SouthWest Exposure X
^{Across America, 2005}

Thursday 13 October 2005 - DOWN OREGON!
_{Dale OR to Joaquin Miller CG - John Day River & beyond}

MORNING: We evacuated our lovely riverside squat camp, set among dry-looking hills with light-tan dry-looking earth cut through with the usual segmented strata of lava, a light-coffee cake with chocolate frosting layers and conifer fuzz. We headed south past a sign announcing 45TH PARALLEL - HALFWAY BETWEEN THE EQUATOR AND THE NORTH POLE. The last time we saw that sign, we were northbound in central Idaho, way back in week #1 of this debacle adventure. We have crossed many degrees of latitude on this extended trip, Arizona to Honduras to California to Alaska, with several to go before hitting the Mexico-Arizona border again. Tire wear for the RV portion, California to Yukon-Alaska to here, is now above 6600 miles.

We pass a sign announcing OLIVE LAKE. It's too far to visit. We've seen lakes. But have we seen lakes full of olives? I think not. We wonder, are those black olives or green (cocktail) olives? Maureen suggests they're martini olives. I sing:

  "If the lake was martinis
   And I had some straws
   I'd chew on the olives
   While Maureen dips her paws"

The we both make scooping gestures, scooping and slurping. [Slurping sounds...] I should mention that I'm on a strict ration of alcohol, no more than an ounce a day and usually much less, a beer or two a week now. Maureen is not so limited yet. She doesn't even need a straw. Why, she could just stick in her Irish snout and snorkel it all up! [Maureen laughs.]

Which reminds me of what we heard yesterday on NPR radio, that a treatment now exists for the common cold. Not a cure, just a low-tech treatment, and it works. Very simple: irrigate the nasal passages and sinuses! Squirt or snort some saline (salt) solution up there. It clears out the environment wherein resides cold and congestion, stimulates the cilia to beat faster and break up clogging.

With my limitations, I *must* irrigate with salty water. Maureen, would you irrigate with martinis? Martinis up your nose? She says no.

Maureen: No, I've snorted a few and it didn't feel good. [Laughs.]

NOONISH: Out of the mountains, into the great east-west canyon of the main John Day River. We invaded the typical small western village of Mt Vernon, stopped at a junk store there to get some books and music and to play guitars and banjo and mandolin. We talked with the friendly locals — they're complaining about the cost of fuel. They depend on fuel oil for heating, and it's no longer possible to lock prices. They expect to be mighty miserable and broke this winter.

Another NPR program yesterday dealt with energy costs. Some claim that US oil companies are exporting fuel to keep domestic supply short and demand (and prices) high — some say not. But expect oil and LPG to be 50%-70% more expensive than last year, propane maybe 30% more, and electricity up about 5%. Our Sierra Nevada house is propane-fired while Bisbee is electric-heated. Should we stay in Bisbee over the winter? No, we're already committed to returning to California by mid-November.

Thanks to our big score in Mt Vernon, we can cruise down the road (past the remnants of many dead animals) and listen to Christmas songs in Polish, Hungarian and Georgian, and soundscapes of the Oceans and Amazon and Arctic. When we stop, we can read about ATLANTIS and FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE and NAKED MEN. Ah, life is good.

It's a few miles east from Mt Vernon to the old mining-lumbering town of John Day. Our last visitation was five years ago on our STONEHENGE OR BUST! (click here) trip. We stop again at the KAM WAH CHUNG store-museum, from John Day's gold rush days when the largest Chinatown in the northwest was vibrant here. Same old building, more artifacts visible than last time, a State Parks interpretive ranger giving tours but with a number of misplaced facts. That is, she was WRONG on a number of details. Dominoes are not Mah Jong pieces. The building blocks are tufa (solidified volcanic ash) not dried mud. Ah well.

AFTERNOON: We did some wardriving (WiFi sniffing) around John Day, got a few signals but no connexions. Bother. So out of town, south into the Strawberry Mountains etc towards the desert-center town of Burns. Just outside John Day is an old log structure labeled JOAQUIN MILLER CABIN. Yeah, that old charlatan was here. Hmm, we pass a household sign that says THE WORD OF THE LORD IS TIRED. But I digress.

Before the last downslope to Burns, we pull into the forest service Joaquin Miller Campground for the night. It's empty and cheap. Probably as cheap as the last official campground, where nobody came around to collect money. We're tired; our next run will probably be from Burns to Mucktown (Winnemucca) or beyond, up to 300 miles, so we'll lay around here for a day. Start a fire. Cook another lentil stew. Mellow out.

Oh yeah, Joaquin Miller was a famous but lousy poet of the California gold rush, an incomprehensible wanderer and self-important flake. In his later days he passed as a journalist; notes mailed to his editors and publishers were often unreadable, which doesn't matter, since all he wrote was lies. You don't believe me? Look him up.

Friday 14 October 2005 - LAYABOUT OREGON
_{Squatting in Joaquin Miller campground, emulating the poet}

A night when coyotes sing and winds blow. A hailstorm of rapidly-falling pine needle clusters. Then a somnolent relaxing day. Do nothing but read and plot. Don't even write anything, just think about possibilities, and fix+organize some webpages. Walk around the lonely deserted sugar-pine campground a bit.

Oh yeah, I tried another lentil stew but managed to muck it up royally. Maureen says she can count my culinary disasters in our 26 years on both hands. This was a prize-winner and I can't even blame too much wine. Remember: Cooking in the dark is risky, so start the campfire early so you can cook before sundown and watch what happens in the pot.

Saturday 15 October 2005 - OUTA OREGON!
_{Seneca OR to Denio NV - starting across the desert}

BURNS OR: We roll from Joaquin Miller Horse Camp down a long steep desert canyon cutting into the mountains. Beautiful color on hardwoods and riparian shrubs below, scattered pines and junipers hugging the volcanic ridges above. Then it opens out into the real Great Basin. At Burns OR we spend awhile reprovisioning and discover that casino RV parks are good sources for drinking water. The Paiute casino is a blow-up tent at the edge of town with a bare-ass RV park next to the town dump. Does this place really need overflow parking?

We see a weirdly-constructed sign that looks like ENCHILADA SPECIAL - $1.49 PLUS SHOES. And we wonder about that. But it's on a bowling alley and actually says FAMILY DAY SPECIAL etc.

We exit Burns and reach a cusp, a decision point: take the scenic route down the west side of huge Steens Mountain, or just the mundane high­ways toward Winnemucca? We choose the latter because of mileage and money, and because we did the Frenchglen-Steens route once before, long ago. Our chosen route gives us new views of old junk. Yippee.

The wide desert sky is prettily filled with cumulous clusters coalescing into rain-dumpers ahead of us to the southeast. We're surrounded to near-infinity by high-desert sage and bunchgrass. This is the gut of the Norte-American West.

SCENIC STEENS: A ways beyond where our road loops around the east end of Malheur Lake, we take the Steens Scenic Tour cutoff. The first few miles are in the process of being paved; beyond that it's hard jaggedy gravel, washboarded in places. West, on our right, rises the 30-mile-long and one-mile-straight-up Steens Mountain escarpment, snow-fringed already. East, on our left, is the vast dry lakebed of the Alvord Desert and its dunes, a perfect victim of rain-shadowing.

Past Mann Lake (watch the birdies!), past Alvord Ranch, a hot spring sits beside the road with a perfunctory shelter and several users. Somewhat tempting, but by now we've inhaled too much dust and would rather sojourn elsewhere, and not share hot mineral water with other people's dirty feet. And for some reason, right now, driving a dusty washboard gravel desert road just doesn't seem as much fun as it used to. Maybe it's because inside the RV everything is shaking and rattling and falling down, and all the rear tires need replacing. Maybe that's it.

DENIO NV: Back on pavement, we cross the border at Denio NV. The slot machines don't lure us. Denio looks no better than it did maybe 15 years ago, when last we came through here.

Below (or above) Denio is Denio Summit, 4850 feet (1470 meters). Off to the southwest is the Black Rock Desert, home base for the Burning Man Festival and more. Ahead is a side road to a birdwatching area. And a mile out yonder is where we stop for the night, the full moon sandblasted by gusting winds. Will we still be here tomorrow? Whoosh...

Sunday 16 October 2005 - PIERCING NEVADA!
_{From Denio to Austin NV - raging across the desert}

IMPACT: We arise early at our cold high open-desert campsite, cold not so much by temperature as by windchill. The wind, rattling and rocking and shaking the coach all night, not quite to the same degree as driving on a washboard road, but in that vicinity.

We get off to a not-so-good start — I open a cupboard, items fall out and whack Maureen on the head. The steel can of chili got her forehead; the plastic bottle of salad dressing bounced off her nose. After a couple hours of dealing with the pain, we roll back to the highway over 1.5 miles of washboard roadway, extending her torture. A coyote dashes across the sand before us.

We cross the northeast end of the great Black Rock Desert, so far from our previous light-hearted sojourns. No coyotes here now, only irrigated pastures and harvested hayfields and range critters. Cattle wander the highway just begging to be mutilated. Ravens cluster around lunch.

LATE MORNING: We return again to beautiful Winnemucca (Mucktown). Compared to our northbound swing two moons back, it's now a tad cooler and we're a tad tireder and broker. We're disappointed that a bragging sign we saw years ago has been replaced. No longer are southbound travelers advised that Mucktown has paved streets.

We feast for breakfast at Mucktown's Red Lyon Inn & Casino, blowing a whole four bucks each. Sacre bleu! We're overwhelmed by the elegance. Right. Across the road is a theatre marquee proclaiming film titles that mean absolutely nothing to us. We haven't been exposed to publicity for months. Customers in the casino area look like grotesque caricatures of humankind, of exaggerated obesity and infirmities, hideously dressed and coiffed. Where do strong, healthy, intelligent gamblers go?

A rough-looking fellow walks by; his T-shirt reads, IF YOU'RE A REAL COWBOY, JUST LAY THERE AND BLEED!

We wardrive Mucktown, sniff a few WiFi hotspots but get no connections. The same logon-password screen appears in several places. I suspect that some local shop sold many of the motels here the same WiFi systems and setup the same security software.

We leave Winnemucca (oops, we forgot to look up cousin Susan!) driving eastbound on the interstate along the banks of the mighty Humboldt River. Today, as usual, it's a river in name only, just a wandering wide dampish watercourse that led so many pioneers into the nastiest of deserts. I think Mark Twain mentions it in ROUGHING IT.

AFTERNOON: We reach Battle Mountain and do some more wardriving, again fruitlessly. So we're smack dab in the middle of the Basin And Range Province (BARP), unable to connect. No cacti to wire. Battle Mountain has the look of a once-important crossroads and water-stop, the local service and supply center that was diminished by almost being bypassed by the interstate highway. The town is still usable as a gas-food-casino-motel stop, but easily ignored by most high-speed travelers. It has that dusty worn-down forlorn once-I-was-somebody look. A real cowtown just lies there bleeding. But cows were likely never vital to Battle Mountain's existence; numerous mines are nearby. Just to the south stands a mountain cluster called The Copper Basin; maps show many mines still active there and beyond.

We roll south through a wide basin between rocky ranges, heading for Austin and the Loneliest Road In America. The basins of the Basin And Range Province (BARP) are often boring during unobscured daytime. The ranges can be quite interesting, especially late in the day as the sunlight cuts in at an acute angle, throwing mile-long shadows across the sage and burroweed and bunchgrass.

EVENING: Just after sunset and full-moon-rise we pull into Austin, like Bisbee an old Phelps-Dodge mining town of vertical aspect. Tall mountains to the south are streaked with snow, but they're a mile above out 6600-foot elevation. The Italianate castle on a mountainside outside Austin is prominently visible as we roll in from the northwest.

We park by Stokes Castle, modeled on a tower outside Rome for scions of the Phelps mine-owning family. It's ours tonight, and maybe tomorrow. We dine. We take revenge on that vicious can of chili: we sacrifice it and eat it. The salad dressing's turn will come later. The full moon shines down on the arid basin below. If this is werewolf season, they're probably pretty dehydrated by now.

Monday 17 October 2005 - AUSTIN FOREVER!
_{In and around Austin NV - almost Bisbee-like, but smaller}

NOONISH: We leave the castle and drive the 1/2 mile twisty but good mountain road into Austin town. We wanted to stay out but we're impelled to go. Problems! My expensive and sophisticated little scanner radio went walkabout, but that's survivable.

But then our cabin water pump stopped working which ISN'T survivable, at least not easily and gracefully. Earlier it worked and now it doesn't power up. Bad motor, loose wire, what? So we must seek help. And we don't even know where the bugger is hiding. The pump COULD be inside an outside compartment which bears an unknown padlock with no key. We thus need to have the lock cut off. Bother. With luck, just the bouncy drive to town will shake the pump back into operation. Right.

Before leaving Stokes Castle, we enjoy the spectacular view. Those rich folks sure know how to pick a good homesite, eh? Then they abandon it, and the state takes it over, and we peons can chug out and dig it too. Groovy. We want to come back right away and get on with today's writing and resting and reading and relaxation and rooting about, etc.

SOONISH: We stop at the first gas station, ask about lock-smiths or -cutters. They send us to the sheriff's office. [BTW: Sheriff derives from Shire-Graf, or Count of the Shire, appointed by a king to overrule the traditional landholding Earl.] At the sheriff's office we learn that deputies aren't allowed to have lock-cutters. Something about liability. But Darla the dispatcher, who has a very Lily Tomlin look-sound-feel to her, says to go down the street to her brother's hardware store and ask him. We do so. He emerges with the burglar's tool and snips that sucker right off. No problem. Ain't small towns great?

Unfortunately, the pump was NOT behind that locked door and we still don't know where it is. We go uphill (everything is uphill in Austin) to the junkyard-autoshop and ask Ray where we might find the pump. Damned if he knows, they all put'em anywhere they want in RVs, they're all different. OK, thanks.

We wander around this county seat, poke through a few antique and turquoise shops. Austin has 250 inhabitants and 25 such shops. Our favorites are closed. Our next favorites have changed. Some proprietors talk relentlessly. One has an outdoor speaker playing old and new rockabilly — who is that singing I LOVE A RAINY NIGHT? We escape with our dollars undented.

LATER: Back at the castle, we root around in the RV, clean out a lot of behind-the-scenes debris, and finally find the pump under the couch, which nearly devours me as I reach behind the articulated mechanism. The pump wiring seems intact but I can't find the multimeter to check voltages or continuity. Maybe we get to buy another meter. That's cheaper than another pump, which may come anyway. Bother.

So for now we'll pretend we're car-camping, fill our water jugs whenever we can, take sink baths, etc. How long can this go on? To service the pump, the couch must be removed. OK, some other day for that.

Meanwhile, behold a few more Travel Guides: TRAVEL & TOURISM FOR TOTAL MORONS & JOURNEYING TO LOST WORLDS & CLONING FOR TRAVELERS & THE TOURIST IN A HURRY & THE ACCI­DENTAL TOURISM GAME & THE UNDERWATER TOURIST. I must be near the end, mustn't I?

Tuesday 18 October 2005 - ACROSS NEVADA!
_{Austin to Connors Pass NV}

MORNING: The rain is still chasing us, falling lightly before dawn as inquisitive owls continue their interrogation. Behind clouds, the sun rises upon a dramatic vista of forested slopes, snowy peaks, gold-grassy valley, distant blue mountains, as the occasional jet fighter roars overhead. And our water pump still doesn't work. We are on day 75 of this journey. Nothing can stop us now.

We climb uphill from Austin, the small seat of a large county. It's a steep grade up to Austin Summit, elevation around 7500 feet. The hillsides are mostly sage and dry grasses with pockets of colorful hardwoods stuck in folds in the slopes. Maureen says there's not much back there in Austin. I guess that's a matter of comparison.

GLYPHS: A few miles east, and here's Hickison Summit and Hickison Petroglyph Area. Yes, there are petroglyphs with only minor modern defacements. We meet a couple motel-hopping from Southern California. She's a birder. I mention hearing an owl back at Stokes Castle. She asked, what kind? I replied, the kind that go WHO-WHO-WHO. She advised that the pinyon nuts looked better around Great Basin National Park east of Ely than here, multitudinous and delicious, fat and full and perfect for harvesting. So y'all should come pick some now. Otherwise they're pretty expensive.

We cross wide valleys and slither through and around jagged mountain ranges. We come to a sharp cut in the rocks, great stony faces hanging over the road, called DEVIL'S GATE. This predates video games, of course. And up ahead: EUREKA!

EUREKA: The outskirts of Eureka, Nevada look like they've seen better days; but we get downtown and the old museum and opera house have been nicely painted-up and the big casinos are in good repair. Eureka's main street is twice as wide as Austin's; Eureka is less vertical and not nearly as quaint. There seem to be more casinos here than the through traffic could possibly support, and indeed some gaming houses here are mere dead shells. We sniffed around town, found a WiFi hotspot and accomplished a transmission. Eureka!

The highway eastward from Eureka cuts through picturesque Western mountains forested with pinyons and junipers, then drops back into more stinking basins filled with dwarfed sage etc, grey-carpeted to the horizon, then yet more ranges with that definite Wild West ambience.

ELY NV: We finally thread the long winding canyon into Ely, Nevada, pass even more casinos and support businesses, and see a shop advertising RV repairs. I ask about water pump repair. A scruffy guy comes out with a multimeter, jiggles the wires more than I did, and the pump works again. Milagro! And no fee!

Darkness is descending as we head southeast from Ely. At Connors Pass we see a graded road leading uphill, drive a mile and find a flat-enough spot. This is it for the night. And we have running water again! Huzzah!

Wednesday 19 October 2005 - OUTA NEVADA!
_{Connors Pass NV to Wah Wah Pass UT}

MORNING: A little rain overnight here. Snow at higher elevations? Ski Nevada! We roll out of Connors Pass, down out of the Schell Creek Range, across basin, up into another range, the Snake. We pass tall gateways totally enveloped in deer antlers. Way up north, those would be elk and moose antlers. Where are the shrunken skulls?

The basins and ranges... some perceive that WITH the topographic grain, ie along the valleys, is a lot less tolerable than going ACROSS the grain, across valleys and ranges. Well of COURSE. And one's time sense is altered. We read that the 120 trip down-grain from Austin to Tonopah takes a lifetime, while Fallon, just 80 cross-grain miles away, seems just around the corner. Yes, traveling down a straight arid valley forever and ever and ever DOES get tedious.

We climb up into the afore-mentioned Snake Range, looping around GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK, which contains no basins, just tall (over 13,000-foot) mountains. (Maybe someone objected to the name SNAKE RANGE NATIONAL PARK.) At those heights, we should find Bristlecone Pine groves, hiding in the high lonesome places. Down here in Sacramento Pass it's the same old pinyon-juniper stuff.

The great craggy peaks are islands in the sky, reefs that snag passing clouds and capture the weather. The Big-Picture view of the Great Basin, seen from far above, looks corrugated and fuzzy — green fuzz on the rises, thinner gray fuzz in the dips, with white misting or powder around the higher bumps. Some peaks around us have a thin brushing of yesterday's snow — TERMINATION DUST! And Wheeler Peak over there actually has a glacier.

NOONISH: We drive up into GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK, first passing dryland fences topped with weird artistic thingies: aliens with horns, a vintage auto driven by a skeleton, a half-buried miner. We'll photograph those on the way down. The scenic drive climbs WAY up into these steep mountains — we pass the 10,000 foot marker. Wheeler Peak's glacial cirque and snowy jagged points and live glacier loom above us. The forests have changed, aspens and Engelmann spruce and limber pine.

We descend (reluctantly) from Wheeler Peak. We MUST return and stay awhile, especially since camping is cheap, like the six dollar off-season rate (bring your own water). The other big attractions in GBNP are Lexington Arch (way out of the way for us now) and Lehman Caves (beyond budget for us now, at ten dollars each). So on we go, stopping to shoot all the roadside 'artworks'. There's a whole new school of art hanging athwart these barb-wire fences on the sagebrush plains. More of the same around Baker, the park's portal town.

AFTERNOON: And then enough of Nevada — we're off to Utah, which looks about the same. More basins and ranges to cross, which should occupy the rest of the day. The first Utah town is Garrison, which looks very stark after the rustic exuberance of many Nevada hamlets. Or am I reading too much into this?

What's that Maureen says is off the west? Martians? Oh no, just a marsh. How trivial.

A small herd of pronghorn antelope beside the road, maybe a dozen. They take off like fuzzy bullets when I slow down. Hey, I won't hurt you, I promise! And the route is owned and occupied by cattle who barely deign to clear the roadway as I auger-in towards them. If they knew their fates, they'd slaughter all passing humans.

Snake Valley, Mormon Gap, Pine Valley, the Wah Wah Range. That's enough for today. We pull up into Wah Wah Pass, park next to the shot-up rusty wreck of some vintage auto, and take much-needed showers. WE HAVE RUNNING WATER!! But who knows what tomorrow will bring?

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