When I left Grand Canyon, I prepared myself for a few days
in the desert. I had already traveled
through north central New Mexico and Arizona, but I knew the desert landscape
was soon to become even more desolate and harsh. I found a nice little town to stop for
lunch. They had a Wal-Mart, so I decided
to get an oil change. My trusty Subaru
started burning oil several road trips ago.
I love my Forester, but the recent discovery that oil consumption in
vehicles like mine is a common, potentially disastrous, and practically
unfixable, left me a bit paranoid about the reliability of my most important
asset on the trip…my transportation. My
owner’s manual suggests oil changes every 5,000 - 7,500 miles, unless you’ve
been driving in “extreme conditions”. At
the 100,000 mile mark, I can tell you, driving at 70+ mph for 10+ hours a day is what they meant by “extreme”. I estimated I was burning a quart of oil
every 1,000 miles or so, which wasn’t the most comforting thing to have in the
back of my mind. I purchased 5 quarts in
addition to the fresh 5 they put in, bought some beef jerky, and got back on
the road. While waiting on “Tire &
Lube Express”, I organized my CD’s for the upcoming few days. I still listen to CD’s. I love my music and I’m a big fan of “the
album”. What I mean is, I love songs
that are arranged in a purposeful order by the artist, to be listened to from
beginning to end. I know you can do this
with an MP3 player, but the physical act of choosing the album and placing the
CD into the player is one of those romantic things that I love…super romantic
on a trip through the desert. Fortunately
for me, a lot of the music I listen to isn’t geared towards the pop single and often
from a time when entire albums were played on vinyl, with sides and stuff…which
I think is more attuned to a beginning-to-end listening experience. Anyhow, I enjoyed organizing a “playlist” that
included Jackson Browne (ultimate road music, especially after a stop in
Winslow, AZ a couple days prior), Drive-by-Truckers (I was inspired by the last
song on English Oceans, Grand Canyon), Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty,
Wilco, T Rex, Nick Drake, Otis Redding, Little Feat, The National, Pavement, Howlin
Wolf, Neil Young, Screaming Females, Whiskeytown, Jason Isbell, Sam Cooke, The Black
Crowes, Lightnin Hopkins, Waylon Jennings, Bad Religion, The Replacements, John
Lee Hooker, Sturgill Simpson, Grateful Dead, My Morning Jacket, Cat Power,
Sylvan Esso, and probably a few others I can’t think of at the moment. Funny enough, for the amount of music I
designated as “desert mix”, I ended up having to break into another CD binder
thingy before moving to less arid landscapes.
I love having new experiences while with good music blasting through the
stereo…I think it helps me remember those experiences like scenes in a movie or
something.
I was on my way to Las Vegas. I hadn’t really intended to stop there, but
my schedule made sense of it. I wanted
to end up in Death Valley the next morning, and Las Vegas was the most logical
stopping point. So, with Vegas as my
evening destination, and a lot of brutal heat left in the day, I decided to
take another break at the Hoover Dam. It
was over 100 degrees by this point. The
combination of the canyon and enormous amount of concrete held the heat like an
oven…it was quite unpleasant. I awed at
the scale it all. I took a tour and a
selfie, then got back on the road.
Seeing that much man-made wonder is a weird thing. On the short trip from the dam to “the strip”,
I thought a lot about the lifetimes spent building…roads, cities, monuments,
and the like. There is a certain type of
irony at play while standing on an enormous, man-made river obstruction,
listening to a tour guide describe the millions-of-years-process nature used to
carve the canyon dwarfing everything within it.
As I pulled into a parking garage behind a huge man-made replica of a
huge man-made French monument, I started to feel like a real sleaze ball. I was in Paris. The Paris Resort that is. I was in Las Vegas…the capital of sleaze.
I planned on splurging a bit in Vegas so that I could have
the total “Las Vegas strip experience”.
Turns out, I didn’t have to splurge at all…hotel rooms are dirt
cheap. I ended up with some snazzy suite
with a view of the Bellagio for $80. Okay…not
dirt cheap, but significantly less than I figured I’d have to spend. I guess I owe all of you slot machine
feeders, buffet eaters, and desert oasis entertainment connoisseurs a thank
you. I walked around for a couple hours
seeing the sights. One of the major
thrills was seeing at least a thousand “adult calling cards” stuck in the
vertical metal teeth of an escalator. It
was a beautiful sight at a distance…little moving bits of neon and flesh moving
towards the sky. No doubt, there was a
lot to look at. After some exploring, I
had the great pleasure of meeting two former students for dinner. Social media and text messaging brought us
together over a thousand miles away from our hometown. We had a nice meal and laughed a lot. I was pretty excited to see people I knew after
several days on my own. Moreover, I was
ecstatic that my students would want to “hang out” with me while on vacation,
as they actually drove quite a distance to meet up with me. It’s pretty cool that they’re getting to see
the country at such a young age. Both
students are super smart, mature, and motivated…they’re going to do great
things. I worried about them making it
back to their lodgings for the evening while roaming the streets, watching the
performers, paying too much for drinks, and pretending I was George Clooney or
any of those other cool guys from Ocean’s Eleven while standing in front of the
Bellagio’s fountain show. I got to bed
relatively early in preparation for the next morning. I checked out and hit the road as many were
getting back to their rooms after a long night of whatever you do all night in
Vegas. What a funky place…I think I’ll
go back to watch the magicians.
I started driving northwest so that I could make a turn to
the southwest. It wasn’t long until I
was in California. I planned on driving
through Death Valley as the sun came up.
The further I drove toward my goal destination of Badwater Basin, the
more alien the landscape began to look.
The mountains began to glow orange and the temperature began to rise
quickly, even though the sun hadn’t actually broke into my view yet. I passed several “wild horses” and wondered
why they chose to be wild in one of the most brutal places on Earth. I came to the conclusion that being free
involves some type of sacrifice, in this case, learning to survive a place
where they probably shouldn’t. I
eventually got to the lowest point in North America. Of course, there was a roadside pull-off to
appreciate the landmark. I got out of
the car and walked through the salt, beyond the shadow cast by the ridge behind
me, and continued until I was just shy of a mile away from any type of shelter
from the elements. I sat down in the
salt and listened to the least amount of noise I’ve ever heard. I’m guessing the absolute isolation and extra
atmosphere gained below sea level contributed to the lack of sound. Whatever the reason, it was an experience I
won’t forget. I had a lot of “spiritual
experiences”, for lack of a better term, on this trip and Death Valley definitely
took me to a different place. I think
there’s a certain amount of “prove it to myself” mentality when taking a trip
like this, and the slight dangers associated with traveling alone in relatively
untraveled areas become addictive. For
about an hour, while sitting in “hell on Earth”, I really started to feel a
weird sense of accomplishment. I sweat
through all of my clothes and walked back to the car. I was on my way out of Badwater Basin by 8:30
am, but it was already over 100 degrees.
I pushed on through the Mojave Desert.
I saw towering dunes, lake-like mirages, and even lost the road a couple
times in an apparent windy area. The
temps continued to climb and I became increasingly uncomfortable in the
car. I really think I began to love the
desert for the same reasons I hated it.
It was too hot to inhabit, void of most living things, and continuously
threatening. I found a great thrill in
driving through a place I knew I couldn’t survive, should some catastrophe
occur. After sweating through another
shirt (I rarely turned on my AC during the trip…I’m a windows down type of
guy), I made it to Baker, where I was greeted by the world’s largest
thermometer. It read 112 degrees. I stopped for gas, hopped on highway 15, and
imagined I was driving a 1971 Impala convertible with bats chasing me (some of
you might get that reference). I was on
my way to Bakersfield, where I’d then turn north towards the High Sierra’s.
