At high noon on this third Sunday in March, a good four tons of American-made metal left Sebastopol, California in search of a few good t-shirts. So begins Destee-Nation’s first great American Road Trip. This was the virgin trip for our 1970’s three door Chevy Suburban, Sue, and her charge, a twenty foot 1967 Silver Streak trailer, known only as Streaker. A righteous combination of machines by any definition and one that would be put to the test on this first day in search of the first Destee-Nation pit-stop: Boonville, CA.

A windy drive north through twisted trees and rolling hills allowed me ample time to daydream about what rough and storied piece of California was Boonville. Logging? Mining? Maybe a Prohibition era gunfight or a ’40s crime syndicate. I was looking for a bar called The Buckhorn, with rumors of rowdiness and fear high on my mind. But pulling into Boonville, I was soft struck by the inordinate number of wine tasting announcements and slow moving SUVs. Boonville, it seems, has become a floodplain awash in weekend winery cruisers with a sweet tooth for angled parking and stop-and-go traffic.

As I stood dumbfounded in front of some new construction, a man with a slim dog informed me that The Buckhorn was long gone. Disappointed, I walked next door to the Boonville General Store in search of jerky, but where the tackle, beer and axe handles would have been, I found clever chalk menus detailing organically patronized chicken salad sandwiches on numerically significant grained bread and mixed greens with Miso dressing. [Needs a line like, "Sorry Charlie, no jerky for you." Or something...]

Exit Boonvile. RIP.

Somewhere up the road, past Philo, I found the entrance to the mighty Redwoods. Furry eared giants marking the cool and shady slalom towards the coast. I stopped for gas before diving in, and met a spry man named Mark who wanted my hat in exchange for some campfire kindling. When I asked him where the kindling was, he gestured sarcastically towards the forest…. Locals rule.

The awe-inspiring Hwy 128 through the Redwoods eventually spit me out on the California coast where I began a white knuckled dance with my life and a twenty foot tin can down the beautiful and sadistic spine of Hwy 1. It was late afternoon and the weekend wine tasters and antique combers had scurried back to the city, graciously leaving me both lanes for miles in either direction. Now with confidence at ample levels, it was time for a working gear check. A shudder during a downhill right. A metal rattle at 45 mph. A wobble zone beginning at 60. This conversation continued in various forms until a right-hand turn dropped me onto Manchester Beach and a number six stall with water and power hookups.

Tonight the camping roster is a bit thin. A fifth wheel with purple accents. A VW camper, TV a-thumping. A weathered, tan Bounder with Kentucky plates listing sheepishly to its right. Bev and Tom from the Freedom IV in Number 15 invited me to go hot-tubbing at the park spa, but I managed to get out of it by playing the “sure would, but don’t have my suit” card. It worked like a charm, but there was a pregnant silence when it became clear that they didn’t either. On the way back to my rig, the guy in Number 14, who looked eerily like a very tired Robert Goulet with a Class A Jayco, explained to me that the mistake most people make in their squirrel gravy is that they use ground squirrels and not TREE squirels. [Wrap it up with some pithy comment about your first experience with trailer parkers?]

Now, finally home in stall Number 6, in the warm belly of a glowing tin beast, my first day of virgin miles ends and a longer journey stands ready to begin. The machines of travel proved more than worthy of the task at hand and leave me feeling good about my chances. A real magic pools in a tired moment like this. So much that I’d like to think it has to go somewhere when the day is finally done. Something up there in the pines stirs when I turn out the lights. Tonight I’m choosing to believe it’s the magic heading back into the stir of a mighty ocean…

From somewhere out there,
Gabe