Barstow: Beyond the Desert

Barstow, California. 10:15 pm.

This was a long, hot, hard day for everyone. It’s only 10:00 now in Barstow and I’m feeling refreshed (just out of the shower), but my eyes are so dry from salt, sweat, and heat that they’re burning and crying to close, so I’m going to cut this short, summarizing the day by quoting from one of the travel guides about the mountainous desert region we traversed today (repeatedly, given that we had decided to speed forward to drop off Tom’s car and the camper at Topock and Lake Havasu respectively, then return to Kingman in order to drive the Oatman Highway up and over Sitgreaves Pass to tiny Oatman to see the donkeys and a couple of skits).

"If a major part of your driving time until now has been up on the superslab, you’ll be surprised how quickly civilization fades once you are away from town. There are real beginnings and endings here on old Route 66, and a truer sense of being alone, dependent on your vehicle and the road itself to take you safely through. Along this stretch especially, there’s often the very first glimmer of how it must have been for travelers forty or fifty years ago. As you roll deeper into the desert, a more primitive part of the brain begins to stir. You may find yourself listening more carefully to the engine, checking the gauges, feeling with your hands what’s happening on the road just below. By the time you reach Cool Springs Camp (which is none of those, but only a trashed ruin now) you may even have heard some mechanical notes never audible to you before. Funny how perfectly good engines can sound rough way out here."

... And west of Topock (finally in California), "where the road curves down and away to the right, you’ll get a first look at what lay in wait for the pioneer or the Dust Bowl family. Imagine the feeling: just when you have struggled past the terrible grade west of Needles and believe the worst to be over, you see what must yet be endured.

Out beyond the shimmering, glass-hard desert floor in front of you is another range of mountains, a thousand feet higher than those you just crossed. And beyond them yet another great barrier range, higher still, Peaks to 10,000 feet, some still carrying the snows of winter. Perhaps you tremble a little at the thought of what it will be like to go on. Most did tremble. And some, taking in the seeming endlessness of these trials, just stopped their creaking wagons or steaming old cars and without a word to anyone, walked away into the desert and disappeared. It was not a good end. But it was a way to have it over with, and that’s all some could find for themselves in this merciless place. Just an end to it all."

Yes, "an end to it all" – I’m sure that each one of us was wishing for that at some point or another during this hot, endless day – exhausting even with cars; I guess one faces all sorts of adversity in the desert. But now everyone else is asleep, snoring away, in a stucco cabin at the 1920s Route 66 Motel in Barstow. Tomorrow we’ll reach Santa Monica and the end of the Mother Road. California or bust indeed.