John Rachal's Blog

DAY 71, July 31, Wednesday

I have begun reading one of the John Muir collections I picked up in the Tetons. The  reader insistent on functional, just-the-facts-ma’am nouns, pronouns, and verbs will not likely care for his lush, bountiful assortment of adjectives and adverbs cavorting with and adorning all those nouns and verbs. He paints with words, sometimes neologisms, like “arrowy” conveying straightness. His imagery splatters the page. It’s gorgeous, brilliant, and sometimes overwhelming. But it is pure experience—what he sees, hears, smells, feels, sometimes even tastes—all translated into impassioned language fully able to make an attentive reader almost see, hear, smell, and feel what he does, though at one remove. Possibly we can experience a thing fully—joy, passion, love, hatred, ecstasy—without being able to express the experience in language. I’m not entirely sure. But in his case, at least, expressing it in his word pictures allows him to experience it twice, once in the moment and again in reflection.

We powered on, stopping to smell only one rose. We have been driving along the general route of the Oregon Trail, and there is a state historic site in Guernsey where the wagon ruts cut right through the sandstone. First it was gold seekers, then Mormons escaping the religious intolerance that hounded them, then homesteaders, all over about 40 years. Pulling wagons through these plains, over rock formations, abandoning their former lives: pure guts, grit, endurance, and strength. Seeing the actual ditch their wagons cut through stone, even sandstone, reminded me of what Hannibal is alleged to have said crossing the Alps to attack Rome: We will either find a way, or make one.

We spent the night in Kearney, Nebraska after about a 400 mile day. Appropriately for the Nebraska Cornhuskers, lots of corn fields ran along the highway and beyond, crop dusters zooming in low.

DAY 72, August 1, Thursday

Our longest day in the saddle, 587 miles, through the plains of Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. My Mama taught me that if you can’t say anything nice about Oklahoma, then don’t say anything at all.

We spent the night in a KOA in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, about 600 miles from home. It’s too hot to boondock, though the generator would provide a few hours of comfort, and there are few places to do so anyway. So we need electric hook-up for our penultimate night.

DAY 73, August 2, Friday

We lingered a little in the morning, not leaving another KOA until after 10:30, planning to drive around 350 to 400. Our house-cleaning fellow would come tomorrow morning before we arrived, and there was no reason to grind out another 600 mile day anyway.

Most of the day we were in Arkansas, and there were several roses we could have smelled, including Ft. Smith and the Clinton Library in Little Rock. But history is everywhere, and we did smell one last rose, or at least got a whiff of it, almost at our final destination, Poverty Point State Park in northeast Louisiana. Once thought to be the oldest native American mounds in North America, they are now the second oldest, dating back to around 1700 BC, at least three centuries before the Trojan War, perhaps nine before Homer and Moses, and a thousand years before Rome. I have all of my adult life been somehow mesmerized by the idea that Thing X took place on or near the very place where I am standing Y years or centuries ago. I’m really big on ruins, as Val will painfully verify.

Anyway, we called the little Visitors Center at the site of the primary mounds, but they would close at least an hour before we could get there. Too bad about that late start. Nevertheless, as we drove down the little two lane road to our park, I saw a sign for the site six miles down another little two lane road, and down it we went. The gates were closed, but in the distance between some trees I could see part of a large mound with steps going up part of it. This time of day, around 6, the sun was lowering and the place seemed pleasantly lonely, with only an occasional car or pickup truck on the road. I managed to turn around and we proceeded on to our state park, only a little farther.

The park was extremely pleasant, though admittedly this time of day appeals to me considerably, thus heightening my positive impression. Being our last night of the trip, we took a few pictures of the camper, trying to capture the clouds of a setting sun. I took the dogs for a long walk and discovered the Marsden Mounds within the park. These mounds are a little younger, and it is not exactly easy to determine what you are looking at. The largest is apparently more square than round, about 150 feet by 150 feet, and rising almost imperceptibly only a few feet. The trees have been removed and the grass mowed. But if you didn’t know what you were seeing, you would probably be no more impressed than Leo and Lucy, who loped through the eight-inch grass with smiles on their faces. Walking out, I saw an owl at the edge of the wood, but regrettably had no binoculars and could not identify him. Back at camp, I got a fair shot of a rising sliver of moon.

There was a certain strangeness since it was our last night, but also anticipation. We are both ready for home.

DAY 74, August 3, Saturday

We had only 171 miles to go. We crossed the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, headed to Jackson, and then down to Hattiesburg, arriving around 2 pm. Total mileage for the trip was 12,856 miles, with an average of 15.8 mpg, though probably at least 600 of the miles were without the trailer. The comparatively good gas mileage was also due to almost never getting above 66 mph, even on the interstate, when the limit might be 80.

The inevitable question I knew we would be asked was What did you like most? For me any single answer tends to oversimplify. I liked seeing Denali from different points on the ground, and I am certainly glad that I did the little piper cub plane ride in the Denali range, though I wish I had upgraded from the most popular flight to the one that actually circled the mountain. I liked seeing the grizzlies in Denali National Park. I liked the familiarity of Glacier National Park, having been there many times over the last 19 years, and I also enjoyed the modest challenges of my hikes, or, as Muir would say, my tramping. I generally enjoyed writing this journal; I also generally enjoyed moving, perhaps a bit more than Val, on the more lonely roads. I liked the company of my wife, and I would have missed our dogs profoundly had they not been along. I very much enjoyed chatting with other people, hearing their adventures, and getting a sense of where we, or at least I, fit on the nomad scale. For an armchair adventurer like me, one who has never climbed a Mt. Ranier (as my friend Kelly has), much less a Denali or a Kilimanjaro; who has never ridden a bicycle across the continent; who has never swum the Hellespont; who has never run with the bulls in Pamplona; who has never sailed the Atlantic; who has never trekked the Sahara by camel—this was a pretty good adventure.