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Day 40

Friday 3rd August.

The morning staff are even surlier so I am not too horrified when the black water pipe comes away while I am dumping. We hardly ever use the onboard toilet and woudnt have if their bathroom had been open so it was poetic and in a way natural to see it all lying there in the sunshine. A quick stop at Walmart for catnip and a 45 second lifestory from a passing rv man. You get used to this and we have learned to open conversations ourselves. I learn about his father’s death and his sister’s miraculous recovery from lifelong stupidity after heart surgery and get a recipe for polishing fibreglass. An easy run down to Reno has us deciding to get at least as far as Grass Valley, sister city of the famous Bodmin, Cornwall, England. The last gasp of Interstate 80 took us high into the mountains again over the roughest road we had travelled in 4500 miles. We jangled and jarred past Lake Tahoe with all the cupboard doors banging until mercifully turning off towards the west and a run downhill. The road by now was heavily treed on either side and very picturesque. We climbed and descended (climbing means crunching down through gears balancing somewhere between lowest and second trying to keep the revs down at 22 mph, pulling over when possible to let the angry calvacade take a risky shot at passing. Descending means hanging on at 60 mph, bucketing and swaying, trying to anticipate the hairpin bends while the fridge, cooker and gong try to overtake us. Lisa prefers it when I take photos going uphill) several times through the Sierra Nevada but arrived at Grass Valley and I went in search of a pasty. It wasnt too good (broccoli?) but we met a friendly dentist. Having come this far we puit the pedal down and trucked on through to Willits - our destination on the Pacific coast where George and Ellen live. We lost the petrol cap somewhere on the way and the sun was in our eyes for the last 2 hours but we finally arrived, hot and grimy but jubilant at having crossed this Great Country Of Theirs. George was out of course. He’s in England for a month but Ellen was lovely and kindly gave us her bed. Slept soundly.

Day 39

Thursday 2nd August

This day is a big trek across the desert as fast as possible. We hope to do t in 2 days and are on the road well before noon. The landscape is barren with the salt lake with the salt lake half-hidden by highway barriers to the right and and industrial machinery under the crags to our left. Further on there are immense crusty salt fields on either side. I stop to taste it - its salty. After a couple f hours we pul up for a rest at a shiny white place that looks like a snowfield laid flat and clean to the mountains on the horizon. We discover to my boyish delight that this is Bonneville Flats, where my hero Sir Malcolm Campbell set the first Land Speed Record of around 300 mph. We walk out over reflecting salty water to stand on the vast white plain where the whole of tecourse cannot be seen due to the curvature of the earth. Refreshed, we get petrol and cross into nevada, land of desert and casinos. The landscape is unrelentingly rocky with scrappy vegetation and brbed wire for miles. We rest a couple of times in ugly places alongside 18 wheelers but press on until the evening when we arrive at the Model T RV Park and Casino in Winnamucca manned by a surly woman. In all directions we see glossy old cars, some cranked up to be fearsome drag machines but all beautifully detailed. Car show weekend in Nevada. The showers and toilets closed 30 minutes later so I tried my luck in the casino along with a handful of solitary tired punters and bored croupiers. I won 2 bucks but lost 12, dumped and went to bed, listening to the drone of giant truck engines airconditioning their sleeping drivers.

Day 38

Wednesday 1st August

We pay a final visit to the spectacle by morning light but we have to get downhill fast as Lisa is very unwell. We return the way we came the day before. Downhill for well over a hundred miles we decide to cross the Nevada desert by the lowest route, the interstate from Salt lake city to Reno. Making good time and still going down fast we truck on at 60mph for the full 250 miles and arrive at Salt lake city to meet the evening rush hour on a 14 lane highway with twisting loops above and below us. We punched the coordinates of a Kampsites Of America into George and followed a red line that threaded through the chaos and led us to the kamp. Lisa recuperated while I took advantage of the free mormon tourist bus which took me to a guided tour of Mormon Central. Lots of smiles, white shirts, long skirts and ugly shoes but very friendly people with a secure place in the universe. No records for Yanavicius. The buildings were an incredible effort from a few hundred pioneers, many of whom pushed heavy handcarts across the prairie from St Louis. The rand churches were created from what was available close by, the marble columns and oak pews both made from cunningly painted pine. A swim in the pool and a soak in the hot chlorine tub before bed to lie awake serenaded by trains blasting their horns in the marshalling yard upriver.