Leaving Lassen (posted out of order)

Mount Lassen, seen from scenic overlook

2019-10-03 (Thursday) (This blog should come before “Ow!”, Friday’s blog)

Our day started very early, as Joe and I awoke hearing a strange clicking noise. He immediately identified it as our gas furnace attempting to turn on; the clicking meant that the battery in the RV was dead. I thought we could manage another hour--it was warm in our sleeping bag--but he is a bit obsessive about taking care of the batteries, which is of course a good thing. But poor Joe, it meant he got dressed and went outside and had to jump the RV battery from the Jeep, and then we had to run the RV engine for about an hour to juice up the batteries again. I felt terrible for the others in the park whose quiet early morning was possibly disturbed, but I suppose they would have understood if they knew we had no heat.

Anyway, the furnace went back on, the engine was turned off, and I think we both dozed off again around 7 a.m., until a little after 8. At which point we heard another odd sound which woke us up. It turned out to be a noise from the radio (which was on?) coming through the speakers over our heads in the bed. That was the final straw, and we decided the RV wanted us to get up. So we did.

Since we were leaving the park this morning (waaahh!!!), we had to hook up the Jeep. We drove a short way to the boat launch near the campground, which was flat and long and almost deserted, so we weren’t in anyone’s way. The hook-up went smoothly. Then I noticed it was about 10 minutes before 11:00. I suggested to Joey that we drive to the Visitor Center (a quarter-mile or so away) and watch the park film which is shown every 30 minutes. I figured we have 45 hours of driving time to get back to New Jersey, so how much difference is 30 minutes more going to make?

We parked and ran into the Visitor Center, getting there JUST in time for the movie. It was very interesting, and gave us a great overview of a lot of the places we’d visited yesterday, plus historical photos and videos of the volcano erupting in 1915. In some ways, I think I got more out of the video seeing it after I’d toured the park, rather than before! Afterwards, I took some time to look at the museum exhibits I’d hardly noticed yesterday morning when I’d stopped in.

Alas, by noon it was really time to stop postponing our departure, and so we headed out. We made a brief stop at the same store we’d bought gas at two days ago, to pick up a couple of cans of propane (our small propane heater was no use this morning, since it too ran out of fuel during the night.) Then we headed toward the town of Susanville. Almost immediately, we saw a sign for the Hat Creek Scenic Overlook, and we took it.

Wow!!!  The view was incredible. We had about a 180-degree view of the valley around us, with Mount Lassen in clear view, and Mount Shasta faintly visible in the distance. There were a number of panels identifying the different mountains we were seeing, and pointing out three distinct areas which had suffered from forest fires. The outlines were very clear. But mostly I found that I was having the most elated feeling being up there! I simply felt ecstatic--it was fairly warm (I was only wearing one long sleeved shirt, and the sun was shining), there was a slight but warm breeze, and the air was so clean and revitalizing. Every time I turned toward Lassen Peak, I got another rush!! It is so hard to describe.... I could have stayed up there for hours. As it was, I stood out there for at least 20 minutes, just drinking it in, and staring. Joe also agreed that the landscape was simply extraordinary. I felt so energized and thrilled just standing there. It was so very hard to leave!

Sadly, we continued south-east to Susanville, which turned out to be a cute historical town on the side of the mountain, with a main street sloping down the hill rapidly (a bit like Butte, Montana, actually.) We only could catch glimpses of it, because there was no good place to pull over on such a steep slope. So we went through, and picked up US-295 toward Reno, Nevada. We passed a number of beautiful hills at first, but then the road seemed to become more drab. We stopped to fill the RV’s propane tank, and when I walked Cassie, what looked like grass turned out to be sticker plants low to the ground. The poor thing immediately got stickers in her paws, and we had to dig them out with her. It seemed like a metaphor for leaving such a glorious location behind us.

Soon enough, we crossed into Nevada. It seems that US-295 is also not worthy of a “Welcome to” sign. That’s TWO welcome signs I got cheated out of-- California and Nevada! But even without the sign, we are here. Our sadness at “turning left” to drive eastward was compounded by finding ourselves in a 3-lane each way traffic jam! It was rush hour, of course, and we were stuck in it for a short time before all the traffic thinned out. But it could not have been more the antithesis of our glorious Mount Lassen and Lassen National Forest. Frankly, it was horrible.

Once we were past the main city area, traffic was not bad, and the scenery along I-80 was beautiful rocks again. After we arrived in Fernley, we luckily could leave I-80, since we decided we couldn’t stand to just come home on the Interstate after such a wonderful western experience. Every road has been beautiful since before the end of September! So we are taking US-50, “the Loneliest Road in America”, as it is dubbed, straight through Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. Unless, of course, the weather stops us.

As it is, it was actually gorgeous weather today, warm and sunny and almost mild. We stopped for the night in Fallon, the last “big” town before the Loneliest Road really gets going (there’s nothing for another 100 miles, or more). We’re at the Fallon County Fairgrounds, where we were able to park for $15, including water and electricty. We are in a lot of company, because currently there’s a shooting competition going on here! The guy in the next RV over said he’s not a shooter, he is selling western wear clothing at a booth. We spoke to a guy dressed like Matt Dillon or some other 19th century western denizen of Dodge City, who told us he was in one of the competitions today, and placed 10th out of 48 entries. We are hoping that the event opens again tomorrow before we leave, since that would be quite an unusual event for us to attend! But if so, it will delay our arrival at our next destination, Great Basin National Park. So we will see how the morning goes.

I should add that I do have great photos from today, and fabulous ones from yesterday, but the internet here is not working so well. It is allowing me to update the blog, but not upload photos (or download them, for that matter, into my computer.) So I do hope I’ll have a chance to do that soon. Some of the photos I took yesterday should really be postcards, and the ones of Mount Lassen from lunchtime today are just beautiful. But I’m pessimistic about my connectivity for the next few days, so we will have to see how it goes.

A Peak Experience

Hat Creek tumbling from Mt. Lassen

2019-10-02 (Wednesday)

We had a wonderful day today in Lassen Volcanic National Park. We definitely timed it right vis-a-vis those winter storms that came through. There is enough snow here to remind us that winter is coming, and the night was cold--definitely below freezing. We were toasty warm, though, and woke up to clear blue skies without a single cloud all day! Joe said he knew it would be clear... we went out last night, after I finished my blog, to look at the stars. It was gorgeous-- at 5,000 feet elevation in the forests of northern California, surrounded by only tiny towns, there is no ambient light from anywhere. The only thing limiting us was the incredibly tall trees- we looked straight up, and our sky was surrounded by trees. But it was all crystal clear then, and this morning too.

Unfortunately, Joe didn’t sleep well, so I left him to try to take a nap around 10:00, while I went to the visitors center for maps and information. I dawdled there, chatting with not-quite-2-year-old Eloise and her mom about what might be a good gift “for the baby” (Eloise helped decide!) Then I stopped at the campground store to see if they had any cereal, but mostly what they had was souvenirs. I finally went home, and discovered Joe, instead of napping, had made our lunch sandwiches for our day exploring Lassen.

So we gathered up everything we needed for a day trip (we even included a thermos of hot tea), and the three of us started across the road which goes through the park. There is only one road, running from north to south, so we knew we’d have to retrace our steps on the way back, but it is only 30 miles, and the ranger in the visitor center assured me we’d have no problem doing it in a day.

Well, it was simply a stunning drive. Our first significant stop was at the “Chaos Crags and Jumbles” scenic pull out-- a rock slide which came down the north side of Mount Lassen. Lassen  erupted several times between 1914 and 1921, so there are many areas where recent  results of volcanic eruption can be seen. The so-called “Devastated Area” is a large area littered with rocks which were thrown from the volcano 5 miles away. There is an interpretive trail through the area, indicating a number of different features in the types of rocks which landed there, as well as photos taken in 1915 after the most significant eruption. Several rocks were labeled “Hot rock” in the photo, as people came up to see them right after the eruption, when the rocks were still warm from the volcano. It must have been astonishing to see and hear at the time.

“Chaos Crags and Jumbles” Rock Slid

We ate our lunch at the picnic area nearby, looking right at the mountain above us, so serene and snow covered now. Then we drove on to the next stop, Hat Creek. There we discovered the creek (same creek we’d sat by yesterday!) rushing merrily over another nearby cascade. This time we could practically see its route from the mountain--not literally, but Mount Lassen was right in line with where we were standing. I took a photo, noting that it was like a postcard!

From there, we spent time noticing the meadows with the streams meandering through them. They must be wonderful in the spring with the wildflowers, but today the contrast between the fields, the water, and the remaining snow was truly special. We’ve never been able to stick around to visit the parks this long after tourist season, and I only wish we could have spent a week here (Joe says I say that at EVERY park! Which is probably true!) Anyway, I think Joe’s favorite sights are the streams and waterfalls, and mine are the meadows, especially with the streams in them. So we were both enthralled by the Hat Creek area.

We had a bigger treat when we drove on to the King’s Creek area. There, we saw King’s Creek wide and gushing downhill. And a few miles further, we saw the same creek just mellow, winding its way through a large meadow with Mount Lassen looming over it in the background. It was simply gorgeous!!!

I think that was really the high point of the drive for us. We went further--first higher up so we got a great view looking over the meadow we’d just visited, and then to the trail head for Lassen Peak hike. This was at 8,500 feet, but at this angle (from the south side of the mountain, and much higher toward the peak), the mountain was much less beautiful. I likened it to getting VERY close next to someone who is a lot taller than you are, and then looking up. Basically all you would see is their chin! All I can say is, this angle did not impress us, and of course we weren’t planning on a strenuous hike farther up, either.

Lake Helen

Overlook above Bumpass Hell

From there we drove past Helen Lake, which WAS beautiful, and then suddenly we were on some extremely winding roads with nothing between us and the spectacular view of the valley and the Cascade Mountains in the distance. Neither of us had the stomach to look over the side! We also stopped at two geothermal areas, Bumpass Hell and Sulphur Works. We had a great view of the valley at the former, but the trail to the mud pots and fumaroles was 1.5 miles each way, and we were long past the time of day when that would have been even remotely do-able for either of us. In fact, when we got to Sulphur Works, Joe just let me jump out and look at it myself--he said, “My legs ache, and I’ve been to Yellowstone.” It is true, Lassen is like a mini-Yellowstone in respect to the geothermal features. Sulpur Works was one really impressive mud pot (bubbling up vigorously) and a lot of steam coming right out of the mountains around. Definitely cool, but not on a scale of Yellowstone.

Fumarole

Then it was my turn to drive us home to give Joe a break. Those winding roads with the steep drop-off were just too much-- I stared at the double-yellow line in the road and drove about 20 miles/hour almost the whole way until we got past that point. Fortunately, it was now late in the afternoon, and the road was almost deserted. Not one person came up behind me for the ENTIRE drive back to our campsite! And I was driving pretty slowly the entire time. It went much faster when we didn’t stop at every place, but I did pull over for one last look at the meadows in the late afternoon sun.

We got back to the RV at 6:00, feeling very fulfilled and happy with our day. The road through Lassen is definitely a beautiful drive, and the mountain itself is lovely. It is maybe not as big as Mount Shasta, but it is special. And thinking that it is still active.... well, we are just glad we were not erupted on! Especially considering that in 1914, three guys were checking out the smoking mountain when it DID erupt! Remarkably, they all survived, but one was pulled out of the ashes after a rock landed on him! So it’s no joke hanging around an active volcano. However, we will be leaving tomorrow... sadly, we are finally driving east. We have to be home 2 weeks from today. I will blog the rest of the trip, but I can’t imagine we’re going to top this last park. Lassen was truly special to us.

Mountain Peaks Loom in the Distance

Mount Shasta in the Distance (her head above the clouds)

2019-10-01 (Tuesday) [Photos of mountains to follow- I have insufficient wifi ability currently)

We had a wonderful day today (how many blogs have I started like that for this trip?) We woke up on a crisp cold morning--it was bright and sunny, but the temperature was around 32 degrees. Knowing we were heading for a park with an even higher elevation (Lava Beds is at about 4,000 feet), I made the bed up into a complete sleeping bag. I forget the brand name of this bedding, but I bought it when we got Mo (our first RV) and didn’t have a real bed. It is basically a double sleeping bag, but it is lined with real sheets, which attach via velcro. One bag is labeled “summer” and one is “winter”, and they are different weights, so you can flip the bag depending on how cold the weather is.

Ever since we got Sam (our current RV, that is), I’ve used real sheets on the real queen sized bed, and we’ve used the bedspread/comforter when we need an extra layer at night. When we left New Jersey in August, it was so darn hot that we could hardly bear to have a sheet over us, and I would stash the comforter at night. We had the air conditioning running the entire night too! A few weeks into the trip, when it became consistently cooler at night (maybe when we were in the Black Hills?), I took down the summer-weight sleeping bag, and we’ve used that as a quilt on us, in addition to the comforter. This morning when I made the bed, I took out the winter-weight bag, zipped the two bags together with the sheets inside, and tonight, we’ll be snug as bugs in a rug! (Well, in a bag.)

We were able to leave before 10:00, which was good, because we stopped at a number of the exhibits and views in Lava Beds NM on our way out of the park. The most interesting was Captain Jack’s Stronghold, which is a natural fortress used by the Modoc Indians during the Modoc Wars. I mentioned this in yesterday’s blog, but we read a lot more about it today; we also stopped at Gillems Camp, which was the camp area of the American army. Captain Jack (as the chief was known to the white settlers), along with 60 Indian warriors as well as women and children, were able to hold off the troop of 600 soldiers for months. Finally the soldiers cut off the Indians’ water supply, and they left the the “fort” at night and took refuge in another part of the park. Joey and I thought of this area as the Indians’ Masada, since they’d been driven there from their hereditary lands in another area of the lava fields, because they didn’t want to be relocated to a reservation up north in Washington. The fundamental cause for the wars was, of course, because the white settlers wanted to take over the land, and it’s hard not to feel compassionate toward the Indians when you walk around this area. It seems so inhospitable in many ways, but they were forced to give it all up anyway.

Our final stop inside the park was at Petroglyph Rock. This is a huge cliff which originally was an island in Lake Tule. Now it’s located a little way from what is left of the lake, near the Wildlife Refuge. No one knows what the ancient petroglyphs mean or were intended for--the early residents of the area had to get to the walls of the cliffs in canoes to make the symbols. Of course there is a lot of modern graffiti also, sadly. But it’s interesting to contemplate what makes one set of carvings in the wall a cultural and archaeological artifact, and another one graffiti. Presumably in 1,000 years, the initials from the 20th century will be cultural artifacts too!

We left the park and headed south toward Lassen Volcanic National Park. The GPS said it would be about 2.5 hours drive, but I knew that basically we’d spend the afternoon driving. Luckily, the roads were almost deserted, which is what we enjoy, and some were very scenic. We stopped at about 1:15 at a town named Bieber, which was only a few blocks large. We pulled into a parking lot of a closed and dilapidated building and had some lunch. Across the road was a river, and I checked it out and decided we should do tashlich while we were there. So after lunch, we took a piece of bread and tossed our sins into the water. I looked at the map, and it was called the Pit River, which was pretty funny considering what we did there--threw our sins into the Pit! I was concerned because the river did not seem to flow very fast, and the bread representing our sins was not moving away from us very fast. I can only hope it finally got a move on. We saw the same river a little while later, when we stopped at a scenic overlook. We were expecting mountains, but it was an OVERlook, where we had to look DOWN, and there was a gorgeous waterfall! It was the same slow and casual Pit River. So if ducks didn’t get the breadcrumbs, I can’t believe our sins would survive that waterfall.

Not long after that, we came out to overlook a beautiful valley, and suddenly Joey said, “Look ahead!!!!”  And WOW!!  There was a HUGE mountain, just LOOMING over the other mountains in the distance. There were clouds about halfway up it, and it’s top was way above the clouds. It was Mount Shasta, which was one of the sights I’d hoped to see on this trip. We would have loved to stop and just stare, but we were on the inside of the road which was curving around the mountain, and there were no pullouts on our side. I had to get photos through the windows as we drove. But it was simply majestic. These enormous volcanoes-- Ranier, Hood, Shasta-- just dominate the landscape like you can’t believe unless you see them with your own eyes.

We were getting views of Shasta for about 30 minutes before the angle of the road shifted, but we still were seeing lots of snow-covered mountains. We entered Lassen National Forest, and were thrilled when Mount Lassen suddenly appeared straight ahead of us. Lassen, at about 10,400 feet, is shorter than Shasta, which is well over 14,000 feet, but it is really a beautiful peak as well. Joe pulled over into a pullout, ordering me to jump out and take a photo. I did so, and then realized I heard water. LOUD water. Sure enough, just at our pullout, through a few bushes, there was an incredible rushing stream going over some rocks just at that point. I hollered to Joe to get out of the RV, because he loves mountain streams more than anything. The moment he got out he said, “I hear water!” We stayed there for about 15 minutes or so, just drinking in the smells and listening to the sound of the creek (it is called Hat Creek, and originates someplace up on Mount Lassen.)

Finally we figured we needed to get going, we still had 10 miles or so before the national park and our campground. We got into the park at 5:05, just too late to go into the visitors center and get maps etc. But I saw the ranger as she was heading to the parking lot, and she told me the campground was right around the corner, and to go to Loop B. So we did, and there were actually quite a few pull-through sites. Of course the campground is mostly empty, but the most noticable thing about it is--there is SNOW everywhere!!!!!  We saw snow in the trees on our way through the forest for about 15 miles before we got here, but gee! Many of the picnic tables have several inches! We were right to hold off getting here until today--obviously the rain we saw at lower elevations was snow here, as predicted. So we are going to really appreciate having the winter side up on our sleeping bag tonight. But we are expecting bright and sunny for the next few days, just like we had all day today.

We are planning to stay here for 2 nights. Tomorrow we will take the Jeep up the road through the park--it is NOT a place I’d want to take an RV, and is one good reason to have a Jeep with us. So now we’re going to have dinner, and make it an early evening. It’s either that or read a book--we are off the grid for a couple of days, no internet or phone. I am not complaining--this park is just gorgeous so far, and quiet. I suspect there will not be many folks on the road up the mountain tomorrow, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Alternative Rosh Hashanah

Cinder Cones on the Horizon

2019-09-30 Monday

Today was Rosh Hashanah. The only time I remember not being home on Rosh Hashanah for the past 35 years or so, was in 2007. That year was our first cross-country RV trip, and we spent Rosh Hashanah in Yosemite National Park. It was a wonderful experience, and we've never forgotten it. Today was memorable also, and a worthy addition to our "alternative Rosh Hashanah experiences".

The day started with us waking extra early and immediately checking our campground for snow--we'd heard it might snow an inch or so overnight. No such happening, however-- we'd had rain, but there was not a trace of snow. In fact, when I took Cassie out to walk, I thought it felt almost balmy, and the sky had signs of blue in it! But I did see when I looked at the mountains surrounding us that in fact, they did have a covering of white. It didn't seem to be threatening us, however, and we ignored it.

One thing we had discussed last night with Adam was whether there was any recycling center in Klamath Falls. We've been shlepping a lot of aluminum cans and plastic water bottles with us for weeks, unable to find anywhere to recycle them. Turned out there was something called the BottleDrop where we could bring our stuff. So that was our first stop--it was only 5 minutes away (all of Klamath Falls is less than 10 minutes from any other part of it-- it's not a large city.) We parked in the large parking lot of a Fred Meyer store right behind the BottleDrop, and dragged in two large bags of flattened plastic bottles, and a bag of squashed cans. Turned out the cans had deposits on them in Oregon, and we got $3.70 back for turning them in! What a deal--we'd have PAID to be able to drop this stuff off! We investigated and discovered they also took cardboard and glass, so back we went to the RV and brought in a lot of cardboard and a few glass containers. Voila! Suddenly our shower is not full of trash!

From there, we headed south to Lava Bed National Monument. It was only about an hour drive away, and to get there, we crossed the state line into California. It turns out that when you cross a state line on a back road, there's no colorful "Welcome to California" sign waiting for you :(  I thought that was very unfair. But soon I was distracted by unusual black mounds in the distance. They sure looked like volcano cones to me!

The landscape changed, and we found ourselves driving along a gorgeous lake, Lake Tule, which signs told us was a wildlife preserve. There were a lot of birds on the lake--I even saw some pelicans! On the other side of the road, the rocks were rising up around us. Soon the lake side turned to cultivated land, but the rocks became even more jagged and unusual. And then suddenly, as we arrived at Lava Beds National Monument, all we saw were black rocks of lava all around us.

The landscape reminded us very much of Craters of the Moon, which we visited in 2011. But it's very different in some ways. Craters of the Moon had much less vegetation growing on the surface--we saw a lot of sage, and especially beautiful Juniper trees (which are all loaded with berries right now.) And the volcanoes are visible on the surface--we climbed up one of the cinder cones. The volcano which created this area was a different kind than the other. The area was formed by the Medicine Lake Volcano. Rather than erupting in explosions, it was "gentler", and erupted through vents in the surface, causing the lava to flow and form what they say is a "shield-like profile.)

I had a hard time understanding the surface convolutions, but what I did understand was that the lava created tunnels as it came out, and those acted like "arteries" to guide the lava as it left the interior. The walls of the tunnels cooled first, creating a sort of "tube" where the lava continued to flow. When it stopped flowing, the walls were still there and they are now caves which open up on the surface. There are more than 700 lava tube caves in the Monument, and a couple of dozen have been opened up to access by the public.

Joey reading an information panel in Mushpot Cave

 We stopped at the visitor's center, where I got a pin for my new collection, and talked to the ranger. He gave me a map, a list of which caves were the easy ones (they are divided based on level of difficulty to explore), and a cave permit. The small interpretive area was very interesting, to say the least, also (more about that in a minute.) It was already about 3:00, so we were anxious to go into one of the caves. We chose the Mushpot Cave, which is the easiest-- it is lit, and has a concrete floor, and interpretive panels to show you features of the cave as you walk through it. Nevertheless, it was exciting and fascinating, not least because Joe and I were literally the only ones in the entire cave! We read about the different types of lava flow, the different markings on the walls and ceilings, and the animals which live in the cave (pack rats, bats, and icky things like centipedes and scorpions.) We brought extra flashlights (recommended), but we still both managed to hit our heads in one particularly low area. We loved it, and I would have liked to try another cave, but Joe was ready to call it a day. It was pretty late, so that made sense.

Looking Down through Mushpot Cave

Another thing which made the area in general so interesting was its settlement history. Originally the area was the territory of the Modoc Indians. When we were driving in, we stopped at an overlook which also marked the spot of the final battle between the Indians the the US Army, which was trying to move them out of the area. The war lasted a number of months, because the Indians knew the land so well that they could avoid the army. The end came when the Indians themselves became divided, and one group guided the army to the stronghold where the Indians were encamped. There were fewer than 200 left in the end, and they were relocated to Oklahoma and their culture was mostly lost. ("Another proud moment in American history," was my husband's wry comment.)

Juniper Tree with Berries

 In the interpretive center, we learned that much of the parks infrastructure had been built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, which lived at Gillem's Camp (which was near the National Monument entrance.) Sadly, during World War II, the camp was used as an interment camp for Japanese civilians. We also learned about that cultivated land we'd seen next to Lake Tule as we drove in. After WWI and WWII, the government had offered parcels of land to army veterans for farmland. The parcels were given out via lottery--which was held by drawing names of winners out of a large pickle jar! There was a replica of that in the interpretive center, along with other information about the settlement of the area around the National Monument. Much of that land had been wetlands, which were drained to create the farmland.

We decided to spend the night here, because it was too late to leave to drive toward Lassen National Volcanic Park, our next destination. Yes, we really are seeing a lot of volcanoes on this trip! The most interesting thing we learned-- until Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, the Medicine Lake Volcano erupted most recently of any in the lower 48 states-- it last erupted only 900 years ago! That's modern history! Scientists study the regrowth and changes at Lava Beds National Monument to learn what may happen in the future around Mount St. Helens. So each of these volcanoes is an ongoing learning experience.

Cassie contemplating the volcanic horizon

 Our Alternative Rosh Hashanah proved to be very interesting--we did not expect so much from this site. But we wished, in the end, that we'd gotten an early start to our day and gotten here earlier. There is a lot to see, and we plan to see a couple of more things on our way out tomorrow. Meanwhile, the campground is beautiful, with views of the surrounding area, and cost us a grand amount of $5.00. So you can't beat that for a lovely end to a lovely day.

Philosophy

Well, this looks like it may turn out to be a really boring day—in fact, Joey just announced that he is bored (he’s driving down a featureless highway). I wish I had a book on tape (the one thing we didn’t bring!) After we left Lee Vining (where we couldn’t find our “borrowed” wifi, and so couldn’t upload the blogs), we headed out of California and into Nevada. This is the route I was worrying about before we left, which has a 170-mile stretch with no gasoline. After getting much better gas mileage than I expected (well over the 5 mpg that I was using as a base calculation, as pitiful as it sounds!), we figure that we can make 170 miles on a tank of gas. But we haven’t even reached that 170 mile stretch yet, and the landscape is beyond boring—flat sagebrush prairie, with uninteresting mountains on either side of us and no change expected until we reach Tonopah, the gas-up point and beginning of the 170 mile stretch.

The first part of the trip, however, was less boring. In fact, I was thinking of referring to it as God’s Amusement Park. First we had the spectacularly beautiful and nail-bitingly scary descent from Tioga Pass. After that, we hit about 30 or so miles of road which bore every resemblance to a kiddie roller coaster—up and down and up and down and up and down. After 10 miles or so of this, the road sign warns of “dips” and we wondered, it gets WORSE? It did, actually, for a while; several of the rises and subsequent dips were fairly significant. I decided there is a reason those amusement park rides only last about 3 minutes—it is all the human stomach can tolerate!

Speaking of tolerating, I have not been tolerating the altitudes very well. Last night I was awake again with chest aches and nausea. Joe says that there is a simple medication to take for altitude problems—who knew I’d need it? But for now, I think we’ve left the highest mountains behind. And so far today, the only really interesting photo I have to share is this sign:


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I wrote the above at about 1:30 or so, just before we arrived in Tonopah, NV. Joe pulled into the first gas station we came to, which included a Burger King, which also had a wifi. So while he filled Mo’s tank and walked Roxy, I uploaded my last two blogs. We decided to splurge on a BK lunch just for a change, and then switched drivers. I pulled out onto the highway, accelerating as I turned left, and suddenly the most horrendous crashing noise came from behind me—it sounded as if half the RV had fallen off! It turned out to be not so serious—Joe had neglected to lock the refrigerator door while we were stopped, and it swung open, discharging most of its contents and those of the freezer (including a full bag of ice) onto the floor. I pulled over immediately onto the shoulder, and fortunately no harm was done, nothing was broken or spilled.

After Joe put the fridge stuff back, and picked up all the other items which had fallen off the bed in the back (it’s amazing what a simple turn + acceleration can do!), I restarted Mo, pulled out on the highway again, went about 200 feet, and the engine suddenly cut off. I steered onto the shoulder again, alarmed because of the suddenness and the loss of my steering. Joe, ever calm, said that probably the fuse had blown again. But when I went to turn the engine on, it turned over, but didn’t catch—meaning it wasn’t the fuse. We looked at each other and I told Joe that HE should take the driver seat and be the one to turn the car back on; for some reason he is better at starting the engine up than I am.

To our alarm, the engine continued to turn over, but refused to catch. It was exactly like what had happened two weeks ago in Sioux City! As a sense of fatality settled over me, Joe began to trouble-shoot, but after 30 minutes or so of trying everything, we had to give up and once again call Good Sam Road Service. I kept trying to look on the good side—this happened IN Tonopah, not 60 miles down that long stretch of highway coming up. Tonopah, small as it is, is the county seat, has a Dept of Motor Vehicles, a hospital, and lots of motels; I was sure there HAD to be a repair place somewhere nearby. OTOH, it is Sunday, and also, we did not NEED this again!!!

We talked to Good Sam, and as we were waiting for the rep to call us back with some plans, and I was examining the map of Tonopah in our DeLorme program, Joe, of course, was still fiddling with the engine, and suddenly, he started it and it caught! We sat there, stunned, trying to figure out what to do next! I asked what he’d done, and he said he had tightened the wires to the distributor cap. He voted that we should keep driving, but I was scared to move—what if it was only a brief temporary fix? What if we got stuck again, this time in a worse place?

I suggested we drive through town, and look for a “better place to be stuck”, such as a truck stop or even a large parking lot by a grocery—someplace a little less on the fringes of town; and then shut the RV off and see if it started again. So we did that, several times, and each time it started right up. So we decided that since it now seemed “normal”, there was no point in simply hanging around in Tonopah, we might as well keep driving and hope for the best. We headed down the road, but had driven only a mile when we had to stop to readjust the engine cover (inside the cab—we could tell it was on wrong.) At that point, I said I wanted to go back to the grocery store I’d noticed—I had suddenly realized we only had 2 gallons of drinking water left after 4 days in Yosemite, and I envisioned us breaking down in the desert with no water.

This turned out to be a good move, because both Joe and I were a bit unsettled by the events of the previous two hours, and doing something plebian like grocery shopping was good for us. After 30 minutes, we were back in the car going down the same road yet again, when I saw a mileage sign for Las Vegas. “Huh??” I told Joe we were on the wrong road—in our search for a “better place to be stuck”, I had not noticed the turnoff for Route 6. So back we turned around for the second time, in the very same place, found the correct route, and kept driving.

And now I am writing this tonight from a KOA in Ely, Nevada, 170 miles down the road from Tonopah. We arrived here with no further trouble from Mo. Needless to say, we are beyond relieved. But we did come up with the moral of the story from this episode. I told Joe I never wanted to hear him say “I’m bored” again on this trip! I told him that God was punishing us for saying that, and for having the chutzpah to complain about anything on this wonderful trip! He responded by quoting the book of Amos, with a twist: “Are you not like the Ethiopians unto me? Is not the desert I made just as beautiful in its own way as Yosemite National Park?”

And it’s true, as we travelled, we discovered that the landscape did have its own beauty, and that in fact it doesn’t stay the same anyway—we saw rangeland, we saw beautiful mountains of all kinds, and in the dark, a KOA after an 11 hour day can be pretty darn beautiful too! So we are here for the night, and we are hoping for the best for the rest of the trip. We really have no idea what might have happened—Joe thought maybe the engine flooded, and it was because we finally let it alone for 30 minutes that it finally started working again. All we can do is continue on our journey and be grateful for all of it—the beautiful and the scary.

Nevada Desert in the morning

Nevada desert, evening coming, 60 miles south of Ely

Nevada desert, 30 miles south of Ely

We did have one casualty today--my MP3 player was fried by the wrong cable. It means our music selection for the rest of the trip will be VERY boring, I'm afraid--all my favorite stuff was on the MP3 player. But considering what else happened today, I am not fretting too much over it. We will just have to hope that we find some good radio stations along the way!

A Different Kind of Rosh Hashanah

After setting up our campsite, we spent about an hour just sitting and soaking up the reality that we had arrived at the most beautiful campsite in Yosemite. But at around 3 pm, I wanted to find out whether there was perchance any kind of “gathering” being set up anywhere in the park to welcome in the new year. We took the free valley shuttle bus from the campgrounds to the Visitor Center, but I totally stumped the ranger at the desk—she knew of no plans anywhere for Rosh Hashanah. I found myself to be disappointed—I had been so sure that someone would be doing something, somewhere, which would be known to the park administration. We decided we would simply have to do our own thing, for which purpose we had brought with us a shofar. Since the one mitzvah for RH is to hear the sound of the shofar, we had figured that we would fulfill that commandment, and find some other way to be appreciative to God for the gifts of life and the world we live in. Of course, in Yosemite, it is remarkably easy to do that!

So after watching a 23 minute film called “The Spirit of Yosemite”, we left the visitors center and went back to Mo. When it was getting dark, we took out our candles, our wine and grape juice (I’d specifically brought small bottles of both from home), and we made our brochot to welcome in the Yom Tov. After dinner, we decided to attend a ranger presentation called “Natural Parks in the Sky: Appreciating The Splendor of the Universe.” It seemed to us that the splendor of the universe was a good thing to appreciate in lieu of services at home.
The show was not bad—maybe not quite as good as one of Rabbi Miller’s high holiday sermons but with better slides, LOL! And then we walked back in the dark (the show was in an outdoor amphitheater in one of the other neighboring campgrounds) with our flashlights, looking at the stars. We had actually had reason the night before to note that the stars were simply incredible out here; we never see stars like that in New Jersey, for sure.

Yesterday morning we slept late, and were happy to get a call from Beth just as we were waking up. We ate breakfast and then set out to find a place to blow the shofar. I had given this much thought, because although I’d had the idea that Joey ought to be blowing it every morning throughout our trip, as per halachah (and to afford him some practice), it was obvious as soon as we started travelling that blowing a shofar in the close quarters of a campground, or even in a Flying J parking lot, might be more noise and disturbance than one would like to cause! We’d also talked about blowing it on top of a mountain—but of course, we are down in the valley; the mountains are about 5,000 feet above our heads!

So I decided we ought to head for El Capitan Meadow. El Capitan is the largest granite monolith in the world (3 times taller than the Empire State Building) and the meadow which stretches out at its foot is quite large. I thought that if we were in the center of the meadow, it would be a suitable spot, and one which was unlikely to disturb anyone else. So we took the shuttle bus again and wandered into the meadow. There were a few people around, but no one was really near us. We said the brocho, and then Joey blew all the different shofar calls for us. It was very cool!

El Capitan

After that, we simply wandered through the meadow, down to the river, and through the trees, slowly and appreciatively. That part of the park is simply lovely, and despite the fact that there are many visitors here, we were alone most of the time. We took so many photos that we actually used up the disk (it holds 128 photos, but we’d forgotten to download those from the day before.) We could see some mountain climbers on the face of El Capitan; even using my 10x zoom lens, they looked like ants.

Can you see the climbers in the center of the photo?

After wandering and taking photos for several hours, we went back to the shuttle stop, and took the bus to the Village Store. We needed “eggs, milk, and ice”. Well, we managed to buy a lot more groceries than that! The Yosemite Village Store has a little grocery which is probably one of the most amazing stores for its size. It had gourmet and specialty foods of every description, ethnic choices from Mexican to Thai (even kosher hot dogs!), wine (and wine glasses, God forbid you hadn’t brought any!), organic yummies, and lots of great ice cream! We had to skip the latter since we were at the mercy of the shuttle, but we bought a lot more than I should have allowed poor Joe to shlep back (of course he wouldn’t let me help), but I did buy something called a Starbucks Mud Pie, and enjoyed it as we left. Also outside the store as we left was a young buck, grazing along as if for the sheer pleasure in posing for photos.

Joe outdid himself creating burritos for dinner (or were they enchiladas? I’m not sure), and he went to bed early. But I sat up for a while reading my book…. And that was our Rosh Hashanah day. From the moment the sun went down and we could look at the stars, until the next sundown, the day typified the quote from Psalms: “This is the day the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” A really special Rosh Hashanah that we will remember for a very long time.