As we crossed over the Hood River Bridge into Washington, it reminded me of the first time I did it in 1996 on the backseat of a motorcycle. I captured that event in the following short essay.

Finding Religion on the Road

It was a brilliant Sunday morning in August, and we were heading north to Seattle on Route 141, looking forward to a stop at Mt. St. Helen’s along the way. We’d camped out along the Columbia River the night before at The Dalles and had just breakfasted at a motorcyclist’s diner in Hood River before crossing the bridge over the Columbia River Gorge into Washington. The strong breeze we’d felt wandering up and down State Street in Hood River looking for a restaurant should have given me some inkling of what we were about to face, as well as the myriad number of wind-surfing shops. But I was naively comfortable with the many bridges I’d conquered in my short motorcycling career and no longer feared anything.

“You know, gusts can reach up to 30 mph in the Gorge,” my husband mentioned casually as we donned our helmets in the diner parking lot.

“Really?” Just like I’d learned how to lean into the curve, I’d learned to keep my body straight with his, so I figured I’d have any challenges to our upright position nailed if I just stayed in line with him.

“Not so bad by itself,” he continued, “but it’s a narrow, old bridge and the road is an open metal grate. It’s a challenge because the grooves of the grating and the treads of the tires never seem to get in line together, and I’ve got to fight to keep the bike going straight. We’ll have to take it slow, but we can’t go too slow either, or it’s even harder to control. Just sit as still as you can.” That was easy; by then I was frozen, my hard-won courage having deserted me.

The bridge itself looked innocuous. It was flat and relatively short compared to some of the monster structures we’d already tackled together. Parked at the traffic light before we began our crossing, the sound of the churning river ahead and the blustery wind were like an awesome, dissonant symphony. As we took off, a stunning scene unfolded before us as we entered the panorama of the Columbia River Gorge. I forgot all my intentions to keep my eyes shut at the spectacular sight of the Columbia River on a Sunday morning filled with hundreds of multi-colored windsurfers collected there to grab the best wind of the day. Brilliant-hued sails peppered the water, all heading swiftly in the same direction like a flock of low-flying, migrating geese. It was a spectacular regatta of every color in the rainbow, as if the river had come alive with jumping tropical fish. For a few seconds I forgot any angst over our unstable road beneath.

Then I heard a loud hiss through the intercom, and I knew it was my husband sucking in his breath, never a good sign. I sensed the wheels’ attempts to fishtail on the grating as their treads sought an elusive, comfortable groove, and I felt his muscles tighten as he controlled the hundreds of pounds of metal between our legs. By this time I was holding onto him like a bloodsucker.

“It’s better if you don’t look through the grates,” had been his last words of advice while we sat at the light, and of course the moment I remembered that, my eyes flew downward. Through the holes in the grating, the sails of the windsurfers looked like colorful specs on the roiling water below. Reality sank in. We were less than a hundred feet above a raging river that could carry us out to sea in minutes or, at its whimsy, dash us into the huge rocks on the shore, and all we had to keep us from tumbling into it was a relatively thin sheet of metal mesh that was doing its best to confuse the tires beneath us.

This called for reinforcements. It was Sunday morning after all, so I began to pray, reciting every prayer I’d ever learned as a child, some several times over before we reached the other side. It gave me an unusual sense of comfort, and I wondered why I hadn’t tried this before. With my newfound source of courage, I even grabbed another glance through the grating.

Sometimes life seems to smack you in the face with a brick saying this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience—relish it! I did. And as we wandered up the north side of the Columbia River after our treacherous crossing, passing the hundreds of cars parked along the edge of the road carrying the gear of all the windsurfers, I realized that I’d experienced something that, for me at least, was nearly as reckless as the brave wind-borne souls taking their chances in the river below. And survived. Life doesn’t get better than that.

Trees spread over mountainsides like toothpicks spilled from a box. Half-blasted mountain top, still raw from explosive force. A mountaintop viewpoint with Spirit Lake on one side, so covered with fallen trees you can’t see the water, and Mt. St. Helens standing battered but not completely broken on the opposite side. These are my memories from 17 years ago when I first saw Mt. St. Helens.

Yesterday, 33 years after the blast, the land is less raw than when I saw it first. The toothpick piles of trees are still there, but the land surrounding it is now covered with green. Not many trees, but plenty of shrubs and ground cover. Spirit Lake has nearly doubled in size, and the water is now visible, with only the northern end of the lake covered with wood. As it is a National Monument, there has been no clearing of the fallen timber, and some of it looks ready to fall on the road. The road itself is in terrible shape, with plenty of head-to-ceiling bumps to keep you awake. It was easy to say “I’ll never do this again” until you reach the top viewpoint. Then you realize you’re seeing something unique and special.

Trees like toothpicks

Spirit Lake

To the top of the viewpoint of Mt. St. Helens

Fires are to be expected out West, where lighting and wind set off enough to keep firefighters busy all summer. Add the human factor, and it quickly becomes unmanageable. So it wasn’t a big surprise, but it was a huge disappointment, that the day we’d scheduled our trip to Crater Lake was also a day when forest fires had broken out west of the park several days before. Even though they were now contained, the remainder of their smoke was hovering over the water of Crater Lake, captured by the caldera that made it very difficult for it to dissipate.

I’d been to Crater Lake about fifty years ago when I was a teenager, and I saw it then in my own self-induced haze of dramamine druggedness, so I was looking forward very much to a clear view of the deep blue water contrasting the crisp greenness of the surrounding forests. Every photo you see of Crater Lake shouts of this reality. Instead, we were greeted with a mystical view of ghosts of trees on Wizard Island that rose in the middle of the crater, an after-thought eruption, now a volcano within a volcano. Shadowy speedboats zipped through the water like water-striders moving in and out of the low-hanging clouds of smoke. It was a unique and rather satisfying experience.

I’ll have to return one more time to see the Crater Lake of my fantasies. There was a saving grace to the day, however. Earlier in the day, we had stopped at Burnley Falls and happened to catch it at one of the rare times of day when the sun was on the waterfalls. They are some of the loveliest falls I’ve ever seen, tumbling at several places along a tall cliff sprinkled with greenery in a haphazard manner. It was one of those sights we weren’t even aware of and couldn’t have planned for, but an encouraging nudge from a general store clerk spurred us to explore. It was a treasure of a find.

Burnley Falls

Well, more a semi-boondoggle day. It started with us getting lost just north of San Francisco. A GPS has an unusual mindset sometimes, and that morning ours firmly believed that side streets with speed bumps were a more direct route north than I-80. Our destination was Lassen Volcanic National Park. But once we successfully found I-80 we failed to take a right turn where we needed to and were on the wrong road, then discovered our error, retraced our steps only to learn that the right road was closed 47 miles ahead (just a few miles before the park), so the wrong road we’d taken was actually the right road. All this added a good hour to our trip.

We finally arrived at Lassen Volcanic around 4pm, and it turned out to be a lovely time to drive the tour road through the park. The park was fairly empty, and the light was good for photographing the peak and the surrounding lakes. Lassen Volcanic is still an active volcano, as it’s been less than 100 years since it erupted. The road, another masterwork of switchbacks to rival Rocky Mountain, climbs through the park to reach 8,512 feet and then slowly descends to about 6,000 feet at Lake Manzanita where we camped. We especially enjoyed a stop at Emerald Lake, a glacial lake that was isolated when the glacier receded. Algae at the bottom of the lake give it a deep greenish-blue color. The lake was stocked with rainbow trout many years ago which they are trying to remove, as they feed on the tadpoles of a rare native species of frog.

You can’t travel anywhere in the West without being faced with man’s intervention with nature in the form of dammed rivers, mining operations, land-clearing for crops or asphalt parking lots for large shopping centers, or air filled with smoke from man-made forest fires or factories. In some cases, it is arguably progress. But when you visit the national and state parks and see their pleas to save the bears, the trees, the frogs, to not interfere with the wild animals or the land that holds precious fossils, or to protect the rivers and their inhabitants, you have to wonder at what we’ve already done to this Earth and what the real long term effects will be. It’s chilling to look at a place like Yosemite and realize that there were once powerful men who only saw it as a rich resource of raw materials for industry or commerce. Fortunately it has been preserved for us by the federal government, but how much else of our incredible country is at risk? How much can we afford to sacrifice to progress?

It was a perfect day for sailing–blustering, fits of sun breaking through, cool enough for fleece or even parka. We joined the hundreds (not thousands) of people at the Americas Cup Pavilion on the Embarcadero to check out the two sailboats in today’s race: the New Zealand boat sponsored by Fly Emirates and the Italian boat sponsored by Prada. True to American marketing practices, the sponsors names shout from the sails, readable without binoculars even when far from shore.

Thus far, the Americas Cup has been somewhat of a non-event in San Francisco, generating fewer crowds, jobs and revenue than hoped for. But it’s early. July and August are qualifying races. The big event is in September, so the participation and revenue stream should improve.

San Francisco Bay is the perfect place for racing, with the stiff and steady breezes creating the kind of wind that can send a sailboat with the right equipment shooting through the water up to 45 knots (like 50 mph.) These boats are equipped with the latest technology in sailing gear that make them worth millions. They’re big enough to require a crew of 16 who they look like high-tech Spider-Me n as they scramble all over the boat when it’s in flight.

And they do fly! At full speed, they rise out of the water, only attached to the water by a thin hydrofoil; see the picture below.

As we were traveling with an Italian, we were rooting for the Prada, but unfortunately it was having a bad day and trailed the Emirates by several miles to the finish line. That didn’t stop us from at least celebrating afterwards with fish we bought from the most remarkable market I’ve ever seen. The New May Wah Market is a classic Asian market where fish eyeballs stare at you from the all the fish piled on mounds of ice, where crabs skitter in boxes on the ground, and sea urchins sit with their bristles drooping in death. Chicken carcasses and chicken feet were in the row with the eels and (I think) the snakes. And the rows of greens wrapped in rubber-banded stalks that filled several aisles were as green and robust as if they were still in the field. Everything was incredibly fresh.

San Francisco! Nearly three thousand miles to get here, but it’s a prize worth winning. The city is gloriously gray, overcast and foggy, a lovely relief from the 100 degree plus weather we experienced coming down from Yosemite. It has its brief bouts of sunshine too, which are well-received, but there’s something refreshing in the cool crispness of the air.

Saturday was Jelly Belly day–an opportunity to tour the factory that creates these remarkable nuggets of unusual flavors. They specialize in the unusual: chocolate pudding, cake, Dr. Pepper, spicy mango, and toasted marshmallow being some of the more socially acceptable. Less so are flavors that mimic earwax, rotten eggs, Tabasco, toothpaste and grass clippings. And they’re always willing to accept suggestions for new flavors, so send them on.

Our guide was super-enthusiastic about telling us about all the steps required to create a Jelly Belly–it takes 21 days from start to finish–and I was amazed to learn each one worthy of carrying the Jelly Belly name goes through 3 filtering and inspection steps to assure they’re the right size, shape and color before the name gets stamped on each one. I never realized this before as I was too occupied with eating them.

And of course, the gift shop at the end of the tour will sell you anything made of or commemorating Jelly Bellies. Even their rejects, which they sell as Belly Flops.

Awesome is a word that’s been overworked in recent years, but somehow no other word works as well with Yosemite. Stunning, spectacular, incredible could also be used, but none of those capture the overwhelming impact of such natural and diverse beauty concentrated in one national park.

Yosemite has it all: towering stone cliffs, waterfalls that tumble thousands of feet, rivers that wander through beautiful forests that invite picnicking, and hiking trails that take you as far as you want to go into the parks hidden treasures. The park itself is huge, large enough that, even when filled with tourists during one of the busiest months of the year, it still has enough space that you never feel crowded. Indeed, the large number of pulloffs taking in all the vistas are invitations to pause and enjoy.

Visiting the park was special to me because the last time I was here was with my family as an almost-teenager. In the distant reaches of my memory, I can hear my father’s voice saying the names of what we were seeing with that crisp, enthusiastic tone that told me this was some special. Tioga Pass, El Capitan, Bridal Veil Falls–these were all sights I can recall the immense pleasure he took in sharing with us. Seeing them again a good 50 years later brought back a lot of those memories, and they’re still as special today.

Below is a slideshow with just a few of today’s special moments.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Our 7th day on the road was spent viewing more iterations of dry, dusty, scrubby land which varied from flat as a pancake for twenty miles in front of you to brown-toned boulders piled on either side in novel arrangements. Roger and I both agreed by the time it was over that the route we took from Dinosaur, CO to Lee Vining, CA was the longest route you could do the distance with the maximum amount of desert. Why did we do it? Because we hadn’t taken that route before–often our profoundest motivation for planning our trips.

We did have a bit of excitement when out in the middle of nowhere a pickup headed our way lost a tire. That took the pickup careening off the road, throwing up a huge cloud of dust, and for a few seconds we had no idea whether a loose tire or, worse, another vehicle dodging the mishap would be meeting us. I’m here to write about it, but it was one of those life lessons that reminded us how fragile our grasp on life truly is.

Shortly before our stop for the night, we pulled over to see the site of a former wood mill just outside Lee Vining. It’s history had been captured in a beautiful kiosk that described the wood cutting, milling and shipping that took place at that site. With 4 saws and 25 men, a crew (when sober) could produce 80,000 board feet a day.

I was equally impressed with what a few local people proud of their heritage can accomplish to preserve it for the future. The woodwork and stone monuments showed great thought and high quality handwork had been put into the project.

Tomorrow we see one of the major sites we came for: Yosemite National Park, just a few miles from our campground.

Allosaurus Skull

Our sixth day on the road carried us off to the land of dinosaurs–Dinosaur, CO and the Dinosaur National Monument. For me, dinosaurs have always been something other-worldly, a fantasy that appeals mainly to young children. But in this land I could imagine these huge animals nibbling on trees, slurping river water, and wandering across the terrain. And the proof is here too. In a huge quarry hall, they have the products of their archeological digs in the nearby hills. A few examples are found in Dinosaurs.

Leaving the dinosaurs behind, we headed off into the wilderness of western Colorado, into Utah and Nevada. The terrain is spectacular, although there are many who would say its spectacularly boring. The land is dry, sometimes barren, and rugged. But there is beauty in the million shades of brown that are used to paint the myriad land formations. We’ve spent nearly three days going through varying landscapes, and they rarely replicate. Below are just a few examples of the diversity of the desert West.

And it was good to see that some of these wide open spaces are being used to harness wind power. We’ve passed several wind farms on our travels through these states.

On to California and Yosemite.

Definition of boondoggle: an inadvertent and often self-imposed blip in on otherwise well-ordered course of action, often the result of inattention, lack of knowledge, or sometimes sheer stubbornness to pick up the phone and call.

Bonney Lake State Park in Idalia, CO. It was on the map. There were signs for the campground along the road. Just 3.7 miles down a dusty, rutted, rocky road straight a 50’s Western and we’d be home for the night.  We were both convinced that we didn’t need to call because state parks always had space during a weekday.

But the lake had dried up, and the campground was abandoned. We were in the middle of country where 150 years ago justifiably angry Native Americans could have come racing on horseback over the horizon to avenge our invasion of their hunting ground. No John Wayne to come to the rescue either. Salvation came in the form of a KOA near Denver, 108 miles away. When we rolled in after 12 hours driving 535 mies, we were ready to stake a claim and stay put forever.

But of course we couldn’t do that. The following morning found us climbing the steps of the State Capitol in Denver. As in Kansas, there was heavy-duty renovation going on, the most notable part being their restoration of the covering of the outside of the dome. This requires an unusual “hat” for the capitol. See below.

One of the most notable things we saw was a remarkable quilt that had been made by the women of Colorado to commemorate the significant contributions of Colorado women in settling the state. It hangs from floor to ceiling in the Capitol in a place of honor.

On to Boulder, where the bicyclists outnumber the cars, and then to Estes Park where we had lunch before taking on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. We rode the entire route from one end of the park to the other and passed through multiple time zones of geologic activity. There are too many photos to share here, but below are a couple showing the glacial moraine, and one of the many remarkable switchbacks that I marvel anyone can do in an RV. We reached 12,200 feet where life, and the air, is rare.

For additional photos, see Rocky Mountain National Park.