23rd Jan – 4th Feb
Perhaps it was Vegas, perhaps it was having been on the road for five months, but I obviously ran out of steam and a little bit of enthusiasm to get these last posts done. The whole trip I have battled with being weeks behind writing about our travels, but I now find myself MONTHS in arrears. I am contrite, but now armed with a brand new laptop, which I don’t have to share, here I am, fingertips to keyboard, to fill you in on the final fortnight of Tin Can Travels-The Sequel, and our last few weeks in the USA.
As we drove away from Las Vegas, we were certain of one thing. We would be back in two weeks. Big Dave and Tin Can were booked into storage here in a brand new facility capable of storing 300 big RV buses. We would definitely be the ‘small kids on the block’. Our next date in the meantime was to be in Southern California in three days. Here we were meeting Lori again and staying with her and her parents, Rocky and Casey, at their winter-time residence in Palm Desert, a town near Palm Springs.
Our first stop on our way there was a place called Lake Havasu City, Arizona. As the name suggests it is on the shores of Lake Havasu, one of the many lakes created by the damming of the Colorado River. This place is fairly sleepy in the winter, being an affordable place for the temporary winter-escaping Snowbirds to come and quietly sit, but in Spring, Summer and Autumn it is a buzzing playground for all-comers with all types of water craft. It is best known for a bridge. Not any old bridge, but the original London Bridge.
This was purchased from the City of London by a chap called Robert McCulloch in 1962. The 1831 construction was not strong enough to cope with the increasing traffic of the day and needed replacing. McCulloch, a developer who had founded the lakeside retirement town needed a gimmick to bring in the crowds and put his town on the map. He bought the bridge which was disassembled and shipped to Arizona. The individual stones were cut thinner and used to clad a modern ‘under-structure’, retaining its original appearance. (He then on-sold the remaining stone for a considerable amount, covering most of his costs of the whole project.) The bridge was a triumph. It attracted lots of people who came to see the displaced historic British monument, who then bought the plots he had developed. We arrived here on a lovely sunny afternoon and headed to the only RV park within walking distance of the bridge. We didn’t have a booking, but luckily for us the last available site was right on the lakeshore with a stunning view. We headed into town to admire the bridge, enjoyed a couple of beers in the sun and headed home in time to catch sunset over the lake.
Our stay was short and in the morning we continued southwards to another curiosity, The Quartzsite RV show. This is a week-long expo of all things RV, co-located with a gem show, and hosts a million visitors in this time. Many of these will, of course, come in their rigs, and due to very relaxed freedom camping rules in Arizona, the scrubby desert land around the show is covered with buses, vans, trailers and campers as far as the eye can see.
We came, we queued, we parked in a dry river bed, we wandered the stalls, we window-shopped a few new trailers and apart from the junk food we had for lunch, we left without being parted from any money. We headed off before the crowds had the same idea and crossed into California to find the night’s roost, a riverside camp outside a town called Blythe. This initially seemed a questionable choice as we struggled to find a suitable pitch that we could fit into, amongst the many permanent dwellers. This was the closest we had come to ‘trailer park trash’ on this trip. Spirits were low and we were close to just driving on, but by magic, one of the premium riverside sites on the posh side of the camp suddenly became available. It was lovely. A westerly view, with much more savoury neighbours. We happily installed ourselves and grabbed a cold beer each to accompany the setting of the sun. Spirits resurrected. Magic all around!
The next day we headed off to Palm Desert and our few nights on ‘dry land’ with Lori and her parents. Rocky and Casey live in a gated retirement community complete with golf course, clubhouse, pool, gym, bar and restaurant, all beautifully manicured. The town consists almost entirely of similar communities, and the golf cart is an entirely legal form of transport, with dedicated traffic lanes. At this time of the year the weather is perfect, whereas in Seattle it is ‘challenging’. I can entirely understand why they, and hundreds of thousands of like-minded retirees, head south for the winters. The ‘enclave’ was so safe and security conscious that it took a 20 minute delay and several phone calls to be allowed in, despite Casey having been very organised and left all our details at the gatehouse. We sneeked in under the canopy of the entrance and wound our way through the maze of roads to find their place, then squeezed onto the driveway.
The Hillbilly Hampsons had arrived! Our accommodation was a cozy ensuite bedroom in a garden casita. Quite perfect! We had a lovely few days with Lori, spending our time variously with and without her folks, sitting in the sun, eating and drinking, exploring nearby Palm Springs, hiking and visiting markets. One day we took a gondola ride up the mountain above Palm Springs which gives a great view of the desert and valley. The gondola car rotated on its ascent, which was a little nauseating for me, and at the top there was still snow on the ground despite the mid 70s F temps at the bottom of the hill. This was quite exciting for the day tripping Southern Californians who don’t see much of the white stuff. Many of them were comically overdressed in snow gear and carrying flimsy plastic sledges. The sledges seemed mostly designed to only withstand the rigours of a couple of ‘runs’ before self-destructing into a hundred pieces, which, for some reason their riders then saw fit to abandon at the bottom of the slopes. The lovely hiking area up there was littered with tons of brightly coloured shards of plastic. This is behaviour that makes my blood boil… “Pick up your s*&t, People!” We finished our walk with armfuls of the broken pieces which we were able to dispose of in the dedicated ‘dead sledge’ area. Such is the size of the problem.
We bade farewell to the Rocky and Casey, hopefully long before we had overstayed our welcome, and with huge gratitude for their hospitality, and headed back East. The federal shutdown was by now suspended, and Joshua Tree National Park, which had had to be closed to protect it from destructive unsupervised visitors during the shutdown, was now open again. (There are reports that the park may take up to 350 years to recover from the damage, which includes damage to the slow-growing eponymous Joshua Trees by people that were running amok in the absence of park rangers. This also makes my blood boil. “Don’t vandalise s*&t, People!”)
We drove through the park, a little underwhelmed by the Joshua trees, but impressed by some of the characteristic rock formations and after a lunch stop north of the park, headed north along one of the most unexpectedly amazing roads of the trip. It was a like a synopsis of our whole journey in one road: deserted endless blacktop winding through miles and miles of scrubby desert plains dotted with some far more impressive Joshua trees than in the park, horizons rimmed by distant snow capped mountains, with blue skies and fluffy high cloud. A joy to travel.
Our splendid isolation ended as we approached a town called Barstow, and our unusually long day of driving ended at our night’s roost, possibly the most unusual of our stops: Peggy Sue’s 50s Diner. This was a rare ‘boon docking’ night. It was not a formal RV park, but a truck-stop. There were no services to hook up to, we were to be self sufficient for the night. This was an old fashioned 50s diner right next to a busy noisy interstate highway.
The diner piped loud 50s music out into the carpark from dawn to 9pm, and bizarrely had a dinosaur park. Across the road was an army training base where they were loading hundreds of tanks nose-to-tail onto railway carriages, all night. Massive trucks were arriving and leaving all the time. It was noisy, very noisy. But it was free, and we had ear plugs. We availed ourselves of a classic diner meal for dinner and actually slept quite well.
We had a few days in hand before we were due back in Vegas, so decided to head back through Death Valley. We found a camp on the southern border of the park that had all the pre-requisites to keep the Hampsons happy for a few days: good wifi, a view, somewhere nearby to go for a walk or cycle and a bar/restaurant/shop within walking distance. This was in a village called Shoshone. Unfortunately we were unable to take full advantage of its charms as Nick succumbed to a bout of food poisoning. We retrospectively traced this back to some elderly tomato chutney that thankfully hadn’t made into my sandwich. Suffice to say, the next two days were very miserable for him, and a test of managing to sustain sincere sympathy whilst breathing through my mouth, maintaining strict hygiene standards and tip-toeing around for me. The camper has never felt quite so small…
On day three we both emerged from the haze (literal and metaphorical) and made the final long journey of our trip back to Las Vegas. Nick was still feeling very tired and fragile, so I took the wheel and took us back to Sin City. This was a bit hairy at the end as we hit the urban highway with all its craziness of fast drivers, tailgaters and random lane changers. I am normally a passenger, so the knuckles where white on the wheel! We arrived at our final camp in north Vegas, chosen for its proximity to our storage facility and its on site bar/restaurant. We had given ourselves three nights here, plenty of time to do all the chores involved in getting everything ready to go into storage. Nick was starting to perk up as we arrived and had his first proper meal in days that evening. The camp was right next to Nellis Air Force Base, a fast jet facility. We were treated to some impressive (but very loud) low level flying displays, approaches and take offs. Very Top Gun.
The next couple of days were a slow blur of laundry, cleaning, sorting, chucking and packing. Nick retuned to his usual perky self eventually, but we never did make it to the bar. Instead we ate several of those interesting invented meals that are created only by ‘eating up’ and emptying cupboards and the fridge. Finally on the morning of the 4th Feb we headed up the road to our storage facility. On the way we put Big Dave through a commercial truck wash. This involved pulling into a large drive-thru’ shed staffed with half a dozen chaps armed with various implements like long handled brushes and industrial strength jet wash wands. It was quick, fierce, efficient and very effective at removing the last few months of road grime, and perhaps rather predictably, some of our decals. Our ‘Lance’ camper is now a ‘Lan’ camper. I have added ‘new decals’ to our list of jobs next trip.
This year’s storage is in a massive, newly built facility that had booked up fast and we were lucky to secure a space. We arrived still dripping wet, did all the necessary paperwork and paid our bill. This time we only will be away for three and a half months, so it didn’t feel such a wrench to unload our bags, book an Uber and walk away. Our flight out of Vegas wasn’t until the next day so we had booked another night on The Strip, at the MGM Grand. This was not a patch on The Venetian, but we had a lovely Chinese meal and an otherwise very ‘un-Vegas’ type of evening. We were tired and Nick not quite back to 100%. We had to save ourselves for the fun of the next ten days…