Comfort Zones by Jessica Renee Collins

It's good ole Jess, alive and well, coming at you again from Winnemucca, Nevada this time, noteworthy for being mentioned in Johnny Cash's song "I've Been Everywhere," which we actually heard upon exiting Highway 80 to Winnemucca.  Magic, I tell you, pure magic.  Also magic was the girl in what might loosely (very loosely) be called a Winnemucca bikini standing in the parking lot of a Winnemucca brothel alongside our Winnemucca exit smoking a Winnemucca ciggy. Hot. Winnemucca hot.


Speaking of heat, dry heat is a myth and I give you permission to land your knuckles right on the mouth of anyone who tells you that dry heat is better than humid heat--best to keep that lie locked tight inside that liar's mouth, believe me. People don't carry 12oz water bottles around in this part of America; they carry a ONE GALLON JUG of water on their person at all times. People who tell you that dry heat is better than humid heat have a motive and that motive is to motivate you to get your a$$ to Nevada asap but, luckily, you know me and I am telling you the truth when I say that Nevada is not for you. It's not for anyone or anything other than casinos, dirty brown mountains, and low lying scrubby things attempting to be bushes. If you absolutely must visit Nevada in your lifetime (or in your deadtime), visit Lake Mead which is on the way from the Grand Canyon to the Hoover Dam. Lake Mead was drop dead gorgeous and that is literally what may happen to you if you visit it because it's going to be at least 103 degrees out when you see it so bring water dammit.


This leg of the journey, while filled with absolutely breathtaking moments, got all of us out of our comfort zones, most especially me. I am a person who prizes neatness, efficiency, order and I like to anticipate (some say worry about) any problems that may arise before they arise. This strategy helps me keep my life all tucked up and tidy. When a life mess does occur, more often than not I have anticipated its coming and my broom and dust pan are at the ready to set things to rights again without too much disturbance and on I go again. Surprises are a no no; being able to mostly control what happens to me is a yes yes. This past week taught me that while I've done a decent job of anticipating and preparing for what may happen on the road for 35 straight days in an RV with 1 husband, 2 kids, 4 cats, and 2 dogs, I cannot predict everything, especially in Nevada.


Day 8, June 21st: Holbrook, AZ to Grand Canyon, AZ


If you know Bryan then you know that he is a meat eater and if you know me, then you know that I am NOT. Anticipating meat related problems is not in my wheelhouse of "worries" and that is unfortunate for Bryan because he discovered, on day 2 of this trip, that the grill this RV came with did not come with the all important connecting device that attaches the physical grill to the provided grill propane line on the RV. We have made many an unscheduled exit to various stores along our journey with Bryan hoping upon hope that they would carry this coupler device and every time he comes out of the store downtrodden, a meatless Charlie Brown to report the news to carrot munching me that they did not have what he needed.


So, it was with great delight that Bryan found a Camping World in Flagstaff, AZ nearby to our Grand Canyon destination that carried exactly what he needed, or so he thought. We picked up this $35 tube of wonders and pulled into our impeccably clean Grand Canyon Railway RV Park with just enough daylight left for him to attach the tube joining the grill, finally, to the RV's propane source and roast up some tasty animal tissues. Bryan having little to no meat for a solid week is significantly out of his comfort zone. Bryan having little to no luck MacGuyvering things to work is also out of his comfort zone and, sadly, that was the case here because the $35 tube of wonders was utterly useless and would not fit either zone of connection. Furthermore, had we traveled another 100 miles, Bryan would have completely lost his useless grill somewhere in Arizona because it, apparently, was not designed to travel whilst attached to the RV's bumper.


By the time we got to the Grand Canyon, Bryan's brand new grill was clinging to the RV with just barely one weld on its support bar. Bryan's grill, still unused, now travels in our bathroom when we're on the road and is unceremoniously heaved under the RV in a naughty spot to think about its actions (or lack thereof) whenever we camp. He has been able to supplement himself with fried eggs, bacon, weenies, and microwaved Salisbury steaks, and he even managed to wait an agonizing hour or two to charcoal grill a burger up in the mountains of Yosemite, so if you're gnawing on some propaned animal products while reading this, please think of Bryan and send him some juicy vibes.


Day 9, June 22nd: Grand Canyon, AZ


We paid a good chunk of change to ride Coach class in the train that takes tourists on a two hour ride up to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Do not pay for anything other than the basic Pullman class or the slightly upgraded Coach class for this trip because everyone experiences the same thing and those who paid double for the domed cars (with a view!) must have been extremely upset because the only view(!), for the entire trip, was the Arizona landscape consisting of brown grass, dirt, broccoli-sized bushes, and an occasional stumpy tree. The train catches one corner of a glimpse of the Grand Canyon the entire time so do not be bamboozled into thinking that your train rides alongside the actual Grand Canyon and thank goodness it doesn't because that first glimpse of the Grand Canyon is a doozy and you'll want to be standing on your feet in front of it, ready to damn near salute its natural beauty, by God.


The train ride is made shorter by a new entertainer every half hour or so, a Navajo singer/guitar player and a fiddle player were quite good at both their craft and their supply of corny jokes. Where do you send a dog with no tail? To Wal-Mart, the largest re-tailer in town, of course! What do you call a deer that has no eyes? No idear. What do you call the same deer with no legs? Still no idear. What do you call a fish with no eye? Fsh. Har de har, guffaw, guffaw and, oh my, has two hours passed already? No, but here comes your own personal train car assistant to explain to you what you're about to experience and also to encourage you, rather aggressively, to drink some damn water.
Our assistant was really very nice but we either all had a problem hearing her or she had an undetectable speech impediment because what we thought she said was that we could hike down to the bottom of the canyon in about 6 to 8 minutes. Not so, my friends. So, not so.


Released from the train, we climbed about 400 feet of staircase to see the Grand Canyon for the first time, all of us. Bryan and I at 37 and the girls at 10 & 8, lucky kids. I had to wait nearly four times as long to see what they saw! We all had the same reaction though and it was instant: stunning. That word most accurately describes your first sighting of the Grand Canyon so don't let me catch you using it for just any old thing like a diamond crusted Oscar dress or a molded over baloney sandwich because stunning is reserved solely for Mother Nature's grandest feat. The Grand Canyon literally looks like a picture, the most perfect picture ever, a calendar picture, a screensaver picture, and your brain cannot comprehend that what you are seeing is really what you are seeing and your brain, my brain, any brain, cannot swallow the vastness of it and express it to you through your synapses that it is actually real, reality, there, right in front of you, for a good solid minute or two and that is something that I have never experienced before and probably will never feel again.  It's groovy, Baby, and you should do it (because everyone is.)


Bryan and I stumbled along the path in absolute awe, unable to take our eyes off the Grand Canyon or to stop taking pictures of it. Luckily, the girls were paying attention to more than just that vastness and they discovered a quiet little pathway where just against the wall, nearly out of sight, two deer lay quietly observing the canyon themselves and it just added to the unreality because the five hundred other tourists milling about there missed that moment that was right there in front of them. It was grand.


We found our way to the path leading down into the canyon and walked along it quite perkily. It wasn't until we had gone about 15 minutes (not the 6 to 8 minutes our train car assistant had said) that I realized that we were not progressing very far down into the canyon and, in fact, there were an awful lot of able bodied people huffing and puffing their way back up the canyon, moaning and just looking completely exhausted. We went aways further, me all the time pretty terrified that the girls might fall off the path and into the nothingness below even though the path was safely wide, and then, besides the rumble in my belly, I noticed even more fit looking people pass us going back up just sucking for dear life on tubes connected to backpacks full of water, out of breath and looking like they did not belong inside their tanned, toned bodies. We went still further because we wanted to get to the bottom of that canyon, dammit, but when we came to another clearing and saw little ants of people trekking further and further out of sight below us, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were not going to make it to the bottom of the canyon and it's a damn good thing we came to that decision because the first three steps I took back up the canyon were perhaps the most brutal steps I've ever taken in my life and I had about 3,000 more to go as did my little legged girls and my Mr. Cozy Office Chair 40 Hours-a-Week husband, Bryan. Walking up something that big, at that height, in that heat, is like nothing you've ever done before so drink some water, dammit!


(We later learned that it was 6 to 8 miles to the bottom of the canyon, not minutes. Egads.)


We made it out with lots of "pausing for picture taking" AKA allowing our hearts and entire circulatory systems to catch their freakin' breaths and take in some water dammit and double-timed it to the El Tovar hotel where we inhaled, perhaps even through our nostrils, enough calories to sustain a Triple-Crown winning horse mid-race, including a chocolate taco dessert that my mother was still raving about after her trip to the Grand Canyon several years ago. It was rave-worthy indeed. We walked along another sightseeing path after lunch and reluctantly got back onto the train at the appointed time, but we all wished we had been able to stay longer, especially to see the sunset. Booking a hotel or camping spot that is actually on the Grand Canyon is a good idea, so try it now, while you still have ten years because it may take that long to find an opening.


I must now speak for Storm and Trooper, our dogs, who informed me, through various foul and crude gestures, that they did not like the pebbled/rocky grounds of either New Mexico or Arizona and that I had better get them back into their grassy comfort zones asap. Too bad for them that our next state, Nevada, offered the exact same landscape only in gray. Overjoyed they were not.


Speaking of overjoyed they were not, that is exactly what Scout (the geriatric diabetic cat) was that night when she released her entire bladder onto our bed, right between Bryan and I, at about 3am. Perhaps we looked like we needed more water dammit or perhaps the rapidly changing time zones had screwed with her insulin dosages or perhaps her kidneys suddenly realized that they were 16 years old or perhaps she was ruining our comfort zone because we had ruined her comfort zone by bringing her on this trip, but, whatever the cause, the campground laundry machine was the answer and I fixed that life mess up with a few quarters and an apology to Bryan.


Day 10, June 23rd: Grand Canyon, AZ to Las Vegas, Nevada


As previously mentioned, the only thing you need to know about Las Vegas is that it is unbearably hot. So much so, that the only thing we did for nearly three hours after arriving there was to lie in our RV soaking up cold a/c through pores we didn't even know we had. We had visited the Hoover Dam on the way to Vegas and that trip, while both beautiful and interesting, is sort of like throwing oneself into a Crock Pot that is plugged into a desert.


While I was lying prone in my recently laundered bed, Scout decided to purr herself on up to me and then do a bit of a dribble, dribble right onto my bed again that I had luckily anticipated that I should cover with beach towels and wee wee pads because nothing says romance like wee wee pads. The damage to the bed was nil but the damage to Scout was irrevocable because, be forewarned all ye, you get to pee on my bed only once in life. I'll forgive you. Once. You do it again and you're cut off because I own all 3 Godfather movies and that's how we Italians do.


Scout narrowly escaped a trip to the vet because I could not in good conscious allow her to be put to sleep in that awful Las Vegas heat, so she instead earned a solitary confinement storage cubby with her very own litter box where she has remained ever since rather contentedly. Perhaps that was her aim all along. Well played, geriatric diabetic Scout, well played.


Las Vegas was a disappointment to me because I had envisioned a street filled with those huge lighted bulbs in every color. While our RV park at the Circus Circus fulfilled my expectations, the rest of Vegas was too trashy glitzy for my taste. I wanted mid-century modern glitzy I guess. It was okay to walk around seeing everything, and I made sure that we saw everything because I knew that I had no desire to come back to Vegas ever again, but it was all really just a let down except for the Bellagio fountain which was truly fantastic, especially during our third go around watching it when they played Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." The thunderous rush of all that water is something to behold and I'm glad I beheld.


Day 11, June 24th: Las Vegas, Nevada to Yosemite, California


Well this is the day that efficient, ordered, tidy Jessica completely lost it. We got up and immediately set about leaving the heat of Vegas which is pointless because the heat is Vegas, at all hours, and I happened to notice a strange ticking sound coming from our truck. Tic-tic-tic-tic, subtle but clear enough to me. I mentioned it to Bryan and he couldn't hear it, so I figured that maybe the truck was just a little overworked from all of our daily travels so off we went. Little did I know that we were going to spend the next twelve hours traversing the blazing heat of Nevada, passing two (just two!) gas stations along the way on roads populated with no one and nothing, just mountains staring down at us, daring us to break down right there, 94 miles between civilizations. I also didn't know that we would not have functioning cell phones for 3 whole days, nor did I know that up ahead loomed the Tioga Pass, a death-defying road into Yosemite with few guard rails located a merry 9500 feet straight up. Just one of those factors removes me pretty handily away from my comfort zone, but you multiply them all together, one after the other, after the other, and I panic in an increasingly frenzied manner until it is no longer calm, fore-thinking Jessica sitting there, but split second decision Jessica who should not be trusted.


As we drove through Nevada, a picture of the state does appear in the dictionary under "desolate," the tic-tic-tic noise on our truck got more pronounced, loud enough for Bryan to hear finally. It didn't matter that he could hear it because we were literally in the middle of nowhere and the landscape had looked so similar for about 250 miles that we might as well have just been sitting there in the same place for all those hours rather than moving along and, suddenly, we weren't moving along. The truck's speed fell to 40mph and when I asked Bryan if he was doing that, he looked confused and said no. I know from previous experience that when Bryan doesn't know the answer to something mechanical, I am already in deep $hit and past the point of being able to anticipate what might happen next other than doom. The truck kept getting slower and slower and finally Bryan decided, brilliantly, that we must be driving against a strong headwind. I looked at the broccoli bushes, no help there because they weren't even tall enough to quiver behind a tooting cow, so I opened my window and stuck my hand out; the force of the wind immediately shot my hand nearly into the back seat and I felt better because answers always make you feel better.


We were eighteen miles away from the next town at that point, so I told Bryan to try to keep us going for at least another two miles because it would only take me 4 hours to walk for help if we broke down then. He then reminded me that we had bicycles and once again that made me feel better because I could bike for help in an hour or so, while my entire family shriveled to ash on the side of the road in the Nevada heat.


When we made it to the second of the two gas stations, the wind had died down and we felt renewed vigor because Yosemite was only about an hour or so away and surely we could make it. Besides, the tic-tic-tic just tic-tic-tic-ed and didn't seem to want to do anything more and there was the rather large problem of being out in the hot boonies with not even a mirage resembling an auto repair shop so we went for it. Idiots.


The first section of road was a wonder and a delight to Bryan and the children because it contained five straight miles of "hills." These hills are mountains to a Floridian, straight up, straight down with the added bonus of not being able to see over them so you have no idea if some drunk Yosemitian is heading straight at you from the other side for a nice and quick head on collision that you don't see coming until your head is located in the trunk of the Yosemitian's car. Up and down, giggles, laughter, up and down, tee hee ha ha, look at mom trying not to vomit, ho ho oh, Mom, bracing herself for an impact at every crest for five freakin' miles. Adventurous I am not, not in the middle of the desert with no way to call for help and no one to even come for help in a tic-tic-ing truck hauling 8,000 lbs. No.


We left the roller coaster road behind and traveled along okay for awhile until we came, hooray, to the signs for Yosemite. Nearly there. We paid to enter the park and followed along behind the other cars and I noticed a sign out of the corner of my eye that read, "Difficult for Trailers." I turned to Bryan and asked him what that meant and he shrugged, replying, "Well, there is nothing we can do about it now" and he was right because, coming from the area that we did, there is only one way through Yosemite and it is called Tioga Pass. It might as well be called "Take Your Freakin' Chances." We climbed, climbed, curved, climbed, curved, curved, climbed, at one point Bryan had his foot on the gas pedal to the floor and our truck was going up, up, up at 20 mph. Drop offs to the left, drop offs to the right, experienced drivers ahead and behind, guard rails nowhere and there we are, a family of Florida flat landers driving the most difficult road ever, in the most difficult manner possible, with a tic-tic-tic-ing truck with no breakdown lanes in sight. I tried to busy myself taking pictures of the gorgeous (not terrifying) views that we were surrounded by but all the time I was wondering if we would slide backward down 9500 ft to death, be sideswiped by a stranger off the side of the road and down 9500 ft to our deaths, lose the trailer off a curve and be pulled down 9500 ft...well, you get the picture and it was not pretty.


This went on and on and on until finally we reached the end of Tioga Pass and by that time it was dark, nearing 9pm and we still had another 30 minutes to go to reach our campsite. I thought that once we exited Yosemite, we would find civilization and flat land. I was wrong. Continued nothingness, continued mountains, continued curves, this time with bonus signs reading 8% grade. Tic-tic-tic, it was no longer the sound of the truck, but the sound of my mental abilities. I continuously looked at our GPS, at the miles to go, at the minutes to go, and I swear that it was not changing. We must have had 20 miles to go for a good 2 hours and I started counting to 60 and then looking at the GPS to see if a mile had ticked off yet. When it hadn't, I counted to 360 and looked again.  Aha, 3 miles had ticked off in that time so I counted to 3000 and looked again. Still 8 freakin' miles to go so I just kept counting and counting and willing us not to fly off the side of a mountain in the dark and had Bryan looked over at me right then, I am quite sure that I looked very much like a drooling zombie because I know that my mouth was hanging open and that there was nothing going on in my head other than counting and counting again. Rational thought, gone; want to get there safely now, its replacement.


I nearly cried when the GPS announced that we had arrived at our destination and we went bumbling along a completely black road and I'm looking at all these RVs to the right of us and Bryan just keeps bumbling along going straight and I completely lost it because he had driven right past the campground, right past safety and sanity and now we were stuck in Podunk land with no place to turn around and dirt driveways every few feet. Instead of stopping and consulting our GPS (which would have told me that we could have continued on that road and eventually looped around back to where we belonged) I immediately commanded Bryan to get us the hell back to the campground NOW by pulling forward into the nearest driveway and backing us up. Well, he tried. The left side tires of our truck fell off a mini cliff while the trailer threatened to back into a tree and then fall off its own mini-cliff and by that point Riley is screaming and wanting out of the vehicle.


After spinning the truck tires in the air for a few more seconds, Bryan pulled the truck forward onto land again and I got out into the blackness to help him even though he could not see me back there in the least. Mind you, as I'm out there in the Yosemite wilderness, the pamphlets they had given us at the Yosemite fee booth are ringing in my mind because, besides identifying the sites we could see, they also had numerous warnings about mountain lions and bears nestled amongst other death warnings like hidden waterfalls, hiking exhaustion, falling rocks, and hypothermia. Bears can smell cars full of food over 3 miles away and we had quite a smorgasbord going on in the truck alone not to mention the RV. Bears also enjoy roaming in the dark and they very much like people who are alone and there I was, alone, in the dark. My other choice was a truck, or an RV, both of which were soon sure to fall off a cliff. Great times. 


Bryan magically got that tic-ing truck and the RV set on the right path again after perhaps a 21-point turn and the screams of Riley subsided. We pulled into the RV park at around 10pm and a man on a golf cart led us to our sight in the darkness.  Lo and behold, our spot was a nice pitch-black area with a steep drop off to the rear and a steep drop off to the side. Oh, Joy! And, just about that time, as Bryan was trying to figure out how to wriggle us in there, our worn out, been driving twelve hours in the friggin' mountains and headwinds truck starts slipping and sliding in the gravel down yet another "hill." I politely asked the golf cart man if he, perhaps, had another site that would not threaten our lives for the umpteenth time that evening and he immediately took off in his golf cart for flatter grounds, correctly sensing my sliver of remaining sanity. 


Day 12, June 25th: Yosemite, California


This day didn't start out much better for me because I was dreading the meandering and steep drive back to Yosemite and then the terrifying drive within Yosemite itself. It also didn't help to learn that the area we wanted to see in Yosemite, Wawona/Mariposa Grove, was 1.5 hours from the entrance to Yosemite and our campground was .5 hours away from that and oh, if you'd kindly recall, our truck was tic-tic-tic-ing! Bryan agreed to take the truck to a mechanic in nearby Groveland even though he was eager to see Yosemite, perhaps also sensing my sliver of sanity. Groveland is tiny, teensy-tiny, and the one mechanic we found who was open was already busy enough for the entire day even though it was only the morning, but he looked at the truck, heard the tic-ing, added some oil, and told us that Ford's engines shift all the oil to the back when going up inclines so that was probably what had happened. He told us to find the Ford dealership 45 minutes away in Oakdale when we were heading out and to just baby it for our time in Yosemite. I immediately wanted to drive right then to the Ford dealership because the tic-tic-tic-ing and the threat of breaking down in a mountainous, cell tower-free, bear-filled region was making me batty, but Bryan convinced me that all would be well, that it just needed an oil change, and that we should just enjoy our time in Yosemite and go to the Ford on our way out.


Yosemite is overwhelming, at first, to navigate, but once you've stared at the maps long enough and meandered around, it is quite easy, except that you should, under no circumstances, stare at the map while your husband is driving around and around and back and forth and over and up and down and through, and no guardrails there, and straight down there, and oy! I have never experienced car sickness before but the Yosemite roads got me this first day and I had to clamp my hands on both sides of my head to keep my brains in. We eventually got to Mariposa Grove, where the giant Sequoias are, and oh my gosh are they amazing. Trees, up, up, up and thick, thick, thick all throughout the forest, silent and sturdy and thrilling to see. We paid for a tram tour and thank goodness we did because we were able to see all of them and hear their history and stories. Truly a wonder to see something that has been there nearly 1800 years and will still be there another 1,000 years more. My favorite was the Faithful Couple--two sequoias that had grown so long and so close together for so many years that they became one whole tree. Majestic.


Day 13, June 26th: Yosemite, California


This time, I looked forward to going to Yosemite. Bryan had a handle on the curvy, mountainous roads and was, in fact, driving on them like James Bond, Bryan James Bond; I knew how to navigate the entire park without looking at the map and the truck was going to live to tic another day, so Bryan packed our bikes onto the truck and we headed for Yosemite Valley, only about an hour away this time. There are paved, traffic-free bike paths all over Yosemite Valley and it was easy for the girls to keep up with us on their bikes because there were a lot of downhill breathers which they loved coasting down. We went first to Mirror Lake, an absolutely enthralling bit of lake that is precisely a mirror, perfectly reflecting Glacier Point mountain and all the scenery surrounding it, even the tiniest of leaves. Truly mesmerizing. We did a bit of hiking and rock climbing from there; Bryan and the girls made "rock snowmen" in an area where there were already hundreds of snowmen precariously balanced all over the place and, even though it was man-made, it was quirky enough to grab your attention for awhile.


The girls enjoyed pushing my limits by straying from marked paths to crawl along rocks near (as I had been warned in my Yosemite pamphlets) swift-moving, cold water or climbing up huge boulders that may or may not have housed mountain lions and bears eager for a sweet treat walking alone.


We finished exploring that area after a couple hours and the girls had enough energy remaining to bike to the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls, beautiful! Water sounds like the Bellagio only much more peaceful. We also biked to a swinging bridge over a large swimming lake located next to a meadow bordered on three sides by mountains. You could not take a bad picture anywhere in Yosemite Valley and it was a great family day spent in nature. Definitely either bring bikes or plan on renting them if you go. The other tourists walking around (with their gallon jugs of water) didn't see a third of what we did because everything is very spread out.


Day 14, June 27th: Yosemite, California to Folsom, California


I was mighty pleased to leave the Yosemite area and that terrifying Tioga Pass because I anticipated  traveling down a mountain for just a bit to flat ground. Wrong again. Leaving Yosemite is just about as terrifying as arriving in Yosemite except that the curves are bigger and there are more of them. Down and around and down and around the mountains you go and Bryan deserves a sainthood for handling all of that and me at the same time. It took us three hours to reach Folsom where Bryan's college roommate, Jeff, lives with his wife, Lisa, and their adorable girls Sydney & Caitlyn.


We utilized the Folsom Ford dealership straight away (we also had squeaking brakes at the point--can I get an amen?!) but were told that we had to wait three days for a specialist so we zipped over to a Goodyear service center instead. The diagnosis for the tic-ing truck ended up being a build up of carbon in the engine and there is not much we can do about that except to stop driving so much in the freakin' mountains.  Right-o. They gave us an oil change and instructed us to pick up some fuel injector and to buy the highest grade of gasoline for awhile at Chevron which includes Techron. (The timing couldn't be better--buy the most expensive gas in one of the most expensively gassed states, California? Right-o! Kill me now.) The brakes were also a result of mountain driving and there wasn't much we could do about that except to stop driving so much in the freakin' mountains. Right-o, 10-4, I got you, Babe.


Jeff and Lisa made a home-cooked meal for us that included tri-tips, Bryan was in meat heaven! and Riley really enjoyed them too. That girl looks like me but eats like him--traitor! Our girls were especially thankful to be playing with girls, in a two-story house full of toys, just like theirs back home in their comfort zone and the adults talked and caught up from the years between sightings and it was just good times and nice to feel normal again. Folsom is also a beautiful, family-oriented town with tons of bike trails as well as a road called "Riley St." Perfection!


Day 15th, June 28th: Folsom, California to Winnemucca, Nevada


The astute reader, and Johnny Cash fan, will note that we went from Folsom, of Folsom Prison fame, directly to Winnemucca of "I've Been Everywhere" Man fame. Winnemucca is fun to say but that is about all I can tell you about it because we have been cozied up in the RV since arriving at the campground a few hours ago. Bryan is asleep on the couch in front of the TV, which is on, the girls are in their room playing happily together, and I'm writing this at the dinette table while all the animals snooze comfortably. It seems that we have unconsciously returned to our normal comfort zones. Woot!


I'm not sure what lies ahead for us, but I know that it will be memorable and that we will face it together. It better not include mountains.