Marlena under Foster Grants
She’s undercover from the dawn’s advance
That girl is travel-drained
And the neon-mercury vapor-stained
Miami sky
It’s red as meat
It’s a cheap pink rose
Otis in the driver’s seat
Watches the streetlights fade away
On louvered blocks in green sea air
In fluorescent fossil yards
Slippers are shuffling into folding chairs
Freckled hands are shuffling cards
They’ve come for fun and sun
~Joni Mitchell
I got up early on Monday morning. As much as I loved the spot I was in at JTNP BLM land, (I think I could have enjoyed staying there for another week or more) I decided it was time to head South to Fountain of Youth spa. I stopped in Coachella and picked up groceries from Walmart, and arrived at FOY by noon. It was packed. I’d never seen it so crowded, but they had one “dry camping/boondocking” spot left and I got it. It was close enough to the hot tubs and pools and steam room that I could easily walk over, soak and come back to take Cosmo for a quick walk before returning to water.
The weather was perfect all week, with highs in the mid-70’s and lows around 60 at night. I slept with my windows open at night and was up before the sun each morning. Between the long walks with Cosmo during the day (we walked about a mile up the road to the dog park where he could play ball and show off by running the obstacle course) and soaking in hot water for hours during the day, I slept soundly every night without a care in the world.
FOY is for all intents and purposes a small town, in and of itself. There are options to stay without hookups (basically a double parking space), to stay in a double parking space with water and electricity, to stay in a larger spot with a concrete patio. There are daily, weekly, monthly and yearly rates. Some bring their big rigs and park them in one section all year long and use them as winter homes.
They have 5 hot tubs, heated with hot springs underground, 2 swimming pools (one for adults only), a steam room, many steaming hot showers throughout with the best water pressure I’ve experienced since I’ve been on the road. They have a dog wash station, a dish wash station (for those staying in tents or vehicles without a kitchen) and a van wash station. They have a place to dump wastewater and fill fresh water tanks. There is a gym (I’ve used it each morning) and laundry (all my clothes are now clean and put away), a café, a general store and even a post office. There are Bocci ball courts, tennis courts, a massage studio, pool room, two dog parks, and many other facilities for various meetings and activities. (My main “activity” is sitting in hot water and people watching.)
The average age is probably 70-something, and the tubs look a bit like a scene from the movie Cocoon. (Lots of Wilford Brimleys and Jessica Tandys but unfortunately, not Steve Guttenbergs.) The aged residents are mostly wearing bathrobes and driving golf carts around. Everyone seems happy and friendly and it really DOES feel like a vacation to me
I’m clean. Most importantly, my FEET are clean! Wearing flip-flops year-round does a number on my feet. My skin was looking dry, and my feet often crack and peel. Now I’m completely re-hydrated. I look 10 years younger. Well, my feet do anyway.
I took my throw rugs up to the van wash station and power washed them. They not only LOOK better, but I can tell the difference even in the dark when I step out of bed. My van is free of months’ worth of dirt on the outside (although that will only last until I get on the road heading toward Yuma on Friday).
When I arrived on Monday and paid for 4 nights, I soon had the feeling that maybe that was too long, but by departure time on Friday, I could easily have stayed another day or two. I headed south and went to Holtville where there is another hot spring. It is directly across from Holtville LTVA, and since I paid for the entire season for all the LTVA’s in CA and AZ, I took advantage. I’m just about a football field (maybe slightly farther) from the hot tubs. They are not nearly so commercial or fancy as Fountain of Youth, but they are hot, free and have a steady flow of lots of different kinds of visitors (even a couple Steve Guttenbergs while I was there.) The BLM land has few amenities, but the land is nice and offers a smattering of small bushes and some palm trees. It’s been hot, but there is a breeze, and it has been nice to have some space between me and the closest campers. It’s funny, but my idea of “some space” is easily adjustable depending on where I am. At FOY, the van parked next to me was about 5 feet away. I tolerated that because I spent most of my time out of the van, but at night and in the morning, I was very aware that I could hear most of my neighbors, and that they could hear me. It made me very self-conscious about watching YouTube videos or listening to a podcast early in the morning. In Holtsville, even though many rigs are camped much closer to me than my normal spots on BLM land, they are far enough that I don’t worry about the limited noise I might be making, even with all the windows open.
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My first night in Holtsville, I slept soundly with all the windows open and the hum of traffic from I-8 in the distance. The combination of fresh air and white noise was soothing. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. with the sky in the east a bright red and the sun not quite making its first appearance. It’s funny that even after 3 years on the road, I still wake up disoriented sometimes, wondering where I am. As I fight off the cobwebs, my first realization is that I’m at home, in my van and I relax for a few seconds before thinking “Wait. But where is my VAN?” Part of my disorientation comes from the sun rising through different windows throughout any given week. When I stop at a new place, I always get out my compass to try to determine where the sun will rise in the morning. As we approach the equinox, the sun seems to be rising closer to true east than it has most of the winter.
Lessons From The Road: I still think about “my tribe” and what exactly that even means. It occurred to me that I may have more than one tribe. I’ve also been thinking about what Kurt Vonnegut called my “Granfaloon” – a term he made up in the book Cat’s Cradle. According to Vonnegut, a Granfaloon is a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is meaningless. He cites “Hoosiers” (anyone from Indiana) and Alumni of Cornel University as two examples of a meaningless connection. I think a granfalloon is an attempt to connect to a tribe when none actually exists. Certainly all the residents of Indiana could not really be considered a tribe, nor could all the people who are out camping in a van. And yet, when I come across someone camping in a van near me, or even better, when I find someone living in an old Roadtrek, I think that certainly they must be “one of us.” Experience tells me that is often not the case, though we certainly greet each other as members of the same granfalloon. Vonnegut also coined the word “karass”– a group of people brought together to do God’s work—though the purpose of that work is not something they can ever be fully aware of. Is that a better definition of “tribe?” I don’t know. Certainly, I connect with people who seem to have the same sense of purpose, the same values, the same connection that I’ve found looking up at the stars at night. The people here at FOY probably don’t share many of my desires and values. Most are snowbirds, leaving Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Canada just to avoid the cold. I talked to a couple from Canada in one of the hot tubs yesterday. They said they come to FOY every winter and leave their rig at FOY when they return home to Canada in the summer. They told me their friends asked if they weren’t afraid of “migrants” coming in from Mexico breaking into their rig and stealing stuff. They said they were not afraid but apparently didn’t see the irony in Canadians crossing into the U.S. being wary of Mexicans crossing into the U.S. Sitting in the hot tub together at this resort, I recognized them as probable members of my granfalloon but certainly not members of my karass. And the definition of “my tribe” remains elusive.
And speaking of the stars at night, there are none visible from here. There is so much light pollution that only the nearly full moon, Jupiter and Sirius are visible in the night sky. Looking up at the void makes me feel a little empty myself. The city, even a small, make believe city like Fountain of Youth is no longer a place I can ever get comfortable. I am looking forward to moving on to a land of few lights so that I can once more see the night sky and know my place in this vast Universe.