The trip to California,part 2...

After our first night camping in Missouri (and a Hard Days Night) the next few days are a blur , lost memory except just driving through Texas and wondering if we were driving around in circles. I swear I saw James Dean thumbing for a ride. I remember stopping at a rest stop and noting the bugs were bigger, it was extremely hot and dry, and fat old guy in a cowboy hat who spoke with a Texas drawl so thick i thought he was drunk. (Well, he probably was anyway).


The next memory I have is camping in what seemed to be a stone parking lot in Carlsbad Caverns area, New Mexico. Hot. We went to see the bats fly out of the famous cave that evening at sunset. Apparently, my parents had done a lot of this stuff before they had children. That was another trip to California around 1952 that we have home movies of. Floyd and Margaret Allen went with them. as the story goes, they bickered all the way, and Floyd kept looking at the landscape instead of keeping his eyes on the road half the time, when it was his turn to drive, scaring everybody half to death. That would make a hell of a movie in itself. Sort of a comedy/drama. SomedayI'd like to see that whole era from 1930 to 1957 portrayed in a movie..."Floyd and Margaret" I'll call it.


At least my folks had an air conditioner installed in the door, a popular item back then. The home movies show lots of mountains they stopped at with Loree, Floyd and Paul waving or walking, and occasionally grandma would get out of the car. Other still photos are around the house here somewhere. I'll have to dig up stills from both trips.


The next day we took a tour of Carlsbad Caverns, went way down underground. that was a lot of fun until we came up to the heat the next day. Don't recall f we drove the 2nd half of the day but I bet we did, and wound up in Tombstone Arizona area. don;t recall the campground. We filmed and took photos of the Famous Tourist Trap the OK Corral (not to be confused with the singing group, the OK Chorale-just kidding). One phony tombstone at the "Boothill" they created was quite famous: "Here Lies Lester Moore, Shot Down by a Colt 44. No Les, No More." hahaha- always liked that one. We bought phony souvenir old time money, the kind that is treated to be brown or yellow and crinkled with oldtime printing on it. Think we had a sarsaparilla in the local saloon. (No Rocky Raccoon was not in the local saloon-Beatles hadn't recorded it or released it on the White Album yet anyway).


Don't recall if it was the next day but we wound up some national park in either New Mexico or Arizona. Could have been White Sands-90%sure. It was
on the south side of the state near the Mexican Border. I am surprised dad did not stop to see his brother Francis in Albuquerque, but maybe old baggage I guess.


National Park - we showed up toward sunset - Two rangers there and no one else at the campground. Lots of Cactus and tumble weed, but Roy Rodgers was nowhere to be found singing "Tumbling Tumbleweeds." It would have been more like "Happy Trails to You" when you find out what happened next.


Dan and I went to the restroom building while mom and dad fixed a quick little dinner-most likely soup and sandwich type dinner. i am talking quick here. We did not unpack the camper. Dan and I saw a giant bug or two that we called cockroaches-these suckers were so pick you could put a saddle on them and rice them. We reported this to the parents, which only made my mother even more anxious to get out of there. Dad had seen a coyote in the distance looking on and probably smelling the food. He thought, no, this is no place to camp, as my mother probably passed out anyway when she found out while we were in the restroom. We packed up after wolfing (pardon the expression) our food down. We must have had a howling good time there.


Two college girls showed up in a VW Beetle hauling a small trailer with their tent and stuff. Dan thought it was one of those giant bugs again, I thought it was Ringo. But the girls asked us where all the people were, and we said we're it and two rangers. the girls said "what Rangers?" We said maybe they went home to sleep. We told them we saw a coyote outside of camp, and giant bugs in the bathroom. and that we were leaving now. That's all they needed to hear and they left following us out.
We drove for several hour to Yuma Arizona and stayed in a hotel.


(End Part 2).

by mr t

edited 8-16 for clarity...