Desolation (and Polar Bears)

RENO, NEVADA: Howdy, friends, from the "biggest little city in the world". I put in a long day of traveling yesterday, starting first with a drive through the Great Divide Basin. This dry area straddles the Continental Divide. While most of America's water drains eventually into the Atlantic or the Pacific, rain that falls in the Great Divide Basin doesn't go anywhere. In a wetter climate, this would form some sort of lake, I suppose. Here, it's just desolate, though a few cows could be seen from the road. As you might expect, I didn't stop to look around, since there's little to see here and I wanted to make Reno by nightfall.

After passing into the Pacific watershed, I came to Green River, Wyoming. I don't think I made it clear in the last posting how much I enjoy this state. The natural beauty makes it an obvious place to like but more than that, it just feels more alive and optimistic than other places. There are farms and mines of the sort that once covered Pennsylvania, but now are gone in many places. Yesterday, I drove by a massive oil refinery, followed a few minutes later by an array of windmills. Here is a state, I thought, that does it old-school and new-school. A few years ago, I might have not come back, but fortunately I now have good reason to return to the East, even if Pennsylvania is no longer the world's largest oil-producing region and is notably short of windmills.

I pulled into Salt Lake City around noon. The streets confused me at first in their simplicity. The street two blocks south of downtown was called 200 South. This pattern is replicated, with few exceptions, throughout the city. The streets are wide, like you might expect in a Western city, and also carry secondary names, as to honor some person without losing the number that tells you where you are. The choices in names are surprising: if you had told me that I would be driving at the corner of Rosa Parks Street and Cesar Chavez Avenue, I would not have suspected you were referring to Salt Lake City. But so it is. I walked to the Temple Square at the center of the grid pattern. I sat for a while, enjoying the cool breeze and the fountains that are in between the Mormon church's buildings. When after a few minutes, no one tried to convert me, I left at drove back to I-80.

The land west of Salt Lake City was the truest desert I've yet seen. The land is completely flat, and the sand is blindingly white, owing to salt in it from the lake. This is what I had expected from a desert, and while boring, the driving was easy. I stopped at the Great Salt Lake where the road goes near it. It was strange to have the smell of the ocean in my nose while being hundreds of miles from the Pacific. I heard some woman ask her husband why it smelled so bad. I never thought of that smell as bad though. It wasn't that rotting-fish low-tide smell you sometimes get on the way to Cape May, but just the salt marsh air that lets you know you're nearly there. I guess they just weren't beach people.

I thought this desert would continue all across Nevada, but as I crossed the state line I saw that there was some vegetation. This might be a desert, but it's not like the sand dunes that people have to crawl over in movies. Actually, the path that the highway and the railroad follow here is the course of the Humboldt River. While it's not a mighty torrent, the Humboldt does contain enough water to green some of the surrounding country. Still, when a tumbleweed rolled across the highway and hit the car, I knew this place was desert enough. I stopped in Elko, in search of the world's largest polar bear. I came to a museum that promised to have a tiger inside. I figured this was a good place to keep the polar bear, too, so I went in. I did, in fact, have a polar bear, but not the world's largest. I didn't ask where the other polar bear was, because I didn't want the lady at the museum to think I was an asshole. "Oh, this polar bear's cool and all, but is there a better one somewhere else?"
I looked around, and moved on to Winnemucca, where I greedily ate two McDonald's double cheeseburgers. My growing love for Arby's notwithstanding, in a time of hunger, I return to my roots, with a side of fries. I ate in the car, because the sunset was coming and at night the Camry turns back into a pumpkin. I raced down the road and arrived at Reno at dusk. I drove around in confusion for a half hour or so (lots of construction on the streets here), and found this hotel. The promised internet connection failed to deliver last night, and there was no ESPN or Comedy Central on the TV, so I couldn't watch Jon Stewart or find out how badly the Phillies had lost. So I went to bed, only to find the internet miraculously restored come morning. It must portend a good day.

Now, for the most dangerous part of the journey: Berkeley, California. Will I survive a trip into the red, red heart of American Socialism? Will I be brainwashed and forced to work on a commune/gulag? Will I be force-fed communist cheese? Stay tuned for the gripping conclusion of Both Hands on the Wheel!