Needles, California, November 2019. An unscheduled sleepover at a Red Roof Inn straddling the California–Arizona border, with a parking lot that spanned two time zones. There was limited cable, so Laura and I huddled together on the king-size bed and watched an episode from season 3 of The Crown on my phone.
We were transplanting ourselves from Oakland to Las Cruces, New Mexico. In October, I had flown to El Paso (no public airport in Las Cruces), supervised the delivery of our belongings, unpacked scores of boxes, and shelved countless books. A month later, I took the return flight to Oakland. The next day, we set out on the final phase of the move: a thousand-mile road trip with our cat, Lolo, voicing her displeasure from the backseat of a rented Nissan Rogue.1
Day 1 was uneventful. Almond groves off I-5. Gross-polluting eighteen-wheelers on I-5. A pet-friendly Best Western in Bakersfield.
If every road trip guarantees one Very Bad Day, that was day 2. We never made it to the motel room we’d booked in Bullhead City, Arizona.
For one thing, the GPS lady led us on a surprise seventy-mile tour of the Mojave Desert. No signal, no gas pumps, not another vehicle on the special super-fast shortcut road. (Needless to say, the GPS lady has been let go.)
For another, when we emerged at last from the desert, fighting, it was into the aftermath of a torrential Arizona rainstorm. We forded a few submerged roads, but night was falling, and enough was enough. We bailed on our motel reservation and backtracked to Needles.
There was no denying that the Mojave had been absolutely stunning. And we’d seen two double rainbows en route to the flood.
But the true saving grace that day was our pre–Mojave Desert stop at Peggy Sue’s, just off Ghost Town Road in Yermo, California. We ordered two takeout chocolate shakes. If our luck had been worse, they would have been our last meal.
We had decided to drive Lolo to New Mexico and spare her the concentrated stress of air travel. That meant finding a rental car. We already had a car in Las Cruces, and I could have driven it to California and back. But we no longer wanted to leave our own car or a rental on the Oakland street where we had been living. We picked up the Nissan the morning we left, said goodbye to our gutted home, and hit the road.
I remember it well!
I am glad you made it!! Love the photos!