The West’s vast landscapes seem like old friends to me. In the 1960s, sardined together in Dad’s homemade camper, my family stopped everywhere Mom wanted to stop (antique stores), and at all the national parks. And long ago, Padre and I road-tripped through Montana (above), Oregon, and California.
But neither of us remember so much scary fire.
In 1965, I’m sure Dad didn’t check the daily fire maps – I bet there weren’t any, at least not that you could google. (Maybe a hotline? I don’t think so). As our departure date neared, I sometimes checked the fire maps twice a day, fearing we were headed right through prime fire territory in early September. Was it really that different, years ago?
Yep – check the chart. On our trip, we detoured away from one raging inferno near Bridgeport, CA., and glanced nervously as dense smoke wafted over mountain passes near us. On Oregon’s Santiam Pass we saw grim acres of withered dead trees, remnants of last year’s destructive Oregon fires, so bad that Oregonians coined a new month: Smoketember.
Should we have left even later than September? It wouldn’t have helped. In November, California’s Camp Fire and other conflagrations west of our route killed several people, destroyed thousands of acres, and wiped out the town of Paradise.
Besides watching fire maps, we also recommend that you learn to drink blood (desert survival), avoid random bathroom breaks so the guy in the hockey mask doesn’t get you, watch for cool Corvette caravans, and pray for an internet connection when your new car’s detector systems go rogue. Most important advice: Make sure to visit the West soon, before it burns up or disappears.
Ok, a bit of hyberbole there, since I’m sure the West won’t disappear anytime soon, and it’ll be here far longer than we will, as Wila Cather points out: How many names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here.”
Impending oblivion is as good a reason as any, but there’s one more: The West’s best natural monuments belong to all of us, thanks to the National Parks System President Woodrow Wilson established in 1916. And they’re free if you have Old People National Parks passes, which we gleefully waved at the ranger as we flew past the crawling Yosemite Park entrance lines. Who hoo! Old age and treachery….(works for us).
After leaving Las Vegas and civilization, we gassed up at The Last Stop Before Death Valley, where the attendant pointed us to the tavern’s bathroom next door. When we hesitated, she assured us that no one would even look up when we entered. The morning imbibers did not, in fact, look up.
We chugged up steep switchbacks and descended below sea level, eventually climbing 10,000 feet up Yosemite National Park’s Tioga Pass. These dramatic shifts in elevation make for jaw-dropping scenery: craggy snow-topped mountains, wildflower-dotted, lush valleys……and lots of dirt, like the hellscape we saw from Dante’s View just inside the entrance to Death Valley National Park.
I’m using the word ‘hellscape’ in a flattering way, the way Hell might look if you just peeked over the rim but didn’t have to stay there: Vast dirt-red mountaintops surrounding a sulpheric valley of steaming rock and dirt. Of course there would be dirt in a place called Dante’s View, but wow: talk about scenic dirt.
And HOT – 118 at Hell’s welcome room, Furnace Creek Visitor’s Center, which sounds balmy compared to the record (134), but the intense blast of heat as we stepped out of the Mazda was not for air-conditioned sissies, no sir.
The Visitor Center exhibits include displays of all things creepy, crawly, snakish, hawkish, or brown. Hard to imagine that anything survives in the Death Valley moonscape, and survival here takes special skills, including drinking blood, growing sharp spines, and walking on scorching hot rocks. Oh, and it helps to be poisonous. Not a bad set of skills for modern life (I’m thinking dating in the 80s…..would have been handy skills, those).
We pulled in for the night at a 1950’s throwback motor hotel in Lone Pine, California, nestled in the shadow of the spectacular Sierra Nevada mountain range. First notable stop the next morning: The Lone Pine Movie Museum, where Padre paid homage to Roy Rogers, his childhood hero. We followed the designated Movie Road to check out movie locations, which Padre recognized since he watches plenty of old westerns to this day.
Next we made a sobering visit to the Manzanar War Relocation Center, one of 10 centers where the United States detained over 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry at the height of WWII. Many of the detainees never regained their homes, property, or gained citizenship after the war. We found the Catch-22 loyalty papers detainees were forced to sign particularly cruel: If they didn’t forfeit all ties to their Japanese heritage to swear allegiance to the United States, they faced harsher confinement, sometimes for years.
It saddened us that America, our shining city on a hill, didn’t do better during this tragic episode in our nation’s history. This kept us deep in discussion all the way to Yosemite, where the failed trip planner (me) failed to allocate enough days to hike and explore. We gawped and gaped at its beauty from our car, with brief stops to stand at the edge of pristine mountain lakes and say ‘wow.’
Edward Abbey, one of America’s most famous defenders of its wild places, would have hated us. I read his most famous work, Desert Solitaire, so knew how much he loathed cars and the people riding in them. He once called cars ‘sand-pitted dust-choked iron dinosaurs’ and lamented that he had to return to the ‘miscegenated mésalliance of human and rodent called the rat race (rattus turbanus).
That’s us – rats in a shiny new Mazda 6. The old curmudgeon might have shot at us, or at least unleashed a snake or two our way. I grew quite fond of him as I learned his story, and wish America had listened more to his admonitions to save America’s natural wonders from development. At least the parks we do have aren’t mined, logged, or otherwise ruined, at least not yet. Sadly, however, there are traffic jams.
So reluctantly we headed north again through mostly empty mountain scenery. We stumbled on Vinton’s Cowboy Poetry Festival, and saw advertisements for a cowboy opera. Culture is alive and well in rural America, it seems, as is religion – we gassed up at Hallelujah Junction, finally pulling in to our lodging just as the sun set over South Lake Tahoe, our reward at the end of a long day’s drive.
In the morning, we took the less-travelled road west of Lake Tahoe into the high Sierras, and so glad we did: More spectacular scenery, including one of Padre’s favorite sights on the entire trip: what I called the Corvette Caravan. He immediately corrected me; they weren’t all Corvettes, and named, in detail, every high-end racing car that passed us going the other way, and I quote: “We saw at least 15 Ferraris, Lotus, Mazaratis, Lamborghinis, McLarens, Porsches, and bringing up the rear, a newer Mustang Cobra in traditional white with blue stripes. So sleek and beautiful, and so much horse power corralled at 66 MPH on a two-lane mountain highway.”
All Corvettes to me. But Padre knows the name of every car he’s ever seen, I swear – maybe that’s his Detroit roots? He loves cars, and good thing, because he pampers ours. I have an agreement with him, in fact; I’ll cook, if he’ll make sure the car turns on every single time I turn the key. Yep, I’m spoiled (but so is he. Just sayin’).
That’s why I’m so proud of the fact that I saved the day when our new Mazda 6 decided to act up not long after we crossed the state border into Oregon. Padre may know his cars, but I know my Google. As we drove directly into the sun down a narrow valley, the Mazda’s engine-fail warning light suddenly blinked an ominous red. No town, turnoff, or help in sight as far as the eye could see. We pulled out the manual – no help there. So I did what I always do, when I’m looking for answers;
I googled it. And guess what? When the sensors on the Mazda’s grill plate face into direct sun long enough, they go berserk. All we had to do to fix it was to turn away from the sun for 30 seconds or so, and voila: problem solved.
The miracle in this little story is that we had internet service at all, and sure enough, a few miles down the road the bars on my phone disappeared and our Google lifeline disappeared. No more engine problems either, though, so we breathed easier, until we met Jason from Friday the 13thin Valley Falls, Oregon.
We pulled in to a decrepit general store, two ancient gas pumps and a lifeless old dog lazing in the sun out front. Looked shady but we had to go, so just like those teenagers who hide from the chainsaw killer in a garage with chainsaws hanging on the wall, we pressed on. A haggard woman emerged to pump our gas, as she directed us to pass through several doors to find the restroom.
Once my eyes adjusted to the gloomy light I realized I’d entered a hoarder’s lair, a terrifying nightmare with dirty stacks of garbage piled to the rafters. A creepy white-bearded man eyed me suspiciously from the murky interior, as I made my way along a tiny pathway through the refuse to a filthy bathroom. I didn’t touch anything – where is the hand sanitizer when I need it? – and exited before the hockey mask killer could drag me back under the filth and I was disappeared.
We drove away from American Horror Story/Southern Oregon Edition posthaste, to civilization in Bend, Oregon and its upscale Mill District, where we especially enjoyed exhibits at the High Desert Museum on the outskirts of town the next day. Did you know that raptors have the best eyes in the animal kingdom? We know that and much more, after our immersion in all things high desert. And of course, a bit of retail therapy in Bend’s trendy shopping areas was also on the agenda. Not hoarding, just shopping.
Over Santiam Pass on the way home, I had to tell Padre for the 14thtime about my solo ski trip just before we met. (He has to listen. We’ve been married almost 30 years.) I was single and determined to have fun alone, so I headed to Mt. Bachelor over a winter break. I got trapped in a raging midnight snowstorm, however, which closed Santiam Pass just as I headed over but after I’d passed the ‘closed’ warning signs. I could scarcely see through the snow drifts, convinced I would drive over a cliff to my doom at any moment.
But I made it. Pulling off to remove chains, I found myself caught in enormous headlights as a grizzled old trucker climbed down from his cab and sauntered toward me. Turns out the old guy had been keeping an eye on me the whole way. “I was worried about you, little lady,” he told me. “Glad you’re ok.” I thought I was completely alone during my midnight death drive, but no: He was there the whole time.
I couldn’t imagine that, over 30 years later, I’d cross that same pass again, with Padre at my side this time, as we reminisced about our long life together. We never know where the roads of life will take us, do we? And maybe someone’s always watching out for us, even when we don’t know it. I hope someone’s watching over us next year, when we tackle the granddaddy of road trips: Seattle to Key West, and all the way back.
In winter.
What could possibly go wrong?
As always, thanks for following along everyone. Be sure to sign up for email ‘new posts’ notifications at the bottom of this page so you don’t miss our next trip. Next, we’re off to the Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles for sun, sand, snorkeling, and some cruise pampering, and Padre’s looking for his flamingo shirt right now – because Sailaway is just around the corner.