sometimes, it's the side trips...

Photo credits are a mix on this one. Some are Rose's, some are Chewy's. If it really matters to you which is which, ask me.

Most of the time, when I'm headed off to have a vacation, I have a pretty good idea where I'm going. I have fairly well planned what I'm going to do when I get there. After all, I might not be passing back that way again soon, and I don't want to miss a gem of an experience because I didn't know it was there for the having. But I never nail my schedule to a solid surface and stretch out all the slack, either. It's a blessed thing to reach a fork in the road and have the luxury of choosing which way to go. Sometimes instinct guides me, sometimes it's the allure of something shiny on the horizon, sometimes it's the promise of beauty passed in a rumor while chatting with the locals. Other times, it's a mundane highway sign, placed there by the good folks at the local transportation department purely for my edification. (Ok, for the edification of the general public, not me in particular. But it seems like they're written just for me sometimes. The universe has an impeccable timing chain, I tell you.) On the last day of my Utah vacation this summer, we rode over to Cedar Breaks National Monument as planned. I had bashed myself in the noggin with some sinus medication, so I stretched out on my bike and took a nap while the crew took these amazing photos. Medicated was better than congested, but it made me easy prey for the sunbeam-laced cat nap that came looking for me later. The vistas at Cedar Breaks are amazing, and really leave you with the impression that a Creator was looking at all those neat hunks of rock and thinking, "What if i just frosted this landscape with Cedar trees? I know! I'll liquefy the seed mix and spread it on like those Chia Pet things! This'll look AMAZING in about 10,000 years..."

Chelli had things at home that needed her attention, so she left Zion in the direction of Hurricane to get a t-shirt and then to point her headlight homeward. And so Rose, Chewy, Sylvia and I found ourselves at Zion National Park in southern Utah, staring at a fork in the road. It was pretty nearly our first unplanned turn of the whole vacation, and we were about 6 days in at that point. It took us to Kanab, UT. We'd been on an ATV tour in Tropic, UT a few days earlier, and our guide had mentioned that there were some old Hollywood movie sets in the vicinity that were used to film some of the episodes of Gunsmoke and several Hollywood westerns. He lamented the fact that another set had burned down under suspicious circumstances. Apparently the locals had recently rebuilt the set used in The Outlaw Josey Wales (and some other classic westerns) to make it safe for tourists to visit and the scuttlebutt said that extremist environmentalists had torched it because they were unhappy with the resulting traffic. This still-standing TV set was only barely holding together. The whole thing was posted "No Trespassing" but that hadn't stopped a few people we saw from sneaking in. I don't know whether Chewy was more disappointed that cheaters were prospering (in that they got close-ups) or that the John Wayne set was burned down. Either way, it was easy to see why they wanted to keep people out. The gallows looked like it was being held together by the wisp of rope that was dangling from the crosspiece, and all the other buildings had the look of using their very staircases as crutches.

Camping in Kanab was just as scenic as everything else in southern Utah. And I think it was staring up at that butte, sipping a beer and polishing off the last of my macaroni and cheese that I finally let go of the need to know where I was. I don't know how or when this need overcame me. I remember reading the map for my mom on long road trips when I was not more than 10 years old and not caring at all where we were. Somewhere in the succeeding 10 years, I turned into a (slightly compulsive) Navigator. In Kanab, I managed to let go of it for a while.

Lots of people have written books and sung songs extolling the idea that life is more about the journey than it is about the destination. On the one hand, I can appreciate that. But I know enough psychology to know that the sorts of people who are inclined to write books and sing songs are the only people for whom that is absolutely and essentially true. For those of us more inclined to consume art than to create it, life might be journey, destination, or some mix of the two. For me, life is HERE and life is NOW, so the destination and the journey are equally important. Yesterday is pretty much irrelevant, tomorrow is an infinite fan of possibilities that cannot be comprehended, while the present is everything. It makes me rotten at pattern recognition, it explains why I'm 10 minutes late for everything, and it makes me great at Navigation. I can limit the field of possibilities by taking a fork today. Knowing where I am in the moment allows me to foresee, insofar as one can foresee, what possibilities I am allowing or denying by making a choice. Plus, something about vacation tends to slip my inner Perfectionist a Valium Martini, letting me make Navigational choices both literal and figurative without agonizing first over whether it is the perfect choice.

So we woke up the next morning in Kanab, and instead of going home as we had planned, we looked at that fork in the road and took it to the Grand Canyon. I sure do love having some slack in my schedule, because sometimes the side trips are the best part.

Leave Only Your Footprints

On our third day in Utah, we woke up in some chilly high-altitude morning darkness in Torrey. The idea had been to get out to the first lookout in Dixie National Forest just after sunrise (because it would be too dark to ride there before sunrise) and then roll on through our day from there. We actually crawled out of our tents just after sunrise, because it was too cold to be out tearing down your nice warm campsite and still define the activity as "vacation". We were slow moving that morning, but it gave the coffee shop across the road (<3 coffee!) time to open up and sell us coffee and that gave the non-coffee drinkers in our party time to visit the local tourism office two doors down. The local tourism office had some interesting information about our planned route, like the fact that there was a great little slot canyon a short hike off the main road, if you knew where to look. (I'm experimenting with the Google Map link. If you DO NOT see a blue dot in the middle of the map, you can click the "View Larger Map" link to see where that canyon is and what photos other people have posted of it.)


View Larger Map

We did make it out to that overlook, and the view was worth it, no? Now, some of you know I have a miserable sense of elapsed time. How long does it take to do laundry? About an hour. How long to make macaroni? About an hour. Watch a movie? Write a blog post? Eat supper? Walk the dog? Get through airport security? About an hour. I'm not at all scientific about time. So Chewy and Chelli got as far down the road as they were going and turned around, and they saw me keep on going. I was going to The End Of The Road, you see. And that got me in trouble, because the time that elapsed between passing them as they turned around on the road and seeing them again at The Beginning of The Road was too long. "Too long" is a scientific measure of time describing the time it takes for others to get tired of sitting in the hot sun and move from worry about you to aggravation with you. Irritated as they may have been, they took some awesome photos!



In the "too long" period of time that I left everyone waiting, however, I went clear to The End Of The Road. I saw some amazing scenery and got some of the real solitude that visits to the desert always promise. I could never be that far from civilization as long as I was on a paved road, but I spent "about an hour" not seeing any other vehicles, and the time and space to let my thoughts expand and roam were a treasure to me.

On the way back to The Beginning Of The Road, I decided to stop in at that little slot canyon. I had noticed it on my way out to The End Of The Road, but thought it looked too busy. So I went on by in search of my solitude. I was rewarded, because by the time I'd reached The End Of The Road and come back "about an hour" later, the place was abandoned. I hiked across the creek and up into this quiet little nook between high stone walls. It was cool, shady and just a little bit damp at the very back where the sun can never really reach. I just squatted back there and listened to the wind whistling over the top of the canyon and the rustling of the cottonwood out in the creek bed, hiding the mouth of the canyon from casual passersby. If it had been a little warmer that morning, if my phone's alarm clock had been a little louder, if we hadn't stopped for coffee, if we hadn't engaged the local guy at the information office... All those things had to happen to give me that quiet, shady moment in the back of the slot canyon. I know I was but one of many visitors that day and many other days. After all, how secluded can a place be if you can find out about it at the tourism office? Still, for that little while, I had the place entirely to myself.

I felt a chill coming off the wall, but whether it was from the rock or the wind I didn't know. So I reached out to touch the stone to feel just how cool it was... The canyon floor was deep sand, and the stomping of all the previous visitors had dusted the walls with powder. Where I touched the yellow stone, I left a little damp mark and my hand came away gritty. I tried to wipe it clean against my pants, but couldn't; the grit of riding and hiking was all over my clothes. So I dug a little at the base of the wall where the sand was still wet from carrying the last rain some months before. The permanently shaded little hole filled up with just enough water to rinse my palm clean. I stirred up the sand and made mud, wet my hand, and made a proper handprint on the wall. The mud was a dark red on the yellow-brown wall, the only sort of graffiti I could bring myself to create.

I hiked back to my bike and rode back to my anxious friends. I never took a picture of the handprint because I gave up carrying cameras on these trips after our RoadTrip07 when I realized how much better Rose's photography is than mine. So my handprint evaporated off that wall, I'm sure, well before I tucked into a plate of lunch and pie at the diner at The Beginnng Of The Road. And that's what it's all about, right? Leave nothing behind but your footprints. The only lasting impact any of us can make is in loving the people around us and treating them gently. I'll try to remind my friends of that the next time I keep them waiting "too long".

howl at the moon...

Rose and I recently returned from a vacation in Utah. It seems like an odd place for a queer couple to vacation, but the land is beautiful and the motorcycling is outstanding. We had a thrilling time.
Our first few days were lazy and fun, just passing time getting across West Texas (snooze) and into Cortez, CO (beautiful). We enjoyed the warm hospitality of my aunt and uncle in Las Vegas, NM along the way and sampled some terrific cuisine in Taos. We even shopped! Furthermore, we bought something! Neither Rose nor I shops recreationally so that was a noteworthy moment. It was a home decor item so large we had to ship it home as it wouldn't have fit on our motorcycles. Srsly. I'm sure that I'll post a photo of it once we get the room painted and hang it on the wall.
We met up in Cortez with some friends from Bakersfield, CA and another friend from Phoenix, AZ. Chewy (one of the two from Bakersfield) started having trouble with her bike out on the road. It turns out an electronic component in her bike was on the fritz, and this is a widespread problem. They had several dozen back ordered at the shop where she stopped for repairs, so we had a makeshift solution for starting her bike: keep trying until it works. It turns out, though, that the uncooperative electronic component governed other miscellaneous systems, like headlights and the cooling fan. These will both be important later...

So on our first day out, we hit a bunch of big destinations: Mesa Verde, the Four Corners, Goosenecks State Park, and a terrific (in the terrifying sense of the word) piece of road called the Moki Dugway. About 2/3 up the Moki Dugway, Chewy's bike overheated and we had to pull over. (Fritzy Electronic Component strikes again!) On the face of a cliff, in a switchback, five bikes parked on the gravel, with sunset approaching rapidly. And that wasn't the scary part of the day. Just so you know, everything worked out okay. Now you don't have to scroll to the bottom of this post looking for the awful news before you come back to finish the story.



After about an hour waiting for the bike to cool, we carried on. This meant we were passing through Lake Powell territory right at sunset, but we were still a good hour and a half from our destination in Hanksville, UT. As full darkness got serious about settling on the mesa there, Chewy's absent headlight became a real problem. (Fritzy Electronic Component strikes again!) However, she's a real tough lady and not one to stop riding for something so silly as absence of light. So she put me out front, and she rode just off my flank so she could use my headlight to illumine her path. Everyone else followed behind. Really, this worked pretty well as long as the road was straight and flat. We had to slow down significantly to take the curves, though. UNTIL... [dramatic music: DUN-DUN-DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!] the coyote.

That's right, gentle readers. I had my first motorcycle/wildlife encounter. This little coyote was out in the middle of the road, sniffing something on the pavement that I'm certain was quite disgusting and probably dead. As soon as I saw it, I jammed on my brakes and (reportedly) created quite a nasty-smelling cloud of rubber smoke behind me. I did not manage to avoid the coyote, but I did manage to avoid the pavement. So I call that a tie. I hit the thing with my tire and then IT hit my left foot and went spinning off into the darkness. Some brainiacs have asked me when I tell them this whether the coyote lived. Now, really, if you hit a wild wolf-like creature on the highway at night, would you go unarmed out into the desert to look at the outcome? Really?!?! Just FYI, the pictured coyote is one that we stumbled across in a national park the following day.

About five minutes later, the massive rush of adrenaline wore off, and I had to pee like i have never in my life needed to pee. And I went through both basic training and military survival school, so I know about needing to pee. :) Luckily, we were only another 10 miles or so from Hanksville, at that point. We pulled up at the first gas station and examined my bike for signs of damage and everyone else's teeth for rubber cinders. Turns out there were none of the above, but I finally got to pee. We concluded (and rightly so) that it was too late by then to expect any restaurants to be open in this roll-up-the-sidewalks-at-dusk sort of town, so we bought some cans of Chef Boyardee and rolled to our campground.

Chef Boyardee heated over a camp stove, when savored with that Boyamigladtobealive sauce and topped with superb company, is probably the finest gourmet meal I've ever eaten.