This is what it sounds like when elks cry

Salt Lake City to Rocky Mountain National Park (10/5):

We woke to clear skies in Salt Lake and got to see for the first time the mountains that surround the city. Those suckers are huge! We crossed through the mountains in a semi-blizzard, stopping in Park City for breakfast where we saw from afar the ski jumps from the 2002 Olympics. We drove a LONG time through the non-varying landscape of Wyoming before making it to Rocky Mountain National Park after dark. It is currently elk mating season, and our campsite is in the middle of the prime area for this, so we heard a lot of elk "bugling" as it is called, which sounds kind of like a warbling moan if moans were high-pitched. It's a nice sound, though probably will not make it to any white noise machines anytime soon. The campsite is at 8,500 feet, and as mentioned before, I've discovered that I start feeling the effects of altitude at embarrassingly low levels (like 7500 feet), so I'm a bit out of breath.

This is what our drive looked like for several hours until it just became several hours of yellow/green fields (notice the wind turbines!):


-M

Salt Lake City

Great Basin NP to Salt Lake City (10/4):

The wind continued to howl during the night, and we woke up a couple of times to giant gusts that seemed to threaten to uproot the tent. We woke up in the morning to the sounds of rain, and stayed curled up in our warm sleeping bags and blankets until it stopped. We left the tent to find out that the reason it wasn’t raining anymore was because it was snowing heavily. Packing up the car was slowed both by the wind and snow. After we un-staked the tent and were putting stuff in the car, we turned around to see our tent sailing off into the forest. I was also of little help, as I’m apparently really sensitive to high altitude. The camp is at about 7,500 feet and I’d noticed being short of breath the night before. In the morning, I couldn’t take more than a few steps without getting really out of breath and then getting really light-headed from not being able to breathe. So between my feebleness and the raging snow, we nixed the idea of a hike or scenic drive even further up the mountain, and satisfied ourselves with a trip to the visitor’s center where we looked at pictures of what we could have seen.

The snow stopped as soon as we left the park, and much of the driving scenery was similar to yesterday. We got to Salt Lake City to find a chilly rain. We were pretty tired from all the driving and not really in the mood to wander around wet and cold, so we didn't do much besides a quick drive around the city center. We'll probably do a bit more exploring in the morning, but a couple observations about SLC: 1) the streets are incredibly wide, and according to Lonely Planet, this is because they were designed so that a full team of 4 oxen could turn a cart around in the road. Because the streets are so big, in some places you can cross in special crosswalks mid-street, which come equipped with little orange flags that you can carry across to make yourself more noticeable.

2) There are a lot of breast augmentation ads around, including billboards, commercials, and Facebook ads from my Utah-based IP address.

3) There were several people just a *bit* too naked at the local Walmart, even allowing for it being Walmart.


-M
P.S. Happy 10-4 day!!

The Great American Road Trip

Yosemite to Great Basin National Park (10/3):

We devoted our Yosemite time today to exploring the valley. Yosemite is PACKED with people, even though it’s the off-season, and the Valley is the most popular place to be in the park. The majority of the visitors—or at least a substantial percentage—seem to be foreign, and I heard a ranger say that was typical for the fall months. We put our car in day-use parking, and we rented bikes to tour the valley that way. The other national parks we’ve been in are pretty ambivalent about biking—they allow it, but only on park roads which are normally winding and narrow and teeming with giant RVs. Yosemite, though, has actual bike paths throughout the valley that allow you to get around without contending with any cars at all. It only took us a little over an hour to make a circle, by which point we were ready to move on. The bikes were decades old and pretty painful and made going up the tiniest hill a major struggle. But it was definitely the best way to get around, and it was pleasant riding around all the rocks, forests, and meadows. We decided to forgo a hike since we biked, and set off east out of the park.



We planned to drive about halfway across Nevada and camp at a sight midway across. Brad and I are both enchanted by the drive across the Great Basin. It’s desolate, with desert-y shrubs stretching out for miles, interrupted every so often by small mountain ranges. There are towns every couple hundred miles, with literally nothing in between. This is what you think of when you think of a cross-country road trip, and it's especially fitting set to the soundtrack of Tom Petty’s Highway Companion. A good portion of the highway skirts the northern border of a massive military site, which our atlas says contains Yucca Mountain, a test range and a test site. Lonely Planet fills in some other details, such as the fact that Area 51 is located here.

Our drive was much faster than expected though, so we decided to skip the first site and go to the next. We pulled up after dark to find it completely deserted, but open. I was a little freaked out by the desolation, but we were starting to think about staying when we saw a tiny notice posted that the campground was closed. Decision made, we left the murder campground (as Brad began referring to it). It was only another hour or so to Great Basin National Park, near the Utah border, which was our destination for the next morning, so we took a chance that campgrounds would be open and headed in. We found a campsite and set up our tent in the howling wind and went to bed.
-M

A bed of california stars

Red Bluff, CA to Yosemite NP (10/2):

Our days for the rest of this loop of the road trip until we get back to Knoxville will be fairly driving-heavy, but we still have some good detours to make. Today’s long drive took us through central California and Sacramento (or Sacramendy as Maeby Funke would have it) until we reached Yosemite. The land is really flat with mountains you can barely make out in the far distance. Minus these mountains, it actually looks a lot like Kansas or Nebraska, with lots of corn, farm machinery, and grain elevators. We got to Yosemite late in the afternoon and were lucky enough to get a campsite even though we hadn’t made reservations.

I didn’t really know what to expect from Yosemite or even what it was famous for. In fact, until we went to Yellowstone, I always confused the two parks. But Yosemite is famous for rocks and waterfalls. The most famous sites are clustered in Yosemite Valley, which also has a lot of the campgrounds and lodging. All those campsites were full when we got there, so we had a campsite near Glacier Point, about 30-45 minutes away from the Valley. Up the road from our campsite was an overlook of the valley, and we headed up there (along with a few hundred other people) to watch the sunset.

Yosemite is a bear-y park, so it’s the first time that’s been a factor in the last week or so. In terms of food storage, Yosemite is much stricter than the other parks we’ve been in. Everywhere else, you have to be really careful not to leave out any food that isn’t in immediate use, but as long as you leave it in your car with the windows rolled up, you’re fine. The bears are a bit cleverer at Yosemite, though, (smarter than your average one -B) and they have learned that they can actually rip the doors and trunks off cars to get to the food that they can smell inside. Therefore, everything with a scent (and that includes all food and toiletries) have to be locked in special bear boxes that are located at each campsite. The bears can still smell everything in there, but they have learned that they can’t get in, so they don’t bother (at least in theory). Bears on hikes don’t seem to be an issue though—I never even read or heard any suggestion of bringing bear spray along.

Not wanting to tempt the bear fates, we decided to eat in the valley so we wouldn’t have to deal with cooking at our campsite. It was dark when we got there, but it was a nearly full moon, which cast beautiful shadows on the rocks that you could see in the night. A lot of people rock climb in Yosemite, and we could see the lights of a number of climbers who were tackling the rocks in the dark. We then headed back to our tent for the night, where we mostly succeeded in staying warm with temperatures in the 20s.

-M

Brad and Mandy vs. the Volcano

Shasta-Trinity National Forest to Red Bluff, CA (10/1):

We woke up to some other guy at the campsite sort of laughing at us, saying, "Wow! You guys must have been cold last night!!! Why didn't you all put your rain fly up on your tent??" And while Brad and I had this conversation between ourselves the night before about putting up the rain fly because we would be a little warmer, we didn't because we wanted to look at the trees while we slept. He was not impressed by our explanation, and in reality, I actually slept in my winter coat, but I still stand by our out-doorsy decision that allowed us to commune with nature in our own special way. (Hick -B).

After packing up our camp, we headed towards Lassen Volcanic Park, towards our one true aim of climbing said Lassen Volcano. My parents had already told me the story (a couple times) about how my brother at a young age had sat down on this very volcano and refused to climb any further up the mountain, so clearly, I was determined to show up my 8-year-old brother of the 1970s. Not to mention that as we made it to the trailhead, a number of children, some toddlers (toddlers!!!!!) and some more middle-school aged, were on their way down.

But to be fair, the Lassen climb was to be 2,000 feet over two and a half miles. If you're anything like me, you can't really translate that into anything meaningful. But it's a climb of 200 stories, if that helps at all. Though as we started to climb, we made it a bit over halfway until the last .9 miles were washed out by a rock slide so we couldn't make it any further up. So Mandy and Brad vs. the Volcano was fought to a draw...Though I'd like to state for the record, that had the trail not been washed out, I could have made the extra .9 miles to the top.
-M

Giant Redwood of a Day

Klamath to Shasta-Trinity National Forest, CA (9/30):

So Brad and I have both felt blargh-y today, but for no particular reason. I think part of it is that our last few national parks have been less hike-y and we've spent too many of the last few nights in hotels. But after our relaxing stays, we found accommodations in a delightful national forest.

We left the lovely Heaven Tree Campsite early in the morning, heading out over highways. Our main accomplishment of the day may have been not being pulled over for speeding (not that we were going that fast, but there were lots of radar cops especially sitting around passing lanes which really is not fair), but we also made it to the iconic Highway 101 following along the Pacific Ocean and through the Pacific Redwood forest. So we saw a number of ridiculous, incredible trees, including the aptly named "Big Tree", and we wandered about in the forest for a bit and got a little lost until we found our way back.

And THEN!!! So right near one of the visitors' center is this crazy prairie space where elk tend to hang out. We were pretty psyched, because in our lost wanderings earlier, we'd known these elk were here and were thus hoping to get closer to them in our car. And so we got within a few feet, which was nice because all the national parks talk a lot about elk and how there are lots of them around, but we've yet to really get close to them. But these were pretty close, especially this one that was 2-3 feet away, so we hung out with him for a bit with his giant antlers, but he wasn't really into us. As we were leaving, I gave him a little wave, and he definitely charged our car. Luckily Brad slammed the gas and everything was ok, but I lost some sympathy for the elk herd.
-M

And the elk lost sympathy for us, though one would think that national park wildlife would at least be taught simple human hand gestures by the rangers, and thus not mistake an innocuous wave for aggression. Also, increasingly we're running into highways reduced to one lane, thanks to stimulus dollars for road improvement. Obama better have this shit cleaned up by the midterms.
-B

Craters and Snow

Roseburg to Klamath National Forest, CA (9/29):

Portland and the side trip to a petting zoo accomplished, we headed to our last Oregon destination, Crater Lake National Park, the deepest lake in America and possibly made out of the crater of a volcano, or else a meteor, I'm not as up on the history as Mandy. There were a few snow flurries as we headed to the park, which turned into a fairly serious snow storm as soon as we reached it. So we drove around the eastern rim, where every so often the clouds parted and we got a glimpse of the lake, which is nice enough, though bluntly, we've seen lakes before, and while its depth is supposedly noteworthy we took that fact largely on faith. We did do a short but terribly steep hike down to the lake from the road, where we were able to confirm our suspicions that the water was a bit chilly.

So we drove around the rest of the lake, then left the park and headed down to California. The snow stopped soon after we got out of Crater, and the intermittent rain stopped in California, so we set up for the night in a national forest, reasonably enough.

-B