We won't miss her quirks - the shades that have to be propped up with a piece of firewood, the fact that you can set your watch to the minute by when the "black water" tank needs to be dumped.
Oh, and the tale of the gas station tape is more or less in - with one short leg of the journey to go, we've traveled 2,074 miles, spent $682 on gas, and used 210 gallons of gas, for a hideous 9.87 miles to the gallon. That sound you hear is Al Gore hunched over in the corner somewhere, puking his guts out. Our Prius uses that amount of gas in a YEAR. Oy.
The all time nasty boy I saw on this trip, though, had to be the guy driving the 45 foot converted bus, and he was towing - and here's the photo to prove it - a HUMMER! My guess is he just drains his oil into the ground and as a hobby throws six pack rings into the ocean.
An Inconvenient Ride
For our last night, we stopped at the 49er RV Village in Columbia, California. On the way out of Tonopah, we spotted the least appealing RV park yet:
Er, nope.
After escaping Tonopah as early as humanly possible yesterday morning, we came over the Sierras past the east side of Yosemite. (Favorite highway sign: "This road sponsored by one of them June Lake liberals") The drive over the summit is crazy beautiful, but also a little crazy. You quickly climb to about 9500 feet and just a quickly descend. According to a road sign, the steepest grade is 26%, and by flooring the RV, I could get it up to about 15 miles per hour.
On the other hand, the scenery rivaled some of the best Arizona and Utah had to offer, and it was pretty much deserted. There are tons of campgrounds, and most of the land is forest service or state park anyway, so you can pretty much camp wherever you want. This would have made a great place to make an impromptu stop, but we had reservations in gold country.
Coming down the mountain was a white-knuckler - trying to find a decent low gear and pumping the breaks was the best I could do, but I had a feeling that at any time the thing could get away from me. I was happy to finally make it to flat-ish ground.
We finally made it to civilization, sort of, when a man on a horse trotted down the middle of the road. He motioned like he wanted to say something, so I rolled down the window. "There's cow's comin,'" he said, and trotted off.
He wasn't kidding.
At about three, we pulled into the 49er RV Ranch, which turned out not to be nearly at kitchy as you'd think. We had a nice shady spot to park the RV, and we were a ten minute walk from the Columbia State Historic Park, this old west gold rush town that has been remarkably well preserved.
We love this kind of stuff. There are a bunch of old shops, a few saloons, two surviving old hotels, and lots of exhibits on how gold was discovered, mined, and the settlement that supported the operation.
One saloon, the St. George, starts filling with locals at around five, and if you put them in old timey clothes, you might think you were time traveling. First person with a full set of teeth gets a free drink.
While we're on the subject, we paid a visit to the dentist's office exhibit, which displayed a set of turnkeys, a diabolical device used to pull teeth.
Never forget to floss
It was a great way to end the trip - like a Cartalk puzzler, it was historic and folkloric, and it reminded us (here's where the patriotic music swells in the background) how interesting and beautiful this country is.
Hop in a car, or a large hunk of steel with sloshing raw sewage, and tootle around for a while, and you'll see that there is almost no limit to the epic vistas, the historic side streets and the weirdly apocalyptic strangeness out there.
I may not want to head out in an RV for months at a time, like many of the people I met, but we'll definitely do this again.
Considering the close quarters, and the constant contact, we got along remarkably well. We're also good travelers, by and large - we like the same kind of stuff, we enjoy each other's company, and we have a taste for the unexpected, the weird, and the unknown, which served us very, very well.
Hope you've enjoyed this little travelogue.
Cheers,
Eric
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