Wednesday May 7

More rain and cold. I should have stayed in Tucson.
No sun but a couple days when it didn't rain. Took
some long bike rides and went to the state park. John
the ranger is a very nice, very laid back type. I
think we'll get along fine. The park has old
conifers, very thick tops so the forest is pretty
spooky. I expect to see ROUS's (see The Princess
Bride) around every corner.

I'm sleeping in the toaster. Got a wifi modem so I
can listen to the BBC at night before falling asleep.
Getting lots of time to read. Finished a great
whodunit by Janet Evanovich called "Twelve Sharp" with
an accident prone female bounty hunter main character.
Saw a red breasted flicker and stellar's jay. Just
so some of you birders don't think I'm making up some
of these names, they don't appear in the eastern US
bird books. Find a western Sibley's and eat your
hearts out.

Went into Seattle last weekend and spent time with my
brother's old girlfriend, Kris, and got lots of
cultchah. Mostly improvisational dance. Lots of it
pretty boring. But a great video of a young couple
with an 11 month old discussing art: to my ears, how
many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The whole
time this little cutie is babbling and you get the
idea that what he has to say is more compelling than
the adult conversation. Don't know if that was the
point or not. Kris is my age (or so) but dances way
younger. She says she doesn't stuff Ibuprofen but I
don't believe her.

Saw a wonderful movie last night called A Band's Visit
about an Egyptian Police Orchestra that gets invited
to Israel to give a concert but ends up in the wrong
town. Much of it in Hebrew and Arabic but in halting
English when the Israelis and Egyptians talk to each
other. Touching but not sappy.

Got a 50 lb sack of Magic Mushroom popcorn. It was on
the doorstep when I got home from the movies last
night. Made some for breakfast. Wow. I'll send some
to the PCC.

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Saturday May 2

THE TOASTER HAS LANDED! At 2:14 PM yesterday landfall
was achieved on Whidbey Island, WA. A beautiful ferry
ride from a strangely named town called Mukilteo.
Sunny day, lots of wind, just perfect for being on the
water. Mom was pretty pleased. Set up the trailer in
her driveway and now I have a couple weeks to sightsee
and kayak before starting at the state park.

The orientation for new camphosts was some boring and
some very well done. Three naturalists from the state
spent a day talking about geology and it was pretty
cool. A glacier created an enormous lake that finally
exploded the ice dam and carved out all kinds of
canyons, carrying rocks hundreds of miles and
generally created conditions for endless numbers of
PhD theses.

All kinds of interesting people. Lots of obnoxious
men, of course, who seemed as if they had never had
anyone to talk to and were making up for lost time.
And many lovely couples who were enjoying each other
and the time they had together in retirement.

Drove east from Coulee City over the cascades. Huge
amounts of snow at the top. Came through Leavenworth,
a ticky, tacky tourist trap made to look like a
Bavarian Village, complete with McDonalds and Holiday
Inn Express. The east side of the Cascades is big
apple country. Right in the middle of the apple
bloom; miles of soft white felt covering flats,
hillsides and mountain tops.

Mom has two cockatiels. This is their mating time and
they are obnoxious. Loud, flying around constantly,
and there is very little to tittilate human beings in
their sexual activity.

The day is overcast. We have great plans to get a
wifi modem and visit the state park. Or just stay in
and read a good book.

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Monday April 27

A little overcast this morning but it warmed up
quickly. First day of orientation. Pretty basic
stuff. But talked to lots of interesting folk Two
guys who worked at the mint in Washington, DC regaled
us with tales of people trying to steal money. A
woman from Anacortes, WA who is further left than me.
She runs a group trying to get homeowners to get rid
of their lawns to save water. We were both pissed off
at a short video in thet afternoon essentially saying
that employees attitudes about custormer service have
nothing to do with how they are treated by their
bosses. The workshop on dutch oven cooking was great.
They made 5 desserts (one for diabetics) and it just
seemed like magic, piling all the ingrients into the
cast iron pots, closing the lids and putting hot
charcoal briquets under and on top, waiting 45 minutes
and finding exquisite looking (and tasting) things
inside.

Gas prices are having an effect on the number of
volunteer camphosts which is way down this year
according to the director. A number of state park
managers are here trying to recruit people who may
have some available months in their schedule.

There is a strong wind blowing tonight though it's not
very cold. There are no tenters so it's all very
quiet outside with everyone watching their satellite
tvs.

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Sunday April26

Drove to Sun Lakes State Park outside Coulee City, WA
for the orientation for new camphosts. Finally here.
Lots of confusion around campsites because it was
crazy busy, being the first weekend of fishing season,
a new reservation process and the campground and the
volunteer program not communicating very well. It's
quieted down now. All bent out of shape noses seem to
be back in their correct places.

I had lots of time to sit in the sun and read this
afternoon. Started and finished a great book called
"Birds in Fall", fiction by Brad Kessler (thanks,
David). About the aftermath of a terrible plane crash
in Nova Scotia, interwoven with descriptions of fall
bird migrations. Takes place mostly in a fancy inn run
by a gay couple. Thoughtful, and settings that are as
interesting as the story.

I'm hearing peepers tonight for the first time this
spring.

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Thursday April 24

Drove to Baker City, OR to the Oregon Trail
Interpretive Center. It sits on a hill top
overlooking miles of the old trail. You can walk
along it and in places the ruts made by the thousands
of ox-drawn wagons are still visible. When things
went well, the trip took 150 days from St. Louis to
Oregon. With poor weather, dead livestock, pissed-off
Indians it could take 200 days. These were tough
people. Most were middle class, many, farmers who had
sold their homesteads to get enough money to make the
trip. It was an expensive undertaking. Over 100,000
people went to Oregon by wagon between 1830 and 1850
(when the train made it unnecessary). I wonder about
the change in human character since that time. Is the
striving towards new frontier good for the human soul?
Or did it just give men more opportunities to build
phalluses (I'm talking symbolically here). There was
a bit on male/female relationships on the trail. The
heading was something like, "Men worked hard and had
fun and women did what men let them." There were very
few incidents of Indian aggression in the first few
years of emigration. The native tribes were actually
very helpful and were eager for trading opportunities.
At some point, however, the numbers of white people
got to the point where the local folk started to see a
decrease in property values: spoiled water sources,
decreased buffalo populations, annoying missionaries,
and they started to fight back. Buy the book and find
out who won.

Discovered that Farewell Bend, where I camped
yesterday got its name as the place where Oregon
Trailers, who floated down the Snake River to cut off
a few miles, got out to avoid the rapids further down,
and continued on by land.

Drove up and over the Blue Mountains, pretty much the
same route as the Oregon Trail, imagining what it must
have been like. Got into La Grande, OR and, for some
reason, noticed how white the population was. At the
same moment, I saw I drive-thru Greek take-out place
with a young black guy with serious dreads waiting for
an order. Of course, I went in. Yai Yai Nikki
(Grandma Nikki) was the proprietor, an old lady with a
Greek accent, and her American husband. The gyro was
better than anything I've had in NYC. I'm came
dangerously close to telling my blood sugar to fuck
off and suck down a piece of baklava.

Continued on into Washington, through Walla Walla.
Having also been to Okeefenokee, I only have Kalamazoo
still on the list of weird, trite, named places to
visit. This area is good sized hills totally plowed
and planted with wheat, a deep bright green with the
early plant shoots. Miles and miles of softly rounded
mounds lacking only pigmentation and nipples to be a
male adolescent's delight.

Tonight in Lewis and Clark State Park. They came
through here on their way back east. The park is in
pretty bad shape. No one else here. Not even a camp
host. Lots of wind damage. No hot water. I think L
& C used the bathrooms. I hope this isn't
representative of Washington State Parks.

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Friday April 25

Drove through more miles and miles of wheat fields.
Huge grain elevators. Beautiful patterns of rows of
green wheat shoots on the hillsides. Contour plowing
meets cubism. As fertile and planted as the land is,
the small villages I passed through are dying, many
empty store fronts and houses in need of care.
Perhaps the only people left are on the widely spaced
farmsteads who do their marketing at Walmart.

I'm in Spring Canyon campground at the Grand Coulee
National Recreation Area, the lake on the Snake formed
by the Grand Coulee Dam (Lake Roosevelt). Not only
there a large body of water behind the dam but there
is a whole pump and canal system that lifts Snake
River water 300 ft above the lake and supplies an
irrigation holding reservoir that used to be a dry
canyon. It is 60 miles long itself.

The campground sits on a cliff overlooking the lake
and the dam. About half the sites are filled. It's
very quiet. Saw yellow-rumped warblers and northern
flickers.

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Wednesday April 23

Woke up this morning to a light drizzle which turned
to real rain during my second cup of coffee. So I
quickly packed up and headed west. Got into Boise in
time to find a sports bar and watch Manchester United
play Barcelona in the second semifinal match.
Pinpoint passing but powerful defenses (and a missed
penalty shot by Christiano Rinaldo) ended up 0-0.

Major agricultural area. I thought Idaho grew potatos
but in this area it's soybeans. Wide irrigation
ditches, hundreds of yards long circular spraying
machines, enormous elevators and tractors the size of
small apartment buildings.

Stopped in to visit Mary Sullivan's son Patrick, his
wife Cory and kids, Sean and Lily. They were a little
bleary-eyed, having gotten back home at midnight last
night from a week in Puerto Vallarta. Parick runs a
shelter for homeless youth, with funding from the same
place as TLP. They have 12 beds and are staffed 24
hours. Patrick makes his own kettle corn with a
popcorn called, I think, Magic Mushroom, which he buys
in 50 lb. sacks. It is by far the best popcorn I've
ever had. Giant, perfectly shaped pieces, puts
Orville to shame.

Drove into Oregon to Farewell Bend State Park on the
Snake River north of Ontario. Only $13 a night with
electricity and $3 for a wheelbarrow load of firewood.
The Snake is famous for things during pioneer days
and tomorrow I'll try to find out what they are. The
campground is about ¾ full. It's no warmer here than
any other places I've been lately so I'll also have to
find what what the big attraction is. There are some
very noisy Canada geese walking around the camp. They
seem to be nesting on an island in the middle of the
Snake. And the robins are doing things we'd rather
our teens didn't. (No, not smoking little robins size
hash pipes.)

In coming into Oregon I'm now on Pacific Time. Seems
like some sort of milestone. All the way across the
country.

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Tuesday April 22

Went back to the refuge and spent some time in the
visitors' center. Then a shower, laundramat, food
shopping and I was ready to head to the B & B Billiard
Parlor to watch the Chelsea-Liverpool semifinal, leg 1
of the European Champions League on the tv of the only
bar in Brigham City (pop. 9000). It was 12:30 and
there were a number of people already imbibing but the
bar mistress was quite welcoming and set up ESPN for
me. It was a great game and tied in the last 10
seconds of play by an own goal (I know this is
gibberish for some of you but to the initiated it is
important stuff.) You can still smoke in bars in
Utah.

After the game I drove to Lake Walcott State Park near
Rupert, ID. The lake is part of another wildlife
refuge and is filled with birds. There's a large
flock of white pelicans on the other side of the lake
and with the south wind blowing I can hear every
squack. Saw two grebes doing a mating dance on the
surface of the lake, running together for about 50
yards then diving underwater, like sychronized
swimming.

There are 36 sites in the campground and only two
others are filled. All sites have water and
electricity for the winter rate of $12.74 (tax
included), the best deal of the trip. The price is
discounted because the showers aren't open yet.

Had a nice fire tonight. The wind is creating a small
chop on the lake and the waves are making a familiar
and pleasant noise on the shore just below my
campsite.

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Monday April 21

Drove to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge north of
Salt Lake City. It sits on northeast edge of the
Great Salt Lake (which, by the way, is very low. All
the boat ramps are high and dry). Had an amazing
afternoon:

American Avocet white pelican clarke's
grebe
Yellow headed blackbird black necked stilt western
grebe
Sandhill crane marsh wren franklin's gull
Eared grebe canvasback ruddy duck
Northern shoveler scaup (lesser or greater?)
white-faced ibis
Long-billed curlew black crowned sparrow snowy egret
Hundreds of canada geese thousands of coots lots
of lbb's
Mystery plovers

There's a great visitor's center that I didn't spend
much time in today. I'm going to do the whole thing
again tomorrow. One of the volunteers at the center
said "There's a lot of romance going on out there".

My campsite is 50 yards from the Great Salt Lake to
the west and ½ mile from snow covered mountains to the
east. Only the traffic noise from I-15 takes away
from the edenic surroundings. Had a nice campfire.
It's getting a little chilly but it's not supposed to
go below freezing tonight. I'm the only person in the
campground.

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Sunday April 20

Spent the day today in Arches National Park with the
PCC women, looking at arches, hearing about lesbian
love affairs, and the whole lovely day followed by
watching Brie and Jill taste 9 different beers at the
Moab Brewery. I love PCC people. I was pretty sore
all over from yesterday so I played chauffer while the
girls hiked. Tomorrow they are off to Canyonlands and
I'm headed to Salt Lake City. And they have the best
selection of car snacks I've ever seen.

Got back to the car at Arches and found a note on the
window from Joanne Casey who lives around the block in
Bristol. She didn't know it was my car but saw the VT
plates and an envelope on the passenger seat addressed
to Mary Sullivan (who lives a few doors down on Pine
St.).

It's been very windy all day. The mountains to the
west are covered in mist or blowing sand. And it's
getting cold. I packed up and reconnected the trailer
to leave quickly in the morning if the weather is gross.

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Saturday April 19

Just had dinner with Sherry, Michelle, Brie and Jill
from the PCC. Pretty cool to see them in Moab.
Tomorrow we're going hiking. They got here and found
that their reservations were at a place that was more
John Graham Shelter than Ritz-Carlton. So they madly
phoned and found a motel for tonight 30 miles back the
way they came. But they have a place in Moab for Sun
and Mon. Michelle wants everyone to know that, even
though she made the biggest stink there's at least one
other voyager who silently backs her up (only initials
please: SdG).

I rented a mountain bike this morning and rode Slick
Rock. Well, not the whole 10.2 miles. I crawled the
last 2. And walked many of the ups. The area is a
100 square mile sand dune which petrefied into rock
sometime in the distant past. No trees, very little
vegetation. Just hills of sandstone and a small patch
of sand here and there. I felt ok on the downs, even
the steepest, but going up the other sides, in
addition to being stamina sapping, there was always
the chance of tipping over backwards. I'm hurting
tonight but I did it.

Lots of souped up 4 wheel drive vehicles also parade
around the area. Their designated paths cross the
biking trails. They are pretty fun to watch as they
crawl up and down nauseatingly steep hills. I would
have taken pics but I didn't have the strength to
reach around the back of my biking jersey to get the
camera.

There's an old uranium processing plant just outside
Moab. The Department of Energy has closed it up by
burying it in hunderds of thousands of tons of sand.
And now, because of leeching by the Colorado River and
the discovery of deformed frogs, the DOE is going to
truck the whole thing to a different place. Your tax
dollars at work.

There's a full moon tonight and it is warm. I've got
the door open. The RV park is pleasingly quiet for so
many camping here.

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Friday April 18

Woke up to a chilly but beautiful sunrise (see sun
glinting off Toaster). Connected with three other
campers for shuttling to a trail head. An older
couple from Denver who voted for Ron Paul in the
primary and a very pleasant retired elementary PE
teacher from Maryland. The hike was an 1800 ft drop
into Monument Canyon, beautiful rock formations but
the lady Ron Paul follower was driving me crazy with
her constant lecture on what's wrong with kids today.
The PE guy and I had to sit in the back of her pickup
for the ride back up the mountain and I think she had
figured out that I wasn't a fellow traveller; she
drove around 20mph hairpin turns at about 60. I know
she was trying to throw me out the back.

Drove to Moab. The last 30 miles or so along the
Colorado River through a mini Grand Canyon. There
were a few rafters and white water kayaks and plenty
of water and rapids but the river looked almost too
muddy to flow. The campgrounds in Arches National
Park were full as were all the Nat Forest sites. I'm
in an RV park that had no trailer sites so I'm in the
tenting area and have had to put up the tent: official
rules, though I'm going to sleep in the trailer. The
sites are very close together, no vegetation. On one
side is a family with 4 kids under seven and on the
other, two families with 6 young children between
them. At this moment there are two babies crying.
The two french guys a couple sites down have
disappeared.

Biked into Moab to see about renting a mountain bike
for tomorrow. This is the world capitol of MB'ing and
the most famous trail is Slick Rock, ten miles up and
down a giant boulder. I think that it will be a lot
like the top of Mt. Abe on a warm fall Saturday but
I'm here and it has to be done.

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Thursday April 17

On the road again, la la la. Left Boulder this
morning in the sunshine with 3 inches of melting snow
on the ground. Labored over Loveland and Vail passes
in dreadful weather, snow, slush, wind, giant trucks
but eventually dropped back down to a more humane
altitude and rolled into Colorado National Monument
outside Grand Juction about 5:00. A red mesa with
numerous canyons carved into it. Very few people in
the campground. Met a young German couple who, for
the second spring, are delivering a new RV from South
Bend, IN to LA, paying only insurance and gas. They
get 3 weeks and 3000 miles to do the trip. It's a 21
foot, very fancy machine which, they say, would be a
palace in European RV circles where gas is $8.00 a
gallon.

Met a guy from Burlington who spends winters teaching
skiing in Breckenridge, CO and summers teaching
sailing in Malletts Bay.

Some things from the past two weeks:
At the Conference on World Affairs at CU I heard
Rachel Maddow who has a radio show on Air America.
She is very cool. She's been the token progressive on
some cable talk shows, usually does her show from NYC
but did it live from the conference for 5 days. I
went and saw her 4 times.

Saw the Slipstream-Chipotle Bike Team hanging around
in front of Boulder's most expensive bike shop. They
are one of two American teams invited to the Tour de
France.

I rode public buses a few days and everyone, college
students, old fogies, all say hello and thankyou to
the busdrivers when they get on and off.

Finally passed another biker. And seconds after got
smoked by six guys with matching jerseys.

Drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park and saw elk
and pronghorn sheep.

There are signs on classrooms in the new business
school building at CU designating which are still
available for naming (for a price, of course).

Discovered that there are 10 different flavors of Goldfish.

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Monday April 7

Haven't written much since I've been here. Days are
uneventful but very pleasant. Having a great time
with Steven and Mandy. As I have very few relatives,
mom, Kate, and a cousin I haven't seen since childhood
(mom had one brother, dad was an only child) it's
fortunate that Steven is pretty special, not only by
dint of being my brother, but also because he is a
very nice man.

The days are running into each other even more than
being on the road, but I'll try to remember what I've
been up to the last few days. Heard some great jazz
on Wed: two CU student combos with a couple fine
improvisors. Got the trailer repaired: the post that
holds the Toaster up when it's unhitched was too long,
kept getting bonked on odd shaped roads. Have been
doing a lot of bike riding. Still haven't passed
anyone except the old grey-haired guy on a mountain
bike. I came close yesterday. I was catching up on
the rider in front of me when he/she turned right.

I spent today at CU. They have a weeklong "Conference
on World Affairs" with gobs of heavy hitters. Heard a
concert and history of Bossa Nova with a guitar
player, Oscar Castro-Nuevas who played with Antonio
Carlos-Jobim and Gual Gilberto in Brazil 50 years ago.
Margot Adler of NPR talked at a workshop about
whether we'd survive an attack by extraterrestrials.
Much more interesting and down to earth than it sounds
(by the way, she is a Wiccan Priestess). Also there
was Terry McNally who who wrote and produced the movie
"Earth Girls are Easy." The last workshop was about
the fight between religion and science with "The Great
Randi" from Skeptic Magazine and a gay former Jesuit
priest, now an atheist and married under
Massachussett's new law.

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Monday March 31

There are exciting things to see even in the middle of
a SUV infested city. Walking along the streets of
Boulder I came upon a store called Now and Zen. And
in the window were these high tech meditation timers.
I couldn't tell if they bonged themselves or if you
had to do it manually. But please notice that the
clock also counts seconds. Again, I'm not making this
up.

Bought a new camera and mini bow saw. Met Steven at
the business school after his classes. It's a brand
new building with giant stone columns at the entrance
and the first room inside is a 3 tiered lecture hall
with a huge sign "Pepsico Classroom". There is as yet
no "Diet Bargs Rootbeer Faculty Lounge".

It snowed last night and the weather today is
atrocious. Cold and damp. And no better forecast for
the rest of the week. The sun is out and the
mountains are beautiful. Rode the stationary bike
while watching "The Hunt for Red October".

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Sunday March30

Snow on the ground this morning. We took a trip to
the Coleman factory outlet store. So many cool
gadgets. Bought some fuel and a reflector gizmo to go
on the lantern.

Heard from Hope who was out in the boondocks of Utah
and was at Lake Powell the day after I left. I'll try
to catch up with her this summer when she's in Oregon
for two weeks.

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Saturday March 29

Woke up to a sunny day. First night in a real bed for
a couple months (ok, one hotel night, also). Made
coffee without cold fingers and rinsed the pot with
warm water for the second cup.

Went for a bike ride in the capitol of beautiful bike
riders. I smoked one old guy on a mountain bike but
otherwise I watched a lot of well shaped butts go
flying by. There were groups of 5, 10, 40 bikers,
most very intense. About half responded to a wave.
Although the altitude is only about 5000 ft I was
felling it on the hills.

Went food shopping with Steven in the afternoon and
while he and Mandy were out for dinner with friends I
pigged out on English soccer on the telly.

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Friday March 28

It wasn't too cold this morning but it was raining
and foggy. Went for coffee at George's Restaurant and
Drive-in in Walsenburg and watched two Colorado State
Policemen give a sobriety test to a pick-up driver.

Found I-25 and headed north. Just south of Colorado
Springs it started getting icy but the rotten
conditions were short lived. It stayed foggy enough
that I never saw the front range until I got to
Boulder.

Arrived at my brother's about noon.

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Thursday March 27

Woke up to frost, a warming sunrise and canada geese,
robins and redwing blackbirds. It sounded like
Vermont. Nothing was frozen so I had coffee and
watched the shadows on the mountains disappear.

The road out of Navajo State Park was thick with
Magpies, enormous birds with long black tails that
make a blue jay kind of unattractive squack. Drove to
Sand Dunes National Park outside Alamosa, CO. The
highest sand dunes in the US, mountains of sand
carried off the Rockies by rivers and blown back into
dunes by the prevailing SW winds. I climbed part way
to the top but the footing is nasty. Some hardy souls
did go all the way to the top. It was so high you
could only tell they were people because they were
moving. The wind was fierce.

Went over two passes. One, Wolf Creek, has a ski area
on top and piles of snow 10 feet deep along the road.
The Suby managed nicely in third low gear at 40 mph.

On the way into Alamosa there was a cut field of
something, with about 30 sandhill cranes, stopping on
their way north to bulk up.

An ad in an RV mag I picked up about a fancy RV park
system, "These places don't just let any coach in
through the gates. There are standards and they're
high."

Tonight I'm at Lathrop State Park in Wahsenburg, CO.
It's situated between a busy highway and a golf
course; one of the less attractive camps I've stayed
in. There's one other site occupied. The little
reservoir was full of coots, canada geese and a pair
of mergansers whose bright coloring could only mean
one thing.

It's very cold. I'm under the covers and it's only
7:00. I've packed up everything so I can just jump in
the car and find a warm diner in the morning.

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Wednesday March 26

Couldn't decide, when I packed up this morning which
way I was going to go. At the last second I decided
to turn north into Monument Valley, home of El Capitan
of "Close Encounters" fame. Very cool buttes and
mesas that stretched for miles. Now and then an
"Indian Trading Post" selling "Real Navajo Jewelry" at
"Wholesale Prices". And many little homemade roadside
stands with hand painted signs advertising the same
stuff. Passed three of four housing developments on
the reservation which must have been relocation
villages. The whole res culture is so mysterious to
me. And I have real hesitation and discomfort about
asking questions (which I have never had in
Newfoundland, for example). I feel like I used to in
the Middlebury Natural Foods Coop, imagining the
salespeople saying to themselves "what's he doing
here?" My own mischugass ("craziness" for you goyim
((gentiles)) ), of course.

Went through Mexican Hat and Bluff, CO, two little
towns on the San Juan River that are starting and
stopping places for rafting trips. There's a lot of
water in the San Juan because of the amount of snow in
the mountains and there were lots of rafts getting in
and out. I toyed with floating some of it but the
shuttle back to the starting point was a problem. I
liked the funkiness of the two towns. One had a
restaurant with a sign that said "Home of the Swinging
Steak" and no explanation or picture.

Drove through Cortez and Durango. Elevaton stayed
pretty steady at around 7000 ft. Lots of snow. The
only campground open was a state park near Ignacio,
which is also the home of an old college buddy, Hope
Vail. Hope tried to teach me to smoke and drink
scotch. Needless to say…. She and her partner lived
in Asheville, NC . after graduate school and enticed
me and Phoebe to move there. Anyway, I left a message
but haven't heard anything. Hope works for the
schools and this is spring break.

I'm camping on Navajo Lake, right on the water, no one
else in the campground. A beautiful view of the
snowcovered mountains. Had a campfire. I'm a little
worried about the temp tonight. It was 19 above in
Durango last night. It's a little lower in elevation
here.

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Monday March 24

It was very windy and cold this morning. Had my
coffee and packed up and drove into Springdale, just
outside the park. Found a laundramat and by the time
my undies were clean and dry the sun had come out and
it was another beautiful day. So I went back to the
campsite (which I'd paid for anyway) and set back up.

Took the shuttle bus to a trailhead which also
happened to be under one of the most popular rock
climbing routes. There were four teams of climbers
headed up a sheer face of rock that takes two days to
climb. There was a climber hurt and I watched a
rescue team set up ropes to get him off the cliff.
Never did get to do a hike myself. The rescue guys
said they do about 65 rescues a year and almost none
are rock climbers. Usually, a hiker who slips and
breaks a leg.

Back at the campground I chatted with a young woman
who graduated from Bowdoin two years ago and now
teaches art and outdoor skills at a private school in
Prescott, AZ and her parents; the mom is a social
worker in Waterbury, CT who works in maternity with
high risk moms. Dad teaches art at a posh CT prep
school and makes wooden kayaks. And a man with
Aspergers who has a fiberglass teardrop trailer.

I've been looking at the map and the weather and I
think I'm not going to go any further north right now.
It's very cold in Bryce and in the mountains of
Colorado. Going to head east into the Navajo-Hopi
reservation and into Southern Colorado before I turn
north toward Boulder.

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Sunday March 23

Drove from Page to Zion National Park by way of Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument. GSENM is
mostly accessible by 4-wheel vehicle. It gets it's
name from the 4 distinct geological layers in the form
of a, that's right, grand staircase, each tread being
about 25 miles wide.. Big time dinosaur remains and
lots of universities sending teams to dig. In the
more remote areas they helicopter in and out.

I'm starting to OD on beauty. Zion is another
spectacular place. Two immense canyons. You drive
down into the first, go through a tunnel into the
second. The tunnel was another CCC project, built for
the cars of the time. Some rigs are too big to go
through, and some, pay a special fee to they can go
through as a single lane while the traffic from the
other direction is stopped. The Virgin River Canyon,
where I am camped, is a very busy place. So much so
that you can't drive to the end of the canyon but have
to take a shuttle bus, and so much business that
there's a bus every 15 minutes for the 8 mile route.
The canyon is very narrow and the walls go up 500-800
feet on both sides. I biked to the end today and the
views were dangerous. In case anyone was wondering
what happened to the tops of the Appalachians, they
are outside my trailer. The eastern mountains eroded
and the dirt ended up in Canada. Then big sandstorms
blew the dirt down here (though, when this happened,
land masses were in some different places), turned
into sandstone and got eroded away again.

The campground is very much like ones I remember from
growing up. Lots of families with kids running
around, lots of tents. There's a woman with rather
large parts a couple sites down who keeps yelling
"Matthew". I don't know if Matt is a kid, a dog or a
spouse, but whoever, he keeps pissing her off.

Finished "The Worst Hard Time" about families that
lived through the Dust Bowl. I'd always thought that
the dust bowl was simply caused by drought. But it
was drought, after all the grassland had been plowed
under to grow wheat, which was encouraged by the
government. A great read. Just started "Special
Topics in Calamity Physics", by Marisha Pessl.
Fiction, stream of conciousness, made up literary
allusions, about a young woman with an eccentric
father. Very good so far.

This is my first night on daylight savings time. I'm
ready to go to sleep at my usual time of 9:30 or so
but when I wake up at 6:30 AM, this morning just in
time to see the sunrise, it will still be dark and
cold, even more so because it will take a couple hours
for the sun to peek over the canyon walls.

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Saturday March 22

Woke up to a gorgeous sunrise. I set out my coffee
making equipment last night so I wouldn't even have to
get out of the sleeping bag to make the morning cup. I
sat sipping, and watching the sun slowly light up
Gunsight Mesa. I had planned to kayak into a couple
other canyons today but in the middle of the night the
first of the easter weekend
fishers/partyers/religionists showed up. To be
followed in the morning by the invasion of the bass
boats and parade of the floating apartment buildings.
Under this onslaught, not even my well protected
illusion could survive. I turned around and headed
back to the boat ramp at Antelope Point. The placid
lake now was like the ocean in Newfoundland, the many
wakes combining to make a confused surface and one
behemoth almost swamped me.

Got back to my starting point and as I was loading up
the car, a couple from Brunswick, Maine came over to
chat. She works at LL Bean. He's a woodworker who
has moved his shop to Kaneb, Utah and they are trying
to figure out how to live together again. She's on a
6 month leave and trying to make the leap.

Treated myself to a Whopper and fries and came back to
the campground of a few days ago. There are two
Arabic speaking RV's, one German, one Korean and one I
can't make out what language they're speaking, some
slavic tongue perhaps. The young couple next door are
on spring break from Santa Clara College. He's quite
full of himself, she seems in awe but I have hopes
this week together will cure her. They've just come
from Zion and Bryce so I got some good info.

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Friday March 21

One of the things I like about kayaking is the
illusion that I'm paddling where no one has gone
before. Even in the face of jets overhead, floating
signs labeling waterfilled canyons, the occasional
speed boat and the odd floating beer can I can still
imagine that I'm the first person seeing all this
wonder. Labarynth Canyon is filled with water for
about 2 miles and makes lots of sharp turns. Most of
it isn't wide enough to turn the kayak around in and
the walls are hundreds of feet high. No one hd ever
seen this before. I got out at the end and started
walking up the dry bed. Until I heard the sound of a
motor boat. I rushed back and a film crew was getting
out to do some video taping for a web site. On the
way out I had to back up beneath and overhang to let a
party boat, skippered by a Woody Harrelson look alike
go by.

There's a hundred foot high white ring around Lake
Powell, the discoloration on the canyons' walls caused
by the water when the lake was full. The maps, all of
which were made a few years ago during high water
levels show channels which now don't exist. At the
places I camped, there are clam shells all over the
ground.

In the afternoon I paddled over to Gunsight Canyon,
much wider than Labyrinth and chose a much more
convenient site: a level area on a sandy beach,
protected from the west wind and wide open to the
morning sun from the east. The moon is just rising
and it is full, throwing sharp-edged shadows and mood
lighting the mesa on the other side of the canyon.

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Thursday March 20

Loaded up the kayak and headed out onto Lake Powell.
Just east of the boat ramp is a huge marina, full of
private houseboats and one's to rent. It's hard from
a picture to get an idea of how large some of these
macmansionboats are. Some are three stories tall.
Many have 4 matching jetboats hanging off the back and
all have a second story water slide. You can rent a
pedestrian one story houseboat for $800 to $1200 per
day. The few floating estates I saw all travelled
with an accompanying water skiing boat.

I was fortunate that there were very few people out on
the lake. The surface was very still and after a few
hours I found a sandy beach to camp on. I passed one
other kayaker, on a situpon covered in mounds of black
plastic bags, poormans' waterproof sacks.

And now for the important info. The poop bag will go
down in history as an invention rivalling poprocks,
air conditioning and power car windows. Comes
complete with TP and a hand cleaner. You squat over
it, do your thing and it all closes up slicker than a
selfsealing envelope. Inside is a special gel which
breaks down the things that need breaking down so you
can just throw it into a garbage can when you get
back.

The moon is a day from being full. I found enough wood
to have a small fire. And little dried tumbleweed
bushes almost explode when they hit the heat, cheap
fireworks. I am sleeping out under the stars, the
water lapping at the shore, the moon rising. It's all
just about perfect. I'll have to remember tomorrow to
not set my sleeping bag out on the side of a hill.

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Wednesday March 19

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise. No clouds. Just a
little cool. Drove to the Lake Powell visitor center
to get info about kayaking. There are many narrow
canyons to explore, lots of good camping spots to
paddle to but no bathrooms. You can pee anywhere but
pooping must be done in an approved container. The
high tech bags are $4 each or 5 for $15. I went with
the big buy. Apparently, the people downstream have
not been excited when the lake level rose and water
quality decreased. I'll keep you all posted on how
portaholes work. There are eight floating
bathroom/dump stations on Lake Powell but they are not
open yet.

Biked into Page. There was nothing here except Indian
land before 1954 when the government started building
the dam. The Bureau of Land Reclamation traded the
Navajos some land in Utah for the area that is now
Page. There were 8000 people here until the dam was
finished in 1963 and then the population dropped to
almost nil. Now the village is mostly tourist
industry and the only good sized town on the north end
of the Navajo reservation.

In the afternoon I took a tour of the Glen Canyon dam,
Pretty cool. Enormous beyond words. The lake is
down over 100 below maximum level, supposed to rise up
to 40 feet in the spring with the great snow cover in
the Rockies. But there were displays at the visitor
center about how much lower the lake would need to
fall before they could no longer generate electricity.
It's not real far.

Just outside Page on the Navajo reservation is a huge
coal fired electric plant, very high tech supposedly,
fueled by coal from the reservation, that provides
lots of jobs and noncasino income for the tribe. It
looks so out of place. Four extremely tall
smokestacks and the thing plunked down on a gorgeous
mesa. A whole set of interesting tradeoffs and values
foreign to my middle class progressive,
environmentally and scenically aware upbringing.

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Tuesday March 18

It was pretty cold again when I woke up. Had a quick
cup of coffee, packed up and zipped over to Starbucks
in Camp Verde for more coffee, internet access and
warmth.

I had lunch in Pine, AZ with two of the people who run
the Workamper News web site. They happened to be in
the area and I have had some emailing with Jaime who
moderates the forums. Good conversation and lots of
pics with everyone and the Toaster.

Pine was settled in the 1870's by Mormons, who are
known for keeping excellent records and genealogies.
There are scrapbooks and histories of all the founding
families. The story is that they were sent there by
the elders in Salt Lake City to spread the word to new
areas. But I think they chose a pretty out of the
way place to practice polygamy without getting
hassled. The histories in the little museum (which is
quite good) are quite explicit about the many wives of
the first male settlers. The woman at the museum
entrance desk is a Catholic from Cleveland who said
that the Mormons still run the town. I bet there are
some great stories there.

Decided to bypass the Grand Canyon as overnight temps
continue to be in the teens. Drove north out of
Flagstaff through the Navaho reservation. Beautiful
red cliffs ran along the road for 50 miles. And
little clusters of very small houses and shanties,
nice pickup trucks among junked vehicles, lots of
corrals for horses and lots of horse trailers.

The approach to Page, AZ and Lake Powell is through a
pass in the red cliffs. The first glimpse looks like
someone flooded the moon. Eerie topography and no
vegetation. I'm in a National Recreation Area
campground on the Utah side of Glen Canyon Dam. There
is a marina here filled with 2 story houseboats.
Fortunately, there is very little activity this early
in the year on the lake and I'm hoping to take a few
day kayak expedition to see some out of the way
canyons.

Stopped in Walmart to use the bathroom and most of the
shoppers were Native Americans.

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Monday March 17

It was very cold when I woke up this morning. None of
the snow had melted overnight. I turned the heater
back on before I got out of the trailer and enjoyed a
half hour of warmth. While making my coffee I saw 5
pairs of great blue herons nesting in a huge tree
above the park. I don't know how they managed with
all the snow but they seemed quite active. I couldn't
tell if there were babies.

I packed up and headed down the mountain. The five
miles between Sedona and Oak Creek on Rt 179 has,
perhaps, one of the 5 best pieces of scenery in the
US. The red rock peaks are beyond description. Then
I got into Oak Creek, a Sedona wannabe and the beauty
of the last 10 minutes was shattered like a thrown
wine glass.

On to Montezuma National Monument which has nothing
whatsoever to do with Montezuma. It's a 4 story
apartment complex built into a cave in the side of a
cliff by the Sinagua in about the year 1000 and is
amazingly well preserved. The area was abandoned in
about 1400 and no one knows why or where the Sinagua
went. The Hopis have some oral history of absorbing
them into the tribe but there is no other evidence.

I drove through Camp Verde and into Coconino National
Forest and the Clear Creek Campground. This whole
area is part of the Yavupi-Apache Reservation and
there is a casino in Camp Verde. I took a quick walk
through it. Mostly slot machines. The new technology
allows one to play the slots without using cash. You
get a kind of casino credit card that you wear on an
elastic leash around your neck and insert into the
machine. Some people have two or three cards and seem
to be connected to the slots like patients in an
intensive care ward.

It's a cool clear night. The moon is about half full.
There's an enormous sycamore tree that's been cut
down and the largest parts of the trunk are lying next
to my camp site. I peeled some punky layers of wood
off them and had my first campfire in a couple weeks.

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Sunday March 16

Tourist: I'd like to see some of the sights of Sedona.
Information Person: Where are you from?
Tourist: Philadelphia.
Information Person: Well, we don't have any cream
cheese factories here.
(Conversation I overheard at info booth)

Ah, Sedona. Gatlinburg for college graduates. Santa
Fe without Mexicans. I imagine that sometime, long
ago, the first gringos came to Sedona because it was
so beautiful, to paint, explore, whatever. But it has
turned into an obscenity. Psychic readings, crystals,
jeep tours and expensive schlock stores. Towering red
rock cliffs and mesas to which a guide will take you
to your own personal vortex, in the vernacular, that's
a particularly healthy spot on the earth's surface.
Getting down and personal with the environment while
driving an Escalade and wearing $600 crocodile skin
cowboy boots. Thankyou. I'm done now.

No. Wait. I'm not. The big controversy in Sedona is
between resident/owners of million dollar homes and
people who illegally rent their million dollar homes
to whichever riff-raff can pay the toll. The average
house price in Sedona is $600,000. Now I'm done.

I got into Sedona, elev. 5000 ft, in a driving
snowstorm. Started to drive higher up the mountain to
a national forest campground and had to turn around
because of the weather. Plunked myself down in a
little RV park in Sedona for $31 a night. Went for a
walk in town and got back to the Toaster very cold.
Drove 17 miles to a Walmart to find a heater. No go.
They've got their spring inventory on the shelves.
When I got back to the park, I discovered the trailer
across the way was from VT. Turns out the woman, Sue
Ellen and her husband live half the year in Weston and
half here. She does "body work" in both places.
Barbara Miles in Bristol was one of her bridesmaids.
(I was going to move into Barbara's apt. had I stayed
in VT.) And even better, Sue Ellen had a little
ceramic heater which she has loaned me for the night
and I am warm as can be now.

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Saturday March 15

It was a little chillier than I've gotten used to this
morning. Put on hat and gloves for the first time in
a couple weeks. But by 9:00 it was nice and warm.
Sat through an hour long sales pitch by a very
pleasant guy. Nothing I'm interested in but not a bad
price to pay for two nights stay.

Drove to Jerome, AZ, an old copper mining town that
flourished at the turn of the 19th-20th century, died
in the 1950's and was brought back to life by
hippie-entrepreneurs to the point that you can't find
parking on a Saturday afternoon. Art galleries, cafes
and shlock shops. The town reminded me of mountain
villages in Tuscany with narrow streets built up the
side of cliffs. You can see for 50 miles from
anyplace in town and there is a great little museum
that devotes a significant amount of space to
prostitution during the mining heyday. One of the
perks of working for the mining company was a weekly
visit to a brothel.

Spent the evening with the couple camping next door.
He rolled up yesterday with a chromed out Yamaha
cruiser pulling a little trailer and she came later on
with a car. His trailer opened into a tent bigger
than the toaster, complete with double bed, table and
lamp and all off the ground supported by a spider web
of aluminum tubes. They were married for a few years
in the late 60's, got divorced and went separate ways
for 24 years having 3 children apiece, got divorced
and found each other again in 1995. Have been together
again ever since.

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Friday March 14

Packed up this morning and started north. A very
strong wind from the west. Went through Phoenix, very
smoggy, huge traffic. Just north of Phoenix the road
starts to climb and the rise goes on for 25 miles.
From low desert to Saguaro cacti to scrub Pines. The
car really labored for the first time and the wind was
whipping the kayak back and forth.

I'm now near Cottonwood, AZ in a big time RV park with
a social director and heated pool. They have a stay
two nights for free deal trying to sell a membership,
like a time-share come-on. The mountains have the
same coloration as the Grand Canyon and there's a fast
flowing river just below my campsite. Saw a gila
woodpecker on my walk down to the water. Walking into
the "family center" felt like going into Porter
Nursing Home, except not as many wheelchairs, though a
number of little electric scooters like George rode on
Seinfeld. And the campground is very quiet. Tomorrow
morning I have to attend a sales presentation

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Thursday March 13

Tucson has a public park just for model airplane
flyers. I rode out there this morning to watch an
international vintage model competition. All men in
their later years, a physician who comes from Brasil
every year, a team from Japan. Every plane flies the
same pattern for 8 minutes while judges score. The
fliers stands in the middle of a paved circle and
controls the plane with two wires. The plane goes
around and around and around. Fun to watch for about
20 minutes.

Came home did some food shopping and cooking. Made
some great guacamole. Was going to go to the U to
hear the last jazz concert but ended up staying here,
doing laundry and getting ready to leave tomorrow.

Talked with my next door neighbor, a very nice guy,
older, with a pig tail who works at a call center that
subcontracts for Verizon. They are supposed to
average 400 seconds per call and the whole thing is
computer monitored so each worker can see each day how
they are doing. Chatty customer service people don't
last long. He's done this work for 20 years.

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