California 2: The  California Trip 1968

 After 50 years, I don;t remember shit about the next few days after leaving Missouri. Except we went through Texas and must have went south and wound up at Carlsbad Caverns NM after about 3 days. that's way down by the Mexican Border. I have a vague memory of stopping one hot day in Texas under a slimy gnarly looking tree to eat lunch on a picnic table, and saw a couple of overweight looking Texans, with their Texas cowboy hats on, I couldn't understand what they were saying due to their accent, and thought, damn, I feel sorry for their horse, and they got into their  big limo with cattle horns on the front. I still think, in hindsight, this can't be what everybody looks like in Texas.

I remember at this point mom had plenty of zinc oxide and was already slathering it on our faces and stuff so the southwest would not burn our skin off. People must have thought we belonged to the circus in a clown act. Well, two young boys with endless energy cooped up in a car, that's not very far off, lol.

Carlsbad New Mexico. We camped at a regular campground, I remember it being mostly gravel and rock kind of orange gravel. Restaurants vs. camping groceries I don't remember when we would eat out vs. the Coleman stove menu. that evening we went to the Cave Opening and got a short lecture b the rangers on watching the bats fly out of the Cave. Somewhere along the line there must have been a joke about Batman. Come on, there just had to be. So we watched the amazing swarm of bats coming out the Cave at dusk to go hunting for food at night. in the morning the y would return. We took the big tour of the cave, and I bought a home movie  commercially made of the highlight of the cave. I bet I still have that film in a box with the family home movies downstairs. The way the people were dressed in the film, it must have been made 10-15 years before that, with long skirts on the women and so forth.But it was wise to buy it because our photography in the bog dark cave would have sucked. there are many paces I have been to in my life as kid I may never visit again, and this may be one of them. Recently this past year the elevator that takes you back to the top broke down and people were trapped down there for a few hours. There's another reason i won;t return, hahaha, it's like 700 feet down there. You woke down with a tour guide and a big group of 30-40 people,  but take the elevator up. They had a gift shop down there near the elevator. This tour seemed like it took 2 hours. So while the Hoovers were touring Europe, we were underground looking for the Batmobile.

I don't remember if we left the same day or stayed but my guess is we stayed at some other campground and the next day at some point wound up in Tombstone Arizona. Because took home movies there, the memory is vivid for me. We went to the okay Coral (hey, they were pretty good singers....what? oh...wait..."nevermind") and saw the while Wyatt Earp/Doc Holiday and Clanton Brothers outdoor set up with the statues and guns and stuff. We mugged for the still and film camera. there was "Boot Hill Cemetery" nearby and then I realized that the good condition and funny stuff on them, it was a tourist trap thing."Here Lies Lester Moore, shot down by a Colt 44...No Less...No More..."...that one definitely tipped this 12 year old off.

In the home movie you can see us, esp. Dan, with his face caked with white zinc oxid creme. It made the silent movie we had made look more professional, right?

After this we drove across the nasty desert to White Sands National Park near the Mexican Border. What the hell was dad thinking. Year earlier Ca 1957, myself and parents werethere visiting the Hoovers and we had driven there for the day. Both Steve and us have photos of those days at their house and at White Sands New Mexico. Appears that Floyd and Margaret Allen had gone on that trip also. But here, it was getting dark, we entered the park with our National Park Sticker on the windshield and dragging the camper in. Lots of Cactus and sagebrush. We got out food at the camp ground and ate. I went to the bathroom building and fond while I was peeing a giant grasshopper looking bug about 10 inches long was on the wall. I think Dan saw it too, we ran back and went sort like yuch to our parents.

But the funniest thing was mom had seen coyotes or wolfs lurking about in the distance. Any mom from the Midwest will tell you that these are not pets. And their entire body shakes. Presumably the conversation went like this.

Mom: "Giant bugs, and a pack of coyotes? Paul, we're leaving right now."

Paul :"What? Why?"

Mom: "I saw a bunch of coyotes over there?"

Paul: "But we've been on the road all day."

Mom: “We…Are…Leavng…Right…Now…!”
.

As we were putting things away, a VW bug hauling a small utility trailer on a hitch pulled up. I thought :damn that's even bigger than the bug I saw in the bathroom.: (I just had to throw that joke in didn't I?). Two college age girls were in it. Damn...I was too young for them. They asked if we were staying overnight. We generally answered hell no there are coyotes out her in the park, we are getting ready to leave. Naturally they decided to brave the wilderness and left behind us out of the park. I swear I heard the rangers at the gate office yelling after us as we went by, "Chicken shit!"

We wound up Northwest a long ways away in a motel in Yuma AZ. We must have got in around 11:30 pm.