In Search of Sand, Salt Water, Rainbow Flags and Linguini With Clam Sauce - Part One: Cochiti Lake to Pismo Beach

I Don't Think These Ancient Ones Made It To Pismo Beach

Part One: Cochiti Lake to Pismo Beach

Due to various circumstances, Leon and I were not able to make our annual trip to Cape Cod and Provincetown this September. The circumstances being that it is 2,000 mile to the Cape, and even though Leon has the earned time, he could not take the requisite three to four weeks off that it would take for a leisurely journey.

We did it last year when Leon’s temporary job ended at the end of August and he was hanging on an approval to rehire him permanently, a process that took about eight weeks. It worked out well and we did the trip, including visits with family and friends and a week in Truro/Provincetown, in about 30 days.

The further circumstances being that even with the camper in tow, the cost of the 2,000 mile trip to the East Coast is more than our budget would allow.

So this year we decided to go to California, even though we’d just been there in July and a 1,000 mile trip would still be pushing our budget. Although we liked the San Diego/Encinitas area, and Black’s Beach of course, we couldn’t find a campground nearby that wasn’t already booked solid. (Finding one of the thousands of RV parks/campgrounds using the internet is not as easy as it might seem, especially when one is unfamiliar with the target area - it is the advertised (expensive) resorts that pop up first and the very reasonably priced State and County parks are usually the ones that are all booked up).

The difficulty finding accommodations for our trailer had us looking north to where the population is not quite so dense and beaches promised to be a bit less crowded. There were a few criteria we hoped to meet:
1) it had to be a dog-friendly place, preferably with a dog-friendly beach in the vicinity;
2) it would be great to have a nude beach nearby
3) the area would ideally have a “Provincetown feel” in some way.

I was elated to find that in Avila Beach, near San Luis Obispo, California there is an “off-leash” dog beach. Also, in Avila is Pirates’ Cove, likely the only nude beach between Los Angeles and San Francisco. And an internet search for campgrounds turned up Pacific Dunes in Pismo Beach, very close to Avila Beach and perched atop some vast and magnificent sand dunes, which, though larger and more extensive, actually are reminiscent of the Province Lands sand dunes of the National Seashore between US Route 6 and the Atlantic ocean in Provincetown.

So, all criteria having been met to some degree, we started out our trip on Wednesday, September 6th through the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona and California.

There Is A Lot Of "Nothing" Between Here And There

One Thing About The Desert Is Irony
(And To Be Picky, Scorpions Are Not Insects)

It is almost unfathomable how much “nothing” there is in the southwest and how vast is the landscape, often without a single point of interest on the horizon. Brown dirt, dried grasses, scrubby plants spot the dessert: I consider the New Mexico landscape to be harsh, but there are lots of juniper trees at least; in Arizona, nothing taller than sage brush, or a cholla or a yucca or an occasional Joshua tree.

The landscape can be monotonous except for the mountains in the distance or unusual rock formations which seem to appear out of nowhere. At certain altitudes the rocks are ever changing: jagged rocks, smooth rocks, grey rocks and red rocks, monoliths and rubble, balancing rocks and rocks with holes, mountain ranges and canyons. 

Most definitely, we are on the Third Rock From the Sun.

Rocks Everywhere On The 3rd Rock From The Sun

At The Painted Desert - Petrified Forest

In fact our first stop turned out to be to look at rocks. Holbrook, Arizona, The Petrified Forest. The dessert floor strewn with tree-trunks-turned-to-stone and the Painted Dessert with many rock formations and varied strata of colored rock in its hills.

Who can fathom millions of years? We can conceptualize the time recorded in history books by comparing the life-span of Plato or Cleopatra to our own and kind of piece together a series of human lives representing hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

But millions of years? Attempts to reference cosmic time by offering visual comparisons fail the imagination. There is no yard stick, no quarter dollar we can hold next to it to like one sees in advertisements as a reference to the size of something being sold. No car driving through a giant Sequoia. No pie chart is adequate to slice a year out of millions.

More mind-boggling still is the fact that millions of years combined with a happenstance encounter of trees and mud and water and minerals in such a way as to leave behind solidified trees for we mortals to gaze upon and wonder.

Painted Desert Inn - Historical Landmark

Ancient Travelers In The Painted Desert

Petrified Forest

Logs Turned To Stone

How It Happened

Benni looking For A Petrified Stick

“Vast” “unfathomable” “mind-boggling” - these words kept coming to mind throughout the trip, fashioning a recurring theme of largeness, exponential numbers of things, immense, immeasurable, limitless. As expansive as the landscapes.

Like the perhaps half-mile long freight trains chugging along with shipping containers stacked two high and the tractor trailers that then move those containers to their final destinations. Thousands upon thousands moving through the country at any given time. Mind-boggling. The effort required to move all that stuff - so much stuff: furniture, bottles of wine, meat, fruit, vegetables, beer, cars, tires, TVs, clothing, oil, pesticides, barbecue grills, toys, lumber and drywall, tools, machinery, bottled water, plastic goods made in China and sold at Walmart and Dollar Stores in every Smalltown, America. Mind-boggling.

And the amount of fossil fuel being consumed to transport that stuff and us and our camper and all the other travelers on this highway. Mind-boggling.

And the agriculture: miles multiplied by acres of orange trees, grapevines, cabbages, melons, almonds, sometimes as far as one could see. How do they tend these crops? The sheer numbers of cars, pick-up trucks, RVs and campers. A single campground in California easily has more RVs than there are homes in Cochiti Lake, NM where we currently live.

And…each of those RVs cost two, three, four times what our HOUSE cost. Be it ever so humble, our Craig’s List camper sat proudly amongst the $400,000 motor homes with five slide outs at the Orange Grove RV Resort in California and later at Pacific Dunes Ranch and RV Resort in Pismo Beach.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of campgrounds or “RV Resorts” in California alone, and in Arizona, each with hundreds of RVs parked ten feet from one another. Some have decks and gardens and ATVs and Harley Davidsons and Land Rovers in tow and $70,000 pick-ups.

Economics fascinates me. Not economics theory, but actual, people economics. The disparity between the have-nots and us, and between us and the have-mores, and between the the have-mores and the filthy rich. But perhaps I’ll get back to that later.

Its just that the numbers of dollars and numbers of things and the numbers of people are so mind-boggling.

Another stop was at the Grand Canyon Caverns. A motel and restaurant and a hodgepodge of dusty attractions and curiosities. The place was apparently run in a very laissez-faire sort of way: you had to poke around yourself because there seemed to be no one to offer directions or information.

We finally found where the cavern tour was located. The cavern is “dry”, meaning that lack of moisture results in no stalactites or stalagmites. Thus, in my opinion, rather blah, as caverns go. There was a replica of an extinct giant sloth whose bones were found there. There was a “hotel room” set in a cave. 

I Felt Guilty For Not Being More
Enthusiastic About The Caves

One cavern was stockpiled with provisions for 2,000 people awaiting the radioactive dust to settle after a nuclear bomb.

Fallout Shelter

So many of the Route 66 attractions are kitschy and the Grand Canyon Caverns was a bit pricy, but what the hey, we were out of town and looking for something to do. 

The abandoned gas stations, motels, restaurants, gift shops along old Route 66 recall a time before Interstate Highways.

These TeePees Are Still An Attraction In Holbrook, AZ
 - If You Need A Motel Room There. 

Most Of Route 66 Is Rather Sad

Back on the road we found Bullhead, Arizona and camped at a county park along the Colorado River. The river was clean and refreshing and we all went for a swim. Benni had the most fun of course, since water was involved. The night was windy and rainy.

Benni Ignoring The Ducks In The Colorado River

Arizona Likes Their Palm Trees - Though I'm Sure
They Are Not An Indigenous Species

On to California. Talk about vast and empty. I never realized how much “nothing” comprises California. Dessert, hills, mountains, rocks, more dessert and hills and mountains. It seemed to go on forever. Then we made it to orange country.


We stayed at an “RV Resort” in an orange grove. Interesting. Hot. 

The Whitewash Reminded Me Of Grandpa Daversa's Fruit Trees
Back In New Britain, Connecticut

Somebody Had Too Much Time On Their Hands

Fascinated by the acres of orange trees all over Bakersfield and environs. How many oranges does it take to keep Americans juiced? Lots.

This Is Just A Small Example Of The Orchards
That Stretched For Miles

The vast orchards made me wonder how they plant, prune, irrigate, maintain and harvest the trees and fruit. All the fields are irrigated and very clean and tidy. All planted in perfect rows and new fields with saplings must have thousands of new trees. I wonder how many Mexicans are employed in agriculture. And I'm sure many are expert growers and arborists.

On Sunday, September 10th, we made it to Pacific Dunes Ranch and RV Resort in Pismo Beach/Oceano, California where we settled in for the week.

The dunes were quite impressive and it was good to take off our shoes and walk through the sand. 

A little like Provincetown.

Benni's And Our First Glimpse Of Pacific Dunes 

To be continued...