We got our van back! Tuesday afternoon, as Team USA was losing to Team Belgium, we took Milo in a rental car and drove down to Port Hueneme in Ventura County. We were a bit apprehensive, as the month of waiting was starting to feel like a return to the South American way of doing things. Our handler put us in touch with someone else, who put us in touch with someone else, who put us in touch with someone else…we had to overnight our keys to the port for some reason (those keys never resurfaced). I was envisioning a long day of squatting in some shifting shade while Juan sorted out the paperwork. Once we actually got the port, though, it took all of 20 minutes to retrieve the van and drive away in it. USA! USA!
It felt really good to be reunited with the pony. We had locked a lot of stuff in the closets and storage areas, and left a bunch of things loose. The only thing that wandered away was this epic hat I got in Baja the very first week of the trip. That hat–as big as it was–somehow made it through the entire trip with us, and after we realized it wasn’t going to fall apart or get irreparably smashed, I was looking forward to using it as a gardening hat. But alas, it is probably on the head of a Panamanian port worker, shielding his entire body from the relentless Panama sun.
We camped our first night back at Point Mugu, just a short drive from the port, where we met up with some friends, drank champagne, and ate s’mores in front of the Pacific. (USA! USA!) We had intended to spend the next few days camping our way back up the coast, but the pony had chosen the worst possible weekend to return home, and every place we passed was jam-packed with gargantuan RVs.
It turns out that camping the American way is just another thing we are going to have to get readjusted to (USA…! USA…oh…) All of that wild camping on mountaintops and next to waterfalls and rivers might have irreparably damaged us. It just feels like highway robbery to pay $35 to camp sandwiched between the road and two buses with no facilities to speak of other than a picnic table and an overflowing port-a-potty. I’m now more curious to check out the camping spots further north and up into Canada as we’ve already started thinking of our drive up to Alaska–maybe next summer?
Doggie Addendum: we stay at Motel 6 on the road, which is pet-friendly. Also, Hertz rental car charged us a whopping $50 cleaning fee because of the dog hair they spotted on the seats. This hadn’t been mentioned, and so we were more than a little shocked. If we had known about this being a possibility, we probably would have made a two-minute effort to just pick the few stray hairs off the upholstery. So heads-up, and boo on Hertz for failing to mention this.