Friday July 30th, 2010 [Ethan's post]


Wow, we have a lot of catching up to do. Here are some highlights.

July 19th – Left Eugene and headed out toward Idaho. We made camp at some little campground along highway 21 just for the night. It was about 30 miles out of town in the direction of Stanley and I forgot to put gas in the tank necessitating a trip BACK into town before we could really get going. Oops!

July 20th – Made it into Stanley. Idaho, we discovered, is made of dust. The mountains are dust, the ground is dust, everything and everywhere is dust. The exception is Stanley. The place is gorgeous and it’s hard to describe the beauty of this little Idaho mountain town. Driving highway 21 up into the mountains, your car emerges suddenly into this vast, green ranching land doubling as a ski resort hemmed in by peaks. The river meandering through this town sparkles with golden high-elevation sunlight. A conscious effort was required to just keep eyes on the road, not miss any speed signs and not cause an accident because this place was hard to take in all at once.

July 21st – We drove for what seemed like forever and made it all the way to Salt Lake City, Utah. It was such an interesting place. Their city planning seems to consist of mining the surrounding rock faces level and then building malls with Starbucks on the new foundations. This is not exactly your Eugene-esk urban growth policy, but I have to admit it’s not like drilling through the Coburg hills… this area was bleak, and I mean bleak! Well, that’s about it for Salt Lake City.

July 22nd – Wow, these western states are BIG. Making our way through Utah seemed to take forever, but we did finally make it to the area surrounding Arches National Park. We were finally seeing some terrain that was absolutely spectacular and seemed to scream, “this is Utah!” Giant formations of rock hundreds of feet high and all sandstone red, precariously balanced boulders the size of large SUVs teetering above freeway roads and vistas of rolling, colorful desert, broken here and there by craggy canyon and jagged cliff face. We didn’t have the time to really appreciate the landscape so carefully crafted by God. Think of trying to take in a Van Gough exhibit in fifteen minutes. But here are some pictures for you to enjoy, and we highly encourage a visit to this magnificent National Park.

 

July 23rd – Independence pass! I’m so proud of our little Jeep. We climbed thousands of feet with an extra thousand pounds packed into the back and on the roof. With the suspension almost bottomed out, the air conditioner going full blast for ourselves and the dog, with the Rockies before us, we leapt into the sky and finally reached the summit. At the summit was the Eisenhower tunnel.

For those of you with claustrophobic tendencies, I do not recommend this approach to the mid-western states. I was driving at the time and carefully paying attention to my engine temperature, maintaining high RPM’s to keep the fan running in the traffic when I saw the mouth of this tunnel looming to swallow us. Giant exhaust pipes the size and length of big diesel train engines came out of the side of the mountain to vent fumes from the interior. Long haul trucks were scattered in various places running at various speeds, some even parked for brake checks at a massive turnout area adjacent to the freeway. With a mass of vehicles behind us, all running hot from the arduous climb, the pressure to maintain speed was tremendous… stopping meant certain death for our engine, an instant over-heating scenario, and being stranded amongst the big rigs on the side of the road was out of the question. With mammoth trailer trucks crazily shifting lanes, adjusting speed and gearing from climb to downhill mode, we found our way through the maze and were engulfed by the three lane, gaping entrance.

The tunnel, I’m certain, stretched for at least a mile and a half. I am still incredulous that human engineering is capable of drilling straight through the side of a mountain range. Were there to be a wreck, we’d all be toast, stuck in the middle of a tube of hot machines all burning gas and diesel into the enclosed space around us. The grade was so steep, I dropped the jeep into neutral, controlled my speed with the brake and revved the engine a little over 2000 RPM’s to cool it from the climb. By the time we exited the great Eisenhower tunnel, I was back in business, locked into 3rd gear and rode the compression down toward Denver Colorado.

Like I said, this might not be for everyone… but for me, it was one of the most exciting portions of the trip!

Cheyenne group

July 23rd & 24th – Quick stop for dinner at a coffee shop / bar/ restaurant / former fraternity house/ college hangout spot in Fort Collins, Colorado. Then we barreled into Cheyenne Wyoming the same night on the 23rd and met with one of Carol-Ann’s friends from Willamette. Now, Cheyenne was a cultural shift. Please understand as you read this portion of the blog that many, if not most, of the things we experienced in Cheyenne and at the Frontier Days rodeo would be illegal in Eugene. Let me start with an example. The night we rolled into town, the rock band Kiss was playing a concert at the track. But our group wanted to go visit the beer tent, crush some Bud Lite and watch ‘Mini Kiss’. Mini Kiss is a group of midgets (called little people in Eugene) who dress themselves up just like the real thing, face paint and all, and perform live, singing covers of the real Kiss songs. To a vast crowd of inebriated cowboys, this is hilarious entertainment. While I wasn’t terribly interested and not nearly as amused as the hoard around me, it was refreshing to be in a group of people who simply didn’t care if others might consider what they were doing offensive. Mini Kiss didn’t seem to care either… I suspect they were well paid given that tickets went for 15 bucks a pop and the ground in front of the stage was full of not hundreds, but thousands of people.

Oh, and in case you didn’t catch it, I DID say Bud Lite. In Cheyenne, it was explained to me that they value quantity, not quality of alcoholic beverage. Your universal options consisted of, Bud, Bud Lite, Miller, Miller Lite, Coors, Coors Lite and Mikes hard lemonade for the ladies. I yearned for the Mikes given the limited selection, but in a concerted effort to immerse myself in this strange new culture, I ponied up the outrageous 5 bucks for a tall can of Bud Lite and swallowed it down. At least it was cold.

I explained to our new friends that I could count the number of times on one hand, actually the exact number was three, that I had consumed beer of lesser quality than Corona in the past. They stared at me with disbelief and made me repeat myself. In fact, the further East we drove, the more I realized that I have become a beer snob. I never would have considered myself one, to this day feeling that I really don’t know much when it comes to hops and barley and wheat etc. Apparently, hoppy beers are a thing of the west coast; no one has ever heard of an IPA and luxury beer consists of imported Belgium wheat beers. Ick! I’m really going to miss this aspect of Eugene. PLEASE SEND GOOD IPA’s!

The real highlight of Cheyenne Wyoming was the rodeo. Brooks and Dunn were great, but the rodeo was fantastic. I watched men speed ride their horses alongside 700 pound steers and jump off, grabbing the steers around their necks and horns and wrestle them to the ground, flipping them onto their backs in under 20 seconds and sometimes as few as 6. We saw partner roping events where a team would first lasso the head and then the two back feet of racing steers and finally turn their horses to face each other with unbelievable precision. Bucking broncos challenged riders to hang on for an 8 second bell while at the same time kicking their spurs in such a way as to leave their balance totally exposed to the violently and unpredictably kicking animals. The most amazing of all were the bull riders. These bulls weighed 2000 pounds, were mean, had wicked horns, and were surprisingly flexible and adept at tossing the unwanted cowboys from their bare backs. I even witnessed one of these giant beasts stamp a cowboy into the dirt with its hind legs. I figured he was dead, that his rib cage had probably caved in, but the medical team came with a stretcher and was waved off; the rider insisted on being carried upright off the field. I’m fairly certain I saw another rider break his forearm in an ugly spill with one of the broncos because he held it stiffly at a funny angle as he slowly and casually walked the long way back to his team on the sidelines. No medical personnel went onto the field for that “minor injury”.

The greatest part was the final event of the rodeo, the wild horse race. There are parts of Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona where wild horses roam freely, untouched by humans. These horses are captured and brought onto the track with a long white rope tied to their bridle. Three men teams are tasked with subduing the animal, saddling it, mounting it and racing it around the entire length of the race track. To make things worse, gunshots and cannon-sized explosive charges are set off at random to panic the horses. At one point, I saw a very determined mugger (the team member tasked with holding the wild horse in position) dragged at a gallop on his belly for about 200 yards before he finally gave up and let go. It was bedlam! It was awesome!

From Cheyenne we traveled WEST (yes, it was painful) so that we could camp and hike in the Medicine Bow Wilderness. Well worth the trip, even though we were covered in mosquito bites within five minutes of stepping out of the car. We spent one night camping by a lake, then hiked up the tallest peak (Medicine Bow Peak), which topped out around 12,000ft. The hike itself was actually pretty easy, especially since our memories of our trek up the South Sister are still so fresh (a 17-mile, 11-hr story from an earlier blog). After the hike we packed up the car and drove out toward Lincoln, NE. Kansas City was to follow, and a wonderful visit with my Uncle Kevin and his family. From Kansas City, we traveled East and South, through Louisville (pronounced ‘Louaval’)

P.S. More road trip necessities: WATER, bandaids (we even used them to fix a tent pole!), lots of bug spray for every type of bug imaginable, assortment of candy, Starbucks gift cards (thanks Mary and Timmy), and a cooler full of ice!

**Thanks for reading! We’ll post stories and pics about life in Durham, so check back!**