Hays, Kansas

Today was our penultimate (I love that word) day on the road. We started in Denver, spent a few hours in the Tattered Cover and at Twist and Shout records, then hit the Interstate for Kansas. There was mad rain on the highway, but the familiarity of the landscape was extremely welcome.
Now we're spending our last night in Hays, Kansas, and I have accidentally demagnetized like my sixth key card (oops). Oh well. There aren't a lot of photos from today, but I'll post what I have when we get home tomorrow--I don't imagine I'll be shooting too many photos out the window in Eastern Kansas, because I see it fairly often and stuff. But we'll have to wait and see for sure, I suppose!

Again-ver

That was a pretty unsuccessful pun on the proper noun "Denver," huh. About as unsuccessful as our day was successful. This morning, I woke up and went for a run around Grand Junction, got a few rolls of film developed by the friendly folks at Snap Photo (which I'm posting here on Flickr), and hit the road with my dad (who drove the entire day, and rather attentively, if you can believe that). We stopped in Glenwood Springs and walked around town a bit, which was cool. There was a textile store which donates its profits to improving living standards for developmentally delayed adults, some of whom work at the store as weavers.There was also a sweet bookstore, Booktrain, and a tasty little bistro called Daily Bread, where we ate some Polish food and some artichokes.

Aside from our adventures in Glenwood Springs (which, by the way, it's totally legal to sell firearm ammunition at Rite-Aid; who knew?), we spent a lot of time simply driving through the mountains. My dad told me about working in Georgetown after he'd been fired from his first job in radio, and the Wichita State plane crash (Wikipedia, again, is a lovely thing), which happened right after my dad moved to the area.

There were plenty of mountain storms, and the temperature got as low as 46 degrees Fahrenheit while we were cruising to Denver (where we find ourselves this evening), which is nuts considering that it was 102 degrees yesterday in Utah.

But enough talk of the weather. (The Weather?)

 

-From Ancient Melodies of the Future (2001)

No but really, here are a few photos from today.

El Padre in Glenwood Springs

Glenwood Springs, again

Brindyl the dog (according to her collar, that is)

Colorado River rafters

This exists on I-70

Eagle, Colorado (I wish there were more cows in this photo)

Moody sky

Really moody sky

Incredibly, unbelievably moody sky

Grand Junction, Colorado

Yet another day of driving, this time across Utah and into Colorado, where we ended up in Grand Junction for the night. I walked around town for a bit when we got here and happened upon a one-hour photo place (those still even exist?) called Snap Photo. I've only shot like two rolls of 35mm on this trip, but I'm going to stop by in the morning and see if I can't get them developed before we leave town because I have a hard time being patient. Fingers crossed!

But today was a really nice day. My dad and I crossed the Great Salt Flats and visited Saltair (which is not actually the original building). Some brief background, in case you're in the dark like I was:

Saltair was originally built in the late 1800's as an amusement park on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Misfortune (and fire) befell the place again and again, and after reconstruction and several revival attempts, it burned down for good thanks to arson in the 1960's. A concert hall, modeled after the original architecture of the Saltair, now sits about a mile down the shore from where the original structure was first constructed. If that's not enough history for you, Wikipedia's there to help.

Anywho, we stopped there because--and this interest is fairly prototypical of my family--the park was used in the 1962 film Carnival of Souls, which is a wonderfully eerie gem that's been lost in the annals of horror history. Its influence on contemporary cinema is fairly remarkable; George Romero once even said that it was the film that inspired him to make Night of the Living Dead, which ghouls gave way to the zombies Romero crafted in Dawn of the Dead. Which is basically a roundabout way of saying that zombies, as they stand as a contemporary cultural phenomenon, might not exist were it not for this film. And all of that disregarded, it's just a darn-good horror film that scares my pants off every time.

Anyway, if I did a good job selling it at all, here's a poor-quality version of the full movie on YouTube, courtesy of the public domain:

After we left the moderately-depressing site of Saltair, we passed through Salt Lake City, saw some mountain storms, and listened to The Association, which was one of my dad's favorite groups back in the day. I'd never really listened to them before, but they have some super-smooth melodies and harmonies. It was rewarding to see the look on my dad's face when I pulled up their music on the stereo, because he hadn't heard them since he was in school. Here's a video of them performing the song "Along Comes Mary" on the Smothers Brothers; it's pretty wonderful if you ask me.

 

-From And Then...Along Comes The Association (1966)

And that's all I've got for today, so here are some photos from the road!

Salt Flats, looking South from I-80

I swear there are ghouls living here

Minarets!

I-80, just west of Salt Lake City

Utah Highway 6

Just East of Wellington, Utah

Utah Highway 6, looking West

Wendover, Utah

We made it! After four hundred miles on Interstate 80 East, we've set up camp in Wendover, Utah for the evening. We thought our hotel was in Nevada for the first few hours we were here, until my dad asked the clerk and found out that we'd lost a precious hour in driving a quarter-mile past the state line to our hotel. It's funny how arbitrary things like time zones and state lines are.

Anyway, there's not much to tell about our day. My dad stomached a lot of my music (as in No Doubt and Patience and Prudence and lots of other artists). After that, we also listened to Pink Moon by Nick Drake together. If you've never heard it and are interested, the full album is below. It's one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, and will always probably remind me of car rides with my dad.

Some background, since I'm feeling verbose. When I was in maybe fifth grade, I got one of those silly music encyclopedias that Rolling Stone publishes. Flipping through it, I found the entry on Nick Drake and became intrigued. After showing the entry to my dad, who was also unfamiliar with his music, he took me to Best Buy and bought me Pink Moon for ten dollars. We went back out to the car, a little nervous to listen to the CD--we'd never listened to Nick Drake before and knew nothing about him except that he'd made this album before he died--but, as soon as the title track came on, we simply looked at each other and smiled. And for years after that, we'd listen to that album in the car together.

 

 Pink Moon (1972)

So, to end that major digression, Pink Moon felt like appropriate music for driving alone together through the rocky and sparse Nevada countryside.

We also talked (imagine that) about everything from Ernest Hemingway's post-war insecurities to Willa Cather's treatment of the Midwestern terrain to westward settlers journeying on the California trail.

Oh, and we saw some really lovely things out the windows. My Internet connection right now is dreadfully slow, so I'm afraid these photos may have to be without captions for a day or two,

My dad wasn't even irked that I pulled over to look at this dust devil

We were told there would be geysers

I often dream of trains

Reno Dakota

Being in Reno, Nevada reminds me of "Reno Dakota." If you're unfamiliar with the Magnetic Fields, here's the short (and fairly biting) little song:

Reno Dakota there's not an iota of kindness in you
You know you enthrall me and yet you don't call me
It's making me blue
Pantone 292

Reno Dakota I'm reaching my quota of tears for the year
Alas and alack you just don't call me back
You have just disappeared
It makes me drink beer

I know you're a recluse; you know that's no excuse, Reno
That's just a ruse
Do not play fast and loose with my heart

Reno Dakota I'm no Nino Rota; I don't know the score
Have I annoyed you or is there a boy who-- well he's just a whore
I've had him before
It makes me drink more

-From 69 Love Songs, Vol. 1 (1999)

**********

There's a really great story behind this song; apparently Reno Dakota was an actual dude who Stephin Merrit tried to pick up at a bar. They got him to sit down for a little interview, where he explained the song and sang a pretty clever response:

It's a bit sad, really, though I've gotta say he seems to have been a really great sport about the whole thing. Which I guess is understandable. I mean, he did get a song named after him.

**********

This entire digression of a post is merely my attempt to enjoy my morning coffee and to share something that I liked before we leave Reno (the location) and head eastward.

Reno, Nevada

Here was today, in outline format:

• Woke up, drank coffee, and hung out with the family
• Visited my brother-in-law at his work, NHS, where he kindly gave us a spirited tour of everything (including their skate museum and their offices)
• Said goodbye to everyone in Santa Cruz (which was no fun at all, my sister and her husband and their son being three of the raddest people around)
• Dropped my other sister off at the airport in San Jose so she could return to Kansas City
• Drove through mad traffic all up in Stockton and the like
• Passed through the Sierra Nevadas
• Saw Donner Pass and Truckee Lake--I tried my hardest but still couldn't put myself in a settler's shoes; the terrain was rugged and unforgiving and terrifying--and I'm a contemporary twenty-year-old driving in a car on the luxury of a paved interstate, so I can't even imagine trying to cross the Sierra Nevadas with a covered wagon on mere paths
• Ended up in Reno, Nevada
• Went to Denny's with El Padre, where our waitress was named Yo Yo
• Had absolute treasures of conversations with Dad all along the way

So yeah. It was a pretty good day.

Independent Trucks from Independent trucks

San Jose, 880 North

Cattle and ominous smoke in Sacramento, looking East

El Padre piense

Sierra Nevada sunset

Rocky Mountain Stories

It's been a great, tiring day. Imagine that. We just listened to my dad tell one of his signature Rocky Mountain stories to put our nephew to sleep, and it was so special. He even recorded it so our nephew can listen to it again years into the future.
More on those stories later; now I desperately need to sleep in preparation for our Eastern return tomorrow!

Santa Cruz

Man oh man. Today was perfect and I am totally enamored of my family. They are seriously wonderful in so many ways. My big sister, for instance, took us to the beach with our (sweet and cuddly and imaginative) nephew today. She's a teacher, and while we were there we ran into one of her former students, who told me, "you're so lucky to be related to her." That about says everything.

But because today was more concerned with quality family time than taking tons of non-family photos, I have nothing more to post (and, as you may have already guessed, am too tired to write much of substance), so here is a poem by H.D.

Evening

The light passes

from ridge to ridge,

from flower to flower—

the hepaticas, wide-spread

under the light

grow faint—

the petals reach inward,

the blue tips bend

toward the bluer heart

and the flowers are lost.

The cornel-buds are still white,

but shadows dart

from the cornel-roots—

black creeps from root to root,

each leaf

cuts another leaf on the grass,

shadow seeks shadow,

then both leaf

and leaf-shadow are lost.

-From Collected Poems, 1912-1944

Memory Believes

"...before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." -William Faulkner

Today was another big day and I think words are a bit past me right now. But we made it down Highway 1 and it was even more wondrous than I'd anticipated, even if every photo I tried to take seemed to come out blurry. It's the subjective memory that truly counts, and that's what I'll be holding close in my mind for years to come.

Tomorrow we get to hang out with my admirable-beyond-description big sister and her husband and son! Hooray!

Clichéd visions of America in the Golden Gate

California One

Santa Cruisin'

Day Six

We've got a sleeping nephew in our room, which means lights and noises are off for the night. But. It was another great day of checking out sand dunes and shorelines and zoos and making sushi and playing outside, and now we're all ready for bed. Tomorrow we drive to Santa Cruz, so fingers crossed that all will go smoothly on the drive down.
All for now!

Eureka!

Being here with my brother's family has been beyond cool. To pick up where I left off, last night after we returned to our hotel, we went to the lounge and saw this local band, Electric Gravy, play a set. I was nearly drained, so I left early, but it got pretty funky. They played some improvisational funk/electronic/hip-hop jams, and a gasconading (albeit talented) couple got up and started dancing very well, in this lounge with maybe twenty other people. Maybe "gasconade" is the wrong word; they weren't really bragging aloud. "Show-off" is maybe a better verb for what they did. They got super into it, and I'm pretty sure that they were drunk, although they seemed spectacularly coordinated to me.

But that's a major digression.

Today we took a little trip with the kids to the Redwood Forest, which was awe-inspiring. I can't wrap my head around the fact that some of the trees we saw are older than America, especially given that the West Coast has always seemed so young and new to me.

After that, we visited the beach at College Cove, which was (again) so lovely and different from anything I've seen either in the Midwest or on the East Coast.

The best part of today was simply spending time with the family. My niece and nephew are such intelligent, passionate people. I've loved getting to meet them and know them, and I look very forward to watching them continue to grow.

And now for some less-exciting-than-in-days-past-because-most-of-today's-photos-were-of-the-kids-and-I-don't-want-those-on-public-Internet photos.

Fishing buddies from Highway 101 yesterday

Stereotypical redwoods in the sun

Though not a redwood, I thought this mossy tree was pretty personable

Siblings on the beach

Just painting

Tommy Says That Portland Is Great

Half the cool girls, yeah they look the same.

...If you were wondering, here is some context.

-Japanther, from Tut Tut, Now Shake Ya Butt (2009)

Today was swell. We left Missoula, and on our way out of the hotel we spotted this sweet little scene. These three were just walking, very slowly and noiselessly, along the Clark Fork River.

I was overjoyed to see this little girl eating ice cream at, like, 9:30 a.m.

On the way out of town there were a lot of remains of forest fires. My dad enlightened us about the smokejumpers who died in the Mann Gulch Fire, which was fascinating (a brief background is here). Though we weren't exactly at the site of the fire, it was moving to see the burned-out tree carcasses and reflect on what those men must have endured.

A view North from I-90, just West of Missoula.

After that, we drove through Idaho and stopped in Wallace for gas. It seemed like a pretty colorless town, although I did see a sign for a place called Polaris, which has to be a brighter place. Maybe. Here's the main downtown.

"Pre-Mix before you Re-Mix."

Leaving Wallace and weighing our options, we decided to make haste and head to Spokane. We didn't see much of the city itself, having stopped in what I think were the eastern suburbs, but we drove through and caught a glimpse of downtown, which reminded me a bit of Saint Joseph, Missouri or Manchester, New Hampshire. The buildings seemed fairly old and full of character, and I appreciated that a lot. There's something about the charm of the worn-in that never fails to appeal to me.

Again, a northern view of Spokane from I-90 West.

Continuing West, we stopped in Boardman to buy gas after getting stuck in a traffic jam (overturned trailer, belongings strewn all over the highway; attempted noun phrases to seem more like Nabokov or someone else way more talented than I) before ending up on I-84 to Portland. Maybe it was the lighting, or maybe it was the Columbia River, but man. It was easily the most scenic route we've driven so far.

I-84 West, overlooking the Columbia River and Washington state on the opposite shore.

Finally, after hours of driving, we finally arrived in Portland. The first thing we did was to drive to Reed College, which was where I almost went to school. After spending less than five minutes on their campus, I decided (maybe a bit snobbishly) that Wellesley's campus is infinitely prettier. For all its flaws, I'm happy I ended up there. But I digress. After getting settled in at our hotel, we drove across the Willamette and caught another view of Mount Hood in the distance.

This doesn't do it justice at all. I'll blame it on shooting from a moving vehicle.

As for our evening in Portland, we wandered around the Pearl District and visited Powell's Books. Go figure. I managed to come back to the hotel with only three items: The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore, Alturas de Macchu Picchu (The Heights of Macchu Picchu) by Pablo Neruda, and El Beso de la Mujer Araña (The Kiss of the Spider-Woman) by Manuel Puig. This means that I have a lot of reading to do before bed (which, for the record, I still feel a huge brain-eloquence disconnect, so I apologize if this is sloppy or hard to read or anything else undesirable). Until tomorrow!

Missoula, Montana (and Little Bighorn)

Might be the most near-perfect place I've ever seen. Earlier, my sister and I hiked to the M on Mount Sentinel (which had some mind-numbing views, let me tell you) before swimming in the Clark Fork River (which has a stronger current than you would think).

Montana is a beautiful, beautiful (really, there's no other word for it) state, and I sincerely hope that I'll be back here again very soon. Tomorrow we trek onward to Portland, Oregon, where I'm told that "the dream of the Nineties is alive and well." For now, I'm turning in for the night because I am exhausted (in case you couldn't tell by my excessive use of parentheticals and of the second-person). But first, here are a very few photos from our day.

The marker denoting where Custer fell, surrounded by others, with Custer National Cemetery
in the background. At last check, they had room for 150 more graves, in addition to the
4,500 already there.

My pensive father in front of the U.S. Army Memorial on Last Stand Hill at Little Bighorn.

Our Lady Of The Rockies, overlooking Butte from the Continental Divide.

Facing East upstream, this is the Clark Fork River, full of summertime floaters.

The Bitterroot Mountains, as seen from Mount Sentinel.

Butte, Montana

The Continental Divide is so much bigger than anything people ever made.

Bozeman, Montana

We passed a Montessori school here! Score one for the forces of good.

Buffalo, Wyoming

After a brief stop in Casper last night, we went on to Buffalo, which is a "mountain town" about three miles from the bottom of the Bighorn Mountain range. Our day hasn't even started but I'm already sufficiently exhausted and excited for today. We're going to visit the site of Custer's Last Stand, listen to a whole lot more Simon & Garfunkel, and end the day in Missoula, Montana.

Wyoming is insanely picturesque and quiet and serene, even from the Interstate. Here are some things we saw yesterday.

Kansas

Colorado; I-70 West

Fake buffalo in Wyoming