Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Ages ago, when the world and I were young, there came a summer when I was just plain fed up.

Nothing had gone well for some time. Dreams had been dashed. Adulthood was daunting. My summertime gig at the local Jewish community center had ended, and I had a week or so before my classes at SF State started up, so there I was, despondent and idle, despairing of my future. I had little—no car, paltry funds, dismal prospects, no girlfriend—but Pax, my friend and housemate, though he was in much the same mental space as I was, had two things I did not.

He had a car, and he had an idea:

Road trip.

Pax had a relative who lived in Tuscon and, for reasons I cannot recall, he felt compelled to visit. He suggested we drive out, see some sights along the way, and come home. We’d sleep in the car, do it all on the super-cheap. We’d be back before the week was out, giving me a weekend to spare before I had to hit the books. Easy-peasy.

While a trip to Tuscon didn’t sound terribly exciting, I thought, why the hell not? Better than sitting in my rented garret contemplating my fate.

So, we pooled our resources, scared up a road map of California, threw some clothes in our backpacks, and folded our six-foot bodies into Pax’s tiny, two-cylinder Honda hatchback. Then we pointed our noses south and, with neither itinerary nor plan, drove off.

Thus began what would come to be known as my Six-Day Three-Thousand-Mile Whirlwind Tour of the American Southwest.

In retrospect, driving a car with an air-cooled engine to Tuscon in late August was not the wisest idea—I mean, there’s all that desert out there, around there, and on the way to and from there—but the Gods of the Road smiled upon our youthful folly and served up a series of events that to this day bring a smile to my face.

Heading south out of San Francisco, we bypassed L.A. and skirted San Diego before we hung a left and headed east. The highway bounced along the Mexican border until we reached Gila Bend, a place that even back then looked like it would be filled with MAGA-hat wearing locals. They stood back, eyeing us warily—two long-haired, tie-dye clad, Haight-Ashbury-types driving a crappy Japanese car with California plates—and gave us the distinct impression that we should keep moving, which we did. Supplied with petrol, beef jerky, chips, and diet soda, we drove onward and pulled over outside of town for rest and repast.

That’s when the electrical storm hit. 

As we sat out there, leaning back against the car, surrounded by tall cactus, clumps of mesquite, and a herd of longhorned cattle, the sky went pink and began to rumble. The cows stopped chewing and looked upward. The lightning bolt was preceded by a sound like ripping linen, a rasping hiss cut short by a blinding spear of light as thick as my arm that slammed down, striking a saguaro some ten meters from where we stood. We felt the clap of thunder like a slap on the face, a boot to the chest, and when we could see again, there wasn’t a cow in sight. The saguaro was gone, too.

I remember nothing of Tuscon other than the sight of the city lights as we drove in from the southwest. It looked vaguely industrial, dusty and tired. The visit with Pax’s relative is a blank, lost from my memory, but I distinctly remember the trip out of Tuscon. 

We had been told that there was a canyon to the northeast with ancient cliff dwellings and a stony spire called Spider Rock, so we planned a route. Back in Gila Bend, we’d picked up a map of Arizona and, reviewing it, we noted a thin line that snaked north from Tuscon up through the Santa Catalina mountains. It was in the right direction and looked like the shortest, most direct route toward our goal so, as the sun set, we headed out.

The map’s thin line turned out to be a winding, rutted, dirt and gravel park service road that would have been difficult to navigate in daylight. At night, it was a nightmare, made even more so by the nocturnal critters that emerged onto the roadway. I am not kidding. We crept along, me leaning out of the window shining a flashlight along the perimeters so Pax could see (and hopefully avoid) the nighttime natives: toads larger than my open hand, tarantulas that were literally the size of dessert plates, and rattlesnakes—so many rattlesnakes—lazing in coils or making their six- or seven-foot-long serpentine way across the road. It was exhausting and by the time we trundled down out of the mountains and reached the Painted Desert, dawn had arrived. Sadly, we could do nothing but pull over and fall into a dissatisfying, fragmentary sleep.

When we awoke, we consulted our schedule and realized we were behind our time. I had to be back in SF in just a few days, but how could we be where we were and not see some of the wonders that were so close? Answer: we couldn’t. And we’d make it back in time. Ergo, speed.

Canyon de Chelly, with its ancient dwellings built along the cliffs, was a wonder of echoes and sculpted stone, and Spider Rock was as impressive and nearly unbelievable as we’d been told, but we had to appreciate both from overlooks and parking lots. We nodded to the Petrified Forest as we drove like madmen to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, there to see a thing so large it was almost beyond human comprehension: an entire thunderstorm raging inside the canyon. Leaving the rim, we sped westward through Zion National Park, reaching 90 mph at one point (we had a gravity assist from a long downhill stretch, but that little car really did hit 90).

Overnight, we stopped in Las Vegas (the only time I’ve ever been there in my life) and spent twenty-five luxurious minutes at a Denny’s before driving down, down, down into Death Valley. At Badwater Basin, the recent rain left a “lake” that was a mile across and about an inch deep. As we walked toward the edge of the water, the land was so flat that the weight of our footprints was enough to depress the hard-pan around us and cause the “lake” to creep toward us. We stepped back, and it kept coming at us. In that silence, that heat, and that alien beauty, watching a lake follow you like a puppy was a deeply unsettling thing.

Driving off, we saw a stretch of water across the road and, thinking it similarly shallow, barreled through it, but instead of it being only an inch deep, it was half a foot deep. We hit it at speed and the car sent up a bowshock of silt-heavy muck that engulfed the entire front half of the vehicle. Blinded by mud we stopped, got out, and considered our now two-tone conveyance. Half yellow, half a rather pinkish-yellowish taupe, the car looked like it just finished the Dakar Rally so, keeping in that spirit, we scraped a swath across the windscreen and drew clean X’s on the headlamps. 

From Badwater Basin (282 feet below sea level) we climbed up to Tioga Pass (9900 feet above sea level), traveling from triple-digit dry-as-a-bone heat to a green snow-shouldered alpine forest in a matter of hours. Beyond that was Yosemite with its iconic views and its crowds of tourists, the latter of which, unlike us, had plenty of time to soak up the splendor. For us, though, it was onward, to Copperopolis, to Stockton, and thence north to home where we arrived in plenty of time; I had thirty hours before my first class.

All this, and more, from a trip without a plan.

It may be a while before I travel again, what with . . . things . . . but I do hope once more to experience that true wanderlust I felt during those six days of freewheeling travel. All it takes is the desire and the will, I think, though this time, I’ll have a credit card, too.

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