Today is the longest drive. Initially we were racing west to Reno from Yellowstone so we could play gigs Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but the ineffable complexity of tour scheduling inevitably took its toll and now it’s more about hanging with friends and not paying for another hotel. However, with 4 hours left out of a 12+ hour drive that logic is going to feel thin until we’re actually collapsing into bed.
But you can’t argue with the scenery.
The mountains of western Idaho, fading into Nevada, are truly spectacular. The drive at times gave us almost endless rolling fields bounded on all sides by distant sawtooth mountains, or sudden fields of old black lava dropping away into gargantuan river chasms. Fields of inexplicable boulders that look like alien worlds hours south of where NASA had deemed it alien enough to train for the moon landing.
Slowly the light has drained out of the landscape, mists rising from hidden creek beds mingling with dusty rooster tails kicked up by distant trucks on dirt roads. The last two nights we’ve had crystal clear skies, perfect for stargazing, but clouds have steadily encroached today making the glaring sunshine bearable, and the westward race has become a prismatic, layered painting rather than a viciously painful glare. As I’m writing this the light is slowly draining away and I guess the clouds are still a positive, collapsing the sky into blackness instead of a distracting, sparkling expanse.
I’m a little disappointed, but it’s probably going to be an easier drive without me trying to hang my head out the window like a happy dawg.
The past two days in Yellowstone were powerful. Entering the park with squalls of rain and low-hanging clouds gave us a completely different version of Yellowstone than when we’d had last time we were there, so even familiar sights were lit with a different, ethereal, silver light. It gave us a different kind of adventure, and we got to watch a truly unique sunset with red shafts of light creeping out of the sky almost parallel to the horizon.
But the people. The people were EVERYWHERE. And by the second day, with the sun burning away the last of the clouds and saturating every corner of the park, the people were inescapable. Crowds of tourists (i know I’m one too) and the occasional influencer (I guess I’m one of those TOO, though I didn’t block all traffic on a narrow gangway through one of the most popular features in the park so that I could change into something slinky…) and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people were swarming like locusts. Crowded into the eating establishments and eating and crowded outside the vault toilets and shitting. It felt so circular and horrific.
I’m not a hiker, so I didn’t hunt solitude effectively, but even the entrances and exits to long trails seemed to be crowded. Every epic sight was a battle past people getting the perfect selfie. Elbows and hands and flash-for-the-camera smiles. I’m not saying we didn’t take any selfies… but I DID feel like we were the only people who took a lot of photos WITHOUT ourselves in them.
People complaining about people, complaining about money, about the lodging, about the food.
Me and Kristen found quiet corners and less traveled moments, crowded roadways gave way to hidden lanes. It was a beautiful trip, but I hope we can keep it viable going forward?
One of the more dramatic moments of today’s drive was the sudden reappearance of the Snake River in a truly epic gorge, and if there’s anyone who thinks Yellowstone could exist without the protection of the National Park Service, they need to go visit the Site where Evel Knievel tried to cross the Snake River on a rocket bike… because the canyon is, if anything, MORE spectacular than the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and we’ve built the most generic of strip malls right to the drop off, built pay stations for viewing OVER the drop off, a golf course IN the canyon and draped the whole thing with the biggest American flag I’ve ever seen.
Eating and shitting. And building exclusive golf courses. That’s exactly what Yellowstone would look like.
Or maybe it’s 9pm PST, my body thinks it’s 11 or midnight, and we still have two hours to go.
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