I'd better just get it done in one shot. So, without further ado, take it to the bridge!
Second note: I wrote that first note in July 2010. When you see pictures of the vineyard, that's where my first attempt at this ends and the part I wrote in 2012 begins. It's a long one, and I really don't expect anyone to finish it. But it was important to me that I finish it. The Diagonal on the other hand ...
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We dined with Annalee's sister in Calgary and slept off 31 hours of driving in the plushest king-size bed in Western Canada (or so I claim).
I spent much of the next morning sipping coffee in my boxers and studying Calgary from 22 floors up. It had been a while since I had been in a city larger than Anchorage -- the Las Vegas strip doesn't count -- and I found peace in watching the gnat-sized people get along in their busy lives.
Annalee showed me around Calgs by foot and car, including the "murder tour" in which she outlined several of the city's famous murders. We are not a normal couple.
Calgary is a really clean-looking urban environment. There's patches of grass and trees everywhere, and even the construction of two 58-story buildings looked tidy.
We went to an old-town side of the city and got an unhealthy lunch at Crave, a specialty bakery that makes moist, rich, ahhhh....... cupcakes. After a quick chair-nap while Annalee and her sister shopped at the mall, we hit the highway to Kimberley, British Columbia.
The road to Kimberley goes through one of Canada's most famous natural attractions, Banff National Forest. I rode shotgun and soaked in the mountains, lakes and wildfire-scorched hills as Annalee kept us from getting killed by a jerk in a Porsche Cayenne.
(Editors note: There were some nice pictures to go here, really. I only had nearly a year to upload them before my laptop and memory card got jacked in Tempe, Ariz., in May 2011. Sadly, this was too tight of a window for me to complete that five-minute task.)
In Kimberley, Annalee's hometown, we got a hero's welcome from her mom -- complete with a six-pack of Pacific coast beer and a batch of lasagna that had several pounds of cheese in it. It was May Long Weekend (very creative, Canada) and graduation weekend at the local high school, so there was no dearth of in-town activity for us.
Because the Kia started leaking brake fluid, we didn't get to do everything we were planning to, but it was a grand ol' time. I met tons of new friends -- normally over a brew, of course. We walked to a nearby waterfall where the local kids jump off the 50-foot cliff. We toured Sullivan Mine, a hard-rock mine where Annalee's dad, Rick, used to work and now serves as a tour guide.
Annalee got on her horse, Blackberry, for the first time in a year, and it tried to throw her off in a finicky pout.
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| He's a'fussing. |
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| Annalee calls this her "I love my horse" face. |
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| Note the resemblance. |
We took state roads through the Idaho panhandle and western Montana, which was definitely a good choice. The next incredible sight was always around the next bend. We went a few miles out of our way to have lunch at Home Bar in Troy. They had a good selection of Montana beers, and a gas station-like selection of food; fine by me. I sipped a throat-coating smoked porter as we ate microwaved, prepackaged Philly cheesesteaks.
We stopped in Kalispell for supplies and were giddy over the Lower 48 prices. Compared to Kimberley, food was about 25 percent cheaper and alcohol cost less than half.
The Kia rolled into Glacier National Park around 9 p.m. I set up the tent while Annalee began cooking some elk steaks that her dad gave us. I guess the border patrol was only concerned with us smuggling drugs, because they left all our meat and veggies alone.
Cooking in the dark was a pain, and we didn't have knives other than my multitool and gigantic hunting knife, but we made do. We bumbled through camping that night, but got enough rest to take a walk by the lake early the next morning.
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| Annalee is forcing herself to love two things for my sake: the Buccaneers, and skipping rocks wherever there is water. |
It didn't work as well as I had hoped.
While devouring fries, coffee and WiFi at a dive near the park, we realized an inconvenient fact: Montana was freaking huge, and we had two days to drive 1,500 miles to Kansas City.
So from 1 p.m. that Tuesday until Thursday night, we were trucking. Our route took us mostly through state roads of Montana, so we got to see plenty from the asphalt while enjoying a 75 mph speed limit.
We stopped on the east side of Glacier to take pictures of the last whitecaps we would see for weeks.
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| Going ... |
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| going ... |
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| gone. |
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| I don't know why we didn't stop. |
We drove through population-50 ranch hubs and the relatively metropolitan area of Great Falls. And always, the big baby-blue sky loomed with watercolor clouds.
We were about 100 miles from Billings when my parents called. Both ends were on speakerphone, but Annalee didn't say anything until I passed the phone to her, and at the exact moment she began to speak -- THWACK.
A piece of gravel from two trucks ahead flew right at Annalee -- while we were traveling 85 mph. It had either stayed in the air long enough to fall on my windshield, or it had shot out from the tires of the pickup directly ahead of us. Either way, the conversation was over, and that's how Annalee met my parents.
We made it to Billings by nightfall and stayed in a hotel because we really weren't into camping and cooking after spending a rest-free day on the road. The next day, we hit Wyoming in the morning and pulled of onto a state road toward Mount Rushmore. Wyoming has some beautiful places, but the extreme northeast corner is apparently not one of them. No changes of elevation, bodies of water or trees in sight. Just flat land.
That changed when we entered South Dakota and the Black Hills National Park road sent us swerving down a hillside. It was exciting and challenging to steer a loaded-down sedan along the slope; a better perk-up than coffee.
Note to my fellow travelers: You need to pay in cash at the Mount Rushmore viewing area. We didn't have any. After some thought, the guy at the gate told us, "Just pay on the way out." So, yeah, we didn't pay.
There was still 727 miles between us and Kansas City, so we pressed on until nightfall, when we found a campground along the Missouri River in Oacoma, S.D. The view was nice, and there was a hotel nearby with a pool that we snuck into. While cooking venison (once again in the dark) the bugs took a liking to our propane burner's flame, and I'm not talking about gnats and mosquitoes. There were some monstrous river bugs that rivaled the beasts you would find in a dirty college dorm. One flew into Annalee's hair and tried to make itself a little home, so we ate inside my tent.
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| Not pictured: The 2,000 bugs that attacked us later. |
Our site was 10 feet from the river, and a strong, gusty wind was coming off the water that morning. I couldn't cook breakfast because it blew out the propane burner, and I spent a half hour chasing down all the stuff we had left outside. But the bugs were gone; there was that. Given the choice, I'd take the wind any day.
A few hundred miles of flat, uneventful interstate later, I stopped my dented, dirty Kia in front of the Hilton President in downtown Kansas City, Mo. There were festivities to be had. We were there to see my buddy Pat Greco marry a friend I've known nearly as long, Mary Tully, so the weekend was sure to be a big, beer-filled reunion with my old friends.
Not a minute after checking in, I ran into people I hadn't seen in three years. In fact, many of the guys hadn't seen one another in so long that Thursday evening's bachelor party never left the suite where it began. We just ended up catching up until 4 a.m., aided by a tub full of ice and Budweiser.
It was the perfect weekend, especially after a few days of pure driving. Everyone acted as if they had known Annalee for years, and my friends and I were goofing off like we were still 18. Pat and Mary's families went all-out with the accommodations all weekend, so there was nary a dry throat nor grumbling stomach nor case of unwilling sobriety.
Annalee and I were among the last to leave at noon Sunday. After a weekend of rest, the Kia had acquired some interesting graffiti.
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| I love my friends. |
We stopped in Topeka to steal WiFi from a hotel, and there were horns blaring in the air. I asked the hotel's desk clerk what the horns meant, and she didn't know. The radio told us there was a tornado warning to our east. Since we were heading west and there were plenty of cars still on the road, we figured it wouldn't hurt to continue driving away from the tornado warning. (Yes, we should have found a safe place to stay while the horns were going off; we're alive though.)
Exhausted and hungover, Annalee and I amused ourselves with punch-drunk conversation. At one point, I was trying to tell her that the difference between a pig and a boar is that a boar has tusks. In an honest attempt to verbalize this, I defined a boar as "a pig that means f***ing business" and just left it at that, satisfied that I had explained the matter thoroughly.
We reached Oakley, Kan., at dusk and stayed at an RV park. It was the Caddilac of RV parks, or at least of the ones I've seen. That is to say, the grass was well-kept and the bathrooms were as sterile as an operating room.
After dinner, which was getting easier to cook by the night, we relaxed with some wine and beer in a laundry room with WiFi and a desktop computer for guests. We had five days to get to Las Vegas, so we spent hours researching things to do along the way. We were disappointed to see that we had passed a barbed wire museum about 100 miles east. Seriously, we were disappointed. Once again, we are not a normal couple.
As we exited the cornfields of western Kansas, a cropduster bid us farewell.
After Denver, I-70 became an entirely different road. it climbed and dropped, weaved and swerved through the Rockies. I couldn't believe it could still be considered an interstate. Interstates are supposed to be McRoads overlooking ditches and grassland with the occasional thrill of a Cracker Barrel pit stop. I-70 is a highway; there's a difference.
The Kia has never been a fan of uphills, so it struggled its way up to Vail (10,000 feet) and the Eisenhower Tunnel (11,000 feet). Annalee and I petted its dashboard with encouragement and cheered it on.
I-70 dropped us into Glenwood Canyon that afternoon, and we knew we had to stop there for the night to see more.
The rest areas were connected by a bike trail that went along the Colorado River, so we stopped to stretch our legs at one and met a dog. I named him Kilo.
After securing a cheap hotel room, we hit the hot springs pool in Glenwood Springs. It was touristy, but our weary bones didn't mind. After that, we hit up a brewpub across the river. I dove into the samples and left with a growler of red ale.
The next afternoon, we rode a gondola to the top of a nearby mountain, where there was an amusement park. We weren't willing to throw down money to go on the rides, so we just toured the place.
Then it was off to Grand Junction and its nearby wineries. We stopped at one in Palisade because it had a free tour and the lady on the phone told me to "come on by anytime," which sounds like my kind of people.
We were the only people there, and I ended up chatting with the guy who owns the place for about a half-hour about fermentation and sterilization. Annalee is big on merlots, so he opened a tap on 2009's merlot (not to be sold until a year later) and poured us glasses to drink during the conversation. It was as informal as I could have hoped, especially because half the place was under renovation. We bought a few bottles, and the owner gave us free reign to explore the vineyard.
Now that the growler from Glenwood Springs had two travel companions, a Gewurztraminer and something called Tyrannosaurus Red, we were ready to set up camp before dusk for the first time all trip.
Annalee had picked the next stop to be the Colorado National Monument, where I learned two things: 1) a “monument” can also mean “a rock formation” and 2) Annalee has good taste in camping spots.
We drove to the maze of mesas and rock towers expecting to find the campgrounds. Then we drove up some more, and up some more – and then I decided to go climbing – and then we reached the top of the mesa, where our cliff-side campground awaited. We picked a spot overlooking Grand Junction and were ready for our first early evening in two weeks.
A couple of things happened that night. First, I found out I wasn't the clumsy one in this relationship. I left the campsite to get paper towels out of the car, and no more than 2 seconds passed before I hear “Ahhhh!” Another 2 seconds, then: “Josh!” My graceful partner had avoided tornadoes, hellish traffic, obstacles of sheer rock and all kinds of wildlife, but her mortal enemy, a picnic table, had finally gotten her.
Then I figured out how to freak her out by walking on the edge of cliffs. I am a jerk, by the way.
And finally, over wine and beer, we did something amazing: nothing. We had been enjoying each other's company with the luxury of a conversation crutch the entire time. Even the rolling nothingness of Kansas and eastern Colorado were dosed with enough crazy drivers and surprise tumbleweeds that we could fill the dead air by talking about whatever we observed.
So over dinner, then for a good half-hour afterward, we said next to nothing. And it wasn't awkward. We sipped our drinks, held hands and watched military jets leave contrails in the pinkening sky. Then we got to talking about deep things, really getting to know each other beyond the courting stage. We sipped more wine as Grand Junction lit up in the distance and the stars appeared.
The next morning, we were up early, ready to see the 22 miles of sights in the park. First things first, though: Annalee was determined to get a picture of a lizard. Now, lizards are tricky buggers to photograph as is, and she kept forgetting to turn off the delayed timer on her camera, so she'd get close, ever so gently aim her lens and press the shutter button – only to hear “beep, beep, beep” of the timer and have to wait 10 seconds, hoping the lizard would stay still, too. It usually didn't, and she usually cussed loudly.
The Colorado National Monument was gorgeous, and there were far too many tempting places to get out and hike a bit. I resisted as best I could, that is to say I only stopped every half-mile or so.
We spent the entire morning and early afternoon climbing around those rocks, and we may have spent even longer if we had more water. It was our first day in the desert-like mesa country, and it didn't take long to realize that the couple of liters we had wouldn't last long.
Down in Grand Junction, we refueled at a brewpub. I got the beer sampler and, well, there were quite a few samples. It was then decided that I would provide amusement for Annalee as she drove because, after the sampler, that was pretty much all I was good for.
And what a lucky call that was. Not five miles of interstate later, a pickup towing a trailer of poorly secured items cut us off and spilled his trailer full of junk all over the road. Annalee, who dodges wild animals and Alberta hicks all the time, kept cool and didn't swerve until something came into our path. I don't know if a sober Josh would have done the same, but I doubt it.
We pulled into Moab a couple of hours before dusk and found an RV park with a pool, which Annalee insisted upon so her Canadian skin could get a break from the hot, dry air. The place was crowded and the shower situation was less than ideal because there were so many other people using them, but it had a pool and WiFi, so we were happy with it.
We hit Arches National Park the next day, and again, I wanted to go everywhere and climb every rock in sight.
Annalee was enthusiastic, too, but the temperature hit 110 or 115 while we were out there, and several places had annoying children, so her enjoyment had a limit. When it was time to stop walking, I knew, because this is what I saw:
Still, we ended up spending the entire day out there and rolling into Moab for dinner at sunset. Then into to the pool for the third time that day.
After some eggs and bacon and a morning dip in the pool, we left Moab for Needles Overlook, due south. About five miles out of town, the Kia's brakes weren't responding well, and we decided to pull over, by the time we found a gas station, I was jamming the pedal to the floor to stop.
I opened the hood and gasped. There was no cap on the brake fluid reserve. Now, I had been refilling the reserve since we left Kimberley because it had been leaking, so I could have left the cap off and drove away (a likely occurrence) or it could have been loose and came off on one of our many bumpy mountain road excursions (less likely but still plausible). Either way, it wasn't there, so I did what I could.
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| I am a Red Green-style mechanic. |
At the entrance to Needles Overlook, about 50 miles south of Moab, we stopped an an information booth, looking for a map or pamphlet. Inside a drawer on the booth, we found a cell phone. I opened it and called the number listed as “Mom.” The lady who answered said her son was working at the Grand Canyon for the National Park Service. She gave me half an address, and that cell phone stayed in my glove compartment where I had forgotten about it until I sold the Kia a year later.
Needles Overlook was worth the detour. I did my climb-all-rocks-in-sight thing, Annalee snapped dozens of pictures and we picnicked with an awesome view.
While there, we realized that we were running out of time. Do we want to do an night in Zion National Forest or two nights in Vegas?
“Weeba Was Wegas!” we chanted as we drove full speed through southern Utah and past Zion, stopping briefly to take in some jaw-dropping views of the jagged mesa terrain.
We were making good time – due to arrive at the reasonably early hour of 11 p.m. – and had an off-the-strip hotel booked, so Annalee mixed herself up a Sprite and vodka to at a gas station in St. George, wanting to get a little pre-drink in before we hit the town.
Just past Mesquite, Nev., traffic slowed to a halt. After 15 minutes without moving, everyone had turned their cards off and were standing outside. After another 15, Annalee and I pulled out out camping chairs – she had mixed another vodka and Sprite – and met the person in front of us, a 55-year-old black woman from Georgia who talked about cooking and Jesus.
There was no way to turn around, with a guardrail on the shoulder and a rocky, cactus-filled median. We were at the mercy of traffic.
After another 30 minutes, rumors started to make their way back from the accident site. There was no traffic going the other way, northbound on I-15, because an RV had flipped over, according to word-of-mouth, and rubberneckers swerved into a group of motorcyclists on our southbound side. So traffic was stopped in both directions, and our southbound traffic would be held up longer because it was a possible crime scene for negligent homicide or some such charge. That was the rumor anyway.
A pair of journalists satisfied with a rumor? Not us. Annalee mixed another drink and we walked toward the accident, asking anyone with a CB radio what they'd heard. Five different truckers gave us five different stories with only a few elements the same: A motorcycle was involved, and there would be at least an hour or two more waiting. After a mile, we realized we still were not near the accident site and returned to the Kia.
After some delicately coordinated bathroom breaks (there was cacti on the side of the road and people everywhere), we leaned the car seats as far back as possible and fell asleep around 2 a.m. with the windows open. I woke to the sound of a semi-truck's brake releasing near us. It was time to move. 3:30 a.m. We listened to Tenacious D and tried to be perky as we rolled into Las Vegas, but that enthusiasm didn't last long, and we conked out a 5 a.m. in a seedy off-strip hotel that I promised we would not stay in again.
The next day was a blur. At some point we walked down the strip on a 110-degree day (poor Annalee and her Canadian skin), and we checked into Circus Circus, a hotel we never took time to experience because we spent the rest of the time at Hofbrauhaus and with Pat and Mary, who were on their honeymoon and invited us up to see their incredibly sweet suite atop Wynn's Encore. All four of us watched the pirate show outside of Treasure Island, and Annalee and I did a sprint to see the fountains outside of the Bellagio (we missed them).
It was a weird night, and I think it was because both of us knew Annalee would be on a plane in a matter of hours, so we tried to fill the time we had left with activity.
The goodbye at 6:30 the next morning at the airport was saddening. We stood outside the TSA line until the last possible second, and then she left in the way that never happens in movies, no dramatic moments or gushing farewells, just a kiss and a wave and a longing look from the security line that I saw every time I turned around. I got into the Kia and drove three miles in the wrong direction before coming to my senses and heading back to Vegas, where I had to collect my stuff from Circus Circus and be on my way.
After a quick nap, I realized that my old college roommate Justin was in town, and I should probably call him to see if I can swing by before I hit the road. All I really remember for the next three days was that I didn't pay more than $1 for most food and drink items, I asked strangers where I could find interpretive dance (when they said “What?” I'd reply: “You know, stories ... through ... motion,” while arbitrarily moving my arms in obtuse gestures) and we saw a portrait of Bill Cosby by Dennis Hopper.
Well, that's not all I remember. We bet on horse races, saw the new City Center resorts, enjoyed the Flamingo pool, rapped songs that we wrote in college, smoked Al Capone cigarillos and high-fived people on the strip incessantly. And then there was the moment that really stuck with me: He told me, “Josh, you look happier than I've ever seen you.” It was a good few days, an unexpected slow burn with an old friend.
It was an especially bright day when I left Vegas. TomTom had proved rather useless for navigating around the city (as I hadn't updated it since 2009), so I took what seemed like the most direct way to Phoenix. It wasn't, and when I turned on TomTom for highway directions, it took me into California.
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| This is neither the way to San Jose nor Phoenix. I know this now. |
I arrived slightly after midnight at Ian's. There was a bed inflated in the living room for me, and he and I had a beer as I tried to tell him all about my trip. I said tried because, just like via this blog, I could not communicate the entirety of the previous three weeks. My inability to completely explain what happened and how it affected me is why it took me so long to write this last installment. I wanted to get it right, so it took me two years to realize that will never happen, so I should just take it behind the woodshed and shoot it, as I have done here.
I woke up the next day in a new story, with a new cast of characters and more mistakes, pratfalls and cool treasure ahead. It was a crisp 110 out at 6 a.m. I hopped in the Kia and drove off.
