The Journey

Rayna breathed a sigh of relief when her headlights illuminated the sign: GAS & LODGING NEXT EXIT.

She’d spotted it just as she’d begun to panic. The gauge in the old Jeep was finnicky. She never trusted it once the needle dropped below half a tank, and she’d been nearing a quarter of a tank for the last thirty miles.

You swore you weren’t going to do this again, Rayna! her inner voice chided. Grandpa told you a dozen times: “Rule #1: never run out of gas in the desert!”

She could have stopped sooner. She almost did. But it was better to forge ahead until she reached a city with some streetlights and a shopping center, she’d reasoned, than to risk ending up stranded in some backwoods desert town with who knows what kind of serial killers lurking about.

“Your instincts will, at times, outweigh your knowledge,” didn’t you tell me that, Grandpa? Cut me some slack, she thought.

Kingman, Arizona looked like a typical Route 66 stopover, eerily similar to dozens of others she’d seen in the past few months. Even nine weeks into the trip, she still wasn’t sure she understood why her grandfather had sent her on this journey. As if traversing the country to see various roadside attractions could even come close to alleviating the all-encompassing grief of losing the man who’d played such a pivotal role in her young life. But his instructions, in a wrinkled old manila envelope along with the keys and the small black notebook delivered to her by the lawyer had been clear:

“Take the Jeep, Rayna, and this $1,000. After graduation, go! The notebook will tell you everything you need to know. Read it in order, and don’t skip ahead—I promise you, in the end it’ll be worth it.”

When she’d first opened the notebook, and seen the pages of rules written neatly in her grandfather’s distinctive handwriting, she’d cried so hard that she couldn’t even make out the words on the page. So she threw the whole thing in the back of her desk drawer.

It was her father who’d reminded her about the proposed trip.

“He knew you would be devastated, Ray, that’s why he wanted you to travel before school starts in the Fall,” he’d said gently. “He wants you to see what he saw, and to know that he lived a full and beautiful life while he could. And that you should do the same.”

So she’d left one week after her graduation party.

She coasted by a handful of motels, a Walgreens and a diner with a giant neon pie blinking from the roof. Despite her urgency, she passed the large Chevron station just off the highway and followed the road through town.

“Rule #8: never buy the gas just off the freeway—there will always be a cheaper option in town, where the locals go.”

She spotted fuel pumps in front of a Safeway and pulled in. After filling up, she grabbed her backpack and headed inside. She couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a clean bathroom, it’d been three days since she’d had a good ‘sink bath,’ as she’d begun calling her roadside cleansing ritual.

Ugh, she thought, as she took her shirt off and lathered up a washcloth. I can never tell my mother what I actually did to survive on this trip.

After changing her clothes, she assessed what she had in her pack.

Two days’ worth of clothes left, three if I don’t sweat to death in the car tomorrow, she noted. I’ll have to find a laundromat when I get to San Diego.

She piled the clothes next to her toiletry pack, three pairs of socks, one only-slightly sweat soaked sports bra, her old one-piece bathing suit and the floppy hat she’d splurged on at the truck stop she’d showered at just outside Flagstaff. She was headed to the beach, after all.

“Rule #15: Every so often, buy just a little more than you need.”

Her stomach gurgled.

Dinner time.

Rayna reached into the bottom of the pack and pulled out her tattered My Little Pony wallet with the Velcro strap. She carried a Kate Spade clutch back in San Francisco—a Christmas gift from her Aunt May—but she thought the childhood gift from her grandfather was a more fitting choice for this particular journey.

She counted twice. $87. With the $117 left in her bank account, she had enough for gas and meals for the next 4 days, if she shopped strategically.

Once again, Grandpa—how exactly was I supposed to make this months-long countrywide trip work on $1,000?! You Boomers cannot be serious.

Even with weekly deposits from her Dad, she was barely scraping by—and she’d slept in her car most nights so far. At least she was clean and well fed, and she hadn’t run out of gas anywhere—yet.

So much for finding an Airbnb once I get to California, she thought.

At this rate, she’d be lucky to stay a single night in a hostel before heading north, toward home.

Once back in the Jeep, she loaded her goods into a small cooler and looked at the clock: 7:03 p.m. If she continued on to Vegas tonight, she could spend the day tomorrow exploring the strip before the last leg of the drive out to California. Plus, her friend Lena had told her a variety of ways to sneak into the pool at the Mirage and she planned on sunning herself for at least an hour.

“Rule 4: Fun is the point! Never forget the fun.”

Rayna lifted the small black notebook off the passenger seat. Even now, she felt lighter when she was holding it. As though she could feel her grandfather’s spirit in the pages.

She pulled the black satin ribbon and flipped the notebook open. She was almost to the end. So far, she’d honored her grandfather’s wishes and hadn’t skipped ahead. She longed to know what was waiting for her at the very end, yet also dreaded finishing it. What would she do once she’d completed the journey through her grandfather’s past? It had been her sole purpose for nearly three months now, and she feared she’d end up mourning him all over again once the trip was over.

“It’s like I’m seeing everything twice,” she told her mother one July afternoon. “I see it as it is now, through my own eyes. But I see it how it was then, too, in the way Grandpa describes his time there.”

She dug a pen out of the glove compartment and logged a new entry in the margins:

Kingman, AZ. 7/25/2019. 7pm. Got gas and groceries at the Safeway. The Mohave Museum closed at 4, guess I’ll have to see it ‘next time’. The diner had a giant neon pie on the roof, Gramps would’ve loved it!”

After tucking the ribbon back into the notebook to mark her place, she tossed it back on the seat and accelerated back onto the highway.

When she’d reached page five of the notebook, the rules had abruptly stopped. After that, each turn of the page sent her on a new adventure. She diligently followed instructions, and was continuously delighted by each new discovery along the way. In Montana, she’d seen starry skies that mesmerized her beyond words. In Ohio, she’d spent two nights in an Amish community, untethered from her phone. In New York—she’d stayed in a hostel with two German students who didn’t speak a word of English but somehow still became her dearest friends for two whole days. In Nashville, she spent an entire night wandering around listening to street musicians. Everywhere she went, she carried her grandfather’s words with her.

On the road to Vegas, she passed the time singing along to her road trip playlist. They’d always shared a similar taste in music. More accurately, he’d passed his love of classic rock and soul on to her—and he’d left plenty of notes about what she should listen to in various locales along the way.

“Rule #7: Everything experience is better when you’ve got a good soundtrack.”

Three hours later, Rayna pulled the Jeep into a Walmart parking lot. She pulled the curtains she’d strung along the rear windows shut, and before she’d even had time to admire the bright lights of the Vegas strip just a few hundred yards away, she was asleep.

She awoke hot and sweaty. She started the car and looked at the dashboard: 9:21 a.m., 96 degrees. She rolled the windows down.

Ok Grandpa, I’ll give Vegas six hours, max. I’m not wasting any gas on A/C.

Exactly twenty-four hours (five of which were spent at the Mirage pool, and another one of which was spent luxuriating in the hotel’s poolside locker room) later, she was on the road to California. She even treated herself to a $5 iced coffee for the road. She’d need the boost after she’d spent so much energy sobbing through Grandpa’s second-to-last entry in the notebook last night. Here, so close to the end of the trip, she was finally starting to understand why he’d lead her to so many obscure places.

“You’re still young, Rayna,” he’d written. “You won’t know what you’re capable of until you go and do it. It may be scary going out into the world without me, but I’m always going to be there for you. You just have to know where to look for me.”

She’d read it twice, then fallen asleep in the Jeep again, exhausted from the sun and the flood of emotions.

Right as she approached the California border, “Hotel California” by the Eagles came on the radio.

Thanks Grandpa. “On a dark desert highway… cool wind in my hair!” she sang along.

It was well past lunch when she pulled the Jeep into Moonlight Beach, in Encinitas. She’d continue on to the Gaslamp quarter, where she’d drained the remaining balance in her bank account to rent a private room, later. For now, she just wanted to visit the Meditation Gardens, where she was to take a photo in the same spot her grandfather had visited twenty-seven years ago.

She smiled when she saw it was exactly the same as it was in the old photo tucked into the final pages of the notebook. She lined her own shot up perfectly and uploaded both to Instagram.

Suddenly, a burst of wind stirred the still day and flipped the notebook’s pages to the final entry. Rayna had been planning to read it just before leaving town, or maybe even after she arrived home in San Francisco, but in the moment, it felt like a sign.

OK, Gramps, I’ll read it now.

She strolled along the path until she found a bench tucked away between an array of flowering plants. The sun felt warm on her face, and the air smelled salty. She could hear the gulls crying out, as waves crashed against the cliffs below. It was as if the gardens suddenly cleared, and she was all alone.

She sat on the bench and opened the notebook again, bracing herself for what she expected would be a long entry. For a moment, she was confused. The page only had a few sentences written on it.

“Rayna, I’m so very proud of you. When I was your age, I traveled the country just as you did this summer—in an old jalopy with just the clothes on my back and a few dollars in my wallet. I always hoped to take you on a road trip like this one, but fate didn’t have it in the cards for us. Instead, you’ve had to fend for yourself—and look at all you were able to accomplish! You can do anything in this world, with or without me. Just remember, next time you want to be close to me, I’m in all the places you now know to look for me. Next time, you’ll have the fun of doing it bigger and better. And you remember rule # 4-- it’s all about the fun! I’ll see you again someday, my girl. Love, Grandpa”

She put the notebook down and stared out across the water.

Bigger and better?! You’ve got big dreams for me, Gramps. We’ll see.

Rayna rose to leave. She was starving, and she planned to use her last $11 on “the best fish tacos in the universe,” if the restaurant even still existed. As she walked to the Jeep, she felt a fluttering on her wrist—the ribbon she’d used to mark her place in the notebook, now no longer needed, was dancing in the breeze.

She opened the notebook to the very end to tuck the ribbon away, and was surprised to see a small envelope taped inside the back cover. Gently, she pulled the tape away.

What now, Grandpa? she wondered. What else could you possibly have in store for me now?

She tore the envelope open. Inside was a check for $20,000. In the memo, there in her grandfather’s distinctive handwriting, was written: “Bigger and better, my girl. I’ll see you there.”