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Published: July 14th 2006
Right at this moment, I’m riding shotgun as Paul’s got his foot to the floor. We’re hauling ass out of Death Valley toward the bright lights and air-conditioned splendor that is Las Vegas. Today is my 32nd birthday and I intend to celebrate drinking margaritas by the pool. Better than that though will be a real bed, a bath, and air conditioning set at “arctic”. But, that’s all a hundred or so miles ahead of us. So I thought I’d use the time to catch y’all up on the past couple weeks since leaving the folks’ house.
We spent a couple of nights at my brother and sister-in-law’s place in Portland where they had planned many many fun things for us to do. The first night, we met my aunt and uncle and went to the grand opening of my uncle and cousin’s new wine bar. There we ate yummy, stinky cheeses and smoked salmon and got to catch up on the last year or so. We also went out and toured my uncle’s wine storage facility where a million or so of the Willamette Valley’s finest wines are stored. They also make their own wine there and I, for
one, think it is fantastic (mind you, I’m a big fan of flagons of Carlo Rossi). It’s called Kudos and has a really neat label and a brand new kind of glass cork. If you see it, you should try it—it’s nummy!
The next day, Ryan and Jen (that’s my brother and his wife) took us hiking up near Mt. Hood in the beautiful Columbia Gorge. We climbed up to a lookout where we could see all the great big peaks of the Northwest, including Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. Hood looming above us. Below us were the beautiful rugged cliffs of the gorge. It was a stunning view. We also climbed to the top of Multnomah Falls, one of the largest of the many gorgeous waterfalls that cascade down the gorge face. It was beautiful and good practice for all the hikes we have ahead of us. Dinner that night was a festive pig roast in the country with Ryan and Jen’s friends where Paul and I acted like the Columbia River and gorged ourselves. (You like that one?)
From Portland we drove down the magnificent Oregon Coast where we played on the
beach, gazed at lighthouses and lazy sea lions, and ate lots and lots of fish and other yummy little squirmy sea creatures. One of the best stops was at the Oregon Dunes where we watched dune buggies and four-wheelers whiz around nearly crashing into one another. These dunes are made out of the whitest, softest powdery sand and are just massive. Even more impressive though is their setting. On one side of them is the Pacific Ocean crashing in, then a half mile or more of tall bright white dunes, and then beautiful forests and mountain lakes. It’s almost too much. Some kids had the right idea and built the most kick-ass slip and slide I’ve ever seen. It was about fifty feet long and straight down one of the dunes. At the bottom they had built a bit of a jump catapulting brave sliders into a crystal clear mountain lake. I really wished I’d worn my swim suit.
From here we were off to my friend Cara and her husband Chris’s house for a little Fourth of July fun. The little Subie had a bit of a brush with disaster on the way there though. To get to
Medford, one has to truck through some big mothers of mountains. Su struggles with big mountains on a good day, but on this day, she was seriously hating life. And going 30 mph on an interstate is really not such a good thing. Semi trucks won’t think much of you, and they made their feelings all too clear. Miraculously we made our way to Cara’s where she had scrumptious homemade enchiladas, Coronas, and a hot tub waiting for us. Can’t think of any better way to forget about car trouble.
The next day was Independence Day and all of Cara and Chris’s friends came over for a wonderful organic feast complete with a turkey roasted on the barbie. It was perfection. And even though Cara’s friends’ interest in exploding fire crackers was lacking, it was a good day full of delicious treats and lots of naked hippie kids running around. I’m sure their folks will be glad that we’ve opted not to blog them.
We stayed an extra day to fix up the car, and can I just mention that my husband is a stud? For less than ten bucks he correctly diagnosed and repaired sweet, little Su—something
about catalytic converters. And maybe she isn’t technically legal now and couldn’t pass an emissions test if her life depended on it, but she is running like a race car and shredding up mountains in seconds flat. Staying an extra day at Cara’s wasn’t all bad for us either. We spent a relaxing day laying in the hammocks reading and relaxing while poor Cara and Chris were hard at work. And it gave Paul a chance to get on the mend (he’s been feeling a bit off too).
Then off we sped to California to see the glorious redwood trees. These things are big. I mean really big. Up to 360 feet tall and 1800 years old—you can’t help but be impressed with stats like that. Y’know how I said that the neat thing about the Badlands was how big it made us feel? Well, these giants have the direct opposite effect. We felt minuscule, and we couldn’t get enough of them. The whole area is magical, and for me walking through the Redwood groves has been my favorite part of the trip so far. It also marked the beginning of our biggest, tallest, crookedest, lowest, hottest, deepest leg
of the trip. If only our little Subie knew what was in store for her, she never would have mustered up the courage to keep on trucking.
We wound down windy, winding Highway 1 along the Northern Californian Coast stopping for the spectacular views and cute seaside towns. We also did another hike which I like to call the “Holy hell, there are a lot of snakes” Trail. Paul and I reckoned that we saw at least twenty. And the trail was only two miles or so. I was happy I had on my sneakers.
Just when we were sure we would never get there, we wound around another corner and were delighted by the handsome Golden Gate Bridge. Paul and I took a hundred or so pictures from different angles, ate a quick picnic lunch, then sped into San Francisco to tromp around a bit.
We had the most fun in Chinatown—weaving through the alleyways (and listening to the clink of Mah Jong tiles behind closed doors), admiring the bright architecture, listening to little old men play the Chinese violin on the corner (which I now know is called an “erhu”), relaxing in the park where
men gather in small groups to gamble ferociously, and best of all eating fortune cookies fresh off the press in the little fortune cookie factory we discovered.
We also visited the famous City Lights Bookstore. Founded by beatnik, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and committed to a free press, this bookstore was meeting place of the Beat poets and publisher of many controversial and anti-authoritarian books that the larger publishing houses wouldn’t touch. I could have spent a day in here soaking up the vibe. But we had landmarks to climb, darn it. We hiked up Coit Tower and soaked up the views. Then we climbed down and hiked up famous Lombard Street (aka the crookedest street in the world) and soaked up the same sights from a different angle. People do this a lot in San Francisco, climbing up and down and peering about. Down at the waterfront, we admired street cars, piers, and the old Ghirardelli chocolate factory. We went through the visitor center a couple of times for free samples. We’re big chocolate fans.
The next day, Paul and I cockily set off on San Francisco buses to meet our friend Monica who was in California on a visit
from Norway. Little did we know, we were working off a map that was not drawn to scale. What we thought would be a quick trip across town ended up a two hour adventure that involved a lengthy bus journey and not a five-block walk as we thought, but a hike of at least two miles. At long last, we found the wonderful fairy land of Stern Grove where the San Francisco Symphony was putting on a concert with nature and where Monica and her friends had set up a little picnic retreat complete with Brie and figs. We lounged, we noshed, we soaked in the music . . . well actually, it was bit more rushed than that, but it was still wonderful. So glad to see you again, Monica. Give Daniel a hug for us.
That evening we began the ascent to glorious Yosemite National Park high up in the Sierra Nevadas. Upon entering the park we learned that the only camping available was in a walk-in campground notorious for nightly break-ins, that is bear break-ins. The rangers showed us numerous Polaroids of cars with their doors bent over and windows smashed out by determined bears obsessed
to get their paws on the Oreos/hand cream/cough drop negligent folks forgot to clear out of their car. We decided not to risk it and scoured our car for every last crumb. The other neat thing about this camp is that the bears don’t just stick to the car lot. They also roam around the tents at night hoping to wrestle any tasty morsels out of the tents of absent-minded campers. The rangers assured me that this did not include human tasty morsels, and that if we did see a bear all we needed to do was shout, “Bad Bear” just like we would to a dog. Yeah, right. Needless to say, I was very diligent to keep anything with the faintest scent tightly secured in our bear box. And although I’m just sure I heard bears wandering about at night, neither Paul nor I had any bear encounters. Well at least not in our camp. I’m nearly a hundred percent certain that we saw a bear’s butt fleeing off when we came across him on one of our hikes. Well, it was some kind of large, furry butt. Bigfoot? Hmmm, maybe.
The hiking and site-seeing in Yosemite is
out of this world. If you haven’t been here before, you should begin making plans soon because you are missing out. The centerpiece of the park is the Yosemite Valley, a huge glacier-made valley with imposing rocky faces and dozens of impressive waterfalls. One of these, Yosemite Falls, is North America’s tallest waterfall. Another ‘biggest’ is El Capitan, one of the world’s largest monoliths. We did several small hikes, but our favorite was up to the top of Vernal Falls. It’s a pretty strenuous climb, especially the last quarter mile which is basically straight up the rock face along the rushing waterfall with steep steps hewed out of the granite. This trail is aptly named the Mist Trail due to the curtains of cold mountain mist that cool off hikers as they wonder if the view from the top is really worth all the trouble. It is. (P.S. We also had a run-in with an imposing looking rattler on the way up. Scary!)
Driving out of the park through the Eastern entrance was a delight too with beautiful vistas around every turn. Here we climbed over Tioga Pass at a dizzying, nose-bleed altitude of 9945 feet. This is surely
the highest pass our little Su has ever had to scale and we took a photo to commemorate the occasion at the top. Going down the other side had my sinuses screaming “Mercy”and Su yelling out “Whoopee!”. Gosh I’m going to miss my little car.
On the other side of the mountains, we began to experience the excruciating heat that has not let up since. For sanity’s sake, we made a quick swim stop in beautiful crystal clear June Lake. It was downright frigid, and it felt magnificent. And from there we whizzed along the highway to Death Valley. This is not a place I would recommend to anyone. Hell is certainly more pleasant. Temperatures in July regularly reach the high 120s (that’s 50ish in Celsius), and we got to experience this first hand. 128 is blazing. We thought we might do a couple of hikes, but you don’t hike in this kind of heat. You sit in air-conditioning and try not to do anything. Lucky for us we were camping. At midnight it was still pushing 110, sleep did not come easily. So we did what any reasonable folks would do, sneak into the resort pool. At last,
some brief reprieve from the oppressive heat. I contemplated rigging up a way to actually sleep in the pool. The next morning we couldn’t get out of that damn valley fast enough. (P.P.S. Paul’s Crocs actually melted. We had to exchange them at the REI in Vegas.) Oh and by the way, Death Valley boasts both the lowest spot in North America as well as the second highest recorded temperature on earth. Really makes you want to jump in the car to check it out, huh?
And this brings me to where we are now, two days later from when I started writing this little walk down memory lane, sitting in a Panera in Las Vegas ready to explore some rocks and canyons in Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Grand Canyon National Parks. The stifling heat has persisted during our stay in Vegas so we’ve done little more than chill by the pool and take naps in our air-conditioned room at the Circus Circus. We’ve proved to ourselves that we are not young whippersnappers anymore as we’ve been in bed by midnight both nights of our visit here. Maybe we’re just lame. Whatever. I was just really happy to get
a couple of nights of sumptuous sleep.
Before we speed off into the oven that is the Southwest, I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who sent the nice birthday emails and voice mails. I felt really loved (and surprised by how good of singers you all are).
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nell
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good golly ms molly
what a great blog. i just couldn't help commenting. (we've made it home and i am back at work-i'll write soon)!!!