The Trip
Many people do the traveling thing right out of college. However, I actually think it's better to wait and do it after working for several years. First, having the funds to do it "right" really enhances the experience. You are able to save more while working than you can in college. Second, traveling is not taken for granted. You appreciate not having to squeeze everything into two weeks of vacation time. Third, you can fully maximize the experience if you can travel while you are still able to participate in the physical activities required to see and learn about the environment. Many of the things I'm doing or participating in are physically strenuous. The majority of people I see out here are retired and quite frankly are unable to do some events. For instance, in order to get to the boat tour dock at Crater Lake you had to be able to hike up a 1.1 mile steep incline. The return trip was the equivalent of walking up 75 floors. Clearly everyone has different goals, priorities, and interests. I'm just saying for me and what I like to do, the timing couldn't have been any better.
The Car
I've got to say that the Vette has been fantastic. I've had zero problems (knock on wood) and it's been extremely comfortable. I've been averaging 24mpg (it went up after I was done with the speeding stunts) and it's been running a minimum of 5 hours a day 90% of which has been with the air conditioning on. Honestly, being in this car has been a real highlight. It's more than just being at the destinations, it is getting there that has been a big part of the fun. I see so many people in SUV's, mini vans, mobile homes, or pulling campers and I just don't know if they know what they are missing. Clearly it's a matter of personal interest. However, if you ever do something like this and can't squeeze into a sports car, sell the SUV and get yourself a sports sedan. Its soooo much fun!!!!
Satellite Radio
Just before the trip I had Sirius Satellite Radio installed in the car. Boy I'm glad I did. Having it has really made those long drives fly by. With sixty music stations, all commercial free and forty news, comedy, even a Broadway station, the trip seems shorter. This is CD quality sound and you can hold the same station all the way across the country. After twenty-four days of being on the road I have yet to listen to any of my CD's.
Mental Fitness
Some people said that you really lose your mental fitness when you don't go to work for an extended period of time. I was actually really worried about getting more stupid (joke mom) while being away from work. However, what I've found is that exactly the opposite has happened. I actually feel like I'm sharpening my intellect through figuring out the logistics each day so that I can use my time optimally. It's really been great mental exercise. Plus I've found that the more I learn about something the more I want to learn. It's like you can't get enough once you start. I find that I have tons of questions for the Rangers. I line up activities for myself almost back to back to learn as much as possible before leaving an area. It has been very satisfying and extremely exciting anticipating what I'll learn next. I've got to say it's almost exhausting. There literally is zero down time. I find myself looking forward to Santa Barbara as a time to leave the bags unpacked and just relax. Saying that, I can't believe I've been able to go flat out for twenty-four days straight. It's funny because things in general have been going very well and there have been no major incidents with which to deal. I'm almost hoping that things don't go according to plan for the whole trip. It's actually fun to deal with a problem or change
a game plan on the fly. Chances are very high that something unplanned and significantly out of the ordinary will happen. I wonder what it will be...
People
In the beginning I focused most of my attention on learning about the particular attraction I was visiting. However, I find now that I pay just as much attention to the people around me as I do to the places themselves. It's really been amazing to watch people and how they react differently to various issues. I guess that can happen when you are not trying to get as much as possible in before your two weeks is over and you go back to work. People have almost been as fascinating as the places. Some people worry about so many things that are out of their control. For example, some guy was complaining to a lodge front desk person about the smoke in Yellowstone. He kept complaining and complaining and I stood there and just listened to him. I wondered if he was even listening to himself. What was this 19 year-old kid behind the desk going to do about smoke from 10,000 burning acres of land from a fire that's been burning for a month? Such wasted effort. Sometimes people just don't think and they stress themselves because of it. Life really is too short.
The White Man
If I could sum up the most common theme in all the things I've seen so far I can honestly say, boy did we really screw stuff up. The whole conquer the west philosophy really shows how destructive we were and quite frankly still are. Not more than 150 years ago we stole land from the Indians, drove several species to extinction, and several more to the brink. We think we are smart, and at the time we think we are doing the right things. For example, in Glacier the rafting guide told a story of how NPS scientists in the 40's tried to increase the amount of a particular type of native fish in the local waterways. In the lab they experimented with a particular shrimp as a food source for the fish. It appeared that the fish loved the shrimp in the lab. So they introduced this shrimp into the waterways. Well it turns out that in the wild the fish didn't like the shrimp, however, the shrimp did like the natural food source for the fish. In a matter of a few short years the shrimp eliminated the natural food source and this particular fish they wanted to increase in numbers was wiped out.
Touring the Crazy Horse museums really tells the story about our interaction with the Indians. Today we are still paying for what we did to the land in the late 1800's. After all these tours and reading the history of many of these places you realize that the Native Indians had it right. They lived in balance with nature: not taking more than they needed, not abusing the planet. Then we came along. At Mt. Rainier there was a section of a tree cut and tilted up with dated plaques on various ring lines. The tree started to grow in the year 1250. From the center the dated plaques would reference significant historic events. I was standing there reading all these plaques when a teenage hiker next to me said, "And then we came and destroyed it." He was pointing to the outer most plaque that referenced the name of a logging company that cut the tree down in 1965. We all chucked for a minute but then I realized that the theme at all these places was our destruction of things that lived in balance for hundreds of years before we came along. Don't get me wrong, I like the conveniences that life offers us today and I, maybe more than most, use them. I'm just saying in a way it's sad to see first hand what we've done in such a short time.
Earth
Being at Yellowstone was a real eye-opener. Right before your very eyes you can see the earth changing. And it's not stopping, and there is nothing we can do about it. Your sense of time becomes so distorted. You realize a human lifetime is nothing. You realize that 80-100 years is not even a speck on earth's timeline. You are viewing things that were created 600,000 years ago. You are touching rock that is 2.2 billion years old. You look at 14,000 foot mountain peaks that were once at the bottom of the ocean. I mean it really baffles the mind to see what time can do. And then you realize it's not stopping. The earth will continually reinvent itself and it will determine what type of life will go forward. You stand on or in volcanoes that are due to erupt soon, give or take 10,000 years. And when they do erupt all of North America will be in darkness for months and months. Millions of lives both animal and human will be wiped out. At Glacier you see the result of what has happened, but at Yellowstone, you actually see it happening.
Evolution
Again, the most amazing things happen over time. Evolution works over thousands of years to make plants and animals better able to survive. As odd as it sounds, the evolution of trees fascinated me most. To see how they actually adapted to deal with one major event: fire. While it may take 200,000 - 600,000 years in some places for a large scale fire to engulf the forest, it is a certainty and it seems that the trees know it and are prepared for it. Some trees, like Lodgepole, seed and grow quickly after a fire. Other trees, like Lurch, grow very thick bark and don't have any low limbs. So when a fire does come through they survive and are able to seed the newly cleared ground with more of their kind. It's odd because you will see in a grove of thousands of Cedar trees or Hemlocks one lonely Lurch growing thick and tall just waiting for the fire to come through and clear the land. Other trees have seed cones that don't open until temperatures exceed 120 degrees (in other words the seeding process is triggered by fire). Anyway, trees just struck me as such a clear illustration of evolution and how various species learn to adapt in order to survive. Again, the concept of time is just hard to grasp. To think that a tree has a seeding mechanism built in that will wait for hundreds of years before an event occurs that will trigger it is incomprehensible. Ironically, as more than 80 wild fires burn across the country you realize how important fire is for a healthy forest or prairie. Even more so you realize how long fire has been an issue for these environments, given they specifically evolved to deal with it. |
