Something Wicked This Way Comes

Chapter Six

We caught a small break in the weather after Nick finished the first section of the Pacific Crest Trail but there was another storm brewing overhead and it was rumored to bring more rain and crazier still, snow!

After much debate, Nick decided to put a short three day hold on his hike in order to avoid repeating the great flash flood madness so we spent a couple of days catching up on some basic chores like laundry and refilling and dumping Little Geo’s tanks in preparation for the next phase of our journey.

Our plan was to head east to find a new location to park Little Geo, preferably somewhere with cell signal so we would be able to actually communicate with each other while Nick was out on trail in the event of another weather crisis.

To celebrate surviving the first section of our Grand Adventure and leaving our first home base we decided to drive up to Julian to explore the little town before we moved on.

Craving a hot cooked meal that didn’t come out of our tiny RV refrigerator, we found a small restaurant that had tables available and sat down for an impulsive impromptu lunch. Or in our case, a child wrangling, speed record breaking, eating competition.

For those of you that don’t have kids, going to a sit down restaurant is usually an adult only activity, that is if you actually want to enjoy your meal, let alone taste it.

So for us, with a four year old with the attention span and patience of a gnat and a strong willed one year old wild child that has never held still since he was born, that meant we would have to take turns eating.

One of us would try to power through our meal while the other wrestled the kids who had seriously tired of sitting at a table into somewhat quiet submission.

More exhausted than satisfied, we left the confined space of the tiny and crowded building with full bellies to explore the town even further.

The tiny town of Historic Julian with its thousand or so residents is about 60 miles northeast of San Diego, situated in the beautiful Cuyamaca mountains.

It’s known for its apples and superb apple pie and is an important destination for most, if not all Pacific Crest Trail thru hikers.

Though small, Julian a valuable resupply resource complete with post office and hotel lodgings but if you ask around, most thru hikers will probably tell you the real reason they visit Julian after just 77 miles on trail.

Moms Pie.

It’s been a tradition for thru hikers for years and most will eagerly take the twelve mile detour off the trail and hitch into Julian for their piece of the pie. Plus, if you show them your thru-hiking permit they’ll give you your slice for free!

Now, as far as the great age old pie vs cake debate goes, I stand unapologetically firm on the side of team cake.

Cake wins. Cake ALWAYS wins! To me it's not even a competition! Cake is eternal after all and I’ll chose it over pie every day of the week.

See? Unapologetic. I cannot be cake shamed. It’s just too tasty.

The war of deserts is a fun little argument that Nick and I have mock battled out over the course of our long relationship and we both stand firmly opposed. I am team cake, he is team pie which works perfectly because it just means more cake for me!

Now, please don’t get me wrong, I do like pie, it can be really good, I just think cake is better.

Having said that, I’m definitely not one to look a gift pie in the, well, box, so if I must have pie, at least let it be apple!

Besides, you know what they say, when in Rome, er, I mean Julian… So, with nary a cake shop in sight, we came, we saw, we ate pie and even I will admit, it was oh so tasty!

Unfortunately for me, they didn’t have any singular slices of their signature apple pie, let alone single slices any other flavor, so I had to make due by sharing an entire apple-boysenberry pie with Nick.

The things I do for love.

We drove back to Stagecoach Trails for one final night at the RV park with plans to hitch up and head east towards Palm Springs for a resupply and hopefully, cell signal in the morning,

It has been close to a week since we’d been in contact with our family and were looking forward to re-connecting with the outside world and finally be able to post some updates about our adventure so far.

We had all settled into our beds for the night, both Atlas and Fenix were sound asleep in their own “bunker beds” when I began to feel a rather unpleasant rumbly in my tumbly.

Apparently, the Rueben sandwich I’d had for lunch did not agree with me and it was furiously rioting in my stomach.

I was doubled over with nausea and pain for close to an hour until I lurched suddenly from my fetal position on the bed.

I made it to the bathroom just in time for that damn sandwich, followed by a side of apple-boysenberry pie to make its reappearance in a fierce and violent exodus from my body.

Food poisoning sucks even in the best of situations but imagine being on your knees in a tiny travel trailer bathroom praying to the porcelain god, or in my case, praying to the plastic foot flush god with my ass in the hallway because the bathroom was too small to kneel in with the door shut, trying to keep my choking noises to a minimum because my children were literally sleeping a few inches away from me, while my body heaved and wretched, trying in vain to exercise the demon.

Have you ever tried to throw up quietly? It's just not possible!

And if you’ve never seen, let alone used a traditional RV toilet then you might not understand why that was an especially horrible experience so allow me to elaborate.

Most RV toilets have dry bowls and a foot flush pedal. To get water in the bowl you half press the foot pedal and then the water will start to flow, slowly filling the bowl to your desired level.

Then, when you’re ready, press the pedal all the way down to the floor and the trap door in the toilet bowl will open, depositing your, well, deposit, into the black tank below.

Sounds simple enough, right?

But now imagine being on your knees in a tiny RV bathroom, praying to the plastic foot flush god while you toss your cookies, or in my case, pie, into a dry bowl because I’m too preoccupied with keeping my hair out of the mess and far too busy trying to stay alive to be able to half press the foot flush.

Now imagine finally having the presence of mind to be able to half press the foot flush only to underestimate your strength so you accidentally press it all the way to the floor and suddenly find yourself staring down into the deep dark hole as you involuntarily wretch into the swirling water, fumes rising from the abyss causing you to feel even sicker than you already were.

I’ll spare you further details but let me just say, getting food poisoning in a tiny travel trailer where your whole family is within a six foot radius, with a foot flush RV toilet is absolutely not my idea of a good time.

I fell asleep clutching my gurgling stomach, still feeling a little green around the gills from the whole ordeal, this time praying the sky for the madness to pass before the long drive the next morning.

Lucky for me, having successfully purged the demon the night before, I woke feeling right as rain, ready for the next stage of our Grand Adventure.

We loaded Atlas, Fenix and Crixus into the car and worked together to hitch Little Geo to the Pilot, and slowly pulled away from our temporary home, bumping across the gravel parking lot towards the road.

Leaving was bittersweet.

It’s always a little unsettling leaving the familiar for the unknown and while it had been a wild few days, Stagecoach Trails had been a blissful safe haven but it was more than that, it had become home and I was sad to leave it behind.

Especially not knowing what lay in wait on the road ahead.

That tiny slice of the sprawling, magical desert held so many memories and would always be a special place for me.

I did leave a piece of my heart there after all.

Still, there’s always a level of excitement for the next step in a long line of adventures and it was exciting to finally be getting underway.

As we drove east, I watched out the window as the desert landscape blurred past us.

The rolling hills peaked and dipped, revealing parched ground and the hardy desert dwelling plant life that somehow thrived out there, despite the odds.

It was early March so there were wildflowers scattered across the landscape in vibrant low lying patches, a stark contrast to the overall brown desert color scheme.

The fascinating Ocotillo were abundant on this stretch of highway, lining both sides of the road, stretching upwards like they wanted to paint the sky with their bright red paintbrush like tips.

The sky was a beautiful brilliant blue and the bright sun beamed down upon us, unrelenting and fierce, for now.

I could see dark clouds looming in the distance to the west and knew from experience that something wicked this way comes.

Not wanting a flash flood repeat, I was thankful we were headed away from incoming storm. We had already survived a few days of extreme weather and that was more than enough for the both of us.

We made our first stop at a gas station to fuel up and happily discovered we finally had full cell signal so we eagerly checked in with family who immediately warned us to avoid civilization at all costs.

Not entirely sure what to make of that, and with little choice in the matter now, we ventured onward, passing the Salton Sea before reaching Indio.

After almost a week with zero cell service, we drove out of our self imposed isolation in the California High Desert to find the world an entirely changed place.

We stopped at Wal-Mart first for a quick resupply only to realize the entire rest of the world was doing the same thing, only on steroids.

The shelves were bare! Everyone was running around in a desperate mad panic, piling their carts as high as the half empty store would allow.

What was going on? What was this madness?

Aisle after aisle was empty, picked clean like a vulture feasting on roadkill.

The frenzied shoppers were not unlike vultures themselves, scavengers jealously hoarding their hard won prizes as they dashed down aisles daring anyone to challenge them.

Was this real life?

It was like the scene of a dystopian movie, only we had wandered in halfway though the story so we had no context and no way of understanding the plot as it unfolded before us.

It was shocking. Just how long had we been in the desert?

Dazed, confused and feeling completely out of sorts, we wandered the store trying to make sense of what we were seeing.

We couldn’t help but laugh a little because we discovered that even in the height of panic, people are still picky and cheap because only the high priced health foods remained on the mostly bare shelves.

At least we’ll die healthy, right?

We managed to scrape together a few meager supplies to get us through the coming weeks, almost nothing compared to the haul we had been hoping for, but after seeing the state of the mostly empty store, we were very thankful to find anything at all.

After waiting in line for what seemed like an eternity, we checked out and headed back to the safety of Little Geo which was parked in a deserted corner of the parking lot.

Starving for information, (and food since there was basically none to be found) we scoured the internet for news and information, wishing immediately that we hadn’t as our family’s earlier warning suddenly became very clear.

The virus we’d been casually referencing just two weeks ago had suddenly taken over and the entire world was shutting down around us. 

Discovering the news of a global pandemic was as unbelievable as it was scary and we suddenly wished we’d never left the safety of middle of nowhere, California even with the threat of another flash flood looming.

2020: I’ll see your torrential downpour and flash flood and raise you a deadly pandemic.

Something wicked this way comes, indeed.

Walmart didn’t allow overnight camping which was probably a good thing for us, considering the mad panic surrounding the store, so we drove towards Coachella with plans to boondock at the Spotlight 29 Casino for the night, hopefully giving us time to regroup and figure out our next plan.

The Casino parking lot was massive and it felt like it took an age to finally reach the back area where boondocking was allowed.

We were a lone SUV pulling a tiny travel trailer parked in a sea of enormous semi trucks, class C RVs and fifth wheels.

To kill time before bed, we went for a walk and burned off some energy chasing after Atlas as he rode his Strider balance bike around the parking lot with Fenix cheerfully chasing after him.

There was a four story parking garage nearby and I’m not sure who was happier to see it, Atlas for the cave like riding experience, or us for the cool dark cover from the sun.

It was easily five if not ten degrees cooler under the cover of the towering concrete structure and we welcomed its shelter as the boys happily explored the almost vacant bottom level.

When the sun started to set on the insanely stressful day and we headed back to Little Geo for some dinner before we called it a night.

We fell asleep the the sound of rumbling semi trucks and RV generators, hoping to wake and find that all the chaos of the day had only been a bad dream.

Unfortunately for us, reality persisted and we woke to find the world continuing its spiraling decent into madness.

Nick’s foot had been giving him a hard time since leaving the Pacific Crest Trail a couple days before and it was swollen and painful for him to walk on so we tempted the fates once again and drove back over to Walmart to pick up a brace and some wrap to try to ease the discomfort before he headed back out on trail.

We had one more night to make up our mind about where I would be camping in Little Geo while Nick hiked the next section of the PCT towards Warner Springs so we decided to spend one more night boondocking at the casino.

Generally speaking, most places that allow boondocking usually prefer that you limit your stay to one or two nights so to hopefully avoid confrontation, we decided to spend our second night at a different casino just down the road.

While the task of navigating to the next casino seemed easy and straight forward enough, reality would once again prove to be quite different.

Somehow along the way we missed the turn off for the parking lot where boondocking was allowed and we ended up at one of the many valet drop off corners of the Casino.

Normally not a big deal, but for us, with a nine foot tall, twenty foot long travel trailer we had been pinched off with no exit strategy in a back corner where optimism and hope goes to die.

Seriously, nothing will test the bond of your relationship quite like navigating blind on nerve wracking stretches of road, or in this case, a tight parking lot with an even tighter emergency turn around.

It can be quite hard to keep your cool even in the best of circumstances and we learned quickly that towing a travel trailer is very tricky and stressful, requiring extreme planning and well thought out routes. Moments of high stress can sometimes cause the lines of communication to become cloudy and tensions can rise quick, fast and in a hurry. Especially when cornered in unplanned situations like these.

But like always, we pushed on through and by no small miracle, Nick was able to swing us around in the tightest U-turn imaginable, saving our bacon and effectively sending us off in the correct direction.

Heaving a collective sigh of relief, we decided that this casino was not for us and we headed back to try our luck at the known Spotlight 29 Casino for a second night instead.

We spent the night watching the news and trying to keep up to date with information about the widespread hysteria surrounding the newly dubbed Covid-19 virus.

It was impossible to know fact from fear and we struggled with how to balance our thoughts on something so unknown.

Wishing we’d never left our cell service free desert cocoon, we booked the next five days at an RV park close by so we could drop the Little Geo and lay low and see how things progressed as we waited out the extreme weather brewing over the next section of the Pacific Crest Trail. 

Once again, the weather blew out as quickly as it arrived but the pandemic seemed to grow hourly like the mass panic surrounding it. Everything was closing down around us, life as we knew it was apparently canceled.

It’s both amazing and terrifying how quickly things can change.

Just how dangerous was this virus really? Are we safe out here? Isn’t out in nature the safest place you can be?

People are scary, the two trips to Walmart more than proved that, and with each news update our unease multiplied. 

Finding the aptly named Oasis Palms RV Park came at the perfect time and we were thankful for its somewhat secluded location.

It did indeed feel like an oasis as the pandemic storm continued to rage around us. The beautiful, towering palm trees seemed to project a calming feeling which we gratefully accepted as we settled into that little slice of paradise.

To Atlas’s delight, right next to our camping site was our very own orange tree that he tried to climb in order to obtain his prize. Still unable to reach by himself, I helped by lifting Atlas up the last few inches he needed to reach the literal fruit of his labor and ended up taking his accidentally dropped orange to the eye for my troubles.

We unhitched Little Geo and without the extra weight holding us back, we drove towards the Salton Sea to take our mind off the state of the world.

The smell of the highly concentrated salty body of water reached us well before we laid eyes on it and as we approached the State Recreation area we saw that it was being barricaded and cars were being turned away as a precaution due to Covid-19.

So much for that plan.

Feeling very unsettled, we headed back to Little Geo with some comfort food that we had picked up as a takeout order from a local Denny’s.

As we ate, we checked for further updates about the pandemic and to our complete shock, discovered that in an unprecedented event, Disneyland, Disneyworld and all pro and college football games were shutting down, canceled entirely until further notice.

That unsettled feeling multiplied and we were justifiably concerned about the future of our Grand Adventure. This virus had to be pretty serious if they were willingly closing down dozens of multi-billion dollar operations.

Despite our constant research, no one seemed to have any idea what was really going on let alone how to proceed or even begin to try and handle the situation that seemed to spiral further out of control with each passing day.

In the morning we took a break from the scary news articles and drove aimlessly around with no real destination until we found ourselves in the small town of Joshua Tree California.

We found a campground that had multiple trails meandering through the desert and we parked the Pilot, excited to get out and stretch our legs a little while we explored this new fascinating landscape.

It was raining when we got there and by the time we had everyone unloaded from the car ready to venture fourth, the rain had turned to snow.

Was this real life?

We were in the middle of the California desert where it had just been 80 plus degrees and now it was snowing?

The world really has lost its mind!

We just stood there watching in disbelief as the fluffy white snowflakes danced down from the heavens covering the unsuspecting parched desert ground in faint patches of white.

Understandably, we were very unprepared for the sudden winter weather so we didn’t get to explore the area as much as we wanted to but the little we did see was beautiful and the miles and miles of strange looking Joshua Trees were nothing short of amazing.

Move over Ocotillo, I had found myself a new favorite desert dwelling plant.

Looking like something straight out of a Dr. Seuss book, the slow growing Joshua Trees were a bizarre hybrid, appearing to be part palm tree, part cactus with a dash of crazy all mixed together.

The sort of hairy looking trunk can extend upwards of 40 feet but such growth usually takes whole human lifetimes to achieve.

Much like the snowflakes falling from the sky, no two Joshua Trees seemed to be alike and their bizarre features varied wildly.

Some were short and almost bush like, others stretched upward on singular stalks while the rest split off into numerous branches giving them a taller tree like appearance.

It was peaceful being surrounded by silent desert once more, but all good things must come to an end and by the end of the day, our minds were preoccupied and our hearts just weren’t into exploring further and so once more we found ourselves traveling back towards Little Geo. 

When we arrived back at the Oasis Palms RV Park we discussed plans and the future of our adventure amidst the growing pandemic.

If we followed our instincts, the safest place seemed to be out on the trail because the further we got from humans, the safer we felt.

So after much deliberation, with every intention to follow our family’s previous advice to avoid civilization at all costs, we decided to continue on with our Grand Adventure and do exactly that.

And where better to lose ourselves than out in the middle of nowhere in the hot California desert?