Bodie

Bodie SHP
Eastern Sierra Nevadas
Sept. 2010




Church.

Sanctuary.

Twin.

Locked.

Porch.

Siding.

Sleigh.

Bishop

Bishop
Sept. 2010




Made it to Bishop in record time only to find the entire valley choked with smoke. Fires in Yosemite. Strong eastern winds. The smoke would clear by early evening most days and come flooding back in the late morning. I climbed as much as I could as early as I could before retreating for the day. When I got tired of the smokey routine I hiked up white mountain to escape into fresher air. After six days I gave up and went north.

Smoke.

Claire de Lune.

Peak, White Mountain.

Sunrise

Sunrise
somewhere in the Mojave Desert, Calif.

Sept. 2010

Temperatures though the deserts of southern Utah, Arizona, and California were well over 100 degrees, sometimes pushing beyond 110 on the highway. It had been four days of ridiculous heat. The dog and I were over it.

Even though I had already been on the road since 5am I decided to drive straight through the night. I thought once the sun set it would cool off. Besides its barely 10 hours from the Grand Canyon to Ventura. Boy was I wrong. Once the sun set the humidity climbed as did the mercury. Then the thunderstorms started. The whole car shook with every thunder clap. My hair was tingling and standing on end from the static electricity. Then the rain came. It rained so hard it was like a cow peeing on a flat rock.

With white knuckles are clenched teeth we pushed on through the blackness. When morning came we were greeted with an amazing sunrise.

Billboard.

No Smoking

No Smoking
Motel 6
between Little Rock & Memphis
August 2010




I found this going through odds & ends of the road trip. It made me chuckle then, makes me chuckle now. If you get yourself a no smoking room wouldn't it be easier/ make more sense to either A) remove all the ashtrays in the no smoking rooms all together and B) put up a simple sign that reiterates the desired no smoking policy? Nope, guess not. Instead in the ever-seeing wisdom of corporate America, they decided to print no smoking stickers and affix them to the bottoms of the ashtrays in each room. Really? Really?

Isn't it feasible that an offending smoker could turn the ashtray over and use it as such only to argue later on that he/she found the ashtray in its rightful position and thus missed the no smoking sign? Okay... try as I might, I can't make this shyte up.

Convenience.

Historic 66

Historic 66
somewhere outside Bullhead City
Route 66, AZ
Sept. 2010

Not quite the middle of no where, but close enough you could toss a stick at it. Its God's country. No one else wants it.

Biker.

Historic.

Hippies.

Volvoline.

Cola.

National.

Hackberry

Hackberry Garage
somewhere on the 66
Hackberry, AZ
Sept. 2010




- "How many people live in Hackberry anyhow?"
- "Well sir, none that matter..."

Welcome.

Horns.

Orland.

Diamond.

Fan.

Tuff.

Buick.

South Rim

South Rim
Grand Canyon, AZ
Sept. 2010

Watchtower.

Bloom.

Black's

Black's Tours
Jeep Tours & Trail Rides
between Rain God Mesa & Thunderbird Mesa
Monument Valley, AZ

Sept. 2010

Alfalfa.

Brush.

Buckle.

Peek-a-boo.

Bridle.

Monument

Monument
Monument Valley, UT
Sept. 2010

Mittens, Sunrise.

Sisters.

Flare.

So. Utah

Southern Utah
Sept. 2010




On the road from Moab to Momument, UT.

Towers.

Shack.

Tourists Trap.

Camp for the night.

Mexican Hat

Mexican Hat
Utah
Sept. 2010

Hot.

Goosenecks

Goosenecks
Goosenecks State Park, UT
Sept. 2010

Dry.

Kings

Valley of Kings

Utah
Sept. 2010

Valley.

Sentry.

7 Sailors.

Lava.

Pant.

Bluff

Bluff
Bluff, UT
Sept. 2010

Eight.

King Rastus.

Skyline

Skyline Arch
Arches NP
Moab, UT
Sept. 2010




Caught sunrise in Arches National Park. Brilliant.

Arches.

Moab

Moab
Moab, UT
Sept. 2010

So funny story, I drove into Utah from Denver w/ the goal of crashing someplace outside of Moab for a night or two. I was open to anything. I had a schedule but certainly wasn't glued to it. I rolled through the Rockies w/o problem. Stopped at Grand Junction to pick up real beer & cowboy whiskey before heading across the border. I can't do 3.2 beer, simple as that. So stocked up I did.

After a brief stop at the Cisco ghost town I was rolling south making good time. I hit the 128 South just in the early afternoon. I had read that there were tons of spots to camp along the Colorado all the way to Moab. I stopped at every single one. EVERY SINGLE ONE. And didn't find a single bloody camping spot. Keep in mind I hadn't seen a calendar or the internet or civilization since leaving Maine a few weeks earlier. I had no idea what so ever it was a holiday weekend. Everyone and their brother (and their mothers, and sisters, and favorite step aunts, and priests, and masseuses, and heir... well you get the point, it was dang cramped!). I wasn't too worried though. Its Moab after all.

I headed out to Fischer Towers having no luck finding a free spot to call home for the night. After staking out a rather comfy if not dusty spot to call my own a BLM ranger pulled up. Because it was a holiday weekend (dang you holiday weekend!) free range camping on undeveloped BLM land was highly regulated. "Highly regulated" was the ranger's term, in layman's speak I was SOL and had to move along or risk temporary detainment. I'm not sure how "temporary" temporary detainment would have been. Heck knowing my luck some hung-over minimum wage illiterate government lackey barely recovered from the three-day holiday weekend would misfile my paperwork and I'd be sent of to Guantanamo on a clerical error (dang you holiday weekend!). Off I went.

Long story short, I spent another four hours watching the setting sun disappear into the amazing Moab horizon from the windshield of the car driving around looking for a vacant camping spot. Hours after the darkness had set in I found the one camp ground in town that had an available site. Pissed off about my bad luck and having missed shooting an amazing sun set and super tired from 18 hours in the car driving through Colorado and Utah I took the camp site sight unseen. Talk about a colossal mistake. The site I was given was stuck between a barb wire fence and a dumpster. I stole the picnic table from a nearby site to have something to site on (odd side note; by morning it was back where it belonged though I had no hand in returning it. Strange indeed.) The whole place smelt like burning garbage on a back street on an early hazing Moscow morning. The freeway was all of 3.2 feet away from where I pitched the tent on the other side of the barbed wire. Did I mention I paid $28 for the privileged of pitching tent in this mess for all of 9 hours? Yup, in by 0900, out by 0600 in the dim AM.

If it wasn't for me having the foresight to stock up on 8.5 beer & cowboy whiskey in Grand Junction earlier that day I would have been royally screwed. Thankfully the hoppy goodness helped ease my bruised ego just a tad. Just a tad.

(4)20.

Night.

Morning.