories from other list
members, and I could just see us sitting there re-packing
the car in the cold at midnight. Stay calm.... just stay
calm. Breathe...
We pulled up to the booth at the US Customs. The guard was
about 40, with a burr cut, mustache, and square jaw. He did
not smile. He looked at us levelly for maybe 4 or 5 seconds
after I rolled up and said "Good afternoon." He did not
return my salutation. His eyes cast about our hippie-
mobile. "Citizenship?" "Where do you live?"
"Destination?" Uh, oh, here it comes... "Uh, Mexico!" I
said brightly. He paused for a second, then looked right at
me.
"Weelll...," he said slowly, "We get a lot of these here
Volkswagens coming through here going down to Mexico..."
*GULP!*
"...And I can tell you you'll have no problem finding parts
for this thing down there!" Whew! I couldn't believe it!
"So what year is this, anyway?..." So we talked about how
great VW buses were for a minute or so, and then he waved us
on, wishing us happy travels (in Spanish). Good karma!
We stopped in Bellingham to change some money and buy some
food at a natural food co-op there, then made it all the way
to Tacoma (about 150 miles from Vancouver) that night.
Oooh, hard driving! :) Our gas heater had packed it in
(discovered later it was just a loose wire), and it was well
below freezing. So were we. We were looking forward to
plugging into a hook-up and cranking our little ceramic
heater.
We pulled up to our site, surrounded by huge (ugly!) RVs,
and I hopped outside to plug us in. What the hell was this?
The plug was huge and round, like a clothes dryer plug.
Ahhh... The AAA book said 15 amp hook-ups, but didn't bother
to mention there were no NORMAL plugs!! Arrrgh! Office was
closed, since it was New Years Day. Nobody we could rouse
at the RV park had a spare plug adapter. Off to Fred
Meyer's to shop for a plug. The guy there says, "You mean,
like a dryer plug?" I said I guess so, had a look at one,
it seemed close enough, so I got the plug, a length of cord,
and a female household plug and got to work on the floor of
Fred Meyer's. Made my own adapter; I was rather proud of
myself.
Got back in the camper, drove back to the site, got out in
the dark, tried to plug it in. Wouldn't fit. Christa held
the flashlight. Arrrgh! The 15A dryer plug and the 15A RV
plug were different! The ground prong wouldn't fit. I was
cold. What the hell, I removed the ground prong (Who needs
a ground, anyway?). Arrrgh! Still wouldn't fit! The two
flat prongs were at slightly different angles. HELL! Who
needs the plug housing? I'll just dissassemble the plug,
tape up each prong with electrician's tape, and stick each
prong in with insulated vice-grips. It's only 110V/15A,
right? I get Christa ready to knock me clear if I start to
smoke and all my limbs stick out straight, and I stick the
prongs into the socket. ARRRRGH! They wouldn't bloody well
fit!! Too wide (just), too thick (just). I gave up. I was
just about frozen anyway.
Christa finally found someone kind enough to let us plug
into an auxilary plug on the outside of their RV. Ah, heat.
Darned toasty, actually, and we had to turn the heater down.
Dinner, bed, sleep. Ah.
Next morning, we return everything to Fred Meyer, and picked
up an adapter at Camping World for, like, $3.00.
TIP: Buy one of these adapters if you want to run 110v stuff
where they advertise hook-ups. Over half the places we
stayed had the RV plugs ONLY.
The second day out was still clear and cold. Even though we
wanted to stay off the Interstate highways as much as
possible, the cold made us push for California (and warmer
weather) as fast as possible. So we cruised down I-5 at 57
mph. I thought I'd wait until we got to California to fix
the heater, because I hate working on stuff outside when
it's so cold. Our heater boxes were full of holes, so they
weren't much help at all--barely kept the ice off the inside
of the windshield. So we wore a lot of clothes. It wasn't
so bad in daylight, but once the sun went down (at about
4:00 pm) it got a lot colder in the van. I made deal with
Christa that if I could push us through into California that
night, we could buy a bottle of Knudsen Erath to go with
dinner.
With the promise of wine we pushed through the night,
wearing nearly everything we had with us, and arrived late
in Yreka California. We plugged in (with our nifty new
adapter), turned on the heater, found some nice classical
music on NPR, and Christa made a beautiful herb-garlic cream
sauce tortellini with a blackberry-apple crumble and whipped
cream for dessert. And the wine was perfect. Life was
good: toasty in our westy, with a full tummy, surrounded by
the aroma of beautiful food with the soft strains of
classical music wafting across the candlelit table.
The next day took us down the I-5 all the way to Martha
Rubin's house in Moraga, just outside of San Fransisco.
After driving through a minor snow storm in the mountains of
Northern California, and driving a woman and her three kids
30 or so miles into Redding (her hoodless electronic-
everything car had died in the snow/rain, and I didn't have
a clue how to fix it), we hit the central valley, where it
warmed up a lot. Good. Now we were just a little bit
chilly instead of frozen solid. Stopped at the "World
famous" (I'm a sucker for that!) Olive Pit in Corning, where
Christa marvelled at a kazillion varieties of olives. We
bought a 10 pound tin of Blue Diamond almonds. Yum!
Later that afternoon, we stopped for lunch near Colusa.
Lunch was uneventful, but just before we stopped I decided
to pull into the access for a farmer's field to turn around,
rather than trying to do a 3-point turn on the highway. The
ground looked solid and flat. Ok. Pulled in easily,
stopped, put it in reverse, engaged the clutch.... hmmm.
Must be neutral. Found reverse again, and... nothing.
Geez, did I just lose reverse gear? I tried first gear.
Nothing. What? Christa gets out. She reports that we are
stuck in one inch of the stickiest, slimiest clay she has
ever seen. She's carrying an inch or two of this stuff on
the bottom of her boots. The clay totally clogged the
tires, so it was like trying to get out of mud with racing
sticks.
I broke out the folding shovel. I shovelled gravel under
the rear wheels for traction, Christa took a picture (see
David Schwarze's web site). Using this method, we got
halfway to firm ground when the farmer showed up in a big
4x4 pick up. He pulled us out. Sideways. Oh, well, time
for lunch!
Got into Martha's place that evening. We spent several days
with Martha and her wonderful family before going down to
the vanagon meet at Pfieffer Beach at Big Sur. Martha is
the most incredible host either of us had ever seen.
Absolutely unbelievable! Food! Drink! Laundry every
night! Trips to parts stores! Trips to tire stores to get
nice new tires put on the back of our bus. Martha doesn't
sleep, either. Her daughter, Sarah, was terrific. She came
with us on many of our trips, and Christa, Sarah, and I had
a nice time at a make-yer-own-jewelry bead store before we
left. Nate, Martha's husband, was great too, but because he
seemed to work more and sleep less than Martha (was this
possible?) we didn't get all that much time with him.
Martha also resolved a long-standing debate between Christa
and I regarding the colour of our westy. I thought it was
yellow; Christa thought this was ridiculous: it was clearly
orange! Yellow! Orange! VW calls it "Chrome Yellow"
(L20A), but even I agreed this was not at all descriptive.
Martha looked at it and said, "You know, it's actually
_mango!_ We looked at it. Martha was right: our camper is
mango.
While we were in the Bay Area, the weather began to go to
pieces. Christa and I walked all over San Francisco in the
pouring rain, and it only got worse as time wore on. When
we left to drive down to Big Sur, the wind had come up a
lot, and was gusting wildly. By the time we were south of
San Jose, it was taking a lot of effort to stay in our lane.
I dropped our speed a bit. By the time we reached Carmel,
it was dark and all hell had broken loose. When we were
driving into the wind, I could barely hold 40mph. Redwood
branches were down everywhere. Stuff was blowing all over
the road, and the wind was screaming against the car. With
26 miles left to the campsite, we headed down the coast
highway.
Visibility dropped. Sand and small rocks pounded into the
car. I dropped our speed down to 25 miles an hour. Gusts
would move the car 3 or 4 feet to one side almost instantly,
and direction of the gust became impossible to predict.
Just staying on the road was becoming a problem. As we'd
come out of the other end of a cut through a sand dune, a
wall of airborne sand and rocks would be waiting for us. I
started to worry that we might break our windshield or
headlights or some of the paint off the front of the car.
The noise was incredible. The wind played with us, knocking
us first one way, then the other, then back again. I slowed
down even more, with the 4-way flashers on so we wouldn't
get rear-ended. We could see nothing to our right, except
for an occaisonal glimpse of the stormy Pacific smashing on
the rocks below. After one particularly hard crosswind gust
in the middle of a bridge, Christa started to cry. "We're
going to die!" she cried, sobbing as sand, pebbles, and
branches bounced off the car. She cried for a few more
miles, then resigned herself to fate, and just watched the
madness around us. Might as well enjoy the show!
After what seemed like hours, we arrived at the campsite,
and found that most people had already arrived. We pulled
into the site we were sharing with Bradley Prunehead, and
hunkered down over some fine fish chowder. It was great to
meet everyone. We learned that Steve Johnson's wife, Linda,
had also broken into tears on the drive down the coast
highway, so maybe my driving wasn't so bad after all! Other
folks have reported on the Big Sur meet, so I won't go into
detail here. Suffice to say that Christa and I and John and
Carol Huguenard were sure glad that Jeff had Brought
Something For Bob! Great folks, great food, lousy weather,
and a great time. Jeff Schneiter had brought a tent, but
because his tent was in a few inches of water by the time he
went to turn in, he slept in the top bunk of our camper both
nights.
Oh yeah, and we burned Sarah Rubin's sweater. What a sport!
I got our gas heater working again, but then it promptly
blew a fuse and nearly exploded, so I figured it was time to
have a pro look at it. We were originally going to go down
the coast highway to San Luis Obispo, but the weather was
still unstable, and Jeff knew a few FLARS in Santa Cruz, so
we took Jeff and headed back north to Santa Cruz. Jeff
lives in the hills above SC, and the road up to his place
had redwoods down across it and was flooded out in places,
so we took a long and circuitous detour. Finally made it to
his place, where we enjoyed the 30 minutes of electrical
power he got that weekend, met the superdog Argo, and hung
out. Jeff took us back into town in his insanely fast Honda
Civic, hung out at the laundromat while we washed our
clothes, then took us out for pizza! What a guy! Back to
his place, cooked with some local herbs, and went to bed in
our camper. Listened to waves of wind come crashing up the
redwood forested hillside, followed by the sound of cones,
twigs, and huge branches bouncing off the top of the camper
ALL NIGHT LONG. I was just waiting for one of the trees
themselves to come crashing down on us. As the night wore
on, I became too tired to care.
The next morning, Jeff left for work and we headed into town
to get our heater fixed. We actually found a shop in
California that knew something about gas heaters. The
manual Joel had given proved to be very useful. Turned out
I had an 8A fuse where a 16A one should go, and a 16A where
a 8A belonged. I had switched them up! Oh, well. Mr.
Mechanic also told me I had to rig up a proper exhaust
system for the heater, 'cause the preheater hose I was using
couldn't handle the heat from the heater and would melt and
might set my engine compartment on fire. Uh. Ok, then.
We decided to bail on San Luis Obispo even though David
Garth had kindly offered us his driveway, because we were
getting tired of rain and severe weather. California is
supposed to be sunny, right? We figured we should go for
the desert (desert=dry, dry=no rain), so we took secondary
roads all the way to Bakersfield. Rained. Stayed overnight
in Bakersfield, and left the next morning. As we left
Bakersfield, we saw a sign reading:
BAKERSFIELD:
COME FOR A VISIT,
STAY FOR A LIFETIME!
Whew! That was close!
With the weather still lousy, we decided to high-tail it (at
57mph, that is) east on Hwy 58 to Mojave. Tehachapi was
absolutely flooded out--4 lane roads reduced to 1 lane above
water. Mojave was worse. We had been thinking we'd go to
Death Valley (We'd heard it was a pretty dry place,
generally), so we phoned the ranger there to get the latest
scoop. Uh. Raining. I didn't like the idea of being 282
feet below sea level in torrential rains and severe
flooding, so we did what any other sane, red-blooded
Canadian would do in a situation like this.
We drove hell-bent for Vegas.
Our self-imposed no-Interstate policy be damned, we hooked
up with I-15 heading straight for Sin City. Pulled into the
RV park behind the Circus-Circus, and headed for the
casinos. We went crazy. We didn't stumble out of the
casinos until the early morning, and we felt great! We were
up two bucks! Hey, we were going to DO this town: there
wasn't a nickle blackjack machine in town we couldn't beat!
Coming off this gambling euphoria, we slept soundly while
neon flashed all around us, illuminating the rainy night.
The next morning found us stuffing our faces at a $2.99 all-
you-can-eat breakfast buffet. Vegas is my kind of place!
Can't sit still though; time's a-wasting! Back to the
casino floor, 'cause it never rains inside the casinos!
Well, I should have listened to Christa. I should have quit
while I was ahead. But NO, I had to let it ride. The
casino sharks took me for FIVE BIG ONES, leaving us a whole
three dollars poorer than when we set foot in this cruel
town. Christa and I had to go for a walk. Las Vegas must
be a lonely place, because all these guys kept giving us
these magazines full of pictures of young women who wanted
to talk. I know this because these women had their phone
numbers right there beside their pictures. I think maybe
they, too, had lost a lot of their money because they didn't
even have any clothes left to wear! Some of them must have
been very lonely (or skilled conversationalists) because
they wanted to talk to couples, too.
We decided we should leave while we still had some clothes
to wear.
The next morning we headed for Arizona on US route 93. It
had stopped raining! We paused at the Hoover Dam, and were
impressed with the scale of the project. We putted along
over the Arizona desert, enjoying a vastness of the
landscape. Joshua trees came and went. After joining up
with I-40 at Kingman, we began to climb again, in and out of
the snow as we cleared pass after pass. Christa wasn't
feeling that well, so we opted for a $20.00 motel room in
Williams so she could rest up. We watched incredibly bad
television, and I got Hagen-Daz bars from the store down the
street. Life is good.
It was just a short run from there to the South Rim of the
Grand Canyon, under beautiful crystal-clear skies. I'd
hyped Christa up about how wild the Canyon is: you think
you're moving along a flat plain, and then, with almost no
warning, there's this huge chasm below you. Christa was
very excited. We entered the park, and came to first
viewpoint. I parked, and we ran over to the edge. Clouds.
The canyon was totally obscurred in thick clouds a thousand
feet below us. Oh, poo! Christa goes to the look out area
anyway, and then this rainbow appears below us. Whoa,
heavy!
We had a circular rainbow a thousand feet below us, with our
shadows like a shaft of darkness cutting down into the
centre of the rainbow itself. This was almost spiritual.
We found a campsite, got settled, paid our fee, then headed
back to the rim. The clouds had totally disappeared.
Christa was blown away. We hiked lots, sat and stared at
the canyon. We met another young couple. We chatted, and
they invited us for drinks later. We watched the sunset,
and went to make dinner.
We met our new friends for drinks. They got us very drunk.
Remember we're at 7,000 feet? I didn't. Whoa, big drunk.
Yuck. Good thing was I didn't get cold that night, even
though we had no hook-up and there was at least 2 feet of
snow on the ground.
The next morning in the parking lot outside the showers we
met a fellow and his young girlfriend who were heading from
North Carolina to California in his 1970 bus. They tipped
us off to a good natural food store in Flagstaf with great
granola. All right! We headed out of the park by the East
Drive to US 89, then south to Flagstaff. The scenery on the
East Drive (AZ hwy 64) is incredible, although some of the
signs for "trading posts" in the Navajo Nation were pretty
sad: "FRIENDLY INJUNS AHEAD, GET 'UM GOOD DEALS." I'd
thought we'd moved beyond that, but just goes to show
stereotypes still work for some people...
In Flagstaff we found the farmer's market natural food store
(with a nice bakery next door) without much trouble, and
stocked up on stuff, granola included. From there we
dropped down to Sedona where we spent the night. Much
warmer.
We woke up in the morning to find one of our nice new rear
tires has gone flat. Pumped it up, got it to a mechanic in
Sedona. Nine bucks later, we're on our way. We worked our
way along AZ89 up and down steep twisty roads through Jerome
and Prescott, then onto US60 across the desert towards
Blythe. Back into California, and out I-10 west. About 20
miles later, we pull off the Interstate at Wiley's Well
Road, and headed south past a state prison. The road turned
to gravel, and we went another 10 or 12 miles. The "free"
campsite here turned out to cost $14.00, but the camp host
was kind enough to volunteer that we could camp free a few
more miles down the road on the Bureau of Land Management
Land. So on we went. Another 6 or 8 miles later, we found
a spot we could break through the low berm left by the
grader on both sides of the road, and pulled off into the
desert. Fifty yards off the road, I foundnd a level spot
and turned off the engine. Quiet. Very, very quiet. We
washed, ate, and piled into bed.
By the light of the next morning I realized just how much we
are in the middle of nowhere. Didn't Charles Manson roam
these parts? After exploring the desert on foot for a
while, we packed up and fired up the camper. I worked us
back onto the road, and pointed us south again. After all,
why re-trace steps? The road HAS to lead somewhere, right?
After about 10 miles the road starts to fall to pieces as we
climbed into some desolated hills. But there were still
tire tracks! If they did it, so could we! Another 15 miles
and we unexpectedly hit a paved road. I looked at the sun,
and turned right. We're on CA78, heading south, 20 or so
miles north of Glamis. Nice country. Past the Imperial
Dunes recreation area and into Brawley. Cool Mexican food
for sale in the stores here. We worked our way along
secondary roads to near Ocotillo, when we had to join I-8
heading west. We fought a strong head wind until we climbed
into the mountains. After passing through snow just east of
San Diego, we dropped down towards the Pacific and rolled on
over to David Schwarze's place.
David was just moving in to his new (very nice) place, so I
helped him move a few heavy or awkward things, then we
ordered pizza and retired to his hot tub. Ahhh...
We spent a couple of days with David, getting the camper
ready for Mexico. Insurance at AAA, last minute spare
parts, and a really fun cruise of some of David's favorite
San Diego junk yards. Incredible junk yards! Splits,
loaves, vanagons! Rust free! These yards must be
Volkswagen heaven! As David was punching his ridiculously
powerful Mustang 5 litre down the freeways, I could see the
hills of Tiajuana to the south. I was getting excited (and
nervous!) about what lay ahead.
The morning we pulled out, we double- and triple-checked
that we had everything we thought we'd need. Spare parts.
Tools. First aid stuff. Full water tank in the car, full 6
gallon tank on the roof. Full (1 gallon?) solar shower on
the roof too. We drove to San Ysidro, and filled up with
gas. We practiced filling up Mexican-style: making so damn
sure we had a FULL tank we left a half gallon on the
pavement. We fit another 6.5 gallons of fuel in our (rated)
6 gallon jerry can and threw that on the roof, too. There.
That gave us well over 400 miles cruising range. Checked
the oil level again, checked the tire air pressure again.
Ok. Our trusty camper was ready! We changed several
hundred bucks American cash into pesos, and heading for the
border crossing.
I got that border-crossing nervousness again. Would the
Mexican guards hassle us? Christa was silent, and I could
tell she was nervous, too. We'd agreed we were going to get
through Tijuana as quickly as possible, and head directly
south to get as far into the country that afternoon as we
could. Christa was to be my navigator, watching for signs
to Ensenada, directing me through the city, with the AAA
Baja California map folded to the Tijuana city inset
clutched tightly in her hands.
Tall chain-link razor-wired fences lined Interstate 5 as we
cruised down the last couple of miles of the American
freeway. Signs in Spanish warned people not to run across
the highway. The US Border Patrol were everywere in their
big 4x4s, and just before the crossing, a small army of them
were stationed at the side of the road with big guys
watching traffic from the hoods of their trucks. Oh, great.
At the border, traffic widened to 8 or 10 lanes southbound
to pass through the inspection booths. Traffic crawled but
never really stopped, and as we rolled up to the booth
ourselves, we saw there was no one in any of the booths!
Traffic just rolled south into the country unimpeded! I was
so blown away by this I actually stopped for a second,
hesistant to just DRIVE IN to a foreign country, until an
angry horn blast behind me persuaded me to go with the flow
and not draw attention to myself. So we drove into Mexico
without seeing a single Mexican official. Welcome to
Mexico!
Tobin
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin T. Copley Currently =============
(604) 689-2660 Occupationally /_| |__||__| :| putta
tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca Challenged! O| | putta
'-()-------()-'
Circum-continental USA, Mexico, Canada 15,000 miles... '76 VW Camper! (Mango)
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