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It's tempting to wax romantic about the American Road Trip. It's the stuff of adolescent films, automobile commercials, freedom™, and much of my previous writing. It's doubly tempting to wank about the desert Southwest. It's the stuff of art films, freedom™, and much of my previous writing. I want to say that Chris and I, disgusted by America's shallow notions of the good life, said "to hell with it; we're going into the wilderness to wrestle angels, devils, and rattlesnakes; we'll explore the last great frontier and emerge reinvigorated with a newfound respect of nature and in touch with the primal stuff of life. I'll meet my spirit animal, and he will sound like Johnny Cash." ^[1]
 

Truth makes for bad poetry. We were both mopy about girls and wanted a change of pace. "Zion" has a nice ring to it, Zion was far away, so Zion it was. That was about the extent of our plans. I threw about one apocalypse worth of survival gear into the car, a few maps, and off we went in search of distraction and forgetfulness.
 

Freedom™ is a registered trademark of the Authentic American Experience
 

Our route was essentially the locus of all points from hither to yon (take that, high school geometry!). It took 6 days, we drove 2,153 miles, and for God's sake, don't take notes based on what we did.
 

Day 1:

That morning, I cleaned the kitty litter, said goodbye to my tearful housemates, liberated leftover Zachary's pizza from the fridge, jumped into the car, and peeled off in a cloud of smoke that said "see 'ya later" more eloquently than any damn book of fancy poems ever could, and we were off in search of adventure, freedom™, and all that good stuff.
 

We went about 1/2 mile and stopped at Bel Forno café for chocolate raspberry croissants, fresh squeezed orange juice, and bagels. Yes, I'm lame and yes, I'm a Californian.
 

THEN we peeled off in an honest cloud of see-you-later-peace-y'all smoke, and we started driving in earnest. The route for the day was really basic: take 80 into Nevada, then take 50 until we fell over dead.
 

One of my favorite things about road trips is the driving. I mean, it had BETTER be a good thing, or else why would I plan a vacation around something I hated? Of course, the ostensible reason for the trip was to explore the desert, yada yada, but the truth of the matter is Chris and I needed that sense of movement and temporary purpose that comes from going from point B to point A via D and E. After the third or fourth hour in the car, all that exists and ever existed is your little bubble of movement, the music blasting on the stereo and the wind.
 

And don't forget the chicks in other cars. Male drivers and women are largely invisible, you glance at them and they fade into the personality of the car they drive; but "chicks," those eye-catching ephemeral youth, seem like wild animals trapped in their speeding steel cages, endlessly fascinating to oogle-without-oogling. ^[2] The game is to be passed by them, oogle, pass them later, oogle, be passed again, oggle, and sigh as they pass you for the last time, all without being obvious. (If all this seems a tad sexist or tacky... well, shit, take it as a confession from a road trip junkie, little Mr. or Ms. so-pure-when-I-drive).
 

I'm not good at subtlety. Along 80 just past the Grass Valley turnoff, we spied two gorgeous surfer chicks (ID by Chris based on brand stickers on rear windshield). Without meaning to we passed each other about 7 times. Chris - Chris! - even told me to knock it off, but it was nothing intentional, just a function of the steep grade up the Sierras. Nothing intentional, sure, but not unwelcome.
 

Lunch happened. I'm glad to say that I have no idea when lunch happened; you have to understand, I absolutely hate watches, I have refused to set my car clock, and Chris's pocketwatch was grossly inaccurate for most of the trip. The sun was still in the sky, that much I know for sure. We gnoshed on cold Zachary's, the lunch of kings.
 

Then Nevada happened. After spending a fair bit of time in Nevada and more than a fair bit of time driving through Nevada, I've come to firmly believe that people don't move to Nevada, they don't travel there, and they sure as hell don't find themselves in Nevada: Nevada happened to them. You catch a case of the Nevadas.
 

Soon after Nevada happened to us, we left 80 and turned onto 50, billed as the "Loneliest Road in America." The last major exit on 50 for people not traveling on 50 is Mustang ranch (hint: it's legal in Nevada); a fitting marker for civilization, I guess. From there on out, it's a long haul from here to there.
 

50 is amazing. You drop to about 40mph to climb a mountain range, then dip into a 30 mile valley along an absolutely straight road, and repeat. You see one car an hour and pray that it isn't a very bored cop. The landscape is barren, speckled with a uniform distribution of scrubby plants and the occasional mournful cow. Makes you want to do one of three things:

1. Blast country music and embrace the lonesome, inhospitable landscape
2. Blast electronica and escape to your mind
3. Go stark raving mad, flee to hills in pursuit of cows

(3) Seemed increasingly appealing as the hours rolled by.
 

We were going out of our goddam minds.
 

We'd been driving for about 10 hours. It was suddenly cold. It was time to camp. As the sun set, we fueled up at the biggest little town we could find. It was really cold. Why was it so cold in April? I looked at the map, and realized that most of northern Nevada is at 7000 feet. Ooops.
 

Note to self: look at maps before planning trip.
 

We decided to drive a few miles out of town, and turn north towards a forest service campground. It was getting dark, so I turned on the headlights. There was sand blowing all over the place, or… "uhm, Chris, is that snow?"
 

It was snowing.
 

Fuck.
 

The road to the campground was "Closed for winter."
 

Double fuck.
 

It was snowing in earnest now.
 

Triple fuck.
 

There was a level spot near where the campground was closed for winter. We ran to set up the tent, tying knots as fast as possible before our fingers got too cold to do anything nimble, such as "bending." Then it was time for dinner -- split pea soup and the last of the cold pizza. Standing there in the cold, driving wind, hopping to stay warm, devouring the cold pizza that was car-cold and not wind-cold and therefore warm, I formulated the key theology that would sustain us for the rest of the trip:
 

"Chris, I think there is a God. And, you see, God hates us."
 

"God hates us," he agreed.
 

"Explains a lot."
 

"Hey, it IS April, right?"
 

"Yeah. Fucking Nevada. Fucking God."
 

Pause.
 

"Think we've achieved enlightenment yet?"
 

"Ah, so you're that cold, too."
 

"Yep."
 

So, you've achieved enlightenment. Good for you. Here are some helpful pointers for your time in Nirvana. Hey, do us all a favor and don't rub the Budda's belly. He's pretty touchy about it, 'k? And don't be a freakin' tourist, we know it looks like a screen saver, don't yell 'Satori!' every time you turn a corner"…

Just as we were getting ready to crawl into the tent, the snow stopped.
 

God hates us? QED.
 

Day 2

The next morning was sunny and unbearably bright because of the damn dusting of snow on the ground. Grumbling, I made espresso and we just tossed our soggy clothes and equipment loose into the back of the car on the assumption that if we rolled the windows down, it would dry out.
 

The astute reader will note that I "made espresso" but didn't "make breakfast." What kind of camper am I, to make some damn European beverage before gettin' his bacon and eggs? If we were that damp and hell-bent on getting back onto the road, why not just toss some Folgers into the 'ol Nalgene bottle, shake it up, rouge its cheeks, and call it coffee? The answer, my friends, is that I'm a disciplined caffeine addict. I drink one cup of coffee a day, and it must be strong, it must be black, it must be real, and it must be provided soon after my slumber is disturbed or else all reality shall taste my wrath. That's why I pack a cute little stovetop espresso machines and freshly ground coffee whenever I go camping; to spare reality. You can thank me now. Miserable and wet I may be, but coffee I must have.
 

The astute reader won't give it a rest. He will ask, "do you carry all that crap when you go backpacking?" No, no I do not. Rather than promote the heresy of instant coffee, I dissolve caffeinated mints in cocoa. No, really, I do.
 

The point is, Chris and I were soon toodling along the road, looking for some form of breakfast, preferably warm. We entered a godforsaken town that bragged about its two restaurants, but one restaurant was really a bar that was closed and the other was really a general store that may never have been open. The thing about Nevada is that this was the only godforsaken town we would find in a hundred miles.
 

Since the Neman caves state park was up the road, we decided to take a field trip and check it out. That short drive convinced me that, contrary to first impressions, that town must be populated by the coolest folks in two hundred miles. Every hundred yards or so along the fence there would be some weird exhibit. A free-standing unicycle with attached sneakers. An alien wearing a hat. Abstract sheaves of colored plastic. And so on.
 

Unfortunately, we missed the tour by a few minutes, but fortunately the park complex had a great little café. Thus nourished and invigorated by the sights of human creativity (insanity? weirdness? boredom?) we went on our merry way.
 

We drove south and down. The gray flat expanses and occasional hills of Nevada gave way to Utah's deep ravines and red sandstone spires.
 

We found ourselves outside of Zion around lunchtime. How did we know it was outside of Zion? Because of the ZION TRAVELLODGE, the ZION TURQUOISE, the Great Western, the Indian casino slash Chinese restaurant (I shit you not), &c. By the time we entered the park, I fully expected there to be a sign saying "Welcome to Zion™!" attended by Micky Iguana and Minnie Horned Toad waving at little kids and hawking water bottles for $10 a pop under signs forbidding visitors to bring their own water. I had always thought that Zion was a far-off rugged park. Oh, how wrong I was.
 

Zion is gorgeous, don't get me wrong. It complements Yosemite; there is a long, deep valley with almost vertical red and white walls, a clear river, and a bounty of geological oddities. Like Yosemite, it teems with visitors, 80% of whom stay almost exclusively in the well-groomed regions and easier trails. Unlike Yosemite, most foreign tourists are French instead of German.
 

Zion's Park Service do something that is very smart. They close the upper part of the valley to automobile traffic and provide a frequent free shuttle up and down the valley. And the shuttle is powered by propone, which either means (a) it's a clean, eco-friendly alternative, or (b) visitors were throwing out too many of those damn Coleman tanks, they had to do something with them… But there is a dark storm for every silver lining, and in this case it was a sadistic bureaucracy that insisted on torturing shuttle passengers. Drivers were forbidden from driving faster than 15 miles an hour and they would spend the ample trip time spewing a monotonous litany of factiods at their captive audience. (One of the drivers was cool, though; she made jokes about being passed by bicycles, using the trails as a faster alternative, and "you may be interested in this—or not—").
 

Chris and I staked out a campsite and went for a quick hike up one section of the canyon.
 

Day 3:

This day may go down in the annals of history as one of the weirder experiences of my life, both unbelievably cool and also unconscionably stupid. We were going to – get this – hike up a canyon in the river because that's how narrow the canyon is. ^[3] It's even called The Narrows. Canyon walls: over 1000 feet high. Water temp: 54 degrees. Chuck's ankle: recently sprained. Chutzpah: high.
 

We took the shuttle to the head of the canyon. We hiked with the hoards to the end of the trail. We exchanged our boots for sandals and neoprene booties (me) and wool socks (Chris). Then, with little thought for the future or our ability to bear children, we dove in.
 

Most of the time the water was only ankle deep. The first half hour was the coldest; after that, severe nerve damage was my friend. The place was… unbelievable. We hiked maybe 3 or 4 miles upstream, then turned around at a place where we'd have to actually swim and die of hypothermia and be found miles downstream, our bodies ravaged by hoards of wild bandiceet.
 

The pictures speak for themselves.
 

It's really hard to walk in a river. You constantly zig-zag searching for the shallowest spots, rolling across smooth slippery rocks. Chris twisted his knee and my ankle was giving me hell, but we made it back. It was weird returning to the warmth and crowds of the canyon after the cold womb-like isolation of the Narrows, and as usual, when confronted with weirdness I slept.
 

Day 4:

We started the morning with pancakes and honey. Chris is the pancake master, the griddle general, the spatula slinger. We agreed that honey is a great substitute for syrup. Later, we also agreed that we should have sealed the honey in 12 or 15 plastic bags after breakfast. It got all.. over… the place. It's not like we didn't have any warning. Chris' liquid soap exploded all over his luggage when he flew out to California. Let this be a lesson, ye campers: the messier the liquid, the more likely it is to get all over everything you hold dear. (I half expect to wake up tomorrow morning and find my cat drenched in honey, mewing piteously).
 

In any case, we weren't quite sure what to do with the day since Chris' knee was busted and Zion was crowded.
 

We're really smart, so we decided to go on a strenuous hike up Angel's Landing. This is a knife-edge that sticks out into the valley; at the top, it's about 5 yards across and about 1500 feet tall. The trail is short, but the path is steep.
 

We soon discovered that Chris could go up fine, it was going down that was going to suck. (What do you do with a treed Chris?, I wondered). But we made it to the top OK and were greeted with fantastic views. And fierce chipmunks.
 

My friends know that I hate squirrels. Not squirrels-the-wild-animals, but squirrels the domesticated pest that stare at me with malevolent interest and base cunning, scheming ways to steal my knapsack, me Lucky Charms, and to trip me in the process. I easily transferred this hatred to the Angel's Landing chipmunks. They zzzoooooommm, then suddenly stop, scouting for potential moochage; then zzooooommm again, always towards your food, like poorly designed remote control toys commanded by inebriated children. It was the chipmunks hopping onto us that really bothered me.
 

I tossed a pebble off the edge. Mistaking it for a fleeting handout, a chipmunk followed. I tossed another pebble off the edge. Another chipmunk followed. Soon, the chipmunk menace was over. I breathed a sigh of relief; another day, another battle.
 

(Before you start writing angry letters, I should point out that I only did this to the ugly, unpopular chipmunks. And it wasn't the edge, just an edge).
 

Chris did OK coming down from Angel's Landing. He found a way to hobble with his leg fully extended. But in the process, he wore out his other knee. Similarly, by treating my right ankle with special tender consideration, I messed up my left ankle. Gimpy, hot, and tired, we arrived back at camp. Chris was a bit out of it, so I somehow managed to convince him that taking a bath in the (icy cold) river would be a good idea.
 

Later that afternoon, we decided to leave Zion. We were too beat up to do any of the interesting hikes out of the main valley, and if we stayed in the valley any longer we'd end up learning French from our numerous neighbors. Moreover, the park wasn't the desert Chris needed, spiritually; it was not a vast landscape of struggling beings, but more of a lush oasis encased in breathtaking, but limiting, walls.
 

It was time to see the Pyramids of... Las Vegas. Because if you want to see the desert of men's souls, you go to Vegas. Because if you wander long enough, you end up in Vegas. Because if you want to go to the Mojave desert from Zion, you drive through Vegas.
 

We ate at a Mexican place, had great tamales, sipped a margarita, then hopped back into the car to cruise the strip at dusk. It resembled nothing as much as a giant theme parks for adults. Based on this single cursory glance at Vegas, I can still say with some degree of authority that the weirdest thing about Vegas is contrasting the casino's veneer of sophistication with the fact that almost without exception, everyone milling about wears khaki shorts and t-shirts.
 

We hopped back onto 15, crossed the California border, turned off onto Cima Road, and entered Mojave just as the sun was setting.
 

I've been writing most of this journal tongue-in-cheek, seeking ways to be clever about fairly mundane events, but I can honestly say that there was something deeply moving about entering Mojave, pulling off the road, cutting the engine, and staring at a Joshua tree at sunset. There were no people around, there was silence, there was the pulse of the eternal; it was the desert.
 

It was only this humble respect for the powers of the desert that kept me from killing the thousands of suicidal jackrabbits that truly did their best to get run over in the next half hour as we drove down the road looking for a place to turn off and make camp. (Here's the deal, by the way; take Cima road until you see a pile of rocks on the left. It's the only pile of rocks, you can't miss it. ^[4] There's a dirt road just before said pile. Turn off it, you'll find a very nice campsite).
 

By this point in the trip, Chris and I had mastered the art of precision deployment. We had camp ready in about a minute, and were asleep in three (adjusting for exaggeration).
 

Except for the fucking cow that woke me up as I was drifting off, scaring the bejesus out of me.
 

Chuck's rant korner: do you have any idea how much of the United States is under Department of Agriculture jurisdiction? Neither do I. But national preserves, national forests, bureau of land (mis)management, etc. lands all belong to them. This is Our Land, after all, so it stands to reason that cattle ranchers, gun nuts, and timber companies should have free rein to do whatever they want to it. Hence the cow in the middle of the fucking desert, eating the one green bush that's doing its best to hide in the one bit of water that's holed up under a rock that's next to our car.

Day 5:

We did the Mojave thing. I was kicking myself repeatedly for leaving my topo maps at home, forcing us to stick with the clearly marked trails instead of the more interesting explorations up side canyons. We climbed dunes, chilled with alien Joshua trees, and dug the open space. One of the friendly learn-about-nature-here signs described a particular species of bush weevil. This started us worrying about the nature of weevil. We feared weevil. (This sort of thing happens after 5 days on the road.)
 

In the middle of Mojave is Kelso depot, a defunct railway station that resembles nothing as much as the Hotel California. I mean, you look at it, and you can hear the opening chords wafting in the air.
 

That afternoon, we drove up to Death Valley. Death Valley looks close on the map, but that's the map of California comma all.
 

Now, the thing about Death Valley is this, see: it's a valley of death. There's a lot of cool deeply surreal stuff to see there, but it's spread out and in-between is an awful lot of No Fun. For example, the Devil's golf course is a field of pocked salt flats cut by rain and wind into fractal projections of razor-sharp salt deposits. Visit it, sure, but don't plan a hike. There's badwater, the lowest point in the United States; a pool of brackish water next to the road, surrounded by a dozen miles of gently sloping salty clay, featureless and apparently endless. Everyone gets out of their car and walks for a ways until they get creeped out by the concept of walking on terrain that literally does not change. It's a landscape painted in drab colors, with the odd splash of color – copper-blue hills, a golden dune, or a girl in a red dress standing by the water, breathtaking in the stark contrast.
 

A relentless wind drove north up the valley. We clocked it at 25mph by having Chris stick his hand out the window while I slowed down, until he felt nothing. That evening, we set up camp in godforsaken camp site plunked down for no good reason in the desert. We parked the car such that it block most of the wind, then huddled up in the lee.
 

The sky was boiling with black clouds; if I were back East, I would have sworn a thunderstorm was on its way. But this was Death Valley so our "rainstorm" consisted of 6 drops and a spectacular rainbow.
 

This prompted us to decide that life is deeply surreal, ergo we must drink "a glass of wine" (a nice Pino Noir tucked away in the trunk). We worried about annoying the other campers, so we kept our conversation quiet. We drank another glass. Suddenly, we didn't give a shit about other campers and moreover had become unbelievable eloquent on the subject of women, love, lovin', and the meaning of life. We tried to pour another glass, but the bottle was mysteriously empty.
 

"So, do you think I should open another bottle of wine?"
 

Pause.
 

"You think I should open another bottle of wine."
 

Pause.
 

"OK, let's open another bottle of wine."
 

So there we were, drinking wine in the shadow of the valley of death; yea, we feared no weevil.
 

(Because the land was too barren to support weevil-bushes).
 

Day 6:

We started our day backtracking through Death Valley in the direction of Scott's Castle. Scotty's Castle is a mansion-ranch built in the north part of the valley by some rich dude who was hoodwinked by a phony gold prospector named Scotty, but didn't mind because the process of unwinding the lies led him to Death Valley which he decided was nicer than either Pittsburgh or LA.
 

The point is, we were driving through Death Valley in the morning, and Chris suddenly realized that the sand dunes next to the road were irresistibly photogenic. This may happen on occasion – there you are, putting along in your car as happy as can be, and then some jerk wants to "stop the car" and "enjoy nature's glory."
 

Eventually, Chris was coaxed back into the car with promises of "pictures, big pictures" at Scotty's Castle.
 

We drove for a while; it was only 60 miles or so, which by the scale of southwest landscape was nothing at all. We knew we had arrived at Scotty's Castle when we saw (1) a wrought-iron fence, and (2) a green lawn. The green, it was so bright it hurt. The castle – it's original name was "Death Valley Ranch" – was pretty nifty, and unlike the lawn it sort of fit into the surrounding landscape.
 

After the obligatory tour, we hit the road again, this time heading for the mountains above Santa Barbara.
 

As we got back into the car a thought hit me. "Hey, Chris, doesn't your brother go to Pomona?" Pomona is located in the outskirts of LA. LA is close to Santa Barbara. All these distances were still being mentally evaluated in southwest-landscape-scale, not trip-to-the-supermarket scale.
 

"Hey, yeah. Hmmm… dude, do you think we could visit him?"
 

I was a bit reluctant at first to veer 20 degrees and 150 miles off-course, but Chris was persuasive. "Dude... LA undergrad babes!" I feebly attempted to foil his logic. "But, how will he know we're coming?"
 

Chris pulled out his cell phone. ^[5] He started thumbing in an email. I hate technology.
 

We approached LA. We felt vague foreboding in our bones. Chris drove. He's not too bad at stick, and only stalled once. I took over before we hit the LA freeways. The vague feeling of doom erupted into full-fledged panic. I understand that LA has this effect on people. This panic quickly gave way to utter antipathy directed at both our fellow drivers and the sheer ugliness of the polluted over-developed human wasteland covering a perfectly nice desert. Conversation degraded into speculation about the possibility of marketing the port-a-mortar, ideal for cleaning idiots from freeways, noisy jocks from campgrounds, and golf courses from deserts.
 

My mood improved the moment we pulled off the freeway into Claremont, but I almost broke my neck. See, there were gorgeous people everywhere, nubile and… suddenly, I felt deep empathy with, and sympathy for, sailors setting foot on land after months at sea.
 

We pulled in front of Mike's dorm. He was out front for us; apparently, he had received message of our visit about two minutes before we arrived. With terrifying precision, we proceeded to invade his tiny dorm room, shower in his dorm bathroom, and get on-line. I hate being addicted to technology, sweet technology.
 

Mike a rehearsal, so we chilled in his room and watched anime. Roughly 24 hours before this, we had been drinking wine in Death Valley. Life's surreality was only getting stronger.
 

When Mike came back, we and his girlfriend went out for sushi at an LA restaurant that has a coi pond below the plexiglass floor. Pieces of diced fish wrapped in a blanket of rice and seaweed were being carried above swimming fish, and we had gone to sleep the night before in Death Valley with the secret knowledge of love given only to the tipsy on our tongues and forlorn sadness in our hearts. The surreality was suffocating, so I ordered a beer to wash it all away.
 

Even though Mike offered us a place to stay in his dorm, we declined on the basis of "been there, done that" and continued north until we reached a beach where Chris' grandfather had, at some point in the past, told him was worth seeing.
 

It was a state beach which normally charges a $12 fee for camping. But we arrived after-hours and quietly picked out a spot. We deployed the camping equipment in under 43 seconds, and were soon asleep. We were then woken up by freight trains passing about 10 feet from our heads. This was upsetting, to say the least. What the hell kind of camp site… So the next morning, as the rosy fingers of dawn tickled the sky, we sneaked out of the campground before the ranger would make us pay for such a crappy site.
 

As it turns out, this was a very good call because it started to drizzle half an hour later.
 

Damp. The rest of the day was damp. We wound our way up along the coast, stopping to poke around the beaches of Big Sur and explore the crunchy downtown of Santa Cruz. We cruised into Berkeley around 7.
 

Revelations? No, not really. Next time I want to do more exploring, less driving. I need to get drunk, not just on wine but on the isolation that teaches the true meaning of freedom, the deep interior well of meaning that vastly overshadows its pale imitator, freedom™.
 

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