DAY 02: Oakland to the Calico Ghost Town

Tuesday, April 1st

After a 10 1/2 hour drive, a 7 hour drive seemed something like cake (thank you Dave for doing all the driving!). We said our goodbyes to mom and the doggies, then dropped by my friend Janie's for a brief hello/goodbye (Janie and her family are temporarily living about 10 minutes away from my mom, around the edge of Lake Merritt). Janie had been up most of the night with her 6-month-old twins, who are teething. Dave hadn't met them yet, and they were delightful, which they are whenever I've seen them, though I know they can make quite a noise. Janie fed us breakfast, and we helped dandle the babies. It was a nice way to start the next part of our journey, and I hope to be back in the bay area in the summer to see more of her and all our other bay area loved ones.

We headed out down 580, which was much greener than I'm used to, as was the drive down 5. California is a blond state. Growing up in drought country is a big reason I'm so in love with Portland's lush green, but I am still at home in the purple blues and faded golds of California. When I was taking painting at CalArts, my teacher commented on one of my color studies (purple blue-faded gold) as being particularly reflective of the local landscape. She was from the east coast, and said those colors would just never occur to her. We drove from soft green into hazy and yellow--the valley. We stopped at Kettlemen City for lunch, there being an In-and-Out Burger there. My mom called and I could hear her shiver when I told her where we were. My mom grew up in Bakersfield, and does not have much good to say about the Central Valley. My grandfather Art actually worked as an engineer for an oil company in Kettlemen Hills, back in the 30s, pre-air conditioning. I can only imagine the bleakness.

We turned east and went through Bakersfield proper, something I haven't done in a long, long time, though I spent time every summer there for most of my childhood. Grim, really, though I liked thinking about my mom and aunt riding bareback through the dry riverbeds, and my grandmother presiding as the Judge of Weed Patch county. Still, every sympathy to Mom!

We rolled out into real desert, which was quite beautiful once the houses died down. We planned to stay the night at the Calico Ghost Town, a few miles past Barstow. We showed up just as the light was golden, but no one was around to tell us how to get into our cabin. We backtracked into Barstow and had one of the blandest Mexican meals ever. We got back to Calico, crossing fingers we actually had a place to stay for the night. We eventually found the ranger, who was fairly unapologetic about the lameness of the directions we'd gotten about the campground, but did get us into a very cute little camping cabin (about the size of a bedroom, one queen-sized bed and two bunks). It had electricity so we shamelessly charged our laptops, ipods and iphones, and watched the pilot episode of "The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency" that Dave had snagged. Roughing it! :)