Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Our First Shoestring Travels

I know I told you I would not be back until Aug. 1, but we're back, resting up between short trips, and I just can't seem to pass my computer without sitting down and telling you a story, so here goes.......



      Barbara and I decided to take our first long trip. It was absolutely, more so than all others, on a shoestring. This was a very long time ago, before man walked on the moon, when Barbara and I were footloose and fancy free, son Corey was yet just a few dozen cells, multiplying rapidly, daughter Kinley was yet only a distant but hopeful dream. When Walmart was still just a single store, gas was 28 cents a gallon, Barbara was still cold natured, thus our home was still warm and comfy in the wintertime, (though that was soon to change forever.) The first, With many more to come.


      Our funds were truly meager, yet we owned a nearly new Corvair, freshly paid off. Our available funds amounted to a few pennies one side or the other of $200.
      My oldest brother lived in the outskirts of Los Angeles, while my next older brother, 14 years on the downhill slide side of me, lived in the mountains of Montana. Could we visit them both, see the sights in between, and get back to Fayetteville on our tiny stash of cash? We decided to find out. Now, shoestring travel, in its purest form, (cheapest) is, stay with relatives as long as they will want to put up with us.
We estimated their probable time tolerance level, and headed out one day in June 1968, on what should be about a two week trip.


       We drove hard the first day, and as the last rays of the setting sun melted away, we found a cute little park. No, not a camping park, but a roadside park. Right alongside I 40. We carried our tent back in the bushes a ways, out of sight, hopefully, from touring serial killers, and set it up. I shudder at the memory of that sort of travel in the old days, but back then, we were young, bold, and somewhat foolish.



      The next day we planned to see the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, many other sights yet unseen by our virgin eyes, and wind up at the Grand Canyon. We arrived at the Grand Canyon late, about midnight, tired but happy. Unfortunately, all the campsites were taken, but we did manage to find a nice little spot, though a bit smelly, right between the garbage cans and the dumpster.
      We saw the Grand Canyon in all its glory the next day. As we were about to get on the park tour bus, the woman behind us took her customary long, deep drag on her cigarette, and flipped it back out the door. The lady driver was livid. "You go right back out there and pick that up!" she said. "How can I ever find it out there in that mess?" the woman protested, pointing to the vast array of butts already there. "You just get out there and pick up any one of them," the driver replied. The woman, totally embarassed and humiliated, complied.
      Needless to say, that very large, colorful hole in the ground was breathtaking. At one stop, at the head of the seven mile trail to the bottom, hikers who had just walked out of the canyon were lying around, totally done in. As they say, "7 miles down, 77 miles back up."



      By late morning, we were headed on west. Getting into the Rocky mountains, we just simply could not believe the majesty of what we were seeing. And, unbelievably to us, many were capped, still, by patches of snow.
      Late in the afternoon, we looked for another roadside park. Each one was dry, almost treeless, with no place to hide our tent, and overan with small groups of Indians, sitting about. Some of the men looked at Barbara long and hard. Were they thinking how good that long, beautiful hair would look, hanging from their belt, or did they have something else entirely in mind?


      Either way, this was no place to be camping, and we got back in the car and kept pressing westward.
Arriving in Los Angeles in the middle of the night, we drove slowly along that mass of endless streets trying to follow Harry's directions, but with little luck. I started to change lanes, noticed lights coming up behind me, and jerked back into the lane. Immediately, his blue lights came on. Roadweary as I was, I pulled over to the left side of he road, the closest point. As I emerged from the car, his loudspeaker bellowed, "Get back in that car, and pull over to the curb!" I quickly complied. He walked up, still not in a friendly mode. "What do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "Well, I really don't know. I guess I must be lost as a goose." Hearing my Arkansas talk, he sensed what the problem was, and changed to a friendly, helpful tone. He directed me to our destination.
      Arriving at Harry's complex, it was around 1 AM. Not sure of his apartment number, but knowing I was very close, I took my best guess, and knocked loudly. After a while, a sleepy man's voice said, louldy, "Go away!" He was not in a neighborly mood, and was not Harry. As it turned out, Harry lived next door, and was much more welcoming to us. Asking if we had much trouble finding him, I told him we did fairly well until the man next door got a little upset with us. "No man lives next door. Only a woman," he said, grinning.


      Harry treated us like royalty for several days. He even showed us some of his work sites. Harry travels all over Southern California daily, servicing large earth moving machines, and he crosses the LA area daily, many times, in his large truck. Years later, when we finally got him back to Arkansas, he would never step foot into California again, for the rest of his life.
      He showed us Hollywood, Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, and many other fantastic sights of LA Sensing we were on a very thin shoestring, he almost never allowed me to pull my, also thin, wallet.We got to know, again, all of my California aunts and cousins, some I had met, most I had not. My mother's flock of sisters all headed to the bright lights of California early, mostly before I was born.



      We headed for Montana, cutting across Nevada, into Utah, and camped somewhat short of the Grand Teton National Park. Some sort of furry little animals, a bit smaller than a barn rat, spent the entire night running up on our tent, then sliding back down. Hard to sleep, with all that mess going on.

Continued      Good to be back with you, and thanks for reading!

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