But we gotta get there first and we happen to be in Colorado. This was just a squiggly line through the mountains I chose on unassuming Highway 14. Home of places like Rustic and State Forest State Park. For an extra couple road hours, (counting and calculating squiggles) I just wanted some open space thinking time after Denver. I know nothing about the Rockies. But we managed to stumble into a commercial for canoes or beer in high def. Dudes fished in the crystal clear river. The sun shined hot. We puffed, grinned and gaped all the way to Wyoming.
Natural Beauty, Quirkiness and All Things Water
The Kansas Game
The land stretches out forever, broken only by the geriatric bowing of oil pumps. It’s so depressing it makes me want to throw up or cry. We keep expecting to see the Rockies appear but they’re tucked into the chem haze that smears everything gray.
Out of Luck In Kansas
We run out of money somewhere in West Virginia. Since then, we’ve been “free camping.” On BLM land, in Wilderness Management Areas where we are the only ones without a pickup, confederate flag and a rifle
The Funky and the Bizarre: Hot Springs and Eureka Springs, Arkansas
HOT SPRINGS
It’s 104 degrees and there’s a bug in my shirt.
Oh. Wait.
That’s just me sweating. We pass strange bars, crystal shops, and the Gangster Museum. We’re not speaking to each other. Am I being a bitch or is it just the heat? Or the 80% humidity mixed with steam from the fountains and hot tunnel? We pass a decrepit hotel in silence. The Majestic. It’s a relic of the by-gone era of hot spring resort tourism, taller than anything else in town and all brick. There is one bathhouse that’s been preserved, called the Fordyce Bathhouse. It’s a National Park and free to tour. We part ways and I ascend the marble stairs solo, standing up straighter amidst the dapper charm. The Fordyce opened in 1915, with fountains, tubs and personal steam tanks that look like torture devices. I look up at the stain glass roof in the Men’s Bath Hall.
1
What It’s Like in the Ozarks
The Pig Trail Scenic Byway dumps us into the mountains at night. I roll the windows down and turn the music off because the decibels coming out of the roadside greenery are drowning it out anyway. The headlights catch– an armadillo?? crossing the road. We drive under the dripping canopy to a campground called Redding, where we find every campsite empty. But every creature that can chirp, croak, squeak, flutter or buzz is going at it at full volume. As soon as I don my headlamp, flying creatures try to enter my eyeballs, my ears, my mouth. This is what I always thought the Amazon feels like.
1
Why I Really Need to Like Arkansas (aka Traveling Utah & Nevada)
Sometimes when I travel it’s all sunshine and rainbows, and sometimes it’s the fires of hell on my back and dust. After going through the desert, the next thing on my horizon to look forward to is the Ozarks. I’m getting nervous cause I need to like something soon.
Boulders, Bunnies and a Hot River Runs Through it: Benton Hot Springs, California
The drive from Lee Vining to Benton on 120 starts off with five miles of dips- stomach fluttering waves down arroyos and up again where you can’t help but go whooooo! even if you don’t mean to. Then there’s the view of Mono Lake and it’s salt tufas like deformed white fingers sticking out of the lake, and outcrops of boulders that turn into faces and animals if you squint or otherwise stretch your brain. Boundary Peak comes into view, at over 13,000 ft- not the epic vista I expected just before skirting the Nevada state line. I thought Nevada was gonna be flat flat. It’s not. But that’s another post. Anyway then 120 descends into Benton Hot Springs, ooh la la! Besides being a relief of green in the desert, Benton is a town of living antiques. Not necessarily on purpose.
2
Aquatic Adventures in Way Northern California
If you haven’t been to Stout Grove off Highway 199, you’re missing out on gargantuan redwood trees, some with hollowed out fairy nooks and a ferny understory with magical light shafts cutting through it all. No big. But what I didn’t realize is that this (free!) wonderland is also one of the gateways to the Smith River, in all of it’s Caribbean-esque glory.
Cool Stuff To Do In Southern Oregon
So Oregon is already kick ass because you don’t have to pay sales tax or pump your own gas. (You literally can’t do it yourself, the law is you must be spoiled.) And there are hardly any cops in Oregon. And it’s full of cool shit. Here’s some of my favorites, the popular and the virtually unknown:
1
Surfing the Cold Shit: Washington and Oregon
If you told me in Hawaii that I’d be going surfing by first donning a full wetsuit with gloves, booties and a hood (yes, you need a hood) I would’ve said whhhaaa?
1
The Deep South Tastes So Good: New Orleans, Baby!
The mardi gras beads were still dangling from giant oak trees when we arrived in New Orleans at the end of March. A local African American artist explains to me that as a kid on the streets during Mardi Gras, he’d shout, “over here! Hey mister throw some beads over here!” and glanced at the throngs of people catching fistfuls of the shiny necklaces and doubloons. He moved into the crowd of white people and crouched down.
4
Miami: A Boy, An Alligator and a $45 margarita
If I was going to do it, I was going to do it right. I book a room at the Posh Hostel in the heart of Miami Beach. Complete with glittering chandeliers, free wifi and a rooftop pool for $60. What more could I ask for?
