{"id":53,"date":"2006-08-18T11:31:26","date_gmt":"2006-08-18T19:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/wordpress\/?p=53"},"modified":"2012-02-08T19:04:38","modified_gmt":"2012-02-09T03:04:38","slug":"wild-west-road-trip-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/18\/wild-west-road-trip-1\/","title":{"rendered":"WIld West Road Trip, 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sylvia and I just got back from a 17 night 3,300 mile road trip around the Wild West.<\/p>\n

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We passed through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, California.<\/p>\n

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We visited a bunch of national parks: Yosemite, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier. Here’s our friend Half Dome, seen from Olbers Point.<\/p>\n

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We went through Tioga Pass and stayed in a great state park campground called Big Bend near Mono Lake.<\/p>\n

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And then we took Route 6 across southern Nevada. What a great road. I realized that Interstates are ugly because they have to terraform the land across a strip of a couple of hundred yards, so you’re always in disturbed landscape. Plus trucks, gravel pits, and lots of railings, poles, signs. Those Empty Quarter two-lane roads are the best.<\/p>\n

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I’d always wondered about Tonopah because of the Little Feat song “Willing” with the verses: “I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah \/ I’ve driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made \/ Driven the back road so I wouldn’t get weighed. \/ Give me weed, whites, and wine \/ And show me a sign \/ And I’ll be willin’ \/ To be movin’.”<\/p>\n

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Tonopah is some kind of dead. Though I met a guy from there who claimed things are better just now because of gold going up and the mines kicking back into gear. Dig this on-site Picasso sculpture.<\/p>\n

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We spent a night in an old casino hotel in Ely. They pronounce it “Eely.” Another great road goes through Ely, Route 50, which is sometimes called the loneliest road in America, but take it from me, Route 6 is lonelier.<\/p>\n

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We visited some caves east of Ely. These stalactites look rather penile, I’d say.<\/p>\n

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I always think caves are gonna be more interesting than they are. Plants and clouds are so much more dynamic. Maybe if you could see a cave’s formations in fast forward.<\/p>\n

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Amazing, though, to see the dynamics are thes same in stone and water. A frozen waterfall. We visited our daughter Isabel who lives with her boyfriend in Pinedale, Wyoming. <\/p>\n

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I took a bike ride on a trail in Pinedale. The town is in the high desert, a bit south of Jackson, at an altitude of 7,000 feet or so. Very cold in the winter. Very pure air.<\/p>\n

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The soil doesn’t hold much moisture. The clouds are so crisp and whipped-creamy in the Wild West.<\/p>\n

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The bike trail went across the desert to a stream. It’s so quiet out there, so peaceful.<\/p>\n

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We went fishing one day in this beautiful lake by Pinedale. Didn’t catch anything, but had fun. I think in the 50s some people erroneously introduced an alien “lake trout” called the Mackinaw, and those guys eat all the native trout, and live at 150 feet deep. Next time I’ll use a deep fishing rig.<\/p>\n

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After Pinedale we headed into the Tetons, and actually went backpacking one night, which was new to Sylvia. She got to like camping on the trip.<\/p>\n

To be continued…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sylvia and I just got back from a 17 night 3,300 mile road trip around the Wild West. We passed through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, California. We visited a bunch of national parks: Yosemite, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier. Here’s our friend Half Dome, seen from Olbers Point. We went through Tioga […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3742,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/3742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}