8/21/99

Hello there! I hope that your trip through Italy was as fantastic as it could be. I also hope that my writing is not utterly illegible so that this can at least prove to be mildly readable. I hope you received the postcards i mailed to you while I was on my trip, since the pictures on them will probably do better justice to reality then this paltry attempt to describe them. But I figure that perhaps you might find some mild entertainment value in them. Thus I now embark upon the perhaps self-destructive, or at least wrist cramping, task of writing about my travels.

For the entire trip, I had one of my best friends Ryan as a companion. He and I have known each other for many years, or at least known of each other's existence. In first grade, my parents enrolled me in the school system where my father taught in the high school, Kinnelon. Ryan was my best friend there at Stonybrook/Kiel Schools. We had the typical deep friendship of 10 year olds, mostly involving a penchant for stamp collecting, playing with transformers, and attempting to build the world's largest structure out of Legos. I recall that once we tried to reconstruct the Tower of Babel out of Legos. I was a strange child, and I believe that Ryan did not too much to help that. But in fourth grade, my parents decided to move me into the school system where my mother taught since my father didn't want to have me in his class, so thus ended the first phase of my friendship with Ryan. By an extreme stroke of coincidence, as often happens in life, we both ended up attending Princeton. Furthermore, both of us were also housed in the same dormitory. Ryan had heard that I was there at Princeton through the stories my father told about me to his class (God else knows what else he regaled those insane students of his with) and looked me up. For some reason we became great friends again. Surprisingly we had come to share many common interests and a common outlook upon life, and many of the same difficulties with life as well. Seeing as we also enjoyed each other's company, we became good friends again.

When I had come to accept my job in California, I began toying with the idea of driving cross country. My parents had graciously decided to give me one of their older cars, so I had already had transportation. What would really make the trip fun, I thought, would be to have a friend along. So I asked Ryan, and he said sure. That was the extent of our trip up until the day we left. Ryan had been out of the country visiting relatives in Estonia before we departed, so we got into the car with some sleeping bags, a tent, and a full road atlas of the United States, the only plan in mind to go West. I am particularly a lover of unplanned, spontaneous trips, and this was definitely one, deciding where to go to on a particular day over breakfast.

As do all long voyage beginnings, we needed to embark upon ours by agreeing upon some fundamentals: we wanted to see the Rockies, we needed to get to California, we were going to Seattle so I could visit some friends, and the Midwest was something worthless between New England and the Rockies. We operated off of that last axiom for the first few days of our trip, which involved getting across the Midwest as fast as possible. I believe it to be a strong testament to my car that it was able to sustain > 100mph speeds for such times. Or first day we left from Jersey, and due to my strong distaste for Ohio drove all the way into the middle of Indiana. All of the nasty things I said about Ohio during my last trip through it with my mother are still eminently true: it smells like a sewer, is continually under construction, has drivers that are just too damn slow, and has horrible weather with a strange affinity for monsoons and hailstorms. I spent quite a long time pondering if Ohio had any redeeming qualities whatsoever, and despite the fact that it possesses a monument to that great president Warren Harding, I still find nothing about Ohio that makes it deserving of statehood. It should be cast out of the Union at the first opportunity, with the exception of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which should be preserved as a holy relic since it possesses the miraculous ability to be cool despite the fact it is in Ohio, and even worse, in Cincinnati.

After starting a petition to allow Ohio to be its own third world country, Ryan and I left quickly and stayed just inside the borer of Indiana. We made our first official stop within it. Seeing as it would be days until we would be close to an ocean, us East-coasters, unused to being land-locked, felt an innate drive to go to the beach. This led us to the Lake Michigan National Seashore- actually, Lakeshore, I guess. While not an ocean, I was quite surprised by the beach. It had quite a few areas set of in the park for swimmers and was quite occupied. There were rows of sand dunes with appropriate scrub, and the water on the horizon was a shade of bright green. The bottom dropped off quite quickly from the beach, however, so we couldn't go out wading far. It was also surprisingly rocky. If you've ever been to the beach at Cape Cod, Lake Michigan's was quite similar in temperature and landscape, although I would be reluctant to eat any fresh seafood from that lake. Ryan and I spent a couple of hours there walking along the waterline, just talking about life and happiness. Right before we left on our trip, Ryan had been with his girlfriend [...] it did permeate the discussions we had as well as the trip-both me and Ryan enjoy nature, and it provides us both a way to escape life, if ever so briefly, and find peace.

Our next stop after long talks on the shores was quite the opposite of our peace-seeking nature-Chicago. We had originally planned to meet a friend there and spend some time, but it turns out when we got there that Matt had decided to take a breather in Austin, TX and not tell the two of us. No worries, however, since we weren't going to let a little thing like not knowing directions to anything stop us from having a good time. We put our Neanderthals tracking skills into action to find our first prey-the Chicago Art Institute. The museum had a surprisingly broad array of art, ranging from medieval weaponry to Italian Renaissance (heh-I got to see paintings of Rome while you saw the real deal!) and even a small 20^th century American exhibit. By far the most stunning was the Impressionist collection, perhaps the fourth best I've seen. It is the home of Seurat's most famous panting, which if I recall correct is La Grand Jetée (unfortunately I am merely an art dilettante and may embarrassingly have the wrong title, but I'm sure you could convert me). It was quite amazing to see it in person. The sheer size of it was stunning-some of the figures were ¾ life size-that it conveyed the sheer patience needed to be a pointellist. It was most intriguing to really be able to look at it from different distances-the sensation of finding that one spot where suddenly the whole painting seems to be done in solid colors is something no photograph can convey-the painting suddenly appears so vivid and real it is almost hard to remember what it looks like up close. What surprised me was seeing the border that Seurat had painted around it for an exhibition-he extended the canvas and surrounded the original with bright blue and orange lines. It was strange because I almost didn't notice them-at first they appear to be an extension of the frame. Perhaps that was his intention-to better merge the painting with what encompassed it, almost blending the two much the same way as his colors. Ryan, being a medieval history buff, Anglophile, and at times a monarchist, felt right at home in the medieval weapons gallery, spending almost an hour pouring over the amour and other examples of smithing proclaiming it to be astounding. After experiencing the different armories in England, however, I was not as impressed. After having seen the arms of royalty, the common accouterments of soldiers, no matter how finely crafted, seem quite pedestrian.

After our craving for high culture and Rauchenberg had been satiated, we attended to the baser desires-food and alcohol. Being in Chicago, we had to get a pizza. And what a pizza it was. I honestly believe it to be the second best I ever had-and I can't remember the name of the restaurant we went to for the life of me, but it was right off of State Street and was one of the few places to serve both homemade pizza and Killian's Red. We then walked around for a little bit, decided that it was full of clothes stores (the area around State Street) and that it was just way too slow and uninteresting compared to New York, so decided to leave. This offered me the second most interesting fulfilling of a base desire in Chicago, adrenaline and daring-do caused by driving underneath an El at high speeds. There's nothing quite like the thrill caused by almost getting into an accident involving a steel support pillar with a train clattering above, a Miata, a seeing-eye dog, and an old woman all because a Fed Ex truck ran a red. One thing's now a certainty though-my car can corner quite well. Had I not been in a little death trap sports car, I might very well have been hurt. Funny...I had suddenly become quite tired of being in a town of people so stupid to put their subways above ground and tore ass to the interstate so I could drive 110 again without all the obstacles.

We proceeded to get as far away from Chicago as possible, re-entering a world of fast-food and beef jerky wrappers littering the floor of my car as [...] day we bid Illinois farewell and entered Wisconsin. We found nothing interesting there, passing up the opportunity to visit the supposedly world-famous Cheese Chalet and a gas stop where you could buy Amish cheese and Wisconsin beer. I do give it credit for one thing, however-unlike Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana it had hills. And trees with leaves. Something aside from corn. I was a sight for sore eyes—forests! But more beautiful was the land along the Wisconsin/Minnesota border. There, the top of the Mississippi river flowed through valleys of mountains that were about 150 feet high. The river wound around small forested islands and the terrain rolled alongside it. Quite a change from the corn-fields, but short-lived. After one beautiful river sunset, the orange rays glinting across the water stirred by slight breezes, it was time to move on—back into corn-fields and the silos of Minnesota. We drove across the very Southern edge of the state, opting to skip the 10,000 lakes up north in order to get out of the Midwest. And within a day got out of it we did, foraying into the grasslands of South Dakota.

There was a time when I thought the Midwest was the most monotonous thing imaginable—but that was before I hit the plains. Everywhere th land was filled with brown grasses and mildly rolling hills of only about 50 feet, if there were any hills at all. And there were just a few barns here and there, but other then the road and some barbed wire fences to keep cattle inside the rangeland, there were few signs of human life. The horizon was always flat, and the sky seemed to fill a monstrous expanse above. Although the land was continuously similar and the road almost always straight, I liked the plains much better then the Midwest—I felt humbled in such a land untouched by people, in awe of what the world must truly have looked like before being transformed by the hand of man.

But the hand of man was still here, however, and it took us to a cheesy hick tourist attraction. For the previous two days Ryan and I had seen little signs of civilization, much less things we wanted to stop and visit. Well, about 2/3 of the way into Minnesota, he started to see signs advertising the Corn Palace in Munro, SD. After dozens of these signs and two days of seeing a larger-then-life husk every couple of hours, we happened upon the exit for Munro. Ryan was driving, and against all of my exhortations made up his mind to go and see this, the world's largest place dedicated to corn. We slowly drove through the town, and as we passed the Dairy Queen with the giant paper mache fake tepee, we turned the corner and there it was—a two-story auditorium hall with onion domes to mock the Kremlin into submission, completely decorated on the outside in murals made of corn; each year local artisans gather up corn husks, stalks, tufts, and kernels and make a new decorative design for the outside. This time it was celebrating the millennium in corn. The inside, though, was worse. Imagine a floor full of merchants selling corncob pipes, popcorn, corn husk dolls and hats, candy corn, and on and on—anything and everything you never needed to know existed, much less made of corn. Then perhaps I had the saddest comment of all—passing by an older family with their grandchildren: “I remember when we came here 16 years ago before you were thought of...” Oh my—people actually traveled just to see this place, and worse yet, returned to it. I believe I have finally found the answer to why opera is nowhere near as appreciated as it should be—people actually visit the Corn Palace. With even less hope then ever before that a utopia could ever exist, I bought a corncob pipe and left to go get a strawberry banana smoothie and drink it by the big cow while chewing on a tuft of wheat. Hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. But it was a quite hilarious experience for me and Ryan as I'm sure you could imagine—but I must say that, unlike other people, I won't be driving back to South Dakota to see the Corn Palace again anytime soon—well, actually, ever.

After spending the night in a small town that housed an auto museum whose claim to fame was a copy of the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazard, we got on the road and headed West towards the Badlands. The Indians believed it to be holy ground, and it is easy to see why. I sent you a postcard of the ethereal eroded mud hills, but approaching them from far away is magnificent; after hundreds of miles of flat open plains, you can start to see a change on the horizon, first a small bump, but soon turning into an otherworldly jagged skyline. It is truly awe-inspiring. We sent into the Badlands, and for miles we were surrounded by these mud formations. It was amazing how barren the land is—some prairie grass, some scrub, a few ground birds, but almost nothing else. Except for the tourists in their RVs. Normally people in RVs hit a bad cord with me—they have no clue how to drive their excessively large vehicles, they make insane amounts of noise, and they never really know how to camp. This time, those qualities may have helped us out—being 95 and quite hot, all the RV assheads stayed indoors. This allowed Ryan and I to have one of the best hiking experiences of our trip. For seven hours we were nearly alone as we hiked, meeting only two other hikers and three quail. Other then that we were met solely by the rustling of the prairie grasses in the slight breeze as we walked a winding path through all of the crevices and dried up rivulet bands in the mud hills. The mud was quite amazingly rock-hard—apparently it is so fine that after a rain the sun beats down to bake it into its eroded shape permanently like a kiln. With less then 18 inches of rain a year, the formations are also fairly permanent. Still, nothing quite can compare with being alone for hours in quiet with your thoughts, surrounded by a miraculous fractal landscape that the hand of Man could not reproduce. We spent the night in a campground there and were able to witness one of the many beautiful sunsets I would see on my trip. As the sun went down, it colored the mud hills all different shades of red, orange, and purple, sometimes showing off all the different bands of sediment layered in the mountains, turning them into a rainbow of the fire rising up out of the plains. And when the sun set fully, the stars lit up the expansive sky; I could see so many more now away from the lights of civilization. We could even see the paths traced out by satellites, and even occasionally a meteor streaking by. We sat up for a long time looking up at that sky, sipping whiskey and taking about truly how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things and how much we need to accomplish to make even the slightest impact.

Morning arrived with a sunrise that matched the sunset of the night before. After the morning duties it was off to continue west. On our way out of the Badlands we drove through an Indian reservation that had been set aside for the Lakota Indians. It was beautiful at the same time as very depressing. The land around the Badlands is holy to the Lakotas, so they did much more to preserve it. Instead of being completely empty, the plains here had a couple of trees and sparse expanses of shrubbery that hadn't been cleared for building materials or rangeland. Wildflowers were much more abundant, leaving slight patches of green, purple, and yellow admist the sea of brown dried grasses. The Indians had kept the land almost exactly as it had always been, trying their best even in the modern age to live with it instead of being its exploiters. Amongst all this small eroded patches of the Badlands would poke through. But the Indians themselves lived in rusting old trailers with equally dilapidated cars. A faded plastic child's toy could be seen here and there. Most seemed to be farmers of either livestock or hay, but he amount of land each had was paltry compared to the vast expanses the American owners possessed. They didn't even seem to have enough to make any money off of. And the only major construction was concrete shingled wood housing smacking of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I could only recall in disgust, as Ryan did as well, how both of us had found jobs coming out of college that gave us probably ore yearly income then 25 of the Lakotas-quite saddening to see the disparities between people that still exist in this country, and almost how powerless the single individual is to rectify it, and how much the government really turns a blind eye on the less fortunate.

On that somewhat depressing note we departed the Badlands and their desolate serenity and continued est in South Dakota towards the Black Hills. In retrospect, the same 600 to 800 foot high hills were minuscule, but after days and days of just seeing flat land they were astounding. The mountains had conifer and deciduous mixed forests lining their sides, appearing much like the forests of northwestern New Jersey. At the tops of the hills were large ridges of a weathered grey and black stone, forming a smoothened rough edge against the sky. There are quite a number of things to do in the Black Hills, and we started off by making the American jihad to fulfill the sixth pillar of patriotism by visiting Mount Rushmore. A holy war it truly was to get there to complete the hajj—the highway leading up the side of the mountain was so long and steep that many cars and RVs overheated, leaving only the strongest and bravest at the top. The ride up was truly astounding, going through magnificent forests and around curves until you finally see this large exposed ridge of rock on the summit. And then, admist all this natural grandeur, is perhaps the most out of place sculpture ever created by man. If you've ever seen pictures, keep it that way—it looks much smaller in real life, being engulfed by the surroundings. That being said, it is truly a large sculpture. I found this choice of presidents' faces distressing...I had so wanted to see a fitting tribute to the great Millard Fillmore. When it comes down to it, it is impressive that someone could do such a difficult work, but at the same time sad to see such a beautiful mountain destroyed.

While we were in the Black Hills, we had the opportunity to see the sculpter's much more ambitious Crazy Horse mountain sculpture, but we instead decided to be content merely having seen the mountain from the road and headed towards a little spot on the map which sounded interesting, Jewel Cave National Monument. Not knowing anything about it except that it was hopefully a cave, we arrived to much more then what we expected. Jewel Cave is actually a huge series of 118 miles of tunnels and caverns and is believed to be only about 1% explored. It is a national monument because Teddy Roosevelt made it one when the National Park system was still in its infancy, allowing it to be preserved. The Park Service built trails in some parts of the cave, so Ryan and I got to go on a one and a half hour guided tour of part of the cave. I've been in a couple caves back East, but this one was unique and beautiful. The walls were literally completely covered in calcite crystal formations which had been covered over with clay making the walls a very bumpy texture, almost like what you would expect if a head of broccoli was intensely magnified. In parts the crystal layer had fallen away, leaving the walls covered with fissures looking like the insides of cracked agates. Throughout that section of the cave were giant flowstone formations, making some parts look like someone had spilled syrup all over the floor that had instantaneously hardened right after it had started to spread out. There were also a couple of draperies, resembling fine curtains. Ne bizarre drapery had a mixed white and red-brown coloring that, combined with its crinkly shape, made it look like a strip of bacon. In one room the size of three football fields the ranger turned out the lights, leaving only the beam of the flashlight moving around to try and give a sense of what it looked like to the first spelunkers who saw it—the awe of trying to piece together such a grandeur 250 feet below the surface from what you can see with only a headlamp is unique. When everyone was silent, all we could hear was the dripping of the water and the sound of the almost continual winds that move through the tunnels. It is quite a meditative place and must be truly exciting to explore. This cave is unique in that the Park Services helps to maintain it and also explore it—each year they have several teams that spend multiple day camping trips in the cave helping to map it out. These people are all very experienced volunteer cavers, however, so I doubt they would be letting me go on one of these anytime soon. The Park Service does offer a 5 hour tour through difficult parts of the cave as an introductory lesson to spelunking, which hopefully some day I will be fortunately enough to return for. Like so many other magnificent things on our trip, I wish I just had more time to spend there and really fully experience the surroundings, even if it should take years to do. If I can earn and save enough, perhaps I can still get that chance.

We then bid farewell to the Black Hills and with them South Dakota and made our way into Wyoming. If I had said that South Dakota was devoid of civilization and boring, take heed—Wyoming is worse. Like the eastern part of South Dakota, the eastern part of Wyoming is utterly flat and expansive. There are two major differences, however, In Wyoming you can see the vague outline of the Rockies on the horizon, so as you go across it at least you feel like you're going somewhere. The difference is that in Wyoming there is almost no trace of people at all, not even farm buildings, helping to reinforce the reality that while you are going somewhere, you are in fact firmly entrenched in the middle of nowhere. Now, during the course of this trip I developed a new test for detecting the presence of centers of civilization: does this place have a McDonald's? Only two places along the 400 miles or so I drove across eastern Wyoming passed this test. Check that—600 miles. There were exits along the highway that only had numbers, no names. It wasn't unusual to see signs such as “next gas 120 miles.” Truly empty. While this made traveling a bit tedious since, for example, you had to eat or buy gas as soon as you saw a place since God-knows how far it will be until the next one comes along, it did make for some gorgeous scenery and a wonderful evening skyline of the dimly lit mountains backed by a pastel sky. The night was annoying, though, since we had to keep an eye out for cows that may have strayed into the roadway and finding a motel was damn near impossible.

After a day or so we started to hit the forests and the start of the Rockies, and eventually our nest stop, Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is a gigantic park, almost a square with a 250 mile long side. Within the park the Park Service maintains several small villages with mechanics, food stores, hotels and the like since the innards of the park are so isolated from the rest of civilization. The inside of the park is beautifully diverse, offering almost anything you could want to do in the outdoors, including many things impossible to do anywhere else. We got there in the afternoon and set up our tent next to a lake in one of two of the 11 campgrounds of Yosemite that weren't full. With all o the people there (and tourists driving their RVs quite poorly), thankfully the park is large enough to help spread them out. Still, the famous parts of the park are quite overcrowded in the summer, so we decided to do those first so we could spend the next day alone. We first went to the Upper Geyser Basin inside the caldera, home of the famed Old Faithful. Being partially on a trip to fulfill our patriotic hajj, we of course stayed to see Old Faithful erupt. And erupt it did. But being an American mecca, it was surrounded with hundreds of people. While its 75 foot height was impressive, I eventually would get a much better view. We walked across the river to an entire field of geysers, springs, steam vents, and hot pools to one of the most amazing places I've ever been. The ground is a stark white, devoid of plant life. The smell of sulfur is all around as it comes out in the steam that drives the whole thermal area. The white calcium deposits sometimes form high mounds or else line the pools of the geysers and springs. And in the warm runoff, brightly colored red, orange, pink, blue, and green algae thrive, making it seem in parts as if someone had taken out a brush and painted the landscape. And all around this otherworldly place were dozens of geysers that would sporadically erupt. Each geyser was a unique beast. Some only rose a couple of feet, others hundreds. Some would have a perfect vertical spout, others would spray out to the side in a fan-shaped mist plume. Some had unique mounds of minerals that had built up into beehives and castles, some had multicolored pools alongside, some were just holes in the ground. But the excitement of watching one erupt is amazing. The most memorable for me involved getting a picture of Old Faithful. Although some 500 feet across the river, I could still see Old Faithful, so I fond this beautiful red-orange colored pool that almost looked like a day-lily from which I could take a picture when Old Faithful erupted, the geyser in the top of the frame, the pool in the bottom. So I sat down on the path about four feet from the pool to wait for Old Faithful's next eruption. Well, this beautiful pool I was sitting next to actually belonged to Anemone Geyser (a very appropriate name for the coloring of its pool). As I was waiting, I started to hear a low rumbling. Soon I heard a bubbling noise, and then Anemone Geyser started to erupt, and I was just a couple of feet away! It only got up to about 3 feet in height, but it was still something else to be that close to an eruption. I ended up being able to get my picture of Old Faithful with a still bubbling Anemone Geyser in the foreground.

On the second day Ryan and I went out hiking. The first trail we took, the Elephant Head trail, took us to the top of a hill 800 feet off of the valley floor. This trail gave us amazing views of Lake Yellowstone, a huge lake towards the center of the park. It was beautiful pine woods, I believe white pine with some Douglas Fir mixed in. Scattered about were some ferns and grasses where the sun could peek through the canopy, and some pretty violets and small red wildflowers. The lake was pretty in its own right with the distant mountains, but from up on the hill we could see all of the boaters and the hotels along the lakeshore. The winds that blow down from the mountains created quite a bit of wave action for a lake, which must make it fun to sail on. To do that, though, you need to bring in your own sailboat and I don't quite have the money to do that just yet. The second trail we hiked took us to the top of Mount Washburn, the tallest mountain in the park. We were so high up that most of the trail was surrounded by tundra, so there was quite a bit of small scrub and patches of vibrantly colored wildflowers. From the mountain trail we got some spectacular views of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone (which apparently has been painted by a school of naturalists quite often) and the distant mountain ranges. As we got closer to the top, we started to get above the treeline, and though it was towards the end of July, we could still walk up to the snowpack. At the 10270 ft. high summit, it was about 50 degrees with some very strong and continuous winds, but with some amazing views of the entire park and trails along the mountain ridges that begged to be hiked. But the 3.8 mile long 1300 ft. vertical ascent in the thin air had left us tired and our supply of water and crackers was dwindling, so we had to hike back down and return to our camp. With tired legs we returned to cook a meal as good as any two men in the wilderness could come up with (beef stew [...] for one last time in Yellowstone.

The next day we headed south out of Yellowstone and drove into the adjoining Grand Teton National Park. Being from the East Coast, I had never really experienced the mountains before, and I believe that the Teton Range is mountains in all their glory. Here, from a plain at about 8000 feet, the mountains rise straight up without any foothills to reach over 14000 feet. Mountain lakes are plenty, the still clear waters of each reflecting the snowcapped peaks above. All of the snowpack runoff keeps the soil very moist, creating a diverse forest of ground cover, conifers, deciduous trees, and flowers. If you imagine all the possible grandeur of the Rockies, it must all be contained in this series of about a dozen mountains—the surroundings are sublime. The only drawback is that the mountains are too steep to hike up without climbing gear, so the trails are few. But the ones that do exist are fantastic, replete with creeks, lakes, and waterfalls that are hidden when looking up from below. We only had time to go up one trail that ascended about 400 feet, but even from there the view out on to the lakes on the plain and up to the mountain summit was phenomenal.

We came down from the mountain (but not bearing stone tablets) and headed to Jackson Hole for a late lunch and a long overdue oil change (remember that fact for the quiz later). We then drove on a winding set of highways that took us north through the Rockies. We followed a small river up, the road running in a valley. I must say there really hasn't been a sunset as beautiful as the one I saw in the Rockies. The red setting sun would peek in and out of the mountains, leaving one side light and the other dark. When it would reach the edge the trees would leave long mile long shadows on the sides. Around every single curve of the road it seemed like a completely different landscape, the sun setting at different times. With this as our backdrop, we headed up through the southeastern part of Idaho briefly and up into Montana.

Our next major stop was Glacier National Park, which is truly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Here, there is a beautiful range of mountains surrounding a valley, and though not as high, they are almost as magnificent as the Tetons. Since they are farther north, there is much more snowpack, and over a dozen glaciers (hence the park doesn't just have a clever name). Even though it was summer, the Park Service was still blasting snow off the trails. All of the runoff from this massive amount of snow and ice met in a beautiful mate in the mountain cliffs and created beautiful waterfalls everywhere. We drove along Going-To-The-Sun Road, completed in 1929 and a registered national landmark. This road is literally built into the side of a cliff and runs through the entire side of the valley, right next to waterfalls, creeks, and runoff. It uses tunnels, bridges, side drainage, and gutters in an almost insane attempt to control all of the water that goes around it, the creeks and falls that used to flow naturally down the cliffs. Every single turn of the road brought with it a new view just as gorgeous as the last. It was such a feat of engineering to build this road where there really shouldn't be one, but the effort truly paid off in creating perhaps the most beautiful road in the entire United States.

We did drive the road with a purpose, and that was to get to a trailhead for our hike in Glacier Park. Our trail took us around two lakes filled with the runoff that mirrored the peaks above. The forest that surrounded them was phenomenally varied, much like the one in the Tetons. As the trail weaved towards and away from the water, the forest changed from heavily wooded and flowered to a beautiful old-growth pine. We eventually reached Lake Grinnell after a truly relaxing walk through the forest and all of its lakes, creeks, and ponds, and from the shore of the lake we could see the Grinnell Glacier, along with one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. The glacial melt from Grinnell, nestled in a high crevice in the mountains, was rushing down the cliffs creating a 2000 foot high series of waterfalls, glistening in the afternoon sun. Although we were about three miles away across the lake, we could still hear the roar the water made crashing on the rocks from such a height. Unfortunately we couldn't get closer because the trail that ran up the mountain was still snow-covered halfway up, but it was still so gorgeous from afar, just nestled inside the mountain.

We drove again through the park to view its beauty for one last time, knowing that it was a place to which both of us would someday return. We then made our way back to the highway and drove into Idaho, bidding the Rockies farewell on our way to Washington State. We arrived in Washington two days before were were to meet my friends in Seattle, so we decided to drive around to the parks there. We had expected Washington to be beautiful, but the eastern part proved to be a major disappointment. Much like Wyoming, it ended up being flat rangeland, except, unlike Wyoming, it was miserably hot. After having spent days in 70 to 80 degree weather, in Washington it got up to the mid 90s. We drove as fast as possible through this incredibly boring landscape, hoping to hit the mountains.

For our first stop in the mountain country of Washington we decided to hit Mt. Rainier. We drove into the National Forest that surrounded the park, amazed at the beauty of the pine forests and mountains which, while not as drastic as the Rockies, were a quite welcome change after the monotonous rangeland. We started to make our way up eh pass to get to Mt. Rainier National Park, and were greeted by beautiful views of a pine forested valley and snowcapped peaks. Halfway up, Ryan decided he wanted to stop at a turnout and get his picture next to a snowbank. Well, my car decided that it wanted to spend a little extra time there too and started to overheat. Ryan and I popped the hood and added some extra coolant, which almost immediately boiled off. The car just wasn't cooling down. We decided to coast it back down the hill in an attempt to cool the engine down and reach the nearest town, but the temperature continued to reamin off the scale, even though the wind was going through the engine. Then, when we reached the edge of the National Forest, 15 miles from the nearest phone, my car decided that it really liked trees and thus stalled out to spend some quality time in the forest. Then, stuck there, like real men Ryan and I decided that we could try to fix the engine. First, we added more coolant. Then we noticed the radiator fans weren't going on, so we started to check the fuses but couldn't find one for the radiator fan. Then we checked the oil and found that there was almost none in the crankcase. Having exhausted our knowledge of car engines (which is comparable to a three-toed tree sloth or perhaps a slightly more intelligent then average rock), we decided to try and hitch a ride to that 15 mile away phone to call for a tow truck. Thus began our long series of personal trials involving my car, and the string of interesting people we met being stranded in the middle of nowhere in Washington.

The first people to stop were a middle-aged couple who lived in the area. We asked them to give us a ride so we could call for a tow after the husband had declared our engine screwed beyond roadside repair, but they advised us to stay with the car—they said if we left it there the locals would probably strip it. Not liking that option and valuing my tire rims, we gave them our roadside assistance number and asked them to call. We figured worst came to worst we did have a tent, and hey, at least it wasn't raining. So we took out our books and started reading and waiting for a tow truck.

About an hour later, we met our second person in the middle of nowhere, a 70 year old man driving an old Chevy van, and an overly helpful and cheerful Jehovah's Witness. After regaling us with stories of the largest temporary city in New Jersey constructed sometime int eh 50s for a Jehovah's Witness Publishing Company event (he saw our Jersey license plates) and stories of accidentally illegally fishing in Glacier National Park (since we had struck up a conversation about our trip after he asked what we were doing so far from New Jersey), he got out and decided to help try and fix our engine. After finding in fine minutes everything that Ryan and I had in 40, he actually found the fuse for the radiator fan. He suggested we try exchanging it with the identical ignition fuse right next to it to try to get the cooling fans on since the engine was still hot. The ignition fuse came out easily, but the cooling fan one wouldn't budge. So the man took out his pliers and started to yank on it. Soon, if it hadn't been broken before, it was as he cracked the plastic case off. As soon as it broke, he decided that he couldn't do anything else with the engine, gave us some donuts and Jehovah's Witness literature on how to live longer and drove off to get his sunglasses.

About an hour later we met the third interesting character on our journey. He drove up in a blue SUV with a bicycle on the top, a black lab in the back. He had blond-dyed hair and sunglasses and spoke like the quintessential surfer. After getting out and looking at our engine for 5 seconds he declared “you guys are pretty fucked” and offered to take us to his cabin 5 minutes down the road “to fish, ride his bike, and get fucked up” and that he had more then enough “stuff” with him. Right as Ryan started looking completely sketched out and I started thinking to myself “Gee, this would be a truly bizarre life experience to have,” our tow truck driver showed up and put an end to both my and Ryan's questions about what to do.

Turns out the people who took down my roadside stuff just gave it to the cashier at the first grocery store they saw who just called the local tow truck driver. After taking two seconds to decide I didn't feel like waiting another three hours for my service, I went with this guy. His name was Buzz and ended up being quite talkative. After watching him figure out how to hook up my car to his new truck he had just gotten last week, a process that took a two by four, crowbar, rope, and around 20 minutes, we were on our way. On this lovely two your scenic drive with Buzz we got to hear all kinds of fun information about the best fishing in the area, the most wrecked cars he'd ever towed including one that hit a cow and one that had hit three horses, about how he quit smoking, and about how women never looked at tow truck drivers. He dropped us off at a dealership and left us $180 poorer, but gave us his number in case we ever needed to get another tow in the area.

We were now in the center of all satanic power in the universe, Yakima Washington. Since it was past five, we got to try and find a place to stay. Unfortunately our timing wasn't great—apparently there was a vintage car hot rod convention in town that had taken up most of the hotel space in town. After finding a roach motel that had space we checked in and decided to walk around to find something to do. Yakima was apparently an old canning town that dealt with fruit the farmers grew that was shipped there by rail. Since rail was no longer king, however, Yakima had turned into a backwater burned out town whose sole purpose was to house unemployed Mexican immigrant workers, the vestiges of the one surviving Del Monte canning factory, host unusual events to support the way too many hotels there, act as a magnet for people whose cars broke down within a 200 mile radius of it, and to be unbearably hot and humid. That night, we discovered that after 5 there was basically three things to do in Yakima: watch month-old movies in a little Mickey Mouse theater, drink, or get mugged. We opted to drink. The large Mexican population of the town was good in this respect, for we had some excellent margaritas.

The next day we walked to the dealer, who agreed to look at the car as soon as possible, albeit for $90. Having no choice, we paid and spent the day waiting in Yakima. Aside from the things to do at night, Yakima has not much to do during the day except to visit its prized mall, and its about 25 stores, most of which sell bad clothes. We opted instead to stand around and watch an old semi-Gothic church burn down that someone had conveniently lit for our entertainment. But despite the fact that was a great show and even had some Mexican ice cream vendors who came by to pander to the crowds of people who had nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon, it couldn't be repeated, so we walked on back to the dealer to wait for an assessment on the car.

Mike was the outwardly nice service representative who helped us, but now I believe it to be a well thought out disguise for a highly evil latent homosexual inner child. He brought us news from Jerry about the car, Jerry being the mechanic working on it. The good news was that the car had overheated because all the oil had leaked out due to some moron Pakistani mechanic who hadn't completely tightened the plug used to drain out the oil during our last oil change (recall I told you to remember about that moron in Wyoming). He just had to replace the oil and the coolant—the rest of the electrical system was fine and the fans hadn't gone on because there wasn't enough coolant in the radiator to reach the thermometer. The bad news was that the car wasn't drivable without that fuse the Jehovah's Witness had broken. While it would only cost us $5 and take around 20 minutes to replace, the fuse was a part that was designed to break only in case of an engine fire, so consequently they had none in stock. In fact, there were none in the entire Pacific Northwest, and it would take at least three days to have one air freighted in from Nevada. It took Ryan and me about 10 seconds to decide that we wanted to spend those three days anywhere besides Yakima, so we decided to take a bus into Seattle.

Thus began my first experience with riding a Greyhound. I am now firmly convinced that there is one way not to travel if you have any money or dignity, and that is on a Greyhound. We walked in to the bus station in Yakima, and it was truly a sight. It looked like it had been built in the 40s and hadn't been cleaned since then. The majority of the signs were in Spanish, and almost everyone inside looked like they were two steps away from being homeless. They did have a video game room to keep the kids and teens occupied, which had original vintage machines of Ms. Pac Man and Arkanoid, which I hadn't seen in about 10 years. They had these little plastic chairs with small screens in them into which you could put a quarter and watch TV for 30 minutes. And of course there was the usual swarming of sketchy cab services, and bathrooms that were actually dirtier then Penn Station. And some of the conversations in there were completely out of this world—visiting divorced parents, gun repair, whose rusting pickup truck was being towed out of the loading zone. If you ever want to get an image of lower class American society, or perhaps to write the great American novel of the modern age, I highly suggest you learn Spanish, buy some iodine to disinfect he water in the station, and go ride to Chicago on the Greyhound. But after a slow four hours with only two of them filled with babies screaming and their mothers yelling equally loud at them (in Spanish, of course) we stepped off the bus in Seattle.

Of course, when we got to Seattle we had to find a hotel room. And true to it form, our luck gets us into town during the weekend of a music festival and a large city parade. So everywhere is filled up, except, of course, the luxury hotels. So we step in with our ratty clothes and take the only room left, laughing hysterically when they asked us if we required a parking permit. We met up with my friends and had a fun time in the city. Seattle is actually quite nice for a city. It is amazingly clean and quiet, not even having too much traffic during the traditional rush hours. It has a downtown with all of the traditional yuppie stores, and a portion kind of like the Village with eclectic stores, coffee shops, and the young crowds, but smaller, clean, and laid back. There were a couple of large cinemas there, a few musicals, and many good restaurants. We had some wonderful Asian food there, along with finding this one London-style tavern that had Guinness on tap along with some of the most amazing hamburgers I'd ever had. All in all, it didn't have anywhere near as much to do as New York, but it did have a nice art museum (the Frye museum—really no famous paintings, but overall a nice mix of lesser known Dutch, Italian, and American painters), a nice cathedral (though nothing like the ones in Europe), and a wonderful friendly, safe, and laid-back atmosphere. Aside from the city proper we also visited the Seattle Center, home of the Space Needle. There's really not much there aside from the traditional hands-on science museum and tourists traps. The most shocking thing about Seattle was finding out that my friends were engaged, a bit freaky, considering that one of them hasn't even graduated college yet. I guess it was just a little scary since it was a bit unexpected, as they had been keeping it a secret so P____'s grandparents didn't find out and decide to disown him for now marrying within their faith.

After two days, some great food, and a couple of really funny movies, we hopped back on the white trash Greyhound and hoped back to the dark and foreboding town of Yakima on the appointed day our fuse was to arrive and our car to be fixed. Though we were there, the part wasn't and the smiling preppy Mark told us it would arrive tomorrow afternoon. Another night of margaritas and a morning spent at the mall shopping excitedly for new CDs that would welcome us as we reentered the world of interstate highways. But that afternoon, again the sardonic Mark apologized for not having the fuse and promised it would be in the next day. Another night of margaritas. The next day we called in the morning and Mark told us the part was here. So we excitedly went shopping for envelopes in the morning and had a very nice Mexican food lunch to celebrate our imminent departure from Yakima. We arrived at the dealer that afternoon, expectant and overjoyed. But yet again, the cheery Mark came to greet us and told us that Jerry had mistakenly ordered the wrong fuse and they would have to reorder the part from Nevada again. A manic depression and insanity set in—how could they be morons enough to order the wrong part which all they needed to do was open up a manual to get the right number? Frantically Ryan and I decided that we could do a better job then they could. We located a used car dealer just five blocks that had a Talon for sale. It was the same year and model as mine. In three hours we had bartered the fuse off the used-car salesman for $40, the promise that eventually the other dealer would have the part in stock, and a six pack of beer. We ran back to my car, installed the part ourselves in five minutes, and were on the road again. I don't know if I'll ever be able to fully reproduce the utter joy at that instant of time we left that miserable place.

Being stupid young men, we decided to tempt fate and drive along the same road to go see Mt. Rainier. After all, it would be a waste to be so close and not see it. We further decided to press our luck and stopped at the same spot we had before to take Ryan's picture from the snowbank. I stayed in the car and took the picture from there as Ryan jumped out of the car, posed for my 5 second shot, and then ran back in the car. Though dumb, we weren't completely stupid. We eventually did get to see Mt Rainier as we made it over the pass, but the top was shrouded in clouds. We then headed back to the interstate and hauled ass out of Washington, not shedding too many tears as we hit Oregon.

We now had four days to get to Los Angeles, where Ryan's flight was leaving from back to Jersey. Although we couldn't see all of the pars we had wanted to see on the West Coast, we decided to hit Crater Lake National Park, since neither of us thought we'd ever find reason to be in Oregon again. We started on the highway to get there which ran through a National Forest quite similar to the one by Mt. Rainier, about the same distance away from civilization. I guess my car decided that it liked it there too, and exactly one day after leaving Yakima and one week after having broke down in Washington, it broke down in Oregon. Cooling system again, too, just what was supposed to have been fixed. So this time, the hoses came off and the whole radiator turned into a fog machine. Thankfully Congressed had passed that transportation bill in the spring, so there was highway construction out in the middle of nowhere. Funny how what I usually hate to death would end up saving me a 40 mile walk to the nearest phone. The first person from the crew we met was the flagman, actually a lady. She was a wonderful person. And if you believe it, she was also once stranded in Yakima because a mechanic hadn't put the oil filter on properly on her truck, causing the oil to leak out...you know the rest. She was also able to feel our pain of being stranded there and being steadily driven insane—she eventually bought a used car just to get out of the place. We eventually got in touch with this other worker there who had a cell phone and called for our tow, which after an hour on the phone with my roadside service company spent convincing them that I was in fact broken down, I was in fact in New Jersey, Oregon is in fact a state, Oregon is actually located on the West Coast, and I was in fact stranded on a highway in Oregon, left me convinced of the true success of the American public education system. Then came the obligatory three hour wait for the tow truck, but unfortunately this time it was raining and Ryan was paying the price for having opened up his big mouth last time. After a two hour long tow, this time with Bill, a much less talkative tow truck driver, we were at a dealership in lovely Eugene, Oregon and searching for hotels. Our luck there hadn't changed—a bridge convention was in town for the weekend, so we ended up in a roach motel right on the edge of Little Mexico. At least this one had a vibrating bed, a fact that didn't make Ryan all too happy to sleep on it with me threatening to put in a quarter while he was asleep.

Magically, our car was fixed the next day. The thermostat was broken and Jerry and Mike (the morons) didn't realize it. Guess I should have figured as much when they ordered the wrong part for my car. But after a tense day of trying to figure out how Ryan would get to his flight and some highly overrated Indian food, we were back in the saddle again, with two days to rocket ourselves to LA for Ryan's flight. Thus we went into speed vacation mode. We picked up our car at 5PM, and that night we were in San Francisco. This was when I was glad to be mildly familiar with mid and southern California—now I knew exactly where to go and what to do to make two days in California on the road. In San Francisco we stopped off at Pier 39. Yes, it's touristy, but from there you can at least see Alcatraz, the financial district, the Golden Gate Bridge, the old fishing district, and a real trolley—not too bad of a candidate for an hour in the city. With a day and a half left to do three hundred some odd miles, we had some time to spare, so we drove down the Pacific Coast Highway. It is one of the most beautiful drives I know of—hundreds of miles of winding road built into the sides of the eroding hills and cliffs along the Pacific shoreline. The landscape of the California coast is do different from any other in the United States. Most of the moisture there comes from the morning fog that regularly rolls in off of the ocean, not too much by rain. The coastline, especially in the north, is also especially rocky with very few beaches, and the soil is quite shallow and sandy, making the sides of the hills prone to washing out often. The overall result of this is that only small shrubs, grasses, and windflowers can survive in much of that shoreline region. It makes for a wonderful drive winding through the hills with completely unobstructed views of the Pacific. We stopped briefly in Monterey for Ryan and went to the old cannery district. Monterey is now pretty much a tourist trip beach town whose one unique talent is having some of the freshest seafood in all California. Ryan, unfortunately, detests seafood (the one part of his finicky childhood eating habits that he hasn't grown out of), so we had to eat a poor attempt at Italian food. I'm convinced that, outside of Italy, the best Italian food in the world is found in NYC and in Jersey. Really spoiled my pallet—I have yet to find one Italian restaurant outside of those that I deem to be good.

After the horrid Italian food we continued down and drove through the Los Padres National Forest around Big Sur, some of the few forested areas along the coastline. Even the forests out here are different. They're not all palm trees, since those are all artificially introduced mostly into the cities. There are all kinds of different pine trees with unusual ruddy barks and other trees with unusual pointed and thin leaves. Aside from a picture I don't really know quite how to describe it.

We stopped overnight and then reached Santa Barbara by the morning. I took him out for lunch to this nice grill on this wharf that juts into the Pacific. Here, unlike the North, there are long stretches of beaches and the soil is a little bit firmer. The hills are gone; here a mountain chain of perhaps 1000 ft high ones stretches out along the coastline, leaving Santa Barbara nestled in a little valley of sorts. The weather is surprisingly stable throughout the year; rarely is there a day when its not 70-80 and sunny. I wasn't going to miss the chance to make Ryan jealous of where I would be living, and from the wharf you can get a stunning view of all of it while eating burgers and drinking microbrew beer on an open-air deck (and cute waitresses). After lunch and a quick walk along the beach and a brief excursion into downtown, we hopped back into the car and shot down to LA. Not having much time when we got there, I simply dropped Ryan off at the airport so he didn't miss his flight. We said goodbye and promised to keep in touch.

And then, for the first time in over three weeks, I was alone. It was kind of shocking, being in a car and saying “isn't that pretty” and having no one there to respond. Although we didn't talk continuously and sometimes would go for hours while driving without saying a word, there was still something about just having someone else around that was comforting, knowing that I was sharing my enjoyable experience with someone else. Amazingly, though, we had seemed to make the perfect odd couple—even through the boredom of the Midwest, futility of Yakima, and the stress of breaking down in the middle of nowhere twice, we managed to not slit each other's throats and came out of the trip still being good friends. He was now off in his life to go visit K____ and enter his job training, and I to go find an apartment and commence working for The Man. Our last great hurrah as kids had come to an end, and now life consisted of sitting on an empty floor in an unfurnished apartment worrying about furniture, recollecting the great journey and its exuberant spontaneity, waiting for the day when Ryan would come knocking on my door ready to hop into the car again and drive.

Ed Peterlin

9/11/99