A LONG GOODBYE

It took a while but it was wonderful, hugging so many folks before we began our long drive east.

We marveled at the occasional Joshua Tree but after 400 fairly nondescript miles we began looking for a campground.

It was a motel night but I did not know it at the time.

We could not find a thing so we decided to try what others had recommended, camping in a Walmart parking lot.

It sounds stupid because...it is,

but you’d be surprised at the dozens of RVs we often see at the Walmarts we pass.

They remind me of wagon trains circling up for the night. We had read that the stores encourage lot camping because the campers end up shopping there.

At 10 pm we were tired, desperate to park our tan van. We trudged into the Barstow’s

Temple of Consumerism with toothbrushes in hand.

When we returned to the parking lot we were approached by a 10-year-old boy. He wanted to sell us the puppy he was holding. It got even stranger when the other parking campers told us they were moving on, this was one of the rare Walmarts that did not allow camping on the cheap.

I could live with that. The opportunity to get away from the megastore energized me enough to drive another hour, high into the Mojave Desert where unfortunately there are no campgrounds or motels.

There we bedded down in a place much nicer than a Walmart, we camped in a field of dirt next to a truck stop.