The End... ?

There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.

― Frank Herbert

On Monday, Jobie and I spent a few hours at the Grand Canyon Visitor’s Center before climbing back into my van and pointing it westward for one last day of adventures.  As we were driving down Interstate 40, I saw a sign for something called the Grand Canyon Caverns.  I called back to Jobie who was sleeping in the back of the van and asked her if she wanted to make a quick detour to see some caves. 

Ads for a product that doesn't even exist anymore.
What a great marketing campaign!

She murmured something that I took as a “Yes,” so I turned onto Route 66 and we were off to explore.   Route 66 was not as exciting as Chuck Berry made it sound, but it was a little more interesting than Interstate 40.  There were a series of Burma Shave ads along the way that helped break up the monotonous desert landscape.  After about 30 miles, we pulled into the Grand Canyon Caverns, which appeared to be straight out of 1950.  A large sign in varying shades of faded yellow announced, “CAVERNS INN” with letters that were in somewhat of a caveman-style font.  Behind the sign was a single-story angular building that was painted in tans and burnt orange colors and had several dusty old cars lined up in front.  As we pulled into the parking lot, another smaller, hand-painted sign indicated that the cave entrance was past a 3-hole mini-golf course that had several large dinosaurs in it.  We drove down the gravely road about a mile and eventually came to another old kitschy building with yet another large dinosaur statue in front of it (for some reason we saw a lot of dinosaur statues across the desert—perhaps 20 of them).  We went in and a heavy-set old lady with crooked teeth sold us two tour tickets. Actually, she sold us two faded green poker chips that were used as our proof-of-payment for the tour.  At 12:30, a young kid said the tour was starting and he directed 9 of us into an elevator that led 21 stories down into the earth.  He spoke relatively fast throughout the tour and gave us a little history of it, telling us how it was the deepest cave, that it was one of the largest in the area, that it was designated as a bomb shelter, and about how dinosaur bones were found in it (again with the dinosaurs). 

One last stop at roadside Americana

Before the tour started, he emphasized that the Grand Canyon Caverns Cave Company also functioned as care-takers of the cave and he instructed everyone not to touch any the walls inside of the cave and to avoid damaging the natural features of it.  But once we were inside, he showed us the hotel room they had built inside the cave that came complete with a large screen TV, a king-sized bed, a toilet, and running water which could be rented for $800 per night, as well as the 70-seat music theater that they had constructed inside of it.  In addition, he frequently mentioned how he and other employees would come down at their leisure and crawl through the tunnels and into the various passageways for fun.  It seemed that Grand Canyon Cave was much more a commercial venture than a true protect-the-natural-resource venture. 

After our 45-minute tour of the cave, we continued on down Route 66 until it met up with Interstate 40 again and we headed to Joshua Tree.  We spent the night at the Joshua Tree Lake RV Park and on Tuesday morning we set out to explore Joshua Tree National Park.

Must be close to L.A.

Joshua Tree National Park has a bizarre landscape.  It is filled with mountains of large boulders that look more like piles of rubble than anything that was formed naturally.  The Joshua Trees that are prevalent through the park have tall, light brown hairy trunks that sprout out a small number of thick twisty branches that are also covered with a hairy bark and which erupt into a tuft of green spikes at the tips.  The ground is covered with a gravely sand and lots of small cacti and tumbleweed-looking plants.  We saw a wide variety of rocks strewn around the ground: some that looked like pink quartz, some that looked black and lava-esque, some that were deep red and angular, and some that were round and dark gray and looked more like river stones.  And the whole area was baking in heat that was close to 100° by 10:00 in the morning.  We spent a couple hours exploring a small trail that led to the ruins of an old ranch that was built on the property in 1876.  It was the home to settlers who started using the area for gold mining, and then later as a cattle ranch.  As we looked around at the arid land that was covered in cactus and dry scrub it was hard to imagine cattle grazing in the area or people living in such an unforgiving environment. 

Joshua Tree National Park looked like something
out of a Dr. Seuss book

I suppose, though, that it is a testament to the adaptability of humans and the way that life finds its way into surprising places.  We finished our hike, went back to the van and quickly turned on the air conditioner, and made the last bit of the journey home to Arroyo Grande.

We arrived home late Tuesday afternoon.  I had spent a total of 79 days on the road and drove nearly 13,000 miles—that’s over half way around the Earth.   I got to see a variety of landscapes, talk to people of diverse backgrounds, visit old friends, have new experiences, adventure in some of this country’s natural wonders, and gained a broader perspective of just how varied life is even in a place that at first seemed so familiar.   I’ve flown across this country countless times and I guess that has shrunk its boundaries and made it seem small and trivial in my mind.  But by traveling across it slowly and by taking the time to explore both the grand and granular interesting spots, I’ve realized that it holds far more than was ever contained in the confines of my imagination.

One thing the desert does have is spectacular sunsets

So now my journey is over. Or at least, the part of the journey in my van is over.  In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck said “We do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”  And now that I have taken my trip, I know that that is indeed true.  When I first set out on this venture, I planned that I would have some distinct endpoint—a date at which I’d return, sell my van, and go back to my previous life.  People kept asking, “When will you come back?” and that seemed such an unambiguous question.  On one day I set out on the road, and on another day I’d return and those two days would be like the bookends in defining the length of the trip.  But even now, only a few days after I’ve come home, I know that the lingering influence of this trip will continue:  the impressions of the things I saw and the thoughts I had along the way have become like little Post-Its in my mind to remind me that even when things seem ordinary or mundane, or when I find myself falling into a comfortable routine, there is always an adventure to be had or a story to be told if I just approach life with a little bit of a sense of wonder.