From Wisconsin to the border

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February 11, 2012--Departure

I left Madison late in the afternoon on Saturday, Feb. 11.  It’s taken two good weeks of hard preparations.

If you wonder why it takes so long to pack, here's why.  The trailer had some hard-to-diagnose problems.  The battery wasn’t charging.  Was it damage to the battery, or  problems with the wiring in the trailer or the solar controller?  Or did my purchase of  a new car (a hybrid--which RV repair places don’t understand) create some incompatibility?  After a trip to the RV repair shop, and finding a loose wire myself, things seem to be working now.

Then there was a need to research and order books on Baja, the need to research how to get permits for camping on islands in Loreto Marine Park, looking for RV places to stay in La Paz, negotiations with my daughter and Liz (my partner) about visiting me down south, where and when to meet, and so on.  
                                                                         
Next,  I had to figure out how to install my new weight distribution hitch on the trailer… which required a modification of how the propane bottles were mounted on the tongue.  And then, when the trailer was hitched up, it made terrible popping noises when turning.  More time on the internet, making sure I wasn’t towing a time bomb.

My friend Rob pointed me towards an excellent website—Couch Surfers—as a way to meet people in Mexico.  That required registering for the site, setting up a profile and itinerary, then contacting some people via the website in La Paz.  Still not getting  on the road.

But finally the big moment came--I had everything in the trailer the way I wanted it, so I hit the road.  And the best part was, still no snow in the forecast.

I had decided to take a southern route, to avoid snowy mountain passes.  The route through New Mexico and Arizona was only a few miles and 45 min. longer, from Madison to the border crossing I favor at Tecate—but it promised to be warmer, and to avoid massive avalanches (as during my 2010 trip, and icy passes.

That’s why I was surprised to suffer--during my first night south of Des Moines--as temperatures dropped to 9 degrees F.  The trailer’s full length mirror was covered with feathery branches of frost.  The propane heater barely put a dent on the chill.  I pulled out my light sleeping bag, then piled 5 layers of fleece blankets on top--sleeping with my fleece clothes on.   Once zipped in with the hood of the mummy bag cinched tight, I slowly started to warm up.

But then my legs started to twitch… sometimes I can’t sleep due to restless leg syndrome.  So I was forced to stand up in the trailer with my sleeping bag still cinched up, and walk in place for five or ten minutes.  That worked, and I finally got to sleep.  But sometime in the night, I rolled over, and most of the blankets fell off.  I was so tired that I slept anyway, dreaming about icebergs.

Sunday, Feb. 12

Throughout Iowa and then Kansas, there was no snow on the ground at all.  So the land was barren--all its flaws revealed.  Near the main highways, things are always more disturbed.   But the rural landscape looked pretty wrecked—with abandoned buildings, rotted trees, erosion, junkyards, and all the detritus of a waning civilization.

Late in the afternoon, the sky clouded over and the wind increased.   As I drove west from Wichita in the evening, it started to snow.  Stopping at Walmart, and marveled at the vast size of  the supercenter.  Just wandering around looking for the Outdoor Department, I was getting more exercise than I had in days.  The immense number of banal and cheap products, under the glare of weird florescent lights high overhead, left me speechless.  An interior wasteland to match the outdoors. 

By the time I left the store at maybe 9 pm, the snow was starting to accumulate, blowing hard.  The streets were now slippery, and I was getting worried.  I wondered if I should return to the Walmart and spend the night in their parking lot.  But to my surprise, just a little west of that town, the snow stopped.  Soon, the highways were clear.  I kept driving till perhaps 1:00 am, and turned in for the night at a roadside rest west of Wichita.  It wasn’t so cold, and by now, I was partly used to it.

Monday, February 13

After a good night’s sleep, I awoke to the sun and set off through the prairies.  I was on route #54, the old “Route 66,” the legendary first cross-continental  highway.  It trended SW.

When you take Interstates 70, 80, 90, or 94 west across the plains, most of the old feel of the plains has been replaced by the chain restaurants and gas stations that homogenize so much of interstate travel.  But this route roughly similar to what I remember when I first crossed the plains in 1953.  The route went straight through many small towns—towns with little more than a cluster of run-down homes along a few dusty streets, bisected by gleaming rails, brooded over by immense grain elevators.

I stopped to take photos of a long freight train as it waited on a siding for eastbound trains to pass.  The train was composed of hundreds of identical freight cars of a type I hadn’t seen before.  The walls were perforated—reminding me of cattle cars--but something mysterious sparkled inside.

It turned out each train car was filled with a number of shiny new vehicles--just sitting there in the middle of the prairie—each car decorated with graffiti along the lower portion that could be reached by young artists.

Although it was clear that this part of the country was depopulated, with most people just scraping by—you could see the entire economy of the region was geared towards extracting wealth from the ground and shipping it somewhere else.  There were a few tired oil wells pumping, and some giant wind machines.  Each well or windmill feeding its product into the grid.  There were pipelines and tracks, highways and transmission lines crossing the land, using it as a conduit to somewhere else.

On the eastern portion of the plains there were huge fields—sometimes with great square piles of hay bales.  There were long lines of irrigation sprinklers, of the kind that swing in great circles.  But eventually, to the west, the fields thinned, and then gave way to just grazing land, mostly empty, with a few of the old windmill water pumps from the 1880s. 

At the west end of the fields, I saw two immense cattle feeding lots, announced well in advance by a stench on the wind.  Semis bearing grain arrived at regular intervals, while in the distance, a front-end loader shoveled manure into another semi.  Grain and water going in, stench, meat, and shit coming out…  as far as the eye could see.   If you still eat beef, I can almost guarantee you’ll give it up, if you spend more than 15 minutes watching one of these places.  The suffering, the waste, the environmental disaster, and the ugliness, are beyond any belief.  Here, there was no attempt to disguise the mayhem, because the highway  along side the meat factory got little traffic, except  for trucks and locals.

The only workers I could see were a few drivers, and the guy operating the front-loader.  Of course, the corn farmers,  perhaps hundreds of miles away, are part of the picture, as are the Saudi Kings, pumping the oil that powers the whole odoriferous enterprise.   From the look of the houses in these parts, the local people don’t seem to be getting much benefit from this cojunction of oil, corn, cattle and cardiac arrest.

Well into New Mexico by sundown, I was heading south on back roads.  I stopped briefly in Vaughn, which was now nearly a ghost town, and took photos of decaying roadside buildings etched by the orange bite of the setting sun. 

I spent the night in western New Mexico at a roadside rest.  The weather for most of the day had been balmy.  I had crossed Kansas (going through Liberal at the southern border), the panhandle of Oklahoma, a little slice of Texas, and most of New Mexico.  I had seen a lot of smiley faces in towns that didn’t look so happy.

Tuesday, February 14. 

On Tuesday, Feb. 14, I drove all the way through Arizona.  In the morning, it was blustery and cold.  I stopped somewhere in Eastern Arizona for gas, and decided to get water at the free trailer dump.  I was waiting for an older African American man to get water, and struck up a conversation with him.  I asked him where he was from. 

"New Jersey.'"

"Where in NJ?"

"Montclair."

The same town I grew up in.  Turns out he graduated from the same High School, but five years earlier.  In fact, he lived on the same street as I did, although it was after he graduated, left town, and returned. (I was no longer there.)  So we talked a while.

He joined the Air Force, and was based in this part of the country, which is how he came to settle here.  But he has a home base in some other state, and another RV on land in a northern state.  He lives here in a trailer in the winter, off the grid, with solar panels in the desert.  He claims to be the most liberal man in Arizona, which he affirms is a conservative state.  He was well-informed on current events, and even knew the number of signatures gathered for the Walker recall petition (knew the number better than I did).  He said he had contributed funds to the recall effort.

"There not much down here but God and Guns."

He asked me what I was packing, and I said:  “Nothing.” 

He advised me I should be carrying a shotgun--as he did--and explained why.  One reason was, you couldn’t miss.  The better reason was that people are afraid of shotguns.  (I guess they aren’t afraid of Glocks and assorted hand guns in Arizona—there’s a personal arms race here.)  In my naivete, I said that you only had two shells in a shotgun, thinking of a double-barreled one I had seen.

He laughed: "No, no, you can just pump them, lots of shells, repeating." 

Shows you what I know about self-protection.

When talk turned to my trip to Mexico, he advised me to stay away. 

"A lot of nasty stuff going on. "

He advised me to take a shotgun to Mexico.  He said he hadn’t been there.  We parted after exchanging addresses, a promise to give him a call on my way back.  I left him with a can of Capital beer.

As soon as I finished getting water, the wind picked up to about 40 mph, and a cloud of dust rolled in.  Soon, it started to snow for an hour.  By the time I went through Tucson in the afternoon, the snow had melted, but there were puddles of water here and there.

Dust storm in eastern Arizona

In Eastern Arizona, I passed what appeared to be another giant feed lot.  Only, this one was disguised as a giant spa for cattle.  The center  part had Old Mexican  “rancho style” architecture, rendered in pasteled sheet metal--looking very phony--while on either side, stretching for some distance in a symmetrical and well-ordered fashion, were the ends of huge metal-roofed sheds,  one after another.   I can’t be sure this was a feedlot, but I can’t imagine what else it could have been.  If it was for turkeys, then there must have been a trillion there, and that doesn’t seem possible.   I imagine the roofs were not designed for the enjoyment of cattle, but simply--out of necessity-- to keep them from croaking in the desert sun.  The idea is to grill them AFTER the slaughter house, not before. 

This highway was a well-traveled interstate.  Beef corporations understand that revealing how they operate would mean the end of steak and hamburger as we know it.   So the suffering and stench had to be located well back from the highway, behind a gleaming façade.

To the west of Tucson, after I got on I-8, the highway went through empty desert for hours.  The cactus (saguaro or organ pipe, not sure which) were fun to see.  Like the cirio trees in Baja, each one had a distinct shape and personality.  But these are rather puny, compared to the giant cardon cactus in Baja, which are related.

I’ve seen some nice rest areas en route, especially in Iowa, where they are all equipped with wi-fi internet.  But a number have been closed—and some in the west are quite filthy.  I stopped at one of the grubbier ones for the night, near the California-Arizona border, and filled my tank with water from an unmarked spigot.  It tasted OK.

It was good that I got it there--because at the next roadside rest in the Imperial Valley of CA, there was a notice posted saying that there was chloro-flouro-boro goblydegook in the water exceeding EPA standards, but that ”It was OK.  Nothing to worry about.  If it weren’t OK, we would have notified you all by mail, right away."

I crossed the valley below the Salton Sea.  This area is basically the head of the Sea of Cortez, and the dramatic range rising to the west is the northward extension of the mountains of Baja California.  All along the interstate in this area, the border is just a few miles to the south.

The mountains were very barren, capped with a mantle of fog.  As I was soon to learn, this was the remnants of a winter storm, after all the rain had been squeezed out by the mountains.

Reaching the crest, I knew I was near my turnoff for the border crossing at Portrero/Tecate,  but these old roads, orphaned by the interstate, wander around and are hard to figure out.  I exited near the California town of Jacumba, which is right next to the border, although there is no (legal) crossing here.

Jacumba and the next 20 miles to the west were extremely funky.  This is far from San Diego, and apparently an affordable haven for people who like to live in barren landscapes, and who don't mind a few Mexicans dropping in at odd hours.  One property was decked out with macabre mannikins draped with clothes discarded by refugees--evidently a warning of bad luck for any illegal immigrants.  Here and there, the white border patrol pickups--with their little cages for captives in the rear--watched from rises on the trail on the US side of the border, like predators watching a waterhole in Africa.

Then I saw the loathsome Iron Curtain--stretching across the hills--scaling all but the steepest slopes.  It really is made of red-rusted iron.

The fence is backed up by drones, helicopters, sensors on poles, a thing vehicles drag to make a smooth surface on the ground to show footprints, and officers searching from ATVs.  Not to mention checkpoints on the interstates.

Evidently, someone had made it over the fence, because a number of white trucks were parked along the highway with flashing lights, and ATVs on the ready.

Some of the cabins I could see from the road were perched on boulders, and had smooth granite or an assemblage of smaller boulders for a front lawn. 

Heading west, gradually the dwellings became a little more normal.

I passed through the village of Campo (above), which has a railroad museum, but didn't stop, except to take a few photos of this little green valley.   After traversing more winding miles through the boulders, I reached the village of Portrero, in a larger green valley of its own.  What's so impressive about these three towns is how they exist in a world of their own, like some principality in the mountains of Europe.  Once you drive all the way to San Diego, you have reached another century and a differennt world--crowded, fast, and expensive.

It was cold.  I went to the Portrero library to get online, but it was closed till noon, an hour's wait.  My fingers got cold sitting outside, working on my computer, so I was grateful when the librarians arrived.

I spoke to them about my problem--having no passport.  Portrero has a large Hispanic population--one librarian was Hispanic, the other Anglo.  The one from Mexico frequently travels south, and gave me some good advice.  The Anglo one had never crossed the border (at least not recently), and had no desire to cross.  She had no idea what was going on, and basically warned me to watch out.  From her response, the guy I met in Arizona, other people I've me while traveling, plus what friends tell me in Madison, I've concluded there's a lot of misinformation--even hysteria--about the border. 

Problems crossing the border

Somehow, with all my obsessing over trailer repairs and kayak equipment, I had left my passport at home.  Some research on the internet, plus the librarian, led me to believe I wouldn't need a passport to get into Mexico.  As for getting out, my daughter Lisa could bring my passport when she joined me in Cabo.  No problem.  So I got my insurance and crossed the border.

On the Mexican side, the Immigration official told me I had to have a passport.  My photocopy wasn't enough.  To make matters worse, I couldn't get cellphone reception.  Leaving my car in Mexico, I decided to walk over to the US side to ask officials there if I could get the new passport card.  You know... you go to get your driver's licence renewed, and they produce it right there... after you pass the eye test.  I was hoping for something similar.  I was hoping they would let me in...  after all, I had a photocopy of my passport.  But it occurred to me I could end up as a man without a country.

I blundered around trying to find the entrance  to the US for pedestrians, and when I got in, much to my relief, I found that all they needed was to look up my "dossier" using my passport number.  They asked me my birthdate, and I was in.  (But if I didn't have an active passport on record, it would have been more awkward.)

Knowing I could cross the border from Mexico, I walked back to Mexico, picked up the car, and drove to the border crossing into the US.  I got a little lost in the process, then found my way into a long line.  The Mexicans now had to inspect my car again, and then when I finally got to the US side, they waved me aside to the area for more thorough inspections.

There I sat for a while, waiting for inspection.  Finally several agents came out.  I immediately recognized the guy who had inspected me two years earlier.   This fellow has a Scamp (the cousin of my Casita trailer.)  Two years ago, we had talked trailers for a long time, and so we did again.  He looked at all the features of my trailer, and showed them to his two associates.  He told me all about his trailer.  We discussed the pros and cons of Scamps versus Casitas, up and down.

First he told me his Scamp didn't have an air conditioner.  A bit later, I learned why.  He had bought a used trailer.  The former owner had an accident, rolling the trailer.  While upside down, the unfortunate Scamp lost the AC from the top, but--according to my friend the Scamper--the awning housing on the Scamp's side took most of the abuse from the roll. 

"Except for the missing AC, there was hardly a scratch on it," he exclaimed proudly.

Two years ago, I suspected our long conversation about trailers was a way of sizing me up--a more reliable and enjoyable means of inspection, compared to taking the trailer apart.   But after the trailer-talk this year, I was convinced the agents really were Scamp and Casita fans.

After a pleasant half hour, the agricultural guy got down to business and relieved me of my apples.  I would not be allowed to eat them first.  I pointed out respectfully that California had allowed them to cross the Arizona border.  

"Well, these apples are coming from Mexico."  It was true--they had been in Mexico for about an hour.  But the apples were the least of my problems.

Two years ago, they made off with all of my avocados. No conversion guacamole was allowed.

By now, it was mid afternoon.  I had been crossing and doublecrossing the border for hours.  We hear much of the mayhem on the border.  Yes, it is messy--more bureaucracy than body parts.

I had learned much.  Contrary to popular belief, you don't need a passport to get back into the US, but you DO need one to go to Mexico.  Sort of.  

If you are just going to Tijuana or Ensenada for no more than three days, you don't need a tourist card (or a passport).   There is no inspection for cards (or passports) until you cross from Baja North to Baja South near Guerrero Negro.  They need the original passport to scan it--to make sure you aren't on some watch list.

One Mexican had suggested I try a different border crossing--they might have a different procedure.

So I started driving towards the Tijuana crossing, via San Diego.  By now, it had started to rain. Lows of 28 F were forecast the coming night in Portrero.   The road went steeply down, winding among low granite mountains.  After about an hour, I reached San Diego, just in time for rush hour.

The crossing south of San Diego is very crowded.  Parking is expensive close to the border.  But about a quarter mile back, I found a place to park the trailer in a shopping mall.  I walked to the border, crossed to Mexico, and found an imigration office with a sign that said "open."  No one was there.  After a while, a young man came in who spoke good English.  He was very helpful and kind, but firm that I needed a passport (since I was going south of Guerrero Negro).  He explained this requirement has been in force for three years.

I went back to the US and explored my parking area.  I ran into two private security guys, very helpful, who gave me permission to stay and told me where the nearest post office was located.

Next, I called Liz and arranged to have my passport sent by overnight mail to that PO.  I actually drove there, to make sure my passport wasn't headed for some black hole.  It was in San Ysidro, a US town next to the border that looks very Mexican, with signs in Spanish.

I had supper at a Chinese buffet near my trailer, where they hardly spoke English, and my Spanish wasn't worth anything.  After midnight, the parking lot was very quiet, and I had a peaceful night.  I'm close enough to the border to hear gunfire--but there wasn't any.  Tijuana's murder rate is lower than many Cities in the USA.  Look it up.

I'm sure my readers think I'm senile for forgetting my passport.  I'd be better off not admitting my mistake in this blog.   And yet, I'm telling all because I think what happened was interesting.  It allowed me to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes at the border.  And I did need a rest from driving.

I was planning to camp in the desert, and here I am--camping on an asphalt desert.  Instead of vultures circling overhead, I have the Vodka Blimp making lazy circles over the border.  I never wanted an average vacation.