Colonel Allensworth and Our Desert Adventure

We loaded up our wine and our dogs on Friday morning with long days of driving ahead of us. We need to be in Farmington, New Mexico on the 13th, and that means lots of miles. Our fist night's destination was Bakersfield; our trusty Don Wright camping guide showed a state park just north of there, near a little town called Earlimart, so we headed there. Colonel Allensworth State Historical Park is located on the historic site of Allensworth, a town founded, financed, and governed entirely by African Americans. Colonel Allensworth was a runaway slave who joined the Union Army, fought in the Civil War, and later served in the US Navy. He achieved the rank of colonel, which was the highest rank ever acieved by a black American to that date. He eventually emigrated to California, and founded the town of Allensworth in 1908. The town didn't last a very long time because the company that sold them the land didn't include enough water rights, and a railroad line that brought them goods and services was diverted to another town. By the early 1930's, most everyone had moved away. In its heyday, however, Allensworth was a thriving little rural community, with a two-room schoolhouse, library, dairy, restaurant, and several general stores. Many of the buildings have been restored or rebuilt, and there's a nice little visitors' center as well as a small campground. When we pulled in Friday afternoon, there were only 3 spots left. We were somewhat surprised to see that every other person in the campground was African American. It turns out that this weekend is the 101st anniversary of the founding of the town, and there was to be a big celebration on Saturday. All the buildings, usually closed to the public, were going to be opened, tours given by volunteers in period dress, etc. Everyone was really nice to us and invited us to stay, but we had many more miles to go, so pulled out in the morning before things got underway.

Our goal yesterday was to get the rest of the way across California, to Needles, which we did by mid-afternoon. Our camping guide described a free BLM camping area east of town, along the Colorado River, which sounded nice, so we headed for that. We got off I-40 at the designated exit and turned onto what we thought was the correct dirt road. After about a quarter of a mile, and without warning, the hard gravelly dirt abruptly changed into deep, sandy mush. We were stuck before we realized what was happening. We dug for about an hour, trying to place sticks and rocks under anbd behind our wheels, but just kept getting in deeper. Finally, I got on the cell phone and called our Good Sam Emergency Road Service. We didn't have much hope of them paying to get us out--their policy is that you can't be more than 50 feet from a paved road--but we figured they could at least know who to call to come and rescue us. I spoke with a nice young man named Henry; he was able to figure out where we were, and, amazingly, after a consultation with his supervisor, said that Good Sam would pay for the service call, up to two hours. If it took longer than than, we'd have to pay the difference. We were elated! About 45 minutes later, a huge long-bed tow truck showed up. Out of the cab climbed a tattooed young man named Tony, his fiancee (I never did get her name), and her little fluffy dog named Spanky. They were very nice, got right to work, and almost immediately got stuck in the sand as well. Tony called for reinforcements, which appeared about an hour later in the form of his partner and best friend, Bobby, and an older guy named Al, in Al's 4WD tow truck with a heavy duty winch. You could tell Al was an old hand at this. He supervised the whole operation, first getting Tony's truck free, then winching us out as well. The whole process did take more than two hours, but since it wasn't our fault that they got stuck, they only charged for the two hours and billed Good Sam. We found some hard ground just off the dirt road on the weay back to the freeway and tucked in for the night. Steve mentioned later that he had almost not renewed our emergency road service contract with Good Sam this year because we hadn't used it for several years. We are now true believers. We didn't see the actual bill, but are sure that it was at least $300--more than double what our yearly Good Sam membership is.

Today we drove almost all the way across Arizona and are parked in the OK RV park in Holbrook. Another long day of driving. We had planned to stop earlier in the day, but our camping guide let us down. The place I really wanted to stay--Homolovi State Park with Anasasi ruins--was day use only; the campground closed October 1st, even though our book said it was open year round. The next place we tried--Cholla Lake County Park--was closed to the public, period. Our campground guide was written in 2004--guess it's time to get an updated edition. Tomorrow should be an easy day. We plan to camp somewhere around Gallup, NM, then on up to Farmington on Tuesday in time for the FMCA rally. We're keeping our fingers and toes crossed.