Rough roads ahead

The promised land is a gas station

The next morning, after a dawn fishing trip for Mike and a quick walk for me and Koa, we packed up our camp and got the trailer hitched and the boat tied down. Mike pulled the SUV and trailer out of our site, and I checked the rear signal lights.

A bit of trivia people might not know about trailering is that the camper’s rear lights are plugged into the main tow vehicle’s electronics for brakes and turn signals. To check if they’re working properly, Mike gets in and hits the clicker for the turn signal while I stand behind the trailer and make air traffic controller gestures: pointing to the left, pointing to the right, arms straight up with fists for brake lights on.

This time the lights wouldn’t come on.

Mike had to get out and re-do plugging the electronics in several times, crawling under the truck to check the connections, dusting off the plug with his shirt and some spit, etcetera. By the time we finally got moving, my anxiety about the descent had kicked into fifth gear. I clung to the support strap and said, “Honey, could you please go really slow down the mountain? I started worrying about this yesterday.”

Mike glanced at my tense, pale face. After going on three years of trailering, he had stopped trying to talk me out of being nervous. “Okay. I’ll put it in four wheel low.” 

“Thank you.”

He put the SUV into that gear. The vehicle could now only go about fifteen miles an hour no matter what as velocity was managed by the gearing, not brakes. Assured we couldn’t lose control, I hung my head out to see the view.

The vista from over the cliff might have been beautiful, but I couldn’t see anything. Smoke from California wildfires had rolled in to fill in the gigantic desert plains and the sky was thick and hazy. We’d been evacuated for the fourth time from our red cabin on the Russian River, just before our departure. 

I reminded Mike to put our destination, a lake in Idaho, into the GPS as soon as we had a signal, which we still hadn’t picked up on our phones. We were immediately distracted from that by difficult driving conditions on busy Highway 80. Big rigs whizzed by in fast-moving phalanxes, and gusts of wind rocked the trailer as we squinted through heavy smoke to see the road ahead. I clung to the sissy handle and tried not to broadcast free-floating dread; Mike had to concentrate on driving. Our lives depended on it.