The route through Mojave National Preserve to I-15 north is a solitary one: few other cars on the two-lane road, zero bars of cell service for almost a hundred miles. Still, it’s one of my favorite drives. The wide vistas, changing color and depth as the afternoon light moves across them, are mesmerizing. There’s even a majestic sand dune to gaze at for miles as you follow the straight blacktop line across the desert. The road then curves and winds through Joshua Tree forests more impressive than most in Joshua Tree National Park (though many acres of them burned in the Dome Fire a few years ago).
This desolate drive was how I began my trip to Oregon on a hot afternoon in early July. I’ll admit to having a twinge of apprehension; I had tried to get an early start to beat the heat, but my plans were thwarted by a squirrel invasion that I didn’t want my housesitters to have to deal with. When I finally set off at 4 PM, my consolation prize was to have the brutal afternoon sun behind me, not glaring at me through the windshield.
Eugene, Oregon—in the summertime—is one of my very favorite places to be. Having spent my high school years there, the bike paths, the rivers, the leafy tree-lined streets define summer for me on a molecular level. So when a midsummer housesitting opportunity arose, I lobbied hard for it.
In planning my trip—just for fun—I asked ChatGPT-4 for a route with the fewest mountain passes, since I would be towing Petunia, my little camper. It returned a path through rural Nevada. (It totally lied about the mileage—by almost 900 miles—but the route itself was intriguing.) After double checking with real maps, I got excited at the prospect of skipping what has become an unbearable highway slog—the standard I-5 route through California’s Central Valley—with its obnoxious drivers and soulless fast-food-gas-station stops. Speaking of gas, it was about a dollar cheaper per gallon in Nevada. Sold!
“What about the heat?” people asked, when they heard my plan.
“Have you been to Bakersfield? Sacramentoooooow???” Besides, the forecast for my route actually had lower temperatures than the Central Valley that week.
Once you got past Las Vegas, that is.
I stopped to take a photo at the intersection of Morning Star Mine and Ivanpah, (above) the spot at which you are officially out of the preserve and coincidentally back in cell service. It was 109 degrees at 6:15 PM. As I started to pull out again, I heard a squeak. I thought I’d imagined it. It was the squeak a giant cartoon mouse might make. Half a mile up the road, I heard it again. By the time I got on the I-15 on-ramp, the squeak had the regularity of a rusty old well pump: eep eep eep. Luckily, there was an exit just ahead.
Primm, Nevada—just across the California state line—is a place you only stop if you need gas, have to pee, or feel like throwing money into a slot machine. Coming from the Golden State—where you can only gamble in tribal-run casinos—it’s your first chance to gamble in a gas station, which many people find thrilling. (I did it once and felt like a total chump.)
I pulled—squeaking—into a parking lot near a row of Tesla chargers with a row of Tesla owners sitting in air conditioned comfort, looking at their phones. I was too preoccupied to take a photo, but it was quite an image.
An older couple was walking by, holding hands. I rolled down my window.
“Hi there, do you see anything wrong with my trailer?” It was suddenly clear they spoke almost no English, but the man caught on to what I was asking. I drove in circles while he watched.
“No nothing,” he said with a heavy Spanish accent, making a hand gesture that I think meant dragging. I thanked him and got out to look for myself.
Everything looked fine; he was right, nothing dragging. Then I noticed the wheel on the passenger side of Petunia, which had recently been on fire. The rim was scorched and covered in ash; the chrome was singed a bronze/gold color.
Oh shit. The dreaded wheel bearing burnout, I thought.
Petunia, being a first generation T@B trailer, has some quirks. Some would say serious flaws. Thor, the makers of Airstream in the early 2000s, wanted a lower price point trailer, so they contracted with a German company, Knaus Tabbert, to make the T@B. (The “@” symbol wasn’t being used for anything in those days; it was just a graphic element some trendy designer probably regrets now.) So Petunia is German-designed and American-made, but with German parts. What could possibly go wrong? As it turns out, plenty. I’ve dealt with a few issues over the years, but wheel bearings are one thing I could have paid more attention to. Unlike most vehicles, the wheel bearings on these old T@Bs are sealed. In other words, they cannot be repacked with fresh grease, like most wheel bearings. The whole unit has to be replaced when they’re dried out. The good news is, they last a long time. The bad news is, they go without warning. The other good news is this one chose to go when I was near services and had cell reception, and not in the middle of Mojave National Preserve.
The thing about being stranded after business hours is you’ve got nothing to do but to come up with Plans A-F—and beyond—not knowing until the next day what your options really are. I knew there was a Camping World just 25 miles up the road, but did not have high hopes for them. When I first got Petunia—a decade ago—I’d had such a bad experience with this particular Camping World that it negatively influenced my opinion of the whole company for years to come. It really seemed like my best bet was to tow Petunia home and start my trip over without her.
First of all, it was 4th of July week—not only a busy travel time, but a week during which many businesses close down or go on a holiday schedule. When I left a message with the Camping World service department, I figured there wasn't a snowball's chance in Las Vegas that I'd hear back from them—especially since the voicemail cut me off mid-message. "Of course," I grumbled as I sat baking in the now 105 degree parking lot—where I would end up sleeping.
When the service manager called at 7 AM, I was frankly shocked. The voicemail had cut off before I'd left my number; he'd retrieved it from the caller ID.
"Just have it towed here," he said, "We'll fix you up."
While I appreciated the enthusiasm, I knew this was highly unlikely. No one has parts for this original generation of T@Bs, which was sadly confirmed by the Facebook T@B group the night before.
"It's weird and German," I told him.
"So's the mechanic who'll be working on it," he laughed. "Seriously, Klaus is the smartest guy I know. He'll fix it."
Turns out, this was not just a sales hustle. There's smart, then there's two-degrees-in-mechanical-engineering-and-one-in-computer-science smart. When Klaus walked into service writer’s office with my torched wheel drum in his hands to reprimand me about my appalling lack of maintenance, I knew everything was going to be OK.
I'll spare you the nail-biting details of locating parts from a company in Ohio that was closed for the holiday, overnight shipping (always iffy and expensive) and the 11th hour realization that we needed obscure nuts—which were the one thing I did have from the last time I’d had the bearings replaced. So many things miraculously fell into place. But when the service writer said it would have to be Monday, my heart sank. I was supposed to be in Oregon by Tuesday.
The service writer looked at Klaus. "You're not scheduled for tomorrow."
"Nope," he said, "But I'll be in around 1:00."
With Petunia safely in a repair bay—plugged in so the stuff in my fridge didn’t spoil—I needed a place to put myself for the night. Klaus and his team thought going back to Primm would be my cheapest option on a Friday. Las Vegas is famous for jacking up rates on weekends, even in the heat of summer. The service writer checked Kayak. It said rooms started at $72. Turns out, “started,” was the operative word. With all the taxes and resort fee bullshit, the asking price was $180 for a very average room at Buffalo Bills. There was no way I was going to pay that, even if I could afford it.
This meant I had a lot of time to explore Primm. It’s a weird overbuilt ghost town that—at first glance—looks like its still alive. There are three giant hotels, all brightly it, but only one is operational. There are roller coaster tracks everywhere, but nothing runs on them. There’s a giant mall, but no open stores. The only place doing any business (besides the gas stations and the Starbucks) is the Lotto store. Not even kidding; there’s a whole store that sells nothing but Lotto tickets. The jackpot was $615 million, so the place was packed—with a line out the door. There’s a hidden complex of nice looking apartments for the workers, mostly African American kids from who knows where. The whole place is odd in so many ways, like a late stage capitalism museum or something.
In the Starbucks the next morning, the lady ahead of me was digging frantically through her purse to find something smaller than a $100 bill. She had a literal fist full of Benjamins, but this Starbucks didn’t take anything bigger than a $20—as a sign posted by the cash register informed us—even though a Venti Americana was nine bucks. As the line behind us grew, she finally got down far enough in the brand new Coach bag to get to loose change. She counted it out, still clutching those hundreds. I said, “Oh wow, you should pay for my trailer repair, hahaha.” She finally finished her transaction and opened her phone. She flipped through her photos to show me her big win: $108,000! On a slot machine! “Congratulations,” I said. “How much of that will taxes eat?”
“None. I’m Native American. Sorry,” said this blonde, white-looking woman with a rhinestone pedicure.
Spoiler alert: she didn’t pay for my trailer repair.
After nursing my overpriced coffee in an empty garden behind a closed-down hotel—immaculate pool behind a locked gate—I headed to Camping World. The parts had arrived, Klaus showed up (despite a busted water heater at home), and I was on my way again by 4PM, as I had been two days earlier.
Despite the delay and unexpected expense, this story has a happy ending because a series of people actually cared enough to go "above and beyond." From the tow truck driver, to the parts manager (who went in on her day off to overnight the last set of Al-ko drums in stock), to everyone I dealt with at Camping World—but especially Klaus—my faith in humanity was restored. It's so rare these days to find people who will go out their way for someone, as Klaus surely did. He checked everything else on Petunia, put a scoop on my ceiling fan so I can now drive with it open, and corrected my route through Nevada to be prettier and more fun. So many things had to fall exactly into place, and they did largely because of him. Perhaps ChatGPT-4 sent me through Las Vegas to meet Klaus? Perhaps it was divine intervention by Saint Bob? All I know for sure is as the world begins to look more and more like Primm—an expensive nonoperational ghost town—we all need to be more like Klaus, and to surround ourselves with people like him.