Heading West and dragging our Michigan weather with us

Many of the roads at higher elevations were sanded. The morning of our departure from the California Eastern high dessert it snowed; large flakes coming down wet, sticking on every tree tip and shrub. A joyous winter wonder land. Also covered in this wet snow were the highways. "Its supposed to be like this all day" we were told just as we were leaving our campground. And so it was. The high dessert was covered with so many inches of snow that the undercarriage of small, fuel efficient cars was scraping the center ridges between the two tire tracts. Yet people persisted in trying to get through, loosing control as the front end of their car was litterly lifted off the ground and the back wheels and car momentum spin the car in 360 degree donuts. Drivers terrorized by their recent loss of control would stop in the middle of the tire tracts creating road hazards and making plowing roads impossible. As Rudy, Big Red Kathy and I headed West, the Sheriff were closing one road after another behind us. When we reached Victorville, we were told highway 14 was closed going South, still open headed North towards Bakersfield CA. North we went to lower elevations and more sleet than accumulating snow. Turning West again, through active oil fields and valley orchards and cotton fields eventually we were climbing again.

No services for 79 miles read the sign as we were in the wide open spaces, rising higher and higher into the snow covered mountains. Occasional ranch houses could be seen miles away. Cattle walked narrow paths imbedded in the mountain sides; dark figures against the contrasting snow. Upward we traveled, the roads narrower, and more twisting and turning; hairpin turns were the usual, not the exception. Upward we climbed, solitary, twinkles of lights from the ranch houses. Big Red was now in its glory, shifting gears up and down to meet the road challenges, calibrating its horsepower and gear ratio to meet our assent, only to call upon all its engineering for a controlled descent. Eventually we made it over the multiple high passes and down the other side of the mountain range. The upper elevations of the highway had been sanded; the packed snow had traction. We spent the night at a "rustic" KOA campground, in reality, a lower tier trailer park. Where do people go who have lost their homes? Some at least park their trailers in a campground and pay a monthly fee. What has happened to all the campgrounds dependent on RV traffic? They have taken in weekly and monthly transients, at a discount; and so was our KOA "rustic" campground, amongst the hills and trees, rutted roads,  toilets and showers in need of "maintanence", and old cars parked facing the camper, not capable of pulling the Recreational Vehicle, even this older and smaller version  of the RV.

Route 66 at age 66

Route 66 no longer exists except in the hearts and minds of aficionados of a bygone era of television and movie adventure shows. Route 66 started out in the 1920's as a federal effort to connect existing state roads into a motor pathway from Chicago to Los Angeles. These pathways were the first "interstate" for its time and resulted in many twists and turns through now defunct state highways as evidenced by our finding signs for "Historic Route 66" in Santa Fe NW as well as into Southern California desserts and mountains. The route Toby DeWoody and I traveled in 1962, and that pictured in song and story, we took, returning from the Seattle World's Fair via the Pacific Coastal Highway, Pacific Palisades CA, across the Mojav Dessert to Flagstaff AZ and onto Winslow AZ and the Bar T Bar Ranch. The 1950's version of Route 66 was a clearly delineated highway by then. The picture represents a remnant of "66" near Winslow AZ. Our present Interstate system was the vision of  President Dwight Eisenhower who as General Eisenhower admired the pre WWII German Autobaun. In answer to a question by David Grim, the bridge you queried is within 100 feet of Interstate 40, a steel bridge similar to one might see of the 1930's era, and a copy of which I had with my Lionel Train set.

The Bar T Bar Ranch is also a bit of historic and contemporary "Americana". The Ranch began in the 1930's as a partnership of Cleveland Ohio business people I believe as a tax shelter. The original ranch was joined with several surrounding others until -T- was/is the second largest cattle ranch in Arizona. The lead person forming this ranch was Burton Tremaine whom  I believe had a nick name "Sky," was a descendent of "Johnny Tremaine" of American Revolutin fame. Sky  Tremaine was the Cleveland Ohio business person whom I had met in his waning years in Pacific Palisades CA before Toby and I headed for the Ranch.  Toby's mother, Nancy, was a Tremaine who married Charles DeWoody a Cleveland attorney. Toby is a nick name for Charles Tremaine DeWoody. At the Ranch I met Earnest Chilson the ranch manager of many decades. I say this as I met and rode horses with Earnest Chilson along with the DeWoody Family.  I learned about the remaking of the ecology of mesa cattle ranching. Large D-9 Caterpillar tractors would travel in pairs, linked with  a one inch diameter cable and traveling over the mesa they would clear the shrubs that soaked up the precious water and nutrients of the soil.  While out riding, I watched as the ranch hands lit the brush piles with flares producing a bonfire and a pungent odor. After the brush was cleared and burned, the rocky soil was seeded with a genetically modified grass, producing three stalks instead of one. More feed grass means more cattle. Prior to modification of the mesa, the 300,000 acre ranch could support 3,000 head of cattle, now, 15,000 head. There are 5 ranch hands (cowboys) for the ranch. At dawn, I met them at the bunkhouse, the cook made a breakfast of steak, eggs, flapjacks and black chickaree coffee. After breakfast, the ranch hand would walk into the open pasture towards his horse, feedbag in hand, slip the feedbag over the horse's head, lay on the saddle, cinch it up, when the horse was finished feeding, the feedbag was slipped off and the bridle slipped on, cowboy would climb aboard and ride to the day's work.  The horse could have bolt and run free, but didn't, there was a partnership of shared expectations. 

I re-encountered a disturbing piece of historic and current Americana beginning around Joplin Missouri and carrying into Southern California. The old Route 66 and current Interstate 44 and 40 traverses large Native American Reservations. For over a 1000 miles there were abandoned dwellings, subsistence living  isolated houses, trash, junk scattered around, chain link fences around many, dilapidated siding, roofing, doors and windows, all reminding me of what I had seen some 47 years ago. New for me, was seen at exits , a combination casino, gas station, convenience and souvenir store. In the gift shops were painting of Plains Indians, all portrayed on horseback. There did not appear to be signs of Native Americans activities prior to the arrival of the Spanish at the beginning of the 16th Century. The Spanish brought horses from Europe. There were no horses in North America prior to the Spanish. Horses were few and far between for the Spanish, and horses that had escaped from the Spanish were the ones available to the Indigenous People. Since mares may have 3 to 4 folds in her lifetime, I imagine that horses were not plentiful to the Plains Indians until the late 18th & early 19th Century. By the middle of the 19th Century many of the Plains Indians were already on reservations. 

The paintings available in the gift shops, reportedly painted by authentic Native Americans, unlike those at the Painted Dessert Lodge painted in the 1930's,  show a limited spectrum of time and indigenous people activities. While in Sante Fe NM and the first mission church in what would become North America, the founders of the church came to the area with their Native American servants, numbering in the hundreds for the 92  Spanish individuals who made the first claims to the territory. 
While in a restaurant restroom, I heard a man retching and vomiting in the stall next to me. I inquired if he were "all right?" He said. yes he was "... just a little hangover." I met him outside the stalls and saw a bloodshot eyed Native American young man. I wondered to myself if a hunting and gathering society had the cultural pre-requisites to survive now that the plains were fenced, the buffalo gone, and the rocky soil and available water can support few people, like the numbers that inhabited pre-Columbian tribes, 15 to 25 individuals. If  one believes the Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics that more than 50% of Southwestern Native Americans are obese, 25% of these have Diabetes Mellitus; the complications of alcoholism is the number one killer of young Native American men, it occurred to me that a new paradigm is needed other than the current one which portrays a post-Columbian time, truncated to a 25 or so year period, of a mounted hunting and gathering society. Believe me, I do not have "the" answer. What I do know, is that what I saw as a young man in my travels in 1961, persists into the 2008. This realization casts a pall for me and perpetuates a continuing mind's eye dialogue with myself as Kathy and I continue on our travels.

Another piece of Americana, the murals in the now museum of a former lodge overlooking the Painted Dessert National Monument were painted by an Indigenous American artist during the Great Depression. Also in the lodge is a glass ceiling whose panels were painted by two Pennsylvanian artists, members of the Civilian Conservations Corps (CCC), 1937 to 1941, a Depression era "make work" program which included artists and artisans. Kathy identified the glass ceiling paintings as those of "Pennsylvania Dutch" designs. Who would have thunk it, way out here in Arizona.

Travels with Charlie or whomever

Big Red and Rudy are more than a match for John Steinbeck's camper on a pick-up truck bed "Rosenante," although the literary punch is not. Kathy and I set out to find the bits and pieces of Historic Route 66 that have survived being paved over by Interstate 55, Chicago to St. Louis; Interstate 44, St. Louis to Oklahoma City; Interstate 40, Oklahoma City to Los Angelos. More than a year ago, we did I-55, following the Lincoln Trail, Chicago to Springfield Ill. This time we headed straight to Indianapolis to pick up I-70 for St. Louis. The first leg was to be our longest as I wanted to be West of St. Louis by our first night, and so we were. More than 600 miles. I had planned on stopping at the M something State Park our first night, but Kathy did not want to get off the road in the middle of the night to search for a campground that may not even be open.  So, our first night, Wednesday night, we spent in Missouri at the Doolittle Rest Stop (you all remember the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo at the beginning of WW II memorialized by the book "30 Seconds over Tokyo", separated somewhat from the dozens and dozens of 18 wheeler rigs, we on the unpaved part of the auto area. The only real hic-up was the need for me to change propane tanks for our furnace that kept us toasty warm. 

Our next leg of our trip was 60 miles West of Oklahoma City in Hinton OK, population 1600, with its one blinking red both ways light, where you park in the middle of the street, and the streets are all paved because of the tax revenue from the 2200 inmate correctional facility just down the road. We camped at the Red Rock Canyon State Park along with two other campers. The Red Rock Canyon served the indigenous tribes as a winter shelter from the blowing prairie winds. The sun was just beginning to shine upon the West wall as we arose, shower and shaved, unplugging the electricity and heading for breakfast snack and coffee. I of course had used the microwave to warm up left over pizza from our forage from the night before. We left Hinton, surviving on the prairie while neighboring towns, wither, their unpaved roads a legacy of when the horse and cattle were king, a now bygone era. 

As we traveled West, the time zones changed, but still sunset was at 5 PM and we were searching for campsites in the dark of night. At Red Rock Canyon we campers were three in number, the next night, Villanueva State Park in New Mexico, we campers were 2. North off I-40 into the mountains, elevations of 6000 to 7000 feet, and then plunging down a winding, hair-pin turns narrow road into a valley where a Spanish community had an early success but lost 1800 people when a priest had a vision and lead most of the valley inhabitants South to Mexico leaving behind a remnant subsistence group; first electricity 1949, first community water well, 1952. Littering the valley floor are discarded cars and trucks, broken windshields, hoods up, door open, all with weeds growing around and through the various orifices. The other campers were a group of Spanish speaker men with several small boys, intent upon trout fishing in the Pecos River having intended to go elk hunting this weekend with the two small boys but failing to obtain the necessary licenses through somebody's error, or so we are told. Nevertheless, Kathy and I hiked the valley ridge along the river as our morning excursion. Later on we left for Santa Fe, an artsy community, populated by people who left something behind to get a fresh start in life as we learned at Harry's Roadhouse Cafe. As a winter storm was coming with 5 to 8 inches of snow for the area, by 3 PM we headed South towards Albuquerque and then Westward. The afternoon sun set upon the ribbon of highway as we made our way to Prewitt. We turned South towards the Bluewater State Park. And now we were one, as in one and only in the Park. The wind had been buffeting us all day, 30 mph steady and gusting to 45 mph. As we drove the seven miles to the campground, we took the wind broadside. We had climbed to over 7000 feet elevation in our journey from Albuquerque and again plunged more than a 1000 feet down a narrow winding road to a valley  with raging winds and flying dust. In the darkness of night we found a site close to the heated toilets and showers. We also found that we were the only ones there. All night the wind howled, rattling whatever was loose on our camper, rocking us in multiple gusts of wind. We had electricity, propane for our furnace, down coverings for our bed and so we slept, fitfully. In the middle of the night, a pickup truck headlight's danced on our Cabin A and then moved off into the night. Later on, we heard sounds of rain or snow against our metal shelter. It was snow, 8 inches of it, heaped up and swept into drifts. After morning luke warm showers, we unplugged the electricity, fired up Big Red and blazed a trail where the road likely was. Out of the campground and onto the narrow roads, bisecting more evidence of subsistence living with cars scattered about yards in various states of disrepair, we confronted the snow covered narrow steep winding road that we had to climb to get out of this valley and back to I-40. It was this trek up the mountain side that Big Red earned its keep; all 4 wheels churning, clawing upward, pulling Rudy behind. There was a little bit of slippage as we slowed our momentum and turned a particularly sharp curve, but we straightened out soon and regained our course. At the top we were now headed downward and gaining speed. I downshifted and used the engine as a brake and we descended in a more controlled fashion. Our entrance to I-40 was closed and we headed to Historic Route 66 to the next town 25 miles away and another opportunity to get back on the Interstate. I-40 was plowed, although only the right travel lane had pavement showing, the left travel lane was mostly snow packed. Kathy suggested breakfast in Gallup NM another 40 miles hence to let the snowplows and sand trucks finish their work. And so we did.

The roads become progressively clearer as we headed West. We arrived at the Painted Dessert and Petrified Forest National Parks for an afternoon cruise through "Badlands", beautifully colored petrified trees from tropical forest 225 million years ago, when there was but one land mass, and this part of Arizona was near the equator. The petroglyphs you see to the right represent indigenous people from 1250 to 1380 AD who inhabited these enchanted but parchment dry lands eventually, these people blended into the Hopi and Zuni peoples who lived to the North and South of this area. I wonder if a spiritual leader had initially led a group from the Hopis or Zunis sometime in the 13th century much like the priest had led a group from the Villanueva valley to Mexico in the 18th century. The stories in the rocks do not tell of the demise of the community, only the tales of when it prospered.  Tonight we stay adjacent to Meteor Crater National Historic monument, clear skies and a full moon. The furnace purrs away.