The Last Road Trip - Conclusion

Wednesday, March 27      Kanab, Utah

Today has been a long but exhilarating day, taking in four states in 400 miles and 10 hours of driving, more or less.  I left Barstow, California this morning at 6am while darkness still lingered over the Mojave.  I got on that seemingly interminable stretch of interstate heading for Las Vegas.  The oncoming dawn softened things quite a bit, imparting an eerie hazy glow to the distant mountains and the gray stretches of creosote bush and dry lakebeds.  By 9am I was in Henderson where I stopped at a Trader Joe’s to do some shopping.  I had already made the decision to drive straight through to Kanab, Utah rather than doing another night of camping at Lake Mead.  I just wanted to get closer to home and the sooner the better.

As soon as I got on the road again, I headed out of the Vegas megalopolis and into the stark hills surrounding Lake Mead.  Once again I drove the North Shore Drive that winds through folded, upthrust mountain ranges, dark volcanic ridges, and burnt red sandstone outcrops...all this punctuated by massive blooms of brittle bush and desert sunflower.  I stopped at a roadside picnic area to have a short brunch of yogurt, banana and cheese.  Then back in the van driving north through the Mormon towns of Overton and Logandale, and finally connecting back on to the Interstate at Moapa.  I was making good time in my own leisurely way, nearly out of Nevada and ready to cut through that small but intense slice of Arizona where the interstate makes a spectacular climb up and through the Virgin River Gorge.  This is the gateway to the Colorado Plateau.  This is the familiar way back.

Just past the Arizona/Utah border I got my first glimpse of the snow-clad Pine Valley Mountains and the beginnings of the urban sprawl that is now the greater Saint George metropolitan area.  Massive stretches of desert are being scraped away to make room for more tract homes, golf courses, RV parks.  The traffic becomes intense.  And I keep thinking where will all these people get their water from.  Both the Virgin River and the Colorado are nearly tapped out, yet the building continues unabated with unreasoning faith in the Almighty that all needs will be met.  When, in fact, it is a recipe for disaster.

Nevertheless, I pushed on through as quickly as possible with one quick stop in Hurricane for fuel.  I was determined to drive through Zion National Park even though I knew there would be hordes of tourists there and possibly some traffic jams.  Yet I couldn’t help but feel that old magic as I made my way through Rockville and into Springdale.  I was remembering my first view of Zion way back in 1967 on a college geology field trip.  52 years ago when this was a narrow two-lane road and Springdale was just a tiny portal town on the edge of the park.  It was spring equinox then, and in the upper reaches of the canyon where our group all camped for the night, I got high on weed for the first time with a biker dude named Duncan.  I can still picture that shimmering moon shining above the Great White Throne.

When I entered the park proper, there were even more automobiles  than I had initially expected.  I realized that it is Spring Break time right now for many schools, and the park was over run with people.  Every turn out was filled to capacity with vehicles.  But I was not intending to stop in the valley anyway so I pressed on, over the Virgin River Bridge and up the steep switchbacks that lead to Zion’s east rim.  It was slow going due to recent road damage, but slow is good in this neck of the woods.  Plenty of time to take in the massive walls of Navajo sandstone.  Beyond the tunnel, the rim country opens up in crossbedded palisades and sculpted cliffs.  Rock resembling pulled taffy.  And even though nearly every pullout held its quota of cars, I managed to find one unoccupied one where I stopped the van and decided to take a short hike.

I grabbed my cameras and made the easy descent down to the edge of Clear Creek where the cold water flowed gray green through stands of bare oak trees, yuccas and a few ponderosa pines.  And no people.  Above me the cars continued to wind by but, for the moment anyway, I had the creek bottom all to myself.  I skirted the shoreline, photographing patterns in the rock and listening to the sweet sound of desert water.  I walked until I reached a “narrows” where the shoreline ended and the creek was constricted between sinuous walls and the water flowed bank to bank.  By this time, a few other humans were filtering into my space so I made my way back to the van, feeling satisfied that I had grabbed at least a modicum of isolation and serenity.

As I continued out the east entrance road, I was feeling grateful for all the times I have spent in this place before it became overrun with humanity.  I especially remember the early 90s when Amy and I would come here every fall, camping in the valley but coming up to the east rim to play and get away.  Where we could capture the first light of day with our cameras.  Where we could take off all our clothes and make love on the smooth stone.  Where we could enjoy the primal experience in the illusion of being the only people on earth for that moment.  And in my old age I can still feel that rush of passion and primitive sunlight, but we are no longer the youngsters who could easily escape into a secret canyon.  And the secret canyons are no longer secret.

Still, it is hard to not be impressed by the overwhelming ocean of sandstone through which the road passes.  And near Checkerboard Mesa, I was duly rewarded with sight of a small group of bighorn sheep not far off the road.  There were several females and three newborns, perhaps only two or three weeks old.  And one young ram nearby surveying his domain.  A number of tourists had pulled over to take pictures and I did the same, but the sheep seemed nonplussed by it all.  And in so doing gave all of us the momentary gift of excitement and awe, and a little peek into a fading mountain west.

Upon leaving Zion, the roadside opens up in broad vistas of mountain and mesa.  Forests of pinyon and juniper.  I could see patches of snow against the pastel pinks of the Elkheart Cliffs as I dropped down to the junction of Highway 89 at Mt. Carmel Junction.  There I decided to head north a few miles to a favorite old book store in Orderville, owned and operated by a character named Lance who usually has a few old pulp paperbacks I can get interested in.  This time around he did not have much to offer except his opinions on immigration, homeless people, and how the Trump administration is an improvement over what we had before.  He was really giving me more information than I wanted to hear.  I bought a few books anyway and told him I’d still be a customer in spite of his backward politics.  We shook hands amiably and I headed back south to Kanab where my friend Mike and I could discuss the weird ways of the world, down a couple of gin and tonics, and watch another great old movie.  This time it was, appropriately, In a Lonely Place with Humphrey Bogart.

I have covered a lot of ground in two weeks. Driving these long, familiar stretches my head fairly explodes with thoughts, musings and many memories.  This country is ingrained in the fiber of my being.  Over half a century of camping, hiking, driving, exploring, working, romancing.  I feel enfolded in the rock, imbedded in the sage, and empowered by the open space.  And I can look back on incredible diversity of experience from the seedy edges of Barstow to the old California mission at San Miguel.  Shorebirds on the mudflats of Morro Bay and shooting stars in bloom on the hills of the Pinnacles.  Bookstores in Cambria and rain clouds rising above the Carrizo Plain.

I return to Grand Junction renewed and ready for what the future may bring.

The Last Road Trip - Part 6

Tuesday, March 26         Barstow, California

Yesterday I awoke to clear skies and cool temperatures, got some coffee going and, after a bit of warm up, got myself on the trail again.  I decided to walk to the Balconies and back, a round trip of about five mostly level miles.  I have so much history and so much familiarity with this place that just about anywhere in the park, I feel comfortable and welcome.  I parked at the trailhead, grabbed my cameras and trusty walking stick, and began walking the trail that was once the road to “Old Pinnacles”.  I remembered a time back in 1964 when Stan and I drove this road on January 1 and camped at the base of the Balconies.  It was bitter cold and no one else was crazy enough to be camping there.  We spent the night sleeping in his parents’ old Ford.

The trail as it is now pretty much follows the south fork of Chalone Creek which is currently flowing with fresh, clear water.  I took my time ambling along, stopping to photograph wildflowers as I came upon them….shooting stars, a chaparral nightshade, milkmaids.  I passed the former site of the Chalone Creek Campground, closed many years ago and now just a part of the natural creekbed.  This is the spot where I took LSD for the very first time back in December of 1967.  Why we persisted in visiting the park in the dead of winter, I will never know.  But I do recall that, with rain imminent that day, we (Jim, Stan, Steve and I) all high tailed it over to Santa Cruz taking refuge in a friend’s crash pad.  There, as I came down from my acid trip, we listened to Jefferson Airplane’s latest LP, After Bathing At Baxters, and the music absolutely transported me to another place.  Still one of my favorite records to this day.

In any case, the walk was near perfect as the trail crossed the shallow creek several times, wove through little forested groves of buckeye and blue oak, and across sunny stretches of chaparral.  Eventually I caught sight of the huge massif called the Balconies, an enormous chunk of rhyolitic stone rising above the canyon.  The Balconies Caves were closed due to high water but I walked as far as I could to where an iron gate blocked my path.  Beyond the gate I could hear the roar of falling water coming out of the dappled darkness.  A few minutes later, as I started back, I found an old log to sit on where I could snack on an apple and some dried venison.  Above me loomed the towering Machete Ridge, another major landmark of the area.  One could call it the El Capitan of Pinnacles.

The return trip seemed to go quickly and I was back at the campground by 2pm.  I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and relaxing in the sun, watching turkey vultures soar on afternoon updrafts and California quail scurrying from one bush to the next.  When I woke up this morning the sky was overcast and threatening rain.  So I packed up hastily and began what was basically my return trip home.  The highway beyond the park wound through velvety green hills of the Gabilan Range, then turned east over the more rugged southern Diablos toward Coalinga.  After that it was the long and boring drive south on Interstate 5 through the arid and empty landscape of the western San Joaquin Valley.  Then up and over the Tehachapis at Arvin before dropping into the true desert at Mojave.  Exactly 300 miles from my campsite at Pinnacles to the Hotel 6 in downtown Barstow.  The beginning of the end.

The Last Road Trip - Part 5

Sunday, March 24        Pinnacles National Park, California

I have become quite adept over the years at making good campfires.  I am not talking about the big, blazing “white man” fires one often sees in campgrounds, but the quiet little fire that flares and flits around two, maybe three logs....large enough to warm the hands but not so large as to drive one away with smoke and heat.  I have started fires under some of the most extreme conditions in past times.  There was the little fire I got going when Phil and I holed up in a cave at Canyonlands during a snow flurry.  No paper and not much wood.  Just a bit of juniper bark and some twigs, but that was enough.  Then there was the time in Little Spring Canyon when Cindy and I got caught in a major rain storm and had visions of being flash-flooded down into the Colorado River.  But I led us to a large alcove that I had remembered and we found enough downed wood to get a fire going and make a sweet little campsite.  And the canyon never did flood.

So I’ve got one such fire going right now in the metal fire ring at the Pinnacles camp site I am currently occupying.  The sun finally shone brightly today as I drove north from Paso Robles, stopping in King City long enough to pick up a few supplies.  After that it was back to that oh-so-familiar road that climbs gently into the Gabilan Range, winding first through fertile farms on the edge of the Salinas Valley, then climbing up into hills thickly clad in chaparral and open pastures dotted with oaks, gray pines, and cattle.  I have a familiarity with this area going back more than fifty years now, and I lived in these mountains for four of those years as a park ranger.  When I stepped out of the van at one point to snap a photo or two, the air was redolent of memories and an internal kinship that is hard to explain.

In spite of the Sunday crowds trying to get into the park today, I found my campsite and unloaded as much stuff as I could.  And then I took a solitary hike along the south fork of Chalone Creek, through dazzling green grass and immense valley oaks all twisted and gnarled and leaning over like old men.  Quail darted out of the underbrush, and I scared up some rabbits.  Dotting the sparse ground cover here and there were bright orange poppies and johnny jump ups.  And to my left, the braided, shallow stream of the Chalone.  It was a perfect way to ease back into the Pinnacles experience.

It is wonderful to see the familiar brilliant hues that bedeck this landscape.  Luminescent green moss.  Pink rhyolite with bright orange lichens.  No wonder this was the spot where, as young friends we dropped acid, took psilocybin and smoked lots of dope back in the day.  Those highs have lasted me for decades.  Later when I trekked through the Bear Gulch Caves, I had more energy than I have felt in a long time.  The caves were full of deafening cascades and running water underfoot.  It was a real challenge getting through them for this old man.  But the pay off was being able to stroll back down along the Moses Spring Trail past bunches of shooting stars, and damp hollows filled with chain ferns.  All in all, I put in over four miles of walking.

So now my fire is nothing but glowing embers and, if I have done if all right, there will be nothing but a pile of gray ashes by morning.

The Last Road Trip - Part 4

Thursday, March 21   San Luis Obispo, California

The full moon rose at the Carrizo Plain but I never saw it.  Too many storm clouds gathering and rain shortly thereafter.  The winds rocked the van as I tried to sleep.  Nevertheless, yesterday morning dawned relatively clear and dry.  But I knew more rain was imminent so made the decision to head for indoor accommodations.  That being said, I took my sweet time packing up.  I took a short walk near the campground, winding through open tracts of low grasses and chaparral.  There were the usual abundance of goldfields and fiddlenecks, but also some nice poppy stands.   Here and there a jackrabbit would dart from the brush.

Once I left the campground, I headed north through intermittent rain, stopping when I could to photograph the dramatic landscape.  This included a hillside full of blooming baby blue eyes near Soda Lake, the most I have ever seen in one place.  When I reached Highway 58, I elected to drive east for several miles to catch the colors in the Temblor Range.  I was not disappointed.  The hills were luminescent with yellows and oranges.  I spent a good deal of time taking pictures before turning around and heading west on 58 toward Santa Margarita and the coast.  Classic California inner coastal terrain along the way.  Big valley oaks and gray pines.  Splotches of wildflowers everywhere.  I played Dark Star by the Grateful Dead as I wound around the green hills and valleys.

In the end, I decided to head to San Luis Obispo as I had not been in that town for over 40 years.  Found a decent motel and took a drive out to Morro Bay where I could see the Pacific Coast once again.  Since then I have been catching up on mail and on writing.  This morning I plan on checking out the nearby Spanish Mission.

My health seems to be holding.  Although I look at the end of my arms and see an old man’s hands.  And I am surprised at the loose skin and liver spots. I am surprised that I am nearly 72 years old.  And the thoughts make me feel more vulnerable than I have ever felt before.  This while my 93 year old mother has just been admitted to a 24-hour care facility, and my daughter Alison is going into induced labor tomorrow in Reno.  It is a lot on my plate.

Yet I look forward to the last big destination on this journey.  My stay at Pinnacles National Park. Then the long and daunting drive homeward.

The Last Road Trip - Part 3

Tuesday, March 19     Carrizo Plain, California

Yesterday I got going from Echo Bay relatively early, spending most of my time on Interstate 15 trying to get farther west.  The morning drive through the Mojave was gorgeous, as always.  Long shadows on volcanic ridges.  Isolated outcroppings of red Aztec Sandstone, and all around me the fractured, torn landscape of ancient mountains and sea beds.

I was able to skirt around Las Vegas by hugging those mountains, more or less.  But I still had to endure the long drive to Barstow, California where I took a motel room for the night.  A chance to chill out a bit, wash up, and catch up.

The payoff is that now I am sitting in my campsite at the Carrizo Plain, looking out over vast open space covered in green grass with yellow swatches of spring color everywhere.  Groupings of goldfields that look like they were splotched on by an Impressionist painter.  And endless fields of fiddleneck, punctuated here and there by purple phacelia or an occasional California poppy.  In the background….the familiar hooting of a pair of Great Horned Owls.  They nest here in the small grove of eucalyptus trees that were likely planted many years ago when this place was a working ranch.  They are now just about the only trees in this valley.  They don’t call it the Carrizo Plain for nothing.

Once I bagged a campsite, of the last ones left, I spent the remainder of the afternoon driving the Soda Lake Road and stopping frequently to photograph flowers.  At one point, I headed up toward the Caliente Range where I could explore a prominent outcrop of rock, sticking up like a stegosaurus spine on the western edge of the plain.  The rocks are covered with multicolored lichen, and pockmarked with numerous holes and cavities.  The larger ones are obviously nesting areas, their bottom edges whte with bird shit.  I found several large potholes filled by the recent rains and surrounded by tiny white flowers and orange poppies.  Nearby were several rounded grinding holes, no doubt created and left by ancient Chumash Indians who were native 

to this place.  On the way back to the main road, I passed a peregrine falcon on the ground holding its prey.  It took off as soon as I drove by.

The emptiness and space here are staggering.  Intimidating.  Lonely.  Exhilarating.  The San Andreas Fault runs through the Temblor Range to the east and has torn through the hills, leaving bare ragged patches amid the lime colored slopes.   Many of those slopes now sporting lemon yellow smears of wildflowers.  The valley floor is flat and wide and dotted with remnants of old homesteads.  Weathered water tanks and rusted farm machinery.  Old shacks sagging into the earth.

Low gray clouds have moved in.  The wind is picking up.  And rain is imminent.  If the skies were clear, I could look forward to a full moon rising tonight over the Temblors and marking the first official day of spring.  I’ve got my tripod set up just in case there is a break in the clouds.  Otherwise I continue to sit and just stare across the vastness, glad to be here once again on native California soil in a place lost in time.

The Last Road Trip - Part 2

Sunday, March 17     Echo Bay, Lake Mead NRA, Nevada

It is 2pm (PDT) and nearly 75 degrees here in the Echo Bay Campground on the desiccated shoreline of Lake Mead.  I left Kanab just before 10am this morning, heading south to Fredonia Arizona.  Then west for many long miles along the Arizona Strip until the road gradually curved northward again back into Utah near Hurricane.

Yesterday was one of those stellar, bluebird days on the Colorado Plateau.  Cloudless skies and a light wind.  Mike and I drove south on hwy 89 toward the Kaibab Plateau, then hung a right on a little used roadway that eventually took us to a jeep road that would take us out to Gunsight Pass.  We passed through many miles of beat up, overgrazed public lands and oceans of stunted sage brush with an occasional juniper or cholla cactus to break the monotony.  But the long views were the attraction.  Mount Trumbull to the west, the Kaibab to the south, and to the north the multicolored tiers of the Grand Staircase backed by the snow-covered Pine Valley Mountains.

We swerved through sandy spots and skirted pools of standing water as we worked our way westward, gradually coming to the road’s end where the earth dropped off just beyond into a gaping precipice of tessellated mesas and dark gorges.  We were overlooking the confluence of Kanab Creek and Snake Gulch, a thousand feet below.  With the exception of four or five juniper trees, the landscape was covered with low growing sage, yucca and mountain mahogany.  Scalloped side canyons faded into the haze where Kanab Creek took a big turn toward its junction with the Grand Canyon.  A red tail hawk soared down into the abyss.  A couple of ravens did their aerial acrobatics on the updrafts.  And above all, there was a sweet silence.  And, with the exception of Mike and I, an absence of human beings.

It was a fine spot to sit and snack….seemingly on the edge of the infinite, and looking at a landscape almost primordial in its emptiness and mystery.  We spent the better part of an hour walking along the edge, scanning the Kaibab limestone below us, looking at lichens and scattered red stem filarees that were harbingers of spring. For the first time in a long time, I felt that soaring happiness within, that far flung familiarity with stone and space.  That deep connection with the Colorado Plateau.

We headed back in the afternoon with plenty of time to chill out back at the house.  Some more gin and tonics on the back porch.  And later that evening, more cinematic classics….The Mask of Dimitrios and Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole.

This morning I left it all behind me to continue west toward the “Super Bloom”.  From Saint George, Utah I dropped down quickly through the spectacular gorge of the Virgin River, leaving the Plateau country behind and entering the Great Basin deserts.  At 2000’ elevation, I was greeted by newly leafed-out cottonwood trees at Beaver Dam, Arizona.  As I entered Nevada, I began seeing brittle bush and Joshua Trees in bloom.  I went from late winter to spring in one 200-mile stretch.  Now ensconced in a campsite, I can see the distant edge of Lake Mead, slowly evaporating away in the distance.  The sparse campground is surrounded by oleander, creosote bush and a few spindly palm trees.  But it will do just fine for now.  

The Last Road Trip - Part 1

Saturday, March 16             Kanab, Utah

Morning dawns clear and cold in Kanab, Utah.  Mike’s little place is surrounded by native junipers and sage with lots of planted pine trees and a nice view of the Kaibab Plateau to the southeast.  I’ve had my first cup of coffee while he is still asleep.  I don’t know what we will do today as there are some limitations.  Roads and trails are wet and muddy...and we are two old men somewhat physically diminished by time.  But both of us have a passion for the canyon country, and that keeps us going,

So does our passion for film noir cinema.  Last night we watched This Gun For Hire, the 1942 classic that made Alan Ladd a star and showed the world how sexy Veronica Lake could be.  We followed that with an odd little film called The Stranger on the Third Floor, a nearly forgotten B-film that is often considered to be the seminal noir movie.  Made on a shoestring budget in 1940, and full of German Expressionist shadows, flashbacks and a surreal dream sequence.  All of this crammed into 64 minutes!

Yesterday while driving south on Highway 89, I stopped in Junction, Utah to photograph a number of abandoned shacks and houses.  When it came time to turn around and get back on to the main highway, I got the van righteously stuck in a sea of mud in front of a clean, white house just off the pavement.  When I realized I could not get out of the mire, I went to the front door of said house, knocked on it, and asked the nice lady who answered it if I could get some help somehow.  She immediately went and got her husband, Albert.

Albert was a typical, rural elderly male, rather heavy set and taciturn but not unfriendly.  He donned jacket, boots and ball cap and brought his big pickup truck around to the front to see what we could do.  He spent the next 20 minutes or so trying to figure out how to attach a tow chain to the mostly plastic front end of the van.  Both of us wallowed in the mud, but he took the brunt of it.  When it seemed we had no other recourse, he suggested putting an old tire against the back of the van and pushing it with his truck.  So off he went to fetch the tire.

I stood by with my long hair and muddy sandals, feeling somewhat foolish that I had gotten myself into such a dilemma but he soon returned, tire in hand, and while I propped it up against the rear of the van, Albert got back in his truck and brought it around and somehow pushed my vehicle the several feet it needed to gain purchase on the pavement.  It was only afterward that we introduced ourselves to each other and I thanked him profusely, but he was a man of few words.  Nevertheless, he had unquestioningly helped a person in need, and in so doing, restored my faith in humanity just a bit. 

I quickly got back on to the main highway and continued driving south, stopping only twice.  Once just north of Panguitch to photograph a group of pronghorns near the side of the road.  And again in Circleville, to take pictures of a couple of old cabins on the edge of town. I finally got to Mike’s place about 3:30pm where I could finally chill out, have a cold gin and tonic, and relax with an old friend.