5.11.2010
5.10.2010
Avalanche Zone
To be fair, so far Southern Oregon has had the best weather we've seen. But knowing that this is Oregon and it does have a propensity to rain here, we were prepared for and even expecting some nominal amount of precipitation. We are such n00bs; who would have thought that 'roads closed for snow' in mid-May still meant actively snowing with banks topping 10 feet abutting the roadside? I was unfortunately naïve enough to make sure my snow boots were buried completely inaccessibly last time we re-packed the car (somewhere in New Mexico), not expecting to need them. This is yet more (unnecessary) proof that I am terrible at packing.
On the bright side, I learned some important facts. Crater Lake gets an average of over 40 feet of snow per year. When it's foggy and snowing, you can't really see the lake. I am far better at snowball-throwing than Dan is. (This is, by far, the most important new piece of knowledge.)
It has also been decided that any future trip to Crater Lake must take place either in the summer or, if during inclement (read: snowy) weather, fully equipped with recreational snow gear (i.e. snowshoes and cross country skis and avalanche gear). It should further be acknowledged that we are really terrible at finding good weather. Upon retrospection, the barista at the coffee shop in Santa Fe had the right idea; go to Arizona, pretend to be foreign, and get deported to somewhere nice and sunny, like the Caribbean.
On the bright side, I learned some important facts. Crater Lake gets an average of over 40 feet of snow per year. When it's foggy and snowing, you can't really see the lake. I am far better at snowball-throwing than Dan is. (This is, by far, the most important new piece of knowledge.)
It has also been decided that any future trip to Crater Lake must take place either in the summer or, if during inclement (read: snowy) weather, fully equipped with recreational snow gear (i.e. snowshoes and cross country skis and avalanche gear). It should further be acknowledged that we are really terrible at finding good weather. Upon retrospection, the barista at the coffee shop in Santa Fe had the right idea; go to Arizona, pretend to be foreign, and get deported to somewhere nice and sunny, like the Caribbean.
5.09.2010
5.08.2010
This Rock Slide Is Pathetic: Or, The New Theory of Relativity
I've become very skeptical of road signs. Rock Slide Area, Falling Rocks, Road Damage, Uneven Road Surface, 35 M.P.H. Curve, ICY, Speed Enforced By Radar, and Narrow Road - to name a few - have all lost some of their urgency.
Your Road Damage is a crack. I think. I can't really find any. Where's the two-inch gap between lanes from snow melting and freezing for months, making even the most innocent of lane changes a lesson in disaster avoidance? Your Uneven Road Surface is repaving over old yet perfectly smooth asphalt. Where are the potholes and loose rocks? This 35 M.P.H. Curve is built for bumbling RVs, not nimble hatchbacks. 50 mph, easy. I haven't seen a single cop in your desolate wastelands, and to me narrow means "space for two, only if mirrors are scraping", not an imperceptible decrease in shoulder width. And where's all the ice? It's been sunny and above 50 for days - and to top it all off, none of these so called "passes" are above 7500 feet.
Your rock slide is a gently sloping if possibly somewhat chunky hill subtly approaching the roadside, not overhanging cliffs of loose sandstone. Semi-truck sized hole possible? I think not.
If you don't mind - this is our road trip, DOT - we've seen worse and more precarious roads than your RV-driving, fanny-pack-wearing, upside-down-map-toting, slow-and-cautious target audience will ever hope to.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Your Road Damage is a crack. I think. I can't really find any. Where's the two-inch gap between lanes from snow melting and freezing for months, making even the most innocent of lane changes a lesson in disaster avoidance? Your Uneven Road Surface is repaving over old yet perfectly smooth asphalt. Where are the potholes and loose rocks? This 35 M.P.H. Curve is built for bumbling RVs, not nimble hatchbacks. 50 mph, easy. I haven't seen a single cop in your desolate wastelands, and to me narrow means "space for two, only if mirrors are scraping", not an imperceptible decrease in shoulder width. And where's all the ice? It's been sunny and above 50 for days - and to top it all off, none of these so called "passes" are above 7500 feet.
Your rock slide is a gently sloping if possibly somewhat chunky hill subtly approaching the roadside, not overhanging cliffs of loose sandstone. Semi-truck sized hole possible? I think not.
If you don't mind - this is our road trip, DOT - we've seen worse and more precarious roads than your RV-driving, fanny-pack-wearing, upside-down-map-toting, slow-and-cautious target audience will ever hope to.
Thanks, but no thanks.
5.07.2010
Cuincy, Qalifornia
7 May
My chamomile tea and pumpkin bread was just proffered to me in the most quaint and ecologically sound of manners; a small ceramic pot of tea, a glass mug, plate and fork on a wooden tray.
That about describes this coffee shop and this town; taste and kitsch meet in the walls of the coffee shop - covered with cuttings from canvas coffee bean sacks and an endless collection of coffee pots of various shapes and sizes and vintages - and in the streets of the town, with its opposing one-way streets which collectively make up Main Street, small cafés, and more consignment, vintage, and thrift than is strictly necessary for a town of 5,000.
Quincy has been the seat of Plumas County since the county was officially established around the turn of the 19th century, and as such is steeped in the West Coast stylings of history. Chinese, Native Americans, the White Man, and a freedman named Jim Beckwourth all came together in various roles to develop a rich culture of basketry, beading, mining, logging, transportation, and agriculture.1
Aside from being the closest "real town" to our free campsite, it provides the indispensable benefit of providing free wi-fi in cutesy coffee shops, as well as excellent eavesdropping involving cow health and blurriness.
1All this information thanks to the $2 admission-fee Plumas County Museum, which has more pictures of people in the old days than anyone should ever care to see, but also has extensive collections of heavy instruments for agriculture, mining, trains, blacksmithing, of Maidu baskets, of porcelain dolls, of Boy Scout patches through the ages, and of empty one-quart whiskey and bourbon bottles presumably guzzled by grizzly miners during the gold rush. Unfortunately for those drunk bastards, Plumas County was only lucky to have copper, quartz, and the like.
My chamomile tea and pumpkin bread was just proffered to me in the most quaint and ecologically sound of manners; a small ceramic pot of tea, a glass mug, plate and fork on a wooden tray.
That about describes this coffee shop and this town; taste and kitsch meet in the walls of the coffee shop - covered with cuttings from canvas coffee bean sacks and an endless collection of coffee pots of various shapes and sizes and vintages - and in the streets of the town, with its opposing one-way streets which collectively make up Main Street, small cafés, and more consignment, vintage, and thrift than is strictly necessary for a town of 5,000.
Quincy has been the seat of Plumas County since the county was officially established around the turn of the 19th century, and as such is steeped in the West Coast stylings of history. Chinese, Native Americans, the White Man, and a freedman named Jim Beckwourth all came together in various roles to develop a rich culture of basketry, beading, mining, logging, transportation, and agriculture.1
Aside from being the closest "real town" to our free campsite, it provides the indispensable benefit of providing free wi-fi in cutesy coffee shops, as well as excellent eavesdropping involving cow health and blurriness.
1All this information thanks to the $2 admission-fee Plumas County Museum, which has more pictures of people in the old days than anyone should ever care to see, but also has extensive collections of heavy instruments for agriculture, mining, trains, blacksmithing, of Maidu baskets, of porcelain dolls, of Boy Scout patches through the ages, and of empty one-quart whiskey and bourbon bottles presumably guzzled by grizzly miners during the gold rush. Unfortunately for those drunk bastards, Plumas County was only lucky to have copper, quartz, and the like.
Little House in the Big Woods
6/7 May
The square root of 41 miles (as the crow flies) southwest of Quincy, CA on a gravel Forest Service road, a small group of campgrounds are nestled around a waterfall and rushing stream. The sites are not maintained (and therefore free), save for fallen trees being cut to make roads just barely passable. Abandoned picnic tables and fire puts dot the clearing, and an aged sign warns of rotten tree dangers. The restrooms - rather, outhouses - are decorated with cobwebs and tree crumblings. No other cars pass on the road, if it can indeed be seen from here. The stream cuts a deep gash through the wooded landscape, providing a just-accessible source of fresh water, if you're willing to brave the narrow path trodden into the 75˚ hillside.
These trees are tall, and sporadically drop pine cones as big as my face. The air is of dust and pine needles and is swollen with the cleanliness of a fresh breeze.
Part horror-movie opening, part pristine solitude. It instills a sense of wonderment at the vastness of lands yet to be seen. This is a place where you realize important things: the value of company and the value of solitude.
(Two ducks - male and female - mallards - just came swimming downstream - saw me - paused - and through their wordless lover's communication took off in a flurry of splashing and feathers. This is not my stream.)
The sense of life, sustenance, and survival. The influence of and on one person. Encounters. Observation. Wonder and why.
The square root of 41 miles (as the crow flies) southwest of Quincy, CA on a gravel Forest Service road, a small group of campgrounds are nestled around a waterfall and rushing stream. The sites are not maintained (and therefore free), save for fallen trees being cut to make roads just barely passable. Abandoned picnic tables and fire puts dot the clearing, and an aged sign warns of rotten tree dangers. The restrooms - rather, outhouses - are decorated with cobwebs and tree crumblings. No other cars pass on the road, if it can indeed be seen from here. The stream cuts a deep gash through the wooded landscape, providing a just-accessible source of fresh water, if you're willing to brave the narrow path trodden into the 75˚ hillside.
These trees are tall, and sporadically drop pine cones as big as my face. The air is of dust and pine needles and is swollen with the cleanliness of a fresh breeze.
Part horror-movie opening, part pristine solitude. It instills a sense of wonderment at the vastness of lands yet to be seen. This is a place where you realize important things: the value of company and the value of solitude.
(Two ducks - male and female - mallards - just came swimming downstream - saw me - paused - and through their wordless lover's communication took off in a flurry of splashing and feathers. This is not my stream.)
The sense of life, sustenance, and survival. The influence of and on one person. Encounters. Observation. Wonder and why.
A Tale of Irony, Greed, and Betrayal
6 May
Ma and Pa Donner set out for the West sometime in the 1860s. They were accompanied by 25 of their nearest and dearest.
Sometime in the spring, they stopped to fix their wagons (presumably their oxen did not successfully cross the Snake River - FAIL) in the mountains on the west side of what was someday to be called Lake Tahoe. Evidently, they also neglected to sufficiently stock up on spare axles and wheels and, frankly, whoever it was really sucked at Oregon Trail. In any case, their wagons became mired in the ungodly marshes of the Sierra Nevadas (damned mud puddles). Without spare wagon parts they proceeded to fell trees to build their own. Several party members forgot to move and got squashed. During this feat, which took a good while since they had chosen the ubiquitously useless careers of teachers and lawyers, a snowstorm befell them.
Woe unto the Donner Party! Stuck in a bog on a mountain in a snowstorm, they slowly began to get very hungry and cold. Here, the story becomes a tad sketchy (I swear to this point it's the truth). Common knowledge asserts that they all turned to cannibalism and went up in pillars of smoke and flame. Ish. Alternate renderings suggest some profound sacrifices on the part of the mothers, all to save their children.* Hopefully, this sacrifice involved their own blood and flesh because that's the only good part of the story anyway. Only eleven members survived.
In any case, the "Donner Camp Picnic Ground" (oh, it hurts) graces the side of CA Rte. 89 somewhere north of Truckee. Its plaques commemorate the bravery and pioneering spirit that made California what it is today: the land of saintly cannibals.
*This is the National Park version of the story. Wimps.
Ma and Pa Donner set out for the West sometime in the 1860s. They were accompanied by 25 of their nearest and dearest.
Sometime in the spring, they stopped to fix their wagons (presumably their oxen did not successfully cross the Snake River - FAIL) in the mountains on the west side of what was someday to be called Lake Tahoe. Evidently, they also neglected to sufficiently stock up on spare axles and wheels and, frankly, whoever it was really sucked at Oregon Trail. In any case, their wagons became mired in the ungodly marshes of the Sierra Nevadas (damned mud puddles). Without spare wagon parts they proceeded to fell trees to build their own. Several party members forgot to move and got squashed. During this feat, which took a good while since they had chosen the ubiquitously useless careers of teachers and lawyers, a snowstorm befell them.
Woe unto the Donner Party! Stuck in a bog on a mountain in a snowstorm, they slowly began to get very hungry and cold. Here, the story becomes a tad sketchy (I swear to this point it's the truth). Common knowledge asserts that they all turned to cannibalism and went up in pillars of smoke and flame. Ish. Alternate renderings suggest some profound sacrifices on the part of the mothers, all to save their children.* Hopefully, this sacrifice involved their own blood and flesh because that's the only good part of the story anyway. Only eleven members survived.
In any case, the "Donner Camp Picnic Ground" (oh, it hurts) graces the side of CA Rte. 89 somewhere north of Truckee. Its plaques commemorate the bravery and pioneering spirit that made California what it is today: the land of saintly cannibals.
*This is the National Park version of the story. Wimps.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
