Well, we out smarted ourselves again.  It’s a long drive towing from San Diego to Hurricane, Utah.  So we figured we’d leave Friday at 7pm and drive three hours to Peggy Sue’s in Yermo.  The internets don’t recommend an overnight stay at the Walmart in Barstow, something about it being in the shitty part of town.  There’s a good part in Barstow?  Anyway, Yermo is only fifteen miles further.

Even at 7:30pm the traffic was brutal entering Temecula, aka The Gateway to the I.E., but that was nothing compared to the Cajon Summit.  It was the exact same, last time I was on this stretch of road, nine months ago.  Construction hell.  With a big flashing sign telling you to expect heavy congestion the next twenty miles.  At 9pm?  Amelia’s sigalert app was showing red, meaning single digit and low teens miles per hour.  Ugh, not a good start to the trip.  Amelia was coming unhinged at the prospect of sitting in more traffic so we took the next exit, turned right, right again, and right again, and ended up on a desolate street across from a new gated community in Fontana.  No parking on the street signs were everywhere, but there was a big gravel entry where phase II was likely to be built. So that’s where we stopped.  The plan was to get up at 5am, and hopefully have clear sailing up the Cajon Summit and all the way to Hurricane.

I was ninety minutes into a deep two beer fueled sleep and Amelia wakes me, “I think the cops are here, I see blue lights.”  I put my clothes on, turn on the outside light, and stepped out of the Airstream.  And there to greet me was one of Fontana’s finest.  “Are you Greg Harris?”  I was sleepy, disoriented and answered with a big, “Yes!”, as if I just won the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes, shocked that he knew my name.

I gave the polite young officer my ID.  He told me someone called in a suspicious trailer.  A few quick questions like, “Why are you here?”  “Where are you going?”  A quick run of my ID, and he said we could stay if we wanted. Ninety minutes later I was still not asleep, so I announced to Amelia and Sara, “Get up, we are going to Peggy Sue’s.”  We arrived at 2am, and slept like rocks for 5 hours.

Fontana.

Peggy Sue’s.

I bet the kids like Peggy Sue’s.