Escape from Oly Town

Scheme gets hatched in moment of clarity

250 posts ago we started this blog to document our sailing adventures. Click on the picture title below to go to our first post in March of 2010.  We're still sailing, but mostly in the summer running charters.  Our travel adventures now seem to be mostly land based. We've finally got some free time to do some writing, so the focus of the Traveler at Sea blog will be more like Travelers on Land.  My apologizes to our sailing friends who care naught for the land, but that's the direction we are taking for now......

Our paths in life seem to lurch in one direction for a while then they barrel off in another direction until we come to yet another crossroad.  We make a choice, trying to do so carefully, but in the end we go with whatever feels right at the time.  Connie and I threw caution to the wind seven years ago, sold everything, quit our jobs and sailed south to Mexico.  In 2016 we changed course and pointed the bow to the west, sailing across the Pacific to Hawaii, then turning north towards Alaska and eventually south into the Salish Sea and our new home port, Olympia Washington.

We thought.... after many years living and traveling on the boat, it is now a time to get more serious in life.  Time to put down a few roots, put some irons in the fire, make a few commitments.  And also.. get some money coming in.  Thus came the Mystic Journeys sailboat charter business and eventually the little house at 1910 Giles.  After a few years of hard work we're mostly caught up with that long task list we dreamed up shortly after hitting the dock at Swantown Marina.  It took us a year to remodel the back of the house into a little mother-in-law space.  We rented out the main house and moved into the little "casita".  And now, after staying put in Olympia for three winters, we've had enough of the cold and drizzle and started making plans for a winter escape. Where is it warm? Where does the sun shine?

It's a funny thing, making plans.  You make a plan, list the steps, start with step one, then eventually you find yourself at the end of the list and Voila! you are at your goal.  Things really started to come together as we communicated to our friends our plans to travel south.  Our friends Richelle and Leo, who are traveling the world trying to decide where to retire, offered us a bed in Tucson for a month in an AirBnB they were renting in November.  Friends in Ajo Arizona said, "Come on by."  Connie's old friend and Obrador drummer, Jimi Doney said, "Come down to Tepoztlan Mexico.  I'll find you a cheap place to live for a while."   Connie's sister said, "I've got an old friend in Patzcuaro Mexico who will probably put you up."  Our Mexico boating friends, Virginia and Robert, stopped by in Olympia for lunch and invited us to come visit them in Barra de Navidad in January.  The clouds opened up and travel opportunities fell from the sky! 

 

Connie, Tesla, and Ezrah

To connect these far flung opportunities we needed to figure out how to get from point A to point B without spending a fortune on hotel rooms.  I fondly remembered our old Toyota Dolphin, that old beat up jalopy mini-RV.  How nice it was to be able to just pull up somewhere, cook up some dinner and fall asleep... on the side of the road, at a campground, in the Walmart parking lot, or in a friend's driveway.  How can we replicate the Dolphin without, you know, buying another old beat up Dolphin?  Full blown RV... to expensive, Sprinter Van... same. Maybe a pop-up camper trailer.

Craiglist Seattle had four or five for sale.  Craig'slist Phoenix had twenty five.  Clearly the south, the sunny, the hot places, have a surplus of RVs. And the prices... what was selling in Seattle for 4k was selling in Phoenix for 2.5k, or that's how it seemed to me.  OK, here's a plan.  We bolt south through cold Washington and Oregon and Nevada and pop out into sunny Arizona where cute little pop-up trailers fall like fruit from the trees.  We set a departure date.  

The Three Sisters, Oregon Cascade Range

It is 1502 miles from Olympia Washington to Tucson Arizona.  We cannot stand more than about 6 hours a day driving so we did the math and came up with about 375 miles per day to get us into Tucson in four days.

Dick and Mary Jane Tobiason

Who do we know about six hours south of Olympia?  Our good friend Scott Tobiason's parents live in Bend Oregon, about 5 hours away.  Can we stay there?  "Sure," says Dick and Mary Jane.  And so our first leg of the journey was determined and south we drove on November 9. After a couple of years staying put, the feeling of escape as we headed down the road was wonderful.  Down the coast and over the Cascades we found Bend Oregon and the peaceful home of the Tobiasons.  A nice, no stress, evening and a soft bed prepared us for the long slog south through the wastelands of Nevada.  

Flat, flat, flat.  Highway 20 to 70 to 95, two lane roads mostly devoid of traffic. Our past trips south were down the endless I-5 corridor through Oregon and California.  There is something about driving the freeway that is taxing on both driver and passenger.  All these cars and trucks are zooming by at breakneck speed and your attention is always focused on avoiding all this metal flying down the road.  On secondary roads I can just enjoy the scenery.  In the high desert country of Oregon the roads go off into the distance in a straight line as far as the eye can see. 

It's hard to figure how folks make a living in the hardscrabble outback of the high desert.  100 acres per cow with feed being brought in half of the year seems like a difficult way to make a living.   Hour after hour we hummed down the road, occasionally seeing a cow lying in the shade of a creosote bush. Looking for a break and maybe a cold drink we passed through a small oasis town and pulled up to the one little store.  Big sign on the front of the building said "Trump 2020."  Well that just took the joy out of our thirst.  We drove on and found a little rest area down the road to take a break.  I wondered if the proprietor realized that he/she was driving off snowbird customers with that silly blue and white sign.  Hmmm.   Why aren't more folks stopping in for a cold soda?  It's 50 miles between stops here in southeastern Oregon.  Must be some kind of conspiracy.

Soon we are in Nevada and by nightfall we pulled into Battle Mountain and the famous Big Chief Motel, by all means, the best hotel in town.  Most folks stay 50 miles north in Winnemucca when trying to transit the vast emptiness of Nevada.  With 30 hotels, Winnemucca is clearly the main stop on the line but we pushed on to the much smaller Battle Mountain to experience a little bit more of rural Nevada America.  After checking into the "best hotel in town" we walked to the "best restaurant in town", El Aguila Real (The Royal Eagle).  Very large Caucasian ranchers rubbed elbows with Mexican Americans consuming large plates of meat, cheese, and beans.  Walking home through a small town of empty storefronts and bare lots, it seemed like Battle Mountain had see better days.

Chile Relleno and Chicken Mole

After stealing ice from the Big Chief to refresh our cooler we rocketed south through the endless flats and headed up into the scenic mining town of Austin Nevada at 6600 ft. We climbed up Route 50 to the Austin Summit at 7490 ft to descend into more flat shrub land flanked out in the distance to either side by the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. 

Climbing above the endless flat lands

We fueled up in the scenic and parched mining town of Tonopah, home of the famous Clown Motel then continued south in warming temperatures down the west side of the massive area 51.  The northern route around this area is dubbed the extraterrestrial highway. We saw very few aliens.

At nightfall the road had widened from two lanes to four to six to eight.  Our cell phones started working and we found our exit and eventually found our Airbnb in a gated community of row houses. We used the self check in where you use a code to open a box that holds the key to the house.  We knocked on the door then let our selves in, thinking we were going to be staying in the guest bedroom of a home with a mother and young child.  Inside the house it became apparent that no one was calling this place home.  The walls were mostly bare. The only furniture was one couch sitting in the middle of the room.  No kitchen or dining room table.  The two bedrooms had nothing in them but a bed and a chest of drawers. No side tables, no pictures, no curtains. Sterile. Cold.  Switching on the overhead light in the kitchen, we startled a myriad of roaches happily cruising for crumbs.  

Los Vegas - Not really our kind of place.

I pulled up the Airbnb description again and saw how the words made it sound like it was a family place but never actually said the mother and child were living there.  We'd been scammed.  I texted the host, Karolyna, and asked about the roaches and the deserted house and her reply was something along the line of "If you are not happy with the room, then you can leave and I'll refund your money."  By this time we were exhausted and the last thing we wanted to do was go out into the night looking for another room.  So we tiptoed around the roaches, stashed our food in the refrigerator, climbed into bed, and waited until dawn.  

Area 51 Alien Center

After a few days driving in the vastness of the high desert, the cacophony or Los Vegas was a shock to the system.  We battled our way through the freeway system stopping for breakfast in Boulder City and fueling up for the 77 mile run down to Kingman Arizona. We'd made our escape from the north and found ourselves sleep deprived but happily in short sleeves and we entered the land of the sun.