*Note: this is more or less a post composed from my notes of the past week. The last notes were frantically made as I watched my laptop battery creep down to a mere 3% after transferring the latest batch of photos from my camera. Let's see how good my memory is, shall we?
But first, a couple items from yesterday:
I crossed the continental divide a while back in Glacier NP. Then in Yellowstone, I apparently crossed back. Then back again. Then back. The ridges were pretty small, and it was difficult to tell precisely what was going on, but the net effect placed me back on the Pacific side of the divide. So yesterday, driving east on US Route 26 from Grand Teton NP, I crossed the divide for one grand, final time. To celebrate the occasion, I took a whiz behind a tree. On the western side of the divide, of course; this would be my last opportunity to mark my territory west of the continental divide for a long time. So if you happen to live west of the divide, just a little reminder: you're on my property now. I tagged it.
No tag-backs.
Ok, let's start running through these. There's a lot to get in.
1. Milk was a bad choice: I needed some snaxx for quick energy on my hikes. I thought, how about one of those big party bags of milk chocolate mini snickers bars? Guess what happens when you leave chocolate in a black car parked in the hot freaking sun. Exactly. Luckily, I used *science* to help out. Melted candy bar + pot of cold water = non-melted, albeit Dali-esque tasty candy bar. I takes what I can gets. But note to self: no more chocolate.
2. A fair trade: fire for beer. Back in Montana, I met a nice family from Oakland in the campsite next to me. They had the full-on super camp setup, but they weren't very good at making a campfire. Also, their firewood was pretty wet. I waved hi, they invited me over for a beer, and I got their fire going (pyromania does have its benefits. sometimes). As a bonus, I got to talk football with my new buddy Chris. It was good to get some serious sports talk in. Did I mention that this was at the headwaters of the Missouri? See last week's post. I'm still history buddies with Clark. And he would not have made me his bitch. So don't even think about it.
3. Why do I keep saying Yosemite when I mean Yellowstone, and vice versa? I've been doing it like crazy. No idea why.
4. Yellowstone: crowded as fuck. It was bad, really bad. This is what I get for visiting during peak tourist season. Every single pullout on the road had packed parking lots, and I had to elbow my way past fat Americans and bundles of Chinese tourists on every trail. I prefer the Chinese. They have a more polite culture, and tend to defer to my elbow-throwing. Also, they're not quite as wide, so it's easier to slide by.
5. The adventures of Bad Brad. I'm going to mix it up with a little fiction here. Despite any evidence to the contrary, this is not a real story about me. Fiction. So Bad Brad wanted to hike along the north rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, but the rim road was closed for construction. Closed to vehicles *and* pedestrians. Bad Brad decided this was a foolish restriction, especially on a Sunday. He had worked as a civil engineer, and knew that road crews never worked on Sunday if they could help it. So Bad Brad jumped a couple fences, ignored a few "no entry" signs, and found himself completely alone on an abandoned road. A road especially abandoned by construction equipment (ha!). Then Brad went for a lovely hike along the rim of the canyon, enjoying a the peace and solitude that you can only get by keeping everyone else out. It was a perfect afternoon, and he couldn't have experienced it without breaking a little pointless rule. Then he smoked a doobie to celebrate.
Not bad, eh? I'm considering writing further adventures, like: Bad Brad foils a bank heist by jaywalking. The kindly old Irish cop chides him, but we know that he doesn’t mean it. Like a modern-day delinquent Hardy boy, Bad Brad will capture the imaginations of a generation.
6. Animals. There's a good deal of wildlife in Yellowstone. Whenever animals stray near the road, all the tourists stop to take pictures, creating a unique Yellowstone phenomenon: the bison traffic jam. I also got to “fight” two bears at once. (here, “fight” is taken to mean “observed from a distance"). A momma bear and her cub. She was teaching it how to forage, digging at particularly rich grubs and such. When the cub strayed to far, she'd call and it would come running back on little cub legs. Painfully cute.
7. I get freaking sick of geothermal features. Yellowstone has something like two thirds of all the geysers in the entire freaking world. This is an amazing occurence, but after a while all those fumaroles and mudpots and boiling springs tend to run together. It took me a solid morning to reach my fill, until noon, when I decided...
8. Ok, maybe geothermal features are kinda cool. Geysers! Old Faithful was better than I expected (I'd like to thank my brother for bringing my hopes down: "there's nobody, then like five minutes before it is supposed to blow, thousands of people show up out of nowhere. Maybe they were drinking martinis in the lodge. Then there's a little muddy fountain, and everyone takes pictures then leaves"), and as the first geyser I've ever seen live, it was pretty sweet. As a bonus, Castle Geyser blew about fifteen minutes later, so I got the ol' two-for-one deal on geysers. Value!
9. On to the Tetons: because “Big Titty Mountains” sounds better in French. Grand Tetons. Think about it. The mountains really are spectacular. I highly recommend seeing them.
10. Jackson Lake, or why do all my best memories of this trip involve getting clean? It's been damn hot for the past few weeks, and all this hiking gets me dirty and overheated. A dip in the lake was just what I needed. I've discovered a pattern: All my road tripping now has been during mid-summer, when the heat is at its hottest and the swimming is at its swimmingest. There are few pleasures as great as diving into a mountain lake after a day trudging up and down dusty mountain trails in the hot sun.
11. Did I just get zinged by an old dude? I tend to use poles when I hike. It makes the downhill a hell of a lot easier on my knees, and it allows me to go faster. I get in some serious miles (on average, about 10 a day), so this is a good thing. So I'm hiking down the trail from Mt Washburn, and a pass this old man and his wife. “Goin skiin down the trail, are ya?” he said as I hiked past. I replied something like, “It beats destroying my knees,” and he shot right back with “well why don’t ya get some of them kneepads?”
Zinged. damn.
BONUS: This dude was *old*. We're talking older than the park old. He was likely hiking these trails before cars. With dinosaurs and such. old.
Time to add on items for the 29th as well, while I let my camera photos download. I hope this shit can finish before my battery dies…
12. Again, the Tetons are beautiful. I put in my biggest hike to date, a 20-mile ordeal up Paintbrush Canyon and around Solitude Lake. As the Tetons were my last chance to get in a serious big hike, I figured I might as well go out with a bang. It was perfect -- the weather, the sun, the snow, everything. Impossible to take a bad picture. A monkey with a disposable camera could have developed some Ansel-Adams level prints on that hike.
13. Dave's Law of Hikers: The greater the frequency of encounters with other hikers, the worse my mood becomes. If I pass other people, say, once an hour -- I'll give them a friendly smileand say hello, maybe even throwing in a “how are ya”. Once every ten five minutes or so, and I'll dispose with the pleasantries altogether, possibly even avoiding eye contact. One every two minutes, and I'll start brushing by people with the sort of body language that says "who the fuck are you to get in my way, you worthless pile if shit." Elbows may be thrown. Once a minute: I will stab you with my fucking hiking poles.
14. I do some zinging of my own: On the same hike, getting into the more frequent encounter stage, a woman passes me in the other direction. Without indicating a specific peak, she asks me, “do you know the names of these mountains?” Without missing a beat, I reply: “Grand Tetons.”
Zing, baby. Zing.
15. 20 miles is a long hike. I’m not in TFC shape these days. I must be getting old.
There's probably more, but it's been a busy week and I've been typing here for over an hour now. I've got the Devil's Tower to visit, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"-style.
Adventures to follow
-Dave-
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Home at Teapot Dome
There's been an ass-load of stuffs going on this past week. I'm going to hit up the last couple days in this post, and then draw on my notes for adventures in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Let's do this. In reverse chronological order.
I spent last night camped out under the stars beneath Teapot Dome. This was not my plan. My plan had been, after driving clear across the state of Wyoming, to get a motel room in Casper for some well-needed shower and internet time. I went to a motel. No rooms. I went to a second motel. No rooms. I went to a third motel...
I'll say this much: never again will I underestimate the fantastic drawing power of the mighty metropolis that is CASPER, WYOMING. Apparently this city had not one but TWO conventions starting up today, and the demand was so great that every motel within a couple hour's drive of the city was booked. So no motel for Dave.
I got back on the road heading north, and reviewed my situation:
Been driving for over 8 hours? check.
Sun is going down? check.
Crazy lots of deer near the highway? check.
...Which brings us to why I found myself sleeping under the stars near Teapot Dome. And I learned some things last night:
1. When you are in a remote place like Teapot Dome, miles away from any towns, the stars are brilliant. Countless stars shone down on my little tent, and the broad sweep of the milky way made a bright white arch across the night sky.
2. When you are in a remote place like Teapot Dome, where the speed limit is 65, you learn something: Semi trucks are freaking LOUD. Like end-of-the-world, better-get-religion-fast LOUD.
3. I cannot stress this enough; Casper Wyoming is crazy popular! Also: people who go to conventions are dicks. Dicks who take up hotel rooms.
4. There's something eerie about oil drilling rigs in the light of dusk. The collection of bright lights alone surrounded by perfectly dark prairie...the unnerving scent of refining gases...the slow oscillations of the sawhorse pumps...well, I'm just glad that I'm moving on. An oil field is a sad, lonely place at night.
Other highlights from yesterday:
1. I see the National Bighorn Sheep Center. Apparently, Dubois, Wyoming, is home to the largest herd of Bighorns in the entire country...maybe even in the world. They live on and around the slopes of "Whiskey Mountain" south of the town. Sounds like a good place. Also: one of the natural predators of the Bighorn Sheep is the Golden Eagle. Seriously. This bird can pick up a freaking sheep. I'm all for the Bald Eagle; it's totally cool, and it looks really good on currency. But until it starts picking up livestock, I'm going to have to award the title of "Most Badass Bird" to the Golden Eagle.
2. Jackson Hole is too damn crowded. It's largely my fault for checking the city out during peak tourist season (late July), but still. It's as if you were to take North Conway, make it twice as big, and then smothered the whole thing in a big schmeer of fake cowboy. Not my cup of tea. The mountains nearby look like the skiing is freaking awesome, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to put up with the apres-ski scene there. Or I'd just need to have another beer.
3. The Grand Tetons are absolutely beautiful. More to come on this in my next post. These things were incredible.
4. I've finally managed to find the place where gas is at or below the national average. This morning's fill-up: $3.69/gallon (though it was 85 octane, which sort of concerns me now that I've double-checked my manual and discovered that I shouldn't put anything less than 87 in. "Regular" gas out here is 85 or 85.5 octane, and you need to pay "Plus" prices to get 87. 87 is "Regular" where I'm from. what's up with that? Why do you hate high octane gasoline, Wyoming and possibly also Montana?). Now I just need a year or so of these prices to make up for all the screwjobs I got at the pump in California (note: I fully support increased gas prices, because I see them as the only sure way to force people to start conserving gas. I just feel that I should get a discount because, well, I'm doing a road trip here. Also, I deserve special treatment. Let's go hypocrisy!)
5. There is no #5.
-deuce-
I spent last night camped out under the stars beneath Teapot Dome. This was not my plan. My plan had been, after driving clear across the state of Wyoming, to get a motel room in Casper for some well-needed shower and internet time. I went to a motel. No rooms. I went to a second motel. No rooms. I went to a third motel...
I'll say this much: never again will I underestimate the fantastic drawing power of the mighty metropolis that is CASPER, WYOMING. Apparently this city had not one but TWO conventions starting up today, and the demand was so great that every motel within a couple hour's drive of the city was booked. So no motel for Dave.
I got back on the road heading north, and reviewed my situation:
Been driving for over 8 hours? check.
Sun is going down? check.
Crazy lots of deer near the highway? check.
...Which brings us to why I found myself sleeping under the stars near Teapot Dome. And I learned some things last night:
1. When you are in a remote place like Teapot Dome, miles away from any towns, the stars are brilliant. Countless stars shone down on my little tent, and the broad sweep of the milky way made a bright white arch across the night sky.
2. When you are in a remote place like Teapot Dome, where the speed limit is 65, you learn something: Semi trucks are freaking LOUD. Like end-of-the-world, better-get-religion-fast LOUD.
3. I cannot stress this enough; Casper Wyoming is crazy popular! Also: people who go to conventions are dicks. Dicks who take up hotel rooms.
4. There's something eerie about oil drilling rigs in the light of dusk. The collection of bright lights alone surrounded by perfectly dark prairie...the unnerving scent of refining gases...the slow oscillations of the sawhorse pumps...well, I'm just glad that I'm moving on. An oil field is a sad, lonely place at night.
Other highlights from yesterday:
1. I see the National Bighorn Sheep Center. Apparently, Dubois, Wyoming, is home to the largest herd of Bighorns in the entire country...maybe even in the world. They live on and around the slopes of "Whiskey Mountain" south of the town. Sounds like a good place. Also: one of the natural predators of the Bighorn Sheep is the Golden Eagle. Seriously. This bird can pick up a freaking sheep. I'm all for the Bald Eagle; it's totally cool, and it looks really good on currency. But until it starts picking up livestock, I'm going to have to award the title of "Most Badass Bird" to the Golden Eagle.
2. Jackson Hole is too damn crowded. It's largely my fault for checking the city out during peak tourist season (late July), but still. It's as if you were to take North Conway, make it twice as big, and then smothered the whole thing in a big schmeer of fake cowboy. Not my cup of tea. The mountains nearby look like the skiing is freaking awesome, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to put up with the apres-ski scene there. Or I'd just need to have another beer.
3. The Grand Tetons are absolutely beautiful. More to come on this in my next post. These things were incredible.
4. I've finally managed to find the place where gas is at or below the national average. This morning's fill-up: $3.69/gallon (though it was 85 octane, which sort of concerns me now that I've double-checked my manual and discovered that I shouldn't put anything less than 87 in. "Regular" gas out here is 85 or 85.5 octane, and you need to pay "Plus" prices to get 87. 87 is "Regular" where I'm from. what's up with that? Why do you hate high octane gasoline, Wyoming and possibly also Montana?). Now I just need a year or so of these prices to make up for all the screwjobs I got at the pump in California (note: I fully support increased gas prices, because I see them as the only sure way to force people to start conserving gas. I just feel that I should get a discount because, well, I'm doing a road trip here. Also, I deserve special treatment. Let's go hypocrisy!)
5. There is no #5.
-deuce-
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Bozeman, Montana
Bozeman, Montana today. As if you hadn't figured that out already. I'm sitting in the Rockford Coffee shop, taking advantage of some free wifi and electric outlets to charge up my camera battery. My camera started flashin' the ol' red-light-of-death at me this morning, so I decided it was time for some caffeinated chargin-time.
The next stop on my grand tour is the most famous national park of them all, Yellowstone. This morning is my stocking-up time for the park, collecting food and gas and batteries and such. I picked up some fancy new hiking pants the other day in Helena, so now I can hike about without fear of my naughty bits popping out, scaring women and children and the like. So that's good.
To be honest, I'm paranoid as hell about heading into Yellowstone -- I've heard about the crowds and I'm none too confident of getting a camping spot by showing up on a Saturday. But this trip is all about not planning things in advance, so I'll have to do what I've done for the rest of the trip: fly by the seat of my pants. This could explain why my pants always develop holes in the crotch.
Enough about pants. Time for adventures. I was making my way south from Helena yesterday when I noticed a sign for "Lewis and Clark Caverns." Intrigued, I followed the winding road up to the visitor center, where I discovered a limestone cave system that rivaled what I had seen in Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. The caves are over 300' deep, and a trail over a mile long winds through the caverns and tunnels until exiting out a tunnel excavated by the CCC in the 30's. I have to assume that whoever was in charge of the project at the time had a hard-on for blasting, because the exit tunnel is over 500 feet long and took 18 months of continuous dynamite blasting to excavate. It's long enough that the cave requires a 2-door simple airlock at the entrance, because otherwise the pressure difference of the cave and the outdoor air would create 40-mph winds blasting down the tunnel. All in all, the CCC used a massive amount of dynamite and concrete to build the trail through the caves, and they did a damn good job. it even includes the "Beaver Slide," a short little slide carved in the rock that you slip down on the tour, the brilliant limestone rock of the slide polished to a brilliant sheen from the collective ass-polishing by countless visitors. It leaves a beautiful finish, but I get the feeling that it would be difficult to sell limestone countertops advertised as being "ass-polished."
Ass.
Where was I? Oh yes, the caves. I'm not very good at describing caves, but as caves go, these were very subterranean. There were stalactites and stalagmites, columns and pools, and formations called "cave popcorn" and "cave bacon." I would recommend the tour. It's impressive enough that Teddy Roosevelt had originally protected the caves as the country's 12th National Monument, but years later it was transferred to Montana to be a state park, the reasoning being, well, we've already got one National Park cave, and two would just be silly.
Sweet -- my camera battery is charged. Let's wrap this up. Other adventures yesterday: walking around downtown Helena (an entirely pleasant little city, with a nice history museum across the street from the state Capitol building, and a place downtown that makes some damn good burritos*), and visiting Headwaters State Park.
*So I went to this taco place downtown, and it being 11am, I thought, "let's have a beer." My goal while traveling is to only drink beers brewed locally, if possible, and asked the server if she knew if the "Blackfoot Brewery" was local. She had to check. She checked. Turns out they're in Helena. Seemed local enough for me, so I gave it a go. A nice hoppy lager, nothing particularly special, but just the thing to wash down my late-morning burrito. I'm walking down the downtown pedestrian plaza after lunch, and what to I see? "Blackfoot Brewery." Three blocks away from the restaurant. Definitely qualifies as "local." My question is: how can you serve a beer that's brewed LESS THAN HALF A MILE FROM YOU and not know that it's a local beer?
Headwaters park is located at the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers -- the headwaters of the mighty Missouri River. It's a small park, mostly populated by mosquitoes, but it's a big place in the history and hydrology departments. I went for a short little hike this morning to see the source of the Missouri, the longest river in the continent, and after reading the various interpretive signs, realized that I have awesome timing.
July 25, 1805: William Clark, a few days ahead of Meriwether Lewis and the rest of the Corps of Discovery, arrives at Three Forks, the headwaters of the Missouri.
July 25, 2008: Dave, a few hundred years behind Clark, arrives at the exact same place.
I love coincidences. I couldn't have planned shit like this out if I tried. Two Hundred and Three years to the freaking day. Me and William Clark: history buddies.
So now I continue south to Yellowstone and more fun with the grizzly bears. It should be fun.
-Dave
The next stop on my grand tour is the most famous national park of them all, Yellowstone. This morning is my stocking-up time for the park, collecting food and gas and batteries and such. I picked up some fancy new hiking pants the other day in Helena, so now I can hike about without fear of my naughty bits popping out, scaring women and children and the like. So that's good.
To be honest, I'm paranoid as hell about heading into Yellowstone -- I've heard about the crowds and I'm none too confident of getting a camping spot by showing up on a Saturday. But this trip is all about not planning things in advance, so I'll have to do what I've done for the rest of the trip: fly by the seat of my pants. This could explain why my pants always develop holes in the crotch.
Enough about pants. Time for adventures. I was making my way south from Helena yesterday when I noticed a sign for "Lewis and Clark Caverns." Intrigued, I followed the winding road up to the visitor center, where I discovered a limestone cave system that rivaled what I had seen in Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. The caves are over 300' deep, and a trail over a mile long winds through the caverns and tunnels until exiting out a tunnel excavated by the CCC in the 30's. I have to assume that whoever was in charge of the project at the time had a hard-on for blasting, because the exit tunnel is over 500 feet long and took 18 months of continuous dynamite blasting to excavate. It's long enough that the cave requires a 2-door simple airlock at the entrance, because otherwise the pressure difference of the cave and the outdoor air would create 40-mph winds blasting down the tunnel. All in all, the CCC used a massive amount of dynamite and concrete to build the trail through the caves, and they did a damn good job. it even includes the "Beaver Slide," a short little slide carved in the rock that you slip down on the tour, the brilliant limestone rock of the slide polished to a brilliant sheen from the collective ass-polishing by countless visitors. It leaves a beautiful finish, but I get the feeling that it would be difficult to sell limestone countertops advertised as being "ass-polished."
Ass.
Where was I? Oh yes, the caves. I'm not very good at describing caves, but as caves go, these were very subterranean. There were stalactites and stalagmites, columns and pools, and formations called "cave popcorn" and "cave bacon." I would recommend the tour. It's impressive enough that Teddy Roosevelt had originally protected the caves as the country's 12th National Monument, but years later it was transferred to Montana to be a state park, the reasoning being, well, we've already got one National Park cave, and two would just be silly.
Sweet -- my camera battery is charged. Let's wrap this up. Other adventures yesterday: walking around downtown Helena (an entirely pleasant little city, with a nice history museum across the street from the state Capitol building, and a place downtown that makes some damn good burritos*), and visiting Headwaters State Park.
*So I went to this taco place downtown, and it being 11am, I thought, "let's have a beer." My goal while traveling is to only drink beers brewed locally, if possible, and asked the server if she knew if the "Blackfoot Brewery" was local. She had to check. She checked. Turns out they're in Helena. Seemed local enough for me, so I gave it a go. A nice hoppy lager, nothing particularly special, but just the thing to wash down my late-morning burrito. I'm walking down the downtown pedestrian plaza after lunch, and what to I see? "Blackfoot Brewery." Three blocks away from the restaurant. Definitely qualifies as "local." My question is: how can you serve a beer that's brewed LESS THAN HALF A MILE FROM YOU and not know that it's a local beer?
Headwaters park is located at the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers -- the headwaters of the mighty Missouri River. It's a small park, mostly populated by mosquitoes, but it's a big place in the history and hydrology departments. I went for a short little hike this morning to see the source of the Missouri, the longest river in the continent, and after reading the various interpretive signs, realized that I have awesome timing.
July 25, 1805: William Clark, a few days ahead of Meriwether Lewis and the rest of the Corps of Discovery, arrives at Three Forks, the headwaters of the Missouri.
July 25, 2008: Dave, a few hundred years behind Clark, arrives at the exact same place.
I love coincidences. I couldn't have planned shit like this out if I tried. Two Hundred and Three years to the freaking day. Me and William Clark: history buddies.
So now I continue south to Yellowstone and more fun with the grizzly bears. It should be fun.
-Dave
Friday, July 25, 2008
Damn this laptop is slow
Seriously, this thing is slow. It can barely handle downloading and viewing my digital camera pictures, let alone posting them to the internets. Hell, it freezes up if I type too fast. I suppose that it should be expected, considering that the little guy is almost 8 years old by now. It gets me internets, and for that I should be thankful. Just don't go expecting any fancy multimedia whatevers on this site while I'm updating on the road. Just long, rambling posts. That's what Bears In Cars is all about.
I'm in Helena today, the capital of the great state of Montana. Today is a town day, as I regroup from Glacier National Park and prepare for Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Laundry, shower, haircut, shave, checking the AL East standings -- and of course, a little journal-writin. Check out time is in 2 hours and 9 minutes. Let's see how much I can get in before the deadline.
When I left off, I was two states over in Yakima, WA. I've put some serious miles down since. From Yakima, I drove north along the eastern ramparts of the Cascade Mountains, making my way to the little town of Leavenworth, Washington. Now, for some reason, the entire town has been constructed in the style of a "Bavarian Village." It's like a sort of "quaint" European-Alps-Chalet style with lots of elaborate woodwork and frescoes of stuff on building walls -- like what people in western Washington state would think a village in Bavaria would look like.
Here's the thing:
1. The town doesn't appear to have a significant Bavarian population, and even if it did I'm not sure if they'd want to make their entire town look like a place where the gingerbread man would live.
2. The town is called "Leavenworth." If you're going for the full-on German-Alpen sort of thing, you'd think that they'd at least give the town a German -sounding name, like Dussel-Strassel-Alpen-Burgen-Steiner-Schnitzel. Now THAT's German! Instead, they have one road labeled "Strasse" instead of "Street." Big woop.
3. The Safeway has some sort of facade to keep up the "Bavarian Village" theme. So does the McDonald's. It's...well, words can't capture the resulting crime against architecture. This is what happens when town councils have too much time on their hands, people.
Leavenworth was also crowded as hell. It took me more than 2 minutes to find a parking space for lunch, which means that it wasn't worth it. I headed east, had a picnic lunch, and crossed the Columbia River. And then I was in....
Eastern Washington. It's a big freaking plateau that should be desert, except that one of the more ambitious mass-irrigation projects in the country (thanks, Bureau of Recalamation!) has turned it into a giant wheat field. It is big. And flat. And hot. We're talking 90+. I visited Dry Falls, a lovely bit of geology in the Grand Coulee (I won't bore you with the details. If you're interested, go look it up). And then it was time for some fun.
Background: I'm an engineer. I get nerdy about it. I like to see dams. Big ones. I've seen a number of them on my road trip: Glen Canyon (2 years ago), Trinity, Shasta, The Dalles, and Bonnevile. At every single one of them, I managed to show up just a few minutes after the last tour of the dam had left for the day (if they offered a tour. Most of them did. Also, I keep typing "damn" by mistake. I should look into this). I started to suspect that the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers had conspired together in an unheard-of collaboration for the sole goal of screwing me out of getting a dam tour. "Let's tell him that that last tour left 10 minutes ago every time," they'd snicker. "It'll be great."
So I resolved that I was going to see the dam tour of Shasta. I planned shit out. I camped along nearby Banks Lake and showed up at the dam visitor center the minute they opened in the morning. I would stay all day if I had to.
Luckily, I didn't. That would have been a long day. Grand Coulee Dam is pretty spectacular -- it's the biggest dam in the continent, and the most powerful -- but I can only look at a great mass of concrete and admire how big it is for so long. I got in on the first tour of the day. Finally, I would see the inside of the dam -- the powerplant.
Let's get this out of the way now: Grand Coulee Dam is the kind of dam that gives engineers boners. Everything about it is bigger, or heavier, or more powerful, or more groundbreaking, than any other dam in the country. An individual generator is powered by a water flow greater than most rivers, produces enough electricity to power Seattle, and has moving parts that weigh over 5 million pounds. And there are six of them. In one of three powerplants.
Dude. It. Was. Awesome.
The entire building vibrates from the force of water flowing through the turbines. The powerplant has a crane rated to 2,000 TONS, a custom job larger than anything else in the world, and they still have to break the turbines into parts so they aren't too heavy for the crane. The entire building, a full quarter-mile long, buzzes with the overwhelming sense of primal, all-encompassing, POWER.
This is what happens when you give a civil engineer an unlimited budget. It's pretty sweet.
Ok, enough dam-love. Let's move on.
The remainder of Eastern Washington passed with little fanfare. I drove through some mountains, visited a "grotto" (I learned that "grotto" is a fancy name for "little cave." It was ok, I guess), drove through the Pend Oreille valley, and then I was in Idaho.
Things I did in Idaho:
1. Got gas.
2. Peed.
3. Drove down a dirt road for five miles before I concluded that it was the wrong road.
4. Visited Moyie Falls.
5. Peed.
6. Left Idaho.
I spent nearly two full hours in the state. I passed through the panhandle, the narrowest part of the state, and well, there wasn't a whole lot to see up there. Although whenever I hear the state name, all I can think of is "Idaho? No, YOU da ho!"
I don't think I could have handled that for more than a few hours, anyway.
So then I was in Montana. Big Sky Country. A big state. I visited Glacier National Park, a beautiful place, and got some serious hiking in. It was cloudy for the majority of my visit, but I sitll managed to get some serious scenery in. Glacier is dominated by impossibly steep sandstone cliffs towering about greenish-blue glacier-fed lakes. The "Glacier" part is pretty small, though. The park used to have over 150 glaciers, but after a century of global warming, they've melted down to just a few dozen small glaciers. It's expected that the last of the glaciers will be gone by 2030. So it goes.
The best hike in Glacier? Triple Divide Pass. A seven-plus mile trek up the Cut Bank Creek valley and up the ever-steeper glacier-carved valley walls up to the pass, just a few hundred feet below the bare rock of Triple Divide Peak. From there, you can look down across two majestic glacial valleys, with impossibly blue alpine lakes and waterfalls cascading down 1,000-foot tall cliffs, as clouds break over towering sandstone peaks. Triple Divide Peak is named so because it marks the dividing point between three watersheds: the Columbia, the Saskatchewan, and the Missouri. Three ridges radiate out from the summit, setting the fate of any raindrops that fall near the peak. To the west, everything flows out to the Pacific; to the northeast, everything flows to Hudson Bay, and to the southeast, everything flows to the Gulf of Mexico. It's hard to find another place where a difference of a few inches can mean water flowing to destinations thousands of miles apart.
I say that the hike is "Triple Divide PASS" for a reason. The trail runs to the pass just east of the peak, along the ridge that means the difference between flowing to the Arctic Ocean -- and flowing to the Gulf of Mexico. The ridge then rises nearly 600 feet to the peak -- straight up. I had been dead-set in my goal of climbing to the very peak, the dividing point of drainage basins that covers the entire continent -- but I wasn't prepared to risk my life to do so. The ridge was a near-vertical wall of crumbling sandstone blocks, with equally imposing cliffs branching off to the north and south to discourage any traverse to an easier ridge ascent.
So I'll have to put off my dream of standing on the crown of the continent for a little while, at least. But someday...
Glacier Park is also prime Grizzly Bear country. I'm an accomplished bear-fighter when it comes to black bears, but grizzlies are another thing altogether. Grizzlies are BIG, and they are MEAN. And I sure as hell don't want to spook one.
So as I hiked through dense forest and bushes, the sort of places bears love to hide in as they dig for their grubs and berries, I had to make noise to announce my presence to any potential bears. Now, I'm not the sort to hike around with bells on like some damned hiking clown, so I needed an alternate sound source. Like singing. When I hike alone through potential bear habitats, I sing out loud. Badly.
Problem is, there's a lot of bear habitat in Glacier, and I ran through my catalog of songs pretty quickly. It goes by extra-quick when I only know the chorus of most songs, and even then I'm singing "Do-doo-DOO" because I don't know the words. So on my third day of hiking, I was heading up to Triple Divide with no songs left and about five miles of prime bear country ahead of me. So what did I do?
I got nerdy.
Real nerdy.
I started doing math in my head. Out loud. Distance and velocity problems, trying to calculate my average hiking speed and estimated arrival times based on the time and distance to go. Now, five miles, even at my average rate of 3.6 miles per hour (I told you I got real nerdy), is going to take over an hour and a half. That's a lot of math. I was doing long division. With decimals.
And nothing scares bears away like long division.
Even still, it gets pretty boring after a while calculating out hiking velocities. So maybe I'll get myself some damn bells after all. I suppose it beats having my spleen ripped out by a grizzly.
Next Up: YELLOWSTONE!
keepin it real
-Dave-
I'm in Helena today, the capital of the great state of Montana. Today is a town day, as I regroup from Glacier National Park and prepare for Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Laundry, shower, haircut, shave, checking the AL East standings -- and of course, a little journal-writin. Check out time is in 2 hours and 9 minutes. Let's see how much I can get in before the deadline.
When I left off, I was two states over in Yakima, WA. I've put some serious miles down since. From Yakima, I drove north along the eastern ramparts of the Cascade Mountains, making my way to the little town of Leavenworth, Washington. Now, for some reason, the entire town has been constructed in the style of a "Bavarian Village." It's like a sort of "quaint" European-Alps-Chalet style with lots of elaborate woodwork and frescoes of stuff on building walls -- like what people in western Washington state would think a village in Bavaria would look like.
Here's the thing:
1. The town doesn't appear to have a significant Bavarian population, and even if it did I'm not sure if they'd want to make their entire town look like a place where the gingerbread man would live.
2. The town is called "Leavenworth." If you're going for the full-on German-Alpen sort of thing, you'd think that they'd at least give the town a German -sounding name, like Dussel-Strassel-Alpen-Burgen-Steiner-Schnitzel. Now THAT's German! Instead, they have one road labeled "Strasse" instead of "Street." Big woop.
3. The Safeway has some sort of facade to keep up the "Bavarian Village" theme. So does the McDonald's. It's...well, words can't capture the resulting crime against architecture. This is what happens when town councils have too much time on their hands, people.
Leavenworth was also crowded as hell. It took me more than 2 minutes to find a parking space for lunch, which means that it wasn't worth it. I headed east, had a picnic lunch, and crossed the Columbia River. And then I was in....
Eastern Washington. It's a big freaking plateau that should be desert, except that one of the more ambitious mass-irrigation projects in the country (thanks, Bureau of Recalamation!) has turned it into a giant wheat field. It is big. And flat. And hot. We're talking 90+. I visited Dry Falls, a lovely bit of geology in the Grand Coulee (I won't bore you with the details. If you're interested, go look it up). And then it was time for some fun.
Background: I'm an engineer. I get nerdy about it. I like to see dams. Big ones. I've seen a number of them on my road trip: Glen Canyon (2 years ago), Trinity, Shasta, The Dalles, and Bonnevile. At every single one of them, I managed to show up just a few minutes after the last tour of the dam had left for the day (if they offered a tour. Most of them did. Also, I keep typing "damn" by mistake. I should look into this). I started to suspect that the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers had conspired together in an unheard-of collaboration for the sole goal of screwing me out of getting a dam tour. "Let's tell him that that last tour left 10 minutes ago every time," they'd snicker. "It'll be great."
So I resolved that I was going to see the dam tour of Shasta. I planned shit out. I camped along nearby Banks Lake and showed up at the dam visitor center the minute they opened in the morning. I would stay all day if I had to.
Luckily, I didn't. That would have been a long day. Grand Coulee Dam is pretty spectacular -- it's the biggest dam in the continent, and the most powerful -- but I can only look at a great mass of concrete and admire how big it is for so long. I got in on the first tour of the day. Finally, I would see the inside of the dam -- the powerplant.
Let's get this out of the way now: Grand Coulee Dam is the kind of dam that gives engineers boners. Everything about it is bigger, or heavier, or more powerful, or more groundbreaking, than any other dam in the country. An individual generator is powered by a water flow greater than most rivers, produces enough electricity to power Seattle, and has moving parts that weigh over 5 million pounds. And there are six of them. In one of three powerplants.
Dude. It. Was. Awesome.
The entire building vibrates from the force of water flowing through the turbines. The powerplant has a crane rated to 2,000 TONS, a custom job larger than anything else in the world, and they still have to break the turbines into parts so they aren't too heavy for the crane. The entire building, a full quarter-mile long, buzzes with the overwhelming sense of primal, all-encompassing, POWER.
This is what happens when you give a civil engineer an unlimited budget. It's pretty sweet.
Ok, enough dam-love. Let's move on.
The remainder of Eastern Washington passed with little fanfare. I drove through some mountains, visited a "grotto" (I learned that "grotto" is a fancy name for "little cave." It was ok, I guess), drove through the Pend Oreille valley, and then I was in Idaho.
Things I did in Idaho:
1. Got gas.
2. Peed.
3. Drove down a dirt road for five miles before I concluded that it was the wrong road.
4. Visited Moyie Falls.
5. Peed.
6. Left Idaho.
I spent nearly two full hours in the state. I passed through the panhandle, the narrowest part of the state, and well, there wasn't a whole lot to see up there. Although whenever I hear the state name, all I can think of is "Idaho? No, YOU da ho!"
I don't think I could have handled that for more than a few hours, anyway.
So then I was in Montana. Big Sky Country. A big state. I visited Glacier National Park, a beautiful place, and got some serious hiking in. It was cloudy for the majority of my visit, but I sitll managed to get some serious scenery in. Glacier is dominated by impossibly steep sandstone cliffs towering about greenish-blue glacier-fed lakes. The "Glacier" part is pretty small, though. The park used to have over 150 glaciers, but after a century of global warming, they've melted down to just a few dozen small glaciers. It's expected that the last of the glaciers will be gone by 2030. So it goes.
The best hike in Glacier? Triple Divide Pass. A seven-plus mile trek up the Cut Bank Creek valley and up the ever-steeper glacier-carved valley walls up to the pass, just a few hundred feet below the bare rock of Triple Divide Peak. From there, you can look down across two majestic glacial valleys, with impossibly blue alpine lakes and waterfalls cascading down 1,000-foot tall cliffs, as clouds break over towering sandstone peaks. Triple Divide Peak is named so because it marks the dividing point between three watersheds: the Columbia, the Saskatchewan, and the Missouri. Three ridges radiate out from the summit, setting the fate of any raindrops that fall near the peak. To the west, everything flows out to the Pacific; to the northeast, everything flows to Hudson Bay, and to the southeast, everything flows to the Gulf of Mexico. It's hard to find another place where a difference of a few inches can mean water flowing to destinations thousands of miles apart.
I say that the hike is "Triple Divide PASS" for a reason. The trail runs to the pass just east of the peak, along the ridge that means the difference between flowing to the Arctic Ocean -- and flowing to the Gulf of Mexico. The ridge then rises nearly 600 feet to the peak -- straight up. I had been dead-set in my goal of climbing to the very peak, the dividing point of drainage basins that covers the entire continent -- but I wasn't prepared to risk my life to do so. The ridge was a near-vertical wall of crumbling sandstone blocks, with equally imposing cliffs branching off to the north and south to discourage any traverse to an easier ridge ascent.
So I'll have to put off my dream of standing on the crown of the continent for a little while, at least. But someday...
Glacier Park is also prime Grizzly Bear country. I'm an accomplished bear-fighter when it comes to black bears, but grizzlies are another thing altogether. Grizzlies are BIG, and they are MEAN. And I sure as hell don't want to spook one.
So as I hiked through dense forest and bushes, the sort of places bears love to hide in as they dig for their grubs and berries, I had to make noise to announce my presence to any potential bears. Now, I'm not the sort to hike around with bells on like some damned hiking clown, so I needed an alternate sound source. Like singing. When I hike alone through potential bear habitats, I sing out loud. Badly.
Problem is, there's a lot of bear habitat in Glacier, and I ran through my catalog of songs pretty quickly. It goes by extra-quick when I only know the chorus of most songs, and even then I'm singing "Do-doo-DOO" because I don't know the words. So on my third day of hiking, I was heading up to Triple Divide with no songs left and about five miles of prime bear country ahead of me. So what did I do?
I got nerdy.
Real nerdy.
I started doing math in my head. Out loud. Distance and velocity problems, trying to calculate my average hiking speed and estimated arrival times based on the time and distance to go. Now, five miles, even at my average rate of 3.6 miles per hour (I told you I got real nerdy), is going to take over an hour and a half. That's a lot of math. I was doing long division. With decimals.
And nothing scares bears away like long division.
Even still, it gets pretty boring after a while calculating out hiking velocities. So maybe I'll get myself some damn bells after all. I suppose it beats having my spleen ripped out by a grizzly.
Next Up: YELLOWSTONE!
keepin it real
-Dave-
Saturday, July 19, 2008
I Should Have Brought My Skis
Ok, now we're getting somewhere. I'm rested, breakfasted, and over-coffeed. Time for some journal writin'.
I'm in Yakima, Washington, which apparently has a lot of wineries. Good thing. For a moment there, I was afraid that I might go the entire day sober. It is hot as balls out here in central Washington, and I'm going to need a way to cope. I also may have a mild sunburn. You know what doesn't give you sunburns? Drinking wine.
Think about it.
What does give you sunburns, however, is spending the day hiking around the snowfields of Mount Rainier. I pulled up to Paradise (elevation: 5400') yesterday morning, saw the towering mass of the mountain above me, and thought: let's do this.
Problem is, the summit of Rainier is over 14,000 feet above sea level, and is surrounded by pointy rocks and glaciers and crevasses and avalanches and very little oxygen. It's not the sort of thing to take on alone, without mountaineering equipment, after a late morning start. So I toned down my plans for the day, and just went halfway up to Muir Camp, a collection of squat stone shelters and overloaded outhouses that serves as a base camp for summit ascents. I was told it would take four to five hours to make it up to the 10,000-foot camp. I did it in three.
Did I mention that I'm a fast hiker? I am. I hike at a rapid pace. I'm proud of this. You should bring this up next time you see me. "Dave, I've noticed that you are a very fast hiker," you can say. "I get it. You walk fast. Now shut up about it."
I'll try. Getting back on track, I made it up to Muir Camp, where I could see the beauty of the Cascade Mountains spread across the horizon under a perfectly clear azure sky. It also smelled strongly of pee. Now, there's a lot of snow up on the slopes of Rainier. Hiking up (fast!) I could see a number of people with skis strapped to their packs, and immediately wished that I had brought my skis along with me. 4,500' down wide-open snowfields in perfect spring-skiing conditions? It would have been sweet. As it was, I had to make do glissading down on my boots. Glissading is fun as hell. Especially when I could get in a groove where someone had gone down on a sled earlier, creating a chute of slick, slushy snow that I could glide down, on the brink of lising control and falling on my face the entire time. It was perfect.
It also was very sunny. And I was in a massive snowfield. Above the treeline. So despite massive applications of sunblock, I picked up a bit of a sunburn. I'll take that trade.
It wasn't all fun and games, though -- I had to cope with loss. The loss of my pants.
In Memoriam
Dave's Pants - 2005-2008
I bought the pants back in (I'm pretty sure?) 2005, when I was visiting friends in NYC. We were walking through Greenwich Village, and came across one of those shops that sells highly fashionable clothes at insultingly high prices. It was going out of business. I found a pair of pants (Dunderon? something like that. They're made in Sweeden) that looked good and cost under 30 bucks. They were lightweight and allowed full movement, like running or hiking. Over the years, my pants lost various buttons and developed various holes, and my wallet pocket ripped. So I relegated them to hiking duty. They had a hole in the crotch, but it had only become mildly scandalous. Until yesterday.
I was sitting down at Muir Camp, and happened to glance down. And guess who poked his head out to say hello to the world? My penis. Now, I can deal with some pretty good-sized crotch holes, but when Little* Dave starts flopping out in the breeze, throwing off my aerodynamics, exposing himself to sunburn, prickly underbrush, and hungry birds -- well, it's time for new pants. You can look forward to an exciting upcoming post, "Dave buys new hiking pants."
*"Little" only in relation to the overall size of my body. I cannot stress this enough. I am Dave, he is Little Dave. He's damn big enough for when he's needed, and don't you dare say otherwise.
So yesterday, I did my big hike (halfway) up Rainier. The day before that, I did an equally big hike up Hurricane Hill in Olympic National Park. Don't let the name fool you -- It may just be a "hill," but it's 5,700' and it's right near the ocean, so the trail up it climbs just under a solid vertical mile. That's a lot of vertical. It was a beautiful hike, through lush, dense forests at the base to wide-open alpine meadows at the summit. Unfortunately, you can also get to the summit by driving most of the way up along a road on the other side of the hill, and then hiking a piddly little mile or so to the summit. So after six miles of solitary hiking, I ran into mobs of car-tourists up at the top. I turned right around and made my way a bit down the trail to get a bit of quiet for my lunch. I was taking a nice post-lunch nap in the sun, when I heard what I call
"The Most Inane Conversation Ever"
I can't remember it exactly, because my brain is trying its hardest to repress the memory. But it went something like this:
"Wow, look at all these wildflowers"
"Yes, there are a lot of wildflowers"
"There are a lot of flowers over here"
"Yes, and over here there is a different flower"
"That is a different flower. There are a lot of them"
"Yes, there are so many wildflowers"
"Really. There are more wildflowers than last time"
"Yes, there weren't as many flowers last time"
And so on. The actual conversation may not have been so intellectually stimulating. But it was longer. And it was LOUD. Seriously, it was like these people had built-in microphones. I swear I could hear them half a mile away, waxing idiotic about every single thing they saw.
The experience led me to develop Dave's Law of Conversation Volume, which is as follows: the volume of any given conversation is inversely proportional to the intellectual content of the conversation. Under this law, a couple of philosophers discussing the nature of a man in some bohemian coffeehouse will speak in reserved, hushed tones; and the flower-lovers disturbing my nap will speak at volumes rivaling jet engines. My theory is that the node of the brain responsible for moderating thoughts before they are spoken out loud is located directly above the mouth. People with a well-developed node will have a smaller mouth, and people with a tiny little node will have a massive mouth that has grown to fill the gap.
So after such a wonderful day, I was hunting for a campground. I found one, but it was full. At least, that's what the host told me. It was actually less than half full, but every empty site had a "reserved" tag on it. Bastards. So I had to do a little hobo-camping in a small gravel pit off the road in the national forest. It didn't have a toilet or a firepit or a water source or a picnic table, but it did have a space where I could put my tent and a flat spot for my stove. I cooked up some ramen and opened up a tin of tuna with secret hobo spices (cilantro-lime. Those hobos know their spices). This is what I get for planning my route only a few hours in advance and trying to find a campsite on a friday night. It is also the reason why I made damn sure to get a hotel room and a big freaking dinner at "Smokin Bones BBQ" last night. That was some damn good BBQ. And the chef/owner made a point of making the rounds of the restaurant, greeting each table and asking them how their meal was. I appreciate that kind of service. I also appreciate the "BBQ Combo," a mass of beef ribs, smoked kielbasa, and half a freaking chicken piled onto a plate and drowned in barbecue sauce.
Good times.
I also got to relax in the sulfur hot pools at Sol Duc hot springs several days ago in Olympic, and I got to see the Hoh rainforest. Both experiences were enjoyable. I'd write more, but it's time to get moving and check out of my room. More to come soon.
"I start with the best part of the chicken -- the neck! Then I add secret hobo spices"
-Moe Syslak
Bears in Cars BONUS!
See into the mind of the creator, with this exclusive late-night journal post outline!
It's getting late, I'm tired, and I've got about ten pounds of barbecue sloshing around in my stomach. I'm just getting a quick outline up so I don't forget what's been up for Dave. I'll fill in the details later.
In more-or-less reverse chronological order:
1. glissading is fun as shit. Especially on Mount Rainier. I wish I'd brought my skis.
2. In Memoriam: my old pants.
2a. Little* Dave pops out. *"Little" is only compared to my entire body. I cannot stress this enough.
3. Hobo Camping: the key is adding secret hobo spices.
4. Hurricane Hill: a mile of excitement. 10k vertical in 2 days.
5. Hot springs are hot.
6. The most inane conversation ever is also the loudest conversation ever. Fucking wildflowers.
6a. Dave's Law of Conversation Volume.
-deuce-
I'm in Yakima, Washington, which apparently has a lot of wineries. Good thing. For a moment there, I was afraid that I might go the entire day sober. It is hot as balls out here in central Washington, and I'm going to need a way to cope. I also may have a mild sunburn. You know what doesn't give you sunburns? Drinking wine.
Think about it.
What does give you sunburns, however, is spending the day hiking around the snowfields of Mount Rainier. I pulled up to Paradise (elevation: 5400') yesterday morning, saw the towering mass of the mountain above me, and thought: let's do this.
Problem is, the summit of Rainier is over 14,000 feet above sea level, and is surrounded by pointy rocks and glaciers and crevasses and avalanches and very little oxygen. It's not the sort of thing to take on alone, without mountaineering equipment, after a late morning start. So I toned down my plans for the day, and just went halfway up to Muir Camp, a collection of squat stone shelters and overloaded outhouses that serves as a base camp for summit ascents. I was told it would take four to five hours to make it up to the 10,000-foot camp. I did it in three.
Did I mention that I'm a fast hiker? I am. I hike at a rapid pace. I'm proud of this. You should bring this up next time you see me. "Dave, I've noticed that you are a very fast hiker," you can say. "I get it. You walk fast. Now shut up about it."
I'll try. Getting back on track, I made it up to Muir Camp, where I could see the beauty of the Cascade Mountains spread across the horizon under a perfectly clear azure sky. It also smelled strongly of pee. Now, there's a lot of snow up on the slopes of Rainier. Hiking up (fast!) I could see a number of people with skis strapped to their packs, and immediately wished that I had brought my skis along with me. 4,500' down wide-open snowfields in perfect spring-skiing conditions? It would have been sweet. As it was, I had to make do glissading down on my boots. Glissading is fun as hell. Especially when I could get in a groove where someone had gone down on a sled earlier, creating a chute of slick, slushy snow that I could glide down, on the brink of lising control and falling on my face the entire time. It was perfect.
It also was very sunny. And I was in a massive snowfield. Above the treeline. So despite massive applications of sunblock, I picked up a bit of a sunburn. I'll take that trade.
It wasn't all fun and games, though -- I had to cope with loss. The loss of my pants.
In Memoriam
Dave's Pants - 2005-2008
I bought the pants back in (I'm pretty sure?) 2005, when I was visiting friends in NYC. We were walking through Greenwich Village, and came across one of those shops that sells highly fashionable clothes at insultingly high prices. It was going out of business. I found a pair of pants (Dunderon? something like that. They're made in Sweeden) that looked good and cost under 30 bucks. They were lightweight and allowed full movement, like running or hiking. Over the years, my pants lost various buttons and developed various holes, and my wallet pocket ripped. So I relegated them to hiking duty. They had a hole in the crotch, but it had only become mildly scandalous. Until yesterday.
I was sitting down at Muir Camp, and happened to glance down. And guess who poked his head out to say hello to the world? My penis. Now, I can deal with some pretty good-sized crotch holes, but when Little* Dave starts flopping out in the breeze, throwing off my aerodynamics, exposing himself to sunburn, prickly underbrush, and hungry birds -- well, it's time for new pants. You can look forward to an exciting upcoming post, "Dave buys new hiking pants."
*"Little" only in relation to the overall size of my body. I cannot stress this enough. I am Dave, he is Little Dave. He's damn big enough for when he's needed, and don't you dare say otherwise.
So yesterday, I did my big hike (halfway) up Rainier. The day before that, I did an equally big hike up Hurricane Hill in Olympic National Park. Don't let the name fool you -- It may just be a "hill," but it's 5,700' and it's right near the ocean, so the trail up it climbs just under a solid vertical mile. That's a lot of vertical. It was a beautiful hike, through lush, dense forests at the base to wide-open alpine meadows at the summit. Unfortunately, you can also get to the summit by driving most of the way up along a road on the other side of the hill, and then hiking a piddly little mile or so to the summit. So after six miles of solitary hiking, I ran into mobs of car-tourists up at the top. I turned right around and made my way a bit down the trail to get a bit of quiet for my lunch. I was taking a nice post-lunch nap in the sun, when I heard what I call
"The Most Inane Conversation Ever"
I can't remember it exactly, because my brain is trying its hardest to repress the memory. But it went something like this:
"Wow, look at all these wildflowers"
"Yes, there are a lot of wildflowers"
"There are a lot of flowers over here"
"Yes, and over here there is a different flower"
"That is a different flower. There are a lot of them"
"Yes, there are so many wildflowers"
"Really. There are more wildflowers than last time"
"Yes, there weren't as many flowers last time"
And so on. The actual conversation may not have been so intellectually stimulating. But it was longer. And it was LOUD. Seriously, it was like these people had built-in microphones. I swear I could hear them half a mile away, waxing idiotic about every single thing they saw.
The experience led me to develop Dave's Law of Conversation Volume, which is as follows: the volume of any given conversation is inversely proportional to the intellectual content of the conversation. Under this law, a couple of philosophers discussing the nature of a man in some bohemian coffeehouse will speak in reserved, hushed tones; and the flower-lovers disturbing my nap will speak at volumes rivaling jet engines. My theory is that the node of the brain responsible for moderating thoughts before they are spoken out loud is located directly above the mouth. People with a well-developed node will have a smaller mouth, and people with a tiny little node will have a massive mouth that has grown to fill the gap.
So after such a wonderful day, I was hunting for a campground. I found one, but it was full. At least, that's what the host told me. It was actually less than half full, but every empty site had a "reserved" tag on it. Bastards. So I had to do a little hobo-camping in a small gravel pit off the road in the national forest. It didn't have a toilet or a firepit or a water source or a picnic table, but it did have a space where I could put my tent and a flat spot for my stove. I cooked up some ramen and opened up a tin of tuna with secret hobo spices (cilantro-lime. Those hobos know their spices). This is what I get for planning my route only a few hours in advance and trying to find a campsite on a friday night. It is also the reason why I made damn sure to get a hotel room and a big freaking dinner at "Smokin Bones BBQ" last night. That was some damn good BBQ. And the chef/owner made a point of making the rounds of the restaurant, greeting each table and asking them how their meal was. I appreciate that kind of service. I also appreciate the "BBQ Combo," a mass of beef ribs, smoked kielbasa, and half a freaking chicken piled onto a plate and drowned in barbecue sauce.
Good times.
I also got to relax in the sulfur hot pools at Sol Duc hot springs several days ago in Olympic, and I got to see the Hoh rainforest. Both experiences were enjoyable. I'd write more, but it's time to get moving and check out of my room. More to come soon.
"I start with the best part of the chicken -- the neck! Then I add secret hobo spices"
-Moe Syslak
Bears in Cars BONUS!
See into the mind of the creator, with this exclusive late-night journal post outline!
It's getting late, I'm tired, and I've got about ten pounds of barbecue sloshing around in my stomach. I'm just getting a quick outline up so I don't forget what's been up for Dave. I'll fill in the details later.
In more-or-less reverse chronological order:
1. glissading is fun as shit. Especially on Mount Rainier. I wish I'd brought my skis.
2. In Memoriam: my old pants.
2a. Little* Dave pops out. *"Little" is only compared to my entire body. I cannot stress this enough.
3. Hobo Camping: the key is adding secret hobo spices.
4. Hurricane Hill: a mile of excitement. 10k vertical in 2 days.
5. Hot springs are hot.
6. The most inane conversation ever is also the loudest conversation ever. Fucking wildflowers.
6a. Dave's Law of Conversation Volume.
-deuce-
Monday, July 14, 2008
Oyster Capital of the World
I've been in in South Bend, Washington these last few days, visiting some family friends. South Bend advertises itself as the "Oyster Capital of the World," and for good reason -- more oysters are farmed in nearby Willapa Bay than any other place in the country. I got to learn this first hand, as I found myself hauling oyster bags out of the low-tide muck at 7am this morning. There were a lot of oysters.
I've been helping out here and there with the oyster farming, which helps me to not feel guilty about crashing in the guest room for a long weekend and eating all of my hosts' food. And drinking their beer. I'm doing that too.
The weather out here has been beautiful and sunny for the past few days, which is not normal. I know this because every single person who lives here has made a point to tell me, every single time I talk to them. "Normal" weather here is a combination of clouds, unending rain, and tsunamis. Apparently. Personally, I'm starting to suspect that the weather really is wonderful out here, and the locals just made up the "it rains all the time" myth to keep people away. I can't blame them; nobody wants to wind up like California.
Sunny weather is good for recreation. I've been taking full advantage of it. Saturday was my first attempt at wakeboarding, kneeling on a little rubber-plastic board as a fast boat pulls me along behind it. I decided that this would be a lot of fun, until I tried it myself and realized the physics of the sport:
1) You can't get on the board until the boat starts moving.
2) You can't get on the board without using your hands.
3) You need your hands to hold the rope attached to the boat.
All this resulted in a sort of rock-paper-scissors struggle as I attempted to manoeuvre my body onto the board. I would get a hold of the rope while laying down on the board, then attempt to pull myself up. This just slid me to the side of the board. I tried to hold the rope with one hand, while holding the board with my other hand. This made me go sideways. I tried to switch hands on the rope. This made the board spin around. Finally, with a sudden spastic motion (I still have no idea what I did), I was kneeling on the board. I was holding onto the rope. I was not upside-down. This was good. Unfortunately, my arms were tired as hell from the extended attempt, which made things difficult because I still had to hold onto the rope. I did manage some "tricks," however, ranging from (1) don't fall off the board to (2) look tired to (3) fall off the board while attempting a trick more advanced than (1) or (2). I'm pretty sure I managed to get some slalom turns in there, but my ride was pretty much all about trick (2).
So wakeboarding was fun. What was more fun was shooting stuff. I got my first taste of trap and skeet shooting with a 20 gauge shotgun, and I excelled at it. In that I hit the skeet once. After about thirty tries. So really, my only accomplishments were (1) litter skeets all over the place and (2) make a lot of noise. I'm pretty proud of (2). I was a little better at target practice with the .22, largely because the targets didn't move. It's slightly easier to hit a stationary skeet 25 feet away than one flying away from you at 50. But the gun is still just as loud, and the target explodes into little pieces when you hit it. I have decided that if it weren't for the whole having-to-fight-in-unjust-wars and getting-shot-and-killed-or-gruesomely-wounded things, I could have a lot of fun in the army. As illustrated in the following short play:
"Dave In The Army"
dramatis personae
Dave
Drill Sargent
Drill Sargent: "Hey Dave, would you like to shoot target practice with the grenade launcher?"
Dave: "Yes. Yes I would."
Grenades: "Boom."
And so on.
I've also gotten to help out with various chores here, including my all-time favorite, splitting firewood. If any of you out there have a bunch of wood that needs splitting, my services are always available. I will require as payment a large dinner (note: dinner must include some form of meat. Vegetarian alternatives will not be accepted. If I'm going to spend the day swinging a big heavy axe around, bean salad just isn't going to cut it) and plenty of cold beer. In fact, you can get a lot out of me in return for a steak dinner and lots of cold beer. This includes chores like "watching the football game" and "falling asleep on the couch." I am very good at those chores, too.
Coming up on DaveTrip '08:
Olympia National Park!
Mounts Ranier and Saint Helens, The Twin Towers of the Pacific Northwest volcanic world!
Not Seattle!
-deuce-
I've been helping out here and there with the oyster farming, which helps me to not feel guilty about crashing in the guest room for a long weekend and eating all of my hosts' food. And drinking their beer. I'm doing that too.
The weather out here has been beautiful and sunny for the past few days, which is not normal. I know this because every single person who lives here has made a point to tell me, every single time I talk to them. "Normal" weather here is a combination of clouds, unending rain, and tsunamis. Apparently. Personally, I'm starting to suspect that the weather really is wonderful out here, and the locals just made up the "it rains all the time" myth to keep people away. I can't blame them; nobody wants to wind up like California.
Sunny weather is good for recreation. I've been taking full advantage of it. Saturday was my first attempt at wakeboarding, kneeling on a little rubber-plastic board as a fast boat pulls me along behind it. I decided that this would be a lot of fun, until I tried it myself and realized the physics of the sport:
1) You can't get on the board until the boat starts moving.
2) You can't get on the board without using your hands.
3) You need your hands to hold the rope attached to the boat.
All this resulted in a sort of rock-paper-scissors struggle as I attempted to manoeuvre my body onto the board. I would get a hold of the rope while laying down on the board, then attempt to pull myself up. This just slid me to the side of the board. I tried to hold the rope with one hand, while holding the board with my other hand. This made me go sideways. I tried to switch hands on the rope. This made the board spin around. Finally, with a sudden spastic motion (I still have no idea what I did), I was kneeling on the board. I was holding onto the rope. I was not upside-down. This was good. Unfortunately, my arms were tired as hell from the extended attempt, which made things difficult because I still had to hold onto the rope. I did manage some "tricks," however, ranging from (1) don't fall off the board to (2) look tired to (3) fall off the board while attempting a trick more advanced than (1) or (2). I'm pretty sure I managed to get some slalom turns in there, but my ride was pretty much all about trick (2).
So wakeboarding was fun. What was more fun was shooting stuff. I got my first taste of trap and skeet shooting with a 20 gauge shotgun, and I excelled at it. In that I hit the skeet once. After about thirty tries. So really, my only accomplishments were (1) litter skeets all over the place and (2) make a lot of noise. I'm pretty proud of (2). I was a little better at target practice with the .22, largely because the targets didn't move. It's slightly easier to hit a stationary skeet 25 feet away than one flying away from you at 50. But the gun is still just as loud, and the target explodes into little pieces when you hit it. I have decided that if it weren't for the whole having-to-fight-in-unjust-wars and getting-shot-and-killed-or-gruesomely-wounded things, I could have a lot of fun in the army. As illustrated in the following short play:
"Dave In The Army"
dramatis personae
Dave
Drill Sargent
Drill Sargent: "Hey Dave, would you like to shoot target practice with the grenade launcher?"
Dave: "Yes. Yes I would."
Grenades: "Boom."
And so on.
I've also gotten to help out with various chores here, including my all-time favorite, splitting firewood. If any of you out there have a bunch of wood that needs splitting, my services are always available. I will require as payment a large dinner (note: dinner must include some form of meat. Vegetarian alternatives will not be accepted. If I'm going to spend the day swinging a big heavy axe around, bean salad just isn't going to cut it) and plenty of cold beer. In fact, you can get a lot out of me in return for a steak dinner and lots of cold beer. This includes chores like "watching the football game" and "falling asleep on the couch." I am very good at those chores, too.
Coming up on DaveTrip '08:
Olympia National Park!
Mounts Ranier and Saint Helens, The Twin Towers of the Pacific Northwest volcanic world!
Not Seattle!
-deuce-
Friday, July 11, 2008
SLC Punk'd
Dave's back, babies!
I'm in Salt Lake City this morning, although I hadn't planned on it (this is, has been, and will always be the case when I am in SLC. The only times I find myself in this town are 1) to catch a connecting flight, because there was no other option for my air travel; 2) to drive up to the Wasatch and get some skiing in sweet sweet Utah Powder; or 3) because I've decided that you know what, I don't feel like having fun today. I don't have any particular axe to grind with Salt Lake City; it's just that this town was not designed with fun in mind.
To wit:
1) SLC is centrally located in the middle western United States. This makes it an excellent location for a Delta hub. Unfortunately, "centrally located" does not improve a town's fun rating. SLC relatively close mountains with incredible skiing, desert canyons with incredible vistas, and Las Vegas with incredible immorality. These are all fun. SLC is strategically located in the empty region between them.
2) SLC was founded by mormons. These people have historically been anti-fun, especially in the underwear department. They also rank very low on the fun scale when it comes to...
3) Beer. If there's one thing SLC hates, it's beer with a decent alcohol content. This means that the biggest side effect of drinking in SLC is having to pee a lot. I like to pee as much as the next guy, but there are better reasons to drink. For example, pointless vandalism.
4) The Great Salt Lake. SLC's big attraction is a chunk of water so salty that almost nothing can live in it. The salt content is so high that you can float in it easily. "Easy Floating" does not help SLC's fun rating. Especially if you can't drink a decent beer while you're floating.).
So why am I in Salt Lake City? A misfunctioning altimeter, that's why. Mr. Altimeter decided on the Boston tarmac that he wasn't going to work properly. So the pilot taxied the plane back to the gate to fix him. Apparently, rolling around at 1 mile an hour is the most fuel-intensive activity a jet can do, because after returning to the gate the plane needed to re-balance its fuel tanks for take-off due to all the fuel it had burned sitting on the tarmac. Apparently, moving fuel from one part of the fuel tanks to another part of the fuel tanks WITHIN THE SAME PLANE requires written approval from the control tower.
Now, the Boston-Logan control tower HATES when flights get delayed. They absolutely despise it. So when a plane does get delayed like ours, the control tower punishes them by taking as long as possible to approve their fuel re-balancing. The control tower is tough but fair.
The net effect on Dave was keeping me crammed in my tiny little plane seat for over two hours while this comedy of errors was taking place. Time being linear, it also meant that my flight didn't get into Salt Lake City until after 11pm (local time), long after the last plane had left for Salem for the night.
So I got stuck in SLC. I had not planned on it.
The nice people at Delta booked me on the next day's (i.e., today's) flight, and put me up in the airport radisson for the night. And they gave me $14 in food vouchers, which at airport/hotel food vendors is almost enough to buy half a sandwich. So that's nice of them.
What does this mean for you, good readers? It means that the road trip ("Vision Quest II: Electric Boogaloo") has been delayed by a little over half a day. Assuming no further altimeter hijinx today, I'll be back in the saddle this afternoon. You can look forward to exciting upcoming posts like "Dave gets the oil changed in his car" and "Dave finds out just how bad his car smells after baking in the sun for two weeks with a dirty sleeping bag inside." I might even regale you with tales of my July 4th break -- tales of lobsters, fireworks, sheep, fire trucks, and laundry. It's every bit as exciting as it sounds.
-Dave-
I'm in Salt Lake City this morning, although I hadn't planned on it (this is, has been, and will always be the case when I am in SLC. The only times I find myself in this town are 1) to catch a connecting flight, because there was no other option for my air travel; 2) to drive up to the Wasatch and get some skiing in sweet sweet Utah Powder; or 3) because I've decided that you know what, I don't feel like having fun today. I don't have any particular axe to grind with Salt Lake City; it's just that this town was not designed with fun in mind.
To wit:
1) SLC is centrally located in the middle western United States. This makes it an excellent location for a Delta hub. Unfortunately, "centrally located" does not improve a town's fun rating. SLC relatively close mountains with incredible skiing, desert canyons with incredible vistas, and Las Vegas with incredible immorality. These are all fun. SLC is strategically located in the empty region between them.
2) SLC was founded by mormons. These people have historically been anti-fun, especially in the underwear department. They also rank very low on the fun scale when it comes to...
3) Beer. If there's one thing SLC hates, it's beer with a decent alcohol content. This means that the biggest side effect of drinking in SLC is having to pee a lot. I like to pee as much as the next guy, but there are better reasons to drink. For example, pointless vandalism.
4) The Great Salt Lake. SLC's big attraction is a chunk of water so salty that almost nothing can live in it. The salt content is so high that you can float in it easily. "Easy Floating" does not help SLC's fun rating. Especially if you can't drink a decent beer while you're floating.).
So why am I in Salt Lake City? A misfunctioning altimeter, that's why. Mr. Altimeter decided on the Boston tarmac that he wasn't going to work properly. So the pilot taxied the plane back to the gate to fix him. Apparently, rolling around at 1 mile an hour is the most fuel-intensive activity a jet can do, because after returning to the gate the plane needed to re-balance its fuel tanks for take-off due to all the fuel it had burned sitting on the tarmac. Apparently, moving fuel from one part of the fuel tanks to another part of the fuel tanks WITHIN THE SAME PLANE requires written approval from the control tower.
Now, the Boston-Logan control tower HATES when flights get delayed. They absolutely despise it. So when a plane does get delayed like ours, the control tower punishes them by taking as long as possible to approve their fuel re-balancing. The control tower is tough but fair.
The net effect on Dave was keeping me crammed in my tiny little plane seat for over two hours while this comedy of errors was taking place. Time being linear, it also meant that my flight didn't get into Salt Lake City until after 11pm (local time), long after the last plane had left for Salem for the night.
So I got stuck in SLC. I had not planned on it.
The nice people at Delta booked me on the next day's (i.e., today's) flight, and put me up in the airport radisson for the night. And they gave me $14 in food vouchers, which at airport/hotel food vendors is almost enough to buy half a sandwich. So that's nice of them.
What does this mean for you, good readers? It means that the road trip ("Vision Quest II: Electric Boogaloo") has been delayed by a little over half a day. Assuming no further altimeter hijinx today, I'll be back in the saddle this afternoon. You can look forward to exciting upcoming posts like "Dave gets the oil changed in his car" and "Dave finds out just how bad his car smells after baking in the sun for two weeks with a dirty sleeping bag inside." I might even regale you with tales of my July 4th break -- tales of lobsters, fireworks, sheep, fire trucks, and laundry. It's every bit as exciting as it sounds.
-Dave-
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Return To The Sea
About damn time I found a place where I could get some breakfast and hop on the internet. I would like to wholeheartedly recommend the Morning Star Cafe in Seaside, Oregon, to all you peoples who like breakfast and wi-fi. They just got some fresh-picked strawberries in here from down the road and damn but those things are good. I somehow managed to wake up at 4:55am this morning, and took advantage of my unfortunately early rise by going for a dawn hike through the woods in Stub Stewart State Park (this being the home of my campground last night). The advantage to hiking so early in the day is that the woods are filled with birdsong,* and when I got to a vantage point I could see the rising sun painting the drifting fog banks as they crept through the coastal hills. The downside is that it left me damn hungry before most normal people have even woken up. Hence my happiness at finding a breakfast place.
*There is a certain type of bird -- I'm pretty sure it's the Grouse -- that has a consistent history of scaring the shit out of me when I'm hiking. As I may have mentioned in previous posts, I hike fast, and I don't make much sound. This means that I often get to see wildlife that ordinarily would flee long before a slower, louder hiker would see it. The general reaction of said wildlife is to let out a surprised squeak and rush off into the underbrush. Usually, I get to catch a glimpse of the animal first, and then can watch it as it runs away. The grouse, however, is different. I have never seen one standing still. They are perfectly camouflaged beside the trail, and I am certain that I would walk past one completely unaware if the damn thing would stay still. This does not happen. What does happen is that the damn bird waits until I am about two feet away, and then EXPLODES out of its hiding place in a flurry of surprisingly loud flapping wings. This shocks the hell out of me. Every damn time it happens. Stupid bird.
The weather on the coast today is a dreary cloudy-fog, so I'm in no hurry to get out hiking. Today might wind up being a museum day. I need to start planning out my trip more than four hours in advance now, because I'm flying back to Boston on Friday. I'll be leaving my car parked at the airport while I'm in New England. In some airport garage. My car. That's full of hiking crap. I'll be taking my laptop and items of actual value with me, but I'm always paranoid about leaving Oki all alone in a garage somewhere. I plan to strategically arrange items in the backseat of the car so as to make them appear as inexpensive as possible. As opposed to hanging a sign in the window that reads "THERE IS $1,000 IN CASH HIDDEN SOMEWHERE IN THIS VEHICLE. CAN YOU FIND IT?"**
**I discussed this strategem with Jared. He agreed that the sign would be a bad idea. In fact, the sign would likely lead to someone ransacking my car, taking anything of value, and then taking a big dump in my glove-box. What would lead a person to pinch one off inside someone's glove-box is beyond my understanding, let alone how they could arrange their body to drop said deuce in such an awkward location. Regardless, the lesson is clear: don't make your car look like it contains valuables. And more importantly, don't take a dump in my car. For this reason, I will be keeping the location of my vehicle secret. For its protection.
It looks like there's an air and space museum in Tillamook. And more importantly, I'm pretty sure I've had beer made by a "Tillamook Brewery." I hope that this is not a coincidence. I want to be rip-snortin' drunk when I roll into that air and space museum, wearing a shirt that says "I SHOT DOWN AMELIA EARHART," acting belligerent in general, and when approached demanding to speak to Chuck Yeager. Yes. This is a good plan.
-dave
"I am the Lindberg Baby!"
-Abe Simpson
*There is a certain type of bird -- I'm pretty sure it's the Grouse -- that has a consistent history of scaring the shit out of me when I'm hiking. As I may have mentioned in previous posts, I hike fast, and I don't make much sound. This means that I often get to see wildlife that ordinarily would flee long before a slower, louder hiker would see it. The general reaction of said wildlife is to let out a surprised squeak and rush off into the underbrush. Usually, I get to catch a glimpse of the animal first, and then can watch it as it runs away. The grouse, however, is different. I have never seen one standing still. They are perfectly camouflaged beside the trail, and I am certain that I would walk past one completely unaware if the damn thing would stay still. This does not happen. What does happen is that the damn bird waits until I am about two feet away, and then EXPLODES out of its hiding place in a flurry of surprisingly loud flapping wings. This shocks the hell out of me. Every damn time it happens. Stupid bird.
The weather on the coast today is a dreary cloudy-fog, so I'm in no hurry to get out hiking. Today might wind up being a museum day. I need to start planning out my trip more than four hours in advance now, because I'm flying back to Boston on Friday. I'll be leaving my car parked at the airport while I'm in New England. In some airport garage. My car. That's full of hiking crap. I'll be taking my laptop and items of actual value with me, but I'm always paranoid about leaving Oki all alone in a garage somewhere. I plan to strategically arrange items in the backseat of the car so as to make them appear as inexpensive as possible. As opposed to hanging a sign in the window that reads "THERE IS $1,000 IN CASH HIDDEN SOMEWHERE IN THIS VEHICLE. CAN YOU FIND IT?"**
**I discussed this strategem with Jared. He agreed that the sign would be a bad idea. In fact, the sign would likely lead to someone ransacking my car, taking anything of value, and then taking a big dump in my glove-box. What would lead a person to pinch one off inside someone's glove-box is beyond my understanding, let alone how they could arrange their body to drop said deuce in such an awkward location. Regardless, the lesson is clear: don't make your car look like it contains valuables. And more importantly, don't take a dump in my car. For this reason, I will be keeping the location of my vehicle secret. For its protection.
It looks like there's an air and space museum in Tillamook. And more importantly, I'm pretty sure I've had beer made by a "Tillamook Brewery." I hope that this is not a coincidence. I want to be rip-snortin' drunk when I roll into that air and space museum, wearing a shirt that says "I SHOT DOWN AMELIA EARHART," acting belligerent in general, and when approached demanding to speak to Chuck Yeager. Yes. This is a good plan.
-dave
"I am the Lindberg Baby!"
-Abe Simpson
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Fair Columbia
Here in Troutdale, Oregon, enjoying a cup of coffee at some random truckstop. Today I was hiking around the waterfalls of the Columbia Gorge, and the weather was nice enough to cooperate with some perfect blue skies. There's more to come, but right now I'm looking at some chicken wings that are just begging to be eaten. And seeing as how I haven't mastered the art of typing without the use of my hands, that's how it's gonna be. Anyway, here's yesterday's post:
Getting My Money’s Worth (Journal Entry, 6/23/08)
I’m in Ainsworth State Park, on the southern side of the Columbia Gorge. Tomorrow I’ll head a few miles west to hike among the waterfalls, but for the moment I’m taking it easy. For reasons that I still cannot completely comprehend, every campground I have visited will charge either the same amount or a trivial larger amount for campsites with full RV hookups. I’m a pretty basic camper – all I need is a place to park my car, a relatively flat spot for my tent, and a secnd, smaller, flat spot to put my campstove. If I feel like spoiling myself, I might even want a picnic table. Besides that, I might need a bit of water from a faucet somewhere in the campground, and a proper receptacle for that water once I’ve processed it. Or if I need to drop a deuce.*
*One of my favorite expressions of all time. To this day, I consider the phrase “drop a deuce” to be the most important single thing that I learned during my four years at Bishop Hendricken High School. This says more about my relative maturity than it does about the quality of education I received.
So that’s it: maybe 200 square feet of space, a water source, and a hole in the ground. This is why I was getting so frustrated with the “great state” of California** charging upwards of $25 a night for a little flat patch of dirt.
**California is a beautiful state. It really is. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see that beauty because it is also the most populous state, and all those people (1) get in the way and (2) drive up the cost of everything to comically high levels. As a New Englander, it causes me great pain to pay more for something than I feel is the fair price. I felt this great pain on a regular basis living in CA.
Now, with an RV hookup site, you get an electrical jack, a water faucet, and a sewer clean-out, without having to walk even a few feet. That’s infrastructure, and I know a thing or two about how much it costs to build and maintain infrastructure. It’s what they pay me to do. I’ll tell you this much: it costs more than two bucks. This means that as a primitive camper in a campground with RV’s, I’m subsidizing those road-clogging leviathans. This causes me great pain (see **).
So how do I bring balance back to creation? By helping myself. I have resolved to use the hell out of my electric jack. I’ll be charging cell phones, cameras, and GPS units all night, and I’ll be typing away drivel like the last few paragraphs long into the night. This isn’t about me, people; it’s about Justice.
On to business. Today was a museum-and-visitor-center day, which for some reason leaves me feeling more tired than after a long day of hiking. I suspect the coffee.***
***the cheap-ass motel I stayed at last night advertised “FREE COFFEE” along with their other complimentary amenities, like wireless internet that drifts in and out as the signal attempts to make its way through the cinder-block walls of the building. And like the wi-fi, the coffee left much to be desired. First off, it wasn’t a proper coffee-brown. It was more of a deep red. And it tasted like shit. No, scratch that; if you went through the trouble of taking a dump, drying it out, grinding it up, and percolating hot water through it, I can pretty much guarantee that it would taste better than the substance I attempted to drink this morning. Maybe have a nutty sort of flavor. The best explanation I can think of is that the motel manager failed to either place fresh beans in the coffee maker or to clean out the grounds from previous nights. Or from previous years, for that matter. Maybe they pissed in it too, for good measure.
I couldn’t even swallow the stuff. And as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my coffee standards are low. But I still wanted coffee. So I walked down the block to a little espresso shack, and stood waiting in the drive-thru line among the cars, and got some real coffee. They even put too much cream and sugar in it, Dunkin’-Donuts-style. I still think that that first aborted sip of “coffee” got to me, though. This was coffee so bad that it actually had the opposite effect of coffee, and left me feeling sleepy and lethargic throughout the day, no matter how many cups of real coffee I consumed.
Right. On to the road trip. Today was very much and inside day, first visiting the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Museum in the morning, and then Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery in the afternoon.
The museum was fantastic. A beautiful building with bare cedar columns on the inside and xeriscaped wildflower blooms outside. The museum covered the natural and cultural history of the gorge, with exhibits on the last great Ice Age, the Lake Missoula super-flood, the Native American history of the area, the Columbia River dams and fish migrations, and everything that I ever could have wanted to learn about Lewis and Clark (like the well-concealed (at the time) fact that the expedition went seriously over budget. Like 2000% over budget. This, of course, began the proud American tradition of government cost overruns).
After lunch, I drove by Bonneville Dam below the Bridge of the Gods and the Cascade Locks. It was a big dam. That meant that I had to go look at it. I like visiting big dams – regardless of how ill-advised, unnecessary, or devastating to river ecology some of them may be, they still stand as a testament to the incredible potential of modern engineering. Like a modern-day Archimedes, give me a slide-rule and a near-unlimited federal budget, and I can tame the mightiest river on earth.
Arriving at the visitor center, I inquired if there were any tours offered of the dam. Yes, said the receptionist, but the last tour of the day left ten minutes ago.
…
I’ve been to three damns now that are significant enough to merit offering a guided tour of the powerhouse: Glen Canyon in Arizona, Shasta in California, and now Bonnevile in Oregon. At every single one, when I arrive, “the last tour of the day left ten minutes ago.” I’m calling bullshit. There is a massive federal conspiracy to prevent me from seeing the inside of a dam. This goes up all the way to the very top, with Cheney cackling gleefully as he watches my hopes dashed through his homeland security video screen. Bastards.
Right. Time for some dinner. More to come.
-deuce-
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a dam.”
-Gone With The Wind-
Getting My Money’s Worth (Journal Entry, 6/23/08)
I’m in Ainsworth State Park, on the southern side of the Columbia Gorge. Tomorrow I’ll head a few miles west to hike among the waterfalls, but for the moment I’m taking it easy. For reasons that I still cannot completely comprehend, every campground I have visited will charge either the same amount or a trivial larger amount for campsites with full RV hookups. I’m a pretty basic camper – all I need is a place to park my car, a relatively flat spot for my tent, and a secnd, smaller, flat spot to put my campstove. If I feel like spoiling myself, I might even want a picnic table. Besides that, I might need a bit of water from a faucet somewhere in the campground, and a proper receptacle for that water once I’ve processed it. Or if I need to drop a deuce.*
*One of my favorite expressions of all time. To this day, I consider the phrase “drop a deuce” to be the most important single thing that I learned during my four years at Bishop Hendricken High School. This says more about my relative maturity than it does about the quality of education I received.
So that’s it: maybe 200 square feet of space, a water source, and a hole in the ground. This is why I was getting so frustrated with the “great state” of California** charging upwards of $25 a night for a little flat patch of dirt.
**California is a beautiful state. It really is. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see that beauty because it is also the most populous state, and all those people (1) get in the way and (2) drive up the cost of everything to comically high levels. As a New Englander, it causes me great pain to pay more for something than I feel is the fair price. I felt this great pain on a regular basis living in CA.
Now, with an RV hookup site, you get an electrical jack, a water faucet, and a sewer clean-out, without having to walk even a few feet. That’s infrastructure, and I know a thing or two about how much it costs to build and maintain infrastructure. It’s what they pay me to do. I’ll tell you this much: it costs more than two bucks. This means that as a primitive camper in a campground with RV’s, I’m subsidizing those road-clogging leviathans. This causes me great pain (see **).
So how do I bring balance back to creation? By helping myself. I have resolved to use the hell out of my electric jack. I’ll be charging cell phones, cameras, and GPS units all night, and I’ll be typing away drivel like the last few paragraphs long into the night. This isn’t about me, people; it’s about Justice.
On to business. Today was a museum-and-visitor-center day, which for some reason leaves me feeling more tired than after a long day of hiking. I suspect the coffee.***
***the cheap-ass motel I stayed at last night advertised “FREE COFFEE” along with their other complimentary amenities, like wireless internet that drifts in and out as the signal attempts to make its way through the cinder-block walls of the building. And like the wi-fi, the coffee left much to be desired. First off, it wasn’t a proper coffee-brown. It was more of a deep red. And it tasted like shit. No, scratch that; if you went through the trouble of taking a dump, drying it out, grinding it up, and percolating hot water through it, I can pretty much guarantee that it would taste better than the substance I attempted to drink this morning. Maybe have a nutty sort of flavor. The best explanation I can think of is that the motel manager failed to either place fresh beans in the coffee maker or to clean out the grounds from previous nights. Or from previous years, for that matter. Maybe they pissed in it too, for good measure.
I couldn’t even swallow the stuff. And as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my coffee standards are low. But I still wanted coffee. So I walked down the block to a little espresso shack, and stood waiting in the drive-thru line among the cars, and got some real coffee. They even put too much cream and sugar in it, Dunkin’-Donuts-style. I still think that that first aborted sip of “coffee” got to me, though. This was coffee so bad that it actually had the opposite effect of coffee, and left me feeling sleepy and lethargic throughout the day, no matter how many cups of real coffee I consumed.
Right. On to the road trip. Today was very much and inside day, first visiting the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Museum in the morning, and then Bonneville Dam and Fish Hatchery in the afternoon.
The museum was fantastic. A beautiful building with bare cedar columns on the inside and xeriscaped wildflower blooms outside. The museum covered the natural and cultural history of the gorge, with exhibits on the last great Ice Age, the Lake Missoula super-flood, the Native American history of the area, the Columbia River dams and fish migrations, and everything that I ever could have wanted to learn about Lewis and Clark (like the well-concealed (at the time) fact that the expedition went seriously over budget. Like 2000% over budget. This, of course, began the proud American tradition of government cost overruns).
After lunch, I drove by Bonneville Dam below the Bridge of the Gods and the Cascade Locks. It was a big dam. That meant that I had to go look at it. I like visiting big dams – regardless of how ill-advised, unnecessary, or devastating to river ecology some of them may be, they still stand as a testament to the incredible potential of modern engineering. Like a modern-day Archimedes, give me a slide-rule and a near-unlimited federal budget, and I can tame the mightiest river on earth.
Arriving at the visitor center, I inquired if there were any tours offered of the dam. Yes, said the receptionist, but the last tour of the day left ten minutes ago.
…
I’ve been to three damns now that are significant enough to merit offering a guided tour of the powerhouse: Glen Canyon in Arizona, Shasta in California, and now Bonnevile in Oregon. At every single one, when I arrive, “the last tour of the day left ten minutes ago.” I’m calling bullshit. There is a massive federal conspiracy to prevent me from seeing the inside of a dam. This goes up all the way to the very top, with Cheney cackling gleefully as he watches my hopes dashed through his homeland security video screen. Bastards.
Right. Time for some dinner. More to come.
-deuce-
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a dam.”
-Gone With The Wind-
Sunday, June 22, 2008
A Tour-egon of Oregon
Sorry; couldn't help myself.
I've made it to the northern border of Oregon, but I'm not finished with this state yet.
*BREAK*
I'm in a motel room. The room has a TV. The TV has Iron Chef on. I like food -- I like learning about it, cooking it, sharing it, seeing it, smelling it, and eating it. And because I'm on my road trip I'm hiking nearly every day, and with all that calorie-burning my appetite has increased accordingly.
What this means is that I can only write this blog during ad breaks, because whenever Iron Chef comes on the TV I wind up staring, slack-jawed, in a food-watching trance. And the ingredient is Parmesan-Reggiano. Damn that looks good.
Also: Alton Brown knows a shit-ton lot about food.
*END BREAK*
I've only taken care of Central Oregon so far, driving US 97 almost the entire length of the state. The Cascade Range has been my constant companion, and the snow-covered peaks have towered above to the west, from Crater Lake above Klamath Falls to Mount Hood now above The Dalles. Every place I have been shows the signs of volcanic origin -- lava beds, craters, talus slopes of pumice, even the towering dormant volcano peaks of the Cascades.
Crater Lakes was beautiful -- a perfect deep blue lake below a still snow-covered crater rim. Half of the roads in the park were still closed due to snows, and I had to make my way over snowfields to climb Garfield Peak above the crater rim village. It was my favorite hike so far -- only a few miles in length, but the snowfields made it feel like a mountaineering trip. Minus, of course, all the preparation and time and equipment and dangers.
Heading north to Newberry Volcanic Monument, I drove down one of the straighter roads I've been on -- fifteen straight miles through unyielding pine forest. I'm probably not going to do very well through the great plains if I have trouble with a mere fifteen miles straight.
Highlights of Central Oregon:
Newberry. A dormant volcanic crater four miles across, so massive that I couldn't tell until I reached Paulina Peak, the highest point in the park. There are two small lakes in the middle of the crater, and I camped by the larger one, Paulina Lake (notice the naming pattern yet?). I was met with a familiar sound -- peepers! Thousands of tiny little frogs serenaded me to sleep with their high-pitched peeping. I made a cooking fire entirely out of kindling (after spending a solid half hour collecting three massive armloads of downed wood nearby). I saw a movie that explained in great detail how a massive earthquake of never-before-seen devastation WILL strike the Pacific Northwest sometime in the next few hundred years.
Madras. Well, not so much. It's a little city with the Cascades in the background. But it's Jacoby Ellsbury's hometown, and that's good enough for me.
The Dalles Dam. It's freaking huge. Along with about a dozen other similarly massive dams, it's made the Columbia River navigable straight to Idaho, where Lewiston, Idaho is considered a sea port.
White River Falls. About half an hour south of The Dalles, hidden in a sleepy little farming valley. A perfect swimming hole at the base, except for the hidden rocks and very strong current (leading to more pointy rocks in the rapids downstream). A sunny little sand beach at the bottom of a lava-cliff canyon. A much better swimming hole than:
Smith Rock State Park. Which actually has some great little hikes, and what looked to be some prime rock-climbing. I was set to hop into the Crooked River for a dip after my hike there, when I saw:
A snake.
And it was swimming.
Now, I don't know much about snakes. I especially don't know much about poisonous snakes. If I were to draw a Venn Diagram, I would draw a large circle named "Snakes." Then, entirely inside that first circle, I would draw a smaller circle, named "Snakes That Are Poisonous." Then, completely outside of both circles and far away, like on a separate sheet of paper, a circle named "Snakes That I Know If They Are Poisonous Or Not."
I was pretty hot from my hike, but I wasn't going to take my chances with this snake. He had already demonstrated his ability to swim, and was slithering onto the shore. Poisonous or not, this snake was amphibious. That made him like the Navy SEAL of snakes. And I did not want to mess with that.
You don't mess with that kind of snake.
-out-
"I have had enough of these motherfucking snakes on my motherfucking plane!"
-Samuel L. Jackson
I've made it to the northern border of Oregon, but I'm not finished with this state yet.
*BREAK*
I'm in a motel room. The room has a TV. The TV has Iron Chef on. I like food -- I like learning about it, cooking it, sharing it, seeing it, smelling it, and eating it. And because I'm on my road trip I'm hiking nearly every day, and with all that calorie-burning my appetite has increased accordingly.
What this means is that I can only write this blog during ad breaks, because whenever Iron Chef comes on the TV I wind up staring, slack-jawed, in a food-watching trance. And the ingredient is Parmesan-Reggiano. Damn that looks good.
Also: Alton Brown knows a shit-ton lot about food.
*END BREAK*
I've only taken care of Central Oregon so far, driving US 97 almost the entire length of the state. The Cascade Range has been my constant companion, and the snow-covered peaks have towered above to the west, from Crater Lake above Klamath Falls to Mount Hood now above The Dalles. Every place I have been shows the signs of volcanic origin -- lava beds, craters, talus slopes of pumice, even the towering dormant volcano peaks of the Cascades.
Crater Lakes was beautiful -- a perfect deep blue lake below a still snow-covered crater rim. Half of the roads in the park were still closed due to snows, and I had to make my way over snowfields to climb Garfield Peak above the crater rim village. It was my favorite hike so far -- only a few miles in length, but the snowfields made it feel like a mountaineering trip. Minus, of course, all the preparation and time and equipment and dangers.
Heading north to Newberry Volcanic Monument, I drove down one of the straighter roads I've been on -- fifteen straight miles through unyielding pine forest. I'm probably not going to do very well through the great plains if I have trouble with a mere fifteen miles straight.
Highlights of Central Oregon:
Newberry. A dormant volcanic crater four miles across, so massive that I couldn't tell until I reached Paulina Peak, the highest point in the park. There are two small lakes in the middle of the crater, and I camped by the larger one, Paulina Lake (notice the naming pattern yet?). I was met with a familiar sound -- peepers! Thousands of tiny little frogs serenaded me to sleep with their high-pitched peeping. I made a cooking fire entirely out of kindling (after spending a solid half hour collecting three massive armloads of downed wood nearby). I saw a movie that explained in great detail how a massive earthquake of never-before-seen devastation WILL strike the Pacific Northwest sometime in the next few hundred years.
Madras. Well, not so much. It's a little city with the Cascades in the background. But it's Jacoby Ellsbury's hometown, and that's good enough for me.
The Dalles Dam. It's freaking huge. Along with about a dozen other similarly massive dams, it's made the Columbia River navigable straight to Idaho, where Lewiston, Idaho is considered a sea port.
White River Falls. About half an hour south of The Dalles, hidden in a sleepy little farming valley. A perfect swimming hole at the base, except for the hidden rocks and very strong current (leading to more pointy rocks in the rapids downstream). A sunny little sand beach at the bottom of a lava-cliff canyon. A much better swimming hole than:
Smith Rock State Park. Which actually has some great little hikes, and what looked to be some prime rock-climbing. I was set to hop into the Crooked River for a dip after my hike there, when I saw:
A snake.
And it was swimming.
Now, I don't know much about snakes. I especially don't know much about poisonous snakes. If I were to draw a Venn Diagram, I would draw a large circle named "Snakes." Then, entirely inside that first circle, I would draw a smaller circle, named "Snakes That Are Poisonous." Then, completely outside of both circles and far away, like on a separate sheet of paper, a circle named "Snakes That I Know If They Are Poisonous Or Not."
I was pretty hot from my hike, but I wasn't going to take my chances with this snake. He had already demonstrated his ability to swim, and was slithering onto the shore. Poisonous or not, this snake was amphibious. That made him like the Navy SEAL of snakes. And I did not want to mess with that.
You don't mess with that kind of snake.
-out-
"I have had enough of these motherfucking snakes on my motherfucking plane!"
-Samuel L. Jackson
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Oregon Trail
Ladies and gentlemen, I did it: I finally got to a different state! California is too damn big. I miss New England, where you could choose a direction at random, drive for an hour, and chances would be damn good that you'd be in a new state (or the Atlantic. Or CANADA! eh?). I left Lassen Volcanic National Park just after noon today, but when I found myself in Weed (more on that later) late in the afternoon and realized that the Oregon border was only an hour's drive away...well, I had to go for it.
And does it ever feel good. I love Oregon. Here's a list:
1. Oregon is more beautiful than California. I attribute this to a phenomena called "rain," which means that the landscape is a beautiful emerald green. As opposed to a hellish, burnt brown.
2. Oregon is more affordable than California. Gas is easily $0.50/gal less, and food/lodging ain't too bad, neither.
3. Oregon has free wireless access at their rest stops. I showed up after the place had closed, so I didn't get to use it, but still...well, it's nice. California rest stops are lucky if they have toilet seats.
4. Oregon grows a hell of a lot of potatoes. I learned this at the rest stop information booth. You know what they make from potatoes? French fries. You know what you can make from french fries? Poutine. Enough said.
5. When I drove into Klamath Falls this evening, everyone was out in the streets dancing and partying. There was a blues band playing for free on the city steps. And apparently there's a rodeo somewhere around here. It was the best possible way to enter the state, especially after over two weeks road tripping in California -- damn, I had gotten tired of that state.
So here I am: on the Oregon Trail.* I had planned to camp out tonight and then take care of my internet needs tomorrow morning in Klamath Falls, but any potential campgrounds would have been about an hour out of my way. So here we are, motel-style. So far, I regret nothing. I'll be up at Crater Lake tomorrow, and I can't wait. It also works out well, because I had a good day and I want to share.
*I loved that game, especially back in grade school when you could actually play it on the library computer because it was educational, or something. The key, of course, was to not buy any food and invest all your money in bullets. I must have killed half the buffalo in the great plains playing that game (but you can only carry 40 pounds of meat!), although everyone on my wagons always seemed to die of dysentery (I am proud to announce that I have not died of dysentery. I did rip a pretty loud fart earlier, though). Maybe it was the all-buffalo meat diet.
Lassen Volcanic National Park is a beautiful little park. I got in the little hikes yesterday, visiting King's Creek Falls and Bumpass Hell (this is a series of volcanic steam vents, mudpots, and boiling hot springs. Although most of the ground in the area is still covered in snow, this particular spot is bare of all snow, exposing orange, yellow, and green-tinged soil. Steam vents reeking of sulfur pour into the air, and boiling springs send gray-green muddy streams running through the sulfur domes. It was other-worldly), finding a nice campground that allowed using nearby fallen wood for firewood (I like making fires. But not in a criminal sort of way. Thanks for reading, Department of Homeland Security!). This morning I hiked up Lassen Peak, the now-dormant volcano that dominates the center of the park. It was a beautiful mountain, and had my favorite sign at the trailhead: "DANGEROUS TERRAIN. HIKING NOT RECOMMENDED."
Good times.
North of the park, in the adjacent Lassen National Forest, lies a curious geological feature: the lava tubes. Called "Subway Caves," the site features a 1300-foot long natural rock pipe formed by a chance lava flow eons ago. A trail allows visitors to walk through the entire length of the tube. It gets dark in there -- really dark. How do I know? My flashlight died almost halfway in. I was able to slowly make my way back out and get some fresh batteries, but the fact remains: it gets damn dark in the Subway Caves.
Driving north, I noticed the town of "Weed, California" on my road atlas. And no, it's not what you think. Apparently, the down was founded by a Mr. Abner Weed (of Penobscot county, Maine) in the late 19th century, when he started the lumber mill that would be the towns primary (if not only) industry. I learned this at the "Weed Logging Museum," where the curator (Sal? I'll just call him Sal. I'm pretty sure that's what he said. I have the rare ability to forget people's names the moment they introduce themselves, and this was no exception) said to me what I like to call, "the best quote ever."
We were discussing the current depressed local economy (the lumber mill had significantly reduced production over the past few decades), and we agreed that the country could use a serious change in the upcoming election -- such as an Obama presidency. Sal mentioned that he liked Obama, but he was concerned that residual racism in the country would prevent him from being elected. I can't remember precisely what he said, but this is damn close:
"You younger kids get it, but I'm afraid the older folks won't vote for him because he's black. They don't see like you do that it doesn't matter what color his skin is. And it's a shame, because I think if he doesn't get elected, those damn slant-eyes are gonna own everything."
Sal continued on a bit on his mistrust of China and its many denizens. I make a noncomittal remark about the significant difference between Chinese and "Western" cultures, while furiously making a mental note to remember this moment. Sal has introduced me to an entirely new form of racism: nationalist racism, where the color of someone's skin doesn't matter...unless they're from another country. Then they become a bunch of shifty slant-eyed bastards.
I don't want to disparage Sal in any way -- this is a man who fought in WWII and lived through the entire Cold War -- a man who spent a lifetime being told that you can't trust Red China. And considering their abominable history in the Human Rights and Envinronmental departments, I would say Sal is dead on to not trust the Chinese government. But if he had specified that, instead of calling them "a bunch of damn slant-eyes," well, it wouldn't have been the best quote ever.
-deuce-
And does it ever feel good. I love Oregon. Here's a list:
1. Oregon is more beautiful than California. I attribute this to a phenomena called "rain," which means that the landscape is a beautiful emerald green. As opposed to a hellish, burnt brown.
2. Oregon is more affordable than California. Gas is easily $0.50/gal less, and food/lodging ain't too bad, neither.
3. Oregon has free wireless access at their rest stops. I showed up after the place had closed, so I didn't get to use it, but still...well, it's nice. California rest stops are lucky if they have toilet seats.
4. Oregon grows a hell of a lot of potatoes. I learned this at the rest stop information booth. You know what they make from potatoes? French fries. You know what you can make from french fries? Poutine. Enough said.
5. When I drove into Klamath Falls this evening, everyone was out in the streets dancing and partying. There was a blues band playing for free on the city steps. And apparently there's a rodeo somewhere around here. It was the best possible way to enter the state, especially after over two weeks road tripping in California -- damn, I had gotten tired of that state.
So here I am: on the Oregon Trail.* I had planned to camp out tonight and then take care of my internet needs tomorrow morning in Klamath Falls, but any potential campgrounds would have been about an hour out of my way. So here we are, motel-style. So far, I regret nothing. I'll be up at Crater Lake tomorrow, and I can't wait. It also works out well, because I had a good day and I want to share.
*I loved that game, especially back in grade school when you could actually play it on the library computer because it was educational, or something. The key, of course, was to not buy any food and invest all your money in bullets. I must have killed half the buffalo in the great plains playing that game (but you can only carry 40 pounds of meat!), although everyone on my wagons always seemed to die of dysentery (I am proud to announce that I have not died of dysentery. I did rip a pretty loud fart earlier, though). Maybe it was the all-buffalo meat diet.
Lassen Volcanic National Park is a beautiful little park. I got in the little hikes yesterday, visiting King's Creek Falls and Bumpass Hell (this is a series of volcanic steam vents, mudpots, and boiling hot springs. Although most of the ground in the area is still covered in snow, this particular spot is bare of all snow, exposing orange, yellow, and green-tinged soil. Steam vents reeking of sulfur pour into the air, and boiling springs send gray-green muddy streams running through the sulfur domes. It was other-worldly), finding a nice campground that allowed using nearby fallen wood for firewood (I like making fires. But not in a criminal sort of way. Thanks for reading, Department of Homeland Security!). This morning I hiked up Lassen Peak, the now-dormant volcano that dominates the center of the park. It was a beautiful mountain, and had my favorite sign at the trailhead: "DANGEROUS TERRAIN. HIKING NOT RECOMMENDED."
Good times.
North of the park, in the adjacent Lassen National Forest, lies a curious geological feature: the lava tubes. Called "Subway Caves," the site features a 1300-foot long natural rock pipe formed by a chance lava flow eons ago. A trail allows visitors to walk through the entire length of the tube. It gets dark in there -- really dark. How do I know? My flashlight died almost halfway in. I was able to slowly make my way back out and get some fresh batteries, but the fact remains: it gets damn dark in the Subway Caves.
Driving north, I noticed the town of "Weed, California" on my road atlas. And no, it's not what you think. Apparently, the down was founded by a Mr. Abner Weed (of Penobscot county, Maine) in the late 19th century, when he started the lumber mill that would be the towns primary (if not only) industry. I learned this at the "Weed Logging Museum," where the curator (Sal? I'll just call him Sal. I'm pretty sure that's what he said. I have the rare ability to forget people's names the moment they introduce themselves, and this was no exception) said to me what I like to call, "the best quote ever."
We were discussing the current depressed local economy (the lumber mill had significantly reduced production over the past few decades), and we agreed that the country could use a serious change in the upcoming election -- such as an Obama presidency. Sal mentioned that he liked Obama, but he was concerned that residual racism in the country would prevent him from being elected. I can't remember precisely what he said, but this is damn close:
"You younger kids get it, but I'm afraid the older folks won't vote for him because he's black. They don't see like you do that it doesn't matter what color his skin is. And it's a shame, because I think if he doesn't get elected, those damn slant-eyes are gonna own everything."
Sal continued on a bit on his mistrust of China and its many denizens. I make a noncomittal remark about the significant difference between Chinese and "Western" cultures, while furiously making a mental note to remember this moment. Sal has introduced me to an entirely new form of racism: nationalist racism, where the color of someone's skin doesn't matter...unless they're from another country. Then they become a bunch of shifty slant-eyed bastards.
I don't want to disparage Sal in any way -- this is a man who fought in WWII and lived through the entire Cold War -- a man who spent a lifetime being told that you can't trust Red China. And considering their abominable history in the Human Rights and Envinronmental departments, I would say Sal is dead on to not trust the Chinese government. But if he had specified that, instead of calling them "a bunch of damn slant-eyes," well, it wouldn't have been the best quote ever.
-deuce-
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
I Need To get Out of California
Seriously. It's been too long, and this state is starting to drain on me. It's too damn big and it takes too damn long to drive through. Luckily, I should be out in a few days. I'm in Redding now, heading over to Lassen Volcanic Park and Mount Shasta for the next few days, and then it's north into OREGON!
It's been a bit of a blur over the past few days, as I plodded my way up the coast north of San Francisco. I made the mistake of being in Sonoma on a Saturday afternoon, which placed me square in the middle of the crowds and overpriced everything that drove me to leave this state in the first place. This left me harried and frustrated until Sunday morning, when I gave my car a much-needed washing (and oh did that paint job just glisten and shine in the soft morning sun) and drove up into the Anderson Valley. Several hours of pastoral landscapes and abundant wine & beer tastings later, I was a new man.
I've still been feeling a pressing need to get out of California, though. The essence of a road trip is movement, and although I've been putting down a lot of miles, I'm still in the same state where I started. This needs to change.
So I'm speeding it up. Even the blog recap:
Mendicino County: Boonville. Anderson Valley Brewing Co. Rocky beaches with harbor seals. Redwood forests. No sign of massive marijuana plants growing wild on the side of the road.
Humbolt County: More redwood forests. Bathing in the warm, shallow waters of the Eel River. "Tsunami Danger Zone" around Eureka. Still no sign of legendary wild pot forests.
Trinity County: pine-forested hills. The mighty Trinity River as it rushes down gorges to the sea. A view point pulloff with no trash cans. Trinity Dam. It's starting to look like the pot forest legends were severely exaggerated.
Shasta County: Redding. Shasta Dam is freaking HUGE. Mount Shasta towers over everything. Back in the northern end of the Central Valley, where it is still hot as balls. Wild-growing weed groves demonstrably non-existent.
And that's it. Time to roll out now, because I've got laundry in the dryer and I need to check out of this motel soon. I'll be in touch.
-deuce-
It's been a bit of a blur over the past few days, as I plodded my way up the coast north of San Francisco. I made the mistake of being in Sonoma on a Saturday afternoon, which placed me square in the middle of the crowds and overpriced everything that drove me to leave this state in the first place. This left me harried and frustrated until Sunday morning, when I gave my car a much-needed washing (and oh did that paint job just glisten and shine in the soft morning sun) and drove up into the Anderson Valley. Several hours of pastoral landscapes and abundant wine & beer tastings later, I was a new man.
I've still been feeling a pressing need to get out of California, though. The essence of a road trip is movement, and although I've been putting down a lot of miles, I'm still in the same state where I started. This needs to change.
So I'm speeding it up. Even the blog recap:
Mendicino County: Boonville. Anderson Valley Brewing Co. Rocky beaches with harbor seals. Redwood forests. No sign of massive marijuana plants growing wild on the side of the road.
Humbolt County: More redwood forests. Bathing in the warm, shallow waters of the Eel River. "Tsunami Danger Zone" around Eureka. Still no sign of legendary wild pot forests.
Trinity County: pine-forested hills. The mighty Trinity River as it rushes down gorges to the sea. A view point pulloff with no trash cans. Trinity Dam. It's starting to look like the pot forest legends were severely exaggerated.
Shasta County: Redding. Shasta Dam is freaking HUGE. Mount Shasta towers over everything. Back in the northern end of the Central Valley, where it is still hot as balls. Wild-growing weed groves demonstrably non-existent.
And that's it. Time to roll out now, because I've got laundry in the dryer and I need to check out of this motel soon. I'll be in touch.
-deuce-
More Catching Up
Here's one I wrote up a few days ago in a Starbucks, where they don't understand that the internet should be free. More to come soon.
She Blinded Me With Science (Journal Entry, 6/14/08).
I’m in Mountain View this morning, having a cup of coffee at Starbucks while I wait for the Computer History Museum next door to open up. Starbucks has wifi. Why am I not on the internet?
Because T-Mobile are a bunch of jerks, that’s why. The mere privilege of getting online would run me $6, and I don’t feel like supporting that sort of thing. I’d much rather spend my money on more important things, like booze. I had run into this setup a couple years ago, the last time I was on a road trip, and I remember taking the same stand then that I am now. There’s too many unsecured wireless networks floating out there to justify T-Mobile’s unmitigated greed.
Ok, pseudo-rant over. Let’s get down to the more important things. Today is the real start of the road trip – the day that I actually pass north of my starting point. My Yosemite-Sequoia adventure is past, and I can now drive up the California Coast to Oregon and points north. I’ll be dropping by the Cliff House for one final farewell to San Francisco, and then it’s north across the Golden Gate to redwood forests, rocky beaches, and some proper wilderness for once. I had tasted a bit of wilderness hiking in Sequoia NP, but besides that brief respite it has been traffic, crowds, and the banshee wail of children in campgrounds. It’s also been more expensive than I like my camping to be – California State parks in the Monterey area were charging $25 a night for the use of their campgrounds, which struck me as a bit steep for the use of twelve square feet of dirt to pitch my tent. Crowds and costs helped drive me out of California, and I won’t miss them at all when I leave.
Yesterday was a business day – I dropped by my company’s Monterey office to fill out my COBRA health insurance forms, and I’m feeling a little better now knowing that I still have coverage “in case shit happen” (with apologies to Chris Rock). I pulled up to Moss Landing, a perfect little fishing village on Monterey Bay, and had some excellent fresh halibut at Phil’s Fish Market. Cutting east, I rolled into the promised land: Gilroy, California, Garlic Capital of the World.
Gilroy was less than impressive. At a winery off the side of Route 101, I met a man who had to be the most disinterested server in the entire world of wine tasting rooms. His body language gave every indication that my presence was an unbearable burden, and his knowledge of his wines, or even wine in general, was nonexistent. The wine was pretty bad, too. Although in its defense, the garlic wine never made any claims to being great. I did have the pleasure of meeting a man traveling through with his wife, however; he remarked that he was a scotch drinker and we had a short, friendly chat about Scotch single malts. It turned out that he worked for the state Attorney General, and was in the process of transporting subpoenaed documents form Salinas up to the courtroom in Oakland. Even while on the clock (and working for the government, no less), driving north to deliver time-sensitive materials, he made time to stop by a winery for a tasting. I like that man’s priorities.
I dropped by a few other wineries that afternoon, none of which was particularly impressive. No – I take that back. Clos LaChance, situated in a magnificient mock-chateau in the hills above Gilroy, was particularly impressive. Just before I pulled into the drive, a brilliant orange Lamborghini (it said something like “SuperLeggario” on the side, though the body was the same as a Murcielago – I suspect that it was the lower-cost version. It still looked impressive enough, though) going the other way pulled in before me. Which brings me to a section that I would like to call:
“I Love Stereotypes”
The bright orange Lamborghini pulled into the parking lot. Eschewing all “normal” parking spots, the driver drove directly up to the front door and parked directly in front of the walkway – where any person who walked in or out of the building could not possibly notice his magnificent quarter-million-dollar orange hunk of Italian supercar. The driver of the car stepped out – a slightly balding, slightly gray-haired man in his fifties, wearing sunglasses. His passenger then stepped out – a tall, statuesque woman, easily half the driver’s age, with tanning-salon-perfect skin and wearing a brilliant red dress, holding what was very likely an extremely expensive designer purse. They both dallied by the car for a minute – the man checking the car to make sure that it’s appearance was just right, the woman checking her dress for the same purpose – and then walked into the building. It was the most perfect specimen of the Lamborghini owner that I have ever seen.
I’ve done enough wine tasting to get a sense for what to expect by looking at the outside of the winery, and Clos LaChance did not disappoint. Despite the massive size of the building, the winery had only five wines to offer – all of which were overpriced. To be fair, the wine was surprisingly high-quality; the vintner clearly knew his stuff. Their reserve Bordeaux-style meritage was excellent, and I would have bought a bottle in an instant – if they weren’t charging $50 for it. So it goes.
I finished off the day in a tiny little county park in the hills, Unas Canyon. Although I was a solid thirty miles away (“as the crow flies,” according to the park ranger) from the ongoing Santa Cruz forest fire, the sky was still an ominous charcoal gray – and looking up to the sky at night, I could see the moon glowing orange through the trees. Unas Canyon is home to some of the most adorable little waterfalls I have seen – and having seen Yosemite Falls (over 2,000’ tall, the highest in North America) just a few days before only served to make them seem smaller. The “falls” themselves ranged from three feet high to a staggering EIGHT FEET for the giant known as “Black Rock Falls.” I don’t mean to badmouth Unas Canyon – it was a beautiful little canyon, and the stream cascading down over the rocks was supremely peaceful. However, the trail map noted the points of almost a half-dozen of these “waterfalls,” and each one had a wooden trail sign proclaiming its name. As I first started up the trail, seeing the sign for “Basin Falls,” I looked up and saw a tiny stream dropping over a Lilliputian waterfall into a “basin” the size of a bathtub. The entire park was in miniature.
Waking up this morning, I saw a light dusting of snow on my tent and my car – which on closer inspection revealed itself to be ash from the Santa Cruz fire. A good reason to leave, in my opinion. It’s time to head north to places where forest fires are slightly less likely.
-deuce-
She Blinded Me With Science (Journal Entry, 6/14/08).
I’m in Mountain View this morning, having a cup of coffee at Starbucks while I wait for the Computer History Museum next door to open up. Starbucks has wifi. Why am I not on the internet?
Because T-Mobile are a bunch of jerks, that’s why. The mere privilege of getting online would run me $6, and I don’t feel like supporting that sort of thing. I’d much rather spend my money on more important things, like booze. I had run into this setup a couple years ago, the last time I was on a road trip, and I remember taking the same stand then that I am now. There’s too many unsecured wireless networks floating out there to justify T-Mobile’s unmitigated greed.
Ok, pseudo-rant over. Let’s get down to the more important things. Today is the real start of the road trip – the day that I actually pass north of my starting point. My Yosemite-Sequoia adventure is past, and I can now drive up the California Coast to Oregon and points north. I’ll be dropping by the Cliff House for one final farewell to San Francisco, and then it’s north across the Golden Gate to redwood forests, rocky beaches, and some proper wilderness for once. I had tasted a bit of wilderness hiking in Sequoia NP, but besides that brief respite it has been traffic, crowds, and the banshee wail of children in campgrounds. It’s also been more expensive than I like my camping to be – California State parks in the Monterey area were charging $25 a night for the use of their campgrounds, which struck me as a bit steep for the use of twelve square feet of dirt to pitch my tent. Crowds and costs helped drive me out of California, and I won’t miss them at all when I leave.
Yesterday was a business day – I dropped by my company’s Monterey office to fill out my COBRA health insurance forms, and I’m feeling a little better now knowing that I still have coverage “in case shit happen” (with apologies to Chris Rock). I pulled up to Moss Landing, a perfect little fishing village on Monterey Bay, and had some excellent fresh halibut at Phil’s Fish Market. Cutting east, I rolled into the promised land: Gilroy, California, Garlic Capital of the World.
Gilroy was less than impressive. At a winery off the side of Route 101, I met a man who had to be the most disinterested server in the entire world of wine tasting rooms. His body language gave every indication that my presence was an unbearable burden, and his knowledge of his wines, or even wine in general, was nonexistent. The wine was pretty bad, too. Although in its defense, the garlic wine never made any claims to being great. I did have the pleasure of meeting a man traveling through with his wife, however; he remarked that he was a scotch drinker and we had a short, friendly chat about Scotch single malts. It turned out that he worked for the state Attorney General, and was in the process of transporting subpoenaed documents form Salinas up to the courtroom in Oakland. Even while on the clock (and working for the government, no less), driving north to deliver time-sensitive materials, he made time to stop by a winery for a tasting. I like that man’s priorities.
I dropped by a few other wineries that afternoon, none of which was particularly impressive. No – I take that back. Clos LaChance, situated in a magnificient mock-chateau in the hills above Gilroy, was particularly impressive. Just before I pulled into the drive, a brilliant orange Lamborghini (it said something like “SuperLeggario” on the side, though the body was the same as a Murcielago – I suspect that it was the lower-cost version. It still looked impressive enough, though) going the other way pulled in before me. Which brings me to a section that I would like to call:
“I Love Stereotypes”
The bright orange Lamborghini pulled into the parking lot. Eschewing all “normal” parking spots, the driver drove directly up to the front door and parked directly in front of the walkway – where any person who walked in or out of the building could not possibly notice his magnificent quarter-million-dollar orange hunk of Italian supercar. The driver of the car stepped out – a slightly balding, slightly gray-haired man in his fifties, wearing sunglasses. His passenger then stepped out – a tall, statuesque woman, easily half the driver’s age, with tanning-salon-perfect skin and wearing a brilliant red dress, holding what was very likely an extremely expensive designer purse. They both dallied by the car for a minute – the man checking the car to make sure that it’s appearance was just right, the woman checking her dress for the same purpose – and then walked into the building. It was the most perfect specimen of the Lamborghini owner that I have ever seen.
I’ve done enough wine tasting to get a sense for what to expect by looking at the outside of the winery, and Clos LaChance did not disappoint. Despite the massive size of the building, the winery had only five wines to offer – all of which were overpriced. To be fair, the wine was surprisingly high-quality; the vintner clearly knew his stuff. Their reserve Bordeaux-style meritage was excellent, and I would have bought a bottle in an instant – if they weren’t charging $50 for it. So it goes.
I finished off the day in a tiny little county park in the hills, Unas Canyon. Although I was a solid thirty miles away (“as the crow flies,” according to the park ranger) from the ongoing Santa Cruz forest fire, the sky was still an ominous charcoal gray – and looking up to the sky at night, I could see the moon glowing orange through the trees. Unas Canyon is home to some of the most adorable little waterfalls I have seen – and having seen Yosemite Falls (over 2,000’ tall, the highest in North America) just a few days before only served to make them seem smaller. The “falls” themselves ranged from three feet high to a staggering EIGHT FEET for the giant known as “Black Rock Falls.” I don’t mean to badmouth Unas Canyon – it was a beautiful little canyon, and the stream cascading down over the rocks was supremely peaceful. However, the trail map noted the points of almost a half-dozen of these “waterfalls,” and each one had a wooden trail sign proclaiming its name. As I first started up the trail, seeing the sign for “Basin Falls,” I looked up and saw a tiny stream dropping over a Lilliputian waterfall into a “basin” the size of a bathtub. The entire park was in miniature.
Waking up this morning, I saw a light dusting of snow on my tent and my car – which on closer inspection revealed itself to be ash from the Santa Cruz fire. A good reason to leave, in my opinion. It’s time to head north to places where forest fires are slightly less likely.
-deuce-
CELTICS WIN!
I knew there was a reason I made sure to go somewhere with a TV last night. Game Six (and obviously, I say this as a Celtics fan) was AWESOME. The game looked over by the third quarter, and for the entire second half of the game the Lakers were playing like a team that had given up all hope. The Celtics, on the other hand, were playing like a pick-up game of street ball. The excitement in the Garden was unmistakeable, and it was clear that everyone in the building (well, obviously, except the Lakers) was euphoric -- the fans, the coaches, the team, even the assorted celebrities* making their token appearance.
*Quick interruption. Further proof that ESPN has forgotten what the "S" stands for: a "breaking news" interview with Donnie Wahlberg. Because the real question on all sports fans' minds is what one of the New Kids On The Block thinks about the Celtics victory.
DAMN that felt good. DAMN!
More to come soon, before I ship off again out of internet range.
-deuce-
*Quick interruption. Further proof that ESPN has forgotten what the "S" stands for: a "breaking news" interview with Donnie Wahlberg. Because the real question on all sports fans' minds is what one of the New Kids On The Block thinks about the Celtics victory.
DAMN that felt good. DAMN!
More to come soon, before I ship off again out of internet range.
-deuce-
Friday, June 13, 2008
Rolling Up The Coast
I'm in Seaside this morning, enjoying a cup of "Bad Ass Coffee" (my verdict: an entirely acceptable drip coffee,* although judging by the grumblings in my intestine I'm starting to fear that the coffee was named after something other than the many donkeys pictured in the coffee shop). Today's plan is a visit to Laguna Seca, a drop-by at my old company's office in Marina, and some state parks and wineries in the Santa Cruz mountains.
*To avoid any misunderstandings: this is at the upper range of my ratings for brewed coffee. My coffee taste has not reached the point where I can distinguish flavors as with wine, and I sometimes get the feeling that people who say that they can are just bullshitting. It's coffee. It's black, and hot, and it has that wonderful smell that makes weekend mornings complete, and it has caffeine. I've never had a cup of coffee that I considered to be spectacular, just a whole lot of coffees that I considered "pretty good." My coffee ranges from *absolute crap* -- the sort I think you have to work to make so bad, taking bad beans, roasting them in a garbage incinerator, tearing a big hole in the filter, and then leaving overnight in a commercial-grade pot in a truck stop somewhere -- to *acceptable.* Most coffee is acceptable. It takes very little effort to raise coffee from *absolute crap* to this level, but it takes an inordinate amount of energy and ingredients to make it better than *acceptable.* Also, I grew up on coffee milk and Dunkin Donuts, so I always drown my coffee in milk and sugar. That's how I like it, and presumably it makes it harder to reach some gourmet pinnacle of coffee experience.
I don't consider myself a racer, and my little Subaru is a far cry from its WRX STi rally brethren. Also, it's so full of camping supplies and assorted crap that I fear any attempt at racing would bury me in an avalanche of sleeping bags and trail mix. I still can dream, though, and I know that Laguna Seca raceway is one of the more famous in the country (at least for those race fans who realize that there's more to life than turning left for hundreds of laps at a time). I've seen old F1 races, and I've seen the horror that is "the Corkscrew." Also, it's only ten miles away and is exactly the sort of place that I like to visit on my roadtrips.
I'm also excited about the Santa Cruz mountains, although from what I hear these days there is a good-sized forest fire burning things up in the hills north of the city. This could cause problems. I may have to make a slight detour east and instead visit Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world. After all, I do need to ensure my safety against vampires on this trip.
Paso Robles turned out to have some pretty good wines, and it was mercifully free of the stratospheric "tasting fees" that have infected the more popular parts of Napa and Sonoma. I remember feeling really relaxed as I turned my way up the coast. I stopped by Elephant Seal Beach to see the juvenile elephant seals come to sleep on the beach and molt their winter coats. Elephant seals fall into that small category of animals that are so comically ugly that you can't help but feel some love for them. Essentially, take a seal and fatten it up to manatee-like proportions -- and then give it a nose like Gonzo from "The Muppet Show." They were as cute as 500-pound sea monsters could be.
After a night on the coast, watching the sun set over the Pacific, I got a bit of hiking in -- Manuel Peak in Big Sur. It's a lovely mountain, with some spectacular views of the sea and the coastal range, although the trail...well, the trail sucked. Hiking trails can fall into disrepair in two ways: either the trail is overused and erodes into a muddy ditch, or the trail is underused and bushes overgrow the sides, creating a gauntlet of surprisingly sharp foliage.
This trail was the latter. I started out appreciating the amazing fragrance of the coastal bushes and flowers...and eight miles later, on my way out, I was cursing every plant within scratching distance and stomping on poor little flowers whose only crime was to have taken root next to the trail. It is my firm belief that the person in charge of maintaining that trail be taken out back and beaten with a hose.
...
But I got over it. I visited the Monterey Aquarium in the afternoon, which I heartily recommend to anyone who ever finds themselves in the area. It has a fantastic variety of marine life, well-designed exhibits, and is extremely kid-friendly. The aquarium is crammed with buttons, levers, tunnels, touch pools, video games, noisemakers, and all sorts of hands-on exhibits to keep kids' attention. Or my attention. It was a lot of fun.
The aquarium is also famed for its otters. Otters are awesome.
-deuce-
*To avoid any misunderstandings: this is at the upper range of my ratings for brewed coffee. My coffee taste has not reached the point where I can distinguish flavors as with wine, and I sometimes get the feeling that people who say that they can are just bullshitting. It's coffee. It's black, and hot, and it has that wonderful smell that makes weekend mornings complete, and it has caffeine. I've never had a cup of coffee that I considered to be spectacular, just a whole lot of coffees that I considered "pretty good." My coffee ranges from *absolute crap* -- the sort I think you have to work to make so bad, taking bad beans, roasting them in a garbage incinerator, tearing a big hole in the filter, and then leaving overnight in a commercial-grade pot in a truck stop somewhere -- to *acceptable.* Most coffee is acceptable. It takes very little effort to raise coffee from *absolute crap* to this level, but it takes an inordinate amount of energy and ingredients to make it better than *acceptable.* Also, I grew up on coffee milk and Dunkin Donuts, so I always drown my coffee in milk and sugar. That's how I like it, and presumably it makes it harder to reach some gourmet pinnacle of coffee experience.
I don't consider myself a racer, and my little Subaru is a far cry from its WRX STi rally brethren. Also, it's so full of camping supplies and assorted crap that I fear any attempt at racing would bury me in an avalanche of sleeping bags and trail mix. I still can dream, though, and I know that Laguna Seca raceway is one of the more famous in the country (at least for those race fans who realize that there's more to life than turning left for hundreds of laps at a time). I've seen old F1 races, and I've seen the horror that is "the Corkscrew." Also, it's only ten miles away and is exactly the sort of place that I like to visit on my roadtrips.
I'm also excited about the Santa Cruz mountains, although from what I hear these days there is a good-sized forest fire burning things up in the hills north of the city. This could cause problems. I may have to make a slight detour east and instead visit Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world. After all, I do need to ensure my safety against vampires on this trip.
Paso Robles turned out to have some pretty good wines, and it was mercifully free of the stratospheric "tasting fees" that have infected the more popular parts of Napa and Sonoma. I remember feeling really relaxed as I turned my way up the coast. I stopped by Elephant Seal Beach to see the juvenile elephant seals come to sleep on the beach and molt their winter coats. Elephant seals fall into that small category of animals that are so comically ugly that you can't help but feel some love for them. Essentially, take a seal and fatten it up to manatee-like proportions -- and then give it a nose like Gonzo from "The Muppet Show." They were as cute as 500-pound sea monsters could be.
After a night on the coast, watching the sun set over the Pacific, I got a bit of hiking in -- Manuel Peak in Big Sur. It's a lovely mountain, with some spectacular views of the sea and the coastal range, although the trail...well, the trail sucked. Hiking trails can fall into disrepair in two ways: either the trail is overused and erodes into a muddy ditch, or the trail is underused and bushes overgrow the sides, creating a gauntlet of surprisingly sharp foliage.
This trail was the latter. I started out appreciating the amazing fragrance of the coastal bushes and flowers...and eight miles later, on my way out, I was cursing every plant within scratching distance and stomping on poor little flowers whose only crime was to have taken root next to the trail. It is my firm belief that the person in charge of maintaining that trail be taken out back and beaten with a hose.
...
But I got over it. I visited the Monterey Aquarium in the afternoon, which I heartily recommend to anyone who ever finds themselves in the area. It has a fantastic variety of marine life, well-designed exhibits, and is extremely kid-friendly. The aquarium is crammed with buttons, levers, tunnels, touch pools, video games, noisemakers, and all sorts of hands-on exhibits to keep kids' attention. Or my attention. It was a lot of fun.
The aquarium is also famed for its otters. Otters are awesome.
-deuce-
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
The Grapes of Wrath
Foreword: at some point on this trip, I'm going to find myself in a place with internet access where I won't feel the icy deadline of check-out time breathing down my neck. Alas, today is not that day.
I've finally left the lonely peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, and I am currently enjoying the finer aspects of life in Paso Robles -- the other wine country. I just learned last night at the San Marcos vineyard that Paso Robles is in fact the largest viticultural area in California (in terms of acreage of vineyards, at least -- larger than either Napa or Sonoma county), and I have dedicated myself to exploring its vineyards and tasting rooms. I am an explorer, after all.
I had originally intended to stay in King's Canyon National Park for an additional day, but after taking stock of my electronics (camera, GPS, laptop: batteries dead) and my personal hygiene (unspeakable), I decided to drive down from the mountains and find a nice place with a shower and a whole bunch of electrical outlets. I stand by my decision; King's Canyon is a wilderness park -- the last great roadless expanse of land left in the United States. From what I have read it is not as striking as the gorges and monoliths of Yosemite, but it is no less beautiful. Still, it is a place best explored by backpacking, spending several days traveling into the wilderness and camping out far from the roads and established campgrounds of civilization. I plan to return someday to see it properly.
I have seen more Giant Sequoias in the past week than most people will in their entire lives, and I still am awestruck every time I see one of the great giants. Their trunks are a brilliant cinnamon color, dwarfing hundred-foot pines nearby and standing so massive that it is impossible to gage their scale until you see a human, small and insignificant, stand near their roots. I have come to recognize their ecosystem: gentle, shallow mountain valleys high up the ramparts of the Sierras, where granite ridges block out heavy winds and small, lazy creeks provide the water to quench the Sequoias' unending thirst.
I have also been to the High Sierra, climbing to the top of Alta Peak where snow still lies in June as a deep as a man and trees retreat to lower, kinder altitudes. I had my first taste of the thin air snowshoeing my way up the final ascent at 11,000 feet, where the snow was a blindingly brilliant white and I had to stop to catch my breath every few steps. I also had my first taste of loss, as a audacious little marmot had his first taste of my hiking pole (this is an aluminum hiking pole, with a foam-covered handle. I doubt that it has any nutritional value whatsoever, and I also doubt that the sweat from my hands had left enough of a salt residue to appeal to Mr. Marmot. My theory is that after living year-round in a pile of rocks surrounded by a field of snow, the marmot was just so happy to find something that he could chew that he happily went to town on my hiking pole handle). I had left the pole at the base of the rockpile at the summit for only a few moments, in order to scramble to the top and write my name in the register cached there. I returned down to see the little bastard happily gnawing away, and shooed him away. He hadn't learned his lesson, though; the cheeky bugger kept coming back for more, ignoring my yells and only retreating when I threw snowballs at him. He even posed for a photo, just a few feet away, his face a picture of innocence.
The moral of the lesson: marmots are bastards.
Other wildlife has been more respectful of my property: the bear I spooked while hiking in Yosemite had the good sense to run away (my bear-battling record in Yosemite: 1 win, 1 tie), the mule deer have regarded me with casual indifference, the lizards scurry off when I step near their rocks, and even the mountain lion stayed up in his tree (I saw him my last morning in Yosemite; as I was driving I saw a large cat dash across an opening and leap into a nearby oak tree, effortlessly jumping from the ground into the branches ten feet from the ground. He immediately hid away in the foliage of the tree, and I wasn't willing to walk up to the tree for a closer look. Mountain lions aren't exactly known for being cute and cuddly). But the marmots...
I also drove through Selma, CA, which advertises itself as "Raisin Capital of the World." The claim to this title, apparently, is the countless acres of grapes growing around the town (meh) and the Sun-Maid Raisin Company factory just outside town. The sign outside the factory advertises the fact that it contains a "Gift Shop." As a currently unemployee, I prefer my slices of corny americana be be the sort where I don't have to pay money. I like signs that say "museum" and "self-guided tours." "Gift Shop" doesn't do it for me.
Grade for Selma: C-
After driving across the San Joaquin Valley (If you haven't been there, I'll describe it to you: it is flat. Also, it is hot). I came upon the peaceful little village of Parkfield, CA. Parkfield sits directly atop the San Andreas Fault and is the the most seismically-active town in the entire country. I walked about the town (Population: 18), spooked a few lazy cows by greeting them with "good afternoon, ladies," took a picture of the bridge into town (which bends to the right, a result of the slowly-creeping faultline that pushes the west abutment north by a couple inches each year), and had a drink in the Parkfield Cafe (Motto: "Be Here When The Big One Hits"). Despite the heat (almost 100), I was struck by the peaceful, bucolic nature of the place as I walked in the shade of the Live Oak trees and sat by the "Parkfield Water Works" fountain. A most relaxing place, despite the imminent threat that a massive earthquake could strike at any moment.
Grade for Parkfield: A-
And now, I am off to boldly drink wine and camp along the shores of the Pacific. More to come soon.
-Dave
I've finally left the lonely peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, and I am currently enjoying the finer aspects of life in Paso Robles -- the other wine country. I just learned last night at the San Marcos vineyard that Paso Robles is in fact the largest viticultural area in California (in terms of acreage of vineyards, at least -- larger than either Napa or Sonoma county), and I have dedicated myself to exploring its vineyards and tasting rooms. I am an explorer, after all.
I had originally intended to stay in King's Canyon National Park for an additional day, but after taking stock of my electronics (camera, GPS, laptop: batteries dead) and my personal hygiene (unspeakable), I decided to drive down from the mountains and find a nice place with a shower and a whole bunch of electrical outlets. I stand by my decision; King's Canyon is a wilderness park -- the last great roadless expanse of land left in the United States. From what I have read it is not as striking as the gorges and monoliths of Yosemite, but it is no less beautiful. Still, it is a place best explored by backpacking, spending several days traveling into the wilderness and camping out far from the roads and established campgrounds of civilization. I plan to return someday to see it properly.
I have seen more Giant Sequoias in the past week than most people will in their entire lives, and I still am awestruck every time I see one of the great giants. Their trunks are a brilliant cinnamon color, dwarfing hundred-foot pines nearby and standing so massive that it is impossible to gage their scale until you see a human, small and insignificant, stand near their roots. I have come to recognize their ecosystem: gentle, shallow mountain valleys high up the ramparts of the Sierras, where granite ridges block out heavy winds and small, lazy creeks provide the water to quench the Sequoias' unending thirst.
I have also been to the High Sierra, climbing to the top of Alta Peak where snow still lies in June as a deep as a man and trees retreat to lower, kinder altitudes. I had my first taste of the thin air snowshoeing my way up the final ascent at 11,000 feet, where the snow was a blindingly brilliant white and I had to stop to catch my breath every few steps. I also had my first taste of loss, as a audacious little marmot had his first taste of my hiking pole (this is an aluminum hiking pole, with a foam-covered handle. I doubt that it has any nutritional value whatsoever, and I also doubt that the sweat from my hands had left enough of a salt residue to appeal to Mr. Marmot. My theory is that after living year-round in a pile of rocks surrounded by a field of snow, the marmot was just so happy to find something that he could chew that he happily went to town on my hiking pole handle). I had left the pole at the base of the rockpile at the summit for only a few moments, in order to scramble to the top and write my name in the register cached there. I returned down to see the little bastard happily gnawing away, and shooed him away. He hadn't learned his lesson, though; the cheeky bugger kept coming back for more, ignoring my yells and only retreating when I threw snowballs at him. He even posed for a photo, just a few feet away, his face a picture of innocence.
The moral of the lesson: marmots are bastards.
Other wildlife has been more respectful of my property: the bear I spooked while hiking in Yosemite had the good sense to run away (my bear-battling record in Yosemite: 1 win, 1 tie), the mule deer have regarded me with casual indifference, the lizards scurry off when I step near their rocks, and even the mountain lion stayed up in his tree (I saw him my last morning in Yosemite; as I was driving I saw a large cat dash across an opening and leap into a nearby oak tree, effortlessly jumping from the ground into the branches ten feet from the ground. He immediately hid away in the foliage of the tree, and I wasn't willing to walk up to the tree for a closer look. Mountain lions aren't exactly known for being cute and cuddly). But the marmots...
I also drove through Selma, CA, which advertises itself as "Raisin Capital of the World." The claim to this title, apparently, is the countless acres of grapes growing around the town (meh) and the Sun-Maid Raisin Company factory just outside town. The sign outside the factory advertises the fact that it contains a "Gift Shop." As a currently unemployee, I prefer my slices of corny americana be be the sort where I don't have to pay money. I like signs that say "museum" and "self-guided tours." "Gift Shop" doesn't do it for me.
Grade for Selma: C-
After driving across the San Joaquin Valley (If you haven't been there, I'll describe it to you: it is flat. Also, it is hot). I came upon the peaceful little village of Parkfield, CA. Parkfield sits directly atop the San Andreas Fault and is the the most seismically-active town in the entire country. I walked about the town (Population: 18), spooked a few lazy cows by greeting them with "good afternoon, ladies," took a picture of the bridge into town (which bends to the right, a result of the slowly-creeping faultline that pushes the west abutment north by a couple inches each year), and had a drink in the Parkfield Cafe (Motto: "Be Here When The Big One Hits"). Despite the heat (almost 100), I was struck by the peaceful, bucolic nature of the place as I walked in the shade of the Live Oak trees and sat by the "Parkfield Water Works" fountain. A most relaxing place, despite the imminent threat that a massive earthquake could strike at any moment.
Grade for Parkfield: A-
And now, I am off to boldly drink wine and camp along the shores of the Pacific. More to come soon.
-Dave
Catching up from Sequoia National Park
Sequoia National Park was blessedly free of cell phone coverage, modern civilization, and electrical outlets of any kind. I was able to get in a quick entry before my laptop batteries decided that 80% was far to optimistic a prediction, and dropped suddenly to a mere 7%. Hence the abrupt ending. More to come soon.
-=dave=-
In The Company of Giants (Journal Entry, 6/7/08)
No free electricity tonight, so like my forefathers did I’m typing by firelight. I’m staying at the Lodgepole campground in Sequoia National Park, and feeling pretty lucky. I rolled up this morning to a “CAMP FULL” sign, but because I have such a small camping setup, the ranger let me in to a tiny lot way in the corner of the campground – and right next to the river. It’s a beautiful place, and the white noise of the rapids flowing past drowns out any inane chatter from the nearby lots. I scored big on this one.
Today was my first full day in Sequoia – I showed up yesterday afternoon, nabbed a camping spot in the chaparral woodlands, and went for a nice hike up to the nearby waterfalls. Sequoia is a unique park in that its lands range from under 2,000’ (where I camped last night) to the Giant Sequoia forests at 7,000’ (where I am now) to the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada (where I’m going tomorrow). It was a long, winding, uphill drive to the trees, but I took consolation in a new wildlife sighting – a bobcat drowsily walking across the road. This brings my wildlife sighting count up one further, now including: two bears, one marmot (on the summit of Half Dome), almost a dozen deer (including one that saw me, didn’t un, looked me right in the eyes – and took a great big piss), and innumerable chipmunks, ground squirrels, and lizards.
Tomorrow I make my ascent up Alta Peak – one of the few mountain peaks that can be reached by a day hike here in the park. There are countless little short hikes among the Sequoia groves, and an impressive number of super-long backpacking trails, but not many of the peak-bagging day hikes I love to hit on my road trips. According to the ranger, there’s up to three feet of snowpack still up near the summit (a little over 11,000’), so I’ll be bringing my snowshoes. I like my snowshoes.
I spent just about all of today wandering the numerous short trails throughout the Giant Forest. Along the way, I did stop at General Sherman (the largest tree – and living organism – in the world), along with a crowd of everyone else in the park. It was impressive – as impressive as a 52,000-ton tree can be – but I found that I preferred the smaller, nameless trees I came across while in the woods. Walking at the feet of the Sequoias, my footsteps muffled by the pine needles of the forest floor, the light streaming down in narrow beams through the canopy hundreds of feet above, the brilliant red bark of the Sequoias glowing in the sun, the overwhelming sense of peace and calm…well, it was beautiful.
Battery almost dead, gotta go.
-=dave=-
In The Company of Giants (Journal Entry, 6/7/08)
No free electricity tonight, so like my forefathers did I’m typing by firelight. I’m staying at the Lodgepole campground in Sequoia National Park, and feeling pretty lucky. I rolled up this morning to a “CAMP FULL” sign, but because I have such a small camping setup, the ranger let me in to a tiny lot way in the corner of the campground – and right next to the river. It’s a beautiful place, and the white noise of the rapids flowing past drowns out any inane chatter from the nearby lots. I scored big on this one.
Today was my first full day in Sequoia – I showed up yesterday afternoon, nabbed a camping spot in the chaparral woodlands, and went for a nice hike up to the nearby waterfalls. Sequoia is a unique park in that its lands range from under 2,000’ (where I camped last night) to the Giant Sequoia forests at 7,000’ (where I am now) to the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada (where I’m going tomorrow). It was a long, winding, uphill drive to the trees, but I took consolation in a new wildlife sighting – a bobcat drowsily walking across the road. This brings my wildlife sighting count up one further, now including: two bears, one marmot (on the summit of Half Dome), almost a dozen deer (including one that saw me, didn’t un, looked me right in the eyes – and took a great big piss), and innumerable chipmunks, ground squirrels, and lizards.
Tomorrow I make my ascent up Alta Peak – one of the few mountain peaks that can be reached by a day hike here in the park. There are countless little short hikes among the Sequoia groves, and an impressive number of super-long backpacking trails, but not many of the peak-bagging day hikes I love to hit on my road trips. According to the ranger, there’s up to three feet of snowpack still up near the summit (a little over 11,000’), so I’ll be bringing my snowshoes. I like my snowshoes.
I spent just about all of today wandering the numerous short trails throughout the Giant Forest. Along the way, I did stop at General Sherman (the largest tree – and living organism – in the world), along with a crowd of everyone else in the park. It was impressive – as impressive as a 52,000-ton tree can be – but I found that I preferred the smaller, nameless trees I came across while in the woods. Walking at the feet of the Sequoias, my footsteps muffled by the pine needles of the forest floor, the light streaming down in narrow beams through the canopy hundreds of feet above, the brilliant red bark of the Sequoias glowing in the sun, the overwhelming sense of peace and calm…well, it was beautiful.
Battery almost dead, gotta go.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Takin Care of Business
This one will be short, because I've got to check out of the hotel in about an hour. So let's do this:
After four nights in Yosemite, this was exactly what I needed. A nice hot shower (now: with soap!), a steak dinner at some theme steakhouse ("Cool Hand Luke's" -- presumably named after Paul Newman's character in the movie of the same name, although as far as I can tell the owners of the restaurant never saw the movie. There were no parking meters, no one forced me to do hard labor, and I didn't see "50 eggs" anywhere on the menu. My server had a cheesy little metal sheriff's star on he shirt, which I suppose was the restaurant's nod to the movie being vaguely law-enforcement related), where I showed up just in time to see game one of the NBA finals (go Celtics!), internet access, The Princess Bride on TV (just in time for one of my all-time favorite scenes, Peter Cook's "mawwiage" wedding scene), and a nice soft bed with air-conditioning.
I'm feeling good.
I also got to listen to the dozen voicemails that had snuck on to my phone while in the woods. I've got some medical insurance stuff to take care of, and apparently my former landlord wants to charge me because I didn't leave my keys in the correct location when I moved out (this is exactly the sort of shit that drove me out of the apartment in the first place). I'll worry about these things later, when I have stuff like "a mailing address."
Better: new haircut! I went to a fancy salon called "Dave uses his $20 Wal-Mart shears," and they did a fantastic job. My hair is now a uniform 1/2" long (maybe not in the back, but it's not like I can see it), and looks like it may soon be overtaken by my BEARD, which is growing oh-so-bushy. I can't wait until I reach Grizzly Adams-level beardness. Those bears won't mess with me then!
Off to Sequoia & King's Canyon for the next 3-4 days, and then I'll cut west to Parkfield, CA (the most seismically active city in the country) and Big Sur on the coast. I may even stop by Selma, CA (a city I passed yesterday on my way to Tulare in search of cheap motels), a city that bills itself as "Raisin Capital of the World." This is exactly the sort of place that I should visit on my road trip.
More to come -- possibly sooner (if I can find internet in Sequoia), more likely later. There shall be more adventures.
-deuce-
After four nights in Yosemite, this was exactly what I needed. A nice hot shower (now: with soap!), a steak dinner at some theme steakhouse ("Cool Hand Luke's" -- presumably named after Paul Newman's character in the movie of the same name, although as far as I can tell the owners of the restaurant never saw the movie. There were no parking meters, no one forced me to do hard labor, and I didn't see "50 eggs" anywhere on the menu. My server had a cheesy little metal sheriff's star on he shirt, which I suppose was the restaurant's nod to the movie being vaguely law-enforcement related), where I showed up just in time to see game one of the NBA finals (go Celtics!), internet access, The Princess Bride on TV (just in time for one of my all-time favorite scenes, Peter Cook's "mawwiage" wedding scene), and a nice soft bed with air-conditioning.
I'm feeling good.
I also got to listen to the dozen voicemails that had snuck on to my phone while in the woods. I've got some medical insurance stuff to take care of, and apparently my former landlord wants to charge me because I didn't leave my keys in the correct location when I moved out (this is exactly the sort of shit that drove me out of the apartment in the first place). I'll worry about these things later, when I have stuff like "a mailing address."
Better: new haircut! I went to a fancy salon called "Dave uses his $20 Wal-Mart shears," and they did a fantastic job. My hair is now a uniform 1/2" long (maybe not in the back, but it's not like I can see it), and looks like it may soon be overtaken by my BEARD, which is growing oh-so-bushy. I can't wait until I reach Grizzly Adams-level beardness. Those bears won't mess with me then!
Off to Sequoia & King's Canyon for the next 3-4 days, and then I'll cut west to Parkfield, CA (the most seismically active city in the country) and Big Sur on the coast. I may even stop by Selma, CA (a city I passed yesterday on my way to Tulare in search of cheap motels), a city that bills itself as "Raisin Capital of the World." This is exactly the sort of place that I should visit on my road trip.
More to come -- possibly sooner (if I can find internet in Sequoia), more likely later. There shall be more adventures.
-deuce-
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
L337 Haxx0r Skills
Now that I've found a spot in Yosemite with unsecured wi-fi access, everything is coming together. After slumming with the other peons in Camp 4, I've taken a quick trip my my new favorite nighttime spot in Yosemite: The Ahwahnee Hotel. Built in 1928, this gilded pile of luxury caters to the every whim of the park's most exclusive guests...and, in internet access terms, to a suitably sneaky laptop-equipped Dave.
The past couple days have been big hike days -- I've probably put in over 30 miles combined. Yesterday was my attempt up El Capitan, with new acquaintance Tomas -- a young German, about my age, who was in San Francisco for business and somehow got a week free to see the area. He joined me for my attempt up El Cap, under the guise of safety: presumably, if something terrible happened, one of us would notify the park rangers of the location. I learned very quickly, however, that the last thing I would need on the trails here was another person -- these are some of the most crowded hiking trails I have ever been on in my life. Until today, I have never had to stop and wait in line along a hiking trail.
Back to yesterday: the plan was to summit El Capitan, the imposing granite monolith that dominates the western end of the valley. Only one problem stood in our way: it was far away. This was especially apparent when viewing a topo map of the area. There was El Cap...and there was eight-plus miles of windy trail to get there. And there was Eagle Peak, a short spur off the trail, which was -- and this is the key point -- two miles closer. Tomas and I discussed our options briefly; we considered the distance (shorter good!), the time commitment (early hike finish = early happy hour), and the philosophical (you can see El Cap from Eagle Peak, but you can't see El Cap when you are standing directly atop it...so in a way hiking Eagle Peak is more an experience of El Capitan than El Capitan itself!). The choice was clear: Eagle Peak.
I am not nearly a good enough writer to describe how majestic, how beautiful, and how utterly overwhelming the scenery here is. I doubt even that the pictures I took would give a much better image. All I can say is that if you have visited Yosemite, you know exactly what I mean. And if you haven't visited, you damn well should. Needless to day, the views from eagle peak yesterday and from Half Dome today were incredible.
While on my hike today, I encountered a rare species on the trail: the "Fast-Hiking Asshole," or FHA. This is the fellow (it is always a male; I have yet to see or hear of a female variant) who treats hiking like a race: it is more important to pass other hikers than to actually enjoy the beauty of the hike. I myself am a frequent FHA: stomping up behind some poor slow hiker until they move slightly to the side, then rushing past them while issuing the iciest of glares, a look that seems to say "how dare you clog up my trail with your sloth-like gait? Begone from my trail before I push you off a cliff!"
I just didn't realize how much of a jerk I was (Well, maybe I did; I started hiking fast while in TFC, where any and all hikers are seen as ignorant, bumbling fools). What I discovered today (and only because I was not in good enough shape to prevent being passed myself) was that there were other FHA's out there. I suspect there were about a half-dozen, all told; they woulld jockey for position, passing each other whenever possible, dragging unwilling girlfriends or children along in their wake.
Uh oh -- the place is starting to clear out, and my presence may soon be revealed. To sum up quickly: i have resolved to not be such a dick when I blow by slower hikers on the trail. No, I have resolved instead to blow by my fellow hikers with a graceful, effortless elan, making my speed look so effortless that they will realize that they are boot-licking scum who are not fit even to cough on my dust.
I'm just a nice guy like that.
Other items: Lots of Europeans in the camp, most of whom are climbers. I have become friend ly with Umberto and Mark, two Italians who have come here for several weeks to climb the walls of the valley. They speak very good English, but I take pride in being able to educate them to the vagaries of the language, explaining words like "buttress" and "stem," and being able to tell them where Seattle is located.
I've also gotten very good at converting heights and distances to metric. Oh, you crazy Europeans! Please, continue to visit our country and drop your Euros into our faltering economy.
Time for some sleep.
-deuce-
The past couple days have been big hike days -- I've probably put in over 30 miles combined. Yesterday was my attempt up El Capitan, with new acquaintance Tomas -- a young German, about my age, who was in San Francisco for business and somehow got a week free to see the area. He joined me for my attempt up El Cap, under the guise of safety: presumably, if something terrible happened, one of us would notify the park rangers of the location. I learned very quickly, however, that the last thing I would need on the trails here was another person -- these are some of the most crowded hiking trails I have ever been on in my life. Until today, I have never had to stop and wait in line along a hiking trail.
Back to yesterday: the plan was to summit El Capitan, the imposing granite monolith that dominates the western end of the valley. Only one problem stood in our way: it was far away. This was especially apparent when viewing a topo map of the area. There was El Cap...and there was eight-plus miles of windy trail to get there. And there was Eagle Peak, a short spur off the trail, which was -- and this is the key point -- two miles closer. Tomas and I discussed our options briefly; we considered the distance (shorter good!), the time commitment (early hike finish = early happy hour), and the philosophical (you can see El Cap from Eagle Peak, but you can't see El Cap when you are standing directly atop it...so in a way hiking Eagle Peak is more an experience of El Capitan than El Capitan itself!). The choice was clear: Eagle Peak.
I am not nearly a good enough writer to describe how majestic, how beautiful, and how utterly overwhelming the scenery here is. I doubt even that the pictures I took would give a much better image. All I can say is that if you have visited Yosemite, you know exactly what I mean. And if you haven't visited, you damn well should. Needless to day, the views from eagle peak yesterday and from Half Dome today were incredible.
While on my hike today, I encountered a rare species on the trail: the "Fast-Hiking Asshole," or FHA. This is the fellow (it is always a male; I have yet to see or hear of a female variant) who treats hiking like a race: it is more important to pass other hikers than to actually enjoy the beauty of the hike. I myself am a frequent FHA: stomping up behind some poor slow hiker until they move slightly to the side, then rushing past them while issuing the iciest of glares, a look that seems to say "how dare you clog up my trail with your sloth-like gait? Begone from my trail before I push you off a cliff!"
I just didn't realize how much of a jerk I was (Well, maybe I did; I started hiking fast while in TFC, where any and all hikers are seen as ignorant, bumbling fools). What I discovered today (and only because I was not in good enough shape to prevent being passed myself) was that there were other FHA's out there. I suspect there were about a half-dozen, all told; they woulld jockey for position, passing each other whenever possible, dragging unwilling girlfriends or children along in their wake.
Uh oh -- the place is starting to clear out, and my presence may soon be revealed. To sum up quickly: i have resolved to not be such a dick when I blow by slower hikers on the trail. No, I have resolved instead to blow by my fellow hikers with a graceful, effortless elan, making my speed look so effortless that they will realize that they are boot-licking scum who are not fit even to cough on my dust.
I'm just a nice guy like that.
Other items: Lots of Europeans in the camp, most of whom are climbers. I have become friend ly with Umberto and Mark, two Italians who have come here for several weeks to climb the walls of the valley. They speak very good English, but I take pride in being able to educate them to the vagaries of the language, explaining words like "buttress" and "stem," and being able to tell them where Seattle is located.
I've also gotten very good at converting heights and distances to metric. Oh, you crazy Europeans! Please, continue to visit our country and drop your Euros into our faltering economy.
Time for some sleep.
-deuce-
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