On Surprises, National

Things I wasn't prepared for, but maybe should have been:

The Pacific Coast is as stunning as everyone said and I vaguely remember. To finally see the full open ocean again after 6 or 7 years of settling for the Sound is entirely breathtaking; foxgloves and lupines dotted the roadside, giant towers of rock broke the waves into shards, and we Nixoned every construction worker on the 101. Not to mention we found the most badass secret camping spot in all of Oregon, which only you, the loyalest Spiderettes, who continue to read even after all my coworkers have left me, will know about.

There are customs gates on the California border. Luckily we only had the one orange.

Redwoods are enormous. We didn't find the tree you can drive a whole gol-dang car through, but we found some pretty big ones. For example, Clark and I sawed one down (one who saws is a sawyer, by the way) and determined it was 6'8" in diameter and over 1,500 years old!

Humboldt County is full of hippies. And elk. Unfortunately both hunting seasons had already passed.

Fire season can last 12 months in central California. Dry heat is usually no problem for me, having grown up in a pseudo-desert, but I spent most of my time in Sacramento drinking ice water in front of a fan indoors. The remaining time I was in Tiger Creek pocketing gravel-sized chunks of gold behind my hosts' backs. And a baby peed on my floor.

People drink beer and smoke weed in plain sight in San Francisco. This is a city comprised mostly of sinners. But we had a mostly good time and ate very well, despite (or perhaps because of) being only metres away from the city's main sewage treatment plant. We didn't go to the Golden Gate Bridge, or ride a trolley thing, or drive up the idiot street that turns every four inches, but we did see the Full House ..... houses.

U.S. National Parks are world wonders. Yosemite and the Grand Canyon were littered with families clearly and proudly, to my dismay, NOT using English to express their awe. On several occasions we couldn't even figure out what garbage they were speaking, which was all the more infuriating because the entrance signs to both parks clearly state: "YOU LOOK AT OUR SHIT, YOU SPEAK OUR LANGUAGE."

Death Valley is hot as shit. We drove through it at roughly 9:30 p.m. when it was roughly 105 degrees. Our campsite in Shoshone, about an hour outside the valley, was furnished with lava showers and spigots for Tabasco on-site. Very accommodating, the Shoshone people.

Las. Vegas. Sucks.

The Hoover Dam was not named after my favorite vacuum cleaner brand. Rather, it bears the name of a president who wasn't even invited to the dedication ceremony; he was "the Great Engineer had quickly drained, ditched, and dammed the country," according to Wikipedia's citation of another writer.

Route 66 is the most stereotyping highway in America. Never before have I thought about what it would be like to spend a night in a wig wam, or wear REAL INDIAN JEWELRY, or buy post cards with traditional Indian imagery on them. And now I know what this sacred, wild place was like 60 years ago, in the golden age of cowboy consumerism.

Clark was right about Texas. One should spend as little time there as possible.

Southern hospitality is still going strong. Aunt T and Uncle Jack let us sleep inside. Clayton smoked chicken and bacon-wrapped hot dogs and cigarettes in the front yard. Big Dave bought us breakfast (though he did lie about free muffins). Kyle got an $8 haircut.

RED ALERT!
YOU CANNOT BUY REAL BEER IN A GROCERY STORE IN OKLAHOMA.
PEOPLE PUT WATER IN BEER'S CLOTHING.
DON'T BE FOOLED. ONE MUST BUY BEER AT A LIQUOR STORE AND WAIT A WHILE FOR IT TO COOL DOWN. CONSIDER BUYING A CROSSWORD BOOK WITH YOUR STROH'S.

THIS IS ALL TRUE.

Arkansas is nicknamed The Natural State. An apt name for the greenest state of our trip to date; basically God took a giant nature shit on the country and called it "Appalachia." Rolling hills, diving kingfishers, and gleaming trout everywhere. One thing they haven't figured out, however, despite their best efforts, is mountains. We're staying in Mountain Home and recently visited Mountain View, the alleged folk music capital of the world, but so far I haven't seen any mountains. As a matter of fact, the highest point in the state is only 2,753 feet up, and is flat-topped to boot. The moral of the story is: people in Arkansas don't know what they're talking about.


Final thoughts:
Kyle and I are both inclined to wait until trip completion to post pictures.
Prodigal Summer was not Kingsolver's best work.
Star Anna came out with a third album and Gillian Welch a fifth.
New Orleans is next.
You guys suck.