A New Adventure

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

-- Terry Pratchett,  A Hat Full of Sky

I've been back home for a bit over a month now, and already it feels as as if it were years ago that I left for my seventy-nine day adventure.  The familiarity of Arroyo Grande--the people, the streets, the stores and the routines feel comfortable and they make my journey seem far away and remote.  But I've managed to keep a hold of many bits of perspective and insights that I gained while I was away.  I've been trying to find the story in each day, to keep an eye out for new discoveries, and to approach my surroundings as if they were somewhere new and unfamiliar.  And I've been trying to remind myself that there is always an opportunity for adventure even in the things that seem small and mundane.

One of the big things that has stuck with me is getting out on my bike and exploring.  San Luis Obispo county has so many fantastic little roads tucked away between the valleys of the hills and underneath the old oaks that dominate the landscape.  And while it would be easy to drive those roads it feels much more exciting to be out in air on a bike.  Perhaps it is because it makes me feel like I'm on that first bike ride I took on my trip when I pedaled away from Dutcher Creek Village and explored the roads through the wineries in Cloverdale and around Lake Sonoma.  The bike I brought with me on my trip was a 15-year-old silver Specialized Sirrus.  It's what is called a "commuter" bike:  built more for comfort rather than endurance.  It had a nice, soft, cushy saddle, flat handlebars, and allowed me to sit a little more upright. It was a nice bike for the twenty- to thirty-mile rides I was doing on my trip, but it was starting to show it's age.  When Kevin was tuning it up for me in Washington he even commented "You know, they don't even make parts like this anymore..."  But other than a gold Schwinn Stingray from my youth and a beat-up mountain bike in college, it was really the only bike I had ever ridden so I didn't know any better.  For the first several days after I had returned home, I continued my bike rides.  I rode the narrow road that meandered through the ranches in Huasna Valley; I peddled past Lake Lopez onto High Mountain Road where cars seemed an anomaly among the vineyards, cattle, and horses; and Jobie and I took a few trips to San Luis Obispo on our bikes.  My old Sirrus was serving me well and I was having fun on my renewed introduction to the scenery I had missed for so long in my own backyard.

A couple weeks after I was home, Jobie and I took a little wine-tasting trip in Paso Robles and we met up with two of her friends, Rich and Lina, at one of the wineries.  We brought along a little picnic which we spread out on a table and purchased a bottle of wine.  As we were visiting Rich told us about a bicycle trip that he has done for the past several years.  It was a ride that started in Mojave, California and went up Highway 395 through Tehachapi towards Lee Vining and Lake Mono and then into Yosemite.  "That sounds fun!" Jobie chirped as he told us about it.  "Can we do it with you this year?"  One thing led to another, and now we're signed up for this ride.  On September 1st, we'll be heading to the desert to begin a 5-day ride that will span roughly 300 miles and about a mile and a half of elevation gain.  

I figured that this ride would be a good excuse to buy a new bike, so I visited a friend, Eric, who owns a bike shop.  I originally had intended to get a bike similar to my Specialized Sirrus: the new models of it cost roughly $600 and that sounded reasonable to me.  When I went to see Eric and told him about our ride, though, his response was "You don't want to do that ride on a commuter bike.  You'll need a real road bike for that."  So after trying several different bikes and expanding my budget multiple times, I settled on a black Specialized Roubaix with red and white stripes on it.  Jobie got a matching one, and we agreed that I will stay away from the purple spandex top so that we don't look too coordinated.    We've already gone on a few training rides with our longest one at just under 75 miles when we rode to the Smokehouse in Cayucos to get fish tacos.  Eric was right:  there is a huge difference in how this new bike rides compared to my old Sirrus.  The new one is much smoother and faster and feels much more agile on the road.  The only thing I miss is that big, soft, cushy seat on my old bike.

The End... ?

There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.

― Frank Herbert

On Monday, Jobie and I spent a few hours at the Grand Canyon Visitor’s Center before climbing back into my van and pointing it westward for one last day of adventures.  As we were driving down Interstate 40, I saw a sign for something called the Grand Canyon Caverns.  I called back to Jobie who was sleeping in the back of the van and asked her if she wanted to make a quick detour to see some caves. 

Ads for a product that doesn't even exist anymore.
What a great marketing campaign!

She murmured something that I took as a “Yes,” so I turned onto Route 66 and we were off to explore.   Route 66 was not as exciting as Chuck Berry made it sound, but it was a little more interesting than Interstate 40.  There were a series of Burma Shave ads along the way that helped break up the monotonous desert landscape.  After about 30 miles, we pulled into the Grand Canyon Caverns, which appeared to be straight out of 1950.  A large sign in varying shades of faded yellow announced, “CAVERNS INN” with letters that were in somewhat of a caveman-style font.  Behind the sign was a single-story angular building that was painted in tans and burnt orange colors and had several dusty old cars lined up in front.  As we pulled into the parking lot, another smaller, hand-painted sign indicated that the cave entrance was past a 3-hole mini-golf course that had several large dinosaurs in it.  We drove down the gravely road about a mile and eventually came to another old kitschy building with yet another large dinosaur statue in front of it (for some reason we saw a lot of dinosaur statues across the desert—perhaps 20 of them).  We went in and a heavy-set old lady with crooked teeth sold us two tour tickets. Actually, she sold us two faded green poker chips that were used as our proof-of-payment for the tour.  At 12:30, a young kid said the tour was starting and he directed 9 of us into an elevator that led 21 stories down into the earth.  He spoke relatively fast throughout the tour and gave us a little history of it, telling us how it was the deepest cave, that it was one of the largest in the area, that it was designated as a bomb shelter, and about how dinosaur bones were found in it (again with the dinosaurs). 

One last stop at roadside Americana

Before the tour started, he emphasized that the Grand Canyon Caverns Cave Company also functioned as care-takers of the cave and he instructed everyone not to touch any the walls inside of the cave and to avoid damaging the natural features of it.  But once we were inside, he showed us the hotel room they had built inside the cave that came complete with a large screen TV, a king-sized bed, a toilet, and running water which could be rented for $800 per night, as well as the 70-seat music theater that they had constructed inside of it.  In addition, he frequently mentioned how he and other employees would come down at their leisure and crawl through the tunnels and into the various passageways for fun.  It seemed that Grand Canyon Cave was much more a commercial venture than a true protect-the-natural-resource venture. 

After our 45-minute tour of the cave, we continued on down Route 66 until it met up with Interstate 40 again and we headed to Joshua Tree.  We spent the night at the Joshua Tree Lake RV Park and on Tuesday morning we set out to explore Joshua Tree National Park.

Must be close to L.A.

Joshua Tree National Park has a bizarre landscape.  It is filled with mountains of large boulders that look more like piles of rubble than anything that was formed naturally.  The Joshua Trees that are prevalent through the park have tall, light brown hairy trunks that sprout out a small number of thick twisty branches that are also covered with a hairy bark and which erupt into a tuft of green spikes at the tips.  The ground is covered with a gravely sand and lots of small cacti and tumbleweed-looking plants.  We saw a wide variety of rocks strewn around the ground: some that looked like pink quartz, some that looked black and lava-esque, some that were deep red and angular, and some that were round and dark gray and looked more like river stones.  And the whole area was baking in heat that was close to 100° by 10:00 in the morning.  We spent a couple hours exploring a small trail that led to the ruins of an old ranch that was built on the property in 1876.  It was the home to settlers who started using the area for gold mining, and then later as a cattle ranch.  As we looked around at the arid land that was covered in cactus and dry scrub it was hard to imagine cattle grazing in the area or people living in such an unforgiving environment. 

Joshua Tree National Park looked like something
out of a Dr. Seuss book

I suppose, though, that it is a testament to the adaptability of humans and the way that life finds its way into surprising places.  We finished our hike, went back to the van and quickly turned on the air conditioner, and made the last bit of the journey home to Arroyo Grande.

We arrived home late Tuesday afternoon.  I had spent a total of 79 days on the road and drove nearly 13,000 miles—that’s over half way around the Earth.   I got to see a variety of landscapes, talk to people of diverse backgrounds, visit old friends, have new experiences, adventure in some of this country’s natural wonders, and gained a broader perspective of just how varied life is even in a place that at first seemed so familiar.   I’ve flown across this country countless times and I guess that has shrunk its boundaries and made it seem small and trivial in my mind.  But by traveling across it slowly and by taking the time to explore both the grand and granular interesting spots, I’ve realized that it holds far more than was ever contained in the confines of my imagination.

One thing the desert does have is spectacular sunsets

So now my journey is over. Or at least, the part of the journey in my van is over.  In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck said “We do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”  And now that I have taken my trip, I know that that is indeed true.  When I first set out on this venture, I planned that I would have some distinct endpoint—a date at which I’d return, sell my van, and go back to my previous life.  People kept asking, “When will you come back?” and that seemed such an unambiguous question.  On one day I set out on the road, and on another day I’d return and those two days would be like the bookends in defining the length of the trip.  But even now, only a few days after I’ve come home, I know that the lingering influence of this trip will continue:  the impressions of the things I saw and the thoughts I had along the way have become like little Post-Its in my mind to remind me that even when things seem ordinary or mundane, or when I find myself falling into a comfortable routine, there is always an adventure to be had or a story to be told if I just approach life with a little bit of a sense of wonder.

A Grand Adventure

NOTE:  This entry was written on Sunday, July 21 but I didn't have good internet access to post it.

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To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.

― Mark Twain

I still have a few more days left on my journey, but my days of being a solo adventurer have come to an end:  Jobie flew out to Arizona to join me on the last few days of my trek. 

That's a big hole in the ground!

After surviving Arches National Park with both of my arms still in tact, I drove to Meteor Crater in Winslow, Arizona.  I spent the morning checking out a large hole that was left in the ground when a meteor impacted with the Earth about 50,000 years ago.  It was really quite interesting.  The crater itself is immense: about ¾ mile across and 570 feet deep.  I tried taking some pictures of it but the feeble lens on my camera could not capture its immense size.  There was a small platform that extended over the edge of the crater, and it had telescopes on it that allowed guests to get a close up look at the distant features of it.   In addition to the crater, there was a small museum where they detail the story of how it was determined that the hole was indeed caused by a meteor as opposed to a volcano (hint: in 1960 a guy named Eugene Shoemaker found similarities between minerals found in meteor crater and those found in craters created by nuclear explosions, and he realized that volcanoes could not produce the heat and pressure required to make those minerals).  It also had a lot of displays about other objects found in space, a movie that told what likely happened when the meteor hit Earth, and information about other craters around the world.   I spent about an hour and a half at the museum before heading to the Phoenix airport to pick Jobie up.

For some reason, Jobie preferred the Omni over the KOA

I arrived at the airport about 45 minutes early and found a parking spot large enough for my van.  Fortunately there was a Starbucks inside the terminal, so I earned myself a couple more points on my Starbucks card and enjoyed the air conditioning inside the building while I waited (outside it had hit 115°).  Jobie made her way off the plane and we headed to nearby Scottsdale.  I didn’t want to immediately shock her with life in a van, so we spent the first night in Arizona at the Omni Scottsdale Resort and Spa.  We pulled up to the valet stand at the resort.  It was quite comical driving up in my dust-covered, bug-splattered oversized van.  I pulled in behind a shiny Mercedes convertible and a young guy in a valet uniform came and opened the door for me.  He did his best to remain professional and asked if we were checking in.  I told him yes, handed him the keys, and asked him to be sure not to park it next to next to any of those crappy cars. 

Meteor Crater really didn't seem that big after seeing this

On Saturday we hung around Scottsdale and checked out Taliesin West, which was Frank Lloyd Wright’s residence for several years.  I really wasn’t that impressed with it.  I mean, the architecture was interesting and all, but when the tour guide told the group that Frank Lloyd Wright considered the appropriate height of a person to be 5’8” and that people over 6’ tall were a “waste of space and materials,” I just figured that Wright was a worthless, bitter little man.   So perhaps my opinion was a little bit biased. 

After the day in Scottsdale, we made our way towards the Grand Canyon.  We spent the night at a KOA just outside of the park, as the campground inside the park was full for Saturday night.  On Sunday, we hiked the South Kaibab Trail to a point 3 miles into the canyon.  The first half of the trip was easy—it was all down hill.  We got some incredible views.  The canyon really is one of the great wonders of the country.  Everyone knows about it even if they’ve never visited it, but it really cannot be truly appreciated from just knowledge of its existence.  It starts near the rim with unbelievably sheer cliffs.  The walls of the cliffs are deep red, striped with tan and orange where the different layers of sedimentary rock come together.  At the bottom of the cliffs, the canyon flattens out briefly into expansive flat meadows of low shrubs and green plants and small flowers.  The meadows then drop off again into a steep, narrow gorge that extends down to the turbid Colorado River.  The canyon is a symphony of colors and textures and life and each angle offers a unique viewpoint. It’s impossible to take in everything at one time.  At various points during our hike, we’d both pause to take in everything that was in front of us, and we both saw things that the other didn’t even though we’d be looking in the same direction.  Beyond just the views, the canyon is impressive in its age.  As we descended down into its depths, I kept considering that as we got lower and lower, the rocks got older and older.  At times I feel old with my mere 44 years, but being among those cliffs and valleys that were carved millions of years ago made me feel silly in thinking myself aged.  

Those cliffs seem a lot higher when you
know you have to climb back up them.

The hike down into the canyon was not bad at all--it went pretty quickly being as it was all downhill.  Jobie was even jogging almost the whole way down.  When we got to Skeleton Point, which was the suggested endpoint for a day hike, we turned around and looked back up at the cliffs we had come down.  Somehow, they seemed much larger when looking back up.  And we weren't even all the way down at the bottom which made the scale of the Grand Canyon even more impressive.  We were perhaps only 15% of the way across, and not even half of the way down.  But, again, we didn't want to have to chew off any arms so we made our way back up the trail.  On the way up, we passed a couple who were making their way down.  The man was perhaps in his fifties and the sweat stains on his shirt and forehead gave away his level of exhaustion.  "How much farther is it?" he asked me as he wiped at his brow.

"It's not far," I told him.  "We started at the other rim about an hour ago so you're pretty close. Keep it up!" I told him.  He stared at me blankly for a minute.

"He's not serious!" Jobie blurted out, ruining my fun.  

"No, seriously, you're only about 10 minutes away from Skeleton Point," I told him.  He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.  "After that, you get to go back up hill!" I encouraged him.

He laughed, but seemed a bit relieved that he didn't have much farther to go, and then the two of them  continued on their way down as Jobie and I made our way back up.

Almost back up to the top!

But the best part of the trip to the Grand Canyon was having someone to share it with.  There is a lot of joy in going on solitary adventures:  you can go at your own pace, you can go in whatever direction you want, you can spend as much or as little time at each different point along the way as you like.  But the joy of the adventure gets augmented when you have someone else along. You can “ooooh” and “aaah” at the different vistas and point them out, talk about them, and share the experience.  Plus, you have someone else to point out the things that they see, which you might have missed. 

At the end of our hike, we headed back to the campground.  We were able to get a campsite in the park for Sunday night.  It wasn’t quite the Omni Resort, but it worked out just fine.  It wasn’t until after dinner that I came across the only drawback of having to share this journey with someone else:  there was now competition for all that chocolate that I had stashed away in my little refrigerator.  But in the grand scheme of things, I suppose that even chocolate is a joy that is better when shared.

These were the rules posted on the Grad Canyon shuttle bus.
I almost violated #4.

Getting Lost

NOTE:  This post was written on Thursday, June 18th but I didn't have good access to internet at that point.

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When you've managed to stumble directly into the heart of the unknown - either through the misdirection of others, or better yet, through your own creative ineptitude - there is no one there to hold your hand or tell you what to do. In those bad lost moments, in the times when are advised not to panic, we own the unknown, and the world belongs to us. The child within has full reign. Few of us are ever so free

― Tim Cahill, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh

I got lost today and had a few moments of panic.  It was fantastic!  It was in Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. 

These towering rocks keep watch over the
road into Arches National Park

Let me step back a bit first and say that Moab was perhaps one of my favorite stops on this trip.  To get there, you leave the comfort of the well-worn Interstate 70 and turn onto US 191 which is a small, two-lane highway that feels like it is taking you into the heart of nowhere.  It stretches desolate and lonely away from the traffic of the Interstate and will lead you to question if you really are on the right road.  At least that’s the effect it had on me as I drove south away from the steady flow of cars.  As you approach Moab, the sides of the highway begin to rise up in tall, crimson cliffs that are carved into bizarre towers that seem to watch you warily as you advance on the small town through the dry heat (it was 105° when I arrived).  The entrance gate to Arches National Park is at the foot of the guardian cliffs, and the road twists back and forth sharply up to the top.  Being so close to them, it’s difficult to get a good glimpse of their impressive height and stature, but once you get to the top you are treated to a fantastic view of the valley below.  The road through the park then takes you past even more towers of red stone that have been twisted and carved into dramatic formations over millions of years.   As I passed through the park, I wished that my van had a convertible top so that I could get a better view of the unique structures.  I found myself continuously leaning forward onto the dash, wrenching my head upward to catch glimpses of the full height of the towers around me.   I was on my way to hike through an area called Devil’s Garden at the end of the park, and amazingly I made it the full 16 miles through the park without running off the road while gawking at the scenery.

It was at this point that I realized I had lost the trail

The hike through Devil’s Garden was listed as being a bit over 7 miles and strenuous, and I was looking forward to getting a workout from it.  I thought that I’d get an early start on the trail to avoid the heat and some of the crowds, but when I arrived at 7:45am it appeared that lots of other people had the same idea.  The parking lot at the trailhead was bustling with cars and people rubbing on sunblock and putting on hats and hiking boots.   I quickly got my water pack on my back, put on my own sunblock and bug repellant, and made my way to the start of the trail.  The first half-mile or so was really not at all strenuous. It consisted of a wide, flat gravely path that meandered alongside some tall red cliffs.  There were all kinds of people on the trail: families with young children, couples holding hands, a boy scout troop, and even several people who appeared well into their seventies or more.  As I made my way through the crowds, I heard all kinds of different languages being spoken; German, Italian, Spanish, and Mandarin were the ones I recognized, but there were several others that were unfamiliar.  It was great to see so many different people enjoying the park, but I secretly wished that they would have been there a little later in the day.   Not too far from the start of the trail, the first arch was visible. It was called Landscape Arch. Nestled up against the side of a hill, it was a thin, delicate arc of red stone that stretched a couple of hundred feet between two more formidable rocks.  It was difficult to get a good picture of it as so many people were standing at the bit of trail in front of it, gawking and snapping pictures.  With a little patience I managed to get a few clear pictures of it before heading further down the trail.

After 30 minutes of wandering in the desert,
this was a very welcome sight!

A short ways past Landscape Arch, I saw a sign that said “Primitive Trail” and which warned hikers that it was a difficult, poorly marked trail.  No one was heading down that path, so I decided that was the route I was going to take.  It started with a scramble up a thin ledge of stone.  Getting to the top required a little bit of hands-and-feet, but it wasn’t too bad at all.  Once I reached the top, I turned around and took in the view of the stone I had just climbed up, the sandy, crowded path at the bottom of it.  “There will be no whining children or old ladies on this trail to slow me down!” I thought to myself.  I brushed my hands off, twisted back around and took a moment to figure out where I was going.  The land in front of me was covered with red dirt, speckled with small shrubs, and mottled with rocks of all sizes.  In the distance, I could see tall, vertical spines of stone sticking up from the ground.  There was no discernible path, so I chose a direction that had the fewest amount of trees in the way and walked through the desert.  As I got further along, I realized that I was no longer on any sort of trail at all, but the scenery was incredible!  I was alone among all the interesting rock formations, plants, and critters that scurried along in the dirt.  I climbed up a few of the smaller formations and got a good glimpse of my surroundings. The only footprints in the dirt leading up to the rocks were mine, and I couldn’t detect any other hint of a trail.  It was exciting—I was creating my own trail through the park! 

This is what people come to Arches National Park to see

Eventually I came to several tall rock structures that I couldn’t get around and I had to backtrack a bit.  I walked back, past my footprints until I found another semi-clear line of dirt through the shrubs and rocks.  I walked along, enjoying the silence and the feeling of having the park to myself.  There were several more of the vertical rock spines, and I climbed up one of them.  On the other side, it dropped off sharply and went down a gravely cliff.  It was at this point that I began to get a little nervous.  While it was indeed nice to have a “trail” to myself, I had a few brief images of headlines mentioning a lonely lost hiker in the desert who foolishly went off the established path and ended up lost or stuck and being forced to chew his arm off in order to get free of some fallen boulder.  I wondered if I should go down the gravely cliff or turn around and try to find my way back.  Suddenly, I heard some voices ahead of me down the cliff.  They actually were a bit welcoming even though I had wanted to get away from the crowds.  I decided to go on forward, thinking that maybe I was actually on the “primitive” trail.  I scrambled down the rocks and found myself in a narrow crevasse between two of the vertical blades of red rock.  A short ways ahead I caught sight of a couple cautiously working their way further into the stone valley.  I called out to them, “Hey! Is this the primitive trail?”

A woman in a red floppy hat turned around and looked up the path at me.  “I don’t think so.  I think we’re lost also,” she laughed. 

“Ok, great! So I’m not the only one!”  I felt a little bit re-assured. 

See how small that guy looks?

“We think the trail might be up ahead, though, just around this big rock.  We’re going to try to see if we can find it,” she yelled up to me, her voice echoing off the stone walls.

I looked further down the valley, and I didn’t think that it led to anywhere that I wanted to be.  I didn’t want to end up becoming a headline, so I decided not to follow them.  “Ok. Good luck!” I shouted back, and waved. 

I turned around and made my way back, and eventually found the main trail.  It did indeed get to be much more difficult than the flat, sandy path at the beginning, and the crowds on it had thinned to a small trickle of people.  I was happy to have the sense of adventure with the comfort of at least a few other people who were there with me as well.  At least I knew that if I got stuck, there’d be someone else there who could chew my arm off for me if needed so I wouldn’t have to do it myself.