O n t h e r o a d t o f i n d o u t . . .

O n  t h e  r o a d  t o  f I n d  o u t . . .

I love to travel! I’ve done quite a bit of it over the years, more than most, unless you’re a long-haul truck driver or a airline pilot, and those don’t count anyway, because usually they just go back and forth to the same places….although from time to time I think about the romance of driving back and forth across the country, steering a big rig over America’s Interstates, watching the rise and fall of the Rockies through the windshield, the ebb and flow of traffic through cities and out into the countryside. Then, in a moment of clarity and sanity, I think of the downsides: ‘roids, and bad coffee, and worse drivers, and even worse traffic jams, cold dashes of water all over my lovely fantasy. Perhaps, instead, I could hit the Lotto, for tens of millions, of course, and buy one of those grotesquely huge motor homes, tow a full-size four-door pickup behind it (you understand why I would need to hit the Lotto now, don’tcha?) and take off on a tour of personal favorites and long postponed visits to places I’ve always wanted to see. There are people who do this, of course, they’re called “full-timers”, modern vagabonds of the highways, usually older retired folks. I just want to do this before I’m ready for the rocking chair on the front porch.

We did something very like this, when I was a kid, of course, and I got tired of it, mostly because it interfered with my social life, and with the associated social skills that are essential to growing up. I did enjoy it, though, and for the first 12 years after I left home, I continued, in milder fashion, the family tradition, spending three years in the Army traveling across the country, to Europe, back across the country, to VietNam, back across the country, being discharged on the East Coast and, one last time, back across the country. Then it was a year in LA, followed by almost a year traveling around the West, ending up in Houston for three years, moving to Albuquerque, for college, for four years, interspersed with several trips around the Northwest with my folks, before relocating to Arizona for a couple years and then, finally, to my present location, where I have lived now for 28 years.

I’ve traveled from here, certainly, including two trips to Hawaii, and to Seattle and Vancouver, San Antonio, Washington, DC, New York, Orlando and San Francisco, numerous times. In 1987, we acquired a nice travel trailer and set out on a 5,800 mile odyssey that took us up through Salt Lake City, Jackson WY, Yellowstone, Missoula MT, north to Flathead Lake and Glacier NP, then down across Idaho to Portland, to attend a convention. When we left we zigged around to visit Crater Lake, the Coastal Redwoods at Crescent City, down to Yosemite Valley for three days, then toward home. Coming out of the mountains south of Yosemite, descending into the Big Valley, north of Fresno, the temperature was over 100 degrees. We’d been used to 85 degree days and I wasn’t ready to go back to the desert heat just yet, so we took a left turn and drove up to Sequoia/King’s Canyon NP, to stretch our vacation in the cool forests to the very end. The next year we took a similar tour, only 5,000 miles that took us through Idaho and Nevada. We’ve been to the Grand Canyon several times, just a few years ago traveling into it from Zion NP to the North Rim. After Christmas, 1998, at my parents we drove up through central Arizona, visiting the old mining town of Jerome, old Anasazi ruins at Montezuma’s Castle, Walnut Canyon and Wupatki, looking at dinosaur footprints near Tuba City, before entering the Grand Canyon from the east.

We, my sons and I, and various adventurous girlfriends, have driven repeatedly up and down Highway 395, to Lee Vining and Mono Lake, the eastern entrance, over Tioga Pass, to Yosemite. The drive up to the park’s eastern entrance is an eye-popping climb up into the high reaches of the Sierra, not for the easily distracted as the vista can be nearly a hundred miles out and thousands of feet down! We like to camp at the bottom, near lee Vining, so we can travel to Mono Lake, Bodie, Mammoth and Fire Creek, a natural hot spring system in a flowing river just south of Mamoth. In fact, whenever we travel up or down 395, we have to stop for a leisurely soak in Fire Creek.

One of my brothers live in central Washington, just a short distance off Highway 395, north of the Tri-Cities of Pasco, Kennewick and Richland. We’ve driven up there, a number of times, returning down 395 to home. Driving into Alturas is a “cut”, made to level the highway when it was constructed, where the dominant black lava, customary in that region, overlays a brilliant band of red lava. Dramatic and thought-provoking, it is sights like these that reward the traveler beyond the norm. Standing beside this phenomenon, the questions come fast and furious. Where did the red lava come from? Why is the black lava overlaid atop the red, as if icing on a cake? Why is there so much lava in this area? Just to the south is Mt Lassen, a dormant volcano with a violent history, and to the west are Mt Shasta and Crater Lake, the latter a picturesque example of the after effects of volcanic explosion. To the northwest is Mt Hood, and the other Volcanoes of the Cascade Range. In fact, Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Western Idaho and northwestern Nevada sit atop some 7,000 ft of lava, a mantle over a mile thick. A mysterious clue left behind of the time when all the volcanoes in the Cascades belched fire, smoke, ash and incredible quantities of molten rock.

There are many places left to travel to, places off the beaten track, places I’ve seen, but want to see again, places that call on the night wind, a siren song of the highway, luring me once again into my car, to set out for the horizon, no destination set. I cannot understand why anyone would not want to join me, after all, it’s the same urge that brought our forefathers to this this continent, then led them across the prairies, over massive, ice-covered mountains and burning deserts, to the western coasts. We read about it in our history books, why shouldn’t we go see where those pioneers traveled? I can’t think of a single reason why not….let’s go.