Posts Tagged "blog"

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” ~Henry Ford We left the Worland RV Park (only for the day, trailer in-tow) to get back to the repair shop and let them fix a part of the wiring system that was isolated when the wires got ripped out. Len left me at the local McDonald’s which seemed to have the most reliable (free) WiFi in the area. I worked while surreptitiously watching the locals come in and razz one another and shoot the breeze. The woman behind the counter came out with a carafe of coffee and refilled their to-go cups—definitely not your usual McDonald’s atmosphere. It was much more like a small-town café. For the next three hours I got caught up on blog posts, did a little r.kv.r.y. work, and a bit of computer tidying up of the kind that becomes necessary when you’ve been offline for days and barely online for weeks. I’m still feeling really behind in terms of work responsibilities. Fortunately, I have very patient clients, patient literary journal contributors, a patient writing group, and a patient agent. At about noon, Len returned and I went back with him to the repair shop but they were off for lunch, so we opened the galley (chuckwagon!) and I made sandwiches while we waited for them to return. The issue continued for three hours this time as now four—count ‘em—FOUR expert mechanic shops have tried to diagnose this brake issue to no avail. These guys even gave Len a thermometer gun to register the actual amount the brakes were overheating (a good thing, actually, proof that they were HOT). After a couple miles of driving, he clocked the left brake at 101 degrees and the right one at 200. When you’re facing an unsolved/unresolved issue like this—especially one that involves safety—it runs constantly in the back of your brain, distracting you from the duties and pleasures of the moment. It’s like a computer that gets hung up on some process—CPU all being funneled to a program running in the background that may or may not be a destructive virus. We would like to do a reset, please. Ctrl Alt Delete. At around 3pm, Wyoming showed us her WILD side. Hellacious winds kicked up so that we couldn’t even see the road in places for the storm of dust accompanied by lightning, thunder, hail, and finally buckets of rain. Through it all the wind howled, with (we later learned) gusts of up to 80mph. When it started, it was 83 degrees out. A half an hour later, is was 57...

“A poem of the right shape will hold a thousand truths. But it doesn’t say any of them.” ~Ursula K. Le Guin (A quote in memory of my friend the exquisite poet Susan Laughter Meyers, who I just learned died suddenly last week.) We took our time leaving Grave Spring. Made more cowboy coffee, had breakfast, took some pictures, checked the trailer brakes (and readjusted them) then headed out. We had seen The Loud Family leave by way of the route we planned and since they were pulling two huge trailers, we assumed that the road would be easier in that direction than it had been coming in. Boy, was that assumption ever wrong. We had to go between 5 and 10 miles per hour because the dirt road out was uneven, rocky, washed out, and rutted. The trailer held up like a champ but it took three hours to go about 25 miles. At one point, I got out and walked beside the Jeep because it was so frustrating. (And in case you were wondering, my current meditation pack is on Restlessness, so yes, I am probably on the right pack. One of the ideas I keep returning to is that the spaciousness of the mind is so vast that we can’t comprehend it, so we need to let go the idea that a restless mind is something to fight. We all have restless minds. It’s the human condition. Learning to accept the restlessness and refocus when it interferes, that is the real goal.) When we reached Ten Sleep, Wyoming—so named by the Native tribes that marked it as halfway (Ten Sleeps) between Casper and their summer hunting grounds—we got gas (Yes! We made it on the gas we had.) and there discovered that somewhere along the the 4-wheel-drive road, the electrical connector for the trailer had gotten ripped out and then caught on something else and ripped off the end and then when we reached hardtop, dragged along the highway. It looked like it had been through a shredder and we knew that needed addressing immediately, so instead of heading to Medicine Lodge as we had intended, we searched for a repair place and found The Tractor Guys in Worland, Wyoming. Like everyone else we have pulled in and begged to assess our issues, they were extremely willing, generous, and helpful. They let us leave the trailer and we went for lunch with just the Jeep. We found a Mexican restaurant that was neither very Mexican, nor much of a restaurant and ate, then returned to the shop. I sat in the car and tried for more...

“I’m dirty, sunburned, dried out, smelly, sweaty, covered in pine tree pollen, and it’s better than I’ve felt in a long time.” ~Len, sitting by the fire at Grave Spring Campsite. For breakfast we enjoyed a pour-over made with Arbuckle’s Ariosa Coffee, apparently a revival of the coffee brand that settled the west and a favorite of cowboys in the 1880s (or, you know, we bought into the tourist ruse that it was cowboy coffee and paid three dollars for a small packet—ka-ching!). The sample pack came from Lou Taubert’s Western Wear shop in Casper where Len also found a pair of jeans in a style that he’s been searching for for ages. As I mentioned yesterday, this Grave Spring campsite proved so fine (and the drive in here so rough) we decided to stay another day rather than drive to Doyle Creek, another Bureau of Land Management (BLM*) site that had been on our schedule. This is the smart part of travel—when you can be flexible enough to stay at a primo spot (especially when they’re first-come-first-serve) and enjoy it to the fullest rather than just pick and move because you thought six months ago that would be the right decision. So we settled in for the day and planned a hike. Much to our unbounded joy, the Loud Family began to pack up as if to leave, making our decision to stay another night even sweeter. Then they proceeded to take another loud ATV ride, shoot off a shotgun several times, run a chainsaw, and start up a very loud gas generator and run it for about 45 minutes. Our joy diminished. There are definitely two philosophies to camping (and any number of shades in between), but the extremes run something like this. The Loud Family Philosophy: Conquer the campsite! Make it as much like home as possible. Bring all the gadgets and amenities you can carry, including a TV and radio, a generator, a 22-gauge shotgun, and a chainsaw. Bring a fifty-gallon drum of water lashed to the back of your camper. Occupy every inch of space allotted to you. Erect structures and spread out to fill them. Bring multiple vehicles, if possible, especially an ATV so you can roar around the countryside many times a day. Burn everything in the fire pit, even things that do not burn like plastic bottles, tin cans, and a horrifying plastic stand-alone sticky fly-catcher thing. The Pratt-Akers Family Philosophy: Ease into your campsite quietly. Create as little impact as possible as you back in, unlock your doors, and raise the lid on the galley (setup complete!). Enjoy the views...

“It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong.” Yvon Chouinard I think I forgot to mention that last night was a hotel stay—with actual, real Internet. We got caught up on grooming, washed clothes, I finished several blog posts and scheduled them to publish since I knew we’d be back out of Internet range in the Bighorns for another couple days. The hotel was nice, but when I went out to the trailer to get something I’d forgotten I felt like I wanted to sleep there, instead. Very strange. Plus, it’s tough to break the rhythm of where you keep things and how you access them. You have to remember to grab everything you’ll need for the hotel from the trailer. I was also wishing I had brought in my pillow, but was too lazy at bedtime to go back out and get it. We left the hotel at 10am, after Len futzed with the trailer brakes more to address some additional squeaking. (It appears to have worked!) We stayed in Casper for breakfast, gas, groceries, ice, and a fishing license for Len. The speed limit in most of Wyoming is 80mph. Len has gotten used to this new law, very quickly. When we hit an area that was 55mph, he said (in mock indignance), “Hey! What is this? A school zone??” Out of Casper, we took Route 20/26 to Arminto Road, then Buffalo Creek Road—a gravel, rough, dusty, washboard byway. At one of the turns, we encountered a mom and three kids with a lemonade stand. I make it a policy to never pass a lemonade stand if I’m not in a hurry, so we stopped, drank, and tipped well. It was delicious. And this was also roughly when we realized we’d forgotten to fill the other Rotopax with fuel. Most ranchers have fuel on their property, but the actual gas stations are pretty few and far between out here. We did some quick calculations and decided we were probably good to get in and back out. On the road, we met two nice Wyoming gentlemen (who apparently stop to chat whenever they meet another car on a lonely road). The first one said (by way of greeting), “You’re on an adventure!” and the second one (who stopped to wait for us a good quarter of a mile from where we were) asked, “Is this the road to Chicago?” Len answered, “Just about 3,000 miles that-a-way.” In other words, we fit right in. Have I mentioned just how much I love the Cowboy State? It’s wide, wild, and expansive. As Georgia O’Keefe said about New Mexico, “It’s a...

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” ~Confucius We Left the Red Desert Rose Campground at 8am and drove into Rawlins, back to the Huckleberry Café for breakfast where we each got a Cowboy Bowl (hash browns, sausage, egg, cheese, and gravy) and some coffee. We took Route 220 towards Casper and saw TONS of pronghorn antelope in the vast grasslands that extend as far as the eye can see along Route 220. At first, it was, “Wow! Look! A pronghorn!” But by the end of the drive we’d seen so many it was more like, “Oh. Huh. Another six pronghorn. (Yawn.)” How quickly we get used to glorious sights like the fine fellow Len captured posing in the grass, majestic mountains in the background. We visited the Trail Museum in Casper which is wonderfully interactive (a great spot to bring kids). The displays explained in-depth about four of the major westward trails: The Oregon Trail, The Pony Express Trail, The California (Gold Rush) Trail, and the Mormon Trail. I hadn’t realized that so many Mormons made the trip to Salt Lake City pulling handcarts rather than in covered wagons relying on beasts of burden like oxen, horses, or mules. That seems crazy to consider, but there were “handcart companies” that touted it as freedom from the worries of tending livestock and as a faster way to get west. The companies supplied food and water and the individual families pulled only what belongings they wanted to bring. Ironically, many ended up tossing the belongings that had seemed so essential and ended up pulling sick or dying loved ones in the carts instead (with so many people on the trail, dysentery was a big problem and could kill in as little as 24 hours). Two ill-fated handcart parties left Missouri late (in August) and encountered horrible snowstorms mid-October; many of their members froze to death. Brigham Young sent out a search party to help guide them in but they couldn’t offer assistance until the pioneers walked to Devil’s Pass where a supply wagon had extra food. In the history of the Latter Day Saints, these people who died were raised up as martyrs to the cause, instead of gullible pioneers (hoodwinked by profiteering guides) who foolishly left too late in the season, perhaps trusting that God would look after them on their journey. I’ve always had a problem with people of faith that give over entire control of every aspect, every decision. I understand there are times when that is the correct impulse—let go and let God—we can’t control everything, after all, but it also seems...