There are a lot of people with whom I would rather eat a bag of kitty litter than spend a week in a car, but Sandie’s far from one of them. Initially, we figured we should do something awesome over winter break, since both of our families live at an inconvenient distance, and the standard “go home for the holidays” was less than wholly appealing. We were going to wait until last minute and then find a room on a cruise or find flights to somewhere cool. But sometimes, the best of plans are drunken ideas that people take a little too far. And so, after debating and planning and replanning, we settled on the scenic drive up and down Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway.
[AUTHOR NOTE: Photos used below, unless otherwise noted, were the work of myself and Sandie]
Day 1: Friday December 27th, 2013 - Mountain View to Yucca Valley; 491 miles
We started out bright and early in the morning after a quick pow-wow to print out some directions and grab some breakfast and free snacks. The best thing about Day 1 of our journey was that we were sufficiently pumped that the radio didn't need to come on. We filled the car with sounds of unbridled excitement.
First stop was gas and food in Bakersfield, CA.
That popcorn IS THE SHIT.
As documented in previous adventures, Bakersfield doesn't have a whole lot going on. It's a quiet place surrounded by quiet farmlands and the police officers don't really have a lot going on, so they'd rather spend their time harassing innocent drivers.
The sign said there was a detour, so we maneuvered assuming that the sign was telling the truth. We've no reason to be skeptical. But about 200 yards before the overpass that would take us to the on-ramp, it became obvious that the sign was incorrect documentation, and we would be headed horribly in the wrong direction if we continued to follow the detour. So we signaled and (legally) started moving over to our on-ramp, and the police officer decided to nearly hit us, and then pull us over.
He crankily approached the car and I pulled out my license in shame.
"Do you have any idea where you're going?!?!"
"Actually.... no...."
We made it away, ticket-free, and continued heading South. Originally, our first touring stop was going to be the famed Bottletree Ranch (see below). However, due to poor planning, by the time we were nearby Bottletree Ranch, we were also in the middle of the Mojave desert after dark, and we didn't know where we were sleeping that night. I'm going back to see it one of these days, because it's cool as hell.
We found a place to stay in Yucca Valley, California right outside of Joshua Tree National park. We internetted for a bit and then hit the sack.
Day 2: Saturday December 28th, 2013 - Yucca Valley to Chula Vista; 269 miles
Yucca Valley is a lovely little small hippie town outside of Joshua Tree National Park, providing cheap accommodations and quirky local business to tourists coming to check out the park. We weren't super-hungry, so in lieu of breakfast, we opted for coffee and snacks with which to start our day.
We found local businesses and a nifty farmer's market that sold vegetables and the hippie-type jewelry made by local artisans that moms tend to like.
And then we headed over to Joshua Tree National Park, which was unbelievably gorgeous.
And after some goofing around in Joshua Tree, we headed back through Yucca to head down to San Diego, and we were at the peak of our Kanye West-ing.
Our trip had 2 recurring themes: Recreating Moments from Kanye West's 'Bound 2' music video (Mildly NSFW), and avoiding Jesus. Kanye's highly criticized and hugely awkward music video involves lots of long, traveling scenes of him engaged in coitus while riding a motorcycle through a series of gorgeous landscapes. Since we were also driving through a series of equally gorgeous landscape shots, it made perfect sense to belt "Uh huh, honey!!" while air-humping the steering wheel at red lights. We earned a series of very strange looks from strangers at intersections, but the beauty of a road trip is that you don't usually know anyone else, and you won't see most of the people that you meet again. We'll discuss Jesus avoidance later.
The second stop on our day at at Shield's Date Gardens, a historic date palm orchard and tourist trap outside of Coachella Valley. Delightfully enough, for a significant portion of the drive between Joshua Tree and Indio, the radio selection was limited to NPR and 80's power ballads. I was so happy. But that happiness was utterly shat upon at the Date Gardens.
Having skipped breakfast, and refusing all proper meals until afternoon, we showed up to this crazy place INSANELY HUNGRY. There's a small countertop where you can order a milkshake mixed with sugared date crystals, and there's a "kitschy" type souvenir shop, but we forewent these experiences and descended upon the countertop with all the free samples. And there a million fucking varieties of dates. And they all taste subtly different. And we tasted them all. Then, we stopped into their mini-theater for their documentary about their operation:
And then we got more free samples of dates! But something started to happen. About halfway through free date #11... I got this sinking feeling. A really mild wave of nausea. This sickly-sweet dry mouth feeling. I was standing in line to purchase a souvenir box of dates, and I started swapping down for smaller and smaller size boxes. First, the 50-pack. Then the 30-pack. Then the 15-pack. Finally, I bought the mini-box of 9 dates. The idea of eating any more dates was physically repulsive. It continues to be physically repulsive. Sandie felt it too.
As we drove on to our next location, the sugar crash continued. The nausea and crankiness continued to dominate the car, and we grasped desperately for any snacks that had flavors other than sweet. We craved salty. We craved fatty. But we were in the middle of fucking nowhere and didn't know where we can stop for food that wouldn't aggressively rape our blood glucose levels. The world sucked. The sunlight was teasing us about the enjoyment we could be experiencing during this drive had we even a smidgen of self-control. We were nauseated and cranky. We tried to turn our lives around by belting out 80's power ballads. It didn't work. But we were close enough to our next stop that proper, non-date eating didn't happen.
[AUTHOR NOTE: I STILL FUCKING HATE DATES AND WILL REFUSE TO EAT THEM FOREVER. KEEP THAT SHIT AWAY FROM ME. DATES WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE.]
We drove down around the Salton Sea and started noticing some interesting cultural tendencies around the area. Radio became increasingly dominated with "experimental soundscapes" and Christian worship-music. There was a dude walking through the desert beside the road dragging a cross. But Salvation Mountain was worth the weirdness, and well-exemplified the vibe of the area.
Salvation Mountain is a painted mountain built out of adobe, straw, and what I'm guessing is all the paint in the surrounding area. It's a folk-art installation by Leonard Knight that's currently being maintained by volunteers since Leonard Knight ended up suffering from old-age dementia, likely driven from an original desire to paint a mountain. Although I'm far from the religious type, the insane amount of passion and dedication devoted to a project of that magnitude for any cause was inspiring.
The parking lot featured a collection of painted boats, painted cars, and dust.
Tourists are welcomed to follow a yellow-painted path up to the top of the mountain, where you can look out and see miles and miles of dust and desert and sky.
There's a small side alcove built out of a tree that's long passed on with a million nooks and crannies and every single one of them was painted with loving care.
(I was trying really hard to look cool)
The next stop nearby was Slab City/East Jesus, which is an abandoned WWII Marine barracks that, in 1965, started to be inhabited by people seeking something a little different, and made roots in campers and old school buses and tents. Slab City is the residency, and East Jesus is the nearby art colony. It was cool, but kind of jarring to drive around. The elaborately decorated RVs were people's homes, and not exhibits in the museum. Photographing them felt weird. But for visual reference (photos not my own):
The tree of souls was particularly cool:
The overwhelming feeling of middle-class guilt and hunger was soon overwhelming, and we needed to make way towards our evening destination. Following our journey through this particularly strange part of the California desert, it was time to make our way to the delightful town of Chula Vista, the latin-dominated southern edge of San Diego. Our driving route was amazingly close to the Mexican border, and having not fed following our horrifying date-debacle, we made the brilliant decision to stop for Mexican food in some middle-of-nowhere town, and DAMN! That salty, fatty Mexican food tasted better than anything had tasted in awhile. We went through so many tortilla chips that our waiter was properly giving us funny looks. But the saltiness of the food, and the fattiness of the fried things and guacamole completely revived our desert-weary souls, and we quickly went from forlorn and cranky to more upbeat and motivated. I spent a few brief moments in the parking lot following our meal to just lose my shit and flail my arms about because I genuinely just felt so much better about life… until a family in a minivan pulled up beside us to make me feel awkward about my excitement.
The morals of the story, of course:
- Dates are evil.
- Burritos can solve many of the world’s problems, my friends. Burritos can solve it all.
The radio through the remainder of the day slowly changed from Christian music and mariachi back into more standard radio selections, the road for the remainder of the day changed from desert highway to rocky two-ways passing through mountains, the sky for the remainder of the day changed from cloudy blues to black. The most notable thing from our ride down to San Diego was that we were stopped by U.S. Border Patrol, which was exciting in that every day of our road trip, we were stopped by U.S. law enforcement officials. Felt SO badass. They’re trying to catch us riding dirty. But the only dirty riding we were up to were copious recreations of Kim&Kanye.
We rolled into Chula Vista to stay at the sketchiest of sketchy hotels, it was dirty; the previous occupants of the room had left some socks behind; the kids upstairs were drinking 40’s. We made the best of it by watching a documentary about a man getting murdered in a similarly sketchy motel. The motel had no Wifi, but the strip club next door sure did! We took a few minutes to think through our plan for the remainder of the evening and figured out some things to check out in San Diego the next day. In an effort to be cool and make cool friends, we went out. After seeking out libations and working on our smoke rings, we eventually settled into a state of mellow “fuckit”. The obvious thing to do in a town where no one knows you is karaoke. While Sandie kittenishly worked her way through a love song, I got down with the awkwardest of karaoke song selections. We made a friend named Daniel. Daniel was very inebriated and very much wanted to sing duets with us. He gave us a business card and we hit him up on Instagram (I'm MiniAdrienne on there too!), but weirdly enough, he didn’t get back to us.
Jerk.
