Sick in snowpocalypse

I opened the door to take this. It is very pretty, but very cold.

The danger of naming yesterday/today's storm a snow-pocalypse... is nature could take it as a challenge. Truly, there is only a foot of snow on the ground, but the temperature has been -9 for 24 hours straight. And I've been in bed sick. On Internet Black-Out Day.

The view out one of my bathroom windows. I was going to lie and say,
"look, the snow is above the windows!" but really, my shed it there, so, it's not THAT high.

Things I have learned about living in snow include the following:

1. No matter how crappy you feel, you should take out the trash. Because tomorrow, it might turn -9 degrees and drop a foot of snow. Then you will have to take out the trash AND shovel your way to the can.

I love the texture of the snow on the deck. It's fallen through or
possibly melted... And the tables I left out look like cakes.

2. The mailman really does still deliver the mail. It's so cold, I won't even open my door to reach out and get the mail, and he still delivered it. I don't think this is necessary.

I was trying to capture the dramatic sweep of snow as it mounded on the deck, then dipped toward the house.
It's very subtle though, as snow is all about preventing light and shadow from capturing it.
I like the detail on the railing!

2. People still go for walks when there is snow and it's -9. It's harder to shovel the sidewalks when they walk on it first. As much as I'd like to throw rocks at these people, it means, earlier shoveling is easier shoveling. But I'm sick, so I'm doing as little of my civic duty as possible today. (Luckily, at -9, it won't compact into ice quite as easily.)

3. If you have well-shoveled sidewalks (throughout the neighborhood), it is less work to walk to work than shovel. That is, if you live in Indiana. In Montana, the roads are not really plowed, so even if your neighbors all shoveled (including me, see #2), you will still have to climb the snow berms left by the plow (on the roads they plow) or the chaotic ones left by the cars (on most roads).

4. If you do decide to drive, be prepared for your vehicle to get stuck in deep rivets of sloppy snow at intersections. TG44WD. The normally limited parking will not be a problem, as everyone will have created spaces at the end of each row, since there is no way to see the painted lines. Of course, the rows of parking spaces do push into the road going past them, making the normally-wide-two-lane street into a claustrophobic one-lane thing, hugging the edge of the ditch.

I know it's hokey, but I love my oak tree-with-a-face. I think it is my standard image for how the weather is looking outside.

6. No one understands how cold it is when the numbers become negative. No one. You go outside, and you think, "Minus 9 feels kind of the same as 9." That's what it wants you to think. It is already killing you, but trying to convince you everything is OK.

My mom called yesterday. In my fever-riddled state, I just kept mumbling "Minus nine." My mom asks, "So are you running the heater, or are you conserving energy and just adding an extra blanket?" "MINUS NINE," I began screaming like a loon. Then I tried to compose myself and pointed out it would be difficult to walk around the house if I let it get that cold, and sit on the toilet, and flush the toilet when the pipes all froze, and then there are the cats. Ah, that's what happens in minus nine.

Minus nine is also great for figuring out which of your windows are good, high quality ones (most of them), and which suck (the ones the previous owner chose in the sunroom, which don't match the rest). There is a find lace of ice around the drafty parts.

This last picture is dumb, but I wanted to relate some stories. This shed (I assume from the previous owner... there were only two other owners, and this shed reeks of a younger owner's bad decisions) was not installed on a level foundation, so the doors don't properly close. At some point, it was on fire too, which made a 1' hole in the corner. Anyway, I stacked bricks in that corner, and set rocks against the door to keep it closed. It's hard to open and closed, but I kept finding it open. So I used rocks. It's been closed the last few times I looked at it. This morning, it was open. So the mystery of who/what opens it begins. I imagine there are five deer in there right now, huddled against the cold. I already blogged in the past about the bunnies that live in the original shed (to the right, above). I hope it's full of bunnies.

I was kind of hoping we could avoid this issue.

 

Dear Winter,

I was thinking maybe you wouldn't be coming by this year. Or at least, you wouldn't be bringing your whole family. It's been chilly, windy, crisp, blustering, all in a very wintery fashion, but your snow-kids have been infrequent and haven't stayed long.

I must say, I was quite surprised to wake up and find they had come and had a party all over my yard (and my uncovered trailer). I was quite impressed by how much they accomplished in one night.

But you know what I think would be really impressive? If it all melted in one night too. That would be something.
Let's see if you can do it!

KW

Another Wednesday, Another Semester

Another good day is closing, and after tomorrow, another good semester (then finals week, but in terms of classes...).

I'm happy to say the attitude and outlook of the day went much better today. Will strive to carry it into tomorrow. Perhaps I will get some time to work on the game again. I have to come up with ideas for the forest fire level, which, other than a little pause when the wolf turns around real fast, is working well. I want to get it online so you can see it!

My verbal survey about the crossing-the-road section was it is the right amount of difficult, though no one had won it yet. Agree?

Today can end now. Please?

A series of annoyances. A $500 bill for diagnostics on my trailer, leading to very little actually fixed. Disappointments at work. Frustrations at being long distance. Tensions at being the "dead" week before finals. Anxiety about the holidays (travel isn't as fun as it used to be; maybe it's the criminally negligent taxis I have to rely on in town? Oh, and the 20 lay-overs because the airport is so tiny). Projects crying for my attention, but unanswered. Tried to fix a little thing in my Wolf game and it got bigger. Started a new Wolf game; tried to transfer the working thing to the first one, and instead, it caught the problem. Frustrated my research project is better served by Google Books than my own library. Perturbed there are 50 or so hours of research in and no words written. Annoyed at a student peaking her head in to say, "My lunch isn't agreeing with me, I won't be coming to class." My day isn't agreeing with me; can I play hookey?

is it Tuesday or Wednesday

All semester, I have been confusing my M/W and T/TH classes. Not the classes themselves. I arrive in the correct locations at the correct times, but I invert the days. As a result, it was Tuesday all day yesterday, as far as I was concerned, even in the last week of the semester. Is it that I have always taught Photography on T/Th? And Monday throws me off? Is it that I normally teach my digital class on M/W? And both those trends hold such strong positions in my psyche, that they can deny reality? I don't know. Next semester, all my classes are T/Th. I think I will redo my fall schedule so they fall where they are supposed to.

The BEST pictures from our trip....

...were taken with a point-n-shoot out the window of a moving car. Not by me. SIGH.

Yellowstone in May

With S in town, it seemed only right to head over to the SUPER VOLCANO to see the sights. Last summer, we had a brief day and a half there, and there is nothing like tourists in a National Park in August to make you hate humanity. So, May seemed perfect for us. Fewer tourists, not too hot, new baby animals, etc. etc.

You can agree with that logic, right?

We set aside 3 nights and 4 days to make the trip out, hike, and relax in the trailer, sans kitties. It was such a weird experience, I kept going to the back of the car to let them out for a potty break. No cats in here.

What I didn't really think about, was despite the beautiful weather Billings, MT is getting, a piddly 3000 feet closer to the sea than Yellowstone, was that much of the park is still under snow. After we had already made our non-refundable deposit on our camp site, the operator casually mentions that the entrance we were planning on taking had been closed for a week, due to an avalanche. The other nearest entrance was still closed for the season, as the plows don't finish clearing the roads till June (that pass is a beautiful, but white-knuckled pass up to 12000 feet). No problem, right?

Did I mention my trailer service guy told me my water heater had a crack? And I told him, "I never use it anyway. Just reroute the pipes around it."

There was more snow in the south end of the park (where our campsite was) than in the north end. Most of it was very reasonable in temperature, like California snow. Chilly, but still in the high 40s so who cares? This image (above with Alice's new license plate!) was the coldest I've been taking a photograph. The wind was howlingly aggressive and unpleasant.

So you can appreciate how much snow there was in many places, and imagine how much snow there was a few months ago, here is a drift we took pictures next to. Apparently, it collapsed and closed the road a few hours later.

Another unexpected bonus... BABY ANIMALS!! They were all over the place. Baby BEARS and baby BUFFALOS, and baby BIRDS. The negative of BABY ANIMALS is that there are MAMA ANIMALS out too. Most of the trails we marked in our new "Easy Day Hikes of Yellowstone" book were closed due to hungry BEARS.

Yes, I photoshopped this. I'm not dumb.

The first morning, we awoke to a 40 degree trailer. The water came out of the faucet at a loving 32 degrees. It was inspiring to get dressed and on the road quickly. The next morning, it was 37 degrees in the trailer. I jumped out of bed, lit the stove under two kettles, and got back in bed until the heat from the stove warmed the trailer into the 50s. It happens faster than you would think. Which is why summer cooking is unpleasant!

The third night, I decided we should splurge and I asked S to figure out my only-used-once furnace. Try as we might, it never would start. No heat at all. Luckily, the next morning was 43 degrees inside, and by then, we had a rhythm going with the stove and it practically felt comfortable to get up and start the coffee. Creepy how fast you could turn into an Eskimo (in climate, not culture).

I made millions of pictures and am in the process of sorting through them. More soon.

Hiking in Montana

With two friends in town, it seemed most appropriate to share the things I love most about Billings: hiking and food. (Not that the food is especially good here, but it isn't bad. And I love food.) So, S and I went hiking on his first day here. Actually, we went rockhounding. This is "Montana Agate" season, so it seemed like the thing to do. MT agates have a unique, desirable landscape pattern to them, when painstakingly cut and polished. Since I have recently decided to embrace my obsessive rock collecting (sorry mom, can't be stopped), it has become an interesting challenge to find something unique, and perhaps slow the collecting by entertaining the thought of more careful polishing.

We came back with several large rocks that may or may not be (but they look like they are!) and a hilarious story of a man who asked for a ride back to town for he and his dog. The dog was a sweet, fluffy thing that kept jumping into our laps while we were sifting stones, so we felt like we already knew him. Little did we know in the car, the dog would reveal all the other friends he met next to the river.

I've never had to pick ticks off of anything in my life. And when you have the experience of both knowing what they are, but never having dealt with them, you pretty much think the second one touches you, it will suck all your blood, give you lime disease, and turn you into a vampire. So I would point at a tick, and S would pull it off. The owner, in the backseat (why were we holding his dog??) was frantic, apparently having the same experience with ticks that I had. He insisted we stop so he could buy beer before dropping him off.

We didn't find any on us, so we assumed the dog got them from the brush.

Next day, J is in town so we take him to Pictograph State Park to see where S proposed. We decided the cement path crawling with middle school field-trippers was too busy, so we took a dirt path along an extinct creek bed that ran between the cliffs (to the left in the picture below). We got all the way to the end, "mountain goating" from rock to rock at some points. At the top, we found a huge stash of owl pellets and began pulling them apart to look at the bones. Somehow, I never got to do that in grade school, and they never let you do cool stuff like that for an undergrad biology degree, so we pulled them apart, arranging the bones by size and type. some were tiny, mouse-sized. Others were broken pieces of larger things, like rabbits. Neat!

I don't know why I was surprised when we got back to the cement path, and I reached up to rub my hair and found a tick in it. Over the rest of the evening, until we left J at the bus station to go on his residency, we found a dozen more between the three of us. I have purchased large quantities of bug spray since then.

Camping with Butterflies

I'm trying to get back in the habit of blogging, but with no Internet at home, and slow typing via phone, it is not really happening. I have been slowly packing up my office, getting ready to be kicked off campus as the nobly unemployed, and am trying to break up with my office machine as gracefully as possible.

What better way to deal with an Internet addiction than to go out to a technology-free, 1840s reenactment camp?! As my loyal, educated viewers know, photography's announcement was made in late 1839, so alas, I have few pictures to share. I do have many fond memories and new appreciations, such as my new-found respect for cotton, darts, and elastic.

1839 is 125 years older than Alice, but I found she had prepared me for the adventure adequately. No long showers; you have to think about where your pee will go; you have to have fire for cooking; you have to think about how you are going to make fire; you have to take time to set up your camp, and you are living in style if you set up your patio. I think Alice lacks Moonshine, but otherwise, is very similar to our pioneer fore-fathers. (She was about as humid as the tent was in the rain, but like the tent, prevents the water from falling directly on you.)

A fun bonus to camp is the community. Many of the campers have met together for decades, and they form clans or tribes which have close or not-so-close affiliations with other tribes. I happen to have arrived with the chief, which meant we never lacked for company. At one point, I was alone (chief went to fire muzzle-loading musket), and before you knew it, I had a small herd of little girls following me around camp, helping me carry things, playing with the balsa-wood gliders I brought, painting, all with the promise of s'mores and 'scary' stories later.

All-in-all, it was a great trip. I found both the rain and heat made me terribly lazy (much more than my compatriots), but it wasn't frowned upon too much. They did seem pleased I wasn't freaking out too much. They didn't know I had found the perfect pee-bush that was filled with the prettiest orange butterflies, and was quite content to rough it in such pleasant company.

Long, lonely road

Alice Avion on Route 66, desert in either California or Arizona, August 3, 2009

I'm in Flagstaff, Arizona, at the old-faithful, WiFi-fallback: Barnes and Noble. It seems a little ironic how much I have been craving the remote, the out-of-the-way, the unique, yet have to return to the mainstream chain to participate in the world. That is how these things that are isolated, stay that way, I guess.

For those who don't communicate with me directly, Alice Avion, J, two cats and I left California via Route 66 on Saturday, August 1. We spent the night at my grandparents in Beaumont, CA, then headed up through Joshua Tree and Amboy to continue on 66 into the desert.

Joshua Tree, California

Joshua Tree, California

Because of how long it has been since my posting, I fear any attempt at remembering everything will mean we won't make it to camp tonight, so I will be slightly brief. Time has also made it difficult to remember all the poetic ways I wanted to talk about how isolated 66 is, so much more so than other roads, with tiny towns along it somehow still trapped in the 1950s. Alice fit right in.

Alice Avion on Route 66, Amboy, California, August 2, 2009; link

Some of the stops, such as Roy's Motel, are famous on 66. In this case, Roy's is all that is left of the town of Amboy in the Mohave Desert. We spent that night in an RV park in Needles, were the evening air sat stubbornly at 105 degrees. The trailer quickly turned into an oven, and each foray for a photograph turned into a life-or-death situation for the cats. Soon, I just left the car running, as I jogged around the desert capturing my images. Something about the 1950s feel of everything made this seem like a safe thing to do.

The park in Needles had a beautiful pool, which was warm as bath water, but seemed cooler with the blue light-covers under the water. The sky grew dark as we swam, and the pale silhouettes of owls swooped above us.

Route 66, tires in the desert in either California or Arizona, August 3, 2009

Route 66 becomes a topsy-turny roller-coaster in several places in the desert, the road barely wide enough for the car before succumbing to the surrounding dust. Don't be fooled though: it was beautiful, exciting, peaceful, and a car would pass once a half hour. This was what I had set out for.

Route 66 tourist stop, Ashfork, Arizona, August 4, 2009; possibly a replica of the famous art piece

Most of the tiny towns seem to subsist on the few tourists that come along this famous road and stop to buy trinkets. Oh course, there are only so many "Route 66" magnets made in China any one person can buy... I did appreciate the "Outsider Art" aesthetic of the places.

Route 66 tourist stop, Hackberry, Arizona, August 4, 2009, another famous art piece

Gun fight with town donkeys and Alice, Route 66, Oatman, Arizona, August 4, 2009

A delightful town, Oatman, shows what the road was originally for--running through the main streets of towns in order to trap travelers. At high noon in Oatman, the Sheriff blocks traffic on the road for about twenty minutes for a gun fight/comedy routine. Even the poor UPS driver parked his car in the street and had to wait in the 103 degrees for the show to finish. Even without the show, drivers must be careful of the numerous donkeys moseying about the street.

My favorite fun-fact about this mining town (whose motto is "the Ghost Town that refuses to die") is its namesake, Olive Oatman.

"Have Gun Will Travel", Grand Canyon Caverns, Arizona, August 4, 2009 (be sure to look at the larger version of this one)

We camped the next night in the Grand Canyon Caverns, the 3rd largest dry cave in the world. We also had the chance to finally open up Alice's awning and photograph it in front of the rising full moon.

Alice Avion with full moon and awning, Route 66, Grand Canyon Caverns, Arizona, August 4, 2009

The caves have been a tourist attraction from the beginning. You take an elevator down a 250 foot shaft into a large, cool cave. Concrete sidewalks mark a predetermined path a guide leads you along, much like the Jungle Boat Cruise at Disneyland, including corny jokes. My favorite story was sad and haunted me for a few hours of my drive. There used to be other surface openings, and animals have fallen into the cave to be fossilized or mummified. One such was a now extinct Four-Toed Sloth named Girdy (don't name it! That makes it worse!). She fell in and broke her back. She lived a while after though, long enough to use her Four-Towed hands to claw at the walls to try to climb out. The scratches are still there, a toe found caught in the rock. A replica stands where she fell, and her fossilized bones are in a museum in Phoenix.

Girdy the Four-Toed Sloth, Grand Canyon Caverns, Arizona, August 4, 2009

Grand Canyon, Arizona, August 5, 2009

Then there is the Grand Canyon. We arrived on the evening of the 4th and paid for two nights. We saw the moonlit canyon that night, then a poor view of the canyon most of the day, obscured by a cloudy sky, and smokey atmosphere (there was a fire at the north rim). The shuttle system seemed efficient enough, but somehow it took us two hours to get back to our car. We called it a day. This morning, we drove through the park on the 64, exiting out the east side, but catching amazing views of the canyon, newly cleaned from a late-night thunderstorm, which left no trace other than fluffy clouds.

Alice Avion and one of the Seven Wonders of the World, Grand Canyon, Arizona, August 6, 2009

California Sea Mammals

One thing that has been consistent in my journey across America, is the response I have received from 99% of the people I have met about my destination. "You couldn't pay me to live there." I found it interesting that they never said, "I don't like California," or "It's not for me," or "I've heard bad things about it." It was always, "You couldn't pay me..." It seemed odd because most people (especially those who said this) couldn't be paid enough to afford to live here. Maybe that's what they meant.

Most of California is more beautiful than most other states combined. There are dramatic rocky mountains, beautiful oceans, fertile farms, deep woods, crystal rivers flowing past pastures of happy cows. Having now driven the whole length of California, I can say this with first hand experience. That is not to say that all California is beautiful, but I keep thinking of the negative impression all these people have. One person, when pressed, finally muttered something about loose morals.

Loose morals?

I don't get it. Having been born and raised in California, I wanted to ask, "Did I cut you when I walked up to talk to you? Did I try to mug you? Did I try to drown your child and kick your dog? Did I slap your grandma and pee on your bible?"

In fact, I find Californians to be warm, welcoming, friendly, considerate. I can say this, because I have driven the length of it with Indiana license plates.

That doesn't mean they are all good. Please allow me to digress a moment.

Leaving the Monterrey Bay area on Monday, I lamented we hadn't seen any sea mammals on our trip. In the past, I have seen otters munching on urchins by the pier, sea lions lounging in the sun under the restaurants, dolphins and whales jumping out of the ocean for the pure pleasure of it just on the horizon. What I hoped to see were the elephant seals. Sure enough, as we coasted down Highway 1, there to the right were little beaches covered in the hulking masses of sleeping bodies. Pulling off to look, we learned they are all males, beaching for the month while they molt, before returning to the water to feed and mate. Sometimes they work up and yelled at each other, made displays, but mostly they huddled together and threw sand on their backs.

With pleasure at our success, we continued down the coast to the Santa Barbara area. We decided to stay a night on the beach before finishing the last 125 miles of my long, long trip.

The beach was lovely, the waves a beautiful lullaby. That night, I had a strange dream.

In my dream, the trailer became a part of the ocean floor. I could hear the waves all around, and was sleeping comfortably on the silty bottom. My fingers scratched at the silt, revealing glowing stripes of phosphorescent diatoms, and I was content to do that all night. Someone started knocking on the door. When I looked, I knew it was someone who wanted to buy the trailer, but I didn't answer and went back to bed. Children of the potential buyer rushed in and began running around me as I scratched the silt. They threw the door open, and my cat ran out. I jumped to chase her, in time to see her run into the street and be run over by a truck.

Here is where a blog is tricky. Is it literature, or is it real life? Because in literature, this would be foreshadowing, a premonition. In real life, it would be a coincidence.

I woke up early, not interested in returning to that nasty dream, made some coffee, and went out to watch the waves. The night before, there had been a little sea lion at one end of the park. He had been practically tame because the campers had been feeding him. I was worried about him, but also sort of wanted to take his picture. Looking down the beach, I saw a sea lion sitting on the beach. When we went over to him, we could see it was a different one. And when we got close, we were horrified to see what had happened to it.

He was three feet long, with a golden brown coat, and impossibly large eyes. He looked like he was wearing a leash, but it was a fishing net that had opened his beautiful skin like a zipper. He struggled to stay standing, to stay above the line of rising water, and to keep an eye on the people who watched him. Cell phones all around were calling every number they could find, getting the same responses when they got people, but mostly getting answering machines. "There aren't enough people to be able to send someone out." Flashing in my head were all the newspapers I have been seeing... "Schwarzenegger cuts funding to state parks." That would include rangers and wildlife rescue workers. I looked at the juvenile lion, and knew who I wanted to blame.

Sea lion portrait (very graphic!!)

We called until we finally found (three different people) someone who said they would send someone sometime today. We had to defend the poor creature from the man who wanted to wrestle him with wire cutters to try to free him of the net. His intentions were good, but I didn't think the animal's shocked system could take the strain.

After a while, the little lion stopped trying to stand upright. He laid down, rolling on his back to keep the wound out of the sand or to show us what we had done. He would lift his head if the water came up, but mostly, he laid still with his eyes closed. I kept expecting to see his breathing to stop, but it didn't. Every now and then, he would shudder, but his big eyes would open and look at me as I took his picture.

There was a young woman waiting with us. I finally said we had to go, and asked her to call me if she had any news. I got a text message from her an hour later. "The rescue guys just got here." I wrote back, "Do they think he'll make it?" "Ya."

I know times are tough, the economy is bad. No one's job is safe. I understand. California made some bad fiscal decisions and the belt is being tightened. But should she sacrifice everything that is great about her? Throw the baby out with the bath water? Destroy everything that she is legend for (so we are the last to see it), in order to keep taxes down, to keep driving Hummers to the super market?

http://www.savestateparks.org/

Oceans and Redwoods

Reconnecting

Passing through downtown Hood River, I saw a little shop that I just knew belonged to my long lost friend, Suzy. Even still, I almost left. I almost left the state after standing right on her doorstep and not taking a knock. But I didn't. I knocked. And she was as warm and welcoming as I remembered her, and insisted I follow her home and stay the evening with her and her husband. They bought a house in a remote corner of the valley, with a large meadow full of garden and chickens, and two teenage goat ladies, who rubbed their heads against my hands like my cats do.
I wish I could explain how warm and beautiful it was, how content I was, and entranced by these little food animals running around. The chickens laid brown, blue, green and white eggs, and they made a beautiful omelet the next morning.
Kvan insisted I take a basket of two dozen eggs, and he clipped greens out of his garden to send with me. I hated to go, and could see I was welcome to stay, but I was determined to get to Portland and the museums.The museums were a disappointment, mostly because I found navigating the city with the trailer so difficult. I dropped it off at a trailer park, and felt odd and bulky driving the car around, suddenly going too fast and breaking too hard, struggling to navigate and park. Finally, I decided Portland would be like New York City was for me--a place I would not be able to enjoy until my second trip. Accepting this, I returned to my trailer, stopping at Trader Joe's and now at Barnes and Noble (my 'hits' of big-box civilization). I have an early journey tomorrow to get up into the mountains, park my trailer, then 4WD to a remote hot springs for a Inipi Ceremony I am looking forward to. I will be out of Internet or phone range tomorrow. I will post as soon as I can.

High Desert

Idaho has a high desert, stretching 900 square miles across the central, eastern part of the state. Beautiful rest-stop displays with mini-walking trails explain the lava-scape and the use of the land as a nuclear power testing area over the last sixty years. It reminds me of California and I already feel at home. There are one-hundred mile stretches between gas stations, and I worry there isn't enough water in Alice if we break down, that we will all overheat if the air conditioning isn't blasting (but it's making me cold). Not so. Thunder storms constantly roll overhead, and it is a cool 65 degrees. Not surprising, my phone informs me there are flash flood warnings. I could also see warnings of alien attack or dinosaur resurrections on this landscape.

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

I hadn't originally planned to go to Yellowstone, but I was so close, it seemed silly not to. Like going all the way to Hawaii and not going in the ocean. Or going all the way to New York and not seeing art.

Alice with Eagle

Yellowstone has several things I like and several I dislike. Like: mountains. Alice Avion has now gone to 8300 feet. Dislike: tourists. It is a very popular park, even on a Thursday. Like: wild, dangerous animals. Buffalo became mundane, but still amused me that most of them weigh as much as Alice. My car could pull a buffalo, but my axles could not support its weight. And I like that they are wild and dangerous and unfenced. It humbles you that at any moment, the creature could charge you and put you back in your place. Dislike: park layout. There are many two lane roads all over the park, perhaps 150 miles worth of roads. You have to keep an eye on the car in front of you, because it will stop without any notice if it (thinks it) sees an animal, traffic be damned. I wish there was a shoulder the whole way, if our only interface with most of the park is via road. The park is so large, there are towns in it to provide gas, food, and sweatshirts to the dummy who doesn't gas up first, bring food, or understand weather (there was snow on the ground in places). I have not yet hiked any of the trails (well, there are short, boardwalk-style trails to individual points of interest; I looked at some of those), so I can't rate them. I know there are fewer than I would expect.

With all the notices warning about bears, I was really hoping to see one. One of my inspirations for going to the park was from "Travels with Charley," in which Steinbeck talks about how many bears he saw and how much it upset his dog. Around each curve, along each stream, I expected to see a bear. I hoped to see a bear. Black bear, or grizzly bear, I didn't care. I just wanted a bear. I'd see a crowd of stopped cars, most blocking the road, some sensibly pulled to the side. I peered eagerly for the bear, only to see a happy coyote frolicking in the grass. It's just a coyote! On the other hand, he looked more happy and more healthy than the ones I see in the suburbs.

The quest continued. Sleeping elk under trees. More buffalo. Ground squirrels. All were marvelous, and none were a bear. As the afternoon wore on, two things became obvious: I would not see a bear, and the campgrounds in the park were all full. I would have to make the 50 mile journey back to the park entrance to find lodging in town.

This made me melancholy. The distance, the darkness, the mountainous roads made me not want to linger to see the sun setting, the pelicans swimming on the lakes, the large herd of buffalo grassing in the slanting evening sun. All was a disappointment because I hadn't seen a bear. I thought about making one up. All the dark shapes in the woods I would pass, when I found myself alone on a road--those could be bears. No one was around to confirm or deny it. I could see them in my mind's eye, not really much different than remembering seeing a bear. The mind can play tricks.

I stopped to see the 8:30PM Old Faithful geyser. Geysers are weird, fascinating things. The earth reminding you it could boil you any minute, if it wanted to. Steam erupting from the ground all around, then this geyser. It didn't seem like a surprise, all those pools of primordial ooze, for the earth to erupt like that.

As I made my way to the park entrance in the waning light, not seeing any bears, I passed a herd of elk. I could barely see them, and only the high speed of my camera could pick the babies apart from the adults and the general darkness (that picture doesn't even look like it was taken at night, does it!). It should have been a sign. Wake up, Kristen. There are wonderful things in the world, even when the things you want aren't around.
As I reached the last stretch of road, a long, dark, lonely stretch, I continued along, listening to my book ("Thousand Splendid Suns"), thoughtlessly obeying the speed limit (much easier to do when you are pulling a trailer), when a shape leaped out out of the darkness ahead. It was light brown, still, taller than the car; the profile of the great beast like a giant target standing slightly to the left of the center line. Elk are much larger in front of your car. While it is no buffalo, its 900 pound mass must be respected. I slowed quickly, swerved slightly to the right to avoid it. As all animals do, it registered my approach and leaped to my right, in front of my corrected direction. I slammed on the breaks, my camera sliding to the floor, and all 8500 pounds of my two vehicles slowing from 40 mph to stop. I don't think I was going fast enough that I would be injured (unless it went through the windshield), but I knew the car would be wrecked, my trip would be done, and I would have killed my first animal on the highway. Alice and the Durango were not interested in that fate, however; our adventure is still only half done. We stopped, a foot or two to spare, and the big elk ran off.

I continued on, this time significantly slower than the speed limit, switched my book to music, and watched my fingers tremble like birds as I made my way into town.