Adventures in Travel

I got this note from HomoDommi last weekend, as the holidays wound to a close. (images mine)

Got into Boise at 4:30 am this morning, having left Portland about 13 hours earlier (after a whirlwind of cleaning, returning the house to pre-Christmas decor).  Not a particularly hard drive, but it had its moments.  

The drive from Portland to Boise takes about 8 hours usually.

We had 4 suitcases on top of the vehicle on a makeshift canopy (lying on our ski-racks.)  At the top of Dead-Mans Pass (27° F, hard gusting wind) the flaps came undone and started whap-whap-whapping the top of the car.  Really loud, and on a dark, cold moonless night (with no additional rope) we couldn't strap it down, as we couldn't see where it was loose/flapping.  (Imagine us standing in 10 inches of snow off the road outside of Meacham, using our cell-phones as flashlights, while the cold wind gusted at 30 mph). 

"Winter in the Blue Mountains". Photo by Ruth Jensen, uploaded to Google Earth

Meacham is about half way between Pendleton and La Grande, at the top of Dead Mans Pass. A Google search lists it at 17,000 population, but I don't believe that. Perhaps the county has that many.

But after a visit to the La Grande Walmart (open to midnight on New Years Day!) I strapped it down competently (and drove the remainder of the night at 60 mph - the lower speed helped.  By the way, our gas mileage absolutely sucked - 17 mpg with the cargo on top.)

But then, our excitement for the night.  Around 2 am, out in the no-cell-phone reception area halfway between Baker and Ontario, we came upon a car, emergency flashers on, and two men on the side of the road, waving.  The guys (Sam and his burly brother) were surprised that anyone would stop at 2 am for a car load of Hispanics, but we did, and more than that, we drove Sam into Ontario, then back to his car, before continuing on to Boise (added 60 miles to the trip, and time getting gas, etc.  A late night).

Photo by Ruth Jenson, uploaded to Google Earth.
Taken in the general vicinity of "halfway between Baker City and Ontario".

Sam was nervous, young (24ish, married, 4 kids... We started early). Lives in San Antonio, TX, and work has been sporadic.  But Sam is the music director in his pentecostal church, and thru the church got a job offer ($300 an hour ...for 2 hours work) to play guitar with Grammy-winning singer Eddie Gonzalas ("The Mexican Cowboy").  ~ This was exciting indeed, but the problem: the gig was in Pasco, Washington, and they all (Eddie, Eddie's wife, the accordion player and Sam's brother, also on guitar) had to drive non-stop 2,000 miles to make the gig on New Year's Eve.  Sam has never been away from his wife before, and he's never seen snow before (it snowed in the Blue Mountains on the trip north) but the cash was good.  Unfortunately he was the driver when it ran out of gas, and was getting some nasty looks from the band-mates.  Poor (stressed) guy.  Turns out the gas gauge on the rental wasn't accurate, and he didn't expect 50 miles of no-gas between Baker and Ontario.

Note the lack of any towns - Lime is an abandoned cement plant. Huntingdon has 440 souls, according to the 2010 census.

So, into Ontario and back into the boonies with a 5 gallon tank of gas, and we finally met Eddie and the rest of the band.  With gas in the tank (and happily drunk - time spent waiting in the darkness was spent drinking) they were happy, effusive, and calling us angels (and I like being told, "I'll see you in heaven when I die!").  Much thanking, repeatedly.  Turns out they found the landscape/farness from home frightening (and they said this) ~ hmmm.  I don't see anything frightening  about that area, but I speak the language natively and know where to avoid. 

Eddie gave us a copy of his CD, which I appreciate.  Haven't listened to it yet - but when Teen-Boy wakes we'll all listen together.  (Kids were awake for all of this, so sleeping in today.)

Hmm, strangers from a different planet (well, yeah, Texas is almost that!), where "winter" means less dry and temps in the high 50's, not snow that closes mountain passes.  At night, between "Deadmans Pass" and "Farewell Bend", and just up the road from the site of the Van Ornum Wagon Train Massacre (advertised on the highway)...what's to be scared of?

Scenery as art

Eastern Montana: a half finished statue by Michelangelo. Rough-hewn, magnificent. (Michelangelo's Blockhead Slave)

North Dakota, cleansed after a rainstorm: a pointillist painting. Every inch cultivated. (Paul Signat, Road to Gennevelliers)

Minnesota, between drifting thunderstorms: a plein air impressionist painting. (Claude Monet, Seine Basin with Argenteuill)

Road Trip! North Dakota and Minnesota

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The storm last night blew eastward at a rate of about 35 mph, hitting the Twin Cities before dawn, and moving into western Wisconsin in the morning.  Another (others) blew up in their places, however. Yesterday I was escaping the weather, my 75 mph easily beating the storm; today, I was chasing into it -- this time, catching up.  I still managed to duck just south of the storms (which hit Mille Lacs hard -- the large lake next to the "a" in Minnesota in the map above).

Still, I arrived at Prosapia Dommus ("family home") just in time to unload the car and participate in this week's Popcorn Dialogues. (More about that some other day.)  I have driven 1,849 miles since Tuesday (technically, since HomoDommi drove many of the miles the first day, I've driven 1,427 miles since Wednesday afternoon).

Here are some more photos:

A close up of flowers in the Gallatin National Forest. Looking, IIRC, north.  I took several photos of the immense, glacier-covered mountains in the distance, but none of them show up.

Park City, Montana, is in the chasm between the line of the tops of dark trees and the buttes in the distance.  This is maybe 30 miles west of Billings, Montana, looking southwest. 

A rainbow north of the highway, over eastern Montana, round about Glendive.

The National Grasslands of the North Dakota Prairie.  The wind here was blowing so hard, I lost my footing trying to walk back to my car. I love this territory, and every time I drive through it hurriedly, wonder why I don't stop for a proper hike. It is always windy (based on three different trips through).

The last photo of last night's storm, taken around Williston, ND.

At a rest stop in North Dakota.  This felt like Caledonia (southern Minnesota) to me, although about 500 miles northwest of it.

Driving into another storm, this time in Minnesota, today.

Road Trip! Montana

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The standard speed limit in Idaho, Montana and North Dakota is 75 mph.  This may not be good for gas conservation, but it sure is good for the person who has to cross these states in 2-1/2 days. (Normally, 75 mph would be good for more fatal car accidents, but there are so few cars on these roads that I doubt that's much of an issue -- aside, I suppose, from one-car accidents.  I reckon I spent five of the thirteen hours I drove today with no other cars in sight, except occasionally on the west-going side of the divided freeway.)

So I started today a little ways west of Yellowstone Park; drove up through the Targhee National Forest, and past the Harriman State Park (of Idaho, not New York) -- originally a cattle ranch purchased about 1900 by a wealthy railroad baron, Somebody Harriman, it gradually became a family retreat for his family and the Guggenheims. His brother (or his son) donated it to the state of Idaho in 1977, and it laid the foundation for the whole Idaho park system.

I took photos, but forgot my camera in the car tonight, and so I'll post them tomorrow (if any turned out).  Instead, here's one from Wikipedia, of the next forest after the Harriman State Park -- the Gallatin National Forest.

Gallatin National Forest (photo from US Forest Service). What this photo doesn't show is the lovely blue-green rivers that run through it and the Targhee Forest, full of trout fisherman today.

Eventually, I drove out of the "Yellowstone Ecosystem", as it's called, north to Bozeman and the relatively less impressive environs of the interstate motorway (I-90/I-94 at that point).  I have driven that route many times, and always remember eastern Montana as long boring stretches of flat nothing, punctuated by oil drills in the distance. Today, at least (at 75 mph), it was a progressively changing dramatic landscape: tree-covered mountains (the Glacier Range of the Rockies in the far northwest, the Crazy Mountain range to the northeast, the grand Absarokee Range -- and Grand Tetons beyond -- south in Yellowstone Park) melted into greenish bluffs studded with gamboling horses and blown-out trees, which in turn hardened into the multicolored striations of painted hills (I can't find any names for the area online, but they are clearly the northern cousins of the Badlands in South Dakota).  As the sun neared the western horizon, I raced through the softer hills of the National Grasslands of the Little Missouri.

(The National Grasslands of the Dakota Prairie -- photo from the US Forest Service again.)

Not boring or dull or ugly at all.  Except that there's a lot of miles of buttes and grasslands.

I had intended to stop the night in Dickinson, ND, and pushed myself through tiredness and low level worry to arrive there about just before sunset (about 8:30). For the last 200 miles I had been racing just south of major thunderstorms -- the radio blared alarms every 30 minutes or so, about the large hail and damaging winds (possibly tornados) to be had, and how everyone in the path should seek shelter immediately.  I was never in the path, but didn't want to slow down to let the storm notice my little Mini tootling through its district.

Apparently everyone else on this empty road decided to stop, in Dickinson, too.  I personally went to four hotels, and then phoned another five or so -- every one was filled with travelers preferring to wait out the storm.  People were standing outside in the parking lots, watching the black thunderclouds and sheet lightning turn slowly from its westward march to start tumbling back southeast towards us, blanketing the remaining twilight about half an hour early.  The wind was high, and there was that literal electricity in the air, an urgency and excitement.  I called ahead to Bismarck, pretty much the next town on the highway -- an hour and a half further east -- and got a room.

Without stopping to eat, I dove onto the highway to drive through black night (no street lights on I-94 in North Dakota, and no major towns, either) to the Bismarck Radisson, where I'm writing this.  The storm did notice me, and has followed. Although I didn't experience a drop of rain when I was driving, buckets are dumping from the thundering sky now, about an hour after I parked my car in the hotel garage.

Road Trip! Route 20

Yesterday, HomoDommi, the children and I drove from Portland to their home in Boise. We got off late, ran into the annoyingly ubiquitous American Economic Recovery Act Interstate Construction and Traffic Stoppage along I-84, and arrived late to Boise. Nothing much to speak of, except to mention how much I love the windmills along that section of the world.

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Today I drove from Boise, Idaho, to Rexburg, Idaho.  I had intended to get as far as Bozeman, Montana, but I got off to a late start -- due to forgetting to set my clock ahead from Oregon time, and to losing necessary charging cords and needing to get new ones.  I reached Rexburg less than an hour before sunset -- rather than drive the next (planned) 3.5 hours in the dark, through the mountains, tired -- I chose instead to stop for the night and take that demanding and beautiful drive tomorrow morning.

But today -- today I drove Route 20 across Central Idaho.  Route 20, the Cattus Dommus household learned from last Sunday's Oregonian, crosses the whole U.S.A, from the Pacific Coast (Newport, OR) to Boston, ending in Kenmore Square. The bit I did today skirted the foothills of the dry and treeless Sawtooth Mountain Range, tiptoed along the north side of the desolate lava plains of the Craters of the Moon, and plowed straight through a large region of "Sagebrush Steppe" also known as the Idaho National Laboratory -- once the home to over 50 Nuclear Test Reactors, now an environmental research area investigating the regrowth of rare sagebrush after fires. (FemmeDommi probably knows a lot more than I do about that area -- I've heard her mutter about sagebrush and environmental protection).

This is the scene looking west from almost the top of a pass (elevation 5500 feet), along the edge of the Sawtooth National Forest.  Presumably this shows us Castle Rock, but I don't know which it is.  The road in the distance is part of the Goodale's Cutoff -- a "shortcut" on the Oregon Trail.

Pioneers had at times level ground only 10 feet wide -- not much wider than their wagons -- amongst the scattered, black rock that is now the Craters of the Moon National Monument.  It's weird -- out of nowhere, suddenly you're in 600 square miles of strewn, lifeless lava.  I didn't take the time to stop at the Visitor's Center -- which appears quite extensive and with many hikes attached (well worth a visit later, however). Goodale's Cutoff took the pioneers right through the difficult-to-navigate lava fields -- a trade-off for the lessened likelihood of being ambushed by Shoshone.

The Big Southern Butte is the largest of three buttes that rise up out of the Snake River Plain. It was used as a landmark for Oregon Trail pioneers to head for, to make Goodale's Cutoff. Between me and the Butte is some desolate territory, the sagebrush steppe, used for 50 years as a Nuclear Reactor Test grounds, and to store nuclear waste.

I will part company with Rte. 20 early tomorrow, when it turns east through Yellowstone, and I veer north to Interstate 90, avoiding holiday crowds.  Tomorrow's plan is ambitious -- 9+ hours to get me through Montana just over the border into North Dakota. I plan to stop the night in Dickinson, where my grandparents started their married life one hundred years ago, on a farm with a realio-trulio sod house. (Unless I'm mis-remembering that story).

HomoDommi Got a Printing Press

In June, HomoDommi and Boy-Child drove lickety-split from Boise, through exotic towns like "Toonpa" and "Elko", to a place near Death Valley -- about 700 miles -- to pick up a printing press that they had purchased.  HD is pretty dang chuffed, let me tell you.  This is what he wrote in his letter to me about it:

So it's not that complicated, but it is a big deal for me.  I bought a (used) Takach tabletop press via Craigslist.org last week.  The Takach is a fine-art press - used for etchings, intaglio, woodblock and photoengravure - the rolls-royce of presses, and something special.

And what makes it doubly-special is that I'm buying it from an artist I've been following for a few years - someone whose blog I go to periodically to see what she's up to (Laura Campbell).  So a great press from someone I respect (so hopefully a good vibe and karma come with the purchase).

Here it is, [HomoDommi continues] in the front living room.  Yes, the stand is that pink.  A beautifully crafted, artisan stand made by "Jerry the Queen of Questa, New Mexico" - I guess Jerry's rather unique (an older drag queen who pays the bills doing quality furniture in a small town next to Taos.)  I love the stand as much as I love the press.  I even like that it's pink.

... and the press is inspiring. I'm going to start making monoprints ... soon. (Cloudscapes and maps of Nevada, btw, are the intended subjects.)  I'm very pleased.

He also writes, about Death Valley and the state of Nevada:

Nevada is the weirdest state I've ever driven through.  Not in a good-way weird, but in a 'stare-in-disbelief' sort of weird.  Lots of signs for brothels, gambling everywhere, BIG shiny casinos next to hard-scrabble homes, tequila for sale in 7-11's, and poverty-blue towns with no lawns, no sidewalks and dilapidated roofs, yet huge shiny pick-ups parked in the middle of the front dirt-patch.  (BTW, we rented the biggest pick-up I've ever driven, and in Nevada it fit right in ... and I loved driving it. Sarah Palin can have the state of Nevada, but I want a truck like what I was driving someday.)

Nevada, salt-flats in the background [wrote HD about this photo]. On this 88-mile stretch of road, the Boy and I carefully counted 3 motorcycles, 2 trucks and 7 cars for on the entire drive.  And while we didn't count farm houses, I'd say 25 or so, all off in the distance, and of course no towns, shops, gas stations.  A deserted part of America.

You can't get more 'death-valleyish' than this.

Here are some links to photos printed with the Takach press (by Laura Campbell) that HomoDommi now owns.
South Pueblo Gravure 

Another Pueblo Gravure
Proof Print: San Francisco de Asis No. 6

The push-me pull-you magnetism of the desert

Tucson's brilliant high contrast blue skies, black shadows and pink adobe represent simultaneous allure and fear for me, a northern girl with an allergy to the sun.  Look at that alien cactus highlighted against that wall! (allure).  See the stripes of sunlight like burning coals between the shadows! (fear). I have a huge-brimmed hat and walk around in my light sleeveless linens with my arms wrapped tight around my shoulders, hugging its shade, attracting odd looks from the deeply tanned (and -- may I say it? -- leathery-skinned) Arizonans.

We are in Tucson, Arizona for an abbreviated visit (overnight).  We are here to attend the memorial service for beloved Aunt J-, who died last month. HomoDommi and Girl-child arrived as planned on Friday night; Mater, Peaceable and I (after a cancellation and scramble to find new plane tickets) arrived about half way through the service. But we came here for the people more than the ritual, anyway.

Mater and Uncle B- are now the last remaining members of the hearty and extroverted generation of my father's large family (aside from Aunt C-, still alive but unable to travel from her home in Indiana at the age of 98). Uncle B- was Pater's closest sibling (arguably -- it was a close family), the next youngest and nearest in age. Pater had to repeat second grade after missing half of it to stay in the hospital with Uncle B- as company with an extended bout of scarlet fever.  B- has the unique relation of being the baby of the family, still (at 82) referred to by his childhood sobriquet (B-by) by Mater and us, which makes him laugh.

I watched Uncle B- see Mater across the Fellowship Room at the church at the end of a long reception line after the service. The expression that crossed his face, the way he raised his arms high and wide in greeting, were the features and motions of my long-dead father. The rest of the day and evening, I followed him around like a puppy.

Over the hours, the resemblance faded -- the quantity of charisma is the same, but the quality is different. This is Uncle B's way of telling a story, rambling and funny and soft, not Pater's crowing punch line, accentuated with a sharp finger poke in the air.  We children thought of Pater as a twinkling sun in the sky, and Bis a more distant satellite -- the warmth is there, but he doesn't burn as bright. It crosses my mind that I'm not sure I remember how Pater would have acted in such a circumstance, and a wisp of panic shadows me -- can I possibly be forgetting him?

I always spell "Travelling" with too many L's

(Ignore the fact that this is a photo of a Qantas airplane. I grabbed this off the 'net -- but the Delta flight I took did have those tipped up wings.)

The last several days have been busy busy busy on the kitchen, and then at dawn this morning I flew to the Midwest to house-sit (and attend a family reunion).  I will write more with photos about the kitchen tomorrow or the day after, depending when I get some writing time.

Travel

I flew from Portland to Boston today.  I wrote a blog entry about the hellhole that is air travel in a post-9/11, post-Nigerian Underwear Bomber, recession-pitted, gas crisis world (at least for those people who cannot afford first class), but the entry contradicts a couple of my 2010 resolutions: to write pithy, succinct blog entries (except when necessary not to), and not to whine.  That entry was long, and whiny.

Suffice it to say: even if you are at the airport at 5:40 a.m. (before even the Starbucks are open) make doubly sure to get checked in bags to the airline more than 45 minutes before the flight is due to leave (44 minutes -- even 44:30 minutes won't work -- the half minute I was late cost me over four hours in travel time, not to mention my reserved window seats).  And generally, air travel these days is a hellhole.

Color

Portland is about as far as you can get from Minnesota, in colors and temperatures. This morning, I left a city of bright pale-yellow sun, bright pale-blue sky, white snow and pale grey ice. Everything here, though, is green and brown, and the skies are leaden grey. The colors are saturated and heavy. I suppose I could have stepped off the plane in a desert (burning blues and yellows and tans) or the tropics (sparkling greens and blues) for a similar sense of different.

My flight was uneventful, aside from turbulence due to frigid temperatures at take-off and turbulence due to high winds at landing. We had a few of those moments, as we entered the clouds, when the hum of the jets abruptly lessens -- which, when it happens to my Mini, I attribute to losing power (known as the "bog in first gear"), and thus in flight I imagine we are bogging, coasting, held in place by inertia, like Wile E. Coyote run off a cliff but doesn't know it yet.  Such moments are full of a resurgence of belief in a just, loving, eye-on-the-sparrow God, who might need to be reminded that there are a few hundred people in this airplane who would prefer not to die, today. (Sadly, once the engines return to full power, I sink back to normal boring agnosticism.)

I arrived back in Oregon mid-day. The Texan was of course at work, on the other side of town, so as arranged, I took the light rail to the nearest-to-home station and then dragged my (wheeled) suitcase through a mile of neighborhood sidewalks to home. Fortunately, it was not raining, or even drizzly, and compared to Minnesota, practically shirt-sleeve temperatures.

I have a clear memory of intending to bring my house keys to Minnesota with me. I have no clear memory of actually packing them. In any event, they were nowhere to be found when I arrived at the house, and searching for a hidden spare set in the shed or studio proved fruitless. However, I adopted the attitude of a house-breaker, and realized that the windows over the kitchen sink could be jimmied open from the outside. It was actually a lot of fun, having to stand on top of the garbage can and then pull myself up to a height of maybe 9 or 10 feet and then over the sill into the kitchen sink (narrowly missing the knives and glasses on the drying rack).  The recycling bin got tipped over in the process, making such a racket that I'm not worried about a burglar being able to do this quietly. (But we locked the kitchen windows tonight, just in case.)