I do owe some last fotos. From the days after Bryce Canyon to arrival in San Francisco. Post epilogue, stretching things. But anyway, we are not yet quite home. We still have 900 odd miles to go.
And we are "here" finally, have achieved a minor landing of sorts. We've been here at Sister Margaret's just over a week at this point. Doing the stairs, building them, having a project to hold us, has allowed us some peace of stasis. Not that there ever is any peace. Not for too long anyway. And then there is, comes back, settles.
The odyssey, already evaporated. Something other, gone. The non-here-ness, the ongoing glide, no longer. Maybe it was a blog of four. The fourth pulling us three, me and Adrienne and Yellow, inexorably along each day, above friction, without drag. The fourth wheel. Now three again.
Yellow Truck packed full with the old rotted broken-down pieces of the stairs. Demolition done. Today to an eco-minded dump, we hope, but little solid wood left for re-use. Mostly for the chipper if that. Some of the posts, the pieces holding up the stair, were little more than paint-encased soil. They smelled of earth, moved with slugs, when we brought them down. Nineteen pound sledge. Both of us sore from swinging that thing, the saws-all, pry-bar and hammer.
Back, to this, a long time ago, less than two weeks: Stopped for a drink of oil just west of the Tintic Mining District, Utah, on Route 50, about 80 miles south of Salt Lake City. Sometimes, as here, I took a good spot that presented itself to stop check the oil. Other times, more like a fatalist, as we closed in on another 200 miles - the interval I adopted after awhile to check the oil - I would build expectations, hoping the spot would reveal itself by chance, not even seeable until the last few hundred yards, when the 200 miles were up, and it was time to see how thirsty Yellow Truck was. That all the coordinates would suddenly line up, or would converge, and something magical would rise up at the side of the road.
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The Bonneville Salt Flats: we came here for the curvature of the earth. Adrienne knew about this. Northwestern Utah. I'd heard of the racing, the land-speed records. At one point, we had decided it was too far, but in the end, we did a bunch of alternative google maps, and it meant adding about 200 more miles to our trip. So we made it. The night before it rained. So most of the flats were underwater, even before we knew it, as we passed by the Morton salts icon, girl and umbrella and rain, framed by a night-time factory of low hard lights. Apparently the flats are underwater most of winter and spring. The dark line in the foto is US 80. We had to suck it up and drive a bit of 80 to get here too, along with the miles. There is nothing around here, no human habitation hardly, between Salt Lake City and Wendover, Nevada. Supposedly this stretch of salt-encrusted ancient lake bed slowed the Donner Reed Party on their trip west, led to some compromises of their own.
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Two salts on salt, Bonneville Salt Flats. Gothic pitchfork replaced with camera bag, barn replaced with salt. Aesthetic concept by A Wicks. Bungled and worded up by JLib.
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Carlin, Nevada, all in shades of dust. Old duffer with big cowboy hat and mud flaps. Click for larger image.
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Horses, interrupted. Carlin, NV. We're lost, looking for two-lane thread of Rt 278, south out of town, after our short stint on the wide loud lanes of Rt 80.
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Mountain flank, corner of sky, off 278.
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With two red cows grazing. The tiny darker dots, middle right center and lower right.
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Cold cellar, 278
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Eureka, Nevada. Along Rt. 50. Someone in town came up with the moniker, The Friendliest Town on the Loneliest Highway.
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An oil truck headed down a dirt road to a farmstead. So many towns around here are noted on blue signs, that right below the town name, say No Services. The land dwarfs everything. Is limitless tautology. Is all there is.
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A piece of the Toiyabes, along Rt. 376. We'd called Adrienne's mum, hoping Rt. 376 might be the Extraterrestrial Highway, but it turned out that highway is Rt. 375, we were too far north. No-one up here lately to be clever about things, naming things, opening spaceship cafes, pouring lunar lattes. Just land and sky.
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Maybe we've whined enough about coffee in these pages, but when we eclipsed 7,000 miles for our journey, we decided to have a cup. We'd waited all morning, having forgotten to get some in Eureka, and there was still no town to expect for miles. Several earlier candidates noted on the map had ended up being just intersections, nothing more, just a place to pull over for an eighteen wheeler. So we made some delicious coffee at the back of the truck, under the Toiyabes. Happy 7,000 Team!
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Coming into Tonopah, Nevada. Once was a silver mining town. Eastern money. Back in early 1900s. Most profit exported back east. Now a ghost of itself, hanging on. More than a third of its houses empty, boarded up for years. Elko, Nevada is where all the mines are now.
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Tonopah's Main Street. A Little Bit of Heaven, on the right, is one of the many signs that lead to abandoned businesses and locked doors. The Mizpah Hotel has also been empty for years. The hotel I once stayed in here while working as a newspaper reporter, the Silver Queen, has been torn down. The sign, further up the road, is still there.
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A dog. Adrienne fotoed this dog. Not sure why we didn't foto more, like the ones with their heads out the window of a car. This one has a nice loneliness.
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Cold. Coming into the White Mountains, Nevada-California border, along Rt. 6.
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Bluffs. Closing in on Yosemite. Hadn't yet found out that our route, 120, was still closed for winter.
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Up again into snow. Another mountain pass.
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Snow threatening, dropping big swirling flakes. Smooth headland, Mono Lake. We've just talked to a California Highway patrolman. Found out Rt. 120 will be closed for weeks more. We're tired again, badmouthing the camera function - sometimes it locks up. We're looking for the town we'll be bedding down in, hoping the storm stays elsewhere while we refigure our route.
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Bridgeport, Calif. Morning at Redwood Inn. Just a light snow overnight after all. Bucking horse with cow patterning. See earlier blogs for giant details on this trout-deer hunting capital of the West.
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Running along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevadas, N 395, headed toward Rt. 88, our path over the top. Note a white treeless circle in the land above the road.
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Rt. 88 thru the Sierras, another attic to sky.
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Our friend the mack truck fumphin green hay over the mountains. Eventually he passed us, but it took him awhile. When we passed him on the downslope, after he was pulled over, the driver was outside already, looking after something, and he waved, big smile behind sunglasses, just a t-shirt in the alpine breeze, we waved back, smiles behind sunglasses also, gliding and braking down into the foothills.
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Green Hills of California. Paul Bunyon type. In the lowland, Yellow Truck is breathing easier again.
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Actuary storefront, Ione, California. Sign says, On Vacation. Will return May 7th.
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Cooling towers and vineyard. Along Rt. 104, the smallest road we could find on the map, shooting through farmland south of Sacramento.
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More awesome powerlines, above us again, for a split second. With wire fence, as always, running along beside us, giving form to legal coordinates. Rt. 104.
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Listing cultural center, Isleton, California. Elevated roadway, which also acts as a levee, is behind the building. Beyond that, the Sacramento River. Isleton, like a lot of towns we stopped at - pulled off the road to see, to drive down Main St., feel the place's strangeness, its stillness, the speed of stasis - Isleton wasn't on the map.
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Catching wind. Along Rt. 12. Closing in on Bay Area.
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The Last Motel. For Leg Two anyway. Motel 6, San Rafael, bordering on Marin. The bleakness. The unlevel floor. But good coffee in the morning.
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Karma Factory, Berkeley Calif. The deliciousness, juiciness of pure recycled vegetable oil, served up by hot lesbians in monkey suits. $3.84 a gallon. A relativist's bargain! Just wipe any spills off the car. It's still a solvent. Eats paint.
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Beautiful in grey, downtown San Francisco from Bay Bridge. Saturday afternoon traffic, a moving platform of people sitting ensconced in wifi-d metal.
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"Dave Horne!" I shouted. But it wasn't him. No answer. Just his car. Zipping past crazily. But without the dents.
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We land. Iglesia Roca De Salvacion provides the safe harbor. Outer Mission, less than two blocks from Sister Margaret's house.
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Sister Margaret's kitchen table. Super orange. Note framed map on wall, of Casco Bay, Maine coast, from Richmond to Seguin islands. The maps we take with us.
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Imminent frittata in garden, chef Margaret and us helping.
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Post-frittata. Reclined on picnic table looking up.
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Later, still full, but now thirsty, grumpy white folks. About to lighten up with a gin fizzy of some kind. Note stairs in the background, soon to come down.
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Testing out the seats at a pier near Embarcadero.
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The plum tree and stair at 932 Hampshire St. Endpoint. Beginning. Our first paid job. Here. Latitude: N37 degrees. Longitude: W122 degrees.
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