I Decide to Go Out West

Some where in that last year at Syracuse I decided to go out West. I am not exactly sure why. I think it had to do with weather.

Where I had just spent the last four years was incredibly snowy. It seemed like someone had a snow making machine on my roof, and was making a terrible joke. And then sun never shone. It was one of those places where people mark on their calender if the sun actually shone that day.

In my naivety, I thought out west meant warm. I guess I always saw movies and TV shows in LA, and there were palm trees and it was warm. I didn't understand that it was only in southern California that was so warm. I thought all "out west" was tropical.

Anyway, I decided I was going out west. I started saving my money, and said I was going to buy a car and leave in June no matter what. Maybe what happened next was the power of positive thinking, because in the winter a friend of mine, Joe, asked me what I was doing that summer. I said I was going out west no matter what. He said that is funny, because I was just going to ask you if you wanted to go out west with me this summer. He said he was going to buy a van, and take a bunch of PA equipment out west and try to hook up with women's bands and help them get going, as the sound man. He asked me, because of my radio show. He was part of my radical crowd. I told him I would go, but I wasn't so sure about being part of his sound crew or staying with him, once we got there. He was headed to San Francisco. We said we would leave on June 1st.

June 1st came and we left. He had a big, red, econoline van, filled with PA equipment. Really, I didn't even know where we were going, I just went. It was an adventure from day one. We drove all day and that night he pulled by a corn field in Pennsylvania, and we slept in the field. I had never done anything like that before. He planned the itinerary and I just went where he took me. The first stop was Ann Arbor, Michigan, a well know hippie haven. Joe's plan was to find John Sinclair, who was famous for being busted for one marijuana seed years before. I guess his little commune group, had some connections with John. Joe wanted to find John, to get some sort of help concerning his plan to help women's bands. We did find John. We went to his house and ended up meeting with him in his bedroom. It didn't go too well, but we ended up having a huge argument with him. It turned out that John Sinclair didn't support my friend's idea at all.

We left there and headed for a campground. That was a close call, because we almost got busted there the next morning. A garbage truck came to pick up garbage around the campground. There were a bunch of guys in sweat suit outfits, picking up the garbage. One of them called Joe, and Joe went over, and the guy asked him for a joint. We had one, so Joe went and got one. A few minute later, the truck came over to our camp, and asked if we were going to be around for a while, and left. Joe said he thought we were in trouble, and we better pack up and go. He said to put my pot in my underwear. I thought he was being paranoid, but I did what he said. he was right. We were still packing up, when here comes the sheriff. There were three of them. The oldest guy, who seemed like the main sheriff asks Joe, why he gave contraband to those prisoners. We say what are you talking about, because we really didn't know what he was talking about. He says that the garbage men are prisoners and they know he came them a joint. Joe denies giving them a joint and says he didn't know they were prisoners, how would he know that. The sheriff says because they had sweat suits on. That was kind of ridiculous to us. Anyway, the sheriff says they have to search the van. Meanwhile, we both have pot in our underwear, and we are in the county where John Sinclair spent time in jail for one pot seed. So, they open the van and there is all this PA equipment. They don't seem to care about that. they just start searching away. they opened a tool box and found Joe's FCC license. Somehow that satisfied them that we were upstanding citizens and they let us go. Close call.

So we starting driving across the United States. I don't remember anything eventful until we hit the Bad Lands, in South Dakota. I was blown away. I thought I was in the mountains, but they aren't really mountains. I had been in the Catskill Mountains, but they are nothing like being out west. The Bad Lands were my first taste of the Western Mountains, which I fell completely in love with until this day.

We kept going and got to Estes Park, Colorado. We took a trail that was a all day hiking loop. Joe insisted on bringing a tape deck with him, while we were hiking. I just wanted to listen to the quiet, so we split up, and I ended up hiking the trail alone all day. It was a pleasant walk in the woods, but towards the end, the trail started going up, up, up, along this ridge. I was going up a high mountain. had never seen anything that beautiful in my life. I was brought to tears. It was at this moment that this Long Island girl started her love affair with nature. I kept walking and went down into a serene area with ponds and ducks. I emerged from that walk a new person, different from the one who had embarked on that trail head earlier that day.

We continued our journey and the next stop was the Grand Canyon. I had been here once before for a few hours on a family vacation. I didn't hike down the trail, as the people coming up seemed to being really struggling. So I found a comfortable spot close to the top of the trail, and hung out there for a good part of the day.

After that we headed to LA. Since my friend was into the music scene we went to Laurel Canyon and he tried to find Joni Mitchell without any success. We didn't do much else there. We started heading north on 101 and arrived at Big Sur. Love affair number two.

Big Sur is part of the southern California coast and it is spectacular. We got to this beach called Kirk Creek. I grew up on Long Island near the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic ocean. My father was a great lover of the beach, and this was instilled in me from babyhood. But I had NEVER seen anything thing like this. This was breathtakingly beautiful, amazing, awesome. But that was not all. there was something else that was as equally amazing and awesome. There was a camp of hippies living on the cliff overlooking the beach. I went and said hi, and they told me they were just living there for free. I was more amazed than ever. First, I never heard of living at the ocean, right on the beach, and second for free????? Immediately I told Joe that we should just stop here and start living with them on the cliff. I meant like for ever. Joe had other ideas, he was still San Francisco bound. I thought about getting out, and just staying with them, but honestly I was too chicken, so I got back in the van and kept on going with Joe.

Next stop was San Francisco. All I knew about it was the song " when you get to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair" and Tony Bennett leaving his heart there. We arrived in what was a windy, ugly, concrete city. I couldn't believe it. From the songs I had envisioned this lovely, little hamlet with hippie woman floating along in flowing skirts with flowers in their hair. But we were just in a big, ugly city, after we had just been in all this incredible nature. And it was cold there, and other places had been nice and warm. We were getting close to July by now. I thought to myself, for this I left the hippies on the cliffs?? I lasted with Joe three more days, and then I headed back down to Kirk Creek Campground at Big Sur.

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