Escalante 2006 - A Dream and the Realities - Part Thirteen

Thursday July 27 4:00pm

Back on the road. Next stop Denver, CO where we plan to stay at a friend of mine's. We were backtracking our way up UT 72 towards I70 where we would spend the rest of the day. The scenery remained interesting, lots of sandstone and lots of fir (or fir-like) trees and even the first of the several forest fires we were to witness. TClog was driving - it was still daylight - and he hadn't turned into a pumpkin.

Finally back on I70 and headed east, truly the second leg of our journey home. The western states are huge and we were projecting an arrival in Denver around midnight. Since leaving eastern UT four days earlier there had been no cell signal anywhere along our route. So much for the 'can you hear me now?' guy. Fuck him. We were seeing this scenery for the first time as the last time we had passed this way it was dark, really dark. All we had seen was looming shapes and nothingness. The scenery was quite spectacular, even from the highway, though with some funny features. Principally, this was clearly the land that inspired the landscapes of Wile E. Coyote and The Roadrunnner. It was all about large rock formations standing in isolation surrounded by utter desolation. Secondly, someone had decided that building a fence along the edge of the highway's right of way, perhaps 100 feet off the road, was a good idea. This fence stretched for MILES and MILES, almost never broken. It went down little gullies and along dramatic drops, only pausing where the path it took plunged to amazing depths, but quickly resuming its quixotic journey on the other side. Who built this fence? It must be about keeping livestock and other creatures off the road, but lord what a use of labor and materials.

I70 starts to climb at some point in eastern Utah and continues to climb and climb and climb. I don't think I'm aware of another stretch of road with such a relentless grade. It wasn't as if it dipped occasionally. It just climbed. To the north the land climbed above the level of the road, and to the south it appeared to be the beginnings of the canyon lands that stretch off to our fair Escalante. Near the peak of this climb was an overlook of the dramatic conyonland to the south with a name that included devil or something equally sinister. A number of people had stopped to check out the view including a very odd Eurotrash-looking woman.

Back in the car, the ol' Sombrero was registering her displeasure at the climb. Some warning light on the dash was on and TClog was justifiably, though perhaps melodramatically concerned. Some quick reading of ye old owner's manual revealed it was a simple matter of overheating and simply running the car until the light went out (without taxing the engine) would put us back in fine form. A few short minutes later we were back on the road, with a litttle climb left before the long downhill into western Colorado. I seem to remember at least two, maybe three visible wildfires along this stretch, one off to the north and behind us, and the other off to the east and in our general path of travel. Crazy to have seen 3 or 4 wildfires within such a short time.

I70 enters Colorado and parallels the river so named before arriving at Grand Junction, first large town in western Colorado. Just prior to entering CO we had attained some cell service and I attempted to make contact with my friend for our sleeping arrangements some 6 hours hence. No luck, as my first choice only has a cell and I did not have the number. Calling information proved fruitless and Faith wasn't answering the phone either at home or otherwise. Grand Junction was our evening stop for food and fuel. TClog fueled up at McDonald's and also not surprisingly Dan and I ate at Taco Bell. For perhaps the first time on the trip both ate more than me. Strange. I got a hold of other friends in Denver and hooked us up with some accomodations for the evening (thanks to Jason and Alison). Faith called shortly thereafter, but the deal was done, I was driving and we were headed back on the road, so only a quick chat was had and then back to radio silence.

Evening was well underway as I took the wheel. We were only going to see some of what we had missed in the dark on the way out as we made our way through Glenwood Springs and some of the other areas of western Colorado. Dan and I began another name game episode (celebrity name - next person says another celebrity name starting with the first letter of the previous person's last name and so on). This lasted to at least Vail pass. Quite a run actually with both of us trying our best to not reuse the names used in the earlier sessions of the game. No way to get around it occasionally, but worth the effort if nothing else than for the honor.

Dark. Colorado highways, through ski country and the mountains looming above us, but simple dark shapes with no detail whatsoever. Up and over Vail pass, down into the valley, and then finally up and through the Eisenhower Tunnel at Loveland Pass before beginning the descent down into Denver. I had driven this stretch of highway on several occasions so it wasn't surprising, but it does drop pretty fast through a few stretches before leveling off at the outskirts of Denver.

From there it was just a matter of me remembering how to get to my friends' house, which I got mostly right, though the last mile required some searching and a few missteps. Happily, we arrived just before midnight and Jason was there waiting for us and offering beer. We stayed up a bit having some chit chat and drinking our beer before retiring. They don't have ac, but did have a rather substantial collection of fans, most of which we trained on TClog, who was taking the couch. Dan and I were to sleep in the second bedroom on separate mattresses, the first time I'd slept in a bed in nearly a week. Took a bit longer for me to get to sleep than I expected, but soon enough the dream time was upon me. I awoke with little sense of what time it was, but found it to be about 7:30. Dan and TClog were still asleep and I though Jason and Alison were gone. I wandered around a bit, checking out the yard, before coming across Jason. He offered some coffee, we exchanged cell numbers and planned to meet somewhere for lunch.

Jason and Alison left for work and Dan and TCLog were up shortly thereafter. We killed some time, showered and headed to The Breakfast King, one of a number of classic diners to be found in Denver. It has all of the expected cliches, including waitresses that call you 'hon'. Fueled up, we planned to head downtown for some culturation, hoping to check out the Denver Art Museum. Into the car, join the morning commute and into downtown where we found some parking.

Once out onto the street we asked directions to the library, hoping, I think, to learn something of the power outage, and for what else I do not know. We also learned we were a ways from both that and the art museum and trekked off to find both. We wandered through the downtown pedestrian mall, by the capitol and around some other civic buildings. Eventually we found our way to the museum, which was under significant construction and only had two exhibits, one about the addition to the museum itself, and the other sort of about The Sand Creek Massacre, though focussing on photographs of objects. The exhibit about the addition was full to the brim with classic architecture bullshit. Daniel Liebskind is the architect, and he wears the stereotypical architect garb like a glove. Blech. The SCM stuff was pretty fascinating but sparce and we made it through both in short order and were off to the library.

At the library Dan showed us some children's books by Ann Jonas (cool graphical stuff) and TClog attempted to find out about the reason for the power outage in Escalante. Oddly, even with a reference professional, he uncovered nothing. Did it actually happen? Were we brainwashed? Was this some divine test? We may never know, and certainly the library offered no clues. We killed some other time in the library - they had a great exhibit about Republicans destroying our country - and then got a call from my friends about hooking up for lunch.

We mad our way to the nearby lunch spot, met up with Jason, Alison and my other friend Mike and had some lunch. Dan and TClog played some pool - I think Dan won, which caused TClog some distress - and I chatted with my friends. We also recounted some tales of the trip, including the most ironic bits, drank some beers and killed some time. When we were done we had decided to get out of Denver almost immediately, though knowing that it may bring us back to CF at an ungodly hour if we drove all the way through.

But that is a story for the final installment.