5th Migration

After that steak dinner at Texas Roadhouse, I headed south about eight miles out of St. George and parked on the land at Black Rock Road. I’ve got a love/hate relationship with this particular boondocking spot. One of the things I most enjoy is the wide open space, despite it’s nearness to the city. I’ll detail the other side of my relationship with this space in the book. It’s too long to get into for a blog entry, but based on what I’ve seen here, there is some comfort with the sight and sound of semis rolling north and south along Interstate 15. From where I parked, the semi-trucks look like little Matchbox cars rolling along the horizon, and the hum of their engines penetrates the stillness.

The desert grass is seeding. I learn that right away as Buena pounces back toward me, her paws and hind legs covered in seeds. It’s easy enough to brush the seeds off my shoes and her coat, but we stick to the wide sandy camp circles while I teach her to catch a frisbee. She has more patience for the game now that she’s older. In the past, she just wanted to play keep away.

The next morning, we take a walk out onto the desert. Buena bounds away, looking for lizards or little rodents, but all she finds is one startled bird. She chases it as it hops from one creosote bush to the next one before flying upward. As I watch her and wend through the bushes and sparse desert grass, I almost walk into a large cloudy spider web, the filaments of which stretch between two bushes, running back and forth. I wouldn’t have seen it, except that the gossamer threads caught the morning sun and glinted a warning. While stepping around the spider web, I notice a few others and move away in a different direction, carefully avoiding any more webs between the bushes.

(I notice I’m writing in the present tense with my verb choices for this blog. I'm not sure why I'm doing this, but it's an idea to toy with...write blog posts in the present tense and book chapters in the past tense. Maybe it will help differentiate the "voice" of each medium. English people, if you have any thoughts on this, I'd like to hear your input.)

We sit out there for two days and nights while I organize my living space for boondocking again. I just can’t take the boxes of paperwork and files sitting beneath the place where I reach up to grab my gallon jugs of water. I’m tired of tripping over things. So I arrange the space over the cab, my “garage,” the place that houses the paints, step stool, fans, heaters, propane cylinders, auto stuff, and anything else that’s garage-y. My rationale is that the engine is upfront, so everything from the driver’s seat up and forward is the garage. (My tall toolbox, however, sits next to the garage, cleverly disguised as a plant and knick-knack table.) The big goal is to get the “house” area less cluttered.

On Thursday morning, I notice four things:

1) I’m actually back to doing this…thing…whatever it is I’m doing with my life at this age. Looking for a home? Looking for a career? Waiting for retirement? I have no idea what it is I’m doing, but I just keep doing it until the Lord directs me to do something else.

2) The seeds of grass glow golden as the morning sunlight passes through them.

3) There are holes beneath the spider webs. With this realization, my mind raced back to Rancho de Aranas…Spider Ranch. This is an eighty-acre property a friend owns out by Trinidad, Colorado. While the place has tarantulas, particularly during the tarantula migration, I’d also observed webs similar to these on the property. Beneath those webs were also holes. I spent some time there taking little pieces of branch or pebble and pinging them at various webs because it was interesting to watch the excited spider leap from the hole to see what was caught in the web.

4) I want pancakes, not just any pancakes. Cracker Barrel pancakes. With the nearest Cracker Barrel about ten miles from my location, it wouldn’t be too difficult to go and get a real breakfast.

Returning to the RV, I look at the clock…ten minutes to eight…and make a deal with myself. If I can be ready to leave by 8 a.m., I get pancakes. Otherwise, I’ll just stay on the desert for another day.

Buena looks at me from her water dish, and then quickly decides she’d rather be outside than in this flurry of activity, so she paws at the door. “Okay, for just a minute, Buena,” I say, hooking her onto her outdoor lead. “We’re gonna go get pancakes!”

[I didn’t even get a picture of those pancakes. They were almost gone before I thought about documenting the momentous occasion.]

With the morning already heating up, I need to come up with a plan. I’ve been wanting to go visit the petroglyphs near Ivins again, so I head in that direction. The last time I visited in 2017, there was a small tree that provided shade. If I get there early enough, I might be able to park beneath it.

A lot changes in 5 years, I think, noticing that the petroglyph site had been gentrified. By “gentrified,” I mean that there is now an official fenced parking lot, signage, and an outhouse building. I can’t find the tree I remembered, but that’s probably because the lot has changed considerably. Instead, I park the Godspeed at the far end of the lot, while enduring a glare from an Audi driver who comes around the corner just as I put the rig in park.

Later that evening, I park at Black Rock Road again. I don’t really know where else to go. It’s too hot between Mesquite and Havasu. Instead, I need to stay at this (relatively) higher elevation until the temperatures break to the south.

That night, I carefully look at maps and weather charts. The Godspeed doesn’t tolerate driving in heat very well and protests with the hot engine gauge. I don’t tolerate driving in the Godspeed in the heat because neither the vehicle or the house has air conditioning. But, I don’t really want to sit in St. George any longer. I don’t like all the seeds and spider webs getting on my shoes and on Buena’s coat. I’m at the point where I’m scrolling through the hourly temperature projections in various locations: Mesquite, Las Vegas, Kingman, and…Searchlight.

Why didn’t I think of Searchlight before?

I check the altitude map. Sure enough…Searchlight is over 3500 feet! I look at the 10-day temperature projections which show me daily high temperatures in the 70s all week long.

With this knowledge, I begin carefully plotting my course. If I can leave St. George in the early evening, as the sun starts its descent toward the horizon, I could arrive in Mesquite right around dark. Of course, I should take the back way, down Old Highway 91, up past Ivins and down to Littlefield because I don’t relish the idea of the high-speed traffic on Interstate 15 through that winding canyon. Without hazard lights, it’s a dangerous situation because my rig won’t go over 50 without potentially overheating. (I should have got that bumper sticker—“I can’t drive 55!”—and slapped it on the back of the Godspeed.)

From Mesquite, the trick would be executing interstate travel in the early morning hours…leaving at 6 a.m. at the latest!...and getting to that road that goes past the Lost City Museum and into the Valley of Fire. From there, I could take that pretty drive south through the morning sunlight, through Boulder City—effectively bypassing Las Vegas—and then down to Searchlight before the day heats up. If everything went well, I would be in Searchlight by Sunday morning and could wait out the hot temperatures in the truck lot. On the other hand, if my rig overheated, or had a flat tire, or anything else possible with this 1988 engine, I could be stuck on the Mojave Desert in 90+ degree temperatures.

Rolling out of St. George on Friday evening, I ask Jesus to keep Buena and I safe.

Friday night: Parked in the Casa Blanca casino lot. I even have a palm tree in my front yard!

Saturday morning: On the road by what I thought was 6:15 a.m. It turns out there was a time change. I'm actually an hour earlier.

Saturday morning: Near the entrance to the north entrance of the Valley of Fire.

Saturday morning: Buena and I stop to play in the Red Rocks area in the Valley of Fire.

Saturday morning, 11:30-ish: Made it to the truck lot in Searchlight. I even have a shady spot!