Portland To Santa Fe
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Winnemucca..."And Proud Of It"! I'm not sure what it means when I'm piqued by the "County Landfill" sign. I mean, it's NEVADA. What do they throw AWAY? Hot Spots!!Spencer Hot Spring was crowded with hunters and that whole "wearing your t-shirt into a hot spring" thing is just off-putting as hell. So I headed up over the hill to see what the Geographic Center of Nevada had to hold. The heart of Nevada is a gorgeous little place with Yellowstone-like geography and a vein of hot spots that include perhaps the single most beautiful soak I've ever encountered (and one of the scariest I didn't have the equipment or balls to attempt). The Monitor Valley is ringed by scrub-pine draws that linger down to the dusty floor from rugged peaks. Two sites worth seeing are in close proximity -- Monitor Valley Hot Spring is a leisurely soak (although not a campsite -- it's on private land) looking out over a verdant meadow. The temperature is perfect, maybe not quite hot enough for a full theraupeutic soak but certainly relaxing and wonderful. The trough that serves as a tub is big enough for eight close friends or four who don't mind touching toesies. Just south is Diana's Punchbowl, an absolutely terrifying volcanic throat that plunges in a near-perfect circle about fifty feet across to a steaming pool with lush tropical plants clinging to the sheer edges. Scarier than fuck if you're afraid of heights. Especially when you realize that the lip is undercut all the way around. Contemplating the view from Monitor and the "no camping" sign, I got a wild hair. Armed only with a 1977 Rand McNally road atlas of the United States and an idea that the sun is tending a bit south, I headed down an unmarked dirt road across rolling pinon foothills to meet the saw teeth of the Monitor Range and, with luck, the faint mapmark of Fish Springs around sunset. An hour later, just as I'm getting INTO the tight pine cover and twisty little road, a much-weathered warning sign announces that "Motorized Travel Restricted In This Area". Well......restricted to what? By what? Does the road go through or not? ANSWER ME, SIGN BOY! I wind over the crest of the Monitors and begin to drop through the tightest little valley I've ever attempted, let alone in a 14-foot box-over-cab! Another sign announces that I'm LEAVING the "restricted" area but I'm staring nearly straight down, no more than 30 feet of road visible at once, barely wide enough to negotiate. My hair is caked stiff with dust. And then. In the middle of nowhere. The most amazingly beautiful granite slot canyon opens up with rock spires and vacant waterfalls. The road literally touches the cliff edge and skitters along from streambed to streambed. Fucking incredible. My heart is pounding. I have to stop and breathe. Just sit dead silent for 20 minutes to get a grip. This is incredibly fucking gorgeous. This. Is. So. Cool. Much later. Still marveling. The valley is almost totally invisible from below. You won't even know it's there until it scares the crap out of you. The road has widened out on the valley floor into big looping double-wide-gravel arcs and I'm getting my speed up around 60mph when BAMAKOWIE!!! A 5pmh turn with a fucking water feature at the bottom on a 180ยบ turn! Wow! That's a heartstopping sideways slide. Luckily, NOT over a cliff but just up against the berm of the road. And so the road goes for the next 100 miles. A stretch of mellow where you can (must) get your speed up and then a slight dip turns into a drop and a turn and a little 12-foot jog up the arroyo and a spin of mud or deep dust and then a jarring climb up the other side and you're out, still doing 15mph and checking your teeth for continuity. Fish Lake was where I expected it from the Rand-McNally but no sign of a spring. Missed a turn and had to backtrack 30 miles at dusk and finally rolled out and slept like the dead at the entrance to a dark box canyon. 6am. I've got an idea where I am. There is no road to the east for 30 miles to the south so this HAS to be it. No marking. Seems too close to Fish Lake from this map but....it's hard to tell. Gorgeous stars overhead when I stumble out of the truck to piss. Very very quiet. I turn on the Scissor Sisters and crank the volume as I start the big diesel. Leave the headlights off. Starlight is bright enough to see everything and the eastern sky is starting to glow gold and yellow. "Daylight Use Only" is the first sign. "Use Road At Own Risk" is the second. Sagebrush is giving way to low flowering plants and stands of aspen. Am I in the right place? How wrong can I be? After awhile the stream has thin trickles of steam. I'm in Hot Creek Canyon, headed east into the rising sun and toward Utah. From Hot CreekOn the eastern slope of the Timpahute Range and things look different here -- I've passed into the cactus lands and into a veritable traffic jam. From my vantage point, I can see two speeding dust trails moving up the valley floor plus a car on the distant highway, the most vehicles I've seen since leaving Austin, NV. The Monitor Valley will be with me the rest of the trip -- the truck picked up at least a 1/4" layer of fine white dust. All that work to keep the gear from going to Burning Man...... The rest of the day is a high speed run into Utah. Entering Cedar City, there's an eerie feeling to the town. Everything looks too normal and prosperous and....strange. It takes a while for me to place this as the setting for Jon Krakauer's book on Mormon polygamy and revelation, "Under The Banner Of Heaven", and recent news articles on the prosecution of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, the de facto ruler of this remote valley who auctioned off underage girls to his cronies. The houses here all have multiple wings. In the poor outskirts, the doublewide trailers sit in groups. Pretty curtains line windows in some, little glints of color against the dust-drab exteriors. Spoooooky. The climb out of Cedar City is the steepest of the trip and lifts me out of autumn. I'm weeks late for color here from the looks of it. But the scenery is spectacular anyway. At just below 10,000 feet I pop out of the canyon onto a high alpine plain that rolls away across the state dotted with little chalets and ski huts. The grass provides the color -- burnt orange and creeping browns run alongside clear mountain streams. It's cold up here, too. I can see where extra wives would come in handy! We're getting into the photographic Southwest -- Escalante National Park, Arches, Boulder City. Highway 12 twists along. I ran into a cattle drive and lean out the window to listen to the cowboys yell "hyap!" and snap their ropes at the stragglers. I'm glad I don't have a camera with me -- I'd never get anywhere. Every turn in the road is spectacular. Just north of Boulder City, I camp for the night on the shoulder of a mountain, a quarter mile up a road with the needless sign "primitive". I point the tail of the truck off the hillside toward where sunrise will come and build a little fire. As it dies down and I finish a last beer, the distinctive bugling of a bull elk sounds loud and clear on the other side of the tree line. It is mating season. I've heard of moose humping cars and wonder if I should worry about a horny elk and the truck? No, I'm probably bigger than they are. If there are elk, I wonder if there are other critters. Will I wake up to an inquisitive cat? Should I close the door? No. I should not. I sleep soundly. It's my BIRTHDAY!Up with the first faint hint of sunrise and lumbering back down the road toward Capitol Reef. The photographers beat me to it, though, already arrayed on the roadsides to catch the first golden glow. The road through the canyon follows the Fremont River (hello, old friend John C!) and is, de rigeur, stunningly beautiful. I've dipped back into autumn here and the river is lined with the most perfect colors. Again, thankful I do not have a camera as I would be completely obsessed with capturing this on film. Just east of the park, Rand-McNally show a loop road that skirts the back of the ridge and re-enters the park to the south before turning east to skirt the Glen Canyon complex. I see the road. It says it goes to Bullfrog in 66 miles. This is not indicated on my map but the pavement is welcome. And fleeting. After about five miles I'm back on dirt and picking a route through a maze of unsigned or overly-signed roads. I stay on the largest. I wish for Chet's cool logic to buttress my decision-making. I hit a shadowed rut that pops my head against the roof of the cab multiple times. The most amazing thing about the backside of the ridge that forms the eastern edge of Capitol Reef is how NORMAL it looks. Perfectly normally beautiful with just occasional hints of the geologic freakiness that tongues its way along the other side of the ridge. About 20 miles in the road gets smaller. Up and down over arroyos at 5mph. Up and down. UP and DOWN. The signs are hilarious. Nothing is shown on my map but Utah seems to have signed EVERYTHING. Triple Cow Spring. Stump Cat Gulch. All of them at least 22 miles from wherever I am. Every intersection has multiple signs of equal worth and equal mystery. Should I continue to Bullfrog? Or should I go to Cedar Butte? Is the highway closer if I pass through TopHat Rock? I'm still heading south, ever so slowly. A three way intersection contains LOTS of signs but nothing to tell me which way to Bullfrog, Glen Canyon or the highway. Damnit. The road is marked for private land, no trespassing, go away. The valley opens out into yet another most-beautiful-valley-ever with occasional pines scattered amid tall sage and stubby juniper. The road down into the valley is so steep that my seatbelt is holding on to ME! Water pours across the road from unseen seeps and springs. On the far side of the valley comes my first clue that I'm on the Rand-McNally road -- I re-enter Capitol Reef for a brief run of rock towers and red rimrock. Hit an unseen drop so hard that the fuel cap pops off. Beer everywhere in the cab. Hours later I'm still trying to work around the southern edge of this range, whatever it is. Short jet contrails hang in the deep blue sky like portents. Trickle marks on one side of the road become precipes on the other. I've started heading east and must be seeing the very first tiny beginnings of Glen Canyon. Plain flat dirt for miles on one side dropping to layers of color on the other. I stop and look repeatedly. It's incredible, over and over again. Mts. Ellsworth and Holmes must be the shadowy giants looming to the south of me. And somewhere in America, the March Fourth Marching Band is heading to an unsuspecting rendezvous to play for my impromptu birthday party! Close call!The road up and out of the Glen Canyon complex is interminable. Like, it will NEVER end. There is no variation (heart-stopping beauty, heart-stopping arroyo crossing, just generally...y'know...heart-stopping). Until at last it does and I'm on pavement, picking up speed again. Eager to make some time because it's still a long way to Santa Fe and March Fourth and my show and what I know to be a plethora of excellent restaurants waiting for me! And it's STILL my birthday season! Forty miles from nowhere there's an odd conference going on roadside. A couple vehicles, another pulling up and hitting low-slung cop lights. Closer, there's been some kind of accident. Wacky. How do you hit something out here? I slow and a guy looks over, "hit a bighorn sheep", to explain the incredible front-end damage to the SUV. You can hit sheep? In the middle of the day? In the middle of not anything much? Bighorn sheep? Nobody hurt (except the sheep) and help on the scene and I pull away and slowly climb the long hill. Slowly? Where's that diesel power? I poke along at about 50mph for a bit and then 40. I'm climbing still but not much. The wreck twenty miles back and a sign says that the nearest town is 64 miles. I'm down to maybe 35 if I goose it. No top end at all. Engine sounds normal.....just...not. Shit. I see an intersection coming up, from nowhere to nowhere? There's a good pulloff and I hit the flashers and give up. Whatever the problem is will not be solved by continuing to drive. Transmission? There's a scorchy smell in the engine that seems reminiscent of the tranny. But I don't know shit. I pull out the manual and begin reading when I hear an engine in the distance. I hop out of the cab to see a AAA towtruck rumbling down the road toward the wreck behind me! I flag him down and he tells me it'll be an hour to get a truck out while he does the SUV. We're out of radio contact here so he'll call from further down the road. I wait. I read "Tournament of Shadows", about the English/Russian intrigues in Afghanistan during the 1800's. A postal truck pulls up and departs. I crack a beer and all of a sudden there's a state trooper in my window -- "you just letting it cool?" I tell him I think it might be a transmission issue but that I'd talked with the AAA driver responding to the bighorn sheep accident. He laughs and shakes his head. "Hit a bighorrn sheep. Damn." He tips his hat as he leaves. Finally here come two AAA wreckers, one each direction, one carrying the wrecked SUV. They confer over the engine and deduce that it's not a tranny issue but fuel/air filtering. They have the correct filter at the shop and remove the offending filters on the spot. The truck runs like a top all the way to Blanding, Utah where I read the high school paper while they swap in new filters and I'm back on the road before sunset. It's my birthday! This corner of Utah is ridiculously populated. There are people EVERYWHERE and I finally just pull into a flat spot on the side of the road and give up and go to sleep right there. It's a restless night with traffic noise far too often. In the morning I drive the wrong way for 30 miles before realizing I'm headed back to Blanding and so turn and have to drive smack into the rising sun for the next hour. New Mexico opens up in a swelter of mining operations, gas pipelines and Haliburton trucks. I am desperate for a river bath but every accessible place is swarming with people. There are people EVERYWHERE. Or else the rivers are just dry gulches. And I've got a toothache along my old broken jawline -- the bone spur that has been sitting there for 20 years seems swollen and tender. Blah. It's NOT my birthday anymore, is it? Finally out of this weird population center and up into the mountains and down the valley where I find a beautiful cold-running river for a bath and then through Espaniola and into Santa Fe where I realize I have no idea how to get where I'm going but the first exit takes me right there. Maybe my birthday season is still in effect? Client. Food. Friends. And at a road house just outside of town.....a Marching Band!!!!! They toodle, they noodle and they are TIGHT through the early evening show! And after a long rambling conversation at the bar with a bevy of M4'thers, the call sounds and the bus is off to Arizona and into the starry night. I wind up at a tiny basement bar in Santa Fe, and then some piano lounge where a young Mexican boy tries to get me to buy him drinks, before deciding I'm too drunk to go anywhere and sleep in the truck in the middle of the Santa Fe shopping district. Wooohoooo! It's my BIRTHDAY! So far so good on everything else -- the show looks really nice and I've met the local production company staff (Burners!) who just got together and bought the company and are putting together a nice party scene with artsy elements. There's very little internet in Santa Fe (weird) so I feel very cut off. I keep looking for cool coffee shops but they're hard to come by out in the part of town I'm in. There are a million places to buy pottery and Indian artifacts and faux antiques and souveneirs but not much in the way of real stuff. Mmmmmmmm.....one of the restaurants providing the food just brought in a batch of fresh chile cornbread. Perfect and warm. Show. Good! Strike. Load. Drive! My plan is to hit the Interstate for the first time in 1800 miles and run due west to California, cut the corner at Death Valley to pick up 395 and be home fast with a good soak in the process. A couple of good meals (Pasquale's, the Cowgirl BBQ, Guadalupe Cafe) under my belt and with a full stomach and an itch for home, I'm OFF! Bon vivant! Death Valley makes it all worthwhileAfter a terrible run on the Interstate (I won't even go into it -- it just sucked from start to finish. I hate interstate highways), I finally made it off and cut up from Pahrump through Death Valley and the Panamint Range. Wowzah! The morning, as a continuation of the day before, was kind of a bummer in that I found myself wishing for a navigator. I just can't drive, drink, play DJ, make witty comments (to myself or others) AND be expected to know where I'm going or what's around the next bend. And the lack of a real map does hurt. While I've come to love the exact vagueness of my 1977 Rand-McNally it does not beat the modern state atlas showing every last little Forest Service turnaround. But it was all better once I actually got to Death Valley. I am trying to remember anything more specific but while I recall skirting DV and TALKING about DV and researching the area a bunch.....I might not ever have driven through DV. And they don't call it that for nuthin. Death Valley is....like...the middle brother. Flanked by Mt. Whitney and the majesty of the Sierra Nevada range to the west and on the other side by rimrock country and the Grand Canyon, DV is like the middle brother who has spent time in the state pen. The other brothers have their charisma and are cool....DV is just badass. Face this on horseback? Via wagontrain? With cattle? You are fucking kidding. The run up from Pahrump was gorgeous, of course, despite getting a very late start after mucking around Las Vegas for what seemed like hours. All roads lead to Vegas! Isn't that an album title? Have I mentioned that Nevada doesn't sign for shit? Jesus. I made multiple runs at routes that should have gone through only to discover that they were "closed" for various reasons or were actually similarly signed loop routes that led....back...to...VEGAS! All gorgeous but it's a bit frustrating to climb to 9000 feet and then go back down repeatedly! But it was all better once I actually got to Death Valley. The valley floor itself and the weird, hellish, grotesque barren-ness is freaky but the real excitement is over in the Panamint Range and the Grand Canyonesque carnival of up down that marks the road across. Howie and Rick and Chet and I have talked for some time about a run up the Saline Valley and I think we'd need Howie's Pinzgauer or something with more ruggedness than I'm feeling at the moment -- the terrain is forbidding, even to me. Ralph, you'll be happy to know that there is terrain that I won't just go ahead and DRIVE without regard for physical safety. A moment of calm as you descend the western edge of the Panamints is brought up short as the road meets 395 in the shadow of Mt. Whitney, today decorated with a leading tendril of storm cloud dumping snow across the peak as sunlight streamed around it. As I turned north on 395 that storm pushed across the Sierras and draped sheets of snow over the high peaks, intensely warm sunshine playing in and out of the cloud edge. I made it up to the easiest-to-access of the Mammoth springs and spent a bit more than an hour watching snow squalls push over the edge and bunch higher and higher on the western flank. Fucking incredible. Snow rainbows! On the valley floor it fell as light rain that dried as it hit. I sat in the spring chatting with an NGO ornithologist en route back to the SE corner of Arizona and had a great afternoon. Back on the road the rain turned heavier as I came along Mono Lake, curtaining the lake in black sheets that squalled across and hid the islands intermittently. I had been listening to Jose Gonzalez (the iPod turned from Shuffle to Album today!) but decided I better have something more upbeat so went with Funkadelic to get me through the late afternoon. I'm still way short of Reno but I need a good nights sleep and the parking lot at Sharkey's Casino seems like a pretty good bet. I walked into the Casino with $18 and left with $20 after four beers and two dinners. You gotta know when to fold 'em, apparently. The meals weren't "good" but they were plentiful and I'm ready to curl up and then use my new-found knowledge of free wireless to post this tomorrow. I'd always wondered how Dori managed to find free wireless everywhere and this might not be her secret but at a rest stop outside of Vegas I happened to actually look at one of the "Discount Travel Guides!" that touted local attractions and lodging....and noticed that they list which motels/hotels have what amenities...like free wireless! In-room DSL is different (a cabled alternative) but WiFi tends to emanate from the office and be poachable. Dori, you gave me the idea! So I now have an area-by-area list of what cheap motels have WiFi! Not many, out here, but I have SOMETHING. Which beats the heck out of trying to find a cool coffee shop as you drive down the main drag!! Putting on Schpongle and drifting off on a pleasant buzz of gambling, secondhand smoke and beer. Howl of the WindigoStarted the day a bit ill from the secondhand smoke that had contributed to my buzz last night! Erch. I feel funny. And very smelly. Everybody in the casino was smoking. Gross. If you ever find yourself in Gardnerville, NV be sure to make a beeline for The French Bar. You'll find old farts who can recall pre-highway days in the area and give you whatever lowdown they happen to be chewing on at the moment. A bit further north, I found Carson City, the state capitol, to be a charming little place badly in need of a McMenamin's....and plenty of opportunity for one! Semi-renovated hotels dot the area but the work looks to have stopped about the time of the first Bush Administration. Supercute, tho! I understand from one of the old farts that retirees from Cali are driving the economy in the area. The old farts are none too happy about the pace of change, of course.... If I had any room in my house, I'd be all excited about the secondhand shops that line the West. Surely there's got to be something cool in all this crap. But I have all the crap I need...and then some....and there's no shopping going on with this trip! Instead, I duck into a funky little coffee shop for a triple to get myself back on the road. The plan to head due north on 447 to Gerlach was waylaid by the fact that I had passed the junction in the dark and rain last night. Not being big on turning around at this point, I scraped the ice off the windshield and skirted Reno, taking a "direct" route through Susanville and Tulelake and being absolutely wowed by the Eagle Lake area and then the verdant glory of the Klamath Basin. My personal politics lean toward salmon restoration over water districts but the incredible display of picture-perfect farms and the obvious richness of the Klamath area is a real argument in favor of farmers -- they're DOING things with that water! My internal dialogue foundered on the old arguments balancing human needs with wildlife. I think the best I got was that if "we" (the people/the guvmint) are going to provide water for such an incredible undertaking as Klamath agriculture then "we" have the ability to demand in-ground trickle irrigation (less evaporation) and other water-saving measures that might help restore balance in usage. Did I mention that the Klamath was incredibly beautiful? It's good to be back in the Northwest. A lot of time on this trip was spent with internal political/land use dialogues (thanks, everybody, for NOT coming!). Yes, I can argue with myself and make points on both sides. Extensively. Should Glen Canyon Dam be dynamited without warning? Is there really any need for a big evaporation pond in the middle of that desert? Do water skiers trump slot canyons? What are we going to do with the silt load that is building up in that canyon? Why should we care what happens to the fisheries of the Sea of Cortez if we send only a saline pesticide trickle down the remnants of the Colorado? What's the actual cost of our actions and how do we integrate that cost into our decision-making processes more accurately? Oh, yeah, I'm a hoot on the road! Just as Oregon thrilled me on the way out, so Oregon thrilled me on the way back in. I've been meaning to get into the Upper Klamath for some time but the trips have never quite worked out that way. Today was perfect for it. No stop in Klamath Falls itself although it looks like a very pleasant little place. Instead, I ran up to Fort Klamath and around Lake of the Woods and up the south entrance to Crater Lake, which I've always managed to avoid in the past. Something about that long line of Winnebagos just gets me driving in the opposite direction! The thought of a rustic mountain lodge, a hot Spanish Coffee and perhaps a poached salmon dinner while sitting in front of a crackling fire in a high-backed chair gazing out over the pristine beauty of the lake....mmmm....I was ready for civilization. The end of an epic journey and ones thoughts turn to comfort and the telling of stories round the fire.....(as Berke Breathed once wrote, "foreshadowing is a valid literary device"). But the journey wasn't over and there was no fire in my immediate future. Crater Lake closed two weeks ago and that storm that pushed through the other day had layered fresh snow across the world up there. I found the Cafe and was able to get a desultory sandwich to go, which I ate at a viewpoint on the western edge of the lake, a few remaining beers cooling in a snowbank. Still enough sun left to make it out the north route from Crater Lake and maybe make I-5 at Roseburg and be home at a reasonable time. With a last look at the blasted battlements, a sort of Mordor theme park, I headed down through the alpine meadows and past Diamond Lake and Mt. Thielsen, standing like a sentinel against the deep blue sky. Turning west on 138, a quick glimpse of something unexpected made me hit the brakes to dive right and just sit for a minute, staring at the sign. I pulled out the trusty Rand-McNally and there it was. Crater Lake is actually just barely east of Eugene, and south a bit, sort of triangulated with Medford and Roseburg. Must be a 3-4 hour drive to go around on the highways...but...really, it's not so FAR, as the crow flies. And here was a road cutting due north and signed to reach Highway 58 in a mere 28 miles! All I had to do was cross Windigo Pass! And I'd be on 58! It'd save me at least an hour, maybe two!! I am the last person this year to drive a non-4WD vehicle over Windigo Pass. Betcha. Downed trees, snowbanks, two feet of mud. Ruts that slot-car'd me along at all of 5mph down steep drops. Straightaways that featured tree root ruts across the road. The late afternoon sun slanted through the trees and threw shadows that made everything look like a precipice. Everything WAS a precipice. Around the summit, where Windigo Creek crossed the road, I stopped for a moment. Without the deep diesel note, the forest rang with silence. I looked at the creek for a bit and thought about the legends of the Windigo, a crazed cannibilistic horror that overtook the unwary, and poured my last Wasatch hefe into the tumbling waters as an offering. And then I got back into the truck and drove to beat sunset. As I rounded the last corner and set eyes on pavement, the last of the blue sky faded and darkness dropped like a hood. And somewhere behind me I swear I heard a sound that made me wonder if Windigo is just myth. Weak at the knees and sensing home, I got on the paved road and drove, eager to see warm lights and a bed. Pulling into my own driveway, though, it was immediately obvious that the neighborhood was not as I had left it. Markings on the pavement indicate city work about to occur and the quiet little rabbinical school across from us on our little dead-end is peeled like an orange, the bones of the house standing out. It seems the building has been sold and is going to be torn down with the new owner, whom my neighbors have met and unanimously disliked, determined to build an apartment complex on the lot....I'll be living in an alley behind this monstrosity, it seems! And so the Haliburton-wheels of "progress" have followed me home from the wilderness. Battles are not just to be fought elsewhere but everywhere. But, for now, sleep |
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