Month: October 2022 (Page 3 of 3)

Death Valley is the hottest place on the planet. Its air temperature has been registered at 134°F. Even in October, it’ll creep into triple digits, so my plan for today was a quick in-and-out trip, Ocean’s 11-style.

Badwater Basin is the lowest place in North America (282 feet below sea level); salt lines the basin and there is a strong smell of cured meat. I feel like I’m missing a link to connect those two observations. I viewed the basin up close and from afar, at the top of Dante’s View. Way out in the distance, almost imperceptible, is Mt. Whitney, the tallest point in the contiguous United States.

My favorite view of the badlands was at Zabriskie Point, named after Christian Zabriskie of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, and not Jo-Ellen and Dave Zabriskie of comment section fame. The jagged formations stretched out like a thousand fingers, and clouds overhead cast shadows that added even more varieties of browns, yellows, and deep oranges.

I successfully left without melting and drove east through Death Valley Junction, a particularly unphotogenic ghost town. I fueled up and waited out the heat in Pahrump, Nevada, and considered finding a place to camp. Thankfully, Dad reminded me that the Vegas Strip would be more impressive at night, so I pressed on.

I spent about twenty minutes walking Las Vegas Boulevard, which I found plenty as a solo traveler. I think I would enjoy the glamour and brashness more with friends. Right now, I’m in Philosopher-Errant mode, so I can’t be bothered with such base activities as the Strip provides. I also think casinos smell bad. I was considering a buffet until I pictured myself, alone in the line for crab legs. I cannot let myself fall to such depths. I shot out of Vegas and parked for the night. More philosophy tomorrow.

I didn’t have enough room in my car to bring all the gear on my prep list. The last thing I left behind was a shovel. I figured that my route, plus watching the forecasts, would keep me away from serious snow. I didn’t think that it would be useful for sand as well. Smash cut to this morning, when I tried to surmount an eighteen-inch hump of sand to get back on the road and found my Corolla unceremoniously beached upon it. 

I tried digging out the front tires with an ice brush. No dice. There was some vegetation snagged in the undercarriage that I hacked away with a knife. Not enough. After about forty-five minutes, an extremely kind family of French tourists stopped with a spade and some tire ramps. They went above and beyond, even taking me in their RV to flag down pickups on the main road. The younger child was hacking away at the sand with a toy shovel the size of a wallet—absolutely adorable. Eventually, an equally friendly pair of men hooked my car up to the winch on their SUV and tugged me out.

(This is the point where my wonderful, cherished family members will start privately telling me that I need to call AAA next time. I will. Probably.)

I drove back into town to convalesce. The people of Ridgecrest are—no surprise—extremely welcoming. This was a great place to have a rough morning. I had wonderful interactions with everyone, from the waitress at the local diner with a voice like radio static, to the customer at the local game store who invited me to play Magic with his friends (unfortunately, I left my cards at home), to the elderly cashier at the hot dog shack who grandmothered me into drinking more water. This town isn’t as quaint as the Upper Peninsula or as homey as northern Idaho, but it’s another off-the-grid jewel.

Finally, it was time to head back out. The main road to Death Valley was washed out, so I took a bumpy side road amidst a caravan of like-minded folks. The flooding has closed off many of the park’s more distant attractions, so I should be able to experience a good chunk of what’s available during tomorrow’s coolest hours. Tonight, I’m camping for free in the park, the hottest place in the world.

PS: The family that helped me out is chronicling their journey on Facebook and Instagram at Nous 5 En Ameríque. Check them out!

It’s still hot out here. I’m talking 95 degrees, potato-baking weather. The temperature isn’t terribly uncomfortable—it’s much better than a humid July day back home—but the direct sun is brutal. My neck feels like a slab of crisping bacon, even when I’m in the car. I can only imagine what it was like during the summer.

I wanted a bit more city time, so I spent the morning driving through the well-developed San Joaquin Valley. This may have been a bad choice. Lots of it smelled like poop. This is, unfortunately, not a metaphor, nor was it farm scent. This was abandoned public toilet stench. I did have a delightful apple fritter and a coffee to distract my nose. Connecting the towns was a grid of olive and orange trees that were much more appealing. I’ve seen a lot of farmland during my trip, but not many farmers. I’ll have to look into the details of the modern occupation.

I went east, back up into the mountains, on switchback after switchback. These were the kind of roads that, instead of having a shoulder, have a five-hundred-foot cliff to the side. I performed the vehicular equivalent of tiptoeing as I gained 5,000 feet in elevation, then promptly lost 3,000 on the other side of the Greenhorns. The road spat me out into Mojave Desert, filled with Joshua trees that snaggled and snarled along the roads.

I ended up in Ridgecrest, where I engaged in my new hobby of laundering clothes. I’m trying something new tonight and camping on BLM land (that’s the Bureau of Land Management; Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus has a tremendous approach to the duality of that acronym). Tomorrow I will try not to dehydrate in Death Valley.

Hi everyone. I’m here with a rare second post because I think my car is haunted. Strange noises are occurring when my back is turned. My windshield wipers turned on for no reason. When I opened the side door, my clothes bin jumped into the air. This is why I hate Halloween. If anyone knows how to exorcise a sedan, let me know.

Of all the places I have traveled so far, Yosemite Valley is the most ludicrously beautiful. My second day here confirmed this; there is no angle, no perspective, which does not convey grandeur and wonder. The trees are tall, and the granite taller. I encourage everyone to visit, except those who have neck problems. You need to look up most of the time.

My hike today was also the best I’ve taken so far. It was a baby hike, a scant two miles round-trip, but it changed from bend to bend, the rock clusters and varied foliage keeping me engaged and stimulated. Squirrels scampered freely, and Stellar’s jays wore dreamy blue plumage. The main attraction, Mirror Lake, had evaporated away, leaving a sandy bed from which to appreciate the surroundings. I think I was near Half Dome, but frankly it’s all incredible.

Yosemite Falls had run dry for the season, so my last stop was Tunnel View. El Capitan, Half Dome, et al are on full display here; this is where the most famous and scenic photos of the park were taken. My skills as a writer are insufficient to describe it. It may be indescribable. I’ll put it this way: I haven’t felt a desire to draw since I was very, very young, but I sat down for a full half hour and sketched the view. It was the only way I could respond to it.

I’ve slingshotted around Fresno, which is another strange valley city that ends without sprawl. You’re in it, and then you’re not. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a stupid frog game on my iPad to play.

Three interesting things happened on my drive to Yosemite:

1. I traveled through Angels Camp. This little town is the source and setting of Mark Twain’s breakthrough story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” Appropriately, cartoonish depictions of frogs are everywhere. The Angels Hotel no longer stands, but there’s a little plaque honoring the location.
2. As I was about to exit civilization for a couple days, I stopped for breakfast at Mandy’s Cafe in Sonora. Five stars. A chorizo biscuit with chipotle gravy? Scrumptious.
3. No trip to northeastern California would be complete without a secession sighting. I saw my first banner demanding the creation of Jefferson, adding a 51st state to the union. This hypothetical state would pull counties from California and Oregon. 

My first stop in Yosemite was the remote region of Hetch Hetchy. This valley was carved by the Tuolumne River, which was dammed in 1913 despite furious protests by John Muir and other conservationists. The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir now provides water to San Francisco, two hundred miles away. Muir considered the valley to be superior to Yosemite Valley; the ride in is beautiful, but with the dam in place, there’s not much to look at.

Next up was the main attraction. Yosemite Valley is where many of the park’s huge granite formations reside. I had thought that temperatures and crowds would have dropped in midweek October; this was not the case. My thermometer read 86 degrees as I spent half an hour finding a parking space near the visitor center. Everything was slammed: the kiosks, the general store, the exhibits. I couldn’t even get into the Ansel Adams gallery. It was too late and too hot to start a hike. I decided to eat instead. I grabbed a picnic table in the shadow of El Capitan, laid out dinner, and read a few chapters.

My campsite tonight is farther from the valley than I’d like, and driving there nudged me over ten thousand miles on the trip. I’m hoping to get an early start to the day tomorrow, so I’m turning in early. To all, a good night.

CW: animal death

I hit a dog last night. It was about an hour after sundown on the outskirts of Paradise; the little guy, no bigger than a cat, was wandering toward me in the road. I braked as much as I could and hoped and hoped it was enough, but I knew. The owner arrived about two minutes later. She was as level-headed as was possible given the situation. On the owner’s request, I took a towel from my car, wrapped up the dog, and carried her to the side of the road. The owner then politely asked me to leave, so I did.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about today. Not feeling, really—the worst of that was last night, and I don’t think the human brain is equipped to fully process death. Today I thought about circumstance, and guilt, and the difference between fault and responsibility. And I thought about the dog. 

Beyond that, I don’t think what happened is my story to tell. That right belongs to the family. In deference, I won’t tell today’s story today either. Hug your pets tonight, folks. Even the fish.

I started today with a leisurely drive through Lassen Volcanic National Park. I didn’t feel like hiking or walking, so I didn’t. The joys of traveling alone! The park features small geothermal vents and an area decimated by an eruption a hundred years ago; maybe I’ll return to explore those at a later time in my life. 

The next hour was a maze of sloped, rail-less roads that took me 8,000 feet down the mountainside. It was a joyous and, at times, chest-tightening ride through loose pine forests, by quiet streams, and aside the occasional cliff. I broke through into the Sacramento Valley and stopped for lunch in Chico. This city of over 100,000 residents has very little urban sprawl: a bead of population strung along CA-99. I found out why when I visited the only real suburb, Paradise.

Paradise is the location of a November 2018 fire that basically leveled the town. Its position at the seam of The Valley and the forest made it especially susceptible to such disasters, and a spark from a malfunctioning transformer led to an incredibly deadly and destructive blaze. Four years later, the population is only a tenth of what it was before. Those who remain are rebuilding, with signs that read Hope is Eternal and Paradise Strong. It’s a bold effort, if perhaps a foolhardy one. To quote a Sacramento fire chief, “There’s just some places a subdivision shouldn’t be built.”

Along the road to Paradise, perhaps symbolically, I found a spot where disaster had turned to beauty. Lookout Point was, until the late 2000s, a tragic turnout; people frequently tried to end their lives by driving off the road and into the canyon below. The government bought the land in 2008, placed interpretive signs and fencing, and brought safety to the area. In time, the spot took on new meaning. The fence is now covered in thousands of padlocks. Some are engraved as memorials, but most are symbols of love, stretching out unbroken along the skyway.

I decided to sleep in today. Back in Portland, at a beguilingly large bookstore, I picked up a copy of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet. I started on that, listened to a couple podcasts, and rested my eyes in the comfort of my sleeping bag. But all beautiful things must fade—in this case, my stillness gradually gave way to a natural urge that cannot be resolved in the comfort of a sleeping bag. I grumpily resolved that concern and drove on.

Northeastern California is a patchwork of deserts and pine forests. Neither has more vegetation than the other; the deserts are chock-full of short, hardy plants. My favorite is brittlebush; it grows in dense clusters and adds a welcome splash of green and yellow to what is frequently a true sepia landscape. The desert was dominant as I closed in on Alturas, until a signed popped up: STATE INSPECTION, ALL VEHICLES. Most Western states have boat inspections to curb the spread of invasive species, but this was a new one. I pulled into the shack, where the attendant informed me that my fruits and vegetables were being inspected. He pleasantly but firmly confiscated my mandarins, as only Californian citrus is allowed in the state. 

Weighing a little less, I turned to the southwest, where Mount Shasta imposed itself upon my vision. I couldn’t get a good picture, but so far, only Mount Rainier can rival its stateliness. I stopped for supplies in Burney, then took the south road to the Lassen National Forest, where evidence of the nearby Lassen Volcano is on full display. I took a self-guided stroll through the Subway Lava Tube, which swallowed up my measly flashlight illumination and was, quite possibly, my first experience with true darkness.

There are plenty of places to camp here, and it’s about time I snapped one of them up. I haven’t seen serious tourist congestion since I left Montana, but it’s starting to pick back up. We’ll see if that trend continues as I keep moving south.

Not much to say today, folks. I’m a little worded out after yesterday’s outburst, and  my travels weren’t especially interesting or notable. I’ll give it my best.

I cut through the heart of Oregon, passing Bend and La Pine and continuing into “the Oregon Outback” to the southeast. It turns out that deserts are everywhere in the States; they sneak up on you when you least expect it. This one is filled with stray pine forests, plenty of shrubs and sagebrush, and the occasional intermittent lake—which were, due to their intermittency, completely dry when I passed them. The bonkers EcoZone map I linked a while ago calls this the “Northern Basin and Range”. I would call it dusty.

Towns are the rarest commodity out here; in about three hours of desert driving, I probably drove through six small communities. The last of these was Lakewood, fifteen minutes from the border and half an hour from extinction. I searched for a decent place to have dinner, but even on a Saturday at six, every restaurant was closed. Except for Subway. Even on my debaucherous pleasure jaunt, I still have standards. A canned dinner for me tonight.

California announced itself with a large, pastel sign. The desert did not change until I drove three miles to the east, where the trees quickly thickened. I walked for half an hour in the ponderosa forest, which is so much more spacious than its Olympian cousin. The sunset was beautiful.