Notes from the Road to Arizona

• Although I had anticipated savouring a farewell look at the fabulous view from my 12th floor apartment and the sights along the Pat Bay Highway on route to the ferry, Sunday morning was one of Victoria’s foggier and, other than the immediate road ahead of me, very little was visible between home and the mainland.

• That first “day on the road” was a short one, ending within a half hour from the ferry, on the Canadian side of the border so my kids could come for a visit. Because a 24-foot motorhome doesn’t readily seat 7 for dinner, I must confess we did eat out.

• No problem at the border…..except….having responded to the question “where do you work?” with “BC Government”, the Border Guard wanted to know, “what’s your actual job?” Of course, I don’t have an actual job right now so I fudged a bit, citing the job I have left behind. Hey, I’m not in border jail, so I must have sounded somewhat credible.

• It felt wonderful to be zooming along the I-5 highway, watching Mount Baker and subsequently Mount Rainier fade into the northern background. Didn’t get so much as a glimpse of Mount St. Helen’s, however, since it was somewhere in the fog – at least, I hoped it was fog, because it looked much the same as that famous shroud of day-after-eruption dust.

• Having been distracted by a trip to Camping World and then getting sucked into an RV park membership presentation in exchange for a $50 gas card, we broke a cardinal rule of motorhome travel, i.e., get off the road before dark.

• No luck getting into either of the known campgrounds but a phone call led us to a combination motel/RV park where we would be, apparently, welcome for a night. It is probably just as well we arrived after dark and couldn’t see much of the surroundings because, as we were doing the hook-ups under the watchful eye of the kindly manager, he proudly bragged that he had cleared out all the drug dealers and had warned the residents that if they continued to use drugs he would call the police himself. That night as I lay in my bunk, I recalled in incredible, vivid and horrific detail a number of true-crime books I’ve read about various scoundrels who plundered the I-5 with their serial killing exploits.

• Things happen for a reason. Tuesday afternoon we pulled off the highway – early, needless to say – at the Seven Feathers Casino in Oregon. Having got into the wrong lane at the exit we missed the turn toward free parking and ended up at what can only be described as a skookum resort, complete with a casino shuttle service and a value card to get started on the gambling. Of course we couldn’t dash right over there because as soon as the water was turned on, there was a minor flood in the kitchen and bathroom. The first of the “roadside saints” came to the rescue, a guy named Bill from Portland. Bill dashed over from the next site, armed with flashlight, wrench and determination to find and solve the problem. Bill was returning from Reno to Portland with his Australian wife and her Australian relatives who, he said, after 35 years had not quite forgiven him for the wife’s decision to end her youthful trip to America with marriage and migration.

• Wednesday we availed ourselves of the first opportunity for free overnight parking at a Flying J truck stop in Corning California. This mega gas station can accommodate about 150 commercial transport trucks, has a welcoming staff, a great restaurant and gifts for all. This being America, the gift area features a huge stock of rifle and gun cases, with nicely textured aluminum exteriors and black egg-shell foam interiors. Hey, I’m sure nothing is too good for totin’ your guns! This was my second reminder in two days that Americans take very seriously their right to bear arms. In the previous day’s local newspaper for a place called Benton County, Oregon (population approx. 79,000) an article described a freedom-of-information request to disclose information about all persons to whom the County had issued a “permit to carry concealed weapon.” The purpose of the article was to alert all 2,000-plus such persons of their right to have the County withhold their personal information; a right that seems consistent with the whole notion of “concealed”.

• A huge motorhome, probably 40 feet long and towing an SUV pulled into the far corner of the Flying J. Although the preliminary assessment was “rich folks heading south”, it turned out to be a repo man who had just seized the motorhome and was towing his own vehicle behind so he could drive home after delivering the motorhome to a foreclosure compound. That was one of many, many, many signs of the unhappy state of the US economy. Other signs have included local newspapers – the kind with 20 pages maximum – that have page after page after page of foreclosure sale listings. One RV park host said that a year ago there would have been no room for someone (like me) pulling off the road for a night. This year, that same place is two-thirds empty. In Phoenix, house prices dropped by 38% during the month of October. Wherever we saw a TV, folks would stop talking to watch news reports about the economy, and nobody was smiling.

• Of course some folks have more troubles than others; always an inspiration to count one’s personal blessings. At one RV park, I met an interesting young woman named Sarah who has two children, both under the age of two years. Having returned from Arizona to California so her husband could help his ailing father, a roofer, with a failing business, Sarah’s husband – who is clearly not a roofer – had just broken both arms and a leg after falling off a 14-foot ladder. Sarah was fretting about the pending drive home with babies and invalid but she was even more concerned about her husband’s inability to work and pay the bills. Sarah is, however, a Christian who truly believes that Jesus is going to make this work out for her. Yes, these are tough times for many and, it seems for some like Sarah, if it weren’t for bad luck she’d have no luck at all.
  

…..to be continued.