But as for the last miles of my trip . . . . .
It was almost dark by the time I left Harris Ranch, fortified with a fresh coffee and a snack. I felt tired, but not sleepy, nothing like the dreadful condition I’d been in the previous night. Hard to believe I’d had only a few hours of not so great sleep after that and still felt pretty good. Coffee, food, and breaking up the last few hundred miles was the key. Also, being so close to the end. Part of me didn’t want the trip to end yet. It had turned into such an epic adventure. But the larger part of me was tired and just wanted to get home with the trailer still attached and no major disasters.
Back on Highway 5, heading north, this section of straight highway through the Central Valley was familiar to me, and seemed even more so after all the far places I’d been. Although, one thing I’d discovered on this trip: far places can certainly be different than home, but there is a universality to the North American continent, to the hemisphere, to the planet (I now believe). I found more that reminded me of home, in its way, than I found the opposite. Perhaps it has something to do with the way California has so many different kinds of climate and landscape. People not from here may be under the impression that it is all sunshine and beaches, but it’s not. The vast wide prairie reminded me of nothing so much as my own home state’s Central Valley. The Sand Hills of Nebraska reminded me of gently rolling hills I’d driven through in California, and deserts, though each has its own unique character and flavor, all have the essential, familiar desert nature about them that makes them instantly recognizable, more as a feeling than anything else.
But still, this was home, or near enough to it that I could smell it from here. Perhaps not the precise corner of home that I wanted to stake out for myself, but home nonetheless, where family waited, and friends who had been following along with good wishes waited. Home as a region, as a section of country, where the details and specifics can always be worked out with time and the help of a Higher Power.
Stuck in the slow lane and being beaten up by a road torn up by trucks, I had to laugh at the way I’d dissed other states’ crappy roads. It made me think wistfully of the smooth, well maintained roads of Nevada. But on my left, rounded mountains were drawing closer the farther north I went. It seemed hardly any time at all before I was approaching the junction of 152. These are the Diablo Mountains, and they’d been pacing me for many miles, running as they do along the western edge of the big Valley. We often call them hills because of their deceptively round and maternal curves. But they are a mountain range, part of the collection of California Coast Ranges, with a few high peaks that range up to just over 5000 feet in the case of San Benito Mountain. If you come from a place where the green lasts through spring and well into summer, you might be put off by the brown of these slopes, which is oak woodland and chaparral and most of the year is what less optimistic persons would call dull brown and hopeful ones call tawny and gold. The truth is they are an endless range of colors, and if you love these hills you see them in their best light and don’t think of them as dry or dead. To me they have always been as Kenny described the Chocolate Mountains in Imperial County, hundreds of miles away at the southern end of the state: “I’ll tell you what, no matter how many times you look at them . . .” And I finished the sentence because I knew what he meant: “They never look the same.”
I couldn’t see them too well until I turned onto 152, which cuts through near Los Banos and follows the Pacheco Pass to Gilroy. The moon, a misshapen lump the night before, was moving toward fullness. It would be a big moon in a couple of nights, the biggest of the year, but already it was putting out a lot of light and appeared larger than usual, hanging low in the sky. Its light fell over this eastern face of the Diablos, making them visible and really quite beautiful. A great sense of comfort and homecoming filled me. This journey was almost done.
152 winds through Pacheco Pass as a four lane highway, not terribly challenging as twisty highways go, but I had my first white knuckle moment as I approached a downhill section that had a sharp curve at the bottom. I wasn’t quite expecting it and though I was keeping to a very conservative speed, for this little stretch I realized I was going faster than I should have, especially without trailer brakes. No disaster ensued, but I sharpened up my attention and was even more careful after that.
Casa de Fruta was coming up, and I had it earmarked as a stopping point if I needed one. Most everybody who has traveled from Northern California down to the southern part of the state using 152 to access Highway 5 has stopped at Casa de Fruta. It’s a large roadside establishment, built on what was once just a welcoming, good-vibed place with a big artesian well. Italian immigrants began farming there and sold fruit in a roadside stand, eventually adding gas station, restaurant and a rideable miniature railroad and playground for children. Today it’s an RV park, motel, restaurant, gas station, and shops selling local produce, gifty items and candy. They’ve still got the train and also a carousel. It’s a beautiful piece of land, filled with a naturally peaceful, happy feeling, set about with antique farm equipment, rustic décor and beautiful trees. Some years ago one of the biggest and best of the local powwows was held at the back of the property, on the other side of a little creek in a pasture just under the rise of low hills dotted with oaks. I had some wonderful times attending that powwow, camping in my small tipi on the hills overlooking the powwow arena amid the oaks and meeting friends I only ever saw at powwow. Sadly, that event is no more, and now they hold the Renaissance Faire in its place.
It’s been twenty years since I stayed at the motel, which I remember as being basic but serviceable, and I’ve never used the RV facilities, though friends have. It’s a very pretty place, and worth at least a quick stop if you need a potty break and a chance to get out and stretch your legs. It has its element of cheese, like all roadside attractions, but it is so overlain with the mellow beauty of the surroundings and the native peace even the area’s earliest indian inhabitants noted that I can easily overlook its flaws. If you are traveling in either direction along 152 and looking for a paid RV campground, you could do worse than Casa de Fruta.
I was so close to home at this point and so not in need of a stop that I just kept going. It felt like stopping this close to the end would be pointless.
Past the exit for Casa de Fruta, 152 shrinks to an undivided two-lane highway, narrowing considerably. They used to call this stretch Blood Alley, because of the many head-on collisions. My second white-knuckle moment came as I was negotiating a curve around a k-rail that had been thrown up around some damn piece of roadwork that WAS THERE LAST JANUARY! Dealing with rough road, trailer sway, and a narrow lane, I had quite enough to handle without the eighteen-wheeler coming at me in the opposite direction. It was not a pleasant moment, punctuated by a number of oh shits, but nobody died. I had folks stacked up behind me but nowhere to pull off and no passing lane, which was just too damn bad. I really couldn’t go 55, the best I could manage was 45. One driver couldn’t stand it and barely squeaked around me on the right, passing over the double yellow line seconds before oncoming traffic closed the gap. Of over 2,500 miles of towing, that was probably the hairiest stretch, and I was nearly home. I guess it was to keep the last bit from being boring.
At last the road opened up in Gilroy, and the freeway entrance to good ‘ol 101 was right there, and I was getting on it, and heading north over very familiar roadway, and the last miles were flying beneath Kadydid and the Goose’s wings, and it was so odd to be driving the route I take to work, familiar (if not beloved) landmarks rising up in the midst of Silicon Valley, a once beautiful valley where they put up a giant parking lot.
Off the freeway now, taking the curving road, past a place where I’d seen a little Aristocrat Lo-Liner parked for months and thought (briefly) of trying to find the owner and offering to buy it, it was so adorable and looking so sadly neglected, but I’m glad I didn’t because the reason for all the waiting, months that stretched to two years, was towing along behind me, at last, at last, like a dream, with her running lights glowing and her jostle that bounced Goose on the bumps. I looked back at her in the mirror, hardly believing it was real, and saw a cop following me.
I should say I never did anything about getting a tow permit, and I hauled KD across two-thirds of the country with no plates and no permit. Not a single cop bothered me. I should say that hundreds of drivers ( most of them truckers) probably raised their blood pressure and gnawed their fingers and gritted their teeth, stuck behind the frumpy trio of a pudgy mountain girl driving an aging Suburban pulling a beat old camper trailer, puttering along at well under the speed limit. But none of them flipped me off or yelled out their windows or (with perhaps only two exceptions) cut me off.
I wonder if this cop is going to put his lights on me any second, demand to know where my plates are. I suddenly think that would be hilarious. I think to myself, I’ve just driven five-thousand miles, half of them pulling a trailer I was terrified to tow. I have climbed mountains and visited landscapes that only existed in the imagination. I have been brokedown by the side of the road a thousand miles from home, rescued by angels of the road. I have gone past the invisible gate of my known universe, driving into the heart of a country I belong to but have never seen. I have walked boldly into tiny western town saloons and dared to order cheese sandwiches! I have braved humidity, dodged hailstorms, slept in truck stops, met oh-so-many people! Threaded my way through toll booths and gotten jacked up and lost in downtown St. Louis—while pulling a trailer! I have looked into eyes that have survived death by the grace of God, a set of cement steps and a household appliance. I have looked at a trailer I had the foolishness to want and to buy, trembling as it was hooked up to my truck at the realization that now I was going to have to tow it home, and heeded the silent, laughing words of my especial angel and guide who let out a great cosmic HAH! and said GET ON YOUR PONY AND RIDE! I have driven through the darkness of a terrible, sleepless night, the sleeve of an old trucker’s ratty fleece coat clutched in my hand for comfort, talking to a stuffed bear to keep awake.
I am invincible. I cannot be defeated.
I resolve to ignore the cop even if he puts his lights on. There’s nowhere to pull over and he can follow me home if he wants to chat. Which is just what he does, though he never puts his lights on.
I turn down my street, and there is a whole forest of
cops. A welcoming party! Oh, you shouldn’t have! A simple card would have been sufficient, no
need to break out the keys to the city!
Of course the cops are not interested in me, they have no
idea I’ve just completed one of the world’s grandest cross-country treks, the
journey of a lifetime, a utilitarian errand that became a vision-quest. They are here to arrest one of the neighbors
for some transgression, and nobody wants to be left out of the excitement,
never mind that the rest of the town is now bereft of police protection.
I pull past about a dozen assorted cop vehicles, double park
in front of the house with the engine running, and call the Home Office on the
cell phone.
“It’s me. I’m home!”
“It’s me. I’m home!”
