A City Built in a Day
Hi, I’m Sasha. I’ve traveled in an RV for the past 2+ years with my best friend, Jeremiah, and our raccoon-slayer, Bernadette. If you haven’t subscribed and want to, I’d love that! Or, share it with a friend if that so suits you.
We drove slowly through the throngs of 4x4’s and jeeps on makeshift roads with our lights on; it was midday, but we couldn’t see further than 20 feet. The dust had spiraled into the air and laid there, content to mingle with other particles of diesel and sand. Like heavy fog. All day, it felt like dusk. Distorted were both time and our surroundings.
It was February of 2020. We’d decided last minute to head to the desert near Joshua Tree before going to Mexico a week or two later. Johnson Valley OHV awaited us: a typically barren desert: barren of people, at least. Huge boulders line the sharp inclines of the arid land in Southern California, and miles of flat sand unfold with prickly plants waiting to stab your foot through your shoes.
Note: a very bad place to walk dogs.
The King of Hammers (KOH as it’s often called) is an off-road race over the course of a week with various classes of 4-wheelers and prizes. It’s a combination of desert racing and rock crawling, which I had read, but didn’t totally understand until I saw it.
Another thing I didn’t understand? The number of people with 4-wheelers that sought it out as a destination.
If you think a city can’t be built in a day, you haven’t been to King of Hammers.
We’d arrived a week before the main race, parked our motorhome on the outskirts of the group that had begun collecting so we could have plenty of space. Within two days, roads were created by the 4-wheelers, trucks, and jeeps. Where we’d parked? Yeah, not on the edge as trailers filled in like swarms of legos around us.
It’s hard to explain the sheer expanse of the area and the number of RVs (recreational vehicles) there. When I say RVs, I should specify: homebuilt, car sleepers, and rented U-hauls were not unusual. Newbs who had brought tents quickly realized sleeping in the car was the only option as thick winds pummeled across the desert at night.
Early in the week, we walked through the vendor’s area: the heart of the makeshift town. Someone handed me a reusable bag: another person offered us free energy drinks. Swag from everywhere, for seemingly no reason other than advertising. We purchased some nachos from someone and found a place to sit on the dust to watch cars pass by that were reminiscent of post-apocalyptic.
We watched in awe as the vehicles threaded through the boulders and rocks like bugs, and up-close looked like transformers - their wheels moving independently from one another like a living being. The masked* viewers “Oohed and Aahed” as though watching an orchestrated firework show as the cars tipped up on three wheels, dubiously balanced, then powered forwards over the pebbles and rocks and sand, shooting debris behind their oversized tires. Other cars simply fell over, often tipping completely upside down.
The moment that stands out to me was early in the week though, when the classes were less risky, and often had two drivers. While powering up a steep rocky slope, a small hand-built 4x4 grabbed onto a rock and threw it beneath, high-centering the vehicle.
Grouped with us were a handful of men watching their buddies race across the desert. Like the Olympics, every racer is on their own, or they’re marked as disqualified.
Moments ticked by as 20 feet away from us the men tried rocking it with their own body weight. The car didn’t budge on the rocky incline. They could potentially coast backward into the path of oncoming racers but had passed over the hardest part of the incline. By doing so, they’d have lost all momentum; reversing in sand is a feat.
The passenger peeled off his restraint belt and struggled free of the small machine. Still, the vehicle was stuck. Finally, he removed the spare tire from the back and grabbed the snatch strap to tie around a boulder ahead of the car. Inching forward with help from the winch, the car balanced itself - free! Well, almost. In front of the vehicle were just as many precarious edges and rocks to get stuck on.
As other 4-wheelers sped by, all that was left to win was their pride; they were likely to be near the end of the pack.
The passenger, standing outside spoke something we couldn’t hear. And with that, the driver floored the gas, and crept over the rocky-sandy hill some thirty feet, leaving the passenger with a tire to run back to the car on the decline as the twentieth car rushed past.
The small audience erupted with shouts and applause. A strange place to find community: the middle of the desert, surrounded by people I’ve never met nor will ever see again.
The air didn’t evolve into an eerie dust storm until after the main event. Wind howled, and the mainstage took on a feel of Mad Max Fury Road, and I held tightly to Jeremiah’s hand so as not to lose him in the cacophony of yelling and cheering.
When we awoke the next morning, the dust had subsided after the squall that shook our motorhome that night. The sun grazed the desert. A litter of dry soil landed on every inch of our RV and car. With that, I breathed a sigh of relief, though a bit too early. I hadn’t expected watching the men earlier in the week to be a foreshadowing of what would happen to our motorhome as we winched it out with our beast of a Tahoe paired with the help of our new friends, but I think that’s a story for another day.
Thanks for traveling with me,
Sasha
*KOH had mask wearers of all kinds before it was cool - to combat the dust.
Down the rabbit hole
Mad Max Fury Road was not filmed in Johnson Valley, but in Namibia. I’m not much of a movie watcher, but that movie is gorgeous.
Next on my books to read, Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley that takes place partially in the same Southern California desert as the KOH, albeit a bit more to the east.
It’s true; you can pull a 20-ton motorhome out of deep sand with as little as a recovery strap and a 4-wheel-drive SUV, as shown here. And yep, I was driving the Tahoe.