Our Long & Winding Road

Rali and I are sitting in the dark inside our toasty little Turtle listening to rain fall on the roof - and on the fire we attempted in the pit just outside - while we drink Bud Light Lime, nibble on Dot’s Homestyle Honey Mustard Seasoned Pretzel Twists, and contemplate our dinner of Noodles & Beef, which we’ll make by boiling water on our JetBoil, stirring it into the pouch of dried food bits, & waiting 15 minutes as it rehydrates. There’s no internet connection now, so I’m writing this in Notes to transfer later. We spent the last two nights at Cascade Locks outside of Portland, OR.   Beautiful spot surrounded by state parks with lots of waterfalls.   We’ll include some picks from our hike yesterday.   Last night we met Rali’s friend Tori for dinner at The Sports Bra.   No typo there.   We hadn’t heard about this place, but it’s gotten some national press attention.   The place plays only women’s sports on its TV’s and serves beers made by female brewers.   The walls are cove

A meteor only 140 ft across blasted a hole as deep as a 60-story building is high and 3/4's of a mile wide.  The meteor was something like 93% iron - wicked heavy! - and almost completely disintegrated as it tore through the atmosphere and then struck the earth at 26,000 mph.  The impact threw 175 million tons of limestone and sandstone over a mile away.  Pretty cool. Meteor Crater was not on our to-do/to-see list the day we saw it, but signs on the road lured us toward this as a must-see roadside attraction.  It was a bit expensive ($25/person), and yet it was indeed cool to see and learn about the largest and best-preserved impact crater on earth and to know that the entrance fees collected support continued research.

Rali: When I was in sixth grade I wrote a paper about the Petrified Forrest. I have been secretly wishing to go there ever since.  Today was my lucky day! Several people we have met on our travels have told us that the Petrified Forest isn't worth it, so my hopes weren't very high. I knew that the trees don't stand on end like a forest. I also knew that the vast expanses that we have been traveling through would likely be in the Petrified Forest as well and the rockified trees would be far apart, and they were. Since we had been traveling through the Painted Desert for days and I knew that, in 1932, 53,000 acres of the Painted Desert were added to the Petrified Desert before it was made a national park in 1962 (by  President Dwight D. Eisenhower), I suspected that much of our time in the Petrified Forest national park would include time in the Painted Desert, and I was right. I knew that all the colors in the mountains were from different minerals and how much oxidation hap

Rali's BFF Susan once said that she wanted to marry the wind.  The other day, Rali expressed that she, if I didn't mind her being polygamous, would like to marry a specific mountain we passed in UT.  Over the last few days, I have been considering marrying the Painted Desert.   One of our guidebooks describes it as having "subtle beauty", which seems like a bit of a back-handed compliment, but it's actually spot on.  It's calming in its expansive footprint, its muted beautiful colors, and its changing terrain.  If only there were more water in the places where water has obviously been . . . with all these beds dry I find myself experiencing a low-grade anxiety.  This despite knowing that I am in a desert, after all (!), and that the myriad signs of water are proof that it will indeed come.  I hope you'll enjoy some of these pics.   FYI, Rali's deep childhood interest in geology and my emerging adult interest in visual, vertical, physical history are PS