A Professional Dilettante

First, the rant. I think I need to write Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell (my senators) about how our national parks are being priced out of the means of too many Americans. Thirty-two bleeding dollars for a campsite at Mesa Verde is just the tip of the iceberg. It brought back memories of a bunch of other indignities, like the fact that the price of a cabin at Yellowstone has doubled in the last ten years (and never mind that you can’t even camp near Old Faithful anymore, so if you want to be at the geyser basins early or late, you have to pay for lodging), or that the cheapest place to stay in Yosemite is a filthy (and I mean that in the literal sense – the one I stayed in was disgustingly dirty when I was there in 2011) tent cabin for $125 a night. There’s a lot of inequity about entrance fees, too – some very popular parks don’t charge fees, and some charge upwards of $30 just to get in (this is why an annual parks pass for $80 is something I always do – even when I don’t travel it pays for itself just for going to Rainier and Olympic). Anyway, I hate how the parks are letting the concessioners get away with murder. If they really want to walk the walk about getting the younger generations into the parks that they keep talking about, then they need to make sure the younger generations can actually afford to go to the parks. And those of us in the older generations who aren’t rich, too.

Rant over. At least for now.

Other than that, I love Mesa Verde. This is another of those parks that I first visited when I was too young to remember. Almost. The earliest memory I have of traveling with my family is of my sisters holding my hands as I walked along the top of the walls at the Sun Temple here (which is strictly illegal to do these days).

I’ve been to Mesa Verde once as an adult, in 2002, in the immediate aftermath of a huge fire that closed chunks of the park. It’s nice to be back when everything’s open.

The first thing I did was stop at the brand-new (2012) visitor center just inside the park entrance to buy two tickets, one for a tour of Cliff Palace today, and one for a tour of Balcony House tomorrow, then  I drove the mesa top loop, which is where Sun Temple is, and where there are other ruins, and where of course I saw more wildflowers.

I went through Cliff Palace in 2002, and it’s an amazing place. The ranger who took us through this time talked mostly about the history of archaeology as it applies to Mesa Verde, and the good things that happened and the bad. It was eye-opening. Did you know that because the first “real” archaeologist who excavated in Mesa Verde was from Sweden, that the largest collection of Mesa Verde artifacts is in a museum there? I knew from my own education that repatriation is a fraught concept, but I hadn’t known this in specific.

Anyway, Cliff Palace is a remarkable place, well worth climbing ladders and squeezing up narrow steps (better than the hand and footholds on the cliffs the residents used) to get in and out of. I understand I’ll have to crawl through a tunnel to get into Balcony House tomorrow. That ought to be interesting.

Given that I refused to pay $32 to camp in the park, finding a campsite last night was interesting. The national forest doesn’t start until almost Durango, so that was out. I ended up in a commercial campground just across the highway from the park entrance. It was $19, which was considerably better. But still. I need to write my senators. Not that it’ll do any good, but it’ll make me feel better. The parks are supposed to be for everyone, dammit.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen more beautiful scenery than I saw today. Not even the Blue Ridge Parkway. Not even the Icefields Parkway. Not even the Beartooth Highway. This was the desert version of all three, and it was spectacular. The photos I took don’t even begin to do it justice, and I took 150 of them today <wry g>.

I started the day at the crack of dawn by driving to the end of the road at Bryce and working my way back (this, as the brochure advised, puts all the viewpoints on the righthand side). I’d forgotten how pretty Bryce is (the last time I was here was in February, 1997). The colors and the shapes (collectively called hoodoos) and the curvature of the earth views are just magnificent, especially early in the day.

But that was just the beginning of the scenery. I headed east on Utah Hwy. 14, which is marked on the map with those little green dots denoting a scenic route. This was the understatement of the year, if not the decade.

First, I stopped at a place called Mossy Cave. I never did see the cave, but there was a pretty waterfall (enhanced, it seems, by a canal dug back in the 1890s to bring water east of the mountains to the small town of Tropic). The real highlight, though, was being below the hoodoos without having to hike down and back out. Just a half-mile stroll in and back.

Things only got better from there, through canyons and broad valleys and up over hills and dales to the town of Escalante (Es-ca-LAN-te), where I ate lunch at one of those “okay, we’re too small a town for franchise fast food, so here’s something better than any franchise” places. Best hamburger I’ve had in a very long time.

And then the real gorgeousness began. The local term for the shining, smooth, red and white landscape dotted with dark green junipers is slickrock, I suspect because it would be hard to keep your footing on. The road came out on a viewpoint above miles and miles of this amazing territory, where I could do nothing but goggle and say, “Really? Seriously? Really?” I don’t have words for how beautiful that view was, and the pictures don’t do it justice. It was absolutely amazing.

And then the road wove down through it, for miles. This stretch is called the million dollar highway, for how difficult and costly it was to build, but it was worth every penny. To the dairy farmers of Boulder, too, apparently. Before the road was built, the milk they sent for sale to Escalante often turned to butter on the rough trail. Or sour cream, which then exploded <g>.

I passed through the tiny hamlet of Boulder, and began the climb up over Boulder Mountain. I haven’t seen that many aspens since I lived in Colorado. I can only imagine what it must look like in the fall. Gold as far as the eye can see. Today, it was all pale green, except at the viewpoints (the pass topped out at 9600 feet) with more curvature of the earth views. This was a road I know we didn’t travel when I was a kid, because it wasn’t actually paved until 1985.

My goal for today was Capitol Reef National Park, beyond the northern foot of Boulder Mountain. The last time I was here, too, I wasn’t old enough to really remember. I have vague memories, but that’s it. And, again, I was on scenery overload. Tall dark red cliffs and monuments in all sorts of shapes and sizes, looming overhead like they were going to lean over enough to make a tunnel. I’m pretty sure the ten mile scenic side road (as if the whole place wasn’t scenic) wasn’t paved the last time I was here, either, and while I originally decided to take it because it was 97dF outside this afternoon here (only in the 70s on Boulder Mountain – part of me wishes I’d camped up there instead and come down here in the morning) and I wanted to stay in the AC some more, it was still far more beautiful than it had a right to be.

The campground here is in an old Mormon fruit orchard, so at least there’s shade, and now that the sun’s gone down the temperature is actually quite lovely. But heat aside, it was the most amazing day of the trip so far. I’m still just shaking my head at the glory of it all.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

I have to say, after last night’s incredible stars, that I can believe Great Basin NP’s claim to have some of the least light-polluted skies in the lower 48 of the U.S. Amazing.

This morning I took an hour and a half tour of Lehman Caves, which are one of the high points of this park. I discovered, to my delight, that my new (as of last winter) camera takes much better low-light photos than my old (as in ten years old) camera did. Both of the cave photos in this post were taken sans flash or tripod. Some of the others weren’t so great, but I’d say at least half of them came out well.

I had a little time between changing the ticket I’d bought several days ago via phone from this afternoon to this morning and the start of the tour, so I went for a walk along the nature trail on the surface above the cave, where I saw something really pretty called a cliffrose. I also saw the natural entrance to the cave (which isn’t used for people anymore, but is kept open for the bats), and the entrance and exit used for the tours, which were blasted out by the WPA in the thirties, before people knew better (I suspect this was about the same time the elevator that goes down into Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico was installed, too).

Then I put my sneakers into a (very shallow, only the soles got wet) Lysol bath, to disinfect them and protect the bats that live in the cave from something called white nose syndrome, a fungus brought over from Europe that has killed millions of bats in this country and that they’re trying to keep from spreading. If you’ve worn your shoes into a cave before, you have to have them disinfected. So because I’d been in one of the caves at Lava Beds, my sneakers now smell ever so faintly of Lysol <g>.

The cave tour was cool, and not just because it was 50dF inside, while it was pushing 80dF outside. It was beautiful in there, from teeny-tiny soda straws (they’re long and skinny and hollow) to huge columns, elegant draperies and things called popcorn and shields. We walked through for an hour and a half, and every minute was interesting.

After the tour was over, I headed southeast across yet more lonely highway about 150 miles to the town of Cedar City, Utah (my fifth state of the trip), where I am tonight. One thing I did not expect was the acres and acres of the same desert globe mallow I saw in Oregon, in full bloom. It made the entire landscape orange in places, almost like the California poppies down in the Mojave Desert do, except the globe mallow is a darker orange. Just lovely.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

You don’t have to camp to see critters, apparently. This morning, I looked out my motel room window on the north shore of Lake Tahoe and saw a bear! A big lumbering black bear. He didn’t stay long, fortunately, and was gone by the time I was ready to pack up and leave. But still. A bear!

I headed around to the east side of the lake, crossing my third state line into Nevada, stopping at a viewpoint to take some better photos, and drove down the steep eastern escarpment of the Sierras. I arrived in Carson City in the middle of the morning, where I have to say that the signage for east on U.S. 50 was not the clearest on the planet. I did finally find my way out of town, though.

I hadn’t realized until I’d pulled my map out while I was trying to figure out the aforementioned way out of town that Virginia City was only a few miles off of U.S. 50, just a few miles east of Carson City. I hadn’t been to this Virginia City since the weekend I got engaged to my first husband, thirty-mumble years ago. Since I visited another Virginia City (the one in Montana) early on during my first Long Trip, it seemed like a good idea to visit the other one this time. Besides, it was getting on towards lunchtime.

Virginia City, Nevada is kind of a hoot. It’s a tourist trap extraordinaire, but it’s also the home of one of the richest strikes in mining history, as well as where Mark Twain got his start as a newspaperman. It was fun to wander up and down the board sidewalks and peer into shop windows, and eat lunch in a saloon. I do have to say, though, that it wasn’t where I expected to see anything Seahawks. At this point I’m a lot closer to Forty-Whiner country <g>.

After Virginia City, I kept going east! finally! (after almost a week of going south) on U.S. 50, which in Nevada is known as the Loneliest Highway in America. Once you leave the outskirts of Carson City behind, and the town of Fallon about an hour further on, it does get pretty empty, at least of human stuff. It was 110 miles from Fallon to the next town, Austin, a tiny old mining camp perched on the side of a mountain, and I think I saw one human habitation along the way. Oh, and a rest area with an exhibit about the Pony Express, the route of which crossed what would become the highway several times.

There’s a reason they call it the basin and range country. The geology is such that from the air, the state of Nevada looks like a piece of fabric stretched then rumpled repeatedly in neat rows. Across the plain, over the mountains, across the plain, over the mountains, lather, rinse, repeat.

I’m in a forest service campground just east of Austin, where I think I may have camped with my parents when I was a kid. It looks vaguely familiar, anyway. The altitude is 7200 feet, where it’s nice and cool, as opposed to the 90s I left behind in Carson City. There are wildflowers, too. My old friends mules’ ears and lupine, and my favorite wildflower of all, alpine phlox. My neighbors are friendly, too. It’s a good place to be for the night. I wonder if I’ll wake to find critters peering in my window again.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

I woke up this morning to the distinct feeling of being watched. It was extremely disconcerting, but when I looked out my back window it was to see a deer, about ten feet away, staring straight at me. As soon as I moved she bounded off, but that was pretty cool.

Merlin and I survived the most washboardy dirt road on the planet <tm> back to the main highway without jarring anything loose, and headed south to Crater Lake. The closer I got to the lake the more snow there was, until by the time I reached the rim, the snowdrifts were considerably taller than my van.

I’ve never seen Crater Lake with snow before. I’d been there at least once as a kid with my parents (the Mazama campground is where my dad once chased a bear away, which story gets trotted out regularly in my family), and with my first husband, and this was the third time since I moved to Tacoma 23 years ago. But still, first time with snow, which was amazingly beautiful. Most of the roads and all of the trails were closed because of it, though, so, really, after taking lots of photos and sitting for a while on Crater Lake Lodge’s patio overlooking the lake, and hearing the weirdest sound, which I thought was a wild animal but turned out to be a baby (I’ve never heard a baby make a noise like that before), there wasn’t much else to do but go on.

Down down down to lunch in Klamath Falls, and some necessary phone calls now that the holiday weekend is finally over (there’s not a lot of cell phone signal in this part of the world), and then across my second state line of the trip to the town of Tulelake, California, the site of the largest Japanese internment camp during WWII. There’s a small national park service exhibit (and a bored to death park ranger) at the fairgrounds in town, but that’s pretty much it. Oh, and Tulelake High School is the home of the Honkers <g>. The Pacific Flyway goes directly over Tulelake, and there’s a huge lake and wildlife refuge nearby, but still.

And on to where I am tonight, which is Lava Beds National Monument, home of the largest concentration of lava tube caves in North America, and the last stand of the Modoc Indians, back about three years before the Nez Perce tried to flee to Canada. I hiked a trail around Captain Jack’s Stronghold (Captain Jack was what the whites called one of the Modoc chiefs), where the tribe held off a U.S. Army force ten times their number for months before they finally had to surrender.

Count it as another odd place to find wildflowers, too.

I did go down a little ways into one of the caves, but they’re not lit, and a lantern was not enough light for me to go far down there alone. I’m hoping there’ll be a ranger-guided walk through one tomorrow before I head on south. We’ll see.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

Today was a short drive day. I spent the morning exploring the Painted Hills section of the John Day Fossil Beds, which turned out to be my favorite part. The hills weren’t just multicolored – red from iron, gray from manganese, lavender and yellow from minerals I don’t remember, sorry – they’re textured to look like the skin of some ancient reptile. Nothing grows on them where the soil hasn’t been disturbed, because of the density of the clay and a whole bunch of other things. Where they have been disturbed, even out in that desolate country, there are flowers. I saw three species I had never seen before, and thanks to a lovely identification panel on the kiosk at the picnic area, I now know what their friends call them <g>

Prineville was about an hour’s drive on, and I stopped there for lunch before coming on to Redmond (just north of Bend), where I have taken my first motel of the trip (I had always planned on stopping in motels about every third night – for showers and wifi and easy charging of stuff, if nothing else). I was a bit concerned about finding a motel on the Sunday night of Memorial Day weekend, so I checked in early, then drove over to Sisters, of quilt show fame.

Sisters is sort of the Cannon Beach of central Oregon. Or maybe that crossed with Winthrop? Anyway, lots of tourists, but some really good huckleberry ice cream. And the Stitchin’ Post (the shop that started the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show all those years ago), which was something of a disappointment. For one thing, half the shop is knitting stuff now, and for the other, I don’t know who their fabric buyer is these days, but her taste and mine do not agree. I was looking for fabric that would say, this came from Sisters to me, but mostly what they had was that sixties-looking stuff that does nothing for me, and has nothing to do with where the shop is.

It wasn’t important (having just packed up my entire stash a couple of days ago, I am acutely conscious that I need more fabric like I need a hole in my head), but it was sad to me, anyway.

I did get some spectacular views of the Three Sisters, Broken Top, Three-Fingered Jack, and Mt. Bachelor along the way, but there was no place to pull over and actually take pictures. I promise to try to do better on that front tomorrow.

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

Well, I knew everything was going too smoothly. I’ve been offline since yesterday because setting up my computer connections for while I’m on the road turned into a headache the size of Mt. Rushmore. They’re working okay now, sorta. At least I do seem to be getting email and am able to send it, thank goodness.

The next time I’ll be online is somewhere on the road with wifi. Probably not for at least a day or two. My home internet is shutting down sometime tomorrow.

Also, there was a small hiccup with the closing, resulting in it getting delayed by one day. Which, combined with the holiday weekend, means that the wire transfer isn’t going to happen until Tuesday.

Given that I plan on hitting the road tomorrow as soon as the movers are done, that’s not the greatest thing on the planet. I’d have preferred to be able to confirm things before I left. But there’s nothing to be done about it, and hanging around in an empty house for two more days and then finding somewhere else to be for two more days after that isn’t ideal, either.

Here’s hoping I’m not the only goofed up wire transfer in my realtor’s 20 years of doing business <wry g>.

Also? Insomnia sucks eggs. Hopefully that will resolve itself after tomorrow.

Good thoughts would be most appreciated!

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

And more boxes.  And more boxes.  And how on earth did my computer desk come to hold so much stuff???  Oh, and wow, were the hidden corners of that desk dusty.

That said, the efficacy of having a fabric stash for wrapping delicate objects is once again a really good thing.  The plastic file cabinet drawers I use for storing said stash are also good as box substitutes for said objects.

Making progress.  Moving like a herd of turtles, as my Appalachian-raised friend used to say.  I need another walk.  My back is starting to ache a bit (and no, I do know how to use my legs to lift stuff — this is mostly a bending over kind of ache, which a walk will help).

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

So.  I’m still on schedule to hit the road on May 28th.  We’ve had the inspection, the things they wanted done that I can do or have done are done, and the condo association handyman will be here on Thursday to take care of the things that he needs to do.  The appraiser will be here on Friday.  And after that, it’s less than two weeks before closing.

I’ve begun buying traveling gear I don’t have already (not much, actually — I needed to replace my sleeping bag, among other things), some online (all of which should arrive by next week) and some in the store.

Oh, and here’s a picture of Merlin:

Yes, that’s his name.  If I ever have him painted green, then a Merlin is a small falcon.  In the meantime he’s named after a wizard 🙂   He’s a Ford Transit Connect, the short wheel base cargo version, which means he has two bucket seats and a 4′ x4′ x6′ space behind them.  He’s actually more fun to drive than you’d think he would be.

And my condo is filling up with boxes, which are gradually filling up with my belongings.  I packed up a good chunk of my sewing room yesterday, and I’m going to finish that today if I can.  My best friend’s daughter’s SO and another friend both work for grocery stores, so I am not hurting for packing boxes.

Nerves are starting to get to be a bit much.  Seventeen more days till closing, eighteen more till the movers get here, and nineteen more till I have to be out of the house.

Eep!

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

I have signed paperwork on my condo.  Eight showings in three days and four offers later, I’m very happy with the deal I got.

When they say the Puget Sound area is a seller’s market, they mean it, is all I have to say.

If all goes well and the deal doesn’t fall through, I will be moved out by May 28th, and on the road shortly thereafter.

Can we say holy cow, boys and girls?  And try not to bounce off of the ceiling???

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.