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Published: June 28th 2012
Carla: After leaving Lake Mead we drove north through the Nevada Desert, skirting the outer edge of Las Vegas. There are lots of words you can use to describe the desert here but one that springs to mind immediately is 'empty'. Its very very very empty indeed. The road stretches ahead shimmering into the distance in perfect straight lines. We drove for 6 hours and for 400 miles from Las Vegas to Reno and only saw trees on the last 20 miles as we entered Fallon a town who's tag line was “Nevada's little Oasis”. However that didn't mean that you could describe the desert as boring. There are lots of brown hills, brown rocks, brown and orange scrub and then surprising amounts of other colours from time to time. Flowering cacti provide yellow, pink and purple; the mineral rich rocks also shine with greens and silvers. The other highlights of the desert were the strange towns and settlements that we came across every 30 or 40 miles. For example, we needed to refill with petrol and stopped at “The Last Gas Station before Area 51”. This was in the town of Mercury and the shop in the filling station was
brilliant. It sold a plethora of Area 51 memorabilia and had a diner with an 'alien' theme. It also sold packets of caramels, toffees and chewy snakes for $1.50 for two (cheaper than Morrisons!) and there was a second-hand book stall raising money for the local library which had books at 50c each. Heaven in the desert I hear you say? Another interesting place was Goldfield – about halfway from Vegas to Reno. It was a perfectly preserved little Victorian gold rush town with wooden buildings lining the streets, a fire station complete with vintage fire engine and a stone court-house that dated from 1830. We drove through the place from nothing and back into nothing in about 10 minutes but we talked about it for a while afterwards as if to reassure ourselves that we hadn't dreamt it up. Strewn throughout the desert at reasonable intervals were little groups of rusty trailers. These communities had names and signs pointing to them from the highway. They had no other services though and they were evidently the homes of people who wanted to lively 'freely' and 'off-grid'. We read later in a California newspaper that these desert-dwellers generate their own electricity
via solar panels (yes indeed!) and wind turbines and have enormous water tanks (not sure how they get those replenished). In Nevada it seems that they are left pretty much to themselves although in California they are increasingly getting attention from the authorities for having unauthorised structures and vehicles on their land. A typical plot would consist of a rickety bungalow surrounded by a few acres of scrub across which would be littered trailers, old R.V.s, enclosures for animals and rusting cars. We could sympathise with the views of the state officials in California who wanted to control this use of the land but the impact on the land appeared to be reversible and minimal, especially compared to cities like Las Vegas which had an unsustainable and probably irreversible impact on the environment. We passed another eerie place at Walker Lake, about ¾ of the way to Reno. Walker Lake was a mineral-saturated bright green-blue stretch of water fed by the Walker River with a glassy, perfectly reflective surface which provided a mirror image of the brown hills surrounding it. The lake was used for recreation but also, bizarrely, as a base for the US Navy Sub-Marine Corps. There was
a large and empty-seeming barracks complex but nothing out on the lake to indicate that any submariners were training there. Needless to say our minds turned to conspiracy theories as we wended our way past. It gets you like that, the desert.
We spent the night of 12
th June in Reno, Nevada and Ruby's birthday dawned in a Kampgrounds of America (KOA) campsite overshadowed by a large casino called 'Boomtown'. However as the campsite also had a pool and she had a new scooter to scoot on – it didn't appear to cast a shadow over Ruby. We moved on later that day to a campsite at Tahoe called Granite Flat which couldn't have been more different to the Reno KOA. The Tahoe campsite was run by the National Park Service and the only facilities offered were composting toilets and a tap. However it was by the beautiful, fast-flowing Truckee River and had fire-pits at each site. We made camp and Alex cooked a barbecued feast for the birthday girl and, despite being in full-on bear country, we had a lovely evening. Earlier in the day on Ruby's birthday we had visited the town of Truckee. Something about the
name had made me think that it would be a rough type of place but nothing could be farther from the truth. I have to describe Truckee as the most tasteful place that we had visited in the USA so far. Clearly a result of Tahoe being a holiday destination for middle-class residents of San Francisco and other parts of Northern California, this former railway workers settlement now resembles a trendy North London suburb or even parts of beloved Brighton (hurrah!). The main street was lined with wine bars, 'nice things' shops, coffee shops and old-fashioned ice cream parlours. Tempted as we were to stay we had to source a birthday balloon for Ruby as hers had escaped in Reno and so we visited the local Safeway instead, where we found we were in luck.
Alex: The campground by Lake Tahoe was beautifully secluded and very cheap. As Carla said, there were no showers, so after going for a run I had to bathe in the river, which was freezing. Very invigorating! The day after Ruby's birthday we drove down to the lake, and decided to walk the riverside walk. The map indicated that the path ran 'pretty much'
along the shores of the lake for quite a few miles. However, the scale of the map was rough and we tramped through several car parks, hotel frontages and a couple of private properties before giving up and going back. Taking a closer look at the map we saw that the trail (more for bikes than walking I think) ran along the other side of the main highway from the lake – what's the point of that? So we went to the lake shore for a picnic on the grass. The couple next to us had a white rabbit; in a harness on a lead. They let Ruby feed it some lettuce from our picnic, and lots of other children came over to pet it. We went swimming in the lake, which was freezing (like the river running from it) but crystal clear, and surrounded by tree covered mountains. After we had dried off we went for ice cream, so as you can see the day was thoroughly redemeed. On Friday we were on our way again, this time heading for Crater Lake in Oregon. As many of you will already know, we had something of a disaster along the
way.
Please skip this section if you already know all the details. While driving along the Interstate 5 we hit a railway sleeper left straddling both lanes of the highway. We had pulled out to overtake another car in busy traffic and had no chance of avoiding it. It burst both tyres on the right hand side, and punctured the petrol tank. The was a massive crash as we bumped over it, but Carla managed to keep the RV upright, and we pulled over to the hard shoulder. We all got out and walked away from the RV as someone shouted 'Get out – it's on fire' at us. Within a few minutes it had gone from a bit of smoke out the side to a 20 foot inferno and all of our stuff went up in flames. Luckily for us the police and fire service were lovely, and took pity on us. The police chief went home to get some of his sons clothes for George, as he was still in his pyjamas at the time. The firemen took us back to their station and gave us lunch, free use of their computers and phones, bought teddy bears and
toys for George and Ruby, and even had a whip round a gave us $140. What a bunch of superstars!
Here is George's newspaper version of the incident: The Times 40p 26.6.12 (Games and Puzzles p12)
RV FIRE BLOCKS HIGHWAY
On the 15th June 2012 an RV fire broke out on the turning to Sacramento Airport. All the people on board survived beacuse they had enough time to get out before it turned big. Carla Holden says “It was just stuff we are all ok.” According to Alex Pilsworth it took 4 or 5 mins to turn into a roaring fire. All that was left was the number plate and the microwave oven.
The RV company (El Monte RV) sent someone to pick us up and gave us a lift to San Francisco, as we needed to go to the British Consulate there. They also gave us some cash,and booked us a hotel room using the credit card details we had given them. We had to wait until after the weekend to get our passports back, but we had some cash at least to buy some more clothes, underwear, toiletries etc. We now look like a walking advert for Old Navy! We managed to do quite a few tourist things during our enforced stay in San Francisco, as well as lots of dull admin type things like getting passports, credit cards, cash (surprisingly difficult when you are in a foreign country with no means of identification – actually that's not that surprising). We went to Pier 39 for lunch on Saturday, and wandered round to see the
sea lions. They are enormous, and look so ungainly it's hard to believe they turn into such graceful creatures in the water. We walked through Haight Ashbury to Golden Gate Park with a picnic which was fun despite the fog rolling in (apparently it does this at 3pm on the dot if its going to happen, which it did on that day!) It didn't bother George and Ruby though as they found a fantastic playground and kept warm running up the hill to the top of the slide. On Monday we went to the Consulate. The lady there tried to be helpful, but seemed a little out of her depth. She managed the important thing – getting our passports, but her knowledge on other matters seemed to rely to heavily on 'What her Dad did' when he came to visit her. We spent about 6 hours in the waiting room filling in forms, printing out papers, calling my brother Den to arrange cash to pay for the passports etc. The room was small and George and Ruby were going a wee bit mental by the end of it. But we had got over the major hurdles, passports and cash. Later
in the week we went to the Golden Gate bridge and walked nearly halfway across – well to the first tower anyway. It was the 75
th anniversary just a few days earlier and they had closed the bridge to traffic and allowed 250,000 people onto the bridge. The roadway had dropped by 10m, although no-one noticed at the time, and it was well within safe limits apparently. Whilst in the city we also met up with an old friend of my brother, Andy Hoffman, who I had stayed with when I had visited San Francisco 20 years ago with my sister Isobel. If George and Ruby hadn't been allowed a week off of diary writing they would probably also mention that we went to see the new Disney / Pixar animation called '
Brave' – a Scottish Disney Princess, hurrah for that indeed. On Saturday we were back in a new RV. El Monte were mad enough to give us another! We went to Los Altos and parked up in Andy's driveway – after breaking off a few branches from his trees to make way for the RV. We had a brilliant time, and ate and drank too much until about
2am. Thanks Andy. We met Andy's wife Trisha and his three children Brendan, Naomi and Alec. They were all charming and Naomi and Alec looked after Ruby and George while the grown ups talked – introducing them to the wonders of 'Blackadder' – George has since watched the whole of series 3 on iTunes. Next morning we shared the disappointment of watching England lose on penalties to Italy in a pub called the 'Rose and Crown', a concrete cube building painted to look like a castle on the outside, and with fake tudor beams inside. They did, however, serve bitter – the first I've seen in the States, but I was too hungover – and driving a 25 foot bus later that day – to drink anything but coke! Dammit. We left Andy and his family to head towards Lodi just a few miles north stopping first to stock up the RV with food and buy some warm jumpers for the colder nights to come.
Carla: Our first stop en route to Oregon from Los Altos was Lodi, near Stockton in Northern California. This you might describe as a nowhere sort of place but it is actually a little
haven from having to 'do' anything. I had begged Alex to let us go somewhere with just a pool and nothing else after the accident and the whirl of stress and admin in San Francisco. He was pushing for Yosemite but as we have Crater Lake booked in for the end of the week I stomped my foot and demanded a rest. A lucky bit of foot-stomping as it turned out that I suffered a brutal hangover after the generous hospitality at Andrew & Trish's in Los Altos and Alex got a streaming cold as soon as we arrived at the campsite in Lodi. It's in an area called the Stockton Delta, it could be described as the Norfolk Broads of California, perhaps with more vineyards and soft fruit farms than you get in East Anglia. Maybe more Canal Du Midi than Great Yarmouth when you think of it. We stayed on another KOA with a pool, a big bouncer (trampoline-thingy) and lots of families with kids which meant that George and Ruby had no need or wish to go anywhere else. Ruby made friends with a local girl called Hayley who was staying at the site with her grandma
as a break during her school holidays. A film crew was in running round the campsite on the last day, making a reality programme called 'Life Swap', we had to sign disclaimers allowing them to use our image as we were caught in the background. Our second potential appearance on US TV since we've arrived here. Our RV Fire was on CBS news in Sacramento. We'll do anything for our five minutes of fame. Three nights here and we felt properly rested. We enjoyed the locally-grown apricots, nectarines and tomatoes but we passed on the wine tasting. Shame, but you can have too much of a good thing!
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Marion and Len
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On the Road Again
Hi Ya'll in America land. It's great to see that you are back on the road again. We loved the video of the toasting marshmallows. In fact I would like one please!! (Grandpop). Its far from barbcue weather here in fact, guess what??? Its raining. It even flooded in Leicester! Lots of love Nanny and Le Grande Poopy