[ Lost in the Landscape ]

on the road–part 1

I guess it’s com­fort­ing that the blog doesn’t have a mind of its own and just write itself while I’m away on vacation…

Well, I’m back from points north, includ­ing 8 days in Yel­low­stone. Here’s a quick look at the trip now that I’ve had a chance to orga­nize some of my tourist pictures.

Day 1, less than an hour out of Vegas, and I’m off pave­ment already. I could have sworn the map showed this stretch of the road going through the Mor­mon Moun­tains as being paved, so encoun­ter­ing dirt so soon is a bit of a surprise.

But as you can see it’s a good dirt road, as friendly towards Buicks and Honda sedans as it is towards my Jeep, and it con­nects up with an equally good gravel road as shown on the map. After a few dozen miles, the gravel road hooks up with pave­ment, as promised. But wait: Road Closed?

The black­top looks fresh and smooth and the stripes shiny and new, so how closed can the road be? Besides there’s no way back other than the way I came, and the gas is get­ting low.

Well, yeah, half a dozen times the road dis­ap­pears into the dry lit­tle river—generally not a good thing for a road to do—but for­tu­nately they’ve built gravel alter­nate routes around the washouts for the half-dozen locals to use. So no need to backtrack.

One of a bunch of these lazy snakes tak­ing a Club Med river­side siesta on the warm asphalt:

And finally the road hooks up with the Great Basin High­way, the eastern-most north-south route in Nevada. With snow-covered moun­tains on either side of the high­way, it’s incred­i­bly scenic. I’ve always loved California’s High­way 395 along the east­ern escarp­ment of the Sierra Nevada, but I might now have a new favorite drive.

So, after 12 hours of dri­ving from San Diego I’m at the first night’s des­ti­na­tion, Great Basin National Park, on the slopes of Wheeler Peak, at 13 thou­sand and change in alti­tude the tallest in Nevada. The camp­ground is almost 8,000 feet up, and pretty cold for the mid­dle of May. And what’s this? Snow? Pretty exotic for some­one from San Diego.

Day 2 begins with a drive up to the end of the road on Wheeler Peak, to over 10,000 feet ele­va­tion, and there the snow picks up. Then back down 3,000 feet to the peak’s caves, Lehmann Caves and year-round 50-degree comfort.

The caves are a medium-sized com­plex in not-pristine con­di­tion. In the early days of the caves, pay­ing your entrance fee enti­tled you to break off a sta­lac­tite or two to take home. And there’s a spot where peo­ple used soot from their can­dles to record their ini­tials on the roof of the cave—tacky and inter­est­ingly his­tor­i­cal at the same time.

More travel on the Great Basin High­way gets me to my first real pho­to­graphic des­ti­na­tion, Shoshone Falls, which was doc­u­mented by expe­di­tionary pho­tog­ra­pher Tim­o­thy H. O’Sullivan in 1868 and 1874. For some­thing that has been called the “Nia­gara of the West,” the falls were sur­pris­ingly dif­fi­cult to find. They appear nowhere on the Triple-A Idaho state map, and if it weren’t for there being a street named Falls Boule­vard in Twin Falls, I might not have found them. Yes, there was a sign. Par­tially obscured behind a tree.

O’Sullivan’s images of the falls are clear, force­ful, direct depic­tions of a force of nature. You can feel the awe he felt as he stood on the brink.

Tim­o­thy H. O’Sullivan. Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho, View Across the Top of the Falls, 1874. [ source ]

Today, what you find is a major water fea­ture domes­ti­cated through hydro­elec­tric impounds, and its banks have houses on one side and a bland sub­ur­ban look­ing Fris­bee and pic­nick­ing park on the other. It was like see­ing a wild lion dressed up in a pink tutu and forced to walk on its hind legs. But it’s the sort of des­ti­na­tion where the human/nature edges and col­li­sions are dra­matic, so out comes my more seri­ous cam­era gear.

Next: On to Val­ley of the Moon, and Yellowstone.

June 07 2008 | Categories: rambles | Tags: dirt roads • Great Basin Highway • Lehmann Caves • Mormon Mountains • nevada • Shoshone Falls • Wheeler Peak | No Comments »

destination: yellowstone

At the risk of sound­ing too much like Chris­t­ian on Project Run­way, I’m about to embark on a lit­tle “vay-cay.” I leave San Diego on Wednes­day in my old Jeep Chero­kee for what could be its last major trip to the Amer­i­can West.

These days I worry about gas prices, my car­bon foot­print, and the mechan­i­cal reli­a­bil­ity of my trusty vehic­u­lar com­pan­ion that I’ve had since it was a baby, back in 1993. My pre­ferred modes of trans­port the last seven years has been scoot­ers I’ve owned, the first a zippy lit­tle Aprilia Scarabeo 150, and now a big Buick of a scooter, a 582cc Honda Sil­ver Wing that weighs over 500 pounds. It has no style, but I got it for cheap. (For all its mas­sive­ness, it still gets almost 50 miles to the gal­lon.)

Above: the Shell sta­tion down the hill on April 30, before they raised their prices.

But the thought of strap­ping two cam­era bags with three cam­eras, two seri­ous tri­pos and a big steel box of film to the scooter sounds a lit­tle crazy. And that’s before you fac­tor in the camp­ing gear and mul­ti­ple changes of clothes to keep me look­ing semi-snazzy. Impor­tant things, you know. Besides, when I floated the idea with John–mostly in jest–his jaw dropped with concern.

“Yel­low­stone? On a scooter?”

Maybe I was cruel to even scare him like that, par­tic­u­larly after the episode six years ago when he spent seven weeks tak­ing care of me when I was piled into a wheel­chair after a lit­tle meet­ing of the body with hard pave­ment. But the Jeep it will be for this trip. And not only will the trip be in a car, I’ll at John’s urg­ing be pack­ing a cell phone, in case the Jeep breaks down.

That cell is a big move. Even though I’ve been doing email for over twenty years and have had my own web site for well over ten, I’ve been a total Lud­dite when it comes to cell phones. Yes, they’d be handy to have some­times, but I’m not will­ing to chance being turned into one of those people–You know the type: device planted firmly to ear, mut­ter­ing inanely about foot cream or last night’s pasta salad to who­ever will lis­ten, and often doing it in a mov­ing vehi­cle while dri­ving dis­tract­edly like a chauf­feur on a Quaalude jag. Pray for my soul, folks.

So, cell­phone in pocket, I’ll be head­ing north through Las Vegas into the Nevada out­back, through desert towns with great names like Elgin, Carp(?!), Ely, Pioche, Jack­pot and Caliente. (In nam­ing just six cities, I’ve named vir­tu­ally all the cities on the map on this route that cuts due north through the Great Basin, along the East­ern edge of Nevada.) The nom­i­nal des­ti­na­tion is Yel­low­stone, and I intend to get there. But who knows what else I’ll find. There might even be some cell­phone recep­tion along the way!

May 19 2008 | Categories: photography • places • rambles | Tags: carbon footprint • cell phones • desert towns • nevada • scooters • vacations | 1 Comment »