Snowy Sumos: Pandemic Road Trip Part 14

According to my credit card statement, the morning of November 11 we had coffee at the Caffeinated Cowboy in Evanston, Wyoming, a little drive-up joint of the same general ilk as Dutch Bros. Across the way, this red sumo crouched in the snow. He may have been an omen.

Michael had been leery of the lightweight tires on the Malibu when we rented it. The sumo in the snow gave him pause. He decided we'd better get going before it really started coming down. Soon we were packed up and on the road, but we moved cautiously. Michael had no illusions about how those tires were going to handle an icy road.

Unfortunately, many of the motorists speeding past us had illusions to spare. In short order, we saw them by the side of the road, spun out and wrecked. We tip-toed past them, thinking we had dodged a bullet. And then this happened.

I-80 turned into a parking lot, because there was a tunnel up ahead. Apparently it's pretty common for motorists to go speeding into that tunnel and hit the black ice that tends to form in there. They wipe out and block the tunnel. We sat for an hour and a half while they cleared the road. By the time we got rolling again, I really needed to find a bathroom. We made a beeline to the facilities. I took a phone pic and sent it to my Facebook friends.

I felt like I had been saved by civilization. Outside, the Malibu had collected some icicles.

We still had to drive through snow flurries. Yet my mom decided she wanted ice cream.

My email notes were a tad uninspired:

Baggs WY near Colorado border

Craig CO 

I took a lot of photographs -- once again, from the car, often with the window closed, which means that quite a few of them were blurry and splotched. But not all of them.

I couldn't get out a look at the formations up close, so I had to guess at their composition. I thought they were probably sedimentary, maybe mudstone and sandstone. But there are volcanic rocks that can look similar to sandstone, limestone, etc. Ash deposits in particular can look sedimentary. After all they are clastic. They can end up settling into drifts like snow. 

Our route seemed counter-intuitive. By Friday we wanted to be back in Flagstaff, yet we were headed in the opposite direction. Michael had a town in Colorado he wanted us to see, with a beautiful canyon nearby, so first we went east, and then we went south. By the time we crossed the border into Colorado, we were on HWY 13. On our way south, we saw some very fluffy sheep.

Our destination for the night was Glenwood Springs, a bedroom community for the exceptionally chi-chi Aspen. We had been on the road 9 1/2 hours, partly because we had been stranded for so long and partly because Michael moderated our speed to match the road conditions. We had supper at a restaurant called Tequila's. Then we settled into our warm and toasty hotel rooms. Ernie and I watched various Murder Channels. Mom and Michael drank their peach wine and watched the mayhem on MSNBC. We didn't know it, but Mom was going through changes. She had accomplished one thing that was keeping her alive: voting Trump out of office. She would soon reach the end of the other -- this road trip. 

Michael was saying a lot of things to her that he needed to say. Here's his account of an unexpected conversation that occurred in the middle of the night on the 10th:

Michael here: It is November 10 here in Boise. Mom is standing by her bed when I hear her at 3:23 a.m. I ask, "What are you up to, Mom?" "Ma," she corrects me.

"Okay Ma. What are you up to?"

"Well, you see, no one wants to help me." She pivots slightly, peering through the dark in the general direction of the bathroom.

I say, "Your driver" (whom she - as of late - has taken to calling me) "is here. He can help. Do you want to go to the bathroom?"

"Yes."

"Well, would you prefer to walk or to ride in your chair?"

She weighs the question. "I don't see why we shouldn't walk. What does the driver think?"

"He's not paid to think, Mom. He's here at you disposal."

"Ma."

"The driver apologizes, Ma."

"Why don't we walk?"

"Why don't we?" I slid out of bed.

"You're a good son."

"And a good driver, Ma."

"That too."

I take her arm and off we go toward the biffy. It is a slow walk through the dark but the driver knows where he's going. When we reach the sink and mirror area just outside the bathroom I flick the switch for that light and what seems like one hundred fifty watts suddenly showers us, causing her to wince and squint in response.

She asks, "Do we need the interrogation light?" I quickly reach around the wall and turn on the bathroom light which, with its perhaps one hundred less watts, throws out a warmer, gentler wash. I quickly kill the powder room light.

"Better," she says, inching forward.

"You need a hand perching on that throne?"

"No, I think I've got that part." I retreat around the corner a respectable distance.

I've heard mixed stories from Em and Ern regarding her middle of the night forays and lucidity. She arose only twice during the Coast trip and for the most part, "all hands on board" both times. For the most part she slept like a brick until seven a.m. (give or take).

Whether or not she ate the pastry we brought her (about 60 - 40 on that one) she proved to be an absolute coffee lush - sixteen (and, on occasion, even twenty) ounces at a pop. No matter how hot, she dispatched the coffee shack brew we fetched her each morning in short order. Extremely short order. I refuse to drink coffee that hot. I couldn't remember from one day to the next what the hell concoction they were buying her - hell, to me, coffee is nothing other than black water, an oil slick and bubbles - so one or both of them had to go along to order it.

Em here again: As of this writing, my mom can no longer walk anywhere, let alone to the bathroom. She can't even sit in her wheelchair anymore. She's locked inside herself more often than not these days, and she seems to cycle between that unhappy silence and brief periods of being more like herself, followed by long bouts of sleep (22 to 23 hours). It's not impossible that she'll live to see the New Year, but I check to see if she's still breathing dozens of times per day.

Yeah, we went on this trip just in time. On the 11th, we survived a snowstorm pileup. The next day we were in for an unexpected treat. 

Sandstone/Mudstone/Conglomerate: Pandemic Road Trip Part 13

I took a lot of pictures on Nov 10, partly thanks to some amazing volcanic deposits that form the Snake River Canyon. Apparently the spot we visited was also famous because Evil Knievel jumped over it with his motorcycle -- I seem to recall that happening back in the 70s. 

I can tell by my email notes that I was kind of sick of taking email notes. Or maybe the distance between towns was growing wider:

Road Sign: Burley Paul

Utah, Tremonton

Ogden Utah to Evanston WY

Henefer and Echo

I-80 sandstone/mudstone/conglomerate

Dutch Bros. provided morning coffee as usual, and soon we were on the road, looking for the bridge over the Snake River. I snapped a lot of photos, but I didn't realize someone was hang gliding over the canyon until they had come to a safe landing.

Michael had finally conceded to the cooler weather and put on a long-sleeve tee. He was fascinated with the underside of the bridge, where large voids from gas in the magma were exposed.

I can never resist the underside of bridges.

Because we were driving on I-84 and I-80, we managed to visit 3 states in one day, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. I knew when we had entered Utah because we began to see fantastically tilted strata. Much as I love my home state of Arizona, I don't think any other state can compete with Utah for fantastic landscapes. There's a reason so many movies set on Mars are filmed there. I suspect this bit of folded strata reveals the roots of mountains that were deeply buried when they were deformed by regional stresses.

Michael introduced me to a Utah thrift chain that gives Goodwill Industries a serious run for its money, Deseret Industries.

I love that the state symbol for Utah is the bee hive. As we continued along I-80, Michael demonstrated the tilt of the strata we were passing through just as I was trying to photograph a particularly dramatic scene up ahead, causing me to miss it, but it kind of worked out for the purposes of telling this story. Besides, what do you expect when you snap pictures from inside a car like a lazy bum? You're supposed to pull over, get out and brave the weather and the traffic. Though if we had done that for every good shot on this trip, it would have taken us about 5 times longer.

 Eventually we saw some beds that had been turned on their sides, tilted 90 degrees.

Utah also has a lot of thick sandstone deposits, from dune systems that extended throughout the Colorado Plateau. These deposits have weathered into landforms, from the whimsical to the majestic. 

Some of those sandstone deposits end up looking like battleships.

True, the shapes can be fantastical, but the colors are even better.

As we rolled out of Utah and into Wyoming, I thought about the supervolcano far to the North, one of the few features on Earth amazing enough to give Grand Canyon a run for its money, Yellowstone. Most of the world's geysers are located there. My mom took us there when we were in grade school, and it was like visiting another planet. It even had its own atmosphere (with a lot of sulphur in it). 

We settled for the night in Evanston, Wyoming. According to my credit card receipts, we had supper at another Costa Vida. Ernie and I were beginning to tire of Trump's pathological denial of his election loss, so we found other TV channels to watch, variations of the Murder Channel (which still seemed more soothing). 

We had been on the road for 9 hours that day, a very different approach to the first half of our trip, during which we meandered a lot more. We were running out of time if we still wanted to get back to Flagstaff by Friday the 13th. I had a feeling the most interesting part of the trip was probably over. But I was dead wrong. 

Umatilla, My Walla Walla: Pandemic Road Trip Part 12

My email notes from November 9 at least hint at some interesting things:

Umatilla Walla Walla

I-84

Pendleton

Mt. Emily

Old cattle pen and trailer

Snake River

Ontario, Oregon 

But my photo files are skimpy, and I'm not sure why. We had driven next to the Columbia River, and now we were driving along the Snake River -- but we wouldn't visit the gorge bridge until the next day. Also, on the 9th we thought we were practicing blizzard avoidance, so we were trying to make good time on the road. But within the next couple of days we would be challenged by our assumptions.

After all, road trips are all about things going wrong, and then you improvise, and that's how stories are born. Yet the 9th seems to have been less interesting in general. It was a so-so day near the end of a really good trip. It started out well, with a visit to good ol' Dutch Bros. for coffee. And I think I ended up finally being able to do laundry at the hotel we landed in for the night in Boise. Also, I suspect this was my first visit to Idaho, though I'm not positive. We may have passed through when I was a kid. My mom was a big one for road trips.

We saw an old ranch homestead that still had some useful stuff, should anyone feel like salvaging it (assuming it doesn't already have owners who use it during the warmer months).

I think this was also the day that my brother insisted on buying premium oatmeal cookies for himself and for Mom. Ernie may have had one too -- I passed, though I'm a fan of oatmeal cookies. The moment just wasn't right. And Mom seemed more interested in holding on to hers as if it were a good luck talisman than eating it. We were inclined to indulge her.

It's a good thing we took her on that trip when we did. She couldn't have gone any later than that. She began to decline the day after we got home, and the way things stand now, I'm not sure she's going to see the New Year. Yet four to six weeks ago she was guzzling coffee, complaining about Lucky Trouts, enjoying takeout, looking pretty in thrift store clothing, drinking a lot of peach wine, and avidly watching the election and post-election coverage. Michael got two weeks of quality time with Mom, and Ernie and I got to see her enjoy one last road trip. The timing was perfect.

We got take out from Costa Vida that night, a chain restaurant that was new for me. I like their food and their model of serving it up. It was nice to be able to wash our clothes, too. On the news, Biden was announcing a Coronavirus task force and the National Security Council was still refusing to give the President Elect access to National Security briefings. So just because we saved the world doesn't mean it's going to get back to normal overnight. There's still plenty of petty resentment to be vented. Oddly, the fact that the world is caught in a pandemic may be our only saving grace. Everyone is struggling to handle their shit right now. The only people who seem to be accomplishing anything are Russian hackers.

You know it was a slow day when not eating an oatmeal cookie and getting a little snow in the hotel parking lot are your highlights. But all of that was about to change . . .

Coffee, Mexican Food, Bigfoot, and Yoga: Pandemic Road Trip Part 11

About midway through the day on November 8, we stopped at a 7-11 to hit the bathrooms, and when Ernie and I came out again we discovered that my brother Michael had driven off without us. At that moment, I blessed the fact that we all had cell phones. I called Michael.

He answered, wondering why the heck I would call him from the back seat, especially when he had been right in the middle of telling me a really long, involved story. He had wondered why we had been so quiet back there.

This was particularly ironic because when Michael was a kid, my mother and my aunt had driven off without him on an overnight journey, leaving him at a gas station in Blythe, California. It being the 1960s, no one had a cell phone (except maybe for spies in James Bond movies), so the owner of the gas station had to call the highway patrol, and they chased my mother down. 

No law enforcement had to be recruited this time around. Having been convinced that the back seat of the Malibu was, indeed, empty, Michael came back and got us. It was a successful maneuver in a day full of them, starting with our coffee and pastry acquisitions at Lincoln Street Coffee Pot and Sasquatch Donuts. Somehow I managed to juggle my 16 oz cup and a bear claw (one assumes) and type baffling email notes:

Coffee, Mexican food, Bigfoot, and yoga

Took pics at Triton Bay, Oyster shells

Liliwaup

Kelso

Vancouver, WA

The Dalles, Columbia River 

I'm not sure exactly what I meant when I typed "Coffee, Mexican food," etc. with my fat paw, but I think it was my general impression of Washington and Oregon, at least along those particular highways on that particular trip. It's not a bad summation. We didn't do any yoga ourselves, but we saw a lot of signs advertising it. Who knows, maybe yoga studios have proliferated in every American city. God knows we could use it. In the meantime, here are some cute ducks from Port Angeles.

Michael had been checking weather reports, mindful of the fact that our Chevy Malibu had tires that were fairly new, but made for the desert roads of Nevada, not for blizzard conditions. So he decided to aim us back toward Oregon, with plenty of scenic attractions on the way. One thing he wanted to make sure we did was see some beautiful totems. 

I wish these photos could convey even a fraction of the majesty of these carvings. Ernie says that totem poles have the same density of information that you find in Meso-American carvings. They also remind me of carvings from Oceana. 

If I were going to be accurate while summing up Washington and Oregon with email notes, I probably should have added "volcanic deposits." We saw the Columbia River basalts, the results of titanic rift eruptions 17 to 15 million years ago. Michael gazed longingly at favorite fishing spots (many of which he pointed out to us on the way).

He also wanted to make sure I photographed the giant chicken.

I still took time to compulsively Google "election results 2020." At this point, I was checking the status of the Presidential Hissy Fit. I understood why Republican voters were disappointed -- I had felt the same way in 2016. I had no desire to gloat about the situation. Hell, I didn't even want to gloat to Trump. Anyone who's ever divorced an abusive husband will tell you that's not a good idea.

The gorgeous (and gorge-ous) scenery helped me celebrate the triumph of an election system that withstood historic turnout in difficult circumstances. It also reminded me why I love my country, for its brave election officials, its natural beauty, and Indigenous cultures, and Sasquatch, Mexican food, even yoga.

Michael wanted me to photograph Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River Gorge, but I felt equally fascinated by the graffiti on the walking bridge. But okay -- here's the waterfall.

We stopped for the night in a town called The Dalles, and the way it was pronounced was almost like "Dallas" if you weren't listening closely. We ate supper at Cousins Restaurant, and I'll be hanged if I can remember what we had, but I'm reasonably certain it wasn't Chinese food. The cow from the top of this post is from the exterior of that restaurant. 

I'm thinking burgers.

We dodged the blizzard. The next day we would end up in Idaho. The dash was just beginning.

So That's What "Burly" Means: Pandemic Road Trip Part 10

I think Saturday November 10 may have been the day the networks were officially willing to declare Joe Biden the winner of the general election. They had been cautious about that for good reason, considering that the news thrilled 81 million people and plunged up to 74 million into despair. Though I have to admit, I suspect a good number of those people simply shrugged and decided to get on with their lives -- maybe more like 36 million are sure the world is coming to an end. 

Personally I hadn't waited until Saturday to declare Biden the winner; I knew it by the 4th, and I was ready to get on with my vacation. I had seen many new things so far, but few of them compared with the burls.

The burls hadn't made it into my email notes, though they definitely took up space on the memory card in my camera. I did my best to type in the subject field with a road-shaky finger:

Entering Humptulips

Quinault Rainforest

Town called Forks

Cape Flattery

Olympic National Park

Lake Crescent

Inspecting my credit card statement, it looks like we got our morning coffee at a place called Coffee Man in Aberdeen. The card statement and the Google Maps report agree that we also visited a Rite Aid, and that was a pretty common stop for us on our journey. Michael really seems to like that store. For one thing, it sells the peach wine.

As we drove through town I spotted something that needed to be photographed, some well-placed windows in a house that serve as a greenhouse.

If I had south-facing windows like this in such a cool climate, I would do the same thing with them, cultivate an indoor garden. Of course, more Halloween tableaus beckoned from the side of the road.

And this one . . .

And a round house.

Quite a few houses were painted this particular shade of blue:

Michael managed to find a garage sale.

My brother loves to fish, specifically in rivers, and even more specifically in rivers with clear water (as opposed to muddier rivers like you would find in the South), so he knew where one could find fish hatcheries in the area, and we visited one. I managed to get a salmon action shot.

Of course, I had to photograph the big, green gizmo.

And the pretty leaves in the parking lot.

I think we saw the burls mostly in Quinault Rainforest, early in the day. Michael parked at the trailhead and ushered us out so he could show us the weird concentration of them along that particular trail. As Ernie and I stepped out of the car however, Michael got a phone call. He had received many of them from family members on the trip, some of whom wanted to talk about the election and some who needed to talk about his drum business. While he discussed, Ernie and I wandered into the land of burls.

The trail led down to a beach where we found a really impressive piece of driftwood, a veritable giant that had been thoroughly polished by waves and rocks.

The sand on the beach was dark and silty. A few days earlier, we combed a beach that's famous for its sea glass (Glass Beach, in fact), and not for the first time it occurred to me that it really isn't the water that fascinates me with beaches; it's what the water does. If I lived near the beach I would be a dedicated beach comber. 

Michael joined us on the path and insisted that I photograph this little waterfall.

But this burly character was by far my favorite:

There was some interesting lichen growing on the trees too. Or was it fungus?

As we traveled farther into Olympic National Park, we saw some more fallen giants.

In the next town I photographed a faux totem pole.

It was good to see that Sasquatch has sensible attitudes about masking up.

We drove past Crescent Lake as the sun was beginning to go down, so I managed to capture the light on the water.

Here's one of the streams that feeds the lake.

We stayed overnight in Port Angeles, and had Chinese take-out at Tendy's Garden. Watching CNN that night, I listened to my favorite commentators talking about their feelings concerning Joe Biden's win and Trump's defeat. One man wept openly because he felt grateful that he would no longer have to explain to his children why white people are calling them horrible names. It wasn't that he thought white people wouldn't do that ever again; it's just that now there won't be a president in the White House endorsing that B.S. It made me so proud that voters rose to the occasion. It also made me realize -- we didn't just dodge a bullet here in the U.S. We dodged a freakin' asteroid.

Meanwhile, my fellow roadtrippers and I had reached the top of the West Coast. Next, we would make a mad dash through six states . . .