Category: Stories From the Road

In the panhandle of Texas (and some other areas of the Southwest), I drove through towns where it was hard to tell which businesses were open and which had been long abandoned- both were crumbling to the ground. Towns looked like salvage yards, with buildings sagging, barns collapsing, metal water tanks disintegrating. A vintage pickup truck, the paint long gone, the body pure rust, might be settled on someone’s front lawn. The photographer in me itched to jump out and take pictures, but I wasn’t going to treat people’s homes and yards like a freak show. And I didn’t want to get shot.  

I’ve seen plenty of areas around the country that look like scrapyards- houses dirty and in need of repair, yards like trash heaps, sometimes graced with the classic toilet-bowl-turned-flowerpot outdoor decor. Although run-down, the houses still look inhabited. There’s something about the arid landscape of the Southwest that made those Texas cities look like ghost towns. Like not only had a few boards disappeared from the shed, and the paint had flaked off the Studebaker, but even the plants had left town. Part of the shock was seeing people running errands and going about their day in what looked to be a ghost town or movie set.  

I also noticed that people there seemed especially nice. It was refreshing to think that whoever lived there must not waste much concern over appearances or keeping up with the Joneses. Unless there was competition around owning the rustiest vintage car. 

I blindly chose a campground in Tecopa, CA, as a destination for the night. It wasn’t until I got there that I learned the water is undrinkable. In the whole town. My campground offered free showers and soaking pools for visitors, taking advantage of the spa-like qualities of the water: its naturally hot temperature and high mineral content. However, the high content of arsenic and other minerals makes it unsafe for ingesting. I can’t imagine living in a town -especially a desert town- where you can’t drink the water. It’s bad enough hearing stories about cities like Flint, MI, where the water becomes contaminated. But who would knowingly move to a town where the water is inherently undrinkable from the get-go?  

The Visitor’s Center in Calumet, MI, was also a National Historic Park filled with exhibits detailing the era when Calumet was a boom mining town. This would have been around the time of the Wild West, only it was the Wild Midwest. One of the displays listed crimes committed back in the late 1800s to early 1900s and the punishments that criminals received for them. For example, killing a baby was punishable by a certain number of days or months in jail. I don’t remember the number, but let’s say it was 68 days. [I’ve wanted to contact the museum for specifics, but it has been closed since the coronavirus lockdown in early 2020.] Whatever the number was, it was shocking- but also understandable. It’s interesting to see how crimes were ranked and dealt with when there simply wasn’t space to hold criminals or law enforcement officers to look after them.  

A question I got asked when I visited my hometown during my yearlong road trip of the country was, “What surprised you?” or “What were the most surprising things?” I tend to keep to myself, and I don’t seem to get involved in nutty situations the way some people do, so bizarre situations were rare. But a few things did surprise me.  

In Arizona, I drove through U.S. Border Patrol. When it was my turn, I rolled down my window and a police officer asked me, “U.S.citizen?” I answered, “Yeah.” “Have a nice day,” he said, and motioned me to drive ahead. That’s it? They didn’t want to see any proof? They didn’t want to open my trunk to look for stowaways? They didn’t want to search my car for contraband? I’m not complaining. It was convenient that the interaction went so quickly. But it surprised me how minimal the screening was. I’m in favor of immigration- don’t get me wrong- it just seemed like, What’s the point?  

During my long road trip, I spent one night camping at Monahans Sandhills State Park in Texas. I knew that there would be sand dunes. However, being from an area mostly devoid of sand dunes, I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the wind. It felt like a tornado was coming.  

I’m pretty sure I was the only fool attempting to camp there without an RV. Normally, when I got to my campsite, I’d immediately go into camp set-up mode. I had figured out the most efficient way to set up my tent, and had the order of each step memorized, so I was like a machine on autopilot. [At a different campground, another camper approached me once and said, “I just wanted to tell you I appreciate how quickly you set up your tent.”]  

Here, I had to think first and plan all the steps in advance to prevent my tent from flying away. I took almost everything out of my car- plastic storage bins containing all of my belongings, gallons of water, my backpack, and used them all as weights to lay on top of the folded tent. As I unfolded each section, I had to move some of the bins and belongings to keep the new piece in place before moving on to another section. Next, I tried hammering my tent stakes into the sand. That was basically a joke. Then I moved each of the weights inside the tent, one at a time, marking the corners and edges as best I could before inserting the poles for structure and raising the top.  

After exploring the dunes and eating dinner, I got ready for bed. It was such a strange feeling, laying in the tent with all this other junk that took up all of the floor space not covered by my sleeping bag. It was like living in a camping version of the show Hoarders.  

The top half of my tent was made of mesh- what’s basically a “window” in a tent. A rain fly stretched over the top, but instead of following the contour of the tent, it splayed out farther, creating a tiny “vestibule” area on each side of the tent, in front of its zippered “doors”.  

The wind blew in gusts all night long, like waves, like breathing. It carried sand with it, sand that swept under the rain fly, through the mesh, and rained inside the tent all night long. 

In the middle of the night, I had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t take my camera with me, but it was the one occasion I wish I had.  

On the floor in the women’s bathroom sat the craziest insect I’ve ever seen in real life. It was about two inches long and an inch thick- around the size of a meaty adult thumb, and peach-colored, except for a yellow-and-black-striped, teardrop-shaped section toward its back end. It looked like a cross between the alien in the movie Spaceballs and a honeybee. It pretty much sat still, so I did what I came to do and hightailed it out of there.  

On the walk back to my campsite, my flashlight landed on something near my tent. What was it? A large stone? I leaned in to get a better look, and it moved! A toad! The most gigantic toad I’ve ever seen! It looked dusty, the same color as the dunes. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t want to scare it by reaching close to it, or have it get trapped in the vestibule if I unzipped the tent, so I just stood there, and we stared at each other for a minute in the warm summer wind until the toad hopped away.  

Here’s how much I like being clean: the next morning, in the corner of the campground shower, lay a glossy black scorpion. It was maybe an inch in size. It wasn’t moving. I turned on the shower, and it still didn’t move. I always wore flip-flops in public showers, and I figured, well, there’s some protection, at least, if it does get near me. I took a shower, making sure to stay away from that corner, and kept an eye on the scorpion. I never saw it move.  

I had the job of taking down my tent in reverse of the way I had set it up, trying to shake as much sand out of it while the wind simultaneously tried yanking it away.  

On my way out, I stopped in the ranger’s station. “I saw the craziest bug last night…” Before I even described it, the ranger said he could guess what it was and handed me a photo of the alien bug. “Is this it?” “YES!” It turned out to be a Jerusalem cricket, sometimes called Child of the Earth. This was no child of the earth.  

Another sand dune range in a different state was on my trip list, but after spending the night in Monahans, I had a “been there, done that” attitude. Now that some time has passed, I feel like I could brave the sand again, but this time with a different agenda. I’d grab my flashlight and camera and go on a night hike to find out what kind of nocturnal creatures gambol on the dunes.  

While I was on my year-long trip, I discovered something I like better than movies: planetarium shows.  

It’s similar to a movie in that you buy a ticket, walk into a roomful of padded chairs, sit back, the lights are turned down, and all you have to do is watch and listen. Or space out (no pun intended).  

The presentations that appeal to me most are the ones titled something like “Tonight’s Sky.” The shows weave together astronomy, history, ancient civilizations, mythology, chemistry, and other subjects. And I always learn something. The presenters point out a feature to locate after you leave the show, such as a planet, constellation, or meteor shower. So when you leave the planetarium, your involvement with astronomy isn’t over; you now have a task, which involves spending time outside and finding the item that was discussed. 

Some presenters speak in soft, soothing voices that lull you into a relaxed, dreamlike state, which in itself is worth the price of admission. Others have rich dramatic voices that express the theatrics of the myths and the wonder of modern space exploration.  

Because it’s live, each show is slightly different. There’s is also an immediacy from a live show that’s lacking in a recorded film.  

I find the information and stories interesting, but at the same time, I don’t care enough about the topics to study and find all that information on my own. I appreciate that someone else has done the leg work and pieced the highlights together in a fascinating and entertaining way.  

If or when public attractions open again, I’m looking forward to taking a journey to the stars.