From Sea to Shining Sea

Well, our trip is over. I’m back in Santa Cruz, Jenn has returned to San Diego and will be starting work soon…and I still need a summer job. Too bad there are no Cracker Barrels in my area.

Our last leg of the trip was our drive from San Diego to Santa Cruz, which we did under the cover of darkness, while the turtles slept happily in their new bathtub home, back in Jenn’s condo. We stopped in Fullerton to visit with Sharon and Mark and their son Teddy-our second toddler of the trip. Teddy showed us his favorite loud and obnoxious toys and demonstrated how he can fit his toes in his mouth. We were duly impressed. While we would have liked to stay in Fullerton with our friends for a proper visit, we had to push on to Santa Cruz. Not too much to report about the drive, since it was dark the whole way, but by the time we reached the agricultural areas of the Central Coast, the farmers were already out on their tractors at four in the morning, and we spotted a bus full of farm workers headed to the fields.

Although it’s nice to be home and not in a Super 8, Jenn and I are both sad that our trip is over. Somewhere around Tennessee, we came to the realization that America is pretty frickin’ cool. Jenn reminded me that we had the same realization the last time we drove across the country, in 2001. We saw so many neat places and met so many friendly people, it was hard to stop exploring and steer the car back home. We started this trip out by saying sarcastically that we were going to see uh-MER-ica, the greatest country in the world…and while I don’t mean to sound jingoistic, we were reminded that even though the U.S. has its problems, it’s still awe-inspiring.

 

And the Padres Win!

Some of Jenn’s new Navy medical colleagues invited us to watch the Padres game from atop their apartment complex downtown. The complex boasts a beautiful rooftop patio, complete with barbeques, and a view of the action down in the new Petco Stadium. Good news–the Padres beat the Dodgers.

 

Navy Base, Coronado Island

Like ducks lined up in a row, a marching we will go…

 

More Rocks, West Texas

 

Guadalupe Mountains, West Texas

 

San Diego!

We finally reached our destination (or, at least Jenn’s destination), San Diego! However, when we reached Jenn’s newly purchased condo, we had some problems; namely that Jenn has only seen this place once, briefly, and we had no idea which of the two buildings her condo was in. Luckily, the sales office was still open, which just meant that Jenn had to go in and ask someone, “Hi, do you know where I live?” The lady looked like she thought Jenn might be mentally deficient, and was somewhat unhelpful. We did find her condo, but then, when we tried to get back down to the parking garage, we couldn’t find her car. It’s like the parking garage and her condo existed in two different dimensions that we couldn’t travel between. Finally, we found her car again, and grabbed our stuff to carry upstairs, and…you’re honestly going to think I made this up, but then we couldn’t find her apartment again. Somehow, in our underground wanderings in the parking garage, we’d crossed over to the other building and emerged at the correct apartment number in the wrong building.

Since Jenn’s apartment has no furnishings right now (her mover is dealing with a “problem customer” in Scottsdale and will thus be arriving a day later than originally estimated), we are staying in the Navy Lodge on Coronado. God, I love mooching off Jenn’s military connections. We’re right on the beach. You know, that big, beautiful unspoiled beach on the West side of Coronado that faces the open Pacific? Oh, that’s right, you’ve never seen it because it’s owned by the Navy and closed to the public, mwa  ha ha ha ha ha. Suckers!

 

I’ve Been Through the Desert

…with turtles with no names.

Although Tucson was a beautiful and balmy 104 degrees, Jenn and I, for some crazy reason, decided we’d like to get the hell out of there as fast as possible. I think the turtles definitely agreed with us. One of them had staged an escape the day before while still in the car. Jenn and I heard some rustling noise from the back seat of the car, and turned around, and there was Turtle 1, sitting up on top of my backpack, having popped the top of his Tupperware cage and gone a-wandering in the car. Clearly, the turtles have had it with this “seeing America” bullshit.

On our trip back to Cali, we passed numerous border patrol checkpoints and lookouts, but the turtles managed to escape detection by La Migra. We encountered by far the biggest tragedy of our trip in Yuma, which is on the Arizona/California border. It was lunch time by the time we rolled through Yuma, and my spidey senses were tingling, telling me that there was an In ‘n Out Burger somewhere nearby. However, I had no concrete evidence for this feeling, just a gut instinct. We saw no signs for In ‘n Out, so in a haze of dehydration and hunger, we gave up and stopped at the dreaded Mickey D’s, our first of the trip. Lo and behold, we get back on the freeway and immediately pass a freaking In ‘n Out, I kid you not. I could hardly choke down my McDonald’s fries, because they just tasted of bitter disappointment.

 

“But the state is a living organism, man.”

The next day involved a lot of driving-back down through the left corner of Texas and El Paso (where Jenn found the best torta she’s ever eaten), and into Arizona, all the way to Tucson. During our travels, Jenn spotted at least three roadrunners, and two tarantulas crossing the road. I somehow managed to see none of them. I began to think Jenn was just being cruel about the third time she yelled “Roadrunner! To the left!” while I was looking down at the map, or fussing with my camera. There were some interesting parts to the drive–the Guadalupe Mountains are strange and beautiful, for example, and all those cacti are an interesting sight at first–but mostly we just wondered at the extreme nothingness for long stretches, and then suddenly a mailbox would appear on the side of the highway along with one lone trailer. Who lives out there and WHY?

At a moment of extreme boredom during the drive, we tried to make Wookie noises. Try to growl like a Wookie right now; it’s harder than you’d think. That kept us entertained for about twenty minutes; then it was back to rocks and cactus.

Once we got to Tucson, we picked the Super 8 motel that didn’t have some guy who looked like a meth addict prowling the parking lot. We found a Vietnamese restaurant for a late dinner (the “college area” was pretty much a ghost town, except for a few dedicated summer session students riding home on their bikes to go study, presumably) and ate outside, next to two guys I’m going to assume are undergrads. I’m going to assume this because they were having a quite serious and animated discussion about anarchy. The younger guy was really and truly convinced that anarchy would result in an equal distribution of wealth. I couldn’t stop listening to their conversation–it was all the beautiful clichés of college intellectualism in one neat little scene.

 

The Saddest Carnival in the World

After Jenn and I left the national park area of Carlsbad (it’s absolutely beautiful, by the way) and drove back into town looking for dinner, we spotted what looked like a small fair set up by the side of the road. We parked and walked over to what turned out to be the saddest carnival in the world. It didn’t appear to be a fair, or any other sort of special event, but just a traveling carnival company with about five rides and a couple game booths with a tired selection of prizes that looked like they were purchased at Goodwill. About 25 or 50 people were sort of wandering around the carnival half-heartedly, but most of the rides were just sitting there, riderless. It was too depressing a scene for funnel cake, so we left after Jenn took photos.

 

New Mexico (Or, “Bats! There are so many bats!”)

Thanks to Jenn’s driving skills (and my car-napping skills) we made it to the Carlsbad Caverns in plenty of time to catch the evening bat show. Each night at around dusk, the hundreds of thousands of bats that live in the caverns in the warmer months make their exit to go look for delicious moths to eat. There are so many bats that it takes them about an hour to all fly out the mouth of the cave. And, if everyone is quiet, you can hear the sound of all of their little tiny wings flapping, like rainfall, and you can also smell them (they smell like wet puppies, just like our ranger said).

You see, I knew all this because I actually listened to the park ranger’s talk before the bat flight. As opposed to the guy sitting next to us. Jenn and I were alternately amazed at the cloud of bats, and the profound stupidity of Jenn’s seatmate. Here is what his constant dialogue sounded like, spoken at nearly regular volume, because he seemed biologically incapable of whispering: “Wow, there are so many bats! Geez! They just keep coming! Phew! They stink! Wow, they just keep coming! I can see them over there, but I don’t see them down there. (Pause.) Wow, there are so many bats! They’re still flying out of the cave! Phew! They stink! Can you smell them? I sure can. There are so many of them! Wow! So many bats!” I couldn’t see the expression on his wife’s face, since it was dark, but I can only assume it was determined obliviousness, tinged with regret at having married someone who must speak his every thought aloud, always.

On our drive back to the hotel through the desert, Jenn and I composed a scene entitled “No Inner Monologue Guy Goes to Denny’s.” It goes like this: “Wow, pancakes! They give you so many pancakes! I’m still eating pancakes! I put syrup on them. Now they taste like syrup! There are so many pancakes, and they all taste like syrup! Do you want to taste my pancakes? Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of them. And they taste like syrup!”