Gail and Seth hit the road
May 18: And so we set out on the shake-down cruise, south to Denver and over the pass on US 285 in scattered rain showers. In Fairplay we fueled up and set off toward Monarch Pass. About 150 miles into the trip, while accelerating to pass uphill, something blew out in the exhaust system and the van suddenly bellowed like an angry beast. I pulled over and found hot gas leaking from the flange ahead of the muffler: we’d lost a gasket there. No danger, just big-truck exhaust noise on all the uphills – and we had lots of uphills ahead.
Rain turned to snow over Monarch Pass, but we had occasional sun through the gorgeous country along the Gunnison and into Cimarron territory. We cruised into Placerville about 5pm and stopped at Pete Wagner’s shop, where he loaded us up with beautiful exotic veneer scrap. Gail will use it for facing the van’s cabinets and counters.
Dinner at a nice Thai restaurant in Telluride. It’s quiet time in town, between ski season and the first of the summer festivals.
May 19: We woke to sun on an inch of new snow, then backtracked to Montrose where the friendly folks at Performance Muffler cut out the loose flange and welded in four inches of solid steel pipe. Took half an hour and not much money. Now the van smoothed out and ran more quietly than ever. We even lost the faint rattle on low-speed turns, which turns out to have been the muffler and tailpipe bouncing about.
Fueled again in Grand Junction, then west through the rain showers across Utah. Hit 90 mph going downhill on I-15 (posted limit 85). Picked up Route 50 at Salina and pulled into Great Basin National Park just before 8pm. Six bucks for a nice campsite but it rained all night and we saw nought of the scenery. Our first night sleeping in the van – snug and comfortable despite the rain drumming on the steel roof.
May 20: I awoke at 6am and left Gail to sleep in while I drove out of the park, disturbing a dozen wild turkeys hanging about on the road. An hour took me through the dawn to Ely, where Gail rolled out of bed for breakfast. Another quick fuel stop and we headed out U.S. 6 toward California.
U.S. 50 bills itself as the loneliest road in America, but 6 is lonelier, and straighter. Thirty-mile straightaways broken by a couple of short low passes. In 300 miles we saw half a dozen trucks and two jackrabbits.
A final low pass took us over a shoulder of Boundary Peak into California. Past the bug station the road becomes California Route 120, with friendly perfect pavement and a roller-coaster mix of tight curves and dips. We have to come back with a motorcycle. We giggled all the way to Lee Vining.
There we restocked on organic groceries and headed up Tioga Pass. At the Yosemite Park entrance I bought my lifetime senior pass for $10 – what a deal! And then we climbed, through light rain turning to gusty sleet and graupel. We stopped at Olmsted Point to peer through the mist at Half Dome, then rolled on to an out-of-the-way secluded campsite among tall redwoods in the National Forest – below the worst of the weather. A fire had roared through here two years ago and while many trees were gone, many more had survived with charred bark low down. The ground cover was rebounding, fresh and green. Gail led me down to a lovely brook – she’s a real water nymph.
May 21: More rain overnight so we booked it down Route 120. This stretch is a steep descent (or climb), and dropped below 4,000 feet elevation for the first time this trip. We passed one canyon-carving motorcyclist on a fully-faired sportbike, full tilt around an uphill 270-degree curve with his knee an inch off the asphalt.
At the bottom we turned north along 49. It winds and swoops in and out of the gulleys of gold country. For the first time we saw evidence of the West Coast drought: while the creek beds flowed with run-off from the high-elevation rainstorms, the reservoirs contained only packed yellow dirt.
At Angel’s Camp the sign said Route 4 was open over Ebbets Pass so up we went, climbing back toward 8,600 feet. Beyond the Bear Valley ski area the road shrinks to a lane-and-a-half and the pavement, while unmarred by potholes and frost heaves, is no longer a seamless mirror-smooth surface. Not much opportunity to pass, now: the country is thickly forested and steep, with a short-radius turn every 50 yards. Another great motorcycle road, but we were back up in the clouds, in mist, rain and sleet. Over the next 30 slow miles, we encountered half a dozen adventure bikes headed the other way, riders in full-dress foul-weather gear and moving slowly. Couldn’t see any faces but the body language was unhappy.
We came down the tight switchbacks on the north side, toward Markleeville, in more rain, and pulled into the Grover’s Hot Springs State Park ready not to cook and clean inside what was becoming a humid tin can. We rolled the four miles back to Markleeville and bought a restaurant meal at the only café still open. Delicious garlic fries: the recipe is roasted garlic blended with butter to make the fry oil.
May 22: We chose a campsite just on the bank of the rushing creek, and it sounded like distant rain all night, as opposed to rain pounding on the roof. We had only a two-hour drive ahead, up the west side of Lake Tahoe to Truckee, so took our time in the morning. We stopped often going north, to shop in South Lake Tahoe and take photos at Emerald Bay, Eagle Falls, and my old haunts at Squaw Valley. I taught skiing there from 1984 to 1993, and felt very wistful wandering about the village.
Arrived chez Lippert early afternoon, as Tom and Laurel wandered in from their rain-soaked morning round of golf. Talked all afternoon about friends, skiing, flying, plans. Kristen Krone arrived from Salzburg. Went to dinner at Bar of America.
May 23: Departed Truckee in the rain, but not before seeing Tom Lane at the Auburn Ski Club benefit sale, and Otis Kantz at Kristin’s coffee shop. Drove up old Donner Pass Road and slid down I-80, out of the rain, to find sun! before reaching Sacramento. At Dad’s
place in Mill Valley by 3pm. Dinner with Amy and Lou, and their friends Duncan and Elizabeth, at Fish in Sausalito. Talk of Triumphs and Teslas (Lou and Duncan share one), China and books.
May 24: Out to Taste of Rome for a wifi breakfast and catch up on emails, page proofs etc. Brunch at the Depot in Mill Valley, with Hillary, Bert and Marie. Long walk along the shore, watching the egrets and great blue herons, gulls and osprey. Mike Brown’s old
Beaver still flying tourists out of Richardson Bay. Dinner at Piazza di Angelo in Mill Valley with Rufus, Hillary, Hannah, Izzy, Bert and Marie. Marie in rare form – opened up and talked for hours with Gail – stories I’ve never heard before about England in the late ‘50s and New York in the early ‘60s. No rain today!
May 25: Memorial Day. Misty morning and off to Cambria via the Golden Gate and Pacific Coast Highway. Drove out of the rain around Monterey. Got to see a couple of condors (well, probably turkey buzzards), soaring close to the road, at the Bixby Creek Bridge north of Big Sur. Condors are in recovery but still pretty rare.
Arrived Cambria, to visit John and Barbara Kirschner, around 4:30. Will take a rest day and get in some cycling tomorrow . . . then head east, toward home.
Over the first 2000 miles we’re averaging 17.8 miles per gallon.
May 26: The turkey buzzards are all over the place, surfing on the sea breeze rising up the bluff. Also saw hundreds of elephant seals comatose in the sun (I suppose they can’t sleep at sea), sea otters diving for clams in the surf, pelicans flying line astern inches off the water, blue jays and red-headed woodpeckers begging for lunch. Finally got out the bikes and I got in a short high-angle jaunt along single-track.
May 27: Nice breakfast with John and Barbara, then hit the road at 9am, eastward over the coast range on California 46, then straight across the desert to Bakersfield, Mojave, Barstow and Needles. Here I-40 crosses the Colorado River. At this point, about 35 miles above Parker Dam, the river looks healthy – the huge withdrawals for Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Diego happen at and below the dam. We’ll shadow the course of the river all the way home.
The road climbs steadily toward the snowcapped mountains east of Flagstaff, and as we passed through about 7200 feet an explosion occurred in the back of the van. We pulled over to find out what container, sealed at sea level, had burst, worried that it might involve our chemical toilet. Turned out to be the 20-year-old front tire of my bicycle, pumped up hard in Cambria so that the inner tube bulged through a worn spot in the sidewall.
We pulled into Flagstaff at dusk and found a comfortable campsite at Fort Tuthill County Park, at about 7000 feet elevation. Quiet night: no rain, no traffic, no trains.
May 28: Up early and south 20 miles, dropping 2000 feet through the twisties of Oak Creek Canyon, for breakfast in Sedona. When we stopped to take photos, a trio of javelinas trotted up and paused to gaze at us. “Tourists,” they muttered, and retreated into the brush.
Then north through Navajo land and Monument Valley. Here a dust storm slowed us down, a blinding red cloud whipping at 40 knots across the road from the west. The wind was related to big thunderclouds building up in the west, north and east. We got a little rain crossing into Utah but pulled into Moab, at around 7pm, in beautiful weather.
We looked forward to a nice evening at a National Forest campsite on the south bank of the Colorado. But every campground was full, so we continued northeast along Utah 128, following the south bank of the river. The views are stunning and we stopped often. After a couple of hours, in the blackest of nights, we emerged on I-70, just a few miles from the Colorado state line. We spent the rest of the night near the river, at a rest stop in Fruita.
May 29: Awake before dawn, I left Gail asleep and pulled onto the highway eastward toward Grand Junction. We had breakfast overlooking the river and the railroad – a beautiful site. In Avon, we stopped off to visit Kathy Ryan, who felt great (and looked even better) two days after having her own bone marrow stem cells injected into both knees.
Home at 2pm, both of us feeling relaxed and unstressed and ready to take off on another trip. We’re taking the Moto Guzzi to Cripple Creek in three weeks, and plan a canoe trip down the Gunnison in July, but may drive the van up to the Tetons and Montana in August.
The van did famously. We averaged 17.7 mpg and two quarts of oil over 3900 miles of pretty vigorous mountain and desert driving. Next step: Installing the high top, so we can stand up straight.
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