the great american road trip

After the adventures on the Oregon Coast Claire and I got a lift back to Portland where we said a reluctant goodbye to Melany, and Claire set off for her primitive pottery course in Utah.

I got to spend some more time with Rhea, and she and her best mate Kayleen took me out to the Columbia Gorge to visit Kika. Kika is a pixie of magical proportions, currently living in a semi-converted barn on the hillside where she grew up. Our day was filled with explorations with a 2 year old - Scarlet seemingly tireless wanted to chase the sheep and feed her crackers to the cat. We sat by a fresh spring-fed creek under the cedars and told each other stories, climbed the sheep trail to the top paddock and out past the stinky bones of a cat (?) to the lookout. The best theory on how the Columbia gorge was created was that a glacial wall of ice once created a dam-lake of epic proportions way up in the columbia's watershed. As the ice gradually melted, one day the whole dam came crashing down and the following flood carved out the huge gorge which is home to the fairly massive Columbia River. The walls of the gorge are steep and rocky, and there are countless creeks which perhaps once gently joined the river but now have a huge cliff instead, creating beautiful waterfalls along the whole gorge. The day was beautiful, and we ate Kika's kale soup while spinning each other tales of our adventures hopes and dreams.

While I was at Melany's place I got a surprise call early one morning from Spud who had decided to take the rest of the month off and come to meet me in Seattle. So, the day after the beauty of the gorge, Rhea took me up to the Greyhound station and I said goodbye to Portland once again. Having been warned about the kind of trip I would find upon the notorious Greyhounds (who have a monopoly on long distance bus travel in the US) I was pleased to find that actually the trip was pretty good. The highway wasn't as scenic as the train ride, but I felt quite at home as the passenger behind me talked almost incessently in Chinese on her cell phone.

Arriving in Seattle I trekked past the homeless and poor in the downtown area to the hotel where I was to meet Spud - above an old theatre, the Moore hotel isn't too bad. The rates are a bit of a shock to the budget though...

Spud and I spent a few days exploring the city. Or rather - Spud went shopping, and I went with him... we found a great antiques mall in Fremont and accidentally got lots of new clothes. We had delicious Mexican/American food at Mama's Mexican Kitchen. And of course we went dancing... at the Century Ballroom up on Capitol Hill. After a few days I was getting city-restless though and we headed out to Vashon back to the comfort and greenliness of Catherine and Dana's house. They were extremely generous and agreed to lend us their old pickup for a roadtrip out East. We spent a lovely night with Catherine and her neighbour Marina talking about the wonderful national parks and forests of the north west. The next day - we were away...

The countryside is truly beautiful, so varied and in this part of the US there's a lot of national forest and wildlife preservation areas. We drove up north through Seattle and then east onto Interstate 2 (Catherine later told me that it's known as Death Highway due to the high number of accidents - glad I didn't know that earlier) and got used to the idea of driving on the wrong side of the road. The day was glorious, and every man and his motorbike and bikini-clad girlfriend were out on the road. Vintage cars, big choppers, the ubiquitous SUV's and pickups and huge RV's all winding their way through the Northern Cascades - still slippery and white with snow.

On the other side of the mountains the environment quickly dried out and rapidly turned into desert - not unlike the Flinders Ranges of South Australia - minus the red/orange soil. Eastern Washington seemed to go on forever, as we drove through towns with names like Ephrata (baaaad diner food) and Soap Lake, before finally reaching some more trees at Spokane. We crossed into Idaho and slept by the shores of Cour d'Alene Lake, I watched the moonlight reflected on the cold still waters while I wound down from the long drive.

The car radio was flipping in between some slightly liberal station all the way down in Sacramento and a range of local redneck stations. The topics of the day were the presidential primaries (of course) and a recent California ruling that the banning of gay marriages was unconstitutional. You wouldn't believe the hype... or maybe you would. Let's just say "you're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy"...

The "Idaho Panhandle" is the skinny top end of Idaho known for gun-toting right wing radio and white supremacists and it didn't take us long to cross. The forests were lush and beautiful, and we had to make a decision - to head north for Glacier National Park or south to Yellowstone? We chose south - heading for the US and possibly the world's oldest national park.

Montana rolled by, with a stop at the infamous Walmart. You NEVER ever need to go and try that for youself. After half an hour under its fluorescence I felt physically ill and had to wait outside.
We spent the night at Pigeon Creek campsite, 6 miles along a precipitous track through the mountains. From the top of the hills was a great view of the Rockies, and at the campsite the creek was still frozen. We congratulated ourselves on our hobo cooking, eating beans straight from the can heated on the coals.

The next day's drive took us south east towards Wyoming, through some beautiful countryside. The mountains appeared and disappeared at will, and the sun was strong and bright. We stopped in looking for hot springs but were disappointed to find them all wrapped up in resort developments. In the tiny town of Drummond we met a lovely lady who's building her own hogan out of logs salvaged from a huge forest fire started on badly managed timber company land. We talked a lot about life and the universe before climbing back in the truck... We had bought a couple of CD's of old radio programs - the kind of 30's radio play that immediately springs to mind - suspense and thriller. Tales from The Mysterious Traveller...

Our final stop before Yellowstone itself was in the tiny town of Gardiner, at the northern entrance to the park. Spud got a buffalo burger while I tried the vego option of "grilled cheese sandwich" - an experience I also need never to repeat. Pump cheese is a crime against tastebuds.

Yellowstone itself is full of variety, canyons in the north east, a huge lake in the South east and a whole heap of volcanic geysers down the west side. We camped at the Tower Falls campsite, in the northeast of the park. The camp was high above Tower Creek, which was a freezing and voracious torrent which had flung whole tree trunks high up on the valley's sides. The creek raced down to emerge through hard volcanic rocks high above the Yellowstone River canyone, where it plummeted beyond view. Our campsite warned strongly about proper food storage in bear country, and we had to comply with camping regulations to lock food in the cab of your vehicle or hoist it 10 feet high and 4 feet from tree trunks to avoid encouraging bears to rely on human food supplies... while we were lucky enough NOT to run into any grizzlies, but . just grateful not to BE a human food supply myself. We did catch sight of some small black bears foraging near the forest's edge but what was equally fascinating was the incredible line of tourists - backs bowed under the weight of their cameras' enormous telescopic lenses. The line of photographers spread out along the road's edge was astounding.

It's been a big snow year, and even two weeks ago quite a few of the roads were blocked with big drifts. We were lucky that only one road within Yellowstone was closed, but quite a lot of the campsites were
closed too. Spud had never seen snow before, so we had fun putting our melted chocolate into the snowdrifts to harden it back up again. the weather was great, pretty warm during the days but cold nights. Very beautiful, and you can see why Yellowstone is such a national icon - with an average of 30,000 visitors per day (in the peak season I guess).

All the stores within the park were staffed with retirees from the south, it seemed. I met a lovely lady from Arkansas called Sis who encouraged me to apply for a summer position - 14 weeks of work within
the park, accommodation and 2 days off per week. It'd be a pretty good way to spend your summer, if you don't mind working in a store.

At times the roads were blocked by wildlife - a herd of migrating bison for instance. Getting up close and personal with the wildlife is strongly discouraged, even the placid looking bison (yaks in disguise) have been known to gore tourists who got too close. We wound our way down the west of the park past the infamous geysers. From the bubbling vats of Mammoth Springs to the huge and fairly predictable eruptions of Old Faithful (Yogi Bear fans - Old Yeller?) the countryside was awesome. In between bubbling sulphurous streams was seemingly untouched forest, tinkling meandering creeks and fields of snow.

We spent the next night in the Grand Teton Ranges just south of Yellowstone, huge steep snow-covered granite peaks rearing up from the plain. Ice-covered lakes and frozen streams and more bear warnings. The first campsite we checked out had sites available, they were just buried in 6 feet of snow. Without a shovel, we decided to travel further south and took a six-pack of local ale "Bitch Creek" to enjoy the evening with. We camped overnight at Gros Venture, a lovely site by a river just south of the National Park, with full view of the impressive Tetons. Corn chips, salsa and beer by the riverside until the mosquitos got too much for us...

We left Wyoming and headed west through the ranges and across the fatter south of Idaho; the kind of place where the only radio show you can get in the morning is the "Stop Obama Express" - a show designated to bigging up John McCain and independent candidate Ron Paul (tax cuts for the rich, guns for everybody, let's bomb Iran, "why do we let young people vote anyway" kind of radio)... an "I'm not racist some of my heros are black but no-one will ever elect a black president" kind of radio. A "not that gay people are an abomination but they are going straight to hell" kind of radio.

As we arrived in Mountain Home (Southern Idaho) a dust storm hit and we retreated to a diner to wait out the blow. After watching a fair percentage of Idaho's topsoil blowing away we climbed back into the car grateful for the break in the weather - which was immediately followed by an extremely heavy
downpour and thunder & lightning.

We stayed in a beautiful town called Cambridge on our last night in Idaho before heading in for a drive up Hell's Canyon - the deepest canyon in the US. It was a little rainy and the clouds were low but it
was a beautiful place. Our last day's drive was back through Oregon's prairie and mountain country followed by crossing the mighty Columbia River and back through the southern Cascades which unfortunately we couldn't get a good look at - couldn't even see the massive peak of Mt Rainier - due to the clouds and drizzle.

When we could receive NPR (national public radio) we got heaps of juicy news about China, lyrical tales from Idaho's prairies, interesting (and not hysterical) election primary coverage. When we couldn't, we had to make do with the sound of the road going by under the wheels or the sound of fire and brimstone preaching about how americans should each have a big truck blame the government for oil prices and make sure the republicans get in again to "rescue america" (from the republicans?) and also one wacky show about conspiracy theories which had a tehno version of the X-Files theme tune interspersed with the presenter dismissing all of the callers' theories as completely ridiculous...

We just made it on to the 10.15 ferry back to Vashon, and navigated the back roads of the island to reach the sanctuary of the Yurt before midnight. Phew... over 2000 miles in 6 days...

After some bargain thrift store shopping at Granny's we're now back on Capitol Hill at Brad's place, preparing for the Memorial Day Weekend Lindy Extravaganza that is Camp Jitterbug... more to come... check more photos here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=36069&l=5117d&id=572849814

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