“If you RV long enough,” someone told me, “you’re gonna have a flat tire.”
The truth is, you’re probably gonna have several flat tires. After all of these years of automotive development, we still haven’t progressed beyond wrapping our wheels with inflatable rubber. I was hoping that here in the 21st Century we’d have tires constructed of tiny nanytes that would seamlessly and automatically repair any damage. Better yet, shouldn’t we really have flying cars by now? Or, you know, flying Airstreams?
Nope, we’re still relying on those vulnerable, fallible pieces of inflatable rubber to get down the road.
So I was feeling pretty good about our luck on the Long Long Honeymoon. We traveled thousands and thousands of miles with no flat tire. We towed our Airstream pretty much from Key West to Seattle, across many a Rocky mountain, with no flat tire.
That is, until we got our first flat — in Myers Flat. Yes, as fate would have it, we suffered our first flat tire in a town named Flat.
We were cruising along California’s lovely Highway of the Giants when I noticed the flat.
With trailer tires, you can actually progress short distances if you have ONE flat. So we limped forward towards the nearest campground. And here’s where the story turns overwhelmingly positive.
The campground in Myers Flat was flat out gorgeous.
“This is an old Boy Scout campground,” the campground host told us. “It was built back in the 30s.”
Being an older campground, the sites were surrounded by mature vegetation. We’re talking mature with a capital M — the campground contained some beautiful redwood trees.
We suffered our flat tire on the weekend, and the nearby tire shop was closed. So we had no choice but to cool our heels in Myers Flat for a couple of days.
By day we explored the nearby winery (riding our bikes to the vineyard) and the famous drive-thru tree.
By night we enjoyed building campfires and listening to burning wood crackle as wind whistled through the surrounding redwood trees.
If I had to sum up that campground in one word, that word would be … spiritual. It’s hard to describe in print, but I’ll give it a shot.
You know how you feel when you walk ancient streets, tour an ancient cathedral, or even enter an old unoccupied house? You get a sense of the people (spirits?) who were there before you. I’m not talking about the people who were there last week, but the people who were there last century. Or at least many decades ago. There’s a feeling you get of connection to those people, of occupying the same space on earth in a very different time.
I felt that way in this old Boy Scouts campground. Many of the Scouts who had played and camped in this place in the 1930s, no doubt have since departed this earth.
But I got the sense that their spirits were still out there playing.
And now those very same redwoods were watching us.