Deserts, Abysses, Storms: Sid's Trip with his Mother-in-law September 27 - 30, 2002 four days without wife, on four wheels through four states

This entry written by Sid:

I think that an arrival of a mother-in-law from overseas can stir even a more hectic household than ours. Carol had been left with no more vacation time, while my employer used its e-mail broadcast system to announce importantly every other day that we must take two weeks of forced time off by the end of every quarter, that is, by the end of September. Our annual performance reviews came up as well (yes we get those even here, in the U.S.), accompanied with rumors of approaching layoffs; besides that, my project's critical phase just culminated, while a colleague of mine, with whom the project stands and falls, has decided to move to a different workplace because of having received an unfair review; my managors in turn began suggesting that I definitely must take those mandatory days off, though I could, ehm, come to work anyway.
Well, then my mother-in-law Lída arrived.

	Carrizo Plain Natural Preserve, with Soda Lake (a dried-out salt lake) in background

From our original plan to drive out for a whole week, only double-padded, extended weekend was left -- I would rather prefer to keep my job, would I not?

Lída, fortunately, is relatively undemanding, used to common inconveniences of traveling, and stays physically fit -- to tell the truth -- more than both Carol and I together. So the problem was not as much how not to tire my mother-in-law, than what to find for her to do so that she would be athletically challenged. There was no issue with her diet either; as long there is some yogurt and lettuce, she's basically happy (it gets worse if those ingredients become less available).

	A thistle has ripened

And so on Friday morning we left Carol and our house, heading towards our first attraction: Carrizo Plain Natural Preserve, also mentioned in our Journals before as California Valley. I had literally thousands of miles behind the wheel ahead of me -- Lída lives in downtown Prague and does not need driving skills, therefore she could not take turns with me. Five hours later, we passed through deserted parts of Southern California east of Paso Robles and I could not quite spot the "dead skunk gulch" where our Wagon gave up the other day -- curves on Highway 58 looked all the same.

Soda Lake, a small salt lake at the bottom of the prairie valley, with San Andreas Fault, our source of earthquakes, running along its eastern rim, was all dried out now at the end of summer. Lída got apparently more impressed by a peculiar landscape near Mckittrick, where oil is heavily drilled for. Sand dunes are beset with swaying pumps, a crude, slimy liquid flowed in one of many trenches. Seems like some pipe had burst there somewhere.

	A train! A train! Famous railroad loop near Tehachapi

Oil field desert turned into cotton fields when we entered San Joaquim Valley, continuing over Bakersfield into Tehachapi Pass. A railroad loop there is guaranteed to impress any European or American tourist, especially if a train is going through it, with engines passing over its tail (that is not too rare as one goes every some 40 minutes). If a train is not currently coming, one can always wait a bit and enjoy the scenery with landscape that is amazing in every season of the year. I would actually say that low January clouds and creepy cold fits here best. We still caught a brisk autumn shining with the gold of hay; and we caught a train, too, by driving really fast on this side road (fortunately for us, the train slows down and curls before it enters the loop, hence we made it to a hill). Admiring the landscape came after the train. Strange fifteen feet tall blossoms of some desert thistle had ripened here, producing black seed when shaken, which looked like charcoal pills. I did not try them out, though.

	Zion National Park, Utah My mother-in-law, balancing on the edge of an abyss...

We reached Barstow, CA by sunset. A crummy looking, yet very tasty Thai food serving Golden Dragon is our favorite restaurant there. The place has gone through several owners and crew since I've known it, but the food remains good and does not appear to vary, although this time again the owner swore that the cook, too, was new; happy you like it, thank you vely much, come again.

Then I just drove and drove and drove through a pitch black desert, through Las Vegas, NV, across a northwest corner of Arizona, on to Utah. I did not, naturally, get any fresher, but I just could not bear the idea to ditch my mother-in-law somewhere in a desert, especially since Carol reserved us a wonderful room in a hotel right next to the Zion National Park. We arrived shortly after midnight, which amounted to nine hours of driving. It was quarter past one in Utah, though. Umph.

	Angels Landing, Zion National Park, Utah So this is where angels hit .. and lightning!

During Christmas 2000, when Carol and I visited Zion together, there were so few tourists there that they let us drive our Wagon right into the park. With Lída, we had to take a bus (fortunately it goes frequently and for free), first to the entrance and then another through Zion's monumental valley, visiting Court of Patriarchs and getting off at Grotto stop, where I had planned a hike for us. Angels Landing, a rocky cliff extending into the middle of a huge canyon, is easily accessible for people that are both physically and mentally fit. One gets there over a neck-breaking trail atop a rock wall that is 1,500 feet high (a double-sided abyss). It's an ideal spot for stroll with a mother-in-law, right? Well, I could barely keep up with her.

	Zion National Park, Utah 1,500 feet below, you can see two buses with trailers on a road; that's how we got here.

On Scout Lookout at 3/4 of the ascent, tourists were amassing, but they fled hastily as a thunderstorm entered the park valley. In fact, sandstone in rain became a bit more slippery, and because Angels Landing is a relatively high spot, all those steel chains that pilgrims normally like to hold on to while scaling the edge over the abyss, became excellent conductors for possible lightning; yet we still went up. Our reward was a breathtaking view and refreshing absence of crowds. For some reason Lída did not quite mind the drop-off by itself as much as that I've been unafraid to walk/sit/take pictures right at the very edge of it. Funny; her daughter had made the same worried gestures and yelps here two years ago.

Going down again, I started feeling quite strongly all the hours of my driving marathon of the previous day, so I let my nice mother-in-law loose in the park, while I went back to our hotel, where I had succeeded to reserve our room for another night. We separately took advantage of the park bus service, which fits well into the Zion's topology.

	Badwater, Death Valley, California Lowest dry spot on Earth (280 feet below sea level)

Although Lída announced that she was interested in nature and did not care to explore western culture, having said goodbye to Zion, I took her anyway to a short visit in Las Vegas. It matched our lunch time and we simply entered one of hundreds of casinos there, where it is said an inexpensive self-served buffet lunch was to be had. My previous experience got reconfirmed: this popular "wisdom" does not elaborate that "inexpensive" means about $18 per person in Vegas, which is about double the usual lunch price in Silicon Valley that otherwise passes as an expensive area. Perhaps it is meant to relate to a waiter-served lunch, costing $50 per person in the same casino, and this amount represents the baseline of said "wisdom".

	Devil's Golf Course, Death Valley, CA

Eventually my mother-in-law assembled a complicated salad, and had seen a casino from inside. As many a Czech before, she was surprised by the perceived popularity of offered attractions, for all the halls overflow with crowds of all ages, who don't do anything else but spend money at various rates, while not receiving anything perceptible in return. One does, after all, expect that from a casino, but Lída admitted that she also had expected to be greeted by a smooth, uniformed croupier, who would personally introduce us to the parties already present. I'd like to see such arrangement for several thousand people in every casino floor. Similar establishments in Czech Republic (I had never been to any there) must be much more personal and intimate -- and one pays admission there. On the other hand I am quite convinced that if my mother-in-law pulled out a thick wad of hundred dollar bills, demanding personal service, she would immediately enjoy attention of several smooth, uniformed employees ready to perform. Alas, she did not pull out any notes, and so we left the city of sin, driving away into the desert again.

	Big Sur Coast, California

Half way between Las Vegas and Death Valley, Lída stepped out for a moment to take a picture of a wasteland, when our Wagon got sick and started boiling, though it was not low on cooler water. It turned out that it could not handle idling -- and it was not even hot outside, only the air was very dry and did not conduct heat well, I guess. I'm not really sure if I managed to explain to Lída that it seemed better, here on a Sunday afternoon, 50 miles from civilization, to try letting the engine cool down and driving on. Consider the alternative: accompanied by a frightened and upset mother-in-law, I would search for a car mechanic in an Indian reservation. In the middle of a desert. On Sunday. The engine eventually cooled down, and we drove on.

	Gimme some chow, fatso!

Troubles with our wagon disturbed my equilibrium, and so I took a wrong, early turn; with Carol, we usually drive through unknown parts with our GPS and electronic map on. My mistake added a dozen miles of detour, but we entered the actual Death Valley on a road, which was new even for me, and which goes by the lowest (dry) spot on Earth, Badwater. Then we roamed through beautiful, colorful desert, reaching incredibly illuminated mining machinery of Trona after dark.

Or last trip day started again at Tehachapi, but we omitted trains and enjoyed the landscape by Caliente instead. It surprised me how vehemently Lída would simply not believe me that all those horizontal bands that "decorate" almost all grassy hill in California and elsewhere in the States, come from cows -- close-up, they're common irregular paths trodden by generations of cattle. I had to find her some cows that walk on hills (of course all would suddenly gather in flat spots to graze), plus some hills with fences limiting cattle only to certain parts; those would be the banded ones. Discussing these important issues, we arrived at the ocean shores, to the famous Highway 1.

	San Simeon Beach, California

Between San Simeon and Monterey, about 75 miles of huge steep cliffs run into the Pacific Ocean. A road winds along their curves, on which thousands of motorists speed and stop to take pictures of the scenery. It's a long stretch, though, and so they're well spaced out, causing only infrequent jams. Several places offer small natural sandy beaches among big rocks; Lída did not hesitate to wade through an icy surf for quite some time, until she had to change her wet trousers. An unexpected couple of military helicopters flew over the sea, reminding us after four days, of war preparations in the civilized world, to which we humbly returned by the evening.

Copyright © 2002-2005 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.