Pulling up to a winnebago precariously situated on a desolate clearing in the desert tundra of the California/Nevada border a middle-aged woman saunters down the steps shielding her eyes from the setting sun. A fellow nomad, I put on a big smile to great my road family.
“Who is it?” she asks.
“Just a stranger on the road” I reply. Pulling the KLR up and switching off the engine. She comes down to the bike as a man appears at the door in a sunhat. “Hello there.”
“Hi” I shout as I remove my helmet. “I heard about this place from a friend and thought I would check it out.”
“Oh so your just riding through?” asks the woman.
“Yeah, looking for a place to stay the night on my way to Bodie.”
“I’m Jen (names have been changed for this story) and that’s my husband Bob.”
After introductions and a short story on my travels for the day I learn that Jen and the rest of her family come up to this spot every fourth of July for a sort of family reunion. Her grandfather had a gold mining claim to the area that she and her brother renewed when he died. Though they don’t actually own the land they speak of it with a sense of pride. They are tied to this piece of earth.
“If you go on up this road you’ll run into the rest of the campers. There’s plenty of places to pitch a tent, depends on if you want to be closer to our crazy group or if you want your space.”
“As you go down the road tell Kyle your an old friends of Bob’s” Bob says. “That’s all you need. We’ll be down in a bit.”
Jen has a short moment of insanity where her eyes glisten and she asks “Can I ride down to the camp on the back of your motorcycle?”
I look at her and then over to Bob who, because he is slightly behind Jen, gives me a shake of the head mouthing the word no. I’m glad he thinks so, and I gently demur saying I might not be able to fit her with all of my luggage, even though she a tiny wisp of a woman who couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and fifteen pounds.
Further down the road I spot the second vehicle, this one is a camper shell built onto the back of a truck in a kind of do-it-yourself winnebago. Again more people file out of the cabin and I ask if one of them is Kyle.
“I am” says a middle aged man with a chipped front tooth sporting a crocodile Dundee hat with reflective rainbow sports shades and a half buttoned safari shirt.
“I’m a good friend of Bob’s, Kyle.”
His pensive faces brightens instantly and he slaps me on the back saying “oh well welcome then.”
Not wanting to keep up the charade with a host of new friends I explain for a second time in a matter of minutes what I’m doing there and what my plan is for the next day. More family members wonder on down the road and soon I’m surrounded by about half a dozen people looking at my bike.
“See you got a Cal sticker on there. You a golden bear?” asks one man.
“I am.”
“Which class?”
“2008.”
“Oh jeez that makes me feel old. I was class of ’68.”
“Hey alright. At least I found some bears, I always seem to be stuck with Stanford people” I say with a chuckle.
As the last sliver of sun pokes out from behind the Sierras I try to wrap up the introductions in an effort to pitch my tent before dark. Several suggestions of places to camp are thrown out, among them one by “tit rock” and another by “little penis rock”. The titles of which leave little imagination as how they go their namesakes. Not wanting to ride further up the road I decide to bunk close to Kyle up on a bluff that overlooks Mono lake.
An hour later my tent is up and I’ve shed my riding suit in favor of jeans and chucks. Along with Kyle I wonder down to the main camp with some vittles from my bike. The camp base is actually an old mining cabin that was built up by the family patriarch and reinforced by subsequent generations. Really it’s just a large metal shed stinking of rat shit, but it doesn’t seem to bother the group.
Everyone wants to hear stories of my days ride and I get several explanations of everyones relation to each other. These are followed by detailed accounts of which camp spot is whose with annotations as to which spots are actually those of campers who have since passed on. I jokingly mention it’s all good as long as I don’t run into them.
It’s a jovial group. The kind of family you see on tv where everyone knows about each others lives and gossip about others who haven’t arrived yet. Occasionally there is a flare up of temperaments in the way cousins and siblings fight and instantly laugh it off. I didn’t know what I expected to find out here in the desert, but this certainly wasn’t it.
Though I don’t imbibe, a bottle of tequila passes from one person to another as voices rise in good conversation. One of the younger campers has taken it upon himself to build a fire out of kindling from the many trees that dot the gully. The warmth of the campfire mixes with the spirt of the groups loving stories. This is what I wanted from this trip.
At some point John, brother of Jen, comes up to explain to me how one of the lines of their irrigation system seems to be broken as they appear to be losing water pressure in the shower pipe. In the course of our conversation I learn John built radiation equipment for Lawerence Laboratory in Berkeley and has engineered all sorts of ‘luxuries’ for campsite. Wanting to be helpful in a small effort of repayment for their hospitality I offer to help him fix it, thinking we would get up early the next morning.
Next thing I know he’s handing me a hacksaw and I’m following him through some rather dense foliage. We come upon a padlocked door that he opens telling me the pipe must be about ten feet inside and shining the flashlight down into an abandoned mineshaft. This is wear scenes out of a horror movie hijack my brain and I think “I don’t know these people. They might be trying to trap me and eat me”. Followed shortly by: “then why did they give you a hacksaw?” John points down the shaft an we follow the beam of light.
The light cuts through the dusk disturbing a colony of bats in the process. Soon dozens of wings go flapping past my head as I duck and dodge. One of the little guys runs into John’s stomach and he brushes it aside as it goes flying off. Thoughts of rabies cross my mind, but John appears to be unfazed so I follow his lead.
Turns out one of the pipes had merely come out of alignment and it took all of five-seconds to fix. He then took me on a tour of the water system he built explaining the whole process and each junction. It amazes me how industrious people are, as I am less than handy most of the time. Returning to the fire more stories are shared and I tell some of my own. Bonding is easy without a single cellphone or LED screen in sight and the human to human connection fills me up in a way no news feed can.
Around ten thirty I call it a night as the rest of the family continues to chatter on. Walking back to the bluff doesn’t even require a flashlight as the nearly full moon illuminates the aired landscape. Up on the bluff I say goodnight to mono lake and its shimming waters before bedding down. The next day is going to be a long one, I can feel it.
Finishing in Part III. A ghost town, a heat wave, and escaping to the coast.
NOTE: I did not take pictures of the people I met. So I apologize for the lack of photos in this post.