reading

ISBN 978-1-48-355257-6

For my sons, Robby and Matt,

as time was running out

CONTENTS

Introduction

PART ONE

Seeing the West from a Bread Truck

For Better or for Worse

Fishhooks and Fathers

Brewing Tea and Friendship

Passion in a Hot Tub

Dusting Off the Ancients

Why Mothers Get Gray Hair

Smart Bears, Stupid Humans

Dear Mr. President

Doing Without, With Style

Why Fathers Get Gray Hair

Breakdown Blues

More Beer than Whitewater

The Sleeping Bag Caper

At the End of His Rope

Death Ride

Reflections

PART TWO

Canyons, Geysers, and Mountain Goats

Fewer Parks and a New Camper

Getting Settled at Grand Teton

Cascade Canyon

Hanging Canyon

Anticipating the Grand

Garnet Canyon and the Grand

The Days Dwindle Down

Paintbrush Canyon and Holly Lake

Rappels and Summits

Thermal Wonders and Redneck Mechanics

Last Days

Getting to Know Glacier

Backpacking with Bears and Mountain Goats

Back to Dixie

Looking back, and Toward the Future

PART THREE

Baptism by Whitewater

Learning the Language

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Our Nemesis—Nantahala Falls

Wetness Slipping Through Wetness

The Best Part

PART FOUR

The Accidental Missionary

The Team

The Journey

The Neighborhood

Unrefrigerated Dead Chickens and Shared Worship

Shops and Homes

New Pews and a New Stove

Stuffed Rabbits and Black Holes

Sobroso Meals and Caring Friendships

Laughter after Tears

History, Pyramids, and Shopping

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

I can’t recall a time in my adult life when I didn’t wish for more hours in a day. I remember how embarrassed I was when, years ago, my first husband told members of my Sunday school class during a breakfast social how frustrated I was every night because I had not completed all the things on my list for that day. I’m in my 70s now, and I still make daily lists. I still never have enough time to get everything on those lists done, and I still get frustrated. Retirement did not help. There is never enough time!

John and I married in 1966, a week after I graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Cleveland State University. A week later, John and I moved lock, stock, and barrel to Auburn, Ala., where he earned his master’s degree in nuclear physics at Auburn University. Our first son, Robby, was born in 1968. Matt, our second son, was born in 1970, a week before we moved from Auburn to Dothan, Ala., where John would teach physics at Wallace Junior College until he retired. In 1975 I was hired by Dothan’s weekly community newspaper as a staff writer. John and I divorced in 1985.

John is an outdoors person like me, but unlike me, his idea of outdoor fun includes putting his life at risk. The first three parts of this memoir relate our (mis)adventures in the great outdoors. When our family set out in a panel van customized into a camper on a 10-week trip to visit national parks in the West, we had no idea of the challenges, dangers, and new experiences that lay ahead. These are recorded in Part One. We didn’t know that our truck-turned-camper would refuse to climb hills in the summer heat. We didn’t know we could comfortably tolerate an eight-day backpack in Oregon wilderness. We didn’t know we would lose our boys on a Pacific beach, or that John and I would come close to killing ourselves crossing the Rockies on a motorcycle in a storm. Undeterred but wiser, we made another trip out West the following year. Those adventures are told in Part Two. My love/hate relationship with the Nantahala River while I endured whitewater canoeing lessons is recounted in Part Three.

Reliving these memories as I wrote the first three parts, I was particularly amazed by two things: The first was the food I fed my family (since I eat very health-consciously now). We ate at a lot of fast food restaurants. Many a day, the boys evidently survived on cold cereal and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Something heated up out of a can, especially stew, seemed to have been the main dish at supper if we cooked in the camper. I guess my excuse back then was that junk food was quick to prepare, a definite plus when up against time limits.

Even more shocking to me was the nonchalant way John and I left our boys on their own to fend for themselves while we pursued some activity without them. In today’s age of structured play dates and no unsupervised discovery/adventure time, our casual attitude seems close to child abuse. But back in those days, cell phones and PlayStations didn’t exist. Kids played outdoors all day out of sight of a parent. And they not only survived, they thrived. (I did, however, make our boys shake cans of pebbles when we hiked in bear country.)

The story of my mission trip to Mexico and all its nuanced relationships, an adventure I undertook on my own after my divorce, is related in Part Four.

During all the years since those trips, despite good intentions and copious journals, I never found enough time to formally organize all this raw material into a book. Time started nipping at my heels in a different way, in the form of the Grim Reaper. Maybe I did not have enough time left to get to “some day.” I started writing, editing, and compiling. My plan was to write for three hours every morning before tackling that daily list of tasks. Some days I was able to squeeze in only an hour or two. Sometimes for months at a time I had to put the project completely aside when other obligations took priority.

But ultimately, a book materialized. This book. Time, it turns out, was on my side.

PART ONE

SEEING THE WEST FROM A BREAD TRUCK

June 11 to August 20, 1980

For Better or for Worse

People get attached to their car or truck, especially if it has contributed in a significant way to their lives. They even bestow an affectionate nickname upon it. Not so for me. After spending 10 intimate weeks with our 1969 International Harvester motor home exploring the American West, I still coldly referred to it as “the truck.” My husband John, a physics professor at the local junior college, liked to tell people the motor home was converted from a walk-in bread truck, but I don’t think its past history was firmly documented anywhere.

Our choice for a vehicle boiled down to one that kept our boys, Matt. soon to be 10, and Robby, almost 12, at a distance during rambunctious periods but close enough to converse with them and share new sights as a family. Our limited budget also mattered. We looked at used vans, new vans, and all kinds of motor homes but were still undecided in March. Our June departure loomed large.

Then we got a call about an International Harvester motor home for $2500. It had 120,000 miles on it but “runs great.” We got a sneak peak at it at the local Ford dealership’s service department, where some front end work was being done.

We liked what we saw, but the call had come just before the week of spring vacation in March, when we had planned a three-day backpack at Oak Mountain State Park near Birmingham. This trip was terribly important to us. We had been accepted by the Sierra Club on an eight-day family backpacking trip in the Three Sisters Wilderness in Oregon in July, and we had never been backpacking before in our lives! We didn’t want to look like the neophytes we were.

Our first and only backpack before our Oregon excursion proved to be a rewarding family experience as well as an eye opener. We learned, for instance, the food and commissary equipment should be conveniently assembled in one pack, and the very top of a mountain, where stiff breezes and cold temperatures occur, is not the best place to pitch a tent. The sorest parts of our anatomies, to our surprise, were our fingers, bruised from working recalcitrant zippers in finger-numbing temperatures. The boys carried their 16-pound packs easily as long as we made short, frequent rest stops. We covered a total of only eight miles, but the point was we survived quite well in the wilderness for three days and two nights carrying all our gear on our backs.

Work, putting away camping gear, and general chores kept me occupied the following week. Not until Wednesday, my day off from the weekly newspaper where I worked, did I contact the owner of the motor home. By that time he had promised it to a used car lot, but the deal was not finalized and he said we could drive it that night if we wanted to. We did. In fact, we drove it a hundred miles on country roads. It handled well. The engine, which was located inside the truck between the two front seats, ran well, and we got 12 mpg. John liked its 19-foot length for maneuverability. I could picture whipping up scrambled eggs and hot oatmeal in the comfort of the motor home on near freezing mornings. Money changed hands the next day, and suddenly we were the owners of a motor home, for better or for worse.

Oh, how worse it turned out to be.

Our tribulations began with the first trip to the mechanic’s shop to get shocks and brakes replaced. The frame was so rusted that the mechanic either could not get parts loose at all or they crumbled under his tools. As I wrote the check I asked myself, What is $600 compared to the peace of mind of knowing the brakes are in tiptop shape?

I thought the interior of the truck was like a miniature house, with its four-burner stove and oven, cupboards under a small sink, refrigerator under a counter top, table, two L-shaped bench seats that turned into beds, and a toilet in a back closet. The floor and walls were upholstered in variegated orange/gold shag carpeting. But the mismatch was glaring between available storage space and the list of items we wanted to take along that filled one side of three pages of notebook paper. We decided the drastic tactic of removing some of the appliances was the only solution to creating more storage space.

The burners and oven were the first things John took out. Next went the refrigerator. Out came the gas bottle and then the heater, since it was useless without any fuel. He took out the toilet because its holding tank had a huge hole in it. Finally, John removed the 18-gallon water storage tank and the water pump, leaving the entire space empty under the front bench seat.

While John’s efforts definitely improved the amount of space available in the truck, the storage capacity of our house was being pressed. All the appliances from the motor home ended up in Robby’s bedroom, which was larger than Matt’s. It already had toys and camping gear stashed in it. By the time we added the truck paraphernalia, he had to thread a narrow path to his closet and leap the water tank to get to his bed.

We bolted an old Formica table top, after cutting it to size, to the cabinets under the stove exhaust fan to create a counter for our Coleman two-burner propane stove. This addition made the truck’s interior look halfway presentable again.

A welding shop cut off the wrought iron porch on the truck’s rear end and added a new iron bumper. The taillights had been attached to the porch. Making three trips to a camper dealership parts store to finally get the correct flush-mounted taillights was bad enough, but deciphering the wires that protruded from the truck was impossible. An auxiliary battery for accessories was located in a rear compartment. Wires from the front battery were connected to the rear one, and other wires exited from the rear battery. The colors of the wires didn’t seem to be meaningful. The wires to the right rear taillight were hidden under the plywood and shag carpeting on the interior wall. How John ever got the lights to work correctly was a miracle to me. Somehow, after several afternoons and much frustration, with one of our boys in front working brakes, lights, and turn signals as John called for them, and with a couple of wires left over, we had working taillights. The truck was street legal again.

I didn’t help our crowded timetable when I backed our 1973 Plymouth Grand Fury, inherited after the death of John’s father, past the motor home and rubbed against the back right edge of it. The whole length of the corner seam split open. A sheet metal shop bent a light strip of aluminum into the necessary angled shape, and we fastened it to the motor home successfully with pop rivets.

Our next major project was to build a flatbed trailer to carry John’s Kawasaki 200 motorcycle and sundry other items we wouldn’t need access to every day. We intended to build it from the skeleton of an old foldout camper. We had been trying to sell that camper years ago when a windstorm demolished it right in our front yard. We had a terrible time getting the wood floor off the old trailer, because the smooth carriage bolts simply turned in place. Once we had the floor off, the boys arduously filed and drilled off the rivets around the metal tire well covers so we could use the covers again.

The following Saturday we intended to drop the truck off at a radiator shop (open only until noon) and then build the new trailer. In a heavy rainstorm, I drove our Volkswagen Rabbit and John followed in the truck. After a short distance, I noticed he was no longer behind me. I went back and found the truck parked askew on an upgrade not a quarter mile from our house. It had stalled going up the hill. When John tried to back it up, he had run over a mailbox on the curb to his right, putting a gash in our brand new aluminum edge. Attaching a rearview mirror outside the passenger side was one task we had not done yet.

Two helpful men and John could not get the truck to start. Finally, one of them pulled the International behind his pickup to the top of the hill. John tried to pop the clutch, but the truck still refused to come to life. He coasted all the way back to our house and parked the truck in disgust on the front lawn. It started later that day but it never got to the radiator shop.

Hours behind schedule and with rain still pouring down, the four of us worked on the trailer under a neighbor’s carport. We worked hard the rest of that day and Sunday and the next precious weekend before the trailer was essentially completed. It lacked taillights and caulking, but the angle iron framework had been extended, plywood floorboards fastened down, fenders put in place, a track to hold the motorcycle wheels fastened to the floor, and the wood weatherproofed with polyurethane clear varnish.

Meanwhile, the truck was back in the shop. A compression test showed the cylinder pressures were too low, and John decided to have a valve job done on the worst of the two banks. He also told the mechanic to check the radiator. Its core was rotten and needed to be rebuilt. Our bill came to more than $500.

We loaded John’s motorcycle on the new trailer and left both at a canvas and leather shop, where a custom tarp was made to fit over the trailer and motorcycle. We also had a ground sheet made for each of our two tents that exactly matched their floor shapes. We had learned the hard way on a previous camping trip that if the ground sheet was larger than the tent, it acted as a basin to capture and funnel rainwater under the tent, especially if people or backpacks were depressing the floor of the tent.

More complications arose when we tried to replace the International’s rear tires and spare. The shop had trouble getting the new tires on the rims, and we had to go to a second shop to get them and the front tires trued and balanced. To add to the truck’s idiosyncrasies, the back wheels were a different size than the front pair, and neither size correlated correctly to the odometer. Consequently, during our trip the odometer showed about 85 miles for every 100 of actual travel.

Adding seatbelts up front went comparatively smoothly if the contortions were disregarded that were necessary to reach the almost inaccessible area under the platform to which the driver’s seat was bolted.

John spent one whole day working on the console panel. All the bulbs were burned out. The only good news came when he found a loose wire that, when reconnected, made the oil pressure gauge work correctly. He eventually gave up trying to fix the gas gauge.

The headlights took another whole day. When we bought the truck, the headlights lit on one beam, whether high or low was impossible to determine. We bought new lamps and a new dimmer switch, but with so many variables we could not isolate the part that wasn’t working correctly. For some reason, John’s volt-ohm meter never read the same twice from the same contacts. We discovered some of the fuses were merely rolled up pieces of aluminum foil and had to buy new ones. Finally, mostly by sheer blind luck, we got the wires sorted out and the beams working correctly.

John then decided to take the fog light off the Plymouth and put it on the front of the truck. Doing so was another battle. Part of the radiator grill had to be cut out, and the remaining ribs threatened to shake loose from the saw’s vibration. The screws for the dash switch were unnecessarily tiny, so small a man’s fingers simply could not manipulate them. The newly bought outside mirror we installed on the passenger side also proved to be poorly made. Its adjustment would not hold, and one bump meant the mirror was no longer correctly aligned for the driver.

John was not happy with the way the truck swayed when he drove it. The International shop had put on shocks designed for passenger cars because it could not determine appropriate heavy duty ones. No one could find our truck’s body style number. John went to a muffler shop and, through a process of elimination, found the correct heavy duty shocks in its catalog. The muffler shop installed them.

The time had dwindled down to a week before our scheduled Wednesday departure. Between taking the boys to a Recreation Department swim clinic in the mornings and going to Matt’s baseball games in the evenings, we kept whittling away at the list of jobs that still needed to be done on the truck.

The gas tank on the motor home held only 10 gallons, so we either had to add another tank or plan to carry extra gasoline. We were told about the owner of a garage way out in the country who built gas tanks, and we contacted him. He explained how complicated and, consequently, expensive building a gas tank correctly was. But he said he might be able to locate one that would fit under the International. He did find a 21-gallon tank, a stroke of luck for us. The Wednesday afternoon of that final countdown week we prepared to drive the truck out to his garage so the tank could be installed the following day. Imagine our discouragement when John turned the key and nothing happened. The truck would not start.

John felt sure the alternator was at fault. We lugged out our battery charger, got the truck started, and managed to deliver it to the country garage on schedule.

The owner was very competent, and the tank was installed in one day as promised. When we came for the truck late on Thursday, John asked him whether he had tried out the plumbing. “It’ll work,” the man replied, and John knew it would. The bill was $300, reasonable enough now that we understood what all was involved. At any price, a second gas tank was vastly preferable to operating on a 10-gallon capacity or hauling gas along in storage cans. The garage owner gamely charged our battery so we could drive the International back home.

Friday John took the truck to an alternator shop. After the alternator had been worked on, however, it still would not charge the battery. Unable to determine the problem, the mechanic finally cut off a mysterious second wire coming from the alternator where only one should have been. After that surgery, the alternator worked. But John was worried. That wire had been there for 120,000 miles. It must have been good for something.

The muffler on the motor home had ruptured when the IH mechanic test drove the truck after the valve job, so the next stop was back to the muffler shop to have a new exhaust system put on.

Somewhere between shuffling the truck from shop to shop, we finished the trailer by adding wires, taillights, and license plate. The wiring diagram that came with the harness proved worthless. John had a master’s degree in physics and was not inept in these matters. The colors in the directions didn’t match the colors of the actual wires, and after step three the directions talked about three wires when we were left with only two. The poor quality of the products we purchased constantly amazed and frustrated us. Since we had already wired the truck for the trailer lights, I was tremendously relieved when we plugged the harnesses together and the lights on the trailer worked correctly.

John fixed an electrical outlet in the truck that had no power. I glued the rug back on the closet wall where we had accessed the taillight and put the new porta-potti in place.

For two weeks we had worked in temperatures in the mid-90s with no rain. On the Saturday before we left, John decided he could not tolerate such temperatures on the trip. We were dipping down into Texas to visit friends before heading for the mountains. He thought we should buy a small room air conditioner for the truck. After comparing sizes, features, and prices at four stores, we bought an 8000 BTU model at Montgomery Ward.

By clearing out the back storage compartment that opened from the outside and cutting out a panel from under the back bench seat to give access to the interior, we installed the air conditioner and turned it on. It hummed and blew air. Warm air. We waited, and waited—no cool air. We looked at each other in disbelief. We had managed to buy one that didn’t work.

We barely had time to get the lemon back to the store before it closed. It had no more of that model in stock. We agreed to take the floor model. At least we knew it worked because it had been running when we’d made our choice.

For the second time we struggled to position the unwieldy air conditioner in the hole we had cut for it, flipped the switch—yes! We were actually getting cool air. Although the arrangement eliminated lowering the table to make the double bed in back if we were running the air conditioner, I figured it was worth the trouble and expense if it gave John—and the rest of us—relief from the heat.

Sunday we constructed a leg for the bed support slat because the air conditioner installation had eliminated the panel it fit into. We also thoroughly vacuumed the shag rug interior and switched batteries with the Plymouth because the Plymouth’s was brand new.

One of the last things we did was install a new door knob because we had no key to the knob that was on the door when we bought the truck. We needed a knob that key-locked on both sides, but not a supplier in Dothan had that kind in stock. We had to take our chances with one that locked by key from the outside only.

Late Monday afternoon I finally began moving in. Up to that point the truck had been scheduled to be in one shop or another, and we didn’t want to chance having our gear stolen. Actually putting supplies in the cupboards was pleasant. Doing so made a Wednesday departure seem a little more realistic. In the cool of that night, we cut aluminum squares to fit over the holes in the side of the truck where grills and vents for the removed appliances had been and riveted or screwed them in place. They were necessary to keep the rain out and the air conditioning in.

Tuesday we worked all day and into the wee hours until 1 a.m. doing jobs such as buying a bicycle rack and installing it on the back of the truck. The installation was no easy task, we discovered, because the bikes’ handlebars were meant to fit over the sloped trunk lid of a car, but the back of the truck was vertical. We arranged all our gear in the truck or on the trailer.

We took time out only to watch Matt pitch his last baseball game that evening. We were leaving town right in the middle of the baseball season, which pleased neither Matt nor his coaches. In fact, his assistant coach offered to keep Matt until the season was over and put him on a plane to meet us. But we thought our trip was more important in the long run and decided to keep the family intact.

Wednesday, Departure Day, we got up at 6 a.m. with several hours of work still ahead of us. I spent all morning emptying closet space, dresser drawers, and bathroom shelves for the young woman who was staying in our house while we were gone. I cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed the bedroom and den, and mopped the kitchen floor.

About noon I dashed to the grocery store to stock up on things like dog and cat food for our house/pet-sitter as well as food for the trip. Whom should I run into but the wife of Matt’s assistant coach. “I thought you were leaving first thing in the morning!” she said. Lady, if you only knew! I silently replied, but out loud just called back, “We’re working on it!” as I raced by her down the aisle.

One last aggravating battle with the right rearview mirror and we were ready. John’s motorcycle, the kids’ bikes, four lawn chairs, an old suitcase with the two-man tent in it, and our backpacks filled with camping gear were secure under the tarp on the trailer. John’s and my 10-speeds were on the bike carrier. Inside we had clothes under the back bed; camera gear, lots of film, sleeping bags, and our new three-man tent under the front bed; winter jackets, vests, sweaters (as ridiculous as they seemed in the 90-degree heat), water storage cans, a radio, and a small electric heater in the closet; miscellany (hair dryer, letter writing materials, clothes line, bug spray, flashlights, our only 8-track tape, Willie Nelson: Greatest Hits) stuffed in all the small upper cupboards; maps, tourist information, and the battery charger where the heater had been; our stove and food plus games and activity books for the boys under the counter; raingear and towels under a front seat; fishing tackle and poles in the compartment that housed the windshield wiper apparatus above the front windows; a few dishes above the sink; a few pots under the sink; and things such as our saw, ax, engine oil, and propane fuel in an outside-access-only compartment on the side of the truck that had held the large propane bottle.

The house was the cleanest and neatest it had been in months. I had even done my once-a-summer thorough cleaning in the boys’ bedrooms so we would not come home to such a mess. My spring garden of English peas, broccoli, Sugar Snap peas, corn, bush beans, carrots, squash, lettuce, and radishes had been eaten or frozen, the crop residue chopped and added to a newly built compost pile of scavenged leaves and grass clippings, and a deep mulch spread to discourage weeds. The garden was on its own for the summer.

We posed at the side of the International for a departure picture. Then we drove a mile to McDonald’s and had a “what did we forget?” hamburger lunch. We couldn’t think of anything. Actually, I suspect we just couldn’t think.

At 1:15 we crossed the traffic circle that ringed Dothan and, at Robby’s request, honked the horn three times. In farewell? In triumph?

We were on our way.

Fishhooks and Fathers

Our first destination was a rendezvous with my parents at Kenlake State Resort Park at Land Between the Lakes in western Kentucky. They lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and we saw them usually only twice a year, once during the summer when they drove to Alabama, and once at Christmas when we braved the snow to visit them. Because we would not be home this summer, we decided to meet at a midpoint at the very beginning of our trip. They stayed in a cottage; we were at the campground. From fishing off the little dock behind the cottages to roasting marshmallows over a campfire at our campsite, we thoroughly enjoyed the week’s visit and the leisurely pace after those hectic weeks before our departure.

One of the activities we looked forward to was fishing with Grandpa, and, although we hadn’t planned it, the day we took him fishing was Father’s Day. We rented a boat and motor for the day and tried our luck in the morning while Grandpa rested. We fished in a large cove sheltered from the wind that looked very fishy around its edges. We didn’t catch any fish, but John did hook a large turtle that had greedily swallowed his worm. The fun part was watching John, with the turtle held between his knees, try to disengage the hook while the turtle tried to bite John.

After lunch and the opening of rather token Father’s Day gifts, my dad joined John and me and our boys in the small boat, and we returned to the cove. Grandpa was just operating the motor since he did not have a fishing license, but once we were at the back of the cove quite a distance from any passing boats, he couldn’t resist putting a bobber in the water himself. The second cast he caught a nice little bluegill and then another bluegill and two drum while everyone else sat there without a nibble.

I wasn’t fishing, just enjoying looking at the scenery and watching my dad catch those fish. It was very peaceful until suddenly something struck me in the forehead quite forcibly. It was Robby’s lure, a treble hook Mepps No. 2, and it was imbedded very solidly smack dab in the center of my forehead.

The wound didn’t bleed, and after the initial shock it didn’t hurt very much. As my father hurriedly headed the boat back to civilization, I’ll have to admit I was torn between crying and laughing at the mental picture of myself with that decoration parting my bangs, its spinner tinkling against the frames of my glasses.

I was really relieved when John and my dad decided to go directly to the little dock behind the cottages rather than back to the marina. If I was lucky, there would be no people there at all, and I could get inside my parents’ cottage before anyone saw me in this ridiculous state.

Sure enough, the dock was deserted. Even though I felt like I could walk on my own, my father insisted I lean on him as we climbed the steps up the hill to their cottage.

Equipped with wire cutters and pliers from his tool box, Dad and John “operated” on me on the bed while my mother kept asking, “Don’t you think you should take her to a hospital and let a doctor do that?”

John let my father take over because, he told me afterwards, my father obviously wanted to do it himself, as though this might be the last chance for him to be “Nancy’s daddy.” The most difficult part for both of us was when he pushed the hook through my skin so the barb could be cut off. John said blood spurted when the hook was then withdrawn, but pressure stopped the bleeding. A little Bactine, a bandage, and I was good as new.

The incident was nothing but a memory now. The puncture wound didn’t even leave a scar on my forehead. I remembered my dad’s concern and competency much more than any discomfort, and a closer feeling existed between us when we parted at the end of the week. The accident had made Father’s Day more meaningful for both of us than any gift could have, no matter how sincerely given.

As we got back on the road at the end of that week and pointed the truck toward Texas, I couldn’t help but wonder—we had already had a major crisis and we weren’t even west of the Mississippi yet! What would the rest of the summer hold?

Brewing Tea and Friendship

We were headed to Texas to visit John and Marcy in Granbury. Until they moved six years ago, they had lived two houses down from us in Dothan. Marcy had been my best friend, the kind I could drop in on unannounced and neither of us worried about how her hair looked or how clean the house was.

Along the way, John and I were learning how to be more efficient campers. John concluded our sleeping preparations were unnecessarily time consuming. The chief culprit was the many cushions we had to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle every time we converted the bench seats to beds. He stored all the pillows that were not necessary for the beds, and put our sleeping bags within easy reach in the closet. After our first cooked breakfast inside the truck on a rainy morning kept us from getting on the road until 10:45, we decided no more cooked breakfasts or dish washing on mornings we were trying to make some mileage. After a stop at a mall, we put together a separate bag of bathroom toiletries for John and the boys, having learned that sharing deodorant or a comb was difficult when we were in separate campground bathrooms. We bought a spare bottle of propane because we had learned how expensive one was at an isolated campground store, and we bought John a twin-size sheet for those nights when his sleeping bag was too hot to use as a cover.

The first time I drove, I thought I was doing pretty well until John told me the rear end was all over the road. After that I felt panicky every time the truck started to rock, and I didn’t enjoy driving, but John didn’t want me to drive much anyway.

We wanted to see the Mississippi River, but when we arrived at some bluffs overlooking the river, we were so disappointed. Steep eroded banks cut down to the edge of the wide, muddy Mississippi. Trees with their roots washed bare clung to the exposed sides of the banks, and weathered tree trunks lay sun baked on the narrow mud beach. A boat launch ramp was littered with smelly fish heads. We could say we had seen the Mississippi, but nothing made us want to stay longer.

We reached the Texas border and Texarkana, and we headed toward Dallas and Ft. Worth. Texas was hot, and the scenery had definitely changed. The land was flat, and the trees were gone. I called Marcy from the pay phone at the Dairy Queen where we ate supper. She sounded completely unfamiliar. Perhaps I should have expected that after six years. I wondered whether our visit was going to be full of awkward silences. None of us slept well in the muggy truck that night until a rainstorm cooled the air.

More rain was coming down hard when we left the next morning. We had not gone one exit on the interstate before we were caught in the backed-up traffic behind a two-truck accident. Our best intentions to leave earlier and make better time came to naught. Once we were past the bottleneck and up to speed again, the shag rug developed a soggy spot. Gradually the entire floor became soaked. A hole under the truck must have been catching rain thrown up from the pavement. We spread towels on the rug.

The sky cleared in a couple hours. The Texas scenery conveyed the feeling of unlimited space. Did Texas seem big because we were conditioned to expect that? Or did the wide vistas devoid of confining trees generate that impression?

Every so often we passed a working windmill, probably pumping water into cattle troughs. A dead armadillo lay on the side of the road. Much of the grass in the fields was parched and brown. The highway cut through grayish-white rock, showing hardly any topsoil. The sky was a wide expanse of blue with a few fluffy white clouds.

We successfully followed John’s directions from Ft. Worth to their three-acre homestead near Granbury. John was at work when we arrived, but Marcy welcomed us and kept up a constant conversation that set everyone at ease. Her seven-year-old, Christy, was not shy and was soon chasing Robby and Matt around the yard. They also had a toddler, Janey.

After a glass of delicious sun-brewed tea, Marcy showed us around their little homestead. They had two calves, one to breed and one to slaughter, two small pigs destined for the freezer, about 30 chickens of assorted breeds, a German shepherd, and a strange-acting Siamese cat that had never been quite the same, Marcy explained, since it was submerged in the dog’s flea dip.

I contemplated the long rows of rough cedar posts John had set by hand and marveled at this couple’s ambition and perseverance. We walked down the rows of their huge garden, which must have covered a quarter acre. They battled weather, weeds, and insects. Johnson grass, which grew from the tiniest bit of root and spread by subsoil runners, pushed its roots right through their potatoes. Grasshoppers flew up with every step we took. We discovered an odd fellow in her garden—our first horned lizard. He looked fearsome but was as easy to handle as our Alabama toads. Other critters Marcy and John had to deal with included rattlesnakes, copperheads, tarantulas, black widow spiders, scorpions, and jack rabbits. Despite their efforts to keep jack rabbits out of their garden, they had found a nest of babies in the pea vines. Consequently, Christy had two tiny rabbits, Thumper and Frisky, as pets in the laundry room. They were adorable.

We ducked back into the air-conditioned house for some relief from the heat. John and I spread out our atlas on Marcy’s dining room table and reconsidered the places we planned to visit. One would think, with our trip barely started and most of the summer still ahead of us, our time schedule could be rather informal. But we were experiencing a vague feeling of anxiety about fitting in everything we wanted to do. Time was already tapping us on the shoulder. Much as we hated to tie ourselves to a schedule, we rationed our days between now and the time we had to be in Oregon for our Sierra Club backpacking trip. We felt better having down on paper the number of days we could spend at each destination without jeopardizing our arrival in Eugene. Our biggest fear was that the truck would break down and we would miss the backpack departure rendezvous.

After a supper of Texas chili, unique in that Texans use no tomatoes in their chili, we went to the Brazos River where Christy and our boys waded in the knee-deep water. We must have brought them good fortune, because later a lightning storm was accompanied by a downpour, their first rain in seven weeks. Marcy’s husband taught our boys to play chess while Marcy and I talked. She couldn’t have been more sincere when she declared she and John had finally found a place where they wanted to put down roots. The reason was certainly not the weather, she said, or the critters. They liked the good people here, and the excellent schools. I was happy she had found a place to call home but sad that such a needed friend should live so far away.

How good it felt to sleep in a bed! Christy woke the boys early, eager to play. They could have killed her. After a leisurely breakfast of eggs from Marcy’s chickens and bacon, we took pictures of the kids and repacked the truck, which had dried out. Marcy sent us off with a gallon of solar tea and a big hug.

We set up at a campground between Dallas and Ft. Worth in 97-degree heat and spent 12 hours the next day at Six Flags Over Texas before heading for New Mexico. Tickets cost $9.95 a person and entitled the ticketholder to ride anything in the park. Because I had become so carsick at the beginning of our trip, I didn’t want to ride anything that might upset my stomach. But my reluctance didn’t slow down John and the boys. They rode the double upside-down loop Shock Wave rollercoaster and the more traditional Judge Roy Scream rollercoaster several times as well as other rides. Robby sat for a cartoon drawing of himself. It showed him missing a soccer ball kick and landing on his rear end. We watched the porpoise show, the Chevy movie, and the Follies. By 10 p.m. even the kids were ready to leave.

Back on the road the next day, we began to see oil wells in the fields bordering the road. John had the truck lubricated in Wichita Falls while the boys and I ate lunch at the Holiday Inn. In Chillicothe we stopped at a Dairy Queen to cool the engine and ourselves. A call home assured us all was going smoothly in Dothan. We bought gas here for $1.06, the cheapest of the entire trip. But we wished we hadn’t because after several miles the engine began to cough. John had to switch quickly to the small gas tank to keep the engine from dying.

What John thought was bad gas was actually our first occurrence of vapor lock. We didn’t correctly diagnose the problem for a long time. The fuel line was getting so hot that the gas evaporated before it reached the carburetor, or maybe even before it reached the fuel pump. The thermometer in our truck registered 103 that day, so the phenomenon was certainly understandable. But we weren’t familiar with the problem, so we didn’t recognize it. At the next truck stop, John filled the small gas tank and put some methyl alcohol in the large tank. He thought water was mixed in with the cheap gas we had bought.

The landscape was changing. Now the sweep of the arid flatlands was broken occasionally by raised plateaus. We crossed the nearly dry Red River, and the soil was red, just like in Alabama.

I was ready to stop by 8:30 that evening, but John said he had the bit in his teeth and insisted on driving into the night to make up time and take advantage of the coolness. About ten o’clock he made a pit stop at a Dairy Queen in Claud. With visions of a nice campground fading fast, I washed my face and brushed my teeth in the DQ bathroom. We hit Amarillo about 11 p.m. We had used almost half the tank of “bad” gas and were thankful the engine was now running fine. Actually, it was running normally because the temperature had dropped. At midnight I gave up my feeble attempt to keep John company and crawled into my sleeping bag.

Passion in a Hot Tub

The steady rumble of a semi parked next to us with its engine running woke me shortly after 6 a.m. John had stopped for the night at a rest area just over the border into New Mexico. I still felt disgruntled by yesterday’s late driving, but breakfast at Denny’s and a chance to wash my face restored my good spirits.

We decided to climb one of the mesas that had become part of the landscape. We picked out a likely looking one close to the highway and parked the truck on the berm of the interstate. Wearing hiking boots, hats, and sunglasses and carrying two emergency kits, our cameras, the small day pack, and some root beer in a plastic water bottle, we eased through the barbed wire fence about 9:30.

Although it was rocky, the hill was climbable and very picturesque, with weathered snags presenting many photographic possibilities. Multi-branched, pink flowering cacti were our first native Western cacti seen up close. After two rest stops, we scrambled onto the flat top of the plateau. We didn’t realize how far we had climbed until we looked down at the truck, which was just a small dot below.

Both boys were breaking in new boots, and Robby changed into tennis shoes we had brought in the day pack because he was getting a blister. Then he stumbled over a flat-growing, hard-to-see cactus, and two spines punctured his big toe right through his shoe and sock. John managed to get one out, but the other broke off and its removal had to wait until we returned to the truck. Robby put his boots back on for safety, but the pain from pressure on the spine in his toe caused some tears on the way down. We did drink the root beer that had become hot and flat, but we were glad to get back to the truck and a cool drink about 11:45.

As we got under way again, we felt pleased with our spontaneous side trip. We hoped many such unplanned experiences would enrich our unstructured vacation. However, drab reality always tempered our pleasure. The highs of peak experiences could not be maintained. We had our share of those moments, but the majority of our trip was spent on that mundane but necessary level of maintenance that included driving, housekeeping, cataloging film so I knew later where and when pictures were taken, and worrying about the truck.

The engine was missing again.

The large gas tank had been emptied of “bad” gas and refilled at an Exxon station, so we knew the gas was not at fault. We used gas from the large tank when we could and switched to the small tank when the engine sputtered. John began to suspect temperature had something to do with the problem.

The boys had discovered an idiosyncrasy of the truck that kept them entertained during the boredom of driving through desert. The truck had two large flat panes of glass for its windshield. The pane on the driver’s side was angled so at times it reflected a large square of blinding light into the oncoming lane. The boys would watch that patch of light as it moved from the interstate pavement up the hood of an approaching car and finally into the eyes of the driver. They would then rate the driver’s reaction on a scale of 1 to 10.

We chose Santa Fe over Albuquerque on the spur of the moment as we turned off I-40. We ended up falling in love with this city of 47,000 and stayed in the vicinity for three-and-a-half days.

Perhaps its architecture was what made Santa Fe so immediately attractive to us. The style was different from anything we had ever encountered. Everything in the city, from gas stations to the multi-storied Best Western motel, was built in the traditional adobe style. The colors were warm, earthy red-browns and tans. I think the lack of sharp corners was why the adobe architecture appealed to me so much. Like a snow-covered landscape, everything was smooth and rounded. We learned later that, to preserve Santa Fe’s character, building codes prohibited any other type of construction within city limits.

During our first stroll around downtown Santa Fe to search for a supper spot, we noticed that bikes, skates, and even skateboards were common forms of transportation. Youngsters wearing shoe skates wove very casually in and out of traffic. Teenage boys skillfully maneuvered their skateboards around and around the fountain in the open plaza. Santa Fe was also obviously an artist colony. Hundreds of art galleries were scattered all over town. The open square at the center of town, which was the termination point of the famous Santa Fe Trail, was surrounded by interesting shops. We finally found a moderately priced sandwich shop.

Here we discovered an important—at least to one’s gastronomic health—cultural difference between the South and the West. John ordered chili on his meatball sandwich, expecting the usual ground-meat-in-tomato-sauce concoction we were accustomed to. Instead, the sandwich came heaped with a sauce made from hot green chili peppers. We learned our lesson. The following evening we dined at a Mexican restaurant, and John asked what the sauce came on. The waitress replied, “Everything.” We asked for it in a side dish.

We had our choice of camping eight miles north of Santa Fe in the Santa Fe National Forest, elevation 8500 feet, at either a state campground ($3 a night) or a national forest campground ($2 a night). Since neither had showers, we opted for the cheaper one. This was the first undeveloped campground of our trip, with pit toilets, no hot water, and only centralized cold water. We hadn’t seen trees for many a mile, and now we were in the midst of Douglas and silver firs, limber pine, and our first quaking aspen with their silver bark and rustling leaves that turned a beautiful yellow in the fall. Being surrounded by trees again almost made up for the lack of showers. The forest smelled wonderful, and its coolness was delicious after the Texas heat. When we got out our marshmallows to enjoy with our first night’s campfire, we found the Texan temperatures had melted them together.

We loved Santa Fe, except for trying to find a parking space for our monster truck within a reasonable walking distance of downtown. Our first full day in town, the boys discovered The Empire Strikes Back was at the local movie theater, and they begged to see it. So John and the boys went to the movie while I shopped. Many of Santa Fe’s streets were lined by large cottonwood trees, and their “cotton” blew in the air, swirled in little eddies on the sidewalks, and drifted into the open shop doors. After the movie, we dropped the boys and their bikes at the square where they entertained themselves while John and I washed and dried our dirty clothes at a laundromat. After supper, we stocked up on groceries at a large supermarket.

The next morning we prepared to do a practice hike with fully loaded backpacks. We spread all our backpacking equipment on a tarp, and each of us packed his own pack exactly as we expected to carry it on our Sierra Club backpack trip. We even dug out our wool clothes. The boys’ packs each weighed 15 pounds, mine was 25 pounds, and John’s weighed more than our little 25-pound fish scale could measure. As we hoisted them on our backs, we wondered where we were going to put, and how we would manage to carry, the 12 pounds of community gear we would each receive at the departure rendezvous.

As I had found on my morning jog the day before, the available trails only went up. Our trail made switchbacks up the mountainside, and we got winded rapidly in the high elevation and rested often. We had just strapped on our packs after a rest stop when Matt announced he was getting a blister on his heel. We had to take our packs off again to apply moleskin and give him liner socks. This curious sequence happened several times throughout the summer. Why the kids didn’t ask for help at the beginning of a rest stop instead of after we had again shouldered our packs remained a mystery.

After lunch, we practiced setting up our new tent on a slope because no level spots were to be found. We put up our Sierra Designs Octadome in fifteen minutes and got it down and packed in nine minutes. Not bad for only the second time.