Monday arrived and we tried again to leave with a certain amount of uneasiness. Would the new transmission be up to the task and would we run into another obstacle of some sort. Even though Craig had told me that the transmission shop runs every rebuilt transmission through a series of tests on the dynamometer I still had negative thoughts in my head and that isn’t how I usually am. This degree of anxiety wore on me all day and after 240 miles Beans and I had had enough. We pulled into rest stop along Interstate 5 and called it a day. I just needed to relax. The next morning we began phase two of our return. I decided to go over Tehachapi Pass and on down into the high desert beyond Mojave, maybe all the way to Amboy Crater on old Route 66 east of Barstow. But this wasn’t going to happen. As we neared Bakersfield on Highway 99 we were stopped due to a traffic collision up ahead. The freeway turned into a parking lot and it took two hours to travel the final eight miles to the turnoff for Mojave. In Tehachapi I found a Burger King for an early dinner. We could have stayed there in a nearby vacant K-Mart parking lot but Tehachapi sits at four thousand feet in elevation. It would be cold at night so I pressed on for another hour’s drive to a rest stop at much lower elevation at Boron east of Mojave only managing a 180 miles for the day. At least we would be warmer there. Ha! It dropped down to 25 degrees that night. I could have died! Strangely it was about eight degrees warmer back up in elevation at Tehachapi. So we moved on out early just to enjoy the heater. It was a long day’s drive across the Mojave Desert slowed up a few times by road construction delays. Finally we made it out of crazy California and into Arizona at Parker. I ate the last of my hot and sour soup from the last supper at the house with the ex and went into Walmart to stock up. Afterwards I filled the propane tank at a nearby Union station then filled The Little House on the Highway with diesel recalling Tracy’s advice for the impending apocalypse. It was now dark. I was tired (Walmart shopping will do that to you) and the final thirty some miles south to Quartzsite is on a narrow two-lane highway which is scary enough in the daylight with impatient drivers passing each other. I found a quiet secluded spot for the night behind the Safeway grocery store across from the Walmart as I wasn’t sure if overnight parking was okay at Walmart. I didn’t want to be bothered in the middle of the night being told to move out. The next day we would be home.
I thought I would be excited when we reached the outskirts of Quartzsite Thursday morning. Instead all the terrible memories of that day and night of October 26 came rushing back. Seeing the familiar sights while driving around town that late afternoon looking for a doctor, clinic, drug store, anything to treat the pain and agony I was in was all I could think of. Would I be reminded of this each and every time I returned to this town in the years to come? By this time the large RV dealers would have brought in hundreds of new RVs for the big show in January but the lots were empty. Another causality of the COVID-19 pandemic? I was surprised to see that the population of winter snowbirds appeared just as it was when we left two months ago. There was hardly anyone camping where normally there would have been thousands here by now. I pulled into La Posa South LTVA to fill up the water tank. In talking with a guy at the faucets he brought up the fact about the Canadians being unable to cross the border this year. I don’t know what percentage of the winter group is Canadian. Could their absence be that noticeable? After filling with water I drove across the highway over to Tyson Wells LTVA. Our camp spot we hastily vacated that afternoon was still there, empty, waiting for us. I pulled in and Beans was excited to see her lizard tree but I was uneasy again. Those memories of that day of panic packing up came back to me. I left to find some other spot, fresh and new to camp in but eventually returned to Camp Medical Issue. I needed to overcome my nightmare thoughts and not allow them to rule over me.
We were home…again.