I managed to skirt Thanksgiving almost entirely for a third year, but I’m not sure how much longer I can get away with it. I know the family wants to see our family members and have the big meal and do all the things we’re emotionally attached to from childhood. But I have a series of complaints. Not, surprisingly, making a big meal for a group of people, which I actually enjoy. It’s more this:
Having family visit for Thanksgiving is great, but a) this time of year sucks in LA. The sun goes down at 4:30, it’s cold and rainy, and everything is packed and expensive. Also, it costs a small fortune to fly/stay anywhere. Surely there are better times for family visits?? b) the genocide of native peoples at my ancestors’ hands and subsequent white-washing of this fact is something that I just can’t reasonably celebrate anymore c) it’s a week off school and therefore a perfect opportunity to go do something cool instead of sit around the house and eat horrid food for days.
I’m also avoiding one problematic family member, but I won’t go into that here. That’s the main reason for avoiding the holiday altogether. I’ll have to tread lightly around this in future.
So instead we did what has become an annual Death Valley trip. This year I followed last year’s lessons and kept the trip shorter - five days as opposed to seven - and kept us in one area, and not anywhere freezing (or so I thought). I enjoyed this trip - especially because it ended spectacularly at the stunning Ibex dunes, but it was not without issues.
The first day (Monday) we drove to Beatty, NV, home of the wild burros, which we got a big kick out of.
The plan was to head into Death Valley to hike Mosaic or Titus Canyon, which we had run out of time for the last two years. I bought a pass in advance, brought all our camel back water backpacks and hiking boots, etc. But life had other plans. I woke up Tuesday morning in excruciating- and I mean excruciating - abdominal pain. It felt exactly like labor, but pitocin-induced labor where the pain never fucking ends. It was a radiating pain that went from my lower right abdomen around to the back. Naturally all I could think of was ruptured appendix, so I woke up the H and told him I was in trouble. We shuffled me in my PJs to the local urgent care, but, being a tiny town, they had no doctor on staff and recommended we drive the nearly two hours to Vegas. Which goes to show that remote areas are great until they aren’t. I started the process of calling my HMO health care plan to see where I could go without being charged an arm and a leg (ah, the US healthcare system), called the on-call nurse (who of course couldn’t diagnose anything and told me to just go somewhere), and somewhere in the middle of all this, the pain completely stopped. Then we had to decide - do we still make the long drive to get checked out just in case, or risk doing an intense hike in Death Valley? What if the pain stopped because my appendix burst? (I was later told this is not a thing). Well, naturally we weren’t about to take any risks, so we made the long drive to Pahrump to a slightly closer clinic and I instead spent three hours there waiting to be seen. The verdict? Nobody knows, could have been anything. Definitely not appendix since the area never hurt when I pushed on it. Possible kidney stone, but extremely unlikely since I have no history of them. There’s always the ol’ trapped gas scenario, and that could have been it, but I’ve had that before - and boy, does it hurt - and it feels very different from what I experienced. The doctor said it was most likely a very angry, inflamed bowel that flared up and then settled down once the offending substance passed through (I did have a small poo that morning during the pain). I had eaten horribly the day before while we traveled (it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been burned by Denny’s blue cheese dressing). So. That was the first day of our trip.
Can I just say what a pleasure it is to be having a medical emergency and everyone listen to you and take care of you? The last time I had severe abdominal pain exactly like this I was about eleven or twelve, living alone with my mother, and we were doing our usual prayer-and-Bible-study-instead-of-actual-healthcare routine, and I was rolling around in bed moaning in agony all day, and her only response was to tell me to quiet down so the neighbors don’t call the police and get her in trouble. Yeah, this was a much better experience.
Wednesday we were set to move to our second location, but I was loath to leave Beatty without doing any of the things we went there for, so we re-visited Rhyolite after just passing through last year, and had a swell time at the ghost town and museum.
We drove to the next Airbnb which was supposed to be in Tecopa but was really about a 1/2 hour away right next to the Nevada border. I had booked it because I wanted to stay in this cool pyramid structure, but days before the owner had told me the heat broke down so we were moved to some tiny houses. When we pulled up at sunset it was like a scene from Easy Rider - there was a group of people about to take off on electric motorbikes; they told us to settle in while they shot a promotional video for their new offering (the bikes). When they got back there was a bit of back and forth about where we were staying and what was happening with the property - unfortunately the cold had burst their pipes that morning so there was no running water, rendering the private bathrooms useless; the owner, a Russian woman with three kids and a large extended family visiting, said there would be a plumber early next morning to fix it (there wasn’t). Ultimately we stayed in two tiny houses which thankfully had heat (at least, until the solar power quit in the middle of the night, then kicked back on when the sun came up). That night we were included in the festivities this family had going on - they made dinner for us (sadly, only bread and mashed potatoes for me since everything else was meat), we all shot off fireworks, had a big bonfire, and were welcomed to join their “banya”, a rock-shaped sauna. Then they took off for the night and we never saw them again. They were so kind to us and it was such a crazy desert adventure that night that I don’t want to complain about it, but the place was clearly not ready for visitors - everything was sort of half-finished, and they clearly had no idea what they were doing; flushing the toilets with buckets of water they’d left us and not having showers was not exactly in our plans, and the outdoor kitchen, while basically serviceable, was severely lacking (especially with no water to wash dishes). It was freezing cold at night, dropping into the low thirties, so boy was it hard to get out of bed in the morning as the heaters were just barely kicking in after being off for hours. But we managed to make it work. I cooked breakfasts and did my marine shower with water in a pan heated on the propane stove, we played epic games of Uno each night, and generally enjoyed the desert quiet and scenery.
On Thanksgiving we went to China Ranch again like last year, hiked and had date shakes, went to the hot spring, and then had Thanksgiving food at the Crow Bar in Shoshone which was closed last year but thankfully open this year with Thanksgiving food, to boot (I had a veggie burger).
The H had stated he wanted to go into Vegas on Thanksgiving day, but that sounded like an absolute nightmare to me. You can imagine my visceral reaction to planning this trip based on quiet and isolation and peacefulness only to be told we’re going to VEGAS, on a holiday, the complete polar opposite of what I wanted. I had a lot of stress leading up to telling him I did NOT want to just wander around Vegas all day looking for (expensive, shitty and over stimulating) things to do when I knew they would all love it and I would hate it. You don’t want to be selfish. But I told him I really didn’t want to go, and he grudgingly agreed. I think the possible expense plus not really having a plan won out. Phew.
Our final day, we packed up from our crazy Russian desert spot (nobody ever checked in on us - good thing we left just as the toilet flushing water ran out), and headed for the Ibex dunes, a remote sand dune spot I figured we could hit on our way home. We somehow found a rough back road to this place, and boy did it not disappoint!! This, to me, was the ultimate. We only saw maybe two other people the entire day - most, at a distance - it was completely pristine and untouched, just miles of beautifully sculpted sand dunes that looked like they were painted there. We found an old talc mine behind them and had a little picnic.
This place really fed my soul. Just ear-ringingly quiet and isolated. We had a bit of a heart thumper as we trekked back to the car as the sun was setting and weren’t entirely sure where we were; the boys were tired and we were out of water. But we found it, made our way out (as we left the main road, not the back way we’d come in, we saw it was closed, which explained why so few people were up there) and headed home. It’s always so strange to me that you can spend a day basically on Mars but then be safe in your own bed at night. Bizarre.
One unpleasant footnote to the trip was our very first day up there I got an email that the big grant I got in 2020 has been flagged for review, which means I have to spend this week compiling tons of paperwork, writing letters, and making calls to make sure I’ve done things right (some of the paperwork they’re asking for is so complicated I don’t even understand what they’re asking for). My expenses are all legit so technically I should have nothing to worry about, but I’m still terrified something will go wrong and I’ll be required to hand some or all of the money back. This was my worst fear was getting “flagged”, and here we are. It cast a real pall over the week as every time I thought about it I became racked with anxiety. This will be my whole job next week, tackling this and then praying they accept everything and clear me. If I have to give money back for any reason I’m in big trouble.
As always I’m looking ahead to future trips and trying to decide what we should do. Personally I would love to just head to Death Valley every year - there’s endless stuff to do there - and if the H gets a car that can tow, getting or renting a small trailer and boondocking *might* be on the list as that would at least be a new experience everyone could enjoy. But I’d also like to venture east and spend more time in Arizona - still lots to see there, or even fly to New Mexico and drive back, something like that. I’ve started plotting possible treks now.
Today we’re meant to do Christmas stuff but personally I’d rather lie in bed all day. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
