The Color Green

Leaving the desert for the California Coast

We left Death Valley and drove 350 miles to the California coast. Stayed at a KOA campground to use the wifi, take showers, recharge batteries, do laundry, and take on water. That has been our usual pattern—4 days dry camping then a day at an RV park and a trip to a grocery store.

We saw parts of the country we have never seen before on this drive, some very beautiful areas. And some to which we will return sometime and camp. I didn’t know that the kinds of some of the roads we took even existed. On one long stretch we hardly saw another vehicle.

We didn’t make the best time. Because we were unfamiliar with the roads, we took a route where we went over four mountain passes—and none were on interstate or divided highways. We frequently had miles of severe switchbacks, necessitating some slow, and careful, driving. I had to be very mindful about the brakes. We learned on the road to Wild Rose Campground that using the brakes as I normally would in a vehicle results in some overheating. Stopping all of that weight is a challenge for even this heavy duty vehicle.

This is a place to mention that we have decided we eventually will probably need a different camper. We love our old fella, but it is heavy and we want to be more nimble. We want a smaller, lighter camper. Older ones were made with wood frames—newer ones are aluminum. We are not RV Resorts type of people. We are campgrounds people, and so need to be able to negotiate tight mountain passes and, on occasion, travel on bad roads to easily get to the campgrounds we want.

We are also looking ahead to the day when we might be able to take extended trips with grandsons, and so need a camper that has been set up to accommodate other sleepers comfortably. Ours is only so-so in this regard, and won’t be workable when the boys are a little older and larger.

Further, we want a camper that can easily be detached from the pickup, so we can drive the pickup to hiking trailheads that might be at the end of rough roads. Driving on these roads with the camper on the pickup is hard on both the camper and the pickup.

We bought this 1970 Chinook camper cheap, with the idea that the only way to learn about what you want is to try something out and see, and it has done that for us. We now know exactly what we need for our lifestyle, and for how we want to use a camper.

We won't be in any hurry to get another one because this one works very well for us. We’ve put almost 6000 miles on this camper, without any difficulties. Neither of us has found ourselves complaining about anything. Only the pickup complains.

One thing we like about our camper is that it is, frankly, cool. It looks different from any other camper we have seen, and is much older than anything else we have seen on the road or at campgrounds. We get a lot of compliments and appreciative comments. It is still going strong because of one unique design feature—a one-piece fiberglass roof which means there are no roof seams to leak. It is also what gives it its rounded look, instead of the square look most campers and trailers have.

Back to our trip: We left Mesquite Springs about 9:00 a.m. and drove through Stovepipe Wells on our way out of Death Valley over the Cottonwood Mountains. That road is now very familiar to us. The summit is about a mile high, starting from below sea level. Our first of many ascents that day. And the first of many road signs showing trucks going down severe grades (one we saw was a 9% grade! I had never seen one that steep).

This was the route taken by some early 49ers who had a disastrous trip to California—in fact Death Valley was named by them, or so the story goes. They took a short-cut through Death Valley, and had a horrible time making it to California. One of them apparently said: “that was a Death Valley.”

Driving their route one has to wonder who these people were. They must have been so tough and hardy, so different from how people are now.

Before they went through this mountain pass that we drove so easily, they butchered their oxen and started carrying their belongings and food. There was no pass. Unimaginable.

After getting through the Cottonwood Mountains we headed south through the Panamint Valley. It was stark, naked, and lonely. That was about the easiest section of the trip. We can see why those families headed in this direction after they crossed the mountains—it looked flat and so much easier than where they had been.

And staring them in the face to the west was the Sierra Mountains range that looked impassable, I’m sure.

Along this area is apparently where the wild burros live that are in Death Valley. They are descendants of burros that escaped from miners or were released by them. For some years they were left alone, and too many reproduced, affecting the natural ecology. According to the brochure we read, now their numbers are around 100 from over 3000 (but the brochure wisely omitted saying how this reduction was achieved, but we think we know).

We went through Trona, CA, which looks to be a huge mineral company instead of a town. I am glad people have jobs, but what a place to live. We tried to imagine it in the middle of the hot summer.

Yet, as desolate and colorless as it looked, one could see inklings of city pride. There was a multiuse trail running along the road—not long, and much of it covered by blowing sand. An occasional park bench.

And in the middle of town, a small park labeled a rest area with a restroom. That was appreciated.

Then we went through Ridgecrest, as did those pioneers, and followed their trail over Walker Pass.

But here our routes diverged—they went south to the Mojave Desert Plateau, and we went straight west over the Greenhorn Mountains—another winding, difficult pass. We saw a lot of beauty here, and also something unfamiliar—a color we had forgotten had existed: Green. It’s kind of a pretty color, actually.

Our route took us to Lake Isabella.

Then we had a beautiful drive through the narrows along the canyon where, once again, I spent a lot of time in second gear, and pulling over at pullouts to allow traffic behind me to pass. Lots of twisting and turning. And watching the brakes. And listening to our pickup complain about wanting our camper to be lighter. Someone needs to tell it to shut up and just do its job.

Then we arrived! We turned a corner on the mountain pass and there was……Bakersfield. Totally flat. Stoplights. Strip malls. Left turn lanes. The town Johnny Carson made fun of on the Tonight Show. Yes sir. He was right. It’s a town…..in California.

We drove through it. And then made a strategic error that I’m sure was even worse than any of those made by those 49ers: We took the most direct route to Lake Margarita. We soon found that this route once again was over a mountain pass with many severe switchbacks, the most severe we had encountered. If we had known, we could have taken a northern route which was a bit longer but which didn’t have the rapid ascents and descents of the route we took.

This was the Temblor Range, and it was desolate. A small road with a ton of hairpin turns, some more than 180 degrees, and ascending steeply at the same time. Often without guard rails to guard against falling off of sheer cliffs. Vicky kept very quiet the entire time so I could concentrate. This was our third mountain range.

After several miles, the road went by one of the Los Padres National Forest’s areas, but we couldn’t get into the park because the road was gravel and we were not prepared to travel on it, and so obviously couldn’t spend the night there. Someday, if we get a smaller camper, we will.

Instead, we went around the north side of the Park. Some of the valleys were very beautiful. It looked like a place many people would want to live. This was our fourth mountain range--by far the easiest.

This led us to Lake Santa Margarita.

After recharging at the KOA, we headed back to the old reliable—a National Park. Another area that was part of the Los Padres National Park, this one close to the California coast.

We found a good camping spot, and headed off for the hike that left from the campground.

It was a hard hike, although fun and beautiful. 6 miles with 1800 elevation gain. The views of the California coast were breathtaking. Even with all of the hiking and biking we had done in the past 2 ½ months, our legs were sore for a few days. But we made it to the top.