Angelus rampant

Woke up, got dressed, drove to Missoula. That was my day, mostly. It takes about seven hours to get to this mid-sized university town in Montana from Seattle. I was eager to get off to a strong start on my way back to the east coast, and seven hours in the driver's seat -- taking me through all of Washington, the Idaho "panhandle," and western Montana -- qualifies. On the drive I listened to "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (my second to last audiobook -- must practice conservation!) and watched the forests transform into high plains in hilly and occasionally dramatic fashion. One hillside had lots of trees but no brush whatsoever, creating a ghost town effect. While I gained some altitude today, I've hardly begun to re-penetrate the Rockies. Those mountains are not something you drive across in a day, though you can get across the wicked part in a day. Today was canoeing down the Hudson River; the wicked part is canoeing down Niagara Falls.

Since I have so little else to say today, I thought I'd post an imaginary dialogue that I think does a pretty good job illustrating what most days are like for me out here. This is how I got dinner tonight. I hung up with my parents saying I was going to Perkins to get some comfort food after some subpar Ethiopian last night. But the angel of adventure, who was sitting beside me, said, "Nay! We shall at least check Google Maps first to see what unique local eateries might be in the area!" I let him do it, and he discovered that in downtown Missoula there is a place called MacKenzie River Pizza Co that Google Maps rates five stars. "Let us then abscond to the pizza place," he said. "But Perkins is right down the road and I know it'll be good," I protested. He chided me: "Lo, you have been bugging Us for good pizza for weeks now, and now that pizza appears on Our doorstep you wish to eat at Perkins?" "Fine," I said, and we got in the car.

We drove downtown, a short and pleasant drive, and there was a wait. While we waited for a table, we looked at the menu. "I can't wait to have some of this classic mozzarella," I said. "Hold!" replied the angel of adventure. "It says on this menu that this is a gourmet pizzeria, and therefore we shall have gourmet pizza!" "Mozzarella can be gourmet," I pointed out. "Mozzarella is less likely to be gourmet," said the angel of adventure, "than a Thai Pie, which is a pizza in which tomato sauce has been replaced with peanut sauce, and which is topped with basil chicken, mandarin oranges, scallions, red peppers, peanuts, and cilantro!" "Is that even a pizza?" I asked. "I do not know!" answered the angel excitedly. "Therefore, let us order it and find out!" "I was promised pizza," I grumbled. "And verily, you are getting a Thai Pie," said the angel.

The Thai Pie, to my surprise and frankly I think to the angel's too, was indeed a pizza, and it was delicious. It was more delicious than mozzarella would have been.

Now to the pictures!


Speaking of angels, here's the statuary trumpeter atop the central cathedral in Salt Lake City, Utah, at sunset. No post-production effects have been applied to this picture. This is how it really looked.


The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, through the fence on the south end. This is not the classic view of the bridge, which is taken from Marin County on the north end on a clear day, but this picture is closer to the reality of the bridge as I experienced it in the fog.

Jono Xia (nee DiCarlo) denounces the evils of socialism in full wedding regalia.


Sushu and Jono, all dressed up in their self-designed wedding couture. Aren't they radiant?


Brian Auriti, Action Wildlife Photographer! That is a wild deer who lives on a steep and exhausting three-mile trail in Muir Woods in Marin County. The hike was beautiful but did not photograph well.


Run, it's a tsunami! Oh wait, no it's not, that's just the fog rolling in on Pacifica, the Bay Area town where the Raskin clan lives. I stayed one night in their place. Never having seen a tsunami, I actually was momentarily worried when I glanced out of my car window and saw this panorama.


And in less threatening landscape capture, the sun sets here on quite a different bay, eight hours' drive away in Waldport, Oregon.


Run, it's the Fremont Troll! This guy lives under a bridge in Seattle and is a piece of public art. The things I learned in Seattle were generally less photographable than the things I learned elsewhere, so this is the only picture from Seattle in this batch.


One of a thousand views of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver. Photos are not very good at capturing motion or depth, two elements very important to understanding how beautiful this garden is, but I couldn't very well not include any photos of this tranquil place.


And a few blocks away, here's Vancouver pot culture. It's a little blurry because I was holding an umbrella in the other hand. Does rain bring out the potheads, or is downtown Vancouver always this smoky?


I touched the moon! This was at the otherwise not very interesting astronomy museum in Vancouver by the southern bay. The rock was very smooth, worn down by God knows how many thousand or million fingers.


Vancouver as seen from Queen Elizabeth Park, the highest point in Vancouver. Funny how in many ways this view is better than any view of the city I took from atop the tourist tower (visible at right; it's the one with the needle) or the skyride at Grouse Mountain (the one on the right).


Wildlife Photographer 2: Electric Cockatoo! At Queen Elizabeth Park there is a greenhouse containing a wide variety of tropical plants and birds -- yes, in Canada. I don't know what species this guy is, but he very much enjoyed strutting his stuff for all the photographers.


And here is an axe thrower at the lumberjack show at Grouse Mountain. The axe is actually in the air here, near the target at about two o'clock from the bullseye; you can see it against the light brown pole if you look carefully. He landed the bullseye a fractional second after the moment frozen here.

There! Now I can procrastinate on posting a whole new set of pictures, once I have some! :D

The dusty Winnemucca road

I bade a fond farewell to Salt Lake City this morning, but first I set out to explore its greatest remaining mystery: the Great Salt Lake. One would think that it would be impossible to drive past the Great Salt Lake without seeing at least three billboards for boat tours of the lake, but as far as my Googling and inquiries can discover, all the lake's boat tours are either luxury or bankrupt. The best way to experience the lake seemed to be driving across a bridge to Antelope Island, where there's a road that showcases the lake on one side and native flora and fauna on the other, but it would have been two extra hours of driving with nothing to do but gawk at things from the car. I generally like activities better that let me gawk at things from outside the car, so I took a pass on Antelope Island. Instead I pulled off I-80 at a beach (yes, the Great Salt Lake has beaches) and waded out to the water. The interesting thing about the Great Salt Lake is that you experience it with all five of your senses. The other interesting thing about the Great Salt Lake is that none of those senses can distinguish the lake from the Gulf of Mexico, the coast I'm most familiar with. There is simply no way to tell that this is a lake and not an ocean. Indeed, the early explorers thought they'd reached the Pacific.

Wishful thinking on their part. They still had a ways to go. The western mountains in this country simply do not end! Whenever you crest one, there's another behind it. Sometimes they're craggy peaks, sometimes mesas, sometimes big ol' hills that look like contour maps out of an MMORPG. But there are always more of them. It's a good thing I'm driving primarily to see the country, because if I were driving primarily to reach a destination I'd be frustrated to no end. In fact, I was frustrated today. I turned off the interstate to look for a canyon they advertised. It turned out to be a forty-mile round trip, and so inadequately marked that I never did find what I was looking for. I did hit a prairie dog while looking, though. I don't think it lived. I cried a little bit on my way back to the interstate. I was going a little over the speed limit, and if I'd been going slower I might have stopped in time. It was one of the small, careless tragedies that happen every day. I'm so sorry.

Later I finally reached Winnemucca. Winnemucca is a small town that appears to be built entirely on transient tourism like mine. Small-time casinos are everywhere, poised to rake in the passing traffic. Well, I reasoned, if I want to experience Nevada I have to go to either a casino or a prostitute, and prostitutes are expensive. I got $40 turned into chips. This was my first time gambling and very nearly my first time in a casino. I didn't know the rituals. You pay for your chips in cash, no credit. No blackjack till six. Chip bucket on your lap, not the table. Only one hand on the cards. Scratch the cards on the table to hit, shove 'em under the money to stand. No touching cards other than your first two. Drinks are free while you play. I didn't know any of that stuff, but I walked in knowing there was a lot I didn't know. I still don't know how many of those rules are universal to casinos and how many are specific to Winners Hotel & Casino. What's important is that I overcame my intimidation -- and Winnemucca is an intimidating, masculine town -- for no other reason than to practice courageous living. I didn't do too bad, either! Conservatively, I kept my winnings separate from my principal and left when my $40 was gone. At that point I had $29.50. So I paid $10.50 for a drink, some entertainment, and a bracing memory. Absolutely a fair transaction.

Exhausting the list of things to do in Winnemucca was Sid's Restaurant, sort of a de-chained version of Perkins, walls decorated with everything from framed artwork to My Little Pony coloring book pages. I asked the waitress what her favorite dish on the menu was and got a chicken focaccia sandwich -- which was not at all what I'd been going to order but turned out to be very good! One thing I've learned repeatedly on this trip is that people who know more than I do about an area, or a restaurant, or a culture, are to be treasured; it's through them that I can approach that knowledge. They don't always help, but they almost never hurt. Of course, sometimes I stumble across things on my own, too, and that kind of knowledge is also sweet, like a little secret. Which I promptly blab about to all of you. :)

City on a hill

I left Grand Junction this morning without it leaving much of an impression on me. Not that I didn't try to have an adventure! -- but adventures are harder to come by on Sundays, and Grand Junction's museums and wineries aren't really my scene anyway. I settled for the Trail Through Time, just west along the interstate. The trail winds through the hills beside a mesa on the high scrubland, showcasing classical Wild West terrain to great effect, and runs past many dramatic rock formations, some with dinosaur and plant fossils embedded in them. Courtesy of the trail, I had an invigorating and nearly solo morning constitutional, then set out for Salt Lake City.

Utah's cliffs and plateaus would have seemed breathtaking back in Kansas, but seemed gentle and a little boring after yesterday's Rocky Mountain passage. They were a welcome reprieve from the constantly-one-second-away-from-death peaks of Colorado. (Though there was some snow on the road at one point!!!) To pass the time while driving I listened to an audiobook version of Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers," courtesy of Wiley. Audiobooks are much better than music as a way to kill time; they hold your attention and let your muscle memory deal with the road. Outliers is pretty good. It's a lot like The Tipping Point in that it's a book-length elaboration of a single self-evident sentence, in this case "even for the talented, success relies on being in the right place at the right time." But also like The Tipping Point, the case studies Gladwell uses to make his (foregone-conclusion) argument are fascinating in themselves. It might be better to think of Gladwell as a talented essayist who organizes his monographs around central themes rather than the social visionary he presents himself as.

But you're not here for my literary criticism, are you? Outliers was just a means to Salt Lake City. I exited the interstate at a randomly selected mile marker within the city and began exploring downtown. I soon found myself driving up a steep grade and staring directly at the Utah State Capitol, an architecturally gorgeous building very much modeled after the U.S. Capitol in Washington. I couldn't go inside because it was Sunday -- go figure -- but I got a couple pictures, plus a pamphlet about Temple Square from the tourist information center across the street. Temple Square is Salt Lake City's Loop -- a block of buildings with names at the heart of downtown. But where the Chicago Loop is very commercial, Temple Square beams Mormonism. Its centerpiece is Salt Lake Temple, which unfortunately I couldn't visit due to construction -- it figures that the one building you'd expect to be open on a Sunday was closed for a different reason! I did, however, sit in a pew inside the Salt Lake Tabernacle and snapped photos of its organ, one of the twenty biggest in the world. Just sitting in that building is a remarkable experience; the tabernacle seems bizarrely full of space for its size even though it isn't as lofty as one expects from a religious structure.

Once I was done wandering around Temple Square I got back in the car and headed for Red Iguana. This Mexican restaurant shows up in all the travel guides as a culinary center of the city. It's a pretty large place with lots of parking, yet still has a hole-in-the-wall atmosphere that makes you feel cared for even as you're stuffed into the dining rooms with a few dozen other parties. (At 4:50 it was already on a 45-minute wait! I read some Neverwhere until my name was called.) I ordered a pork shank that was served in a thick, savory sauce made from a couple different kinds of chili. It was pretty good -- which if you know how I generally feel about Mexican food you will understand is high praise!

Of course, food tastes better when you're in a good mood. I was, and still am! Salt Lake City is unflaggingly welcoming; I haven't met a person here yet who seemed jaded or standoffish. The camera around my neck earned me welcomes here rather than the benign contempt I get in other areas. The city is also very easy to navigate, either on foot or by car. This place and Eustis are the two cities I've seen so far this trip where I might actually like to live -- though every city without exception has been fun to pass through!

Tomorrow I'll tour the Great Salt Lake, then set off for the little-known town of Winnemucca, Nevada, my last waypoint before my San Francisco terminus. As usual, I don't know what to expect from Winnemucca. Making up your adventures as you go along is fun!