We head out Saturday before the first streaks of light stir the ravens in their early quest for road kill. Nature’s cleanup crew. Far more efficient than Caltrans.
We cross the desert as the eastern horizon blushes pink, my daughter, Betty, driving the SUV with her 6-year-old and her three dogs. I in the Saturn listening to NPR, with books on tape and CDs as backup.
Betty chose a different route that would avoid the usual congestion on I-15 through Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. So instead of turning east at Mojave, we continue north to the 395. At Lone Pine, we make a pit stop. The first of many gas, coffee and potty breaks. Snacks for Betty and Sutton, water for the dogs.
Betty thinks I’m nuts, but I bring my own food: fresh fruit, trail mix, homemade banana bread, string cheese, yogurt and crackers, ice cubes in a Mason jar, water and a travel mug of hot tea. The mug gets changed out at the gas station mini marts, just more hot water for my tea bags or coffee where the choice is good. Lone Pine Mobile is good, with six varieties, including French roast, from which I make a latte with generic non-dairy powdered white stuff. Actually, it’s better than it sounds.
With a 6-year-old and three dogs that can’t be left in a hot car, there would be no coffee shop lunches. But driving a vehicle suitable for that entourage, there would be many gas-ups and dog walks. I usually stop once in North Las Vegas and once in Pocatello. At 33 mpg, that gets me to West Yellowstone with maybe two gallons in the tank.
We pull into the Giggle Springs station in Tonopah, a tiny Nevada town that time forgot, if it had ever noticed at all. I was there only once before and not much has changed. It was 1949, and my dad was driving us to Sun Valley to visit friends. The town was about a block long with a saloon on one side and the Mizpah Hotel on the other. The curbs were high, the streets dusty and there was a hitching rail outside the saloon. The Mizpah is still there, apparently still open. If I’d been by myself, I couldn’t have resisted taking a peek inside. In ’49, it had looked like a set for “Bad Day at Black Rock.” The exterior still does. The rooms had iron beds, a washstand with a pitcher and bowl, and hooks on the wall for clothes. No closet, an old keyhole lock and the facilities were down the hall.
Tonopah, it seems, has grown by only a block or two with a Best Western of uncertain vintage added. I was glad we wouldn’t be staying the night.
Next stop, Ely, where my car takes only 4.8 gallons of Shell regular at $3.19. I snag a Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino hidden among the sodas. A perfect accompaniment to banana bread and a deterrent to road doze, that hypnotic unfolding of mile after butt-numbing mile of open range. No farms, no ranch houses, not even a cow or a jackrabbit.
There’s an area, between Wells and Ely, I think, where stunted mountains poke up on both sides and the desert-y scrub is peppered with lava rock and basalt from some ancient volcanic spew. A bit farther on, huge rock formations tower over the range, boulders with the rounded edges and swirl marks made by floods.
Someday, if I go that way again, I’d like to stop and make photos in early morning light.
Twin Falls seems to sprawl for miles though we never see anything that might have been a city center. Betty pulls into an aging two-story motel of maybe 20 rooms, all of which suffer from what the Park Service calls deferred maintenance. On the ground floor, the choice is a two-room suite, dark and musty as a cave, but with refrigerator and microwave. We choose an airier room with two beds, one of which had recently been napped in (the manager said it was probably the maid’s daughter), soiled carpets and two broken light fixtures. Oh well, I didn’t really want to look in the mirror, the shower works, there’s a grassy area for the dogs and pizza take-out next door.
In the morning, I follow Betty into a strip mall where the sign proclaims fresh bagels and coffee. It’s closed, but at the other end is Barnes & Noble. I see a man walk in the door and guess it has a Starbucks. It does. Steaming latte to go with banana bread. Fate is sometimes good to the travel weary.
We head toward Pocatello on I-86 through country that would have sparkled in the early light but for a thick haze. The cause is soon apparent: a huge Simplat plant spewing plumes from a dozen smoke stacks, shrouding farms and cattle pastures in a gray pall.
We drive through Pocatello, where I usually have breakfast, to Idaho Falls, where we turn east on Highway 20. Within five miles, I’m breathing deeply, slowly, more regularly. As we head toward West Yellowstone up through the Targhee National Forest, my relaxation deepens. Even as we stop again for gas at Rexburg, and my car needs only 5 gallons, I’m mellow. We make a slight detour to Hebgen Lake to meet Mark at their summerhouse so Sutton can ride to Bozeman with her dad. Betty takes the dogs.
I leave them at the Big Sky Spur road and drive two miles to my little hideaway in the Meadow Village. The sky is blue with puffs of pure white, the air clear with a gentle scent of pine and spruce. A foursome is quietly playing the eighth fairway, children’s voices drift across from their ball game at the park. This is as noisy as it gets here. Aaah.