Nomads to the Pacific Shore Prequel | Carrying all his belongings and sleeping under the lights of the casino

This is the story of my first attempt at sleeping in a car, traveling alone in the Pacific Northwest.

Named another brand new series, and I suddenly felt like I had set myself another small goal - Washington state, which was not made due to late spring storms, Canada BC to the north, and Alaska to the ultimate north. , and hopefully they'll always be added to the series at some point.

Put the rented sleeping bag and inflatable sleeping pad in the trunk, or maybe it's going to be called "home", I deliberately drove into the school parking lot to do another inventory - I don't dare to be on the streets of the Bay Area Open the car for half an hour. Three large suitcases are the luggage I brought from the other side of the ocean and are about to take back; the occasional windproof clothes are piled up in a random corner; a box of dry food and a small steam stove, on which the bed is rolled up. ; The blackout curtain I just bought blocked the back seat tightly, after all, I had to hide someone at night. With a car as my home, and without the opportunity cost of rent, it seems that I have completely become a nomad—perhaps a more civilized term for the homeless, maybe the true master of the wilderness.

It's hard to believe that this journey is really about to begin.

The decision to go to Oregon this time was purely forehead slap. The lease on the house just ended and I didn't want to leave the U.S. so early, and the weeks between homelessness and expiry of my visa seemed like the right place for some pretty crazy behavior. In addition, the luggage fee by plane is too uneconomical, so you can only rent a car and set off directly. So with my car skills, where can I drive to the limit? So I swiped and swiped on the map—just finished Yosemite to the east, LA to the south, no interest in LA, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and only the north...

That's how the name Oregon jumped into my plan.

The long coast of the Pacific Ocean has suddenly lost its prosperity from the north of the Bay Area. In the vast area known as the Pacific Northwest, there are coastal redwood forests covered in thick fog all year round, the winding and broken Oregon coast, and the Columbia River reflecting the Olympic mountains. And further north, is the ultimate Northland scenery from BC to Alaska. Between San Francisco and Portland, 700 miles away, there are no big cities in the era of globalization, quiet fishing ports and lonely logging towns dotted at the mouth of the river surrounded by mountains. Parallel to it are the volcanoes, waterfalls, and rivers in the interior, where active geological activity continues to shape the landscape on the surface, but it is also not well-known.

We always yearn for sunshine and beaches, but the coast of the Pacific Northwest is often foggy, gloomy and damp, with mysterious giant trees in the woods on one side, towering boulders in the sea on the other, waves crashing against the reefs under the lighthouse, whales in the distance Spit out the water column. Even the youth idol vampire film "Twilight" also set the background of the story in the seaside town of Washington. Such an environment is indeed in line with the eerie and mysterious temperament of vampires.

Of course, the more I look at the various strategies, the more excited I am, this trip is really possible (as if I have this reaction to every state in the west)!

It's just that for a person to travel, the money is shy, inflation is high, and the cost of car rental and accommodation cannot be shared. Coincidentally, I just read the Guide to Sleeping Cars by the Great God of Yuanxia. I have always been fantasizing about Sleeping Car Dafa, and I am even more yearning for its magic power of saving money. I also built a set of very closed-loop logic: no matter where you can sleep in an RV or where you can pitch a tent, you can sleep in a car (of course, the premise is that you have access to the road). In this way, living and traveling are integrated, saving at least a hundred dollars every day, and making the itinerary extremely flexible. Anyway, the paid camps are used for bathing, and the places that don’t need money should be as close as possible to the photo spots in the morning and evening, no matter how you think about it!

So the luggage was put away, the bed was sold, and I slept on the floor for the last night. Then return the key and say goodbye to the University Village (it's really called University Village) where I have lived for half a year. The roads in the Bay Area are very difficult to drive. I avoided the crazy road nu people and the FasTrak who were making money everywhere. I walked around the city of San Francisco slowly, and waved goodbye to Baker Beach and the Golden Gate Bridge for a long time. The windows are fine! - Confidence is really a little more.

After crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, the traffic flow eased a lot. Since the economic center of the Bay Area has shifted to the rising Silicon Valley in the south, even San Francisco has become lonely, not to mention the heavy industrial cities in the north. After getting off the 101 expressway and turning into Highway 1, the prosperity of the city is like being thrown behind the car with the wind. Soon, the coast of the Pacific Ocean began to appear on the left, and he would accompany me for five whole days, across two states, until Astoria, the northernmost tip of Oregon, said goodbye.

After passing Point Reyes, you will pass the last popular attraction on the northern section of Highway 1. Further down the coast, some dilapidated small fishing villages will no longer appear on social media. I was the only car for a few miles before and after on the road where the sky was gradually softening. How few people are there, but I can't help but stop every once in a while and study the map on my phone carefully. Then he looked out the window on the left, and laughed at himself being suspicious - how could the Pacific go wrong when there was only one road to the coast.

The lights turned on automatically, the road ahead was rapidly darkening, and the sun was about to sink over the Pacific Ocean. The water turned from blue to golden, then tinged with a little orange-red, and then suddenly and completely dimmed. I had already browsed the RV forums before I left (my car is also a "RV" in the actual sense), and decided that the place to be stationed tonight was a parking lot of a casino. This is the secret base of all sleepers: in the face of passers-by who have any needs, even if there is a 1% chance of converting them into customers, the casino is the most willing to come, so there is almost no management. Residents will refuse RV requests, and security in casino parking lots is elite compared to most places. Stay overnight here, don't worry.

The night has completely fallen, and in the darkness, a string of lights in the distance is particularly conspicuous. Follow this light, turn into a fork from a junction on Highway 1, and you will reach the small town of Manchester. However, this California version of Manchester City, with a population of less than 200, is probably quite difficult to form a full football team. Can this place have a casino? As I drove along the navigation, I became more and more flustered: first the houses on both sides became wasteland, then the street lights disappeared, and finally the cement became a dirt road. My wheels ran over the rubble at high speed, and I started to bark one after another. After driving for more than ten minutes, I didn’t expect to turn a corner, and suddenly the lights were bright in front. A two-storey mansion with some American horror movie texture, the huge blood-red CASINO signboard stood in the center of the sky. Yes, this really makes people want to go in. There are several towns in a radius of dozens of miles. I am afraid this is the best place to go with the most urban temperament.

The casino closes at 9:30 and I arrive at 9:15. The lights are still bright, the staff are preparing cleaning tools, and the scattered customers are still standing in front of the saturated slot machine screen, believing in the possibility of fullness in these fifteen minutes. After registering my vehicle information with the security guard, I hurriedly ran into the toilet to wash up. When I came out, the machine had already started to open the brakes gradually, and it seemed that the miracle had finally dried up (after all, I would like to support your business after spending one night in vain. ). I got back to the car and watched the gamblers disperse in twos and threes, joking mixed with complaints, saying goodnight to each other, cigarette butts being stomped on, and finally the roar of the engine and the lights disappearing into the thick night fog. At 9:40, the parking lot was half full just now, and all that was left was me and an RV.

Don't blame the gamblers for going in a hurry, the parking lot in the middle of the wilderness has no signal at all, and there is no way to tweet complaining about luck. As for me, of course, I can’t live without the internet, so I just drove down the dirt road back to the town of Manchester, which was all closed, and played with my phone on the side of the road for an hour. This time, when I turned back to the parking lot, the dog's barking became even more tragic.

Not to mention, staying overnight here is more secure than I imagined. The lights in the parking lot stay on all night, and security guards circle the parking lot every hour. Besides, even if there are some extrajudicial fanatics, with such a big treasury nearby, who would care about my little car! I opened the sleeping car guide that I took a picture of, blowing on the air mattress, flattening the sleeping bag, and quickly turning the spacious space with the flat back seat into a comfortable room. Scrooge would like this layout the most. When I open my eyes, I have all my belongings in front of me, and I can count all the clothes in the closet with my hand. But what am I doing with these boxes? So I turned to the other side and looked out the window through the slit in the blackout. At eleven o'clock in the evening, the world here has fallen into a deep sleep, and the sound of ocean waves can be heard in the distance.

I slept really well. When I woke up, it was already bright, and a large group of people in the RV were walking out one by one to stretch their legs. Our only neighbors said good morning to each other, but couldn't chat for long. The casino doesn't open until noon, and the RV's water tank just runs out. The nearest toilet is the only cafe in town fifteen minutes away.

This time, when I drove out, I finally saw this dirt road clearly. It turned out that there were continuous hills on both sides of the road. It's not the same place as the movie), there is a main road, two rows of houses, and the casino stands far from the commanding heights. At the end of the hill, on the other side of the town, the coast stretched out, and Highway 1 was like a ribbon, pulling the Pacific Ocean to the edge of the horizon.

Just like when it suddenly fell, the sudden rise of the sun dazzled my eyes and woke me up completely. Check the time, it's a little past eight; click the map, and Mendocino's bay is an hour away.

What a journey this will be! And that's how it really started.