Gooood – whatever time of the day you happen to be in,
Finally.
I am sitting on a porch with only one fleece jacket, listening to the cicades (I hope that’s the right word, I’m offline so no leo dictionary to help), looking at mountain silhouettes against the sky and waiting for more and more stars to appear. My typing’s quite loud, every sound is audible from the small “town” I’m in, so I wonder if from far away (that would make it a 500 meters max I guess) someone’s watching the small light of my laptop accompanied by my typing melody.
There are certain close listeners, namely rabbits. They are not exactly shy and Debbie has told me you can feed them – but I remember how you’re supposed to treat wildlife. So I only talk to them and will keep the cookies all to myself.
All national park instructions says wild animals are better off if they are scared of humans and keep away.
It makes perfect sense, but I’d never try to scare neither the big-eared jackrabbit nor the fluffy-tailed cotton-tail rabbit. They are so cute.
Even the coyote today was cute. It must have watched me when the barbarian tourist stopped the car (for what felt like the 50th time), got outside and walked around. Desert to the left, desert to the right, and so much fun to cross the “highway” for you can see for miles if someone’s coming. So I walk into the landscape, take a pic, and completely oversee the “big dog” that swiftly takes direction to the car – not so exciting cause I was just seated back in, ready to drive on.
Of course you are armed as a good tourist traveling the US – sunscreen (50 – one morning downtown L.A. forgetting the sunscreen on my face made me look 50 shades of pink-red), a gallon of water (which still makes me feel like an alcoholic if I drink straight out of it) and – the camera. So I got out the camera and aimed and I think I’ve got a photo. And another. And another. The coyote passed the car (half-running, just to be on the safe side) and passed on to the two RVs (großer Camper, Rental Vehicles, really strange abbreviation) that had parked in the meantime. They were better armed than me, I think. And it was clearly waiting for food – begging would be said too much, but oh well.
So one or more than one tourist in the past must have ignored the wildlife-rules. Which is why the coyote did come up to my car. Which I think to be supercool.
Moral dilemma.
Sitting here out in the dark on the porch writing about coyotes makes me more nervous.
Funny how we are scared of things we can’t see.
Considering a lot of things are a mystery hidden in the dark, not to talk of our dark sides, it’s funny we spend so much time being scared about it.
Sorry, no sitting on a dark porch – I report the stars are performing the start of their nightly show with such splendor it reduces Hollywood’s walk of fame to a cute leftover from that tribe called “humans”. By the way, I saw Charlie Chaplin and Robin Williams and loved those best, but I took photos of Kermit and Bugs Bunny and had to refrain from Big Bird for it sheds a weird light on my cultural taste……………
Anyhow. I am in Randsburg. Or Radburg. I’m pretty sure about Randsburg. It is close to Johannesburg (California…) and well shortly it is somewhere West or a little Southwest of Death Valley. It’s on my route to Sequoia, where I’ve alredy booked 3 nights with some Dutch people about one hour from the National Park, as I’m offline here and as it’s the weekend all places around the NP look quite stuffed. I do love to see how people live, which is a clear argument for Airbnb, which means I still haven’t driven into town and searched a place to sleep. But you don’t do things in person anymore. Even motels, Ameena told me back in L.A., have huge reductions if you search online, which you won’t get being there in person (not that I’ve tried, though).
And the place in Parumhp or Parump or Pahrump or Parumph was worth seeing. Thick American carpet, a thick American couple, of which the lady used to own an antique shop in California (Parumph is in Nevada, between Death Valley and Las Vegas). She’s into movies. And Coca Cola. And food – she says they once owned a diner. So the living’s room stuffed with decoration, settings in each corner, there’s the Starwars corner, the Marylin Monroe, …. And finally the lounge for guests (they rent out 3 rooms in the house) with the Rat Pack all over, the “Frank Sinatra Lounge”. I was completely exhausted once I got there (long drive plus I suspect a 100 times jumping out of the car) and drove to fetch dinner at “Mom’s Diner”, so I ended up sitting with a hamburger and fries in the tv-chair, unable to decide what to watch on Netflix. After half an hour, I gave up – the hamburger had gotten cold. Multi tasking abilities failure 🙂
Anyhow let’s skip Death Valley and ouh I’ll still have to tell you about Giant Rock which I LOVE – and let’s move back to Randsburg. Debbie is my host or the help of the official Airbnb host and she was not there upon arrival. Instead Scott came up to my car, telling me the cabin is open. And indeed it was. This place is something else. It is the first small place I’ve seen in the US that breathes history. I still feel this is a bit surreal. There’s all these little houses, rather cabins, that look like out of a movie just much more real. All is a bit worn out and dusty and dirty yet somehow – charming. In a weird way. My cabin has a bear’s fur with the head neatly over the bed, so the head stares at the pillow… I hope I’ve made friends with the bear, took a photo so we both know each other. The bathtub’s right in the “house”, so is the toilet, there’s a sink for kitchen and bathroom use and a huuuge refrigerator. Quite an old one. It made noises like a ship. I found the plug and unplugged. Debbie told me it can get too quiet and she turns on her tv at night so she can fall asleep and her dogs don’t bark at everything.
I got here 10 minutes before 5pm at which the General Store closes. So, advised by Scott, I took a tour of the town and ended up in the only place that supposedly might serve food, the bar. Named “The Joint”. According to old pics in the place I took a look at before (including a chat with an old guy who talked very slowly, I mean even slower than me if I think really hard about how to express something in English, plus he had a beard and a walking stick) The Joint opened in 1890 something. This is a miner’s town, with a gold rush in the 1920ies. Randsburg had gold, the next town (Johannesburg?) had silver, and well who cares. It is the craziest place to be seen, it would top L.A. if it wouldn’t fail so badly in terms of size. There’s 68 people living in Randsburg.
Of which I now know 5 fairly well. That’s more than 5% of the population…!
Anyhow you know last time I was “here” (I miss the Midwest, can’t help it), I was under 21, so I never entered a bar. Actually I think this was my first time doing so. So I enter the bar, ask for food, and feel like I’ve been sent back in time. So while waiting for my order of burritos and not feeling like drinking alcohol on my own (sort of stupid, given the fact you can’t take alcohol OUTSIDE the bar, say to sit on your back porch and enjoy a sundowner there, weird) and just staring a hole in thin air – a voice from the neighboring table says “are you Barbara?” and I see a pic of me on a smartphone lying on that table. My first thought was that small town Americans nowadays use apps to be safe when strangers enter town and a face recognition matched her up with my facebook photo.
Isn’t that an admiring thought given my brain felt quite empty seconds earlier?
But no, no NSA in Randsburg, but Debbie. 68 people still manage to talk to each other, evidently. Debbie and I started talking, I moved over to their table and met her husband – I think he’s seriously called Buck. And some guy my age whose name I successfully forgot. But he’ll contact me on facebook to pass on travel hints for Santa Cruz. He also said I could easily avoid broken canyon bridges on highway 1 along the coast (“you just need to know a local”) by taking the road right through the military base. I asked what would happen to traveling immigrants being caught at doing so, but that seems to be a very German question.
Anyhow the guy whose name I’ll remember once I’m back online and reconnected to facebook-outsourced-parts-of-my-brain ordered a round of tequila for all 4 of us. I had a lot of fun. And half a burrito. And a discussion with Debbie on life in general, a bit of Trump in special, and how she would love to travel Europe in case she ever won a lottery.
While I feel like I’m coming from a development country at times given Californian prices I remembered all the beautiful landscapes I’ve seen only in the last two days and that I am blessed to do something other people would need a lottery win for.
It is very slowly drifting into my consciousness that I am simply enjoying every day, just following my nose and doing things when I feel like doing them. And things seem to fall into place to support that… I was excited about traveling Death Valley (will it be hot…!) and woke up too early. And hit the road quickly tired again. And I was thinking about that earlier (the more you worry, the easier you sleep badly) and how it would get hot during noon and that if Joshua Tree NP didn’t have a decent shadowy place to picnic, how would I find shade to take a nap in DEATH VALLEY.
And then, at noon, I pass by this oasis and I enter this resort-like place and I find a parking lot in the shade and there’s a little wind if you open all windows and air-conditioned restrooms and a back porch of the museum – shaded! – …… So I could swear the universe giggled at me around noon, saying “see?!”. While I took a luxurious nap in my luxurious compact sized car.
I could go on for much longer. But the stars… are calling for a last long look as it is getting decisively chilly out here and I want to snuggle up with the bear. Sort of. Will have breakfast at the General Store tomorrow morning – and maybe meet more of Randburgs population.
If the cabin was cleaner, I’d love to stay here longer. But as it is, I’ll feel like a tramp for one night or a miner or – I still have to find out what that is – a wrangler (??).
One last goodie and in honour of today’s offline time: I zapped through the radio stations and stop at one that’s doing some kind of weird advertisement for not using smartphone devices while driving. And it ends with “there’s no necessity to react immediately to social media notifications”.
From starlit desert highlands,
B.