Jiggedy jig

after we've been away in "the little house," so dubbed by darien and laura four years ago, i'm always struck by how very big our "big house" is. it has a room entirely devoted to my computer, for instance. there's another room for sleeping, a choice of indoor bathrooms, a kitchen you can stand up in, and several different reading lairs. how can this place seem so small by february of every endless winter?

so we are back, and it is cold and rainy here, but greening up. we have not missed a thing: not the daffodils, not the tulips, not the crabapple blossoms. all of that is yet to love, and loving it will take all my attention, and i will forget about many of the things that seemed, just hours ago, unforgettable. so in between putting away the camping gear and putting in the laundry and putting out affection for princess and the hen, i want to spend a few minutes putting down some wonders and oddities, the kind of jumble you have in the back of your car and the back of your head at the end of a road trip.

under the heading remarkable campground sights: two blue-rinse ladies in matching mauve sweatsuits walking matching white bichons at 6 AM.

under the heading sounds that make you wonder: the campground that played XM radio "love songs" constantly ... in the bathroom. i shaved to "the first cut is the deepest." billy joel crooned "i love you just the way you are," but i showered anyway. modesty compels me to stop there, but you can imagine other odd pairings.

startling things: all the US national park bumph uses the phrase "geologists say..." to introduce FACTS -- FACTS, people!!! -- concerning natural phenomena. also: the lingua franca of bryce canyon is in fact french. and: nanton alberta is totally gay.

under the heading freeway signs that cause you to wonder:

• Young Family Living Farm, next exit
• Action Wood Waterbeds
• BJ Services, Ltd.
  
• Dirty Jo Punsters in Spanish Fork, "spicing things up since 1990"
• Pot Roast to DRIVE for, 17 miles ahead

things that made my heart glad: the fields of purple crocuses in the blackfeet indian reservation. being buzzed by a black-chinned hummingbird in zion. highway 287. learning that the california condor, having been declining in number since prehistoric times, is making a go of it in monument valley. seeing my favorite alpine flower with the excellent new name "revel paintbrush." mo's Authentic Western Style.

things to covet: trailers by safari condo.

and a random prediction: iceberg lettuce will make a comeback.

there. really home now.

Old lady road trip

i notice my advancing years most starkly when traveling. for one thing, i can't drive like i used to 20 years ago. back then, i would do a 38-hour drive (san francisco to edmonton, for instance) in about 43 hours, stopping on the side of a nevada two-lane for a wee nap or two. now, if i was so foolish as to "nap" on the side of the road, i would fall immediately into a deep yet fitful state complete with snoring and drooling. the state trooper would find it hard to so hard to wake me he'd just leave me there for the next shift to rouse. then, i would spend all day griping about how my back hurts, and my neck is kinked, and i slept funny on my arm.

so when we don't camp, we stay in motels.

but not just any motels. i used to be of "the chaper the better" view where motels are concerned: why overpay? and then there was the kitsch aesthetic. i would thrill to the bedspreads you can slide right off of, the plastic-wrapped plastic cup. now, i think of things like the quality of the mattress. hampton inn is a good chain, we've discovered -- a chain! -- because of their special serta bed. (don't worry, we're not quite going to order one for home yet, though if you want to....)

and what about noise? used to be, i could sleep through anything. now: well, one morning in moab i shushed the frat party next door with a single teacher-look. old lady! back in yakima two years ago, i reached in through the truck window where a younger version of myself was napping and switched the radio right off. we're in room 214 now, but we were first checked into 208. i had us moved somewhere quieter.

the finickiness of old age extends to road food. no longer for me the big greasy spoon breakfast. i will burp all the way to the next town. also, it makes me sleepy. and the last thing i need is an order of hash browns on my hips ... forever.

driving itself is more tiring now, and more stressful. it takes more effort to keep my eyes on the road. my eyes tire faster. my neck cricks and my back aches. i know more than i did two decades ago, know that i make mistakes and that others make mistakes, and that mistakes are always worse at 60 miles an hour. saddest of all -- i will admit this here, once, and then go back to pinning our routes on mo -- i understand the attraction of the interstate.

of course, there are compensating virtues. for one thing, i've woken up at 6am this fine sunday morning, without an alarm. even after blogging i should be able to make it to smitty's for the senior breakfast special.

Hiking horseshoe canyon

to get to horseshoe canyon from moab, you head back north up the 191. hang a left onto I-70, but before you hit the san rafael swell (say, 30 miles or so), turn south down 24. a couple dozen miles down that two-lane asphalt you'll see a dirt road leading east to hans flat ranger station. now you need the topo maps. after about 30 miles on increasingly rough roads, you hit the five-mile access to horseshoe canyon. wonder whether you should have a vehicle on this road at all. persevere. and park in the overview parking lot that gives nothing away.

the hike is marked with cairns over slickrock, and it goes down down down for 750 feet. you're not surprised to see dinosaur tracks on the path. every step down gets a little bit hotter, until you're down on the breezeless canyon floor. by early afternoon it's about 32 degrees down there, with the sun glinting off desert-varnished rock.











you walk the wash for a few miles, looking at various petroglyphs and pictograms along the way.


























finally, you get to the great gallery, with some of the finest rock art in the world. it's a pilgrimmage for many anthropologists, a mecca for art historians. you sit, awed, in the blessed shade, and you're right: you will never forget this feeling.



















on the way home, even though it's in the opposite direction, stop at goblin state park. why not?

Desert tripping

it's been hard to write, since mostly we've been too busy hiking

and cycling

and mountain biking

to do any blogging.

we've seen some amazing stuff in our two weeks away: peregrines shrieking over red-rock hoodoos, familiar montane landscape giving way to badlands i couldn't have imagined, natural bridges, trestle bridges, arches and petroglyphs, an entire national park closed to private vehicles, queen victoria figured in sandstone, marriages ending in an RV park (mostly because of the parking), a japanese lady hiking with parasol and kitten heels, a lizard eating a grasshopper. there are things we've felt that can't be captured in words or photographs: the miracle of an apple in desert heat, the coolth of rock that's been in the shade, the feeling you get in front of pictographs painted over 10,000 years ago.

i'm writing this post, and the next few, just outside bryce canyon. it's high desert, 7777 feet, which means it goes down to freezing at night and up to a perfect 24 during the day. there's a big fat robin perched on the tent trailer while its mate scours the ground around my feet. a stellar's jay is sitting in the tree ahead of me. it's just like being in jasper .... until you remember what's down the road.

Riding with everything but rilke

a few years ago my friend and colleague ted bishop published a great book called riding with rilke. the book is about a lot of things, especially reading and writing, but at its centre is a solo motorcycle ride from edmonton alberta to austin texas. ted's been on my mind today because we're driving some of the same roads, some of my favorite in the world, and i'm powerfully reminded of his descriptions of two-lane blacktop, esso diners and the freedom of the road.

i am amazed how powerful that idea is -- the freedom of the road -- given the reality. okay, maybe in ted's case there's something to it: the wind in your face, the bugs on your faring, a single pair of jeans. he did the trip in something like a week, as i recall, in two saddlebags. he brought a map, a blank journal, a rainsuit and a credit card.

we, on the other hand, are not traveling quite so light. what gives it away, i wonder: the 6-cylinder jeep or the 2000-pound trailer behind it? each of us has a giant plastic bin for our clothes, not including shoes. 7 pairs. (each.) we are also carrying a big box of food, 4 iPods and the donut player, heather's iphone, mo's smartphone, a solar charging unit, 2 laptops, 2 bikes and associated paraphernalia, an extra memory-foam mattress for the king-sized trailer bed, a portable powerpack, several gallons of water, assorted coffee rigs and a pound of beans (you know we're roughing it 'cause the beans are ground), our new yorker backlog, two lawnchairs complete with sunshades, a range of camera options, and at least 22 books: our own books on utah, my parents' books on utah, dianne and katherine's books on utah, novels for heather, novels for mo, the audubon bird book, the trailer journal, hikes in the canadian rockies (oops), the rand mcnally atlas, the national geographic atlas, and bed gadd. don't even ask what's in the actual trailer.

now consider: synthroid for mo, a topical non-steroidal anti-inflammatory cream for heather, a giant bottle of advil for the both of us, in consideration of a week of cycling, pepto bismol, cal-mag supplements, glucosamine chondroitin, surgical tubing so i can keep up on my physio, waterproof sunscreen for heather, PABA-free sunscreen for mo, the clinique three-part face-cleansing system, intensive eye serum, regular glasses, reading glasses, prescription sunglasses, nonprescription sunglasses and contact lenses, and it's less rebel without a cause than stop that bus!.

i swear to god, though: you crank the tunes, haul the liberty into 5th, and it's all freedom all the time.