Trip Report: Boise to Moab
Trip Report: Boise to Moab
We left Boise at o’dark thirty, a tradition in my family. When we moved when I was a kid, we all got up at 0400. Each kid had a pillow and blanket and a spot in the car to fall back asleep, and my dad had a few quiet dark hours of peaceful driving before the requests for bathrooms started up. That’s a powerful memory for me, sitting in the back of a moving car, all warm and snuggled in to the pillow, hearing the wheels on the highway, and sometimes my mother’s voice, very quiet. It always smelled like coffee, and there was a rustle of the maps as my mom folded them to the right quadrant.
I didn’t realize until I wrote that how much my own roaming around in a pickup truck mimics those old trips. The kid always brings his pillow and a blanket- a nice wool Pendleton camping blanket that we keep in the truck, and he sleeps while I drive in the dark and drink coffee and think about things.
Oddly enough, I had a hard time finding a map. Maybe they’re falling by the wayside like paper books. I ended up having to print directions from Mapquest, but they were really easy the first leg- get on the interstate going east, and drive for 305 miles. Hard to take a wrong turning with those directions.
Just outside of Boise we saw a shooting star, which I took to be a good omen. We’ve only seen one other shooting star in our travels, on the road down in Texas from Alpine to Big Bend. This was a little one, but I was happy to see it. We drove across the Snake River in Pleasant Valley, and the fog hung heavy and wet just above the water. The Snake is a wide, flat, muddy slow river in this part of the state. Just outside of Bliss, Idaho, the sun started to rise, and the sky was so many colors that we don’t have names for in English I amused myself trying to think up colors. But by the time I had identified a particular dark orange red as the color of a winter squash called a Keri, the colors had changed to something else.
I saw a bison standing in a corral in the middle of an RV park. He was standing very still, and breathing very slowly, in a way that struck me as ominous. Like he was plotting something. I don’t know if I’d be able to rest easy inside the thin aluminum walls of a camper if I could hear the thick, raspy breath of a two-ton bison outside the window.
We stopped in Albion, Idaho to get gas, and there were a couple of horse trailers parked next to the road. The horses were out of the trailers, and there were six or seven cowboys with them, wearing barn coats and Stetsons and boots, drinking coffee and standing with the horses. It struck me that they were all standing around not speaking. Just resting against their horses, drinking coffee and thinking about the morning. By the time we got out of the bathrooms, they were up in the saddles and riding off, still not speaking. This is why I secretly desire to be a cowboy- for the quiet, and the ability to climb on a horse and ride away in the early morning. But for now a pickup truck will have to do me.
I’m listening to country music on the radio, and it occurs to me all the songs about cowboys riding away and leaving are about the restless hearts of boys. Why do girls never get to ride away? In truth, I’ve done my fair share of roaming around because I couldn’t stand to stay any longer. I dig through the CDs until I find Bonnie Raitt. The Dixie Chicks. Thank goodness I’m not the only girl with a restless heart.
When we cross into Utah, the landscape starts to look a little tidier. The wildness seeps away in the politeness of the Utah road signs. “Drowsy Drivers Exit NOW!” Idaho doesn’t have any signs for pansy-ass drivers who can’t stay awake. If they did, the sign would say, “Wake Up, ASSHOLE!” Oh, well, I watch Idaho getting smaller in my rearview mirror. I never love a place as much as when I’m leaving it.
The interstate down through Salt Lake was like Limbo, for those of you who went to Catholic school. The kid spotted a ferris wheel, a roller coaster, a haunted circus, and a mini-golf establishment with a tiny Mount Rushmore at the entrance. The final hole was a golf ball hit into the Statue of Liberty. I declined to stop at any of these treats, and we eventually made it through the smoggy polluted air and back into the red rocks of wild Utah.
I kept a careful eye out for any signs of sister-wives, but only in tiny Ephraim did I see a little white house with “The second wife’s house” painted on the front in red cursive. If you had your own house, then the benefits of the whole sister-wife deal were more obvious. It would be sharing the kitchen that was the dealbreaker, not sharing the husband. Did I just say that? What the heck kind of romance writer am I?
We finally hit the mountains and the red rock country of southern Utah, with the strange hoodoos and the empty roads, and started seeing Utes and Navajo roaming around on their horses or in their pickups. My heart was singing, I’m home! I’m home! We got a hotel in pretty little Moab, and I immediately set out to roam around- then I realized I was wearing sneakers. I didn’t even have a decent pair of boots! You can’t walk around Canyonlands in sneakers. I’ve been gone too long. Albuquerque tomorrow, and start the new job. We’ll find a diner that sells fry bread and mutton stew, with peach pie for dessert.
We left Boise at o’dark thirty, a tradition in my family. When we moved when I was a kid, we all got up at 0400. Each kid had a pillow and blanket and a spot in the car to fall back asleep, and my dad had a few quiet dark hours of peaceful driving before the requests for bathrooms started up. That’s a powerful memory for me, sitting in the back of a moving car, all warm and snuggled in to the pillow, hearing the wheels on the highway, and sometimes my mother’s voice, very quiet. It always smelled like coffee, and there was a rustle of the maps as my mom folded them to the right quadrant.
I didn’t realize until I wrote that how much my own roaming around in a pickup truck mimics those old trips. The kid always brings his pillow and a blanket- a nice wool Pendleton camping blanket that we keep in the truck, and he sleeps while I drive in the dark and drink coffee and think about things.
Oddly enough, I had a hard time finding a map. Maybe they’re falling by the wayside like paper books. I ended up having to print directions from Mapquest, but they were really easy the first leg- get on the interstate going east, and drive for 305 miles. Hard to take a wrong turning with those directions.
Just outside of Boise we saw a shooting star, which I took to be a good omen. We’ve only seen one other shooting star in our travels, on the road down in Texas from Alpine to Big Bend. This was a little one, but I was happy to see it. We drove across the Snake River in Pleasant Valley, and the fog hung heavy and wet just above the water. The Snake is a wide, flat, muddy slow river in this part of the state. Just outside of Bliss, Idaho, the sun started to rise, and the sky was so many colors that we don’t have names for in English I amused myself trying to think up colors. But by the time I had identified a particular dark orange red as the color of a winter squash called a Keri, the colors had changed to something else.
I saw a bison standing in a corral in the middle of an RV park. He was standing very still, and breathing very slowly, in a way that struck me as ominous. Like he was plotting something. I don’t know if I’d be able to rest easy inside the thin aluminum walls of a camper if I could hear the thick, raspy breath of a two-ton bison outside the window.
We stopped in Albion, Idaho to get gas, and there were a couple of horse trailers parked next to the road. The horses were out of the trailers, and there were six or seven cowboys with them, wearing barn coats and Stetsons and boots, drinking coffee and standing with the horses. It struck me that they were all standing around not speaking. Just resting against their horses, drinking coffee and thinking about the morning. By the time we got out of the bathrooms, they were up in the saddles and riding off, still not speaking. This is why I secretly desire to be a cowboy- for the quiet, and the ability to climb on a horse and ride away in the early morning. But for now a pickup truck will have to do me.
I’m listening to country music on the radio, and it occurs to me all the songs about cowboys riding away and leaving are about the restless hearts of boys. Why do girls never get to ride away? In truth, I’ve done my fair share of roaming around because I couldn’t stand to stay any longer. I dig through the CDs until I find Bonnie Raitt. The Dixie Chicks. Thank goodness I’m not the only girl with a restless heart.
When we cross into Utah, the landscape starts to look a little tidier. The wildness seeps away in the politeness of the Utah road signs. “Drowsy Drivers Exit NOW!” Idaho doesn’t have any signs for pansy-ass drivers who can’t stay awake. If they did, the sign would say, “Wake Up, ASSHOLE!” Oh, well, I watch Idaho getting smaller in my rearview mirror. I never love a place as much as when I’m leaving it.
The interstate down through Salt Lake was like Limbo, for those of you who went to Catholic school. The kid spotted a ferris wheel, a roller coaster, a haunted circus, and a mini-golf establishment with a tiny Mount Rushmore at the entrance. The final hole was a golf ball hit into the Statue of Liberty. I declined to stop at any of these treats, and we eventually made it through the smoggy polluted air and back into the red rocks of wild Utah.
I kept a careful eye out for any signs of sister-wives, but only in tiny Ephraim did I see a little white house with “The second wife’s house” painted on the front in red cursive. If you had your own house, then the benefits of the whole sister-wife deal were more obvious. It would be sharing the kitchen that was the dealbreaker, not sharing the husband. Did I just say that? What the heck kind of romance writer am I?
We finally hit the mountains and the red rock country of southern Utah, with the strange hoodoos and the empty roads, and started seeing Utes and Navajo roaming around on their horses or in their pickups. My heart was singing, I’m home! I’m home! We got a hotel in pretty little Moab, and I immediately set out to roam around- then I realized I was wearing sneakers. I didn’t even have a decent pair of boots! You can’t walk around Canyonlands in sneakers. I’ve been gone too long. Albuquerque tomorrow, and start the new job. We’ll find a diner that sells fry bread and mutton stew, with peach pie for dessert.