Headin' Home

Somewhere In The Sierra Nevadas its 343pm

Just got back from gathering a mountain of dried sage branches for the fire tonight. I expect it will be pretty cold, we must be somewhere around 8000 feet. The campsite is a perfect little hidden away spot next to a creek, with a rock firepit and the truck leaning one tire on a rock to make it level.

We've had a few spots like this, like in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where we parked in an old hunters campsite next to a creek and enjoyed absolute solitude. In fact, save for the hijinks of a tiny town called... shoot, something forgettable, maybe 500 people, two markets, both way overpriced, we've enjoyed absolute solitude for a while now.

The past three nights we've been back in California, camping in Death Valley National Park. All three nights we did back country camping, driving up treacherous roads, more bumpy and messed up than anything I'd ever driven, to camp out in these vast flats of desert, with no one around, maybe a coyote off somewhere, a few kangaroo mice, ravens. Death Valley strikes as odd at first, not much going on, just desert, but quickly as you turn the corner on the valley itself, it is this vastness of solitude and permanent warmth in the day time that is quiet, strange, and surreal. The colors of the sand and rocks are layered and warm, collapsing down from 11,000 foot peaks (Telescope Mountain) to the lowest point in the U.S., near Badwater, which is 282 feet below sea level. You can see millions of years of history, even if, like me, you have no idea of geology at all.

We spent the days rolling in the warm air through desert roads, in shorts and t shirts for the first time since Sandwich, on the east coast. The light is so intense it colors everything in slightly deeper hues than usual. And most of all the quiet, the sense of space, of mystery, of time sits hushed in the nights, especially at our desolate and beautiful campsites, just me, Kate, and the Truck among millions of sage and mesquite plants, rolling endlessly toward the layered mountains. Everything looks close, but in reality, what looks like it should take five minutes to walk could take three hours. There seems to be nothing small in Death Valley save for the towns, the outposts for radiator water and in our case, Miller High Life.

This morning I woke to the sunrise, the warmth of the sun already pushing into the camper shell across the great cool of the night before. We made coffee on the tailgate and sat like spectators to the vast empty ancient beach before us.

I think yesterday I was in one of the most strange and beautiful places I've ever been. Its a dried up ancient lakebed called The Racetrack, so known because the rocks that mysteriously are on its surface leave long twisting trails, indicating that they've moved, seemingly of their own intuition. The lake is just dried mud, miles of it, all cracked into tiny hexagonal shapes, natures favorite, endlessly stretching beneath and in front of you. As an experiment I closed my eyes and walked for ten minutes, not needing to open my eyes at all... the lake is one of the flattest surfaces in nature, and there are no obstructions in any direction once out on it.

Before Death Valley we had the strange "luck" of revisiting Las Vegas. We decided that from Canyonlands National Park, in Southeast Utah, that it would be more fun and just as fast to cut down to Vegas and up the way we are now (Hwy 395 heading to Tahoe).

We got ourselves a cheap (but surprisingly nice) hotel room at "Circus Circus", one of the older, more tacky, and yet, more, how do you say, nostalgic of the Vegas Strip casinos. We rested up in the room, reading, writing, and headed out once again for the Strip. This time, it was bearable. I learned that to judge the Las Vegas scene in any way is too easy, and completely redundant. You can't knock the tackiness and utter desolation of a place that prides itself in exactly those things. And so we just wandered, from casino to casino, taking in the kitsch, spending 7 dollars on slot machines, losing it all, and returning, exhausted to our hotel room.

Losing 7 dollars in Vegas is not as bad as it could be.

We spent two nights camping in Zion National Park. Zion is packed full of awe inspiring mountains, red and orange, strange peaks rising from the river that runs through the middle of it. Its best seen in the middle of the night, next to a river, with the moon bright and lively out, as we found out. We had time to kind of take in the basics, a walk up the canyons, along rimrock trails, past emerald ponds and tiny waterfalls, and warm breeze nights at the crowded campsite.

***

So after Death Valley we were clearly in our final stretch. We were in California towns with California people, California license plates, California attitude, ie., easy going.

In short, the trip is coming to an end, and it is nearly impossible to be sad about it. We find ourselves now in South Lake Tahoe, at a $25 motel, the last scheduled stop on the trip. Today was kind of a toss up, we didn't get much sleep at all last night, the biting Sierra Nevada air crossed well below freezing, and even in our normally invincible sleeping bags it was chilly, often sleepless. In the morning we made a fire out of dried sage branches, made the coffee, and headed up to Tahoe.

Its hard to visualize, let alone vocalize, the final stage of the trip. Its something I kind of continually want to talk about, evaluate, figure out. And yet, my mind can't really grasp not camping out every night. Can't grasp what is to come next.

I want to offer a grand summary of the trip: Seven months of two American kids out on the road, dazed, impressed, broke and beautiful, finding what we could where we could, doing our best to live it up. And we have, we've lived it up for all its worth. We embody the lifestyle now, dirty jeans and thermals, a dirty truck packed full of memories and essentials. No clue where it goes to next. How to do it again. No answers, but nearly a year of doing exactly what we wanted to do. To see America. To live a life void of regret. To feel the air and the sky and the sun on our skin. To feel the weight of the road pass below us like nothing. To vacate our souls into campfire after campfire. Sure of one thing, certain of the trip. Alive and proud. Unbelievably free. That's what we do here. That's what we've done.

quick post: Utah

In a sleepy quiet cafe in Moab, Utah, stuck in the rocks.

We've been staying at the absolutely mindblowing Canyonlands National Park, and Arches National Park, both within throwing range of Moab.

The vastness of the desert, its quietness, warmth, and amazing features are somewhat addictive.

We've decided to try and make it back for Thanksgiving, being so close as we are to California. Its strange, we have an endpoint in a way, sad, going to be hard, but hey, it could be a whole new adventure, and wouldn't that be ideal?

Plus it will be great to see my fam.

We decided strangely today that the best idea would be to pass through Las Vegas again (deja vu, and a scary one to have) and pass up the 395 through California to check out Tahoe, as the last stop.

Oooh, my chest feels sad just writing it.

Anyways, we drive to Zion National Park tomorrow.

Kate is painting right now, I've got to get over here so I can play some guitar.

That's it. That's the plan.

Signing off.

Colorado

11)6(05 its 925am

We got snowed and blowed and iced out of Yellowstone. It was in the middle of a drive out into Lamar Valley to see the wildlife purported to be thriving there, bears, wolves and the like, when, while watching a small family of bison laying around bored like, off in the distance a big distance mind you, Yellowstone is full of those, this massive cloud looks like a down pillow that has a massive tear and is spreading its feathers all over the valley. And it would have been great if they were feathers, I'm sure we would have made piles of them and through them around, but it was snow. Snow that is cold and icy.

But I have to rewind a little bit about that day because there was more to it than just that moment of things changing, although, it is those moments we do remember best. It kind of began with even the hint of the idea of Yellowstone. I mean, we had gone WAY way out of our way to get to Montana/Wyoming, and really just for this. So Yellowstone was engraved in our minds from the early days of the trip, something we have to see, and can't miss, and you know, its good advice. And then it began with leaving Bozeman, and driving through the valley that enters into Yellowstone, following a perfect river past perfect ranches with perfect horses staring off into eternity in their yards. It began there because apparently my Great-Grandmother, Marion Sullivan, had lived there. And all the while we are driving through this magnificent valley, with peaks on either side and the promise of four seasons hiding in each single one, Van Morrison on the radio and enough instant mashed potatoes to not have a trouble on our minds.

The moment we pulled into our campground we were met by something I'd never had the tingle to experience, a whole heard of huge elk kind of carousing through the sites, yawing and yeeing and making the strangest whale like sounds you'd never expect to come out of them. The big old female elk make this entirely unexpected and therefore funny high pitched squeak somehow come out of their massive frames, as if a kitten were strapped into a microphone booth somewhere within them.

In the morning we were awoke by the herd passing two feet from where we slept in the back of the truck, as if a friendly neighbor going off to work with a cup of coffee in the hands.

Part of what makes Yellowstone neat is its geothermal activity, its unsettled molten core bubbling to the peaks of mountains in the middle of nowhere these murky and primordial stews of boiling water and algae, dripping down their own manufactured shapes of strange bowls and ornamental cups. Off in vast distance geyser valleys steam like a fleet of riverboats were making its way through the mountains. Underneath you on wooden boardwalks, crystal blue and blood red water hisses and bubbles, pits of mud churn on themselves and geysers erupt out of nowhere in frantic excitement, short lived, but excited nonetheless.

The thing that I love maybe the most about "nature", as in, those places you go that are not paved maybe, is the sense of vastness that is completely opposite the dimensions of say a TV screen, or an apartment. A few years back I hiked around Mt. Hood (well, I won't kid you, part way around Mt. Hood) with my great friends Mark and Jason. There are parts and pieces of Mountains that you know go with mountains because they wouldn't fit on anything else. Boulders the size of the White House teeter on the edge of rocks the size of, well, rocks that are really big. Standing there, on and below these enormous gaps in space was the first time I really needed to seek out that place of grandeur.

Standing on river canyon edges that plummeted 2000 feet down into churning waters that rode past rugged mountains and geysers off into the horizon inseparable from the feeling of vastness. Purity, beauty, this could be the definition, something, be it inside you or not of you, most likely not worded out: vast.

We rushed to our campground which was a bit disappointing because it was as if they had put this particular campground (the last open campground we could get to) in the most boring spot in Yellowstone. Which is not that bad when you think about it. Plus it was Freezing with capital F and getting dark and there was ice and snow on the ground. We set up camp, our tarp flapping over our screen house, out in the frozen air, and drove out to look at more animals and just be in the valleys of Yosemite in the evening. The horizon grew more and more dark and we passed herds of bison and elk into the thick of a fat snow cloud, grey and dark and pouring snow like scattered papers in the wind. The light grew dark blue and murky, and the elk continued to feed as the windshield wipers scraped away the fresh ice beginning to land on it like a nuisance. We drove slowly in the absolute silence of snow stopping to stare at the open