Our road trip has finally come to an end. We have done a little over 6000 miles in seven weeks, and in a couple of days we will be driving the last forty miles from Boulder to Denver airport and our flight home.
In the last seven weeks our lives took on a new pattern. Driving into endless small towns looking for the motel, diner, visitors centre, supermarket, bookshop or just the junction with the next highway. Making tea and porridge using a coffee percolator. Watching the seemingly infinite yellow line that runs down the centre of the two lane black top disappear beneath the front wheels of our car. What next to play on the iPod? Countless conversations with friendly strangers. Flicking through the TV channels desperately trying to find something to watch that isn’t an advert. Plotting routes on maps and googling for information. Filling our water container for the next desert leg. Tracking up trails, eating our packed lunch and gazing at stunning natural beauty. The non-stop click of my camera. Tiring, demanding but wonderful.
This is the biggest cliche of them all – but America really is a very big place. Seven weeks and 6000 miles and all we have done is wander around parts of of six states. There are another forty four to explore.
At the end of my last post we had just arrived in California, this is what happened after that.
Having driven 560 miles across the Nevada desert from Escalante we arrived in an area of Northern California that has a special place in our hearts, the Owens valley and Highway 395. The Sierra Nevada mountains run north south in California dividing the busy and populated western coastal side from the eastern strip which is high desert. Running down the length of the eastern Sierra Nevada is the Owens Valley and Highway 395. Isabel and I have spent a lot of time in the Owens Valley on previous trips and this time we headed for the northern end around the entrance to the Yosemite National Park.
We decided to stay in June Lake, one of the many lake filled canyons that cut into the Sierra Nevada. We booked a really nice suite in a lodge with a sitting room, kitchen and a balcony overlooking the lake although there was a glitch with our reservation which meant we had to swap suites after two days.
Isabel paddles in June Lake
As soon as we arrived in Owens Valley we felt a huge boost in our morale, it’s just so beautiful and the sun was shining in the special blue skies you only get in in the Californian high desert. We were initially tired from our long drive and spent the first day recovering and doing some shopping. By the second day we were starting to get stuck into some walks, and we started with the rather scary chair lift up the local mountains and a summit hike to a high lake, the hike was great but the lake a bit of a disappointment.
Isabel walking above June Lake
Then we hiked to Rainbow Falls and the Lower Rainbow Falls in Mammoth Lake canyon. The waterfall at Rainbow Falls is really spectacular but since a forest fire in 1992 burned off the forest cover over a big chunk of the trail the going was very hot and dusty, but the falls made it all worthwhile.
Rainbow Falls
Next we decided to visit Yosemite National Park, the oldest in America. The park is a huge area of mountainous wilderness set amongst an even vaster area of mountainous wilderness. We have been there before several times and it is a very impressive and fantastically beautiful place, its central valley has 3000 foot, almost vertical, cliffs towering above it and it has many waterfalls. The drive in to Yosemite from its eastern portal through the Tioga Pass is the most dramatic entrance to any National park I have seen, you drive many miles up and up a snaking and steeply rising road cut into the vertical face of huge cliffs.
Unfortunately this was peak tourist season (our previous visits had been towards the end of the season) and the park was packed with visitors. The National Parks try to keep most of their parks as true wilderness so they limit the number of roads and in Yosemite there is just one road that coils its way across the Sierra Nevada, in fact this road is the only road that passes across the mountains in their entire length. There are lots of nice hikes off of this road (we have done some in the past) but these were now clogged with visitors and the car parks at the trailheads were packed. It is possible to hike over several days into true wilderness but those sorts of walks are sadly beyond us.
Luckily on the way into the park and just before the entry point we had seen a signpost to somewhere called Saddlebag Lake and the ranger in the park said it was worth a visit so we backtracked out of the park and drove several miles up a dirt road to Saddlebag Lake. We were very glad we did. Unlike the park there were very few visitors and the whole place has a very peaceful feel. The lake itself is about three miles long and you can get a water taxi to the far end where there is a loop trail out amongst several glacial lakes amongst snow capped mountains. Although it was getting a bit late in the day by now we hopped onto the water taxi and did one part of the loop and we were immediately in stunningly beautiful country. We decided to come back the next day and do the whole loop.
Crossing snow in the sunshine
By two of the beautiful lakes on the Saddlebag lake trail
The next day proved to be a bit more dramatic than we expected. When we arrived for the water taxi at the head of the lake we discovered it had broken down and there was now an improvised shuttle running using smaller boats. As we waited a helicopter came over very low and flew up the valley towards the area we planned to hike. We discovered that a sixty year old experienced and fit walker had been lost since the previous day, and he had spent the night on the mountain in only a shirt and shorts. It had been cold the night before and up in these high mountains the temperature had dropped to below freezing, the thought of spending a night up here in just a shirt and shorts didn’t bear thinking about.
Isabel descends a scree slope towards Lake Helen
Isabel crosses a snow pocket above Saddlebag Lake
We crossed the lake and started our walk from the other end of the loop going in the opposite direction to the day before and as we worked our way past lakes and up into the canyon we realised that this part of the walk was considerably harder. Lots of scree slopes to traverse and the wind was stronger and colder than the day before. And all the time we could hear, and sometimes see, the rescue helicopter as it circled looking for the lost walker.
After a couple of hours we had reached the furthest point of the loop walk where the trail turns back towards Saddlebag Lake, here the trail was very rough as it went over and through boulder fields so the path was only marked by occasional stone cairns. At some point we lost track of where the trail was, there was a large snow pocket in front of us and no foot prints across it so that didn’t seem the way to go. Just then a couple of guys came along the trail and they started to look for the way forward and soon they had found a boulder path across the snow pocket and seen a cairn and they set of confidently and briskly, we followed them and soon lost sight of them. We found more stone cairns but the going got very, very rough and we found ourselves on exposed high rock and we just could not see any more track markers. The wind was very strong by this time, we could see no other people and the distant noise of the rescue helicopter only seemed to add to our sense of unease. After trying a variety of directions and routes we began to feel a bit anxious. Eventually we decided to find a sheltered spot, eat some lunch and then back track. When we got back to the last known bit of good trail we bumped into another couple of confused hikers and between us we found the real trail and eventually got around the loop and after five hours back to the boat home. God knows where the markers we had followed earlier led but it wasn’t the trail. We passed and briefly chatted with the search and rescue team hiking up the trail to look for the missing man.
Other than the bit of drama when we were briefly lost we had had a fantastic day walking through the most gorgeous landscape. Sadly just as we were leaving the lake word came through that the missing man had been found dead.
Here is a short video Isabel shot of me of me falling over whilst crossing a snow pocket during our hike above Saddlebag Lake.
Next day, our last in California, we decided to take it easy as we had to drive over a 1000 miles back to Denver over the next four days. We did some shopping and bought a much needed extra suitcase for all the books we had bought whilst travelling (we are such bookies). Then we visited the interesting ghost town of Bodie up in the mountains, the town was abandoned in the 1930s and is amazingly well preserved.
Bodie Ghost Town
One of the photographers who has inspired my attempts at landscape photography is Ansel Adams who from the 1930s pioneered landscape photography through his beautiful black and white photos, the most famous of which were shot in Yosemite. If you want to find out more about Ansel Adams and see some of his work click here and here. I decided to render some of my photos as black and white in the style of Ansel Adams, here are some of them.
Rainbow Falls
Arches National Park – Utah
Sedona – Arizona
Some dead roots in the desert
Shooting the black and white waterfall shot above required a lot of fiddly camera work involving a long exposure, a special filter, balancing the camera on a rock etc, and Isabel shot a short video of me at work showing how undignified the work of a photographer can be 
We left the Owens Valley and set off on our long haul to Denver. The first stage involved a 400 mile drive across the Nevada desert (again!) to the town of Wendover. The route took us through yet more big emptiness, at one point while Isabel dozed beside me I drove for nearly an hour without seeing another car, encountering a bend in the road or seeing any evidence of human activity in the desolate empty landscape around me. With the car’s speed controlled automatically all I had to was minutely adjust the steering wheel every so often. I felt like I was in some sort of car simulator. I was travelling at eighty miles an hour but I had no sense of speed and seemed to be doing five mph. I had spent so long in the car by this point that I felt that I was merging genetically with it to form a new life form called “carseatarse”
We broke the long drive in the town of Ely which we had passed through once before on another trip when we drove Highway 50, across another chunk of Nevada desert, the official Loneliest Highway in America, you can even apply for a certificate if you drive the whole length of it, which I did and my certificate is pinned up in my room at home. When we were on Highway 50 during our previous trip we had suddenly spotted coming towards us out of the heat haze an old fashioned horse-drawn covered wagon. It was being driven across the desert by two young hippies dressed in a cross between pioneer clothes and gypsy outfits. Before we had barely registered them we had sped past. We wandered who they were, where they were going and what their story was.
In Ely we discovered a vintage car competition and people had brought in a wonderful variety of beautifully restored old cars to show. The cars, with evocative names like Oldsmobile, Chevy Bel Air, Chevy Corvette, Impala, were so gorgeous, so perfectly curved, that I just wanted to caress them, unfortunately there was a strict no touch rule. Oh for the days when you could drive around with no seatbelts, smoking and drinking without a care on America’s big empty highways.
Some of the glorious vintage cars on show in the town of Ely
We arrived at Wendover by early evening. The town has two points of interest.The first is that it straddles the Utah Nevada border and so gambling is legal in one half of the town and that half looks like a mini Las Vegas. We wandered into one of the casinos but gambling is not our scene and the windowless interior of casinos are a sensory overload, especially after the stark simplicity of the desert, with countless coloured and flashing lights, chrome and shiny plastic surfaces, big screen video displays. We didn’t stay long.
The other claim to fame at Wendover is the Great Salt Flats, that start on the edge of town, and the Bonneville Speedway which is out on the Flats.
To get an impression of the salt flats imagine a car park bigger than London and as flat as a billiard table. Paint it brilliant white. Then wander out into the middle of it on the hottest and sunniest day you can imagine. I have never been anywhere like it.
Isabel on the astonishing Salt Flats
Much of the salt flats are firm enough to drive on and there are no speed limits or traffic controls. There is a short paved road that takes you about four miles out then a further drive across the flats gets you to the Bonneville Speedway, the place where many land speed records have been set. The day we drove out was the day of a big meet. On the edge of the flats was a vast collection of hundreds and hundreds of RV vehicles, mobile homes, caravans and tents. It looked like a big and affluent refugee camp. Further out on the flats near the speedway were thousands of people and vehicles all focussed on the same thing – driving very fast. There were old cars, ancient cars, sports cars, cars that looked like rockets, rockets that looked like cars, dune buggies, endlessly varied motorbikes, three wheeled motorbikes, microlight aircraft, vintage and custom cars of all kinds, powered skate boarders, cyclists. Like in the rest of the west people dressed in the most eccentric fashion with much facial hair, lots of ZZTop lookalikes. It was Glastonbury for the internal combustion engine. We walked and drove around for a bit before we had to leave to continue our journey east.
Some of the many vehicles out on the Salt Flats
Isabel chats to two kilt wearing cyclists (and why not!) on the Salt Flats. The guy on the left is called Phil Strong and is very proud of his Scottish ancestry, he regularly competes in Highland Games across the western states. The Kilts they are wearing are not regular kilts but are utility kilts with many pockets – Isabel wants to get me into one.
We broke our journey in the pleasant Utah town of Vernal and then pushed on the next day to our next stop at the small town of Hot Sulphur Springs in Colorado in the foothills of the Rockies, where we had a good long soak in the mineral springs. We needed it as we were now both getting really road weary.
After a night at Hot Sulphur Springs we drove the final leg of our journey back through the high pass over the Rockies, through the Rocky Mountains National Park, and into the small and very sweet town of Boulder. We are staying in Boulder for a couple of nights, partly to see the city which is very attractive, and mostly because it will take us that long to sort out and pack all the crap we have collected on the road. It doesn’t help that we are staying in an eco-hotel where you have to sort and grade all your garbage, on the other hand it does have a pool and a hot tub which is where I am off to shortly.
Then tomorrow the drive to the airport and the flight home. It will be nice to be home again but I will miss the blue skies, the bookshops and the wonderful endless highway.
