Month: April 2005

As punishment for staying in a hotel last night the travel gods filled the next room with guys who felt the need to share their love of bad music with the other hotel guests until nearly midnight, and then repeat the stunt at 6:00 this morning. Luckily the joys of being able to shower offset this annoyance, making bloodshed unnecessary. Once on the road this morning the plan was to head northeast towards Mesa Verde, but a picture on the wall of a Jiffy Lube diverted me to the west and towards Monument Valley. One change of destination was apparently not enough, and somehow I finished the day in Navajo National Monument. The latest plan is to head to Monument Valley for sunset tomorrow, but at this point it’s anyone’s guess as to where I actually end up.

After some early morning hiking across the lava flows and a trip into town to pick up fresh batteries I returned to Junction Cave to do some exploring. The cave isn’t particularly long, but it was tough going and took nearly two hours for the round-trip. To reach the end of the cave required squirming through a tunnel less than three feet high that was so damp that my breath caused the air to begin filling with fog. On the return trip I stopped, shut off my flashlight, and sat down to experience the complete lack of light and see what tricks my mind might play on me. After a few minutes I started seeing really bright flashes that would pulse in and out, but after about five minutes of enjoying this trippy display I finally realized my brain was fine and that someone else was in the cave and I was seeing reflected light from their flashlight.

A late afternoon visit to El Morro National Monument completed the day. That park was created to preserve what is basically four hundred years worth of graffiti on the sandstone cliffs, but the hike to the top of the cliffs was more to my liking. I’ve committed the sin of getting a hotel room for the night, and can only justify the decision by stating that a shower makes the breach of road trip protocol so very worthwhile.

New Mexico’s Finest refrained from pressing vagrancy charges last night, so it was sweet dreams until the sun came up. El Malpais (“Badlands”) National Monument was a short distance from my sleeping spot, and I arrived fairly early. The park sits in the midst of several ancient volcanic cones and lava flows and has an extensive network of caves created from lava tubes, the largest of which is supposedly seventeen miles long. Hiking through one of these tubes was a dicey affair as the floor of the cave was covered with boulders and difficult to navigate, and the batteries of my tiny flashlight were fading fast. Sadly, just as it was becoming dark enough that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face common sense prevailed and I turned around; a return trip tomorrow, with fresh batteries, is likely.

Most of the afternoon was spent in the east side of the park taking photos. In the midst of my Ansel Adams impersonations I ran into two guys standing on a cliff’s edge, with one guy educating his friend on everything from lava formations to tsunamis to photographic equipment. What made this conversation interesting was that the guy spoke with utter conviction, but was wrong on nearly every subject. From a lava flow’s ability to mummify people (rock and metal are toast in the face of a lava flow, but apparently organic tissue is special) to the fact that one hundred years ago all cameras took three hours to snap a photo (imagine portrait photographers: “now hold really still”) the entertainment value of this conversation made it hugely difficult not to eavesdrop. The only downside of the encounter was the fact that his poor friend will no doubt be passing along a newfound wealth of misinformation.

Yesterday’s winds topped out between sixty and seventy miles per hour, so it wasn’t such a bad idea to spend most of it inside of the car reading. With the weather calmer today the camera and I roamed about Petrified Forest National Park from sunrise until sunset, during which time the scalp was quite cooked in the desert sun. After leaving the park I crossed into New Mexico, and have spent the last hour trying to find a place to sleep — the need for a shower and the fact that the dome has gone from being bald and badass to fuzzy and not nearly so badass was almost enough of an excuse to pay for a hotel, but the call of the road prevailed and I’m instead parked alongside a highway onramp; trucks park on these things all the time, so hopefully the New Mexico Highway Patrol won’t feel the need to interrupt my slumber.

Insane winds were blowing so strongly that I felt the need to always set the emergency brake when parking today, and any attempts at hiking became survival exercises due to the dust and sand whipping in the winds. As a result the day was mostly a non-event, and the Subaru is spending the night next to the park gate with the hope that things will calm tomorrow and allow some exploring.

As is the norm there was much eating while visiting Caitlin, and in between meals we also squeezed in a showing of Sin City, which was a completely watchable flick. I think I’m now headed up towards Petrified Forest National Park, although I tend to get easily sidetracked so the next stop could just as easily be in Manitoba or Delaware. On a side note, with no moon the stargazing from these mountains is awesome.

Woke up near Palm Springs and then headed off towards Tucson, and I continued to be a magnet for police activity along the way — outside of Phoenix two highway patrol cars had pulled over a truck, with one officer using his gun to cover the driver. The driver decided to take off, causing the officers to rush back to their cruisers. The fact that the two-lane highway was bumper-to-bumper was apparently not conducive to the driver’s escape plans, so he abruptly ended the chase before I had to take evasive maneuvers with the Subaru.

Spent the afternoon hiking in Saguaro National Park, although most of the time was spent attempting not to spontaneously combust in the heat. How anyone lives here without bursting into flame is truly a mystery. I’m off to dinner with a friend, and the plan is to do a lot less driving over the next few days while visiting some of the sights down here.

Most of December, January and February went by with little of note occurring, and then today I rambled all over Pinnacles National Monument, witnessed a bank robbery, hung out with elephant seals, and then navigated the Humvee jungle that is Los Angeles; in one day I may have burned up my quota of excitement for the next few months.

The day tried to start at 4:30, but the snooze button was too great of a temptation and I wasn’t on the road until 5:30. Luckily I was still the first car to arrive at Pinnacles, and had the High Peaks trail all to myself. After leaving the park and heading back towards the highway I decided to stop and check the map, and while pulling into a parking lot noticed a police officer with a semiautomatic rifle doing his best Platoon imitation as he ran behind a sign and then took aim at a nearby bank. My brain was operating in slow mode (as usual) and it was only after driving past that it occurred to me that something wasn’t right about what I had just seen. Making a loop around the lot, I returned in time to see two other officers handcuffing two men in suits, with two large gym bags sitting incongruously next to them. Rambo continued to cover the scene with his hand cannon while the folks inside of the bank watched the proceedings with an understandably varied array of facial expressions.

I called Aaron to tell him my little Bonnie and Clyde tale, but he of course trumped it with the stories of a horrific motorcycle pileup that he oversaw during his paramedic rotation last night. Following several more hours of driving I ended up in Piedras Blancas with the elephant seals, although seeing them arrayed on the beach a “safe” distance from the many inquisitive tourists was a much different experience than having them try to eat me while in St. Andrew’s Bay on South Georgia. The night is finishing up in a Starbucks in Los Angeles, and more than likely I’ll end up asleep in a rest stop somewhere between here and Arizona.