My siblings and I did the return trip to California after the holidays and made it, though not without adventure thanks to a winter storm in Texas.

The Planning

We cut the number of days on the road down to just five and chose a more southerly route, thinking we could avoid any bad winter weather that way. This was more important compared to the trip east because we were deeper into winter and our car was less equipped for the drive. It was a smaller SUV with an extra container on top and would not drive as well in bad weather. I was anxious about using the soft top container since it latched to the top using the door frames and was a new tool for me.

The housing situation was a little harder on this route because the options in west Texas and New Mexico were rather sparse, but eventually we opted for three AirBNBs and a KOA as our stops. Each day would be between 8-10 hours making it tough to fit in a shorter recovery day. Unfortunately, we had already booked our stops when news broke about the winter storm whose path we’d cross in Texas. After some debate, we decided to continue with our plan but carry extra winter gear in case it was needed.

The Execution

The first day was rather easy, though we hit the road later than planned. I was first to drive and took it slow after we double and triple checked that the container was still attached to the car. We avoided bad traffic in Atlanta and kept on going through Alabama until we made it to Morton, Mississippi. Along the way we saw some hilarious signage for locations like Chunky, Lake, and Forest, as well as many telling Mississippians to “Pick it up”. Ostensibly this is meant to discourage littering, but maybe it’s telling them to move faster? Work harder? We had some fun coming up with different meanings on the way. Our place for the night was a cute little cabin across the street from a farm, complete with fireplace, porch and deck, and a nice, big bathroom. In the morning I watched some of the cows over at the farm to see if any were transitioning, but no luck. It also wouldn’t have felt quite right considering we weren’t driving.

We hit the road early to try and beat the inclement weather we were slated to hit at several points. The drive out of our AirBNB’s neighborhood was eerie and evoked memories of the first season of True Detective with gnarled trees alone in big yards and giant houses next to trailer parks. I was happy to put that behind us, though the roadside nature through Louisiana was also foreign to me. It all seemed halfway to being a full blown swamp and ferns covered the undergrowth, which I hadn’t expected. It rained off and on through that passage, but then really picked up on the eastern side of Dallas. It kept up through Fort Worth and caused some traffic, slowing us down before we even hit the snowy portion of the drive. We had to slow down and stop when my sister - an absolute dog lover - saw a dead dog that had been dumped on the shoulder while she was driving, which added stress to an already arduous day.

I took over shortly after nightfall and we passed through Abilene. Several inches of snow had already fallen and our AirBNB was all the way in Odessa, three hours further west on I-20 in normal weather. However, it was not normal weather and there was no chance we would make it to Odessa, so we canceled that AirBNB and found a closer spot in Snyder. I started driving on the snowy highway and the snow falling around us in the dark called to mind jumping to lightspeed in Star Wars. Our max speed in this stretch was maybe 38 or 40 mph and we passed several cars that had spun out on the shoulder. The dangerous road surface causing our slow progress meant that even Snyder was too far, forcing us to find something in the next town. Eventually we found a motel in Sweetwater, picked up some Dairy Queen for dinner, and settled in to wait out the storm.

Thankfully we woke up to beautiful, sunny skies and temperatures above freezing, lifting our spirits. The state of the roads, however, quickly dampened them. At best one of the two lanes on the interstate were open and at worst traffic was stopped for minutes on end. We moved over to frontage roads that Texas has alongside the interstate, which sped us up quite a bit and revealed the source of the slowdown: a half mile stretch were five or six big rigs were either stuck on snow and ice or had slid off the road. Locals with superpowered pickup trucks were pulling the trucks back onto the pavement, but cleanup crews were prevented from de-icing that stretch of road for quite a while. Some truck drivers had fun with it though, as several were hanging out and someone had made a snowman with caution flags for arms.

The rest of the Texas drive was rather uneventful. We passed through the oil fields and saw flares as gas was let off, but were eager to make it to our next stop in New Mexico. We settled into our KOA after 8 pm and took it easy that night after a couple of long and stressful days. The only notable thing about that stay was a clear morning sky greeting us when we woke up. We hit the road again bound for the Palm Springs area, but stopped in Tucson to hit Saguaro National Park. It was a quick but worthwhile stop as those cacti are truly remarkable and don’t naturally grow anywhere else in the world. Seeing their various sizes and shapes of them up close on our hike was really exciting, though we had to hit the road after only 30 minutes in the western Tucson Mountain District part of the park.

Soon we crossed the California / Arizona border and were back in our home state, even if our final destination was still hours of driving away. The rest of our drive to Palm Springs was relatively uneventful besides a man crossing the highway on his bike, passing a palm tree graveyard, and realizing all of the ditches / gullies / washes were named things such as Taro, Meta, Hillock, Bula, and Ghost. No, I couldn’t figure out a pattern either. We did stop in Joshua Tree before reaching our AirBNB, but it was already dark out and we weren’t able to see much.

We left our AirBNB and its maskless, “unicorn blood” having host early the next morning so we could see plenty of Joshua Tree before our final stretch back to the Bay Area. Our destination in the park was the Hidden Valley trail and we arrived to a parking lot full of souped up, giant camper vans and a single Rolls Royce SUV, which was a bit of a surprise. The valley has a slightly different ecosystem than other parts of the park due to the surrounding rocks that make it hidden, which also attract a lot of rock climbers. My brother somehow managed to cut open his hand on a yucca plant on the hike, but otherwise the trail was serene, allowing us to go at our own pace and avoid other groups. After that we attempted to do the Hall of Horrors hike, but couldn’t figure out where the hall was or why it was a horror and decided to hit the road before wasting too much time.

Our route home took us through the Tehachapi Mountains on CA-58 and they were quite beautiful and unexpected, though the drive was uneventful. We did see a man with the misfortune of having to use an interstate call box, which I hadn’t seen in ages. The rest of the drive up I-5 was easy and we stopped for some well-deserved In-n-Out on the way before arriving back in San Francisco with the car in one piece and the soft top container still attached.

Entertainment

We played the license plate game again and saw 40 different states, with the northeast once again proving difficult. Our other primary entertainment was listening to the “Winds of Change” podcast investigating whether or not the Scorpions’ international hit “Wind of Change” was written by the CIA. It was a good podcast, entertaining and thought provoking at times, though it also made you wonder what world the host, Patrick Radden Keefe, and his friend, Michael Shtender-Auerbach, who put him up to this live in. There was a bit of self-reflection about the podcast at the end after an interview with Klaus Meine, the lead singer of the Scorpions and the writer of Wind of Change, about who this podcast was benefiting, who it made look good, etc. Personally I try not to think too much about things like what the CIA may or may not have done, especially when wrapped up in conspiracies and hearsay like this was, but it was fun to dip my toes into that world via this podcast for a bit.

Unfortunately, we did not see any transitioning cows.

Water Rankings

1. Morton, MI

2. Lordsburg, NM

3. Sweetwater, TX

4. Cathedral City, CA