Traveling Mother Earth
Traveling Mother Earth
DAY TWO: Idaho and Montana
I woke up bright and early. Apparently Idaho and Montana do not get the Howard Stern show so unfortunately I missed the show all week. Oh well. :( I hit the road and drove through Idaho. I'd been to Idaho when I was 5 years old and again at 9 years old. I barely remember it. I do know that it was Southern Idaho--like Boise, etc. I remember a lot of fields and farms. Not much else. Ick. So I was surprised at how beautiful northern Idaho turned out to be. I drove through Coeur d'Alene and headed further north where I drove through Sandpoint. I loved Sandpoint. It was beautiful. As soon as I hit the "city" limits a feeling of calm came over me. I could totally see myself living in Sandpoint. I found out later that it's a haven for artists and hippies. :)
I wish now that I spent some time in Sandpoint and at least taken some pictures!! But I was anxious to get to Montana and see Rachel! I drove through Idaho and entered Montana. I was immediately taken aback at how beautiful and clean Montana was! It was almost as if it hadn't been touched by humans. There were hardly any people or houses and I was literally the only one on the road. It was about noon. The sun was out and it was a comfortable 85-90degrees. There was a sign saying "Welcome to Montana" and "Entering Mountain Time Zone". Uh...Montana is in a different time zone? It's a strange thing to change time zones like that. Anyways. I stopped at a pull out and discovered a beautiful waterfall and river. There was a path through trees and I followed it over to take some pictures. It was an amazing sight!
I got back in the car and headed to Kalispell. I stopped a few more times to take pictures and finally arrived in Kalispell. The main street lead me right to Rachel's office so I stopped to say hi. I walked in and she saw me and we said our hellos. It was cool and strange for a moment. She looked so much older than I remember! Of course, it had been about 6 years since we saw each other I think...But after a few minutes it was like we'd just seen each other!! She gave me directions to their house in Whitefish and I drove around Kalispell a bit to check it out before heading to Whitefish. I unpacked my car and relaxed a bit until Rachel got off work. We decided it was the perfect evening to go swimming. It must have been about 95degrees. We went down to the "beach" in Whitefish and went swimming. It was so nice! Very refreshing! We spent a few hours there and then headed back to the house. I slept very well that night, I was so tired!
Day Three: Glacier National Park
The next day I got up kind of early and got ready to start my day. Rachel couldn't take that day off (Wednesday) from work so I was on my own. That was all right because I was looking forward to exploring Glacier National Park on my own. I was excited to connect with nature and perhaps experience a little private spirituality.
I drove about 20 miles from Whitefish to Glacier National Park at the West Entrance. Most of Glacier was a pristine wilderness where very little logging took place. There were spots where fires had obviously burned away acres and acres of trees and wilderness and were just starting to grow back. It was strange to see black and brown clearings free of trees but green shrubs and wildflowers beginning to grow back.
A primitive concrete road was carved through the wilderness, winding through the forests passed hidden streams, fields of colorful flowers and small waterfalls. Being that close to the mountains was truly a breathtaking experience. Suddenly my life and everything around me seemed very small and insignificant. At the same time there was a very claustrophic feeling. I pulled over and parked my car and went for a walk through the woods on a man-made cedar boardwalk. I took tons of pictures of a babbling brook next to me as I hiked. The flowers in Glacier were gorgeous. The lilies were tiny yellow blooms, the wildflowers with curling petals and graceful skirts around stamens heavy with yellow pollen. There were carpets of lush green grass with red paintbrush, fireweed, rich purple huckleberries, lavender and tons of other flowers I couldn't recognize. I got back in my car and continued the tour.
I started to ascend the mountain. Surrounding me were rolling hills of electric green, deep meadows painted with wildflowers and glowing rivers. The Going to the Sun Road is famous. I was apprehensive about exploring it to begin with. I'm deathly afraid of heights and thought I would explore the rest of the park before that! But unbeknownst to me, I was already ON the Going to the Sun Road! There was no turning back now. So I put on some music, the celtic crooners Karan Casey and Susan McKeown, and turned off my air condition. I opened all the windows of my car and enjoyed the nice breeze. The road was terrifying and gorgeous all at the same time. The road was VERY narrow, carved out of the side of the mountain with NO GUARDRAILS OR FENCES between you and the 10,000ft drop-off. The two lanes were very narrow and for some reason, the jackasses in HUGE trucks and trailers were intent on driving down the middle of the road, completely unaware that there were other people in the next lane. Talk about scary!
I stopped about a hundred times at every turnout and viewpoint to take pictures. I loved the view of Heaven's Peak at 8,987 feet up. The purplish gray mountains were topped with crisp white snow and surrounded by hundreds of different types of trees. "Going to the Sun Road is one of the world's most spectacular highways...this 50 mile long road follows the shores of the park's two largest lakes and hugs the cliffs below the Continental Divide as it traverses Logan Pass." Glacier is a haven for old-growth forests, wind-swept prairies, ancient glaciers, deep lakes and wildlife like bears, wolves and cougars. While I was looking at one point, I noticed some smoke off in the distance in some trees. I wondered if there was a forest fire. I found out later that there was in fact a forest fire, huge forest fire!! Maybe you heard about it in the news in July--it was all of the news here. Apparently some lightning started the fire and burned hundreds of acres. More about that later though.
I stopped at Logan's Pass (the peak of the mountain on the Going to the Sun Road) to have lunch and sit and watch the view. I started the descent down the other side of the mountain and ended up at St. Mary's Lake. It was an amazing sight!!! This humongous turquoise lake was sparkling from the liquid gold sun high in the bright blue sky. There were no clouds in sight. I left the park and headed North to Canada. I saw Waterton park, the Canadian portion of Glacier Park. I saw the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton-Alberta. It was an awesome sight. But I must have been closer to the forest fires because the air was smoky. I didn't stay in Alberta long though. I hadn't realized how late it had gotten. It was about 3:00pm and I still had to drive back to Whitefish. I wanted to take Rachel and her boyfriend Chuck out to dinner as a thanks for letting me stay with them for a week. So I left Waterton and drove about an hour back to the Canadian border. One strange thing on that drive was the many cattle grazing freely everywhere--walking in the middle of the road without a care in the world. The sad fact is, while in the park I never did see a bear or cougar. But I saw tons of "wild" cattle. LOL!
I got back into the U.S.A and decided not to drive back to Whitefish through the park. I figured that would be the long way and that it would be better to drive around. So I drove through this mixture of forests and treeless plains on this winding road. It was about 4:00 pm by then and it looked like it was about midnight. The air was so thick with smoke from the forest fires in Glacier that the world had turned dark. The sun in sky was a glowing red orb that didn't cast any light in that creepy darkness. It turned out they closed Going to the Sun Road because of the fires--so I had JUST managed to experience the park before they closed it. Lucky me!!
I called Rachel on a cellphone I'd borrowed from a friend. It kept cutting out whenever I'd get around some mountains so it was hard to talk. But I was feeling like I was lost. I described to Chuck where I thought I was. Told him a sign I passed and he was like "Oh wow you're like four hours from Whitefish!" I was like "WHAT?!" after some chatting he informed me that I was in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation!! Eventhough I'd lived in Seattle around tons of reservations, I'd never actually been on one. I had no idea I'd stumbled onto a reservation. It looked like I was just driving through the middle of the countryside. Very stunning views of lakes, trees, fenced off farmlands, and such. But sure enough, I was on the Reservation. After awhile of driving I came to the "town" of the reservation. I slowed down when I saw people. I drove through native american children playing in the streets. They stopped to stare at me as I went by. I felt very uncomfortable, like I was invading their world. I guess I was in a way. I kept going, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling I had after seeing such poverty and desperation. It was hard--I've always been very sensitive to the plight of the Native Americans.
Anyways, I eventually made it back to Whitefish. It was about 7pm when I got back. I was exhausted after such a long day!! But Rachel and made plans to go out "bar hopping" in Whitefish. We got cleaned up and walked a few blocks to their mainstreet. We went to about four bars that night. It was a lot of fun catching up and chatting. In the second bar we went to it was very--what's the word--white trash? It was like a hick-ville country western bar but with rock music. There were a bunch of people in there drunk and hanging out. And I watched as the bartender took shots with all the patrons. She poured one drink for them and one for her. That was quite shocking to me. I'd never seen that in "civilization" i.e. Portland or San Francisco or Seattle. It was very weird to me. But anyways, we went on to the next bar and I ordered a lemon drop. WOW! It blew my head off it was sooo strong!! Eventually we stumbled home and crashed for the night.
Day Four: Big Mountain
Today Rachel and I drove up to Big Mountain lodge. It's the big ski resort in Whitefish. It was a lot of fun. We got to the lodge, parked the car and paid for our tickets to take the gondola ride to the top of the mountain. We climbed inside the gondola and it took off. It was VERY scary! It shaked and rocked back and forth as we climbed. The view was absolutely amazing but it was still scary! We hung out on top, took pictures and hiked around. We could see the smoke in the distance from the Glacier park fires. Eventually we headed back down in the gondola and went home. We ended up having a low-key day, renting some videos and hanging out.
Eventually it was getting late in the afternoon and packed for our camping trip. We were so excited! Chuck had to work so Rachel and I decided to go alone. I won't give the name of where we went because I want it to remain the "best kept secret."
We piled our camping gear in the back of their covered pickup truck, strapped two innertubes to the roof and headed out. We drove for a good hour and a half out of Whitefish on a highway and then drove off onto an old logging road. We drove on this barely existent VERY ROUGH road until we finally arrived at this hidden lake I won't name. It wasn't a campground, there weren't any people around, very few people knew about this heavenly spot. We found the perfect spot for our camp. It was right next to the lake and someone had built a firepit. We set up the tent, the hammock between two nearby trees, and went for a quick swim in the lukewarm lake. It was very refreshing! It was about dusk by then and we got out to fix dinner. It was starting to get very dark. Rachel chopped some firewood with her axe and I got the gourmet dinner ready--cup of noodles. :) We built the fire, turned on the lantern, and boiled the water for our dinner. We sat in our comfy camping chairs eating, enjoying the absolute silence of the wilderness and chatted.
Eventually it got really dark. The only light was from our small campfire. Now for anyone who usually camps at like a KOA--that is NOT camping. THIS is camping. No outhouses, not bathrooms, no showers, NOTHING! When we had to pee we hiked into the trees and relieved ourselves. I love this kind of camping-REAL camping. This was the type of camping I did as a little kid with my parents. Anyways, it was so much fun. Rachel and I sat around the campfire talking and occassionally hearing the sound of a wild animal in the distance. It was a little intimidating once it got dark. We couldn't see barely five feet in front of us and it suddenly occured to us how alone we really were! We went to bed in our tent. It was nice. The roof of the tent was just clear netting so we were able to lay there and look up at the thousands of glowing stars. It was so incredible!
I slept pretty well until early in the morning when a noise woke us both up. We sat up and looked at each other in the tent. The noise echoed through the wilderness again. It was like the sound of a very loud moo--a cow? A moose? Who knows what the hell kind of animal it was! I was like "What the hell is that?" Rachel's response was "Um, a wild moose?" We laughed and went back to bed.
Day Five: Camping Trip!
The next morning we got up and looked forward to spending the day out on the lake. We filled the innertubes and packed up some snacks and alcohol and sunscreen and climbed into the tubes. They were awesome. I guess they're for fishing? They have a little seat in the middle of them so you can just lay back and float. It was so relaxing! I had no idea what time it was, but probably nine o'clock. I was like, "Is it too early in the morning to start drinking?" Rachel said of course not so we laughed and started drinking our rum and cokes as we floated around the lake. We spent several hours out there, floating to one side of the lake and then back. We abandoned the tubes several times to swim. We took tons of pictures of each other with a waterproof camera. It was so much fun!
We got out of the water and laid around on the hammock. We talked, shared secrets, caught up on old times, as we swung back and forth on the hammock, staring up through the trees at the blue sky. Then we fixed lunch and sat in the tent playing cards for awhile. We got back in the lake and spent so many hours out there we lost track. We even stripped off our suits and went skinny dipping! I've never done that in my life and it was so liberating!!! We had so much fun. We didn't want to leave and we talked about camping one more night. But we realized we were out of food so we had to go back. :( I would have gladly stayed out their for the rest of my life. I had never been so at peace. There was no one around but the two of us and I started to fantasize about how it would be to live out there. Build a little cabin the woods, grown my own food in a garden, maybe have a horse and some cows. Ahhh....heaven....
So we packed up the campsite and drove home. That's when we realized we'd gotten sunburned. Our thighs were so burned they were almost magenta!!! We hadn't even realized, and we had used sunscreen! We were in sooo much pain we were both practically in tears. Chuck laughed as we walked around with icepacks strapped to our thighs. Ugh, it was sooo painful! We both went to bed early because we were in such pain.
Day Six: Goodbyes
The next morning I woke up with a sadness. I realized I had to start heading back home. It was going to be a long drive. I didn't want to leave. I'd grown to love Montana in the short time I'd been there. And Rachel and I had been best friends for so many years I was to leave her. :( I packed up my car and we said our goodbyes. Chuck made a joke about how as soon as I left Rachel would start crying. I knew I'd start too. :( We took some pictures and then I left.:( It was a long drive. I drove south to Missoula and then crossed over into Idaho. That was a really long drive with lots of winding roads!
The drive through Idaho was gorgeous. I enjoyed the Nez Perce National Forest. It was a beautiful drive and I stopped many times to take pictures and enjoy the scenery. The Nez Perce Indian Reservation was beautiful too, a lot different from the Blackfeet reservation in Montana. It was peaceful and welcoming as I drove along side the river. I stopped in Lewiston Idaho (I think) for the night because I could barely keep my eyes open.
Day Seven: Going Home
I woke up and drove the rest of the way home. I was anxious to get back to my apartment and unpack and relax. But at the same time I was sad to end my vacation.
My trip to San Francisco was exciting and fun. The last big trip I had been on was to London, England in 1998. Now, nothing compares to London, but San Francisco runs a very close second.
We left Salem, OR Thursday after work and put in the Eagle's Greatest Hits. Singing to my favorite song "Take It Easy" we headed out of town. We drove all night (literally) but it was fun, we didn't even notice how long it took or that we were stuck in the car. We listened to our favorite CDs, took turns sleeping and driving, and finally arrived in Vallejo (Fairfield), California about 3:30am. We were staying with some relatives. We crashed and slept for about 5 hours before we got up and got out trip started!
Day One: San Francisco
Our first view of San Francisco was exciting. I was driving over the Oakland Bridge (which I begrudingly had to pay $2 to do, what a rip-off man!) and we saw SF: basically a bunch of skyrises partly covered in fog. :) For our first day in San Francisco, we drove around and kind of got our barings.
We did some shopping in the Castro district. I bought a Ganesha incense burner that is absolutely beautiful and a box with Ganesha on the front made from crystals. Beautiful!
Day Two: San Francisco
Today we drove to San Francisco and went over the Golden Gate Bridge instead. But first we stopped by the Vista Lookout Point and took a bunch of pictures. It was very windy. We drove downtown and got our hotel on O'Farrell Street a few blocks from Union Square.
Today we drove to Twin Peaks (lol) and went to the Palace of the Legion of Honor. That place was great! They had an exhibit of Egyptian artificats from the British Musuem. We spent several hours there.
For dinner we walked a few blocks from the hotel to this delicious Italian place (I will have to look up the name of it) but definitely go there! It was delicious. Then we spent a few hours at this Jazz Club nearby, drank some wine and had dessert. We stumbled back to our hotel fairly early (around 11:00pm) and crashed. We fell asleep to "Sex and the City."
We took the bus from Union Square to Haight-Ashbury. This was the hippie area. Everything was either tie-dyed or had Jerry Garcia on it. But we had fun and did some shopping. Then we went to Cold Steel Tattoo Shop!!! We got tattoos. YEAH! My last tattoo was in London (The Eye of Horus). Our tattoo artist, Brian, was very hot. ;) And he was a brilliant artist. (As soon as I get my pictures developed I'll upload pictures of my tattoo.) My tattoo is a purple lotus that symbolizes the brightness and pureness of Buddha, and the purple lotus is the Mystic Lotus. Above that is incense smoke and the japanese symbol for Enlightenment in turquoise. Turqouise symbolizes healing, peace, growth, creativity and the Goddess....all things that have been in my life this past year. It looks amazing.
For dinner we went to a little Italian bistro on Lombard street and then walked a few blocks to the "Black Magick Voodoo Lounge". It was a funky little place. It was open-mic night and there was a band playing that was actually really good. The dummer was cute too. We kept making eyes at each other, smiling and stuff and he winked at me...I should have motioned him over but we were leaving the next day and I didn't really want to start something I couldn't finish. :( SIGH. The one that got away I guess...
Then a British guy came into the lounge. YIPPEE!! We were drooling over him but we decided it was time to go. I dared Anna to grab his ass as we walked outside. LOL. She did!!! I was standing by the door and she walked passed where he was sitting at the bar and grabbed his ass. Then we ran outside and ran down the street laughing. After the adrenaline wore off it was a tad embarrassing. hehehe. :)
So I was driving back to Vallejo because Anna had been drinking. We drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and I guess I crossed into the left lane a bit (swerving or something) because all of a sudden I see flashing lights in my rearview mirror. DAMMIT!!!! I pulled off the freeway and he came to the passenger window. I unrolled it and he asked for my license. He was sooo cute! Gasp. And I gave it to him. I thought for sure he could smell the alcohol on Anna (*I* could smell it!). He asked me if I had been drinking. How sad is that? I was totally sober and I got pulled over for drunk driving!!! lol! I explained that the lanes were really narrow and driving next to a cliff made me a tad nervous. He smiled at me and we started chatting. (What the hell?<--I'm thinking) He asked where we were going and I said Fairfield. He got all excited because that's where he lived...wow, cheap thrills. Anyways, he smiled at me and said to drive safely. And that was it. No ticket, no nothing. YEAH!!! But it's still embarrassing that I was stone sober and got pulled over for DUI.
Day Four: Berkeley
Berkeley was awesome. It was overcast and foggy and the mist hung over the campus like something in "The Mists of Avalon." It was very picturesque. We didn't have much time to spend on campus so we walked around, went to the campus store and then spent the rest of the morning walking around Telegraph St where all the cool stores were. There were tons of Tibetan stores, which was a pleasant surprise for me. I bought some souvenirs (one being an absolutely beautiful Lapis Lazuli and silver ring. I love it!
--->TO BE CONTINUED!!<---
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