(right, I know, you say, but you are supposed to be on a "honeymoon" of sorts enjoying all of life's pleasantries, to which I say, well, when you've got a husband who also shares a love of awesome adventures, you find yourself able to tell tales about the HOUSE OF EVIL without batting an eye to the complete irony of the story. Or perhaps batting an eye and then making an ironic note of it. In any case, I will say that I am lucky and undeserving but extremely joyful and grateful.)
So there we were, in Denver again, looking for the great bastion of road travellers-- free showers and laundry. It is a legend long told in the world of travel that there are places with free showers and laundry facilities, but it is truely a myth, just like Man-Bear-Pig and the Sasquatch and getting an accurate prediction from weather.com. Therefore, we instead found "relatively cheap showers" and "relatively cheap wash" in a great State Park (the oldest in the state, actually) in Denver called Cherry Creek Park. The park was expansive and glorious, with lots of roads for running and many laundry machines, and a place to remember that having an afternoon of sun and yoga is sometimes just as good as an epic adventure. Having relaxed "to the max" we headed westward on the I-70 through the Rocky Mountain Pass.
It is a fact that most interstates are terribly boring at some point or another and I-70 may not be a great exception, but the Rocky Mountain Pass is outstandingly interesting. Imagine riding a roller coaster through heaven with the best companion you can imagine and you may be getting 1/10th of the way close to what I-70 in the Rocky Mountain Pass felt like. It is absolutely surreal. It goes up and up to over 11000 feet high, and you actually lose your sense of "flat." Were it not for the tachometer, I would have presumed that the pass had many up and downs, but in fact, it appears to be mostly "one big up" with "one big down" at the end. And it is mostly an "up." In fact, here in Utah, we are still about 5500 feet high, meaning that we have not fully descended, albeit the temperature is hotter.
As the sun set we drove through the mountain towns I've always wanted to visit-- Vail, Breckenridge, Aspen-- I felt my strength returning. The mountains fulfill me, I guess. I don't guess, actually, I know. Mountains. They're something else. Breckenridge had a huge lake in front of it, and the town was nestled in a mini-valley. Ski lifts climbed the slopes of the mountains, empty in the evenings, but still warm and lively. It was cold, maybe 38 degrees or so, but it felt really warm and nestling.
When the sun was down the pass got more treacherous, and it was time to stop for the night. My tremendous ability to sleep means that when it's night time, I pass out faster than I can control, and so we looked on the map and found the Sylvan Lakes State Park. Actually, I lie. I found the Sylvan Lakes State Park and take full responsibility for its failure to be awesome. It appeared to be right next to a town of Evil... I mean, Eagle.
Eagle is also known as Traffic Circle Capital of the World, and as G drove (I will not take credit for driving the awesome mountain pass-- I would have definitely inched through it at 25 mph scared to death I'd run into a cliff), we continued to encounter Traffic Circles. Sometimes they were even interconnected Traffic Circles! Finally we came to a sign for Sylvan Lakes State Park, and drove down a nice "flat" road past farms. After 10 miles, the flat road dead ended into a gravel/dirt FS road. A sign indicated a campsite up ahead, so we continued to drive. Every so often, we passed a fairly ominous looking "viewpoint" with a name like "BEAR EATS YOUR FACE GULLY" or "BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS MEADOW OF PLEASANTRY" <-- scary, I know! Along the side of the road were white birches-- first of all, why are white birches in Colorado? They are a New England species. Second, white birches looks-- well, awful. They had no leaves, and they appeared to be bones growing right out of the ground. It was a bone forest in the dark.
As we drove, I grew scared. I remembered stories of bears that I was told in Wilderness Safety prior to Clemson, and all I could think was, surely something is going to get us tonight. Yes, I am a wuss. I complained more than necessary about this, mostly trying to vent the fear from my heart, my OCD needing great reassurance that yes, in fact, no bears would be having us for dinner tonight. Deep in the woods, we encounted no campsites, only many SUVs high-tailing it out of the woods as fast as possible. Finally, we turned around and headed back to an open area near the front of the woods. We noted that we had climbed up in altitude a long way. How much climb? Too bad GPS didn't want to work out there. Must have been that place. We came to the open space. "Pleasant Meadows," it said.
I looked up above my feet on the dash. They were crowned in Goretex Salomons. I let out a rather unpleasant exclamation. In front of us was a house... but it was not just any house. It was a house of EVIL. I will try to describe it without touching on the aura of terribleness it gave off. It was a brick house with a half-way collapsed tin roof. The windows were boarded up and the house was fenced off. "NO TRESPASSING" signs were tacked on its walls. To it's side lawn was a smaller, yellow-green shack. It was also fenced off and boarded up in the same way. White birch, China-berry, and sawoat grass grew all around it. G concurred that this was in fact the scariest house known to all of mankind. We quickly hauled out of there, trying to laugh off the terror that was the HOUSE OF EVIL (and it's friendly shack, the HOUSE OF MINOR EVILS). Yes, it was indeed a haunted place if you believe in such a thing. I think I don't, but if I were to, that was it. You could write a movie about that place. And it would be scary. M. Night Shalaman would probably be scared.
Needless to say, we're safe in Utah now, at a coffee shop, with sore joints and happy stomaches. Yesterday we went to an epic steak house. My joy at bread eating was realized as I ate probably some of the most excellent prarie breads ever.
I am tired. I am not usually tired, but I also don't usually move all the way across the country and get married. So it's really the best kind of tired, the kind that you feel on an overcast day at four in the afternoon, when you put on some quiet music and think about how heavy the sky feels. I must say so far this is probably the most epic trip of all the trips I have taken.
At some point during this trip I thought of a minor epiphany. There were many epic views to be had and it occurred to me that as I look at an epic view I can't really capture it all in a picture, or in words, or even in my mind, but if I focus on one part, I can kind of grab that part and describe the rest in context. I think that's how really awesome things work-- you can't possibly describe their grandeur in a little way with words, instead, you find and enjoy little bits of them at a time, using that little bit as a metonymy for the whole. I realized also that this reflection extends to people-- and suffice my corniness to say that I believe that a certain fellow travelling companion of mine reminds me of a very awesome view-- and that I believe I have many metonymical and enjoyable experiences to come. It's cool to think about travelling around the whole world and being able to bring your home and what you care about with you. I am not sure I can really understand it well enough yet, but it's sort of like the end of a really great movie, when the hero rides off into the sunset, but maybe in this case, the hero isn't riding alone.
Okay, well, enough of the "corn" for now. After all I am out of Nebraska. Finally! :)
May I also note that it's raining in the desert. Now that's cool.
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