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Adventures in Road Tripping, Part One
My vacation itinerary may have been a bit too ambitious. This was not entirely unintentional-- I specifically plotted a course I had never taken before so that I could see new places. I hope to one day move to some place in that block of northwestern states, so I want to learn as much as I can about them.

Our route took us to Lake Tahoe by route 395, with a side trip to Virginia City, Nevada; then through northern Nevada to Twin Falls, Idaho. From there, north through western Montana's Bitterroot Valley to Glacier National Park on the Canadian border. South and east from Glacier to Bozeman, Montana and Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. South again to Provo, Utah, and from there to Cedar Breaks National Monument and Zion National Park. Then Las Vegas, and home.

It turned out all to be fairly exhausting. Not to say I didn't enjoy it. I love road trips.

I experienced Portable Electronics Fail, though. From the very first day my small, easy-to-carry camera stopped accepting memory cards because of a faulty sensor, so I shared

sdskuld 's camera for most of the trip. I did bring my Canon digital SLR, but it's a pain to haul around everywhere with its massive telephoto lens. As it turns out, Skuld's little overstock Kodak Z1275 was the overall best camera on the trip: higher resolution than the SLR, video, better color balance, adequate zoom and low-light capability, and surprisingly adept in-camera panorama stitching. Current cheap tech trumps five-year-old top of the line. If only we had remembered to turn off the obnoxious time stamp. It did go through batteries like a goat through kudzu, but I had brought rechargables so it wasn't much of a problem.

Next I discovered that I had forgotten the rather specialized charging cable for my hand-held GPS, so no geocaching for me.

I'll post more details as I sort and post photos on my Flickr account.

Current Mood: sleepy

Adventures in Road Tripping, Part Two
Photo support here.

We left Orange County at midnight because it was Memorial Day Weekend and we had to drive through Los Angeles; I took highway 395 up the east side of the Sierras for essentially the same reason. It was 500 miles to Lake Tahoe, and we arrived mid-morning. Despite being completely exhausted, we then proceeded to tour around the lake, and finished off with a six-mile hike from D.L. Bliss park to Emerald Bay. By the time we finished with supper and returned to our rented condo, I had literally lost the capacity for rational thought.

There is a harrowing section of highway 50 that crosses a sharp, glacially-carved ridge between Emerald Bay and Cascade Lake. The ridge top is about as wide as the two-lane road, and has no shoulder or guardrails of any kind. I couldn't help getting that yawning feeling in my diaphragm every time we drove across it.

The lake is, as everyone says, an impossible shade of blue. The surface ripples are also strangely soft, like the lava in a lava lamp.

The next day was a side trip to Virginia City, Nevada, across the Washoe Valley from the Sierras and Tahoe. I didn't expect much, a ghost town with a museum and tourist traps, but I am a big Mark Twain fan and VC is where he built his writing chops, and he has much to say about his life there in his autobiographical Roughing It. (There's also a good story about him accidentally setting a forest fire at Lake Tahoe.) It actually turned out to be a worthwhile stop. Though the economy is tourist-driven, it feels more like a bustling town that happens to have rich history oozing from its pores. Most of the old buildings on C street are still intact, including Twain's newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise. The main museum was poorly-organized, but interesting and large, and the shops had genuinely interesting stuff, from ostrich-skin boots to period coins made from local silver, to exotic candies and sodas, to fossil fish. Virginia City sits directly on top of the Comstock Lode, the largest silver strike in US History, and so many of the shops have access to the hundreds of miles of abandoned mine shafts below the city. Virginia City Jerky and BBQ serves one of the best BBQ sandwiches I have ever had. I want to go back!

Current Mood: still sleepy