Yellowstone

(In a motel in Ritzville, WA. - Transcribing handwritten entry from three days ago.)



Now at Bridge Bay Campground in Yellowstone National Park. It's sometime around 7AM and people are beginning to stir, but B&G are still podded away and sleeping. We'd come into Wyoming at the last post and kept driving North on the increasingly deserted Highway 85 toward Mt. Rushmore. Big splotchy raindrops hit the windshield and lightning strikes around us became alarmingly well defined.

Our car became the only one on the road and the blue-green pasture lit up with the last angular shafts of sunlight before turning dark. We made the Mt. Rushmore KOA campground about 11 pm, a comparative oasis of activity, RVs pulling in and registering, late night ice creams and apocalyptic snoring. We unbundled the tent and piled in.

KOA's are dangerous. All-you-can-eat pancakes in the morning, horseback riding, water slides and playgrounds, trampolines, laundry and full showers. Now we'll have to qualify "Let's go camping" with "No son, just the place with the trees."

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The next morning we drove up toward Mt. Rushmore, passed a bend and saw the 4 faces gazing imperiously into the distance.

The skill of the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, is (self) evident. I was wondering more about the logistics: Do the faces have nostrils?. If so, how big is that cavity? Could it fit one man? or five? "Yes Honey, it was my 3rd day inside Lincoln's nostril. I wish he had grown a mustache as well as a beard so I have something to stand on."

Gutzon Borglum seems interesting. A true renaissance man, would pontificate on art, literature and corruption in the fledgling aeronautics industry. They had a massive Ingersol-Rand compressor at the foot of the hillside and would send compressed air, via 3 inch tubes, up to the many jackhammers chipping away at the faces. On Mondays, the jackhammers would lose power. Turned out it was laundry day in the local town and the washing machines were draining the grid of electricity. To avert this potentially entertaining debate over the most practical use of electricity, they bought a diesel compressor to finish the faces.

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Heading back west to the Deer Park Campground in Buffalo, WY through a series of Western towns, some ornamental western-theme towns, others more gritty - with grim billboards with graphic portrayals of the downside of Meth. Between two of these towns we found ourselves in the thick of another lightning storm, this time much closer, a lightning strike so close I heard a separate crack as sparks flew off the edge of the main bolt. Then hail, first raindrop-sized pitter-patter ... a learning moment for Griffin who had not seen it before ... then golfball sized numbchucks ... more of a get-the-#$%^-out-of-here moment. Other cars on the highway chose to pull over. We kept driving until we were out of the cloud, pulled over and counted ten pockmarks on our rental car.

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We drove from Buffalo, WY to Yellowstone, the blue-green pasture gave way to dry, semi-vegetated claylands, then canyon country, road signs indicating the age of the land, ranging from Pre-Cambrian, Mississippian and Jurrasic. It would have made for a great geological slideshow if the eras were in chronological order.

Amazing success in Worland , WY on the way to Yellostone. We pulled into Milly-G's drive-thru espresso.

They sold Big Train Chai! Brandy toyed with the idea of buying a 10lb bag. The next highlight was in Cody, WY. We pulled in to buy batteries for our inflatable mattress (same brand that J. Kerouac used!) and the bank inside the Albertsons had a sign saying the Arizona quarter has arrived. In a state of high excitement we bought 3 (for 75 c). Now Griffin and I have the complete collection for the 48 contiguous states. Only Hawaii and Alaska to go. For all those from the US who have promised to visit us, add $0.50 to your travel budget. More photos below.

Buffalo, WY

Now in an Idyllic campground in Buffalo, Wyoming. Secluded field of feathery grass and trembling aspen, light breeze carrying dandelion fairies. We're on our way to Yellowstone.

Since our first post (already I am under pressure to get the 2nd one up...I thought I was getting a break from all of that!), we left our charmless Koa campground in Gallup and hit the many indian jewellery stores in the downtown area. When B&I found her wedding ring in the little antique store in Orange called Ruby's, we also found a Silver ring with inlaid coral that I really liked. Unfortunately, it was too small but Ruby threw it in so we could find one similar. After unsuccessfully checking out a few stores in Orange Co, we were told that Gallup, NM was the place to go - if we can't find it there, then we won't find it. Well after checking every shop in Gallup, we found that it was made by the Zuni somewhere between 30 and 50 years ago, but they haven't seen anything like that for a while. We were given the name of a local guy (ex-Navy - not a Zuni) who could make one similar. We left the ring with him and our address in Wellington. Mission more or less accomplished. Off to the Presidents.

But not before a dip in the pool of the Best Western next to the Koa Campground. Gallup's annual junior rodeo was being held locally and the campground was full of adolescent swaggering cowboys with lassoos. They came with their families in RVs and pulled out these 4-wheeled metal minature bulls, which they would push into motion, pursue and lassoo. Brandy saw one 15 year-old texan rising from his RV chewing bacca, with a cup of jack.


We were booked to stay in the campground again that night, but I said , with a distinctly Kerouak demeanor, lets hit the road. With the same footloose manner, I had logged on to hotwire.com to find the most honky-tonk roadside dig to pull into that night. Turned out the Hyatt Albuquerque had a special for $65. Too good to turn down at that price....who needs that 5th star anyway?... Australians??


By the time I get to Albuquerque, she'll be .....Oh actually she was driving the car...I was sleeping. Our room on the 11th floor faced east and the sunset was almost finished over the desert we had driven through. We walked out of a lobby through a mostly deserted but recently rejuvenated downtown area to a Pizza place called NYPD. The smell of beer and smoke carried a balmy evening undercurrent of agro from the few bar patios where people clustered.


We had a coffee near the UNM campus, in a funky college cafe, complete with an in-cafe 2nd-hand bookstore that any pimply existentialist would die for: Herman Hesse to Nietzche. However, all Brandy would really like is a Big Train Vanilla Chai Latte. So far on this road trip we have not found a cafe that sells it. Kiwi readers-inform please: can you get chai lattes in most cafes there now? Should we begin an importing business when we arrive?

So now we're heading north on Interstate 25 to Pueblo, CO. to visit Becky Scola, a poly-sci friend of Brandy's. The desert becomes more shrubby, and then as we climb transitions into plains..a small range to our west...the desert-southwest is behind us.

We arrive in Pueblo around 4. It was a steel town and the massive factories greet us as we exit on 13th and drive down to an exceeding charming row of ornate Victorian houses of which Becky and Charlies is an gorgeous example - both inside and out. Its July 4th now and about 95 but cooling down. Julian, their 11 year-old son immediately takes Griffin under his wing, and upstairs while B&C show us around their (did I say gorgeous?) home. Brandy and Becky go out for provisions (Coors...of course...American, Coloradian...but not Lite).

We all go down a block down the road to Charly's sister's house and join their family for a most enjoyably barbeque -bbq'd chicken, corn-on-the-cob, grilled peaches and ice cream for desert. A formidable pile of july 4th arsenal has collected on the back lawn. Julian and his cuzzie, Dylan introduce Griffin to.....more to follow...

....to what will be a lifelong dedication to minimally-controlled, possibly improvised, explosive devices.

The festivities moved to the front of the house as we moved to some of the more serious pyrotechnics. The favorites were spinning eyeballs , which spun a frenzy of red and green arcs...like a mobile cathrine wheel. Before the grand finale, a row of fireworks with the same dimensions as Cost-co sized cereal boxes, Charlie and his Sister let of skyrockets with swollen abdomens, their payloads releasing armageddon-scale booms above the rooftops.

Continued up I-25 on July 5th...set for a long day in the car. Destination: Mt Rushmore. The Rockies grew to our West with the colorado plains on our right. After Denver we swung west to Boulder and had Lebanese take-out, Griffin soaking himself with a pop-up fountain on Pearl St. A drum circle in front of the courthouse. No Big Train Chai...not even in Boulder. We stopped at a playground with kids bikes free to ride. A guy from Cambridge UK was there with his daughter, saying that Cambridge also used to provide free bikes but they would all dissappear. He worked for a mining company. We told him we were off to Rushmore. He said that his company donated dynamite for the Indian mountain carving in progress down the road of ____.

Buffalo on the Hillside as we entered Wyoming ..haven't seen any since. The sky darkened as we headed up the 85, and we stopped at a small town (Lusk). Although I have been long intrigued by the Arby's roadside signs ("Eat Arby's Roast Beef Sandwiches - They're Delicious!"), it was only in Lusk that I followed this simple, and inaccurate, plea.

We drove through an intense lightning storm, with the last vestiges of sunlight peering from below the thunderclouds illuminating decrepid infrastructure. Ok ....more soon

Gallup, NM, July 3, 2008

6 AM just East of Gallup, Tent Site #1. Brandy and Griffin asleep in our Coleman tent butted against a fence separating us from a scrubby patch, that adjoins the main road out of Gallup to Interstate 40....and apparently a major railroad track, which provided further punctuation for my sleep. We got here in the dark, after riding through the painted desert as the sun was setting, brightening the green sage and tussock and lighting up the layers of cloud.

Saturday was when we really got going with the move, and we finally filled 154 boxes. I actually have ceased to be astonished at the volume of stuff we have and now view our 600 cubic feet as a proud achievement in the never ending war we wage with minimalism. The movers did not arrive on Monday as promised due to their truck overheating with the hot weather. Understandable perhaps, but what will they say about high seas on the Pacific?

So Brandy and Griffin went on ahead of me to her Dads place in Henderson, NV while I finshed up at the house. July 4th had already started for the boys downstairs, Brad, Larry, Tony and Billy all rode down to the Beach on their bikes. Billy came back early telling me NEVER go to the beach with Brad and Larry. The others were too drunk to ride home and Lucky had to pick them up in Brad's pick-up. I left for Vegas around 8pm as they were all quietening down. At least you can say this for mid-40's partiers: they won't last until midnight.

Last ride in the Honda. Now illegal to hold a cell phone while driving in California. Ipods should be next - for people like me anyway. I stopped in Barstow for my last In'n'Out Burger and made the turn off to Henderson between midnight and one. Don heated up Pizza and poured me a Coors Lite. Then a blissful 6 hours until the final brutal purge at 7AM, collapsing the contents of 2 cars (the Honda and the Prius) into just the Prius, knowing that we have no home to send anything to. We spread the contents of both cars out on Don's driveway - Neighbors aghast - and one final cruel blow halved our volume...unloading the unwanted on an obliging Don for Goodwill and Trash. Of course we were unable to part with everything so sent a box back to Leah's to add to the 6 others we somehow think we will fly to NZ with.