Days 14 - 17 - Palm Springs CA to Amelia Island FL

Whoa... what a blur.

For those of you following the blog who thought "I wonder if Mike ever made it home?", well... thank you.  For those of you following the blog who didn't wonder that.... well... thank you.  

Sarcasm doesn't translate well into the written medium. 

Tuesday (Day 14) started in beautiful Palm Springs. As Angela had a 1pm flight home, we had some more time to explore the city. The weather is absolutely perfect. This time of year, the local TV weatherman has a tough job.  He has to say "Today will be sunny with a high of 82" or "Today will be sunny with a high of 84".

We drove around some neighborhoods and walked others. Every street is perfectly clean with well-manicured lawns. Block after block is impeccable. Even the RV park, which is behind a wall (like a very exclusive neighborhood) and has a championship golf course. I am a huge fan of mid-century modern architecture and Palm Springs is its epicenter.  

The bizarre part is that we are in the middle of a desert. This is a shot of an empty lot near these gorgeous homes.

You quickly appreciate the town's (and the whole area's) dependence on water that comes from elsewhere.

Every trip has to end, and for Angela the return home began today. I dropped her at the Palm Springs airport at 11:30am... hating to see her go. She's been so much fun; a good driver (very good. - but not as good as me); and a very competent navigator, which is strange given that she is directionally challenged. I was going to miss her tremendously. And it turns out that she was my good luck charm.

To get back to Florida, the most direct route is simply I-10. It runs right outside of Palm Springs and ends in Jacksonville FL - just 45 minutes from our home. However, I wasn't quite ready to hop on the interstate. I had been on this section of I-10 three times before (once on the drive out and twice on the bike rides) and I wanted to see something new. Furthermore, there had been a tremendous accident on east-bound I-10 just east of Palm Springs the previous day involving two semi-tractor trailer trucks. One was carrying frozen chicken and the other was transporting millions of bees. Local news sent a reporter to the crash site wearing a bee-keeper outfit; updates kept coming throughout the evening on the clean-up and efforts to get the bees back to their hives. The USA Today headline was "Frozen chicken barbecued in truck crash as bees swarm". It closed that section of the interstate, and I was concerned about residual effects (like what? - I'm not sure if it was traffic or honey on the road or swarming bees or what - but I didn't want to chance it).

From USA Today

I first headed east from the airport along State Road 111 - the main drag. My memory from the previous bike trips is a bit cloudy, because I don't recall it taking this long to get into the countryside. As I look back now, I see that we biked out on roads through neighborhoods - not the busy main road with all of its traffic lights.  It took me well over an hour to get out of Palm Springs and the various smaller (but similar) towns east of it. Each one of them slightly less glamorous than the previous. And then you hit the farming area - citrus fruit, broccoli, grapes, dates, and so on. So productive and green; and a complete contradiction laid out next to the arid desert.

I took this route because I specifically wanted to see the Salton Sea - an absolutely otherworldly body of water in the middle of the desert that is about 250' below sea level and covers an area roughly one-fourth of the size of Rhode Island. The truly amazing fact of the sea is that it was formed about 100 years ago purely by accident. The short story is that the engineers of the California Development Company were bringing in water from the Colorado River for irrigation purposes and things got out of hand.  The sea was formed over a two year period as work was performed to stop the flow of water.

As a side note, I am one of those people who subscribe to the belief that Rhode Island is a state solely so that we may have a reference scale for really big crap like huge icebergs, asteroids and celebrity egos. They get two senators - really? I will stop before I upset my friends from RI any more.

Back to the Salton Sea. It is very salty. More so than the ocean, but less than the Great Salt Lake in Utah. In addition to being very salty, fertilizer runoff from irrigation farming makes life in the sea nearly impossible. There were several resort towns along the sea, but inconsistent water levels, algal blooms and dead fish have apparently killed tourism. I stopped at one of these towns, Desert Shores, and the it was a post-apocalyptic setting.

It was empty buildings and trailers. It appeared that there were some mobile homes with occupants - perhaps zombies. I wanted to actually walk up to the lake, but there is a chain linked fence with "No Trespassing" signs all around it. I could easily smell the sea - it wasn't bad... just that salty ocean smell.

And despite its promise of Color TV by RCA, the Sea & Sun Motel had limited visitors (but there appeared to be someone there). I wonder when was the last time the No Vacancy sign was lit.

You could not have picked a more polar opposite town for Palm Springs. Even the fire station was boarded up and chained shut - with the old fire truck still inside. I wanted to drive through the empty streets and take more pictures. I wanted to find out the story of the town. If the flow of water stopped in Palm Springs, would it eventually look like this? I was fascinated with Desert Shores. But, I needed to be getting on the road.

The Ghia loves southern California (apart from the freeways, which it hates) and southern California loves the Ghia (the freeways have no feelings one way or the other). With this weather, driving with the windows down is perfect - and somehow quieter than driving with the windows up.  People wave, take pictures and ask questions. At one gas station, I had a guy stare at it for a full minute and then simply say "It is beautiful".

The starter problems had gone away. I stopped dozens of time during the day, and it fired right up every time. On these state roads, I was buzzing along at 55-60mph - not in a huge hurry yet.

The empty desert is home to off-roading and the state of California makes it easy to take advantage of the desolate landscape. 

There were numerous entry points like this all along the highway. This is why you have a 4x4 or an ATV or a dirt bike.

I finally reached I-8, which runs from San Diego to just west of Tucson where I-10 drops down to join it. I had gotten to the point where you can't go any further south without a passport. Driving along I-8, you can see the big black fence that separates the US from Mexico. In some instances, it is just a few hundred yards away. It is also along this stretch that you see the big dunes of the desert.

These parts of the desert are also open to off-road vehicles, as evidenced by the tire tracks.

I was heading east along I-8 - beautiful, open scenery.  Just nothingness in all directions. Once again, I came along an RV "park". The pic below is not great, but it gives an idea of where RVs will set up for the winter. I was somewhat oblivious to the whole RV culture. While it is not something that I would like to do, I can start to see its appeal. After checking into and out of hotels for two weeks, having your beds and change of clothes right behind the driver's seat has a certain attraction. I also imagine that there is a camaraderie that comes along with the nomad lifestyle. Moving away from the snow and ice for the winter also makes perfect sense. I just haven't come to terms with some of the RV parks, which are in such desolate areas with no apparent amenities or nearby attractions / distractions - and sometimes fully packed. Perhaps that's the reason right there.

I crossed into Arizona and was headed towards Tucson. I was driving around 65-70mph - just trying to stay out of the way of speeding traffic. I decided to stop at a rest area off the interstate as it was beginning to get dark. It was a mid-century modern design with immaculate desert landscaping. The sun was setting in the west, and a full moon was rising over a mountain range in the east. I took about a dozen pictures, but none of them really give the little rest area justice. These little rest stations are never used to their full potential. Day after day, and year after year, the dozen or so little picnic tables go unused. People just stop to use the restrooms, maybe grab a drink or snack out of the vending machine, then jump back on the interstate. Later at night, semi-tractor trailer trucks will pull in and park for some sleep. But when was the last time a family used the charcoal grills for a barbeque?

I went back to Ghia... it didn't want to start. Turned the key and nothing. We hadn't had this problem since Winslow. This was the start of the problems on my return trip. After about an hour, the Ghia fired right up and I was off.

In the middle of nowhere, I saw eight bright lights well in the distance just hanging in mid-air. I knew that they must be miles away.  They were too high to be radio tower lights. Based on their location and the fact that they eventually burned out, I determined that they were suspended flares launched by the US Border Patrol along the border. I also saw about half a dozen US Border Patrol vehicles almost hidden in the bush of the median.

Shortly after the UFO encounter, I "lost" my low beam lights. I had my high beams, but switching to low beams yielded nothing but darkness. I continued driving until after Tucson when I stopped at another rest area. The car again refused to start. I took the opportunity to get a little nap (it was now very late - about 1am). After about an hour I tried again, but the car refused to start. I tried push starting it by myself (backwards down a very slight incline). No luck. Pushed it back up the incline and tried again. No luck. With temps in the 30's, it was very cold in the Ghia. The push starting exercise, however, had warmed me up. I waited several more hours. Finally, I called AAA. They arrived about 7am and we immediately got the car started.

I made through New Mexico and into El Paso, which is directly across the river/border from Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city of about 1.5 million people. Parts of El Paso looked a little sketchy. Ciudad Juarez looked positively scary. It seems to go on forever. Refineries mixed in with thousands of shanties. Apparently, there are nice neighborhoods in Juarez, but you can't see them from the border. In 2010, over 3500 people were murdered in Juarez - nearly 10 per day. The murder rate has dropped precipitously since then, but it still a dangerous city.

It was against this backdrop that the interstate went from three lanes to one due to construction. Hundreds of trucks and cars were all at a near stand still... and just creeping along. While in this traffic, the Ghia developed a new problem. It started to stall. It never did this before. I was always going just fast enough to pop the clutch and restart the car. However, it was slightly nerve-wracking.  I finally made it out of El Paso and continued east. West Texas is pretty desolate. You can go 120 miles without a gas station on the interstate. I somehow made it to Ozona TX about 5pm where Angela had made me a reservation at a motel. I was exhausted (having no real sleep apart from a quick nap in a freezing rest area for the past two days). My lack of sleep must have been obvious to the motel manager because she gave me a huge room with three queen beds. I managed to fix the headlight problem (it was just a blown fuse) before I passed out for the night.

The next day was very cold and overcast. The Ghia barely started - the stalling problem was worse.  My goal was Austin VeeDub - the guys who had looked over the car the previous week. It was a five hour drive in a car that quit running every time I pushed in the clutch. Furthermore, I was uncertain if it would restart if it did stall. The car has three pedals (gas, brake and clutch) and I have two feet (left and right). I sometimes needed my feet on all three pedals at the same time. Somehow I made it. The garage was full and I waited a couple of hours before Mike (the mechanic that was so helpful previously) was able to take a look. He started it, brought it into the garage, popped it open and found the problem immediately. It was simply a loose electrical connection to the carburetor that tells the car to shut off when you turn off the key. He also adjusted the idle and the timing. When he was finished, he said "all done, no charge". Again. Those guys at Austin VeeDub are absolutely incredible. Just like that, the car was running beautifully.

Without boring you with all the details (too late), I drove from Austin to Houston, hopped back on I-10 and drove straight through to Amelia - roughly 19 hours later. Jackie and Emory had flown out from Houston to stay with Angela. All three were a welcome sight.

I then crawled into bed, buried my face and slept like a baby.

We plan one more post (an Epilogue) with the stats of the trip.