A Long Form Journal of a Journey or Two
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The John Muir Trail
A walk in the Sierra Nevada, including a detailed journal of a north to south traverse of the 178-mile portion of the John Muir Trail beginning at Tuolumne Meadows and ending at Mt. Whitney, with brief descriptions of people met on the trail and personal experiences. |
The Return Of The Family Road Trip
Throughout April 2022, our nuclear family did its part to revivify the classic Family Road Trip, traveling some 4000 miles within the US in a There and Back Again loop that began and ended in New Jersey but primarily centered around the Four Corners region of the US - the place where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico meet. |
Day 1
I am driving Route 395 north from Ridgecrest, California, in one-hundred and ten degree heat. Just outside of town a woman garlands a roadside grave with flowers. The low, white cross is planted fifteen feet off the road, its paint chipped and peeling in the unsentimental desert air. Twenty miles farther, as mountains pass majestic at sixty-five miles an hour, a grandmotherly woman appears to be explaining to a small group of people, their cars and trucks pulled onto the shoulder around her, how her Saturn coupe managed to get into a ditch some thirty feet east of the highway. Her arms and hands flap in small arcs, expressing perplexity. I’m speeding along the long and undulating bottom of Owens Valley, boxed on the east by the Inyo and White Mountains and the west by the awesome escarpment of the Sierra Nevada, rising ten thousand feet from the valley floor. At a stop in Lone Pine, east of Mt. Whitney, I’m greeted at the ranger station with dire warnings about the campsite havoc of bears. Lurid color photographs of bears climbing trees, bears ripping the windows out of minivans and bears bouncing ice chests across picnic tables are prominently displayed. John, one third of our hiking team and a National Park Service Ranger stationed on Alcatraz Island, learns that contrary to his original plan we don’t pick up our backcountry permits here. Apparently the paperwork is at the Tuolumne Ranger Station, one hundred miles to the north, in Yosemite Park. Phil, the other third of our group and a ranger with the Bureau of Land Management overseeing Death Valley and its environs, uses the bathroom down the hall without permission and gets dressed down by the sharp young ranger behind the counter. She accuses him of not reading the sign: "No Public Restrooms." "There's too many damned signs in here," he grouses. I agree with Phil, but I’m not a Ranger, and keep my mouth shut. I’ve got some experience in the wilderness but it’s been twenty-five years since I’ve spent more than a couple of days out here. This trek will be at least twenty-one days. I’m eager to get into the woods. In the last available slot at the Whitney Portal overflow lot we park my tired but dependable old Saab, where it will sit for the next three weeks, patiently awaiting our arrival. I rummage through my pack to get rid of a little more weight. I heft the bear canister John has brought for me to use. It's kind of him to offer but I stubbornly resist, the extra three pounds seeming an unnecessary insult. I’m nervous, and can’t decide. Finally, it’s time to go. I pull a quarter out of my pocket. Heads; I leave it. Tails; I take it. It comes up heads. I stuff the canister in the trunk of my car. We climb into Phil’s small pickup, our packs in the back and the three of us wedged into the front. After three months of preparation the ninety-minute drive to Lee Vining passes quickly. Halfway to our destination a black dot suddenly appears out of the mountains to our right, detaching itself from the brown backdrop of the Inyos and leaping into the open blue sky. It’s moving so quickly I must turn my head to follow its progress, away from us and north, up the valley. “What is that?” I exclaim. “It’s an F-18.” says Phil, “Had one crash in the Panamint Valley last month.” The twenty-five million dollar weapon stationed out of nearby China Lake scoots out of sight in seconds. We follow in its wake, lower and slower, until turning left and steeply uphill at Mono Lake. We quickly gain a mile of elevation and arrive at the eastern gate of Yosemite National Park. An unsmiling ranger glances at our park pass and waves us through. After a ritual pre-journey photograph in the parking lot we hoist our packs for the first time and walk a mere half mile to the top of Puppy Dome, our first campsite, dropping the new and unfamiliar weight while the sun is still a hand’s width above the horizon. Below and slightly north of us Route 120 winds away, east and west. The old Tioga Road, once a Native American footpath, now hums with automobiles. Directly across the busy thoroughfare Lembert Dome rises in hundreds of feet of graceful, undulating granite. To the south Lyell Canyon, our route tomorrow, beckons. Thunder and lightning, marching in on heavy clouds from the east, speed our first dinner and we quickly repack to get off the exposed rock. In the trees at the base of Puppy Dome I enter into a Laurel & Hardy backcountry slapstick nightmare. Attempting to safeguard my food from bears I try many times to loft a stick and then a stone, with my fifty feet of nylon cord attached, over a branch in the gathering dark, my tent still not set up and the storm coming closer. I finally get a line over the branch, tie one bag off and hoist it up sixteen feet, bumping it against the limb. I then desperately lift the other bag above my head and tie it off to the other end of the line as a counterbalance. I let go. The first bag hurtles straight down, dragging the second bag up to the limb. In the dim light mosquitoes are diving into my ears and eyes and I am starting to sweat. John and Phil come over. "You don't have your tent up?", John asks, unnecessarily. "No," I rasp, "this food hanging business is tricky, and I need a little more time." I’m disgusted with myself. I look up at the second bag snagged in the tree and see stars. Not storm clouds. Stars, bright white in a black sky. The storm has passed. To hell with it, I think, and inelegantly retrieve my food bags and line. I stuff my pack haphazardly and announce that I am returning to the dome. We sleep under the sky. Meteors flash across the Milky Way. Eventually the celestial show becomes overwhelming. It's cold and I curl up and sleep. |
It was a good time to go. I had just resigned from a job I held for eight years, and the children's school calendar included seven days covering Spring Break. Additionally, my wife is a freelance clothing designer, allowing her to craft her own schedule. Toss in sharply-spiking gas prices, rampant nationwide inflation, and a resurging pandemic and it’s easy to see why friends and family were scratching their heads and asking us “You really want to do this now?”
Yes, now. Not only because we had begun our planning for the trip months before, while I still had a job and COVID-19 was - according to some official sources - on the wane, but mostly because that’s how we operate. Our family motto might be “numquam casus meos indicare mihi*.” After preparing, packing and planning, we made our departure at 4 a.m., in a powerful rain storm with plenty of wind. We drove 14 hours west that first day, finally hitting our motel beds in Terre Haute, Indiana, at about 9 p.m. That first day of highway driving is the longest, just to get us out of where we are, fired by our anticipation and eagerness. The following three days would get us to our first destination, in Galisteo, New Mexico, in shorter stretches. Through Kansas City, Missouri, diagonally across Kansas, to Amarillo, Texas, and finally arriving at our little rental house in the early evening, we were buffeted by consistent headwinds often topping gusts of 40 mph and above. The entire atmosphere seemed to be pushing us back. Care was taken to avoid parking crossways to the wind, and making sure that doors on either side of the auto were not simultaneously opened, as it could be catastrophic for untethered objects like papers, hats and stuffies. An interesting side trip as we headed west, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, just north of Strong City, Kansas, saw us wander under speedily moving clouds among late winter grasses not yet green. A herd of buffalo grazed about a mile away and the well-kept old house, barn and outbuildings of an 1878 farm made for a fascinating look into frontier life. Finally in New Mexico at the end of our first leg, on that first night in a tight house on a small ranch, we made quick use of the laundry and the kitchen, chowing down on our own homemade guacamole and salsa and listening to the eager wind rushing around the eaves. The next several days in New Mexico saw trips up to Taos, down to Roswell and wandering a bit in Santa Fe and the local environs. Northern New Mexico is a glorious landscape and, although the so-called hellwind only briefly let up at the end of the week, the stars were hard and bright, and the dry desert air stayed cool. Passing through Taos, we had local tacos, chatted up a few locals sunning themselves in front of their shops, and found a rough riverside hot spring a short walk from an old bridge over the Rio Grande river about 25 minutes north of town. In this region the views are long and vantage points along the highway reveal the river’s wild and deep gash down the center of a wide smooth valley bordered with snow-capped peaks. The next day saw a six-hour round trip drive to Roswell, a town that appears to have done a pretty capable job of capitalizing on the tale of a 1947 crash of a flying saucer containing alien beings. The area has plenty of kitschy nods to the story and a surprisingly entertaining self-styled museum does a great job of documenting the purported event and the nationwide cultural reaction, whose waves continue to wash up on the beaches of popular conspiracy theory to this day. Brief conversations with several museum employees revealed that it’s a fun place to work, with a mix of history, academic research, cogent theorizing and wild speculation adding to a Disneyland-style funhouse for all tastes, even the most ironic. The desert winds that had hounded us throughout did not let up, and as we headed back north, a sudden and fast-moving wildfire upwind and to the west turned the sky brown, reddening the sun, stealing the oxygen, and bringing visibility for a time down to about 30 feet. With fog lights on and the interior cabin air set to recirculate we broke through the wall of smoke about 45 minutes north of the town, welcoming the blue skies. Our little house on the ranch was surrounded by paddocks and barns, and other houses for workers and family, and the kids rapidly made pals with the ranch dogs. The horses and mules were introduced, and some of the ranch process - including observing a mobile farrier at work - was enjoyed. The children ate it all up. Us parents welcomed the children’s fascination with their unfamiliar surroundings, and the owners and ranch hands were kind to them. Our four days at the ranch up, we headed west again, this time through Indian land and two-lane blacktop, to Page, Arizona, where we would - via prearranged reservation - tour the storied Antelope Canyon, a wildly curvaceous seasonal pocket riverbed, in its dry season. The winds had strengthened, and as our tour group assembled, we caught the Indian tour guides (this is Navajo land and observes local tribal law) discussing shutting down the facility. We pressed forward with our small group, however, and were soon deep in a quiet sculpted environment, led by our Indian guide. The fascinating tour lasts about 90 minutes walking upstream on the sandy riverbed through the cool undulating sandstone, arriving back on the surface to galeforce winds strong enough to make us squeeze our eyes shut and grab our hats. We learn that we were indeed the last group allowed through prior to the entire area shutting down due to high winds. We turn back eastward, retracing our two-lane blacktop for a few hours before turning north into Monument Valley, in Navajo land bordering Arizona and Utah. Although the wind does not let up, the appalling beauty of this otherworldly environment lessens our awareness of discomfort. Much has been written about this well-documented piece of geological art on a planetary scale. Stark outcroppings jut above gently curving plains, and both sedimentary mesas and dramatic volcanic plugs thrust lonely pires into the vast empty sky. Alone or in groups, these watchful monuments stand out all the more in their solitude, like lightning in dark clouds. In a heavy and continuous crosswind we run up to Bluff, Utah, and after scraping the shelves at a local convenience store for edible objects to assemble an acceptable (read: not candy or soda) meal, we stick close to our little cabin rented for the night in this tiny community hemmed in on all sides by encroaching walls of rock over one hundred feet high. Waking early before the wind gets up to what has become a standard wail, we shoot east and then south, making for the Four Corners monument and then Shiprock, New Mexico, before landing in Durango, Colorado for the night. The Four Corners monument is also on Navajo land, and although the location itself - the arbitrary product of harried 19th-century surveyors plotting out the boundaries of US states - is not sacred, stepping away from the souvenir sheds out into the surrounding emptiness is a humbling reminder of the majesty and loneliness of the land. Shiprock, a massive volcanic plug bursting out of the ground and surrounded by emptiness, is accessible by a paved road to which several dirt roads connect. Awed by the rough monolith, we did not approach closer than about half a mile, feeling that we were as near as comfort allowed. The capricious gusts, the startling quiet when the wind briefly died, and the ancient magma were powerful enough from where we stood. That night we slept in Durango, Colorado, on the south side of this busy town bordered by mountains. In the morning, after grocery shopping, we headed an hour east to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, where we had booked six nights in a comfortable house above the burgeoning tourist town at over 7000 feet. Five loads of laundry and a tasty home-cooked meal under our belts, we slept late the next day, allowing ourselves a break from our flight through the wild windy high desert. The town, with less than 2000 permanent residents, has reportedly been burdened by an influx of well-heeled second-home owners, who ostensibly rent to travelers like us. The locals are friendly but wary. We purchase the hourly services of a popular hot spring right on the San Juan river that flows through the town. The waters have that classic sulfur stink of rotting eggs and the nose gets used to it quickly as the relaxation seeps into our bones. The next days see us running up into the mountains, down back into New Mexico to visit another purported alien crash site, a picnic high up on alpine meadowlands and a few visits back into Durango, including the Durango Hot Springs. On the latter occasion, the winds blasting up the valley have me eyeing the crazily dancing trees above our heads as we lie in one of the many outdoor pools. Earlier visible, the surrounding peaks are soon obscured by a dense cloud of dust blown north by the gale, as well as by smoke from a new wildfire well to the west of us in Arizona. Shifting with the air currents, the smoke and dust we experience in Durango do not make it to our temporary lodging in Pagosa Springs, although the wind continues. Over the last several weeks, since our departure from New Jersey, not only has the wind challenged us, but the nights have regularly been very cold, often dipping below freezing. There were snow flurries in Kansas City. It’s April and the days are warm, but the combination of the wind and the cold makes the nights bracing and the stars bright and sharp. Our final day trip from Pagosa Springs takes us up Route 160 across the 10,857-foot Wolf Creek Pass pass and down into and across the San Luis Valley, to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, a journey of about two hours, one-way. The sand dunes sit at the eastern edge of the valley, under the Sangre de Christo peaks, a popular tourist spot and, like many tourist spots, it’s worth the trip. Visitors throng the most accessible areas, looking like small dark ants wandering the almost featureless landscape. We roll and tumble down the sand, alternating between sunlit warmth in the shadow of a dune and the cold windswept crests. We chicken out on a deeply sandy four-wheel-drive road after just a mile, skipping nervously back to terra firma in our consumer-grade all-wheel-drive family SUV. Our picnic lunch in an empty campground is quiet, for the moment, and we are grateful for the break. The San Luis Valley is a geologic eye-opener, a valley of some 8000 square miles with an average altitude of over 7600 feet, almost completely surrounded by snow-capped peaks. Like so much of the US, beef and oil appear to dominate the economy, and ranches peppered with fossil fuel extraction tech is visible throughout. Talking with folks in Alamosa, the area’s most populous town, we learn that water has become the most valuable coin, as the rapidly-expanding Colorado Springs/Denver megalopolis, some 200 miles and a few mountain passes to the north and east, has begun to lay claim to resources contained within this fiercely self sufficient high-altitude valley. We return to our cozy vacation rental with all of its comforts, preparing for a morning departure and our inevitable run back to New Jersey, 2000 miles to the east. Over the following six days running east we adopt a not-too-hectic schedule, keeping our daily drive totals to under seven hours, disappointed a little that the consistent winds that should now be working in our favor drop away almost entirely over the remainder of the trip. Our first night of the eastward run finds us as far as Garden City, Kansas. We flow down and out of the Rocky Mountains and out onto the High Plains, with its empty sky and endless horizon. No wonder people call their land holy, although sacred might be a better word. East of Garden City we return to the great interstate, Route 70, less interesting than the smaller roads, but faster. Our drive for discovery and adventure is now being tempered by a desire to sleep in our own beds. Travel is intoxicating, but is made better by the promise of returning home. Our return takes us again through Kansas City, but we don’t linger, pressing on quickly for St Louis, where we permit ourselves some touristy behavior, attending the surprisingly excellent museum of western expansion housed beneath the iconic Gateway Arch National Park on the mighty Mississippi River. In St. Louis we also visit a quaint residential district containing shops, bookstores and a cool record shop, as well as the National Museum of Transportation, which has plenty of big old beautiful trains, some of which function. After St, Louis, it’s a smash and grab sleepover in Indianapolis, Indiana, followed by a stop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that includes a visit to the National Aviary, a curiously restful facility with hundreds of remarkable birds from all over the world contained in comfortably habitable spaces that visitors stroll through. After Pittsburgh, a strangely-alluring former Rust Belt city of plate-glass and bridges, it’s a straight shot across PA to our little one-bedroom condo 12 miles - as the crow flies - east of Manhattan. It’s not spacious or exciting but it’s home, and after stripping our vehicle of everything, we sleep late. Twenty-five days, over 4000 miles, 12 one-night stands, two multi-night homes, five museums and two alien flying saucer crash sites, as well as multiple parks, picnics, book stores, thrift shops, taco trucks, truck stops and other more remote pee stops. We added several new stickers to the cargo box atop the car. The Family Road Trip is alive and well. * Never tell me the odds |