Showers, Soul Theft and Geysers

Day 3

We left the Grand Tetons, headed north towards Yellowstone. The plan was to tour around Yellowstone, seeing a geyser or two, a buffalo or two, and definitely a moose. Stop, take pictures. No hurrying. This day (I am not even sure what day it was...) was going to be at least one day of this trip where I wasn't thinking about all of the distance I had to drive. I would be a tourist. I would get out of the car many times. I would "ooh" and "aah". And when I left Yellowstone, I would trave a short few hours, possibly as far as the Bighorn Mountains, and then stop to camp at a campground.


The day started with a shower. Amazingly, in Grand Teton National Park, there was only one place to take a shower. It had many showers, sure. Also a laundry, a grocery store, a visitor center, a gas station, and other modern lifestyle necessities. I showered, and took a walk through the woods behind the facilities, to see if Abbey wanted to take a shit in this small piece of Babylon nestled in nature. As we wandered through the woods, I thought I saw the ghost of John Muir glowering towards the gas station. He was up in a tree. All the way at the top. Dressed in a long overcoat, munching on a crust of bread he had pulled from his pocket.

As we drove through the valley between the two parks, we passed construction. There was a sign that read "Your Admission Fee at Work." I thought about it, and wondered if tax dollars still applied to National Parks too. I am pretty sure they do, but I was reminded that in California, many State Parks are in danger of closing for lack of state funding. There was a brief image of the elusive bull moose taking a big crap on the Governator's head. If you need help with this image, you should know, that like many herbivores, a moose's crap comes out in pellet form. Big piles of brown pellets about the size of shooter marble.

With the window open, I smelled something. It wasn't rank, bad, stinky. But it was a bit stinky. It wasn't offensive stinky, but if you farted, and it smelled like this, you wouldn't want to claim the fart as your own. It was a really familiar smell. I thought about it for a while, and realized that it smelled just like the off-gassing of a lager yeast fermenting when I am homebrewing beer. Rotten eggs. Sulfur. Geysers.

On the way into Yellowstone from the Grand Tetons, there is a waterfall near the road, maybe called Lewis Falls? I stopped there, like so many others, to take a picture of this beautiful, yet relatively short, waterfall. Later on I would think to myself that maybe I was just falling victim to peer pressure. Maybe there was no point in taking a picture of this waterfall. It was nice, pretty, splashy, wet, as waterfalls tend to be. It was bad ass. If it was located in Maryland, people would flock to see it. But here in Yellowstone, it was, I realized later, a shot or two under par.
Still, it was the first one, so people, including me, stopped, gawked, snapped, and left. I have to admit, I had the thought, many a time while I was in Yellowstone, that maybe we tourists weren't really there to see the beauty, or to ponder it, or to meditate in the vast awesome nature of the place, but only to steal its soul with our cameras.
"Honey, pull over, I need to get a photo of that."
Click.
"Okay. Got it. On to the next scenery."

I felt that way a bit myself in Yellowstone. I was sad that I couldn't hike anywhere with Abbey. I was glad when the hike to the brink of lower Yellowstone Falls was something like 5/8 of a mile and down 600 feet. In a nice gentle rain.

Before leaving California I had done some music trading with my friends, and in the process I had acquired a lot of Phish shows. It had been a long time since I had listened to some good Phish - late 90s stuff - and in this case, the music was a great soundtrack to the drive through Yellowstone. (Which, by the way, I kept calling "Yosemite", in my head. I always get the "Y" National Parks confused.) I swear, as were driving through the first hour of Yellowstone, I was hearing Phish sing "Take the highway...to the great, divide!" And so we did:


The next scenery for me was Old Faithful. I admit, I wanted to see the famous geyser blow. I drove by a number of much more beautiful geysers, but didn't stop. I went to Old Faithful, and I was lucky enough to arrive within about half an hour of the next eruption. Right now, apparently, Old Faithful is blowing its top every 90 minutes or so.

I had read that dogs were not allowed near the geyser. The review said, "but, you and your faithful companion can watch the show from 200 ft away." I walked out to the geyser area to survey the scene, and found that the geyser field was surrounded by a boardwalk with benches. Which was surrounded by a concession building, a small visitor center and bookstore in a mobile trailer, some bathrooms, and a massive construction site. Which, in turn, was all surrounded by a massive concession area, and a massive parking lot. Which, in turn, was adjoined to many other random buildings.

I noticed some other dogs relaxing with their owners on the boardwalk, so I went to get Abbey out of the car. She was, to say the least, happy about this. We walked back to the boardwalk and positioned ourselves with a great view for the show to come. About 20 minutes ahead of the predicted "within 10 minutes" of 1:10 pm.

There was lots of steam, the whole time. There was some premature bubbling. Lots of small jets of water which were false alarms. And then a whole lot of hot water erupted from a small hole in the ground

Running, with Dog, in Bear Country

Day 2 (con.)

Well, despite the likely presence of a brewery and maybe a buffalo burger with a couple of beers, we skipped Jackson Hole. Drove right through it, admiring the rafts piled on trailers being pulled by vans, and on top of vans, and the school buses that were not headed to school but to the river, and I thought that I would like to do some of that whitewater river kayaking one day. I am not sure what Abbey thought. It may have been something like "I am tired of being in this car. I like the smells coming in from the window. I want to eat something."

Entering Jackson Hole through the Teton Pass, you see mountains in the distance with snow on the top, even in June. Cool. I have never been to the Grand Tetons before, and if I have seen pictures, I can't remember, so I am thinking that maybe those snow covered peaks in the distance are the grand tetons that I am hoping to see. And I am thinking, "Sure, yeah, they look kinda grand." And I read somewhere that the Grand Tetons ridgeline is one of the most recognizable mountain ridgelines in the world. The snow covered peaks in the distance don't really look that familiar to me.

Then we get into the park proper, and off to the left, I see the Grand Tetons. I am think, "Oh. Yeah. Those Grand Tetons. That recognizable mountain ridgeline."

It does look kind of familiar, really.
I had done some pre-planning and some research for this part of the trip. I was very proud of myself, and thankful to Noah and Facebook, when we pulled into Jenny Lake campground, nice and early (around 2 pm), and there were tons of open sites. A tent only campground, nestled among conifers, with options for shade, or exposure to the flat moraine valley opposite the moutains. We chose the latter.

I was definitely tired, at this point. It was really tempting to set up camp, crawl into the tent, go to sleep. When I set up my tent, sleeping bag, and pad, I like to lie down for a minute, just to test the placement of it all, make sure that I will be comfortable for the night, before making a final commitment to the spot. I did this, and I almost didn't get up again. It felt so good, so nice, so wonderful, so, well, spacious, to rest with my body fully extended. (I need to put a quick note in at this point - a friend of a friend has a blog about his current bike ride across the country (yeah, I know. Why are you reading this crap. Why am I even bothering to write about my drive?). He talks a bunch of times about holing up in shelters at rest stops to get out of the rain, spending the night stretched out in his sleeping bag. I will never again fear the highway patrol eviction. I swear. Stupid. Those picnic tables looked so tempting. Why the hell not?)

I did get up again. I could not leave Abbey tied to the picnic table - though she looked rather comfy herself, stretched out in the shade. Amazingly, in hindsight, I got my running garb on. It had been a few days since I had run. I swore back in December that I was going to start a great habit of running three of four times a week, and stick to it. Well, for a while now I have been really determined to at least keep the sticking to it part alive by running at least once a week. So, why not? I am tired, but running seems to ignore that. I was feeling like a good stretch was needed, so I did that before running. I felt like I had eaten too much food the day before, why not burn some of it up in this beautiful spot.

Another reason that I wanted to take a run was that I couldn't take a hike. Dang National Park rules, dang John Muir preservation ethic, trying to preserve everything, not mess with it, let people see it, but not let dogs chase it. Abbey was not allowed on trails in this, or most other National Parks (thank you Gifford Pinchot and the land of many uses, National Forests, though). So instead of a big hike up into a canyon, or around a lake or two, or both, I would run on a road. Luckily Jenny Lake had a scenic drive route next to it, and looking at the map I realized I could make it a nice run.

I wasn't sure how long I would be able to go. I wanted to try to get at least half an hour in. We were at altitude, compared to the CA coast, so I figured that the thinner air and the road exhaustion would probably knock me out shortly after that. I told myself to keep it slow, and I did. Abbey had no complaints. But after 20 minutes, I felt like I could do 40, and my mind was thinking at that point that it was beautiful in the park, and I want to run distance, and I am not feeling tired, and I am keeping a nice calm pace, and hell, maybe I can make an hour. I have never run for an hour before, but why not. I would run the lake drive until I got to the other end, and make a loop of it, or turn around when I got to a half hour point.

The lake was off to our left as we ran. Cars passed by every once in a while, driving slow. I thought then of how much more detail I was getting to see. I think now of that guy, and my friends, who cross the country on a bike. Hell yeah. Put it on the bucket list. As we got close to the 30 minute mark, I marveled at how good I felt, and how the thinner air didn't seem to be a factor at all. I thought I might even make it to the end of the loop.

In the Santa Cruz mountains before I left California I had been working as a naturalist again. Taking students for hikes in redwood forests and to the tidepools at Natural Bridges State Park, teaching them about the science of those places, and the general rules of ecology as they apply to all places. Eat or be eaten. Food chains. Life and Death. Predator and prey relationships. Adaptations for survival in the natural world. I was aware that there is an outdoor science school based at Grand Tetons that is pretty famous in the naturalist world s science schools go. So I was kind of happy when a van marked with the logo of this school pulled up next to me from the opposite direction as I was running.

The driver smiled at me and said, "Hi."
I said, "Hi."
She said, "I just thought you might want to know that there is a grizzly bear next to the road just a little ways down."
I looked at Abbey, and said "Thanks. Guess I'll be turning around now."
The kids in the back of the van all laughed.
She said something about being cautious, if I did decide to keep going.

I thought about it for a minute. I really wanted to see a grizzly. I hadn't seen one in over 15 years. I started running again, in the same direction I had been headed. The next car was driven by an older fellow. His wife was in the passenger seat. He motioned me over and showed me a picture on his camera. Of a grizzly bear. Told me that the bear was just down the road, and was right next to the road.

I turned around. I was bummed. But I had seen Abbey whine and whimper excitedly when she saw a squirrel. I was running, and I didn't intend to run past it, so would I want to run away from it once I saw it? What if it saw me? Would it chase me? Would Abbey try to chase it? Would it eat me or my dog first? What was really the point of seeing a griz if I didn't have my camera with me? Just kidding on that last one. I had also seen Abbey give chase to a black bear before. She was on leash, but I didn't want her getting too excited. We turned around. We ran back the other way. The time on my watch was 29 minutes into the run. How appropriate.

On the way back one more car pulled up next to me. "Hey man, just wanted you to know we saw a big red bear headed this way through the woods from the other side of the loop." I thanked them, and quickened my pace a little bit. I kept glancing into the woods to my left, but I didn't see a bear.

I asked the campground host later if they get many bears in the campsites. I had been to Yosemite, camped in Little Yosemite Valley, at the base of half dome, watched two black bear cubs climbing up onto some stupidly unprotected backpacks (they were lashed to a tree about four feet off the ground.) My friend and I had been visited by a ranger whose job it was to hike through that campground, warning people to expect bear visits. I had woken up in the middle of the night, opened the tent door, and thrown the previously prepared pile of rocks and sticks at a large black bear, while yelling at it, only to discover later that it had knocked our bear canisters about and bitten a hole in my friend's plastic fuel bottle. The host said it was pretty rare. A few weeks back one camper thought they had heard one. I was sort of disappointed. But, hell, I still had lots of Tetons and Yellowstone to drive through. Maybe I would see a griz. Maybe I would at least get to see a moose. Maybe even a bull moose.

I was proud of myself for finishing an hour's run. We made it back to the campground at 56 minutes, and so we circled the loop once to make it 61 minutes, then circled again, walking, cooling down. My first thought when I stopped running was "Wow, this is what they call the runner's high." I had felt it before, I am sure. I feel it to some degree after every run. But damn if it didn't really kick in after an hour. Of course, there was jello legs sensation, and the mild urge to puke, but these were secondary to the daze I was in. I walked around the loop, then went back to the campground and stretched, and wondered how I could possibly have chosen to run that day knowing that the campground had no shower. The sign next to the ice cold water faucet said "No brushing teeth, washing dishes, or bathing." I didn't read it.

The First and Second Day of the Trip (without much of a noticeable boundary between the two)

Day 1

The first line on the first page of the Driver's Guide to Driving Across this Ridiculously Large Country We Live In is probably, "Be sure to plan ahead." Which I thought I did, by getting my brakes checked. And, so far so good on that note. But, sleeping has been a bit more of an issue. Once again, the Civic is a great car for everything but.

The second line is probably something like "Allow extra time to...to do everything."
(And somewhere in there there is probably a line about not mooching great writing ideas off of John McPhee, but I am feeling spiteful right now due to the scratched nature of my third book on CD, his "The Founding Fish." It's about shad, okay?)

My intended departure time was early Tuesday morning. And despite what you all know about me and my sleeping habits, when I said early I meant early, like 7 am. I did allow enough time in the final days before for blogging, final Facebook checking, drinking with the cohorting coworkers, 9 holes of frolf with the goats and goat-like naturalists, buying a new guitar case and eating one last boring meal at the brewery, and lots of other good stuff. I managed to have a few beers and a couple of attempts at redeeming the men's team in euchre (both lost, which I would like to blame Millipede for, but really it was a team effort) as well beforehand. I did get some packing and cleaning done. On Monday evening I decided to leave the final hour of packing and cleaning for Tuesday morning, and reasonably pushed the departure time back to 8 am.

I managed to wake up Tuesday morning at 8 am, and after breakfast, goodbyes, and a final hour of packing and cleaning that stretched into about 3 hours, I was on the road by early afternoon. Aiming to get to a campground near Elko, NV.

In hindsight, I probably should have left earlier. By the time I reached the exit on I-80 where I knew the campsite to be located, I had had three Rockstars and way too much Subway, and I was amped up on my first book on tape, The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. And the thing about me and books, is, well, once I am reading I don't really like to stop until I am passing out. Which I managed to widely avoid by grace of the rest area gods and their choice of placement of a quaint rest stop somewhere along the lonely state route 93 in the NE corner of NV, just south of the ID line (and well past my planned stopping point near Elko). A real nice place to wake up to see the sunrise - middle of the desert, next to a river. Or at least I imagine it would have been. I crashed for an hour, waking up every ten minutes or so to experiment with a new attempt at comfort in the front seat of the Civic. Damn it, this is just what I swore I wouldn't do this time around.

So the first night I slept in rest stops. One in NV, one in ID a few hours later. Sunrise......somewhere just short of Massacre Rocks State Park in Idaho, a place I had researched ahead of time as a possible campground if I made it that far on my first day of driving, or intelligently split the drive to Idaho into two days. I didn't stop at Massacre Rocks. I wish I had.

A list of things to do differently on Day 1, next time I drive from the Santa Cruz mountains to Maryland (or, really, so far, to Remington, Indiana. Don't ask.):

• pack early, leave the night before
• stay with Shawn and Emma in Oakland on a work night for early departure and hometown inspiration
• stay at the campground as planned
• Stop to take pictures of that crazy house on the south side of I80 in NV.
• Or drive across NV 50 instead of 80, cause it sounds cool
• Based on above, camp in Great Basin
• drive through NE NV during the day time to fully appreciate the desert
• Scratch that last one. Drive through all desert areas at sunrise of sunset only, taking photos the whole way
• Travel in larger vehicle. Ideally, synchro Vanagon Westfalia or Dodge Sprinter camper

Day Two

Abbey was spending as much time staring out the window, shedding, and sleeping as I was listening to Neal Stephenson. She also was managing quite nicely to pee quickly every time I let her out of the car. At gas stations, at rest areas. A good travelling companion. Calm in the car. Not prone to howling. Only once every thousand miles or so did she try to crawl out of her cave in the back, onto the front seats and into my lap. Which I generally discouraged.

When we finally were up and on the road on "day two" of the trip, my intention was to aim for the National Forests and associated campgrounds south of Grand Tetons National Park. This meant a few hours of freeway and a lot of wandering mountain roads. We had driven through Twin Falls, ID, in the blur that was the early morning driving, between rest areas. Really, we skirted it, driving around the actual city on border roads. I was not awake enough at the time to take a break from Stephenson to put on Built to Spill, or for that matter Josh Ritter, though I am not sure he is from Twin Falls, only somewhere in Idaho. I had been to Idaho once before, actually Mountain Home, but that was more westerly than we were ever going to be on this trip. I did think a bit about how the last time I had driven up this way there was a lot more desert between CA and ID, and I realized there might be some merit to by strategy of driving at night.

We passed through Pocatello, ID, and I wondered why this place sounded so familiar until later I recalled that Jack Black (the hobo turned librarian, not the actor) had spent many a day there visiting Salt Chunk Mary and exchanging pilfered goods for cash. This was to be the first of an old west theme that is hard to avoid when driving through Idaho, Wyoming, and South Dakota. I managed to later pass Wild Bill dam, WY, and Deadwood, SD, and I almost bought a Stetson and the biography of Seth Bullock at Wall Drug. Last night, I camped in Garretson, SD, apparently a place where Jesse James occasionally ran from posses.

On the way into Grand Tetons, I discovered a few things. There is yet another form of the picnic robbing jay that I know as the Stellar's Jay on the west coast (blue and black, with a mohawk, annoying) and the Grey Jay on the east coast (grey, also annoying). I think, anyway. I saw one, but didn't get a photo. It was black and white, about the same size as a Stellar's Jay, and though brave it wasn't really as annoying. I could be wrong. Could this have been a shrike? I thought they were smaller. This was at Palisades Dam, on the Idaho side of the ID/WY border on the snake river. I stopped at the dam because, well, it was big, and it was on the Snake River, and I was hoping there was a fish ladder there that I could take pictures of salmon in. There wasn't, as far as I could tell. I didn't really get too near the dam though. There was barely anyone there, so I let Abbey off the leash for a bit. She immediately took a shit, and we were both happy about that. Though I missed out on taking pictures of fish and that jay-like black and white bird, I did get some of my first (don't laugh now) non-brown pelicans. White pelicans, I think they are called.



Just before leaving the dam, I realized it would be a good idea to look at the map. I did, and then realized I had made a semi-wrong turn. Or missed a turn, really. I would still make it to the park, but I was neglecting a scenic route. I turned around a headed back the way I had come. It seemed only appropriate to make sure I entered Grand Teton National Park by climbing up and over Teton Pass. Which I am proud to say the Civic managed all 8, 431 ft of (though I am sure not all at once), only slowing to about 25 mph in second gear (fully loaded, though I am glad I sold the kayak before leaving CA) on the steepest parts.

At the top of the pass, I pulled over to let the guy in the VW Passat wagon with a picnic table tied to his roof pass me, to let Abbey pee (higher than she had ever peed before!) and to take a picture of the first of much western cheese

Across the country again

In 1998, I graduated from Virginia Tech with an engineering degree. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I only knew that I didn't want to be an engineer. I was thinking, at the time, along the lines of mechanic, or environmental educator. The mechanic thing didn't work out, though I still find myself under the occasional shade tree from time to time.

I spent the summer after graduation partying hard and working a night shift job at a construction site on campus pulling wires for a construction company, making more money than I had ever made in my life. For $6.25/hr I was hanging out with my good friends, falling for a girl, working, getting paid, and hitting the bar at 12:30 am to start a night of partying. Sleeping until after noon, going to work. Repeat. It wasn't too bad of a life. I was always happy hanging out in Blacksburg, partying, doing a radio show, drinking cheap beers at the Cellar, falling for beautiful hippie girls. But one fateful day I was sitting downtown on a bench. Probably smoking, probably people watching. I happened to run into Nathan and Lorena, and they were discussing an upcoming move to San Francisco. On a whim, I asked if maybe I could come along. I figured San Francisco would be a good place to start off the next phase of my life, the "after college" phase. Nathan said yes. This was to be the first of a series of cross country trips. This first one was accomplished in a 24 ft Ryder truck and a early 90s Nissan Sentra sedan, with two dogs and four people. The two dogs consumed a lot of dramamine, the four people many a cigarette. We managed to clip the side of a shed with the truck while leaving Kent St. on the east coast. On our arrival in San Francisco, we managed to bend the drive shaft of the truck pulling into the parking lot of our new home.

In 2001 I found myself, suddenly, without a job, and therefore without a place to live, and without the money to pay rent in the San Francisco area. I had left my well paid job as an Engineering Technician to continue pursuing that environmental education dream. I was living in an amazing house in an amazing park just north of San Francisco. But I hadn't really thought too far ahead when I accepted the 6 month position, and when August rolled around, I realized I did not have prospects for work in the Bay Area, and the when the job ended the housing it provided ended too. So I sold the motorcycle, and packed up the Civic for a trip back to the east coast, where I had landed a job in the White Mountains of New Hampshire on short notice. This was to be a great break from my California life, a great place to teach, a great place to finally experience some real wintertime, a place where I found myself immersed in an amazing community of great people. Along the way I managed to sleep in a couple of rest stops, traverse the Badlands and an equivalent confusing alien terrain of emotions, listen to a BBC performance of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (not recommended for road trips, get the books on tape instead) rather than James Earl Jones reading the Bible (it was a hard choice), and almost die getting myself stupidly lost amongst cows and long long roads in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

A few years later, I found myself doing the edumacation thing in Acadia, ME. An amazing place. Beautiful. Mountains meet the ocean. Epic. Also, crowded. My friend and I had both spent some time in San Francisco, and we met there in Acadia. We had a few conversations about how, well, yeah, Acadia is beautiful, ME is beautiful, but really, well, the Northern California coast is comparatively more beautiful and much less crowded. We both ended up in California again before too long. I spent the winter in MD at my parents house working in a homebrew supply store, and then at Sunday River Ski Resort in ME, paying cheap rent, living with great friends and my first baby buddy (Simon, who was 6 months at the time, and loved it when I played the Beatles on guitar for him), and learning to snowboard. In March I drove across the country. Of this trip, I recall that I crashed late in a campground in western TN, then woke up early to dodge the fee. I drove, I believe, from TN to New Mexico, not being able to cope with the midwest at the time. You might recall that this was the advent of the stupid war in Iraq. When I hit Flagstaff, AZ, I found a hostel, and met a very cute girl who was feeling equally compelled to go for a drink and some food. We went out and talked a blue streak. Turns out she was a southern baptist who believed we were finally fighting the jihad we good christians should be fighting against the heathen muslims. No, she wasn't from Flagstaff. Luckily, there were many other great people at the hostel to balance my impression.

On arrival in CA, I started work at a place that was to change my life, the Mendocino Woodlands. I became a naturalist deep in the redwoods. My edges softened, my cynicism started to fade, I learned a greater appreciation for reggae music.

It is now 6 years and 2.5 months later. I am running late on my cycle of moving across the country. But tomorrow I do it again. This time, a return to the homeland. I will be driving towards MD, the long way through NV, Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, the Badlands, across the Mississippi, through Ohio, and home through the Cumberland Gap. I have a job waiting in MD, taking water quality samples for the state. Who knows what comes afterwards. I look forwards to thunderstorms, muggy summer nights, lightning bugs, family, old friends, new babies, Charm City, sailing?, paddling some east coast marshes, and hurting my knees on icy slopes this winter. I intend to teach myself to take nothing for granted.

Happy trails, CA. It's been, well, utopic.