Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Nevada City, and Yosemite

Well it's been a while, but we've had lots of adventures in the past 2 weeks. We'e been "off grid", mostly in National Parks and getting too drunk with friends to focus on writing a blog. I haven't read what Robert said about LA yet, but I probably agree with a lot of it; it sucked. Lots of materialistic rich people showing off their shiny new cars and bullshit, so much traffic it was impossible to get anywhere. Just the overwhelming size of the city makes it impossible to really wrap your mind around it and leaves you pissed off and frustrated. Add to that the fact that everyone there is such a jerk that even the surfers are assholes, and we were ready to get the hell out of there and up into the mountains in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks.

We spent a day hiking around Sequoia and I got a good run in thru a grove of these enormous trees on a cross-country ski trail. The next day we went up to King's Canyon to go backpacking; got our bear-proof barrel and wilderness permit and headed off down Bubb's Creek (more of a raging river or a nearly continuous series of waterfalls really). King's Canyon doesn't get much attention but it's really a great park. It was a real contrast to our last backpacking trip where we were only able to hike about 5 miles one way in the snow. Here we got to actually cover ground and the scenery changed quite a bit down the trail. We only had 4 bagels and some peanut butter but we figured we'd be back in civilization the next day and ready to get a meal. We were wrong.

Seems like a theme, coming back from backpacking to find some problem with the van, but at least it keeps things interesting. We'd been driving about 30 miles down this extremely twisty canyon road and 4 of the 5 rear right wheel studs, the lugnuts apparently being too loose, had broken off, leaving us with only one stud holding the back right wheel on wobbling all over the place and about to break itself off. Normally this would be an easy fix, bike to AutoZone, or get a tow worst case even. But we happened to be about 80 miles from the nearest town and 30 miles up the windiest canyon road I've ever seen with a sheer cliff on one side.

We decided to find a phone and call for a tow because if that last stud broke off on this road, we were about as royally fucked as we could get. So we rode our bikes downhill 5 miles to see if the ranger station had a phone. They didn't, of course the one 10 miles up the road did, so we turned around. I was good and starving by this point having only eaten 2 bagels in the past day and a half and having hiked up and down for 18 miles with a heavy backpack hadn't helped either. But on the bike ride back up, I thought up a good MacGyver fix for the wheel. Robert's bed had some 3/8" bolts we used to hold it onto the countertop at night. Maybe I could use some of those as makeshift wheelstuds to hold the back wheel on. 3 hours and a lot of close calls (Mom, skip this sentence) where the van fell off the jackstands and lurched towards the canyon cliff or almost onto me (keep in mind this work was being done on the side of the very narrow/steep road) later, we had the wheel kind of on wobbling but somewhat stable and started down the road at 15mph praying to make it to a nice flat straight road with an auto parts store before the wheel fell off.

About 5 hours later we made it to Fresno at about 10PM, too late for an auto parts store to be open, but not too late to eat the most gigantic meal of the trip. One more thing, this was the day we were supposed to pick Michelle and Thomas up from the airport for a nice weekend in Nevada City on the lake at Thomas' parents' house. So I had to call and tell Thomas the ride wasn't happening, but we'd get there eventually. Robert was tired and I'd just had 3 cups of coffee at the restaurant so I kept driving and kept pushing the speed from 15mph up to 30mph, then 40mph, and eventually we were wobbling off towards Sacramento at 60mph on the highway and made it there around 3 AM. After a few hours of sleep we drove to Pep Boys, I put some new studs in and we were good to go!


Thomas and Michelle met us at Pep Boys and we were off for a good weekend, un-ruined by van problems. A few short hours later I was drinking and riding on a kickass boat with an inboard motor bigger than the van's. The weekend was a nice slice of home to see Thomas and Michelle again, and I think I re-gained a much needed few pounds after eating like a king at that house. It made me miss Charlotte and also it made me miss having more than one friend to hang out with, and it was over pretty quick. After one last good shower and meal and Thomas' dad giving us a better lugwrench to prevent future disasters, we were off on Route 80 headed east this time, with Yosemite in mind.

After a night full of wine in Truckee, and losing $35 in Reno (and still not really learning how to play poker) we made it by Mono Lake, thru Tioga Pass and down into Yosemite Valley. Wednesday we did a nice steep climb up the trail to the top of Yosemite Falls and Yosemite Point with some great views of the Valley. I'd gotten it in my head I wanted to go up Half Dome but Robert hadn't so Thursday we split up to do our own thing. I got up at 6 and biked over to the already packed trailhead by 7. I thought it would be good to get up there fast plus my walking muscles were sore from Yosemite Falls, so I decided to use my running ones. Some parts were impossible to run up but still I made it up to the cables with only a few breaks in good time, enough to get ahead of the crowds somewhat.

These cables are ridiculous. I can't overstate the sketchiness of the whole operation. It's upwards of a 45 degree slick granite rock face most of the way with cables to hold on to and you're sliding around on your feet no matter how good your shoes are. The rock face gradually slopes off to vertical and then there's just a few trees to hit along the 4800 foot fall to the Valley below. It's enough to make anyone afraid of heights. I did make it to the top though where it was nice and flat and I could rest and take in the 360 degree view for a bit. Then after making it down the cables I did literally run down the mountain for 4 miles or so which was a lot of fun, like mountain biking, dodging rocks and drop-offs and trying not to fall. I took the long way back on the John Muir Trail and stored it in my head as a future great trail to thru-hike sometime.

After getting back and eating, I went on a quick run to loosen my legs up a bit and then they were pretty much done for the day. At least. Friday we went up to some nice lakes at 10,000ft for a swim. It wasn't a long swim, but it was a good hike and thru a lot of snow too, even in late June.

When we were headed back down into the valley in the van we saw some hitch-hikers, finally! You wouldn't think it would take almost 2 months into the trip to find some hitch-hikers, but anyway after giving them the visual pat-down and clearing them (so to speak; it wasn't too hard, it was a middle-aged couple with their son about our age) we told them jump in the van! Kevin and his wife had just recently sold their house in Vermont, bought a 5th-wheel-trailer for their truck and hit the road to become eternal vagabonds. We had a lot in common. They had been trying to hike the John Muir Trail the past 3 days, but because of the snow, had to stop (Lauren, tell Pierce he's not alone!). They gave us way too much gas money for the 1 hour drive to the Valley but jumped out of the van and wouldn't let us refuse it. In my opinion, hitch-hiking should be a non-pay sport, the hitch-hiker getting his ride and the driver building up some good karma and meeting some interesting travelers on the way to wherever he was already going. No need to involve money. But anyway, thanks for buying us dinner Kevin and family, wherever you are out there.

We took some free showers at Yosemite at one of the campgrounds because I smelled myself and recognized the smell from the zoo. Right now, as I'm writing we're headed back down to pick up the Pacific Coast Highway where we left off in Santa Barbara before our little inland detour.

Day 48, 6408mi, 2 oil changes, 3 hitch-hikers picked up, 4 new wheel studs installed

June 14, 2010 – north of Bakersfield, CA

I’m mad at Los Angeles. What a missed opportunity. You see, the place could’ve been the Emerald City if things had been different. With its climate, lush vegetation, beaches, jagged mountains and ample plains—not to mention its rich history since it was settled—the place should be something like paradise. A few days there, though, revealed (in my opinion) a microcosm of American community problems. The city is so large you can spend two or three hours on one of its freeways just getting from one borough to another. Of course, the city is known for its traffic problem. But I was not prepared for the sheer volume of cars and trucks all trying to cram onto one road for miles and miles. Driving in LA is so frustrating that after getting caught in traffic once again and being unable to reach our destination (again), we decided we’d rather leave. I had hoped to see more in LA but simply ran out of patience. Plus the van is way too thirsty to be sitting in gridlock all day.

Another weird aspect of the town is the apparent gap between rich and poor. Or maybe it’s just that anyone there over 30 who has any money will broadcast it as glaringly as possible. Throw in severe gang violence, a failing education system, and a bankrupt government and you’ve got Los Angeles, CA.

On Monday we went to Malibu, where the sun was shining. Santa Monica beach, where we hung out the day before, seems to be in a setting that traps the clouds once they hit the coast. Malibu would be a pretty nice playground if you could get an in on one of those beachside houses. Up Sunset Blvd from the coast we saw more of the storied areas where our favorite celebrities hang around and hang their hats. I had hoped to get into Bel Air in particular to check out the homes of Beatles and other favorites, but traffic prevented it. Damn it. I brought up traffic again.

We also spent some nice time on southern beaches like Redondo and Manhattan and Hermosa, where the scene is lower-key. Those beaches and neighborhoods were more like San Diego, which we liked so much, except denser with people and homes and cars. The peak of our stay in LA was a house party we attended with a friend we met. Everyone there was our age and work as pages at Paramount. Those people were energetic and funny, great fun! Out of goodwill we brought a sack of beer and a beer bong we found in the van. Both of which proved wildly popular. At one point a partygoer became so excited she actually fell through the porch floor! Thankfully the ground was near and it only caused a thigh wound. Oh, and the people had a lemon tree by the porch that had lemons the size of softballs! Sure, there’s plenty to say about Beverly Hills and the lawns there that have had the hell manicured out of them. Yes, it’s special. But out of my experience, I’ll keep at least these three ideas with me re: Los Angeles: the lady who burst thru the floor, softball lemons, and traffic from hell.

Joshua Tree, San Diego, and Tijuana

Joshua Tree NP is bizarre. Just like a Dr. Seuss book or something with weird trees and desert scenes and colors and big boulder rocks dropped around for no reason like a giant was tossing pebbles around, all framed by mountains and the constant smog glow of L.A. way out in the distance, 200 miles away, the brightest thing in the night sky, just opposite from the Milky Way, the entire galaxy outshined by L.A. at night.

I went for a run around dusk just following a little dirt path out into the desert, and it was really deserted. I saw maybe 5 people the whole day in the park and now at night it was just me, running 5 miles out into the desert and probably 5 miles away from any other living person and the sun was going down behind these weird branching trees stretched all out towards the sky. It was a good run, and good to be back out of the elevation, Joshua Tree NP is around 3000 feet in the Mojave so I could breathe again. Then I built a fire to cook over and play with and climbed up on the big rocks some just looking at the stars; really the first good view of the sky at night on the trip. The desert gets so hot so fast I had to get up at 7 AM and out of the tent because it was already baking in there. And we went on down the road out towards Route 8 and San Diego.

We've spent a lot of time in San Diego on the beach. PB, Pacific Beach, is where we've been mostly. A pretty good beach, and in San Diego in general, not just at the beach, there are camper vans everywhere. There seems to be no real regulation on how long you can park most places (except for when they sweep the streets once a month) so we have been able to just park in the same spot a few blocks from the beach, sleeping in the van, leaving it there as home base during the day too. Looks like that's not an uncommon strategy either. I've been just swimming and fooling around with a skimboard and reading books all day on the beach, but I'm toying with the idea of just buying a surfboard for the trip up the coast and trying to get better than my few "holy shit I stood up!" moments I've had trying to surf in the past. That'd be fun.



So yesterday night we took a little jaunt over into Tijuana because everyone said it was dangerous and it sounded kind of fun. It was fun, but we didn't know our way around and on a Sunday night all the tourist shops close at like 7 and it gets weird fast. Not to mention the whole weirdness of being in Mexico where your waiter offers you cerveza, then tequila, then cocaine, viagra, and hookers or some Xanax for dessert. The law is just kind of a rough guideline there I guess, but it makes things more exciting. And those little kids trying to sell you chiclets all over the place. So we got a cab and Robert whipped out his skills of Espanol and got us to a restaurant with Mexican food (imagine that). Not as greasy and sketchy as we wanted really, but close enough.

Unfortunately we had already had some tequilas and were not really paying attention to where the cab went, so instead of paying $4 for a ride back to the border we decided to figure it out. And we did, after an hour wandering around looking for walls Robert asking questions to some Mexicans and running across highways and ditches and whatever else was there. And we found the border with a huge line leading out from it all cars trying to get back to the good old USA, but we just walked right thru, no problem and got the train back to San Diego from San Ysidro with some schizophrenic man who was really excited about the Mexico jacket he had just haggled a vendor down from $40 to $36 for, and a guy my age from Orange County giving us advice about where to go after I told him I didn't want to buy a gold chain from him because I'd look like an idiot.




As it turned out the timing worked out and my dad ended up in San Diego on business for 3 days when we're here. So we met him for some sushi in the Gaslamp Quarter downtown in San Diego, really great sushi with one old Japanese guy making everything for the whole restaurant and yelling out at people sitting at the counter in his Japanese accent about how spicy they wanted the spicy tuna. So I get to sleep in a bed tonight in my dad's hotel room courtesy of the Dept. of Defense and the US Navy (thanks for the continental breakfast and showers too!); first bed I've slept in since Colorado about 2 weeks ago and first shower (unless you count the ocean) since Phoenix last Wednesday. The beach isn't a bad place to be homeless tho, you have the ocean, public bathrooms and sometimes showers, and you can sleep on the beach or park free in the street at night, turns out the cops don't even care, they pulled up one night (when we were pretty drunk in the van) and we were afraid we'd have to move or something but they just checked the plates and left us alone.

Day 31, 4715mi, 42 tacos eaten

June 1, 2010: some concluding Colorado weirdness (and more!)

Leaving Santa Fe this morning. We just stopped at a reservation gas station and filled up on cheap gas which will help us on the way to Phoenix. Santa Fe’s a funny little place, filled with adobe-style homes, shops, municipal buildings, tourists, and little plazas. Germans, Frenchmen, and lots of American tourists were swarming yesterday on the Memorial Day holiday, checking out the town’s endless art/jewelry/rug/chile shops. If you’re in the market for any of these items, Santa Fe will not disappoint. I saw a lovely pair of zebra striped man-sized busts that I suggested we pick up to decorate the Van, but that idea got nowhere. I struggled to see what’s going on in Sante Fe besides the tourism economy. It is a charming town to visit, regardless. We spent the night in a motel parking lot, hanging out and watching 30 Rock before bedtime.

On the way from Mesa Verde to Santa Fe we passed thru the Ute and Navajo reservations. Funny thing—as soon as you get to the reservation borders the land invariably becomes dry and barren. It’s almost as if the government gave the displaced natives the most inhospitable and unproductive land possible.(!) At a gas station on the Navajo res in NM, we met an older gentleman named Harry, a lifelong resident. He greeted us and asked us all about the trip, then welcomed us to the reservation and pointed out several times that this is the country’s largest. He genuinely wished us an enjoyable visit to the reservation and pointed out his pride in its self-governance. His friend inside the store had to come out and yell “Harry! Gas!” reminding him why they had stopped.

Funny thing happened in Durango, Co, where we spent an evening before heading to Mesa Verde. By the way, that evening we tried our first Walmart parking lot night, and sure enough, lots of campers and fellow vagabonds were passing the evening. Other than the overhead lighting and a noisy street-sweeper, we had a pleasant night beside a little tree and grass patch. But that’s not the weird thing that happened. You see, we had some recommendations of places to go in Durango for dinner/nightlife, and first stop was the Himalayan Café for dinner. This was a nice little place on the main drag with an extensive menu. We walked in and heard live music, and when the host seated us, I asked “what is that in that room? A private party?” He nodded and said “want to sit in there?” The band sounded pretty good (they were finishing a cover of “These Boots are Made for Walking”) so we said why not? and went in.

The room had tables in a U formation facing this band, which was comprised of a raggedy mix of people. The bassist looked like Shaggy, and there was a Dave Grohl-esque drummer hammering away while an older fellow with a partial Abe Lincoln beard plucked at an acoustic guitar and faced the band. Rounding the band out was a voluminous momma who played guitar and belted, and a similarly sized guy who could crank out a blistering guitar solo to any old song. The odd thing though was that as the evening progressed, it became apparent that all these people (the band and audience) knew each other. Sure enough we had ended up in a party of teachers who were celebrating the end of the school year. Celebrate they did, too! The strangest sight I’ve seen in a while happened when all the ladies got up to get down on the dance floor in front of us. An elderly African-American woman noodled in the corner while a crazed Japanese woman grabbed and spun around her dancing partner, who looked like a librarian. Meanwhile a lady who was nearing the geriatric threshold did the twist, while others made more unconventional/ indescribable dance movements. By this point the waiters had long forgotten the two of us, who were left to fend for ourselves and fight off the ladies who were trying to pull us into the Teacher Dance.

Across the Divide and into the desert

This is the Great Sand Dunes National Park in this picture here. There's a little stream that comes down nice and cold only in the spring from the snowmelt and people swim in it. Bizarre scene really, basically a beach, huge sand dunes, and in the background snow-covered mountains at 14,000ft. We climbed up to the highest one barefoot; nice to have that warm but not hot sand to walk in, and a lot more fun to jump downhill than going up. So we parked the van in a Comfort Inn parking lot, ready to finally go over the Continental Divide in the morning.

Crossing over the divide at around 10,000ft on the way to Durango the trees changed pretty instantly. Aspens and Cottonwoods now besides just the pines like it is on the East of the Divide. Well we got into Durango and after a while of biking around town I went for a run. This was at somewhere over 7,000ft but somehow the first run I really felt good on. Maybe I finally adapted to the altitude from the 2 weeks in Denver, or maybe I just can't deal with morning runs... Either way it was good to be back running fast again without feeling like I might collapse after 20 minutes.

Mesa Verde is a weird National Park, because, while most National Parks are devoted to various natural wonders, meant as spaces not to be developed, untouched by the hand of man, the entire idea of Mesa Verde is these man-made cliff houses from the 1200's a National Park. Not that it wasn't an amazing place, but a brick house built in the 13th century hardly merits a monument on any other continent. We took a tour of the "Balcony House" led by a Ranger but they let you walk all around and in the buildings, just as long as you don't touch the walls. There was a 32-foot ladder (they were always very specific about the 32-feet part of it) you had to climb and a little hole of a tunnel to crawl through at one point. There are hundreds of these cliff dwellings around, but after you see a few, your mind gets saturated with pueblos for a while and you go.



Out of here we headed into the Ute Reservation and then into the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. We stopped for gas here and a Navajo man pumping gas into his truck in front of us started asking about our trip. He said he liked Virginia and he saw our license plate, said it was like Germany. I told him it's close but less snow and less Germans generally. We asked him where to eat but he said everything here in this town is closed we should go over to Farmington. He told us a little about the Reservation, how it was the biggest because the Navajo Nation would never sell off their land. He said if he had more time he'd show us around. "In Virginia you have hicks, like 'rednecks', right? Well here I'm a real Red redneck" I got a kick out of that. He welcomed us and we took off towards Santa Fe.

Tearing pretty fast out of Santa Fe, a clusterfuck of fake adobe, Indian jewelery, tourists, and art, we needed to stop for gas since the trip odometer hit 300mi an the van gas gauge doesn't work anymore. I pulled around to a cheap gas station on an Indian Reservation and Robert filled up the gas. He had to go inside to get the free 12oz. Coke they give you with a tank of gas and there was me, pulled around on the other side of the pump towards the road waiting for him, just thinking about some strange dream I'd had the night before and how I needed to let go of trying to control everything that happened to me so much so I could just live and enjoy it more, and me just kind of staring out the window in the mirrors looking at a girl in a white dress and a hat with a dog waiting for Robert and wondering what was going on inside her head under that hat. He came back with his Coke and I drove out of there pushing the van pretty hard. It was a hot day, so the van would get to the point of overheating in the desert there every hour or so. We stopped at casinos along the way to let it cool and I won four and a half dollars at one and lost twenty at the next. Time to get to Arizona.

Right when you come into Arizona on Interstate 40, you go into the Petrified Forest so we checked it out. Some badlands and strangle piles of petrified wood that looks like it's been chopped up by someone, but since it's made of stone that's unlikely. They had signs everywhere telling you not to "collect" the wood or take it with you and the Rangers would ask you if you had any wood on you, and they even had an incredibly boring 20 minute video that ended with a man getting arrested for taking some wood out of the park. Really I didn't want this petrified wood that much, or at all; I didn't really get why anyone would, so I left it alone.


So here we have to fill up with gas again somewhere in Holbrook, AZ and it's the old mechanical pump and you can even pump you gas before you pay, right off of old Route 66 near the Wigwam hotels. We run into the grocery store to get something to cook up for dinner and some beer, and when we come out this old drunk Indian comes up and starts asking about where we've been and where we're going. He was interested but seemed like he was more interested in the four and a half dollars I had in my pocket from earlier. So he prayed for us in Navajo, all is going good, but then he decided that wasn't enough and he needed to inform me that I didn't believe in anything not even myself and unless I did something about it I would be cursed to death. I told him I knew better than he did about that and I believed in myself just fine, and besides I was the only one who could do anything about it anyway. He told me he was a medicine man and knew he was the only one who could help me, and then he asked me for a dollar. I said "hell no I'm not giving you a dollar, you just cursed me, that's not really the way to go about it" and then Robert gave him a dollar. I got in the van and asked Robert what he did that for, and then we took off to find somewhere to stop for the night.

Day 26, 3885mi, 1 oil change