When I left Austin Nevada early the next morning not much was moving in the dead or dying town. Just a few tractor trailers rumbling through and not stopping. I stopped at the newish gas station, the one at the west end of town, the one that the little woman at The Owl Club swore she would never go to because it was owned by her ex and she was damned if she’d give HIM any of her money, and got a cup of coffee that I felt just a little guilty about.
I was headed to Camino California, about 300 some odd miles and five hours away and home to Sand Flats Campground in the Eldorado National Forest among other things. I’d found Sand Flats using ChatGPT, something I’d started using after my little sister told me about using it way back Purcellville VA. And it works, so maybe old dogs can be taught new tricks.
Back on Route 50 I absorbed the loneliness and the vastness and the emptiness and just cruised along thinking of nothing and no one. The sky was an unchanging blue, the land an unchanging brown, and the road an unchanging sunburnt black macadam and on and on it rolled and so did I.
Along the way, about sixty miles west of Austin I passed through Middlegate Nevada, the even smaller, even more dead town that Dan the bartender had started walking from before being picked up by the owner of The Owl Club and having his life changed. Sixty miles he was prepared to walk through this nothingness in the hopes that Austin would be better than Middlegate. You gotta admire that.
Another fifty or sixty miles and I got to Fallon Nevada with all of the chain restaurants and gas stations that you find everywhere and anywhere in America and stopped at the Walmart to get some groceries. Say what you will, sometimes a Walmart can seem like an oasis, you know?
It was when I passed into California that Kimi (my gps) and me started to have a problem with one another. All across America Kimi had been trying to get me onto the shortest route between places instead of Route 50 but it wasn’t until we were getting close to Camino that it became an issue.
I was sure that Kimi was set on taking me off of 50 and onto a better route to the Sand Flats campground so I ignored her pleas to take the next exit and turn around again and again. I was positive that Camino was west of Placerville and so I cursed Kimi saying fuck you, we’re not going that way.
28 miles later I saw a sign for Placerville.
I took the next exit that Kimi suggested and pulled onto the shoulder to look at my map. I’d been wrong all along. Camino was east of Placerville, not west. I apologized to Kimi but she just gave me the gps finger and told me to turn around and bend over, she was going to drive for awhile.
So I did and we backtracked the 28 miles to Camino and the original exit that Kimi had told me to take and we climbed yet ANOTHER twisty, hairpin turney, guardrail-less, mountain road to an entrance to Eldorado National Park that was chained, locked, and gated closed. I actually thought about just camping right there. Instead I got out and peed on the gate and then searched my iPhone for a motel close by.
There were a couple in Camino, back down the scary mountain road so I headed back. Along the way I saw what I had thought was some new construction on my way up. But it had a couple of cars and a Ranger’s truck in front of it so I pulled in, and as I did the Park Ranger was walking out with his lunch and I asked him if it was open and he said yes, it had just opened the day before and I was in luck because Eldorado wouldn’t open until the next day.
And, boy howdy, was I ever. Maybe peeing on the gate helped.
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