Category: Marginalia

 into the Columbia River Valley

So, let’s review:

• We left Virginia in warm sunshine.
• Had snow in the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies.
• Passed a toxic waste spill contaminating a river in West Virginia.
• Polar Vortex deep freeze and broken pipes in St. Louis.
• Snow storm in Missouri.
• Winds near hurricane force and Ground Blizzard in Wyoming.
• Train wreck in Utah.
• Rainbows and more snow in Idaho.

If you’ve been following along for the past several months, and have been keeping count, you realize this all just in three days. We left at noon on the 8th. It’s now the afternoon of the 11th. By the end of this day we’ll be in Portland.

We still have a long way to go. We need to cross all of Oregon.

Continue reading “Epic Road Trip ~ On to Portland”

Even in the dark we can see this is a different landscape. (I say “we,” but Emily is sleeping.) Hills are rounded, not craggy like the mountains we just left. Valleys are broad pans, and the highway undulates through them. Everything bears the mark of those biblical floods pouring out of Utah. It’s an empty landscape, scoured bare of people, too, apparently. The one gas station we see in the distance – a single light glowing in a nimbus on the otherwise dark prairie – is closed. We need gas again, soon.

This is the approach to the Snake River Valley: a wide, flat, elbow shaped plain, the dominant feature of southern Idaho. Though a river runs through it, as did those those epic Old Testament scale floods, it is not just another alluvial valley shaped by water.

No, that’s not what made it. Massive terrain altering floods not good enough for you? Ok, how about this: Multiple super-volcano super-erruptions. BAM! ‘at’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Continue reading “Epic Road Trip ~ Idaho”

 down to Utah

Averting vehicular catastrophe in Wyoming, we’re entering a region of the country rife with past catastrophes – both human and geological.

The Wasatch Range forms a rampart between Salt Lake and the rest of the world. Contrary to common sense, we don’t go up into the mountains; we descend into them. From Evanston, and then in the mountains themselves, we’re winding down narrow canyons beneath the peaks, and the road drops steadily over 3000 feet.

Like a walled medeival city, there are few ways through the mountains to the Promised Land of the West. Gates are small, obscured, and fortified against ingress. All supplicants are channelled into easily defended chutes like livestock.

Just beyond the border with Utah, we enter the first chute, the mouth of Echo Canyon. For hundreds of years, pilgrims have funneled through this spot – bowed their heads, shuffled their feet, and prayed. Places through here have ominous names: Devil’s Gate, Devil’s Slide, Hells Gate, etc..

Devil’s Slide

Continue reading “Epic Road Trip ~ Utah”