We got up early, checked out of the hotel, and went over to Pearl Harbor as the monument was opening. There was already a line of a few hundred people waiting. We went in, got our (free) tickets for the 11:30 shuttle, and went back to the car.

Stephanie has a sports stadium fetish I don’t really understand, but I liken it to my love of Japanese department stores. We went over to Aloha Stadium, and it was a win for the both of us: in the parking lot, they were holding the Aloha Flea Market.

The flea market had about 95% crap, but it was still entertaining. She took photos of the stadium, and we headed back to Pearl Harbor.

u.s.s. arizona memorial

Before you board the shuttle, you watch a 20-minute documentary about the attack. I didn’t really know much about the history of that event, and it was appalling. We were a bunch of sniffling fools heading out of that theatre.

We got on the boat for a 5-minute ride to the memorial. It’s mounted atop the sunken U.S.S. Arizona, which is also the grave of its entire crew. They asked for silence while on the memorial, but people were there gabbing away. That bothered me a lot.

sunken ship

The ship still leaks oil from a couple locations; we could see it floating on the water.

We took the shuttle back, then drove back into Waikiki. In search of a fast lunch, we stopped at the gigantic food court in Ala Moana Center. At the Hawaiian food booth, past the point at which I had abandoned all hope, I found it: POI.

I ordered a serving of it for $1.75. The cashier gave me a very strange look and handed me a little styrofoam cup and a spoon. I pried off the lid and found a greyish-brown substance inside. I worried that perhaps it had some kind of meat gravy on it, even though it’s supposed to just be taro. I took a bite.

That stuff is nasty.

I tossed it and we found food elsewhere. Then we headed off to climb Diamond Head, rushing to get it in before our flight.

looking west from diamond head

The book made it sound like the hike was pretty easy compared to anything we’d already done. It said something about a bit of a walk and some stairs. That book is full of crap. Yeah, it was nothing compared to the volcanoes, but still. It’s a gradual climb up the inside of the crater, which really wasn’t too bad, but it was long. Then there were stairs. The second set of stairs was 100 extremely-steep steps. Every single person who reached the bottom would stand there and stare up at them in disbelief. It was kind of funny.

waikiki

After the stairs, there were a couple tunnels through the rock, then a spiral staircase up to a strange enclosed concrete room. We climbed out the window of the room and onto the bottom of the lookout. From there, we took metal stairs up to the top platforms. It was a hell of a climb. It probably woudln’t have been that much at the beginning of the trip, but it hurt at the end. It was really hot, too.

hawaii kai (south shore)

The view was totally worth it. To the west, we could see it raining over the ocean.

On the way back down, we encountered two women who were running the hundred steep steps. One appeared to be training the other. She was incredible, and had awesome tribal-marking tattoos around her (monstrous) thighs. She was taking the steps by twos. As she reached the top, I said, “You’re so hardcore. I think you’re my idol.” She said, “Thanks! That’s the fourth time I’ve done that so far.” Holy shit.

It was painfully hot on the way down, I could feel my sunburn, and Japanese tourists kept laughing at me. Well, at first I thought they were laughing at me, then I realized they were laughing at my shirt (it says ‘perfect angel massage parlor’). I was seriously paranoid for a while.

king kamehameha (downtown honolulu)

We started off in the direction of the airport, stopping downtown to see King Kamehameha in his cute little skirt, and the palace. The capitol building supposedly looks like a volcano, but it’s a stretch. We saw Chinatown, too; I’d had greater expectations for Chinatown in a place so heavily Asian, but it was quite small.

We figured the H1 would be a parking lot, but it wasn’t bad at all. We returned the car and got to the airport fairly early. Then our flight was delayed another hour and a half; we killed time in the bar, in every single store in the airport, in the bathroom, and sitting at the gate. My knitting was nearly complete, but I was too tired to continue it by the time we got on the plane.

The flight sucked in a huge way, because I can’t sleep on airplanes. It was a DC-10 and we were in the center section of a totally-booked flight. I’d doze off every 10 minutes and wake up crabby, seeing flashes of the stupid movies they were showing. We arrived in Minneapolis around 10:30am on Sunday, stumbling blinkingly out of the airport. I came home, fed the panicky animals, then went right to bed.

the aftermath

On day two of my trip, I began what would be an ongoing contest with myself: to see how quickly I could get out of bed and on the road in the morning. The night before leaving a town, I would pack everything up (the little I had allowed myself to unpack in the first place; if I was just staying somewhere for one night, I didn’t even bring my suitcase in, I just dug clothes and underwear out and shoved them into my shoulder bag – and it’s funny the kind of fashion decisions one makes while rooting through the trunk in the dark at midnight), and everything else I needed to use in the morning would be laid out neatly and deposited back in my bag as soon as it was used. This orderliness was due to two factors: first, I am incredibly, ridiculously impatient. The faster I could get through the formalities of hair and clothes in the morning and get on the road, the better. Second, having everything in order was a way of maintaining sanity. As my friends know well, you can always tell my mental state by my surroundings.

Anyway, I was back on Highway 2 by 7am. I finally got a glimpse of all the nothingness I could only imagine the night before, and it was even less spectacular than I thought. Whereas eastern Montana was all hills and scenic vistas, central Montana is rolling grasslands as far as you can see. (Do you remember that scene in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert when they come up over a rise in the Winnebago and see the Outback laid out before them for miles and miles, going on forever? I had that exact same moment leaving the town of Glasgow.) At this point, I realized that I was relating whatever landscape I was seeing to something else I had seen before, e.g. ‘Central Montana is just like Colorado, only less arid.’ This developed into a game: ‘Kansas with a hint of southern Oklahoma.’ ‘Iowa without the Iowans.’ ‘If Pennsylvania and Missouri had a baby, only Kentucky was the real father, and he was abusive.’

I wondered what I was going to be like after a few more days spent alone. I started to worry.

Left: There’s a ton of road construction on Highway 2. It’s often down to one lane for traffic going both directions, so you have to sit and wait for the Pilot Car to lead you to safety. Right: Cut Bank, Montana, the coldest spot in the nation.

Another thing about Montana: you know those little markers you sometimes see on the side of the road where someone was killed in an accident? Generally a cross and flowers? (Speaking of which, the creepiest one we ever saw was on the Deep South Roadtrip: three crosses on the side of the interstate. One said ‘Jennifer’, one said ‘Jason’, and we didn’t catch the name on the last one. That’s probably for the best, because I’m sure it said ‘Heather’. Since we didn’t see it, we were safe.) In Montana, those crosses are an organized effort. Everywhere someone has died on the road, they put up a little white cross. Often, you see clusters of crosses. I saw way more dead people than living people on Highway 2.

Road Trip U.S.A. told me never to pass a gas station in Montana with less than a quarter-tank of gas, so I obeyed. I was stopping often to pee and get beverages, which is also a good way to stay awake when you’re driving in less-than-interesting territory. I reached Shelby around 10am and drove into town, having seen a billboard with the magic word on it: espresso. I found the little ice cream shop, and ended up with not only a really good iced latte, but a scoop of sugar-free raspberry gelato. I sat there and wrote postcards, then scribbled in my travel journal: i’ve been asked four times if i won this car on ‘the price is right’. I’ve had these license plates for a year and a half now, and no one has ever asked me that before. Bizarre.

I reached the St. Mary entrance on the east side of Glacier National Park at 2pm. According to a sign on the highway, I was 30 miles from the Canadian border, and Canada closes at 11pm. I was a little nervous about driving through the Rockies with my potential power steering issue, not to mention the fact that my brakes were in bad shape when I left home. I had been meaning to have our friend, Nathan, replace them, but hadn’t had the time. Also, I had never driven through the mountains before. Not mountains like these, at least.

I stopped quickly at the visitors center to get maps of the hiking trails. At the gate, I decided to spring for the $50 annual national parks pass, which ended up being worth the price. I drove a few miles into the park, then stopped and took a short, steep hike to see a waterfall.

On the way back up, I encountered a group of four Amish people, two men and two women. The men asked me about the hike. Why was I so amused to find Amish people hiking in our National Parks? I think it was the idea of the women sporting hiking boots under those heavy, impractical dresses.

I got back in the car and drove up and up, pulling off the road to take a million pictures. I reached Logan Pass, the continental divide, at 6600 feet elevation. The visitor center was mobbed. I followed the signs to the hiking trail, which led to an overlook point a mile and a half away. I got a few hundred feet up the path before noticing that it disappeared into a snow hill. I climbed over it and saw that the whole side of the mountain was covered in snow. The pathway peeked out in a few places. There were people all over the place, so I decided to climb up there anyway. I was worried about being cold in my tshirt and capris, but hardly anyone was wearing a jacket, and it was warm and sunny. In fact, it was so sunny that I had given in and put suntan lotion all over, even on my face, knowing that I was going to get zits because of it (skin cancer is worse than zits, apparently).

The snow was starting to melt a little in the sun, especially near the path. I quickly discovered that the best way to climb through it was to run in the looser stuff away from the path, rather than where it was hard-packed and slippery. So I kind of leapt and bounded my way up the hill, taking some pleasure in passing everyone, including the snowboarders. I jumped past a guy who gasped, “I can’t do this, I live at sea level!” I was unused to the altitude, so I was out of breath immediately, but didn’t feel tired at all. About two-thirds of the way up, there was a tiny, narrow trail along the edge of a steep hill. All of a sudden, I was terrified. I was wearing slippery running shoes. I have the worst balance ever. (No, really. I have trouble walking in a straight line. Something about the inner ear infections I had constantly as a kid.) Luckily, there was a long line of people creeping slowly along the edge, so I was forced to take my time. I tried not to think about the climb back down. By the time I got near the top, my shoes were soaked, and there was snow creeping down my ankles and into my socks. The ground was muddy, and we had to pick our way through streams by balancing on rocks. At the overlook, there was a crown of people lounging in the sun, eating protein bars and drinking gatorade. We took each other’s pictures and enjoyed the view. I tried hard not to think about how I was more likely to make it down the mountain inside a giant snowball than on my own feet.

I was starting the downhill trek when I heard a noise to my right. Just as I turned to look, a mountain goat went barreling past me. Then two more came down the hill, all of them making this loud bleating noise that sounded exactly like ‘mom!’ And they were actually yelling for their mom, who appeared on the other side of the slope, surrounded by hikers with cameras. Now, I’m the first to admit that I’m completely unprepared for any sort of wilderness adventure, because I find myself asking questions like, ‘Can mountain goats hurt me? Should I be standing this close?’ (I’m the same girl who’s impressed with the preparedness of the other snow-climbers just because they’re wearing hiking boots and carrying walking sticks.)

Once I got back to the snow-covered part of the hill, I discovered that it was easier to run downhill as well, as long as it wasn’t so steep that I couldn’t stop. The snow seemed about ten times more slippery, but I managed to stay on my feet. When I got back to the narrow trail, I stopped, scared to go any further. To whoever was listening, I said, “I’m really afraid of dying on this mountain right now.” The woman ahead of me turned and said, “SHHH!” Very slowly, we crept along the trail, teetering on the far edge whenever people had to pass going the other direction. A few times, I started to panic and had to just stop and stand there, up to my calves in snow. But I made it through, and ran the rest of the way down the hill. By the time I got to my car, my feet were numb from the cold, and I was starving.

I drove down the long descent from Logan Pass, noticing that my brakes were squealing. Another mountain goat wandered into the road and up to my car. I got an impromptu car wash at the Weeping Wall. I spent a few contemplative minutes on the stone beach at Lake McDonald. I stopped at the west entrance visitor center to write postcards, and I was on my way.

I got back on Highway 2 and started looking for a place to spend the night. I almost peed my pants with excitement when my cell service returned in Kalispell, Montana. I drove around to five or six hotels, running in to ask about their rates. Half of them were already booked up, and they were all ridiculously expensive. Exhausted and irritated, I dragged out my AAA guide and found a listing for the Glacier Gateway Motel. The woman behind the counter was the owner, and she obviously took a lot of pride in taking care of the rooms. It was perfect: a tiny little cubicle with a twin bed and shower stall, very clean, and $40. It might as well have been the Ritz, as happy as I was to be staying there. I dumped my stuff in the room, grabbed the local newspaper, and quickly found an ad for a restaurant with the other magic word: vegetarian. I ate dinner on the patio at the Knead Cafe, digging through a stack of travel brochures I’d picked up at the motel. On my way out, they give me a huge loaf of rosemary-tomato bread, because they had leftovers. I went back to the hotel happy, took a long shower, examined my hard-earned, glowing sunburn, and made a bunch of phone calls just for the sheer novelty of having a signal again. By 11pm, I was asleep.

I got up at 7am and headed into downtown Seattle. I was surprised to find myself in love almost instantly. I walked around the Pike Place Market just as the stands were starting to open. The fresh produce and flowers were incredible. I saw so much that we’d have to hunt down in specialty markets in Minneapolis.

I walked down to the universe’s very first Starbucks and got myself an iced coffee. They also hooked me up with the extra-special Starbucks card that can only be purchased at that very store. I went across the street and sat on a wall overlooking Puget Sound and wrote postcards. Ryan called to say he’d be there in half an hour. I wandered some more and shopped for cheesy souvenirs, and whereas Montana was completely lacking in tacky gifts, Seattle was the motherlode.

Ryan picked me up and we drove over to his neighborhood for breakfast. Afterwards, we stopped to see his apartment, and I reminded him that I had a picture of his bed on my website. We drove to the bluehouse (which is grey) to get a tour of their current projects for Burning Man. They were making three giant geodesic domes and a gyrosphere. The house was littered with plans, schematics, and models. The basement was a full-scale metal shop, medieval-looking and incredible. There were fiberglass pieces being constructed in the backyard. We stood around and talked to Ryan’s friends for a while. One of them gave me passes to his favorite club in Vancouver, and invited me to their 4th of July party. Another guy wandered up and said, “Hey, I heard you’re from Minneapolis. I went to Concordia!” He had graduated from college a year ago, went to Burning Man, met these guys, and decided to move to Seattle. They were awesome.

We drove over to Gasworks Park for a good view of the city. They were setting up for the 4th of July festivities, but seemed amenable to tourists barging in to take photos. Then Ryan took me to see the troll under the bridge (you can’t see it in the picture, but he’s holding a real VW Beetle in his left hand), and the statue of Lenin in Fremont.

I freaked when I saw that Seattle has a Scandinavian neighborhood. Just like home; there was even a lutefisk shop. We spent a long time shopping at Archie McPhee, where many more goofy souvenirs were to be found. Driving around, I got the impression that Seattle was all about coffee, good food, and the music scene. And not just that grunge crap, either.

Ryan dropped me off at Westlake Center, so I could take the monorail over to the Space Needle. On the way there, I got a good view of the Experience Music Project, which he was absolutely right about: it’s butt-ugly. I went up in the Space Needle, took photos of Seattle from every possible angle, exchanged picture-taking opportunities with other tourists, and then went to the gift shop. If I didn’t give you a little metal Space Needle replica, I’m very sorry. I bought one for everyone I could think of, so I guess I just don’t like you all that much.

I monorailed back to downtown, and walked back to Pike Place. On my way, I saw a million street performers and musicians (at least half of them mariachis), vendors selling tshirts and light-up jesus artwork and beaded necklaces, two protests, and a bunch of overly-smiley guys giving out gum samples. And that was in the space of two blocks. I found a Turkish restaurant and got a spinach-and-feta pie and Turkish coffee for lunch, and briefly considered just spending the rest of my trip in Seattle. Then I remembered California, and decided to press on.

After lunch, I wandered back through the market, because all the craft vendors were now open, and the place was packed. I went downstairs and found an awesome store selling old movie posters. I went back up and bought blackberries, prunes, and an apple as large as my head. Then I wandered past an ice-cream place and saw that they had sugar-free vanilla-fudge ice cream, and once again thought maybe I should stay in Seattle. I walked back to the car, eating my ice cream and smiling like an idiot.

It took me about 15 minutes in the Escher-esque ramp to locate my car. I got on I-5 and headed south. Traffic between Seattle and its lesser-understood sister city, Tacoma, was horrific. I exited at the marked route for Mount Rainier, and began to understand why, even though the map said it was only 110 miles, the travel guide told me it was a three-hour drive. I stopped and got gas and a car wash. As was the case during most of my trip, I had a frantically-compiled mental to-do list at every stop: get gas. get carwash. dump trash. buy water. buy pop. buy seeds. get cash. look at map. Sometimes, during particularly rushed moments, I would get flustered. I’d start to panic. It’s hard to keep everything straight when you’re used to having people around to remind you to do things. So, when I left the gas station, I left a little piece of myself behind. Or, to be more specific, a piece of my car: the gas cap.

I drove many isolated and winding roads to get to Mount Rainier. It’s monstrous; you can see it all the way from Seattle. I took the road to Sunrise Lodge, which was super-narrow and winding, way more than anything I had driven in Glacier, but there was hardly any traffic. I got near the top to Sunrise Point, and stopped at the overlook. I jumped out of the car and, impatient as always, decided to hop over the wall rather than walk the extra 50 feet to the crosswalk. I stepped up, and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back on the other side of the wall. It was almost like waking up and not knowing where you’ve been. I scrambled to my feet, shaky and dizzy. My left hand was scraped and already starting to bruise, and I had bumped my left hip (the one without the injury, of course). The altitude affected me way more than I had expected. There was going to be no hiking for me that day.

I drove the rest of the way up to the lodge, stopped at the store, and looked at the huge selection of trail mix and protein bars, finally understanding why they were such a big deal up there on in the mountains. I was still feeling sore and wobbly, so I just took a few pictures, went to the bathroom, and got back in the car to head back to Seattle. The drive down sucked, but I had figured out effective downshifting, which also helped minimize the noise my brakes were making: at this point, the squealing was hard to ignore.

I took a different, equally-slow route back to Seattle. An angry biker gave me the finger for some reason I was unsure of. Perhaps he knew about my lack of gas cap? Even I was unaware at that point, until a short while later, when my car made its happy ‘ping’ noise and popped up a message on the display: TIGHTEN FUEL FILLER CAP. I flashed back to the gas station, replaying the getting-gas-getting-carwash episode, and realized the scene where I put the gas cap back on and closed the little door was missing. Replayed it again, still missing. Again. Missing.

Dammit.

I decided to find dinner in Capitol Hill. I parked and wandered down Broadway Avenue, peering in the cute shops and stopping to examine every restaurant’s menu. A few blocks down, I found Julia’s, which was the same place we had breakfast, but a different location. I was happy with their vegetarian breakfast options, so it was decided. The food was great, but it was so dark that I had to hunch over my tiny little bar table and squint to see what I was scribbling in my journal. This trip had not been great for my posture.

After dinner, I walked back down Broadway. Ryan had told me that Seattle had lots of cute little neighborhoods, but you would cross the street from one and find yourself in a really seedy area. That was exactly the case when I crossed Olive Street. All of a sudden, there were street people everywhere. I saw a guy in a wheelchair and a guy covered with huge, open lesions rolling a joint. I dashed into a dirty convenience store to buy… um, never mind. I went to my car and drove back to my swanky hotel, where I carefully reconstructed my pillow nest before collapsing into it.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

how long can you go without a gas cap?? i have no idea.

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I got up and logged to Priceline to book my room for Los Angeles. $35 at the Hilton, which meant that I was spending more for crappy hotels in the middle of nowhere than I was for nice hotels in big cities. Jay came home with my car, and told me that I not only needed to get a replacement gas cap (the car wasn’t the performance vehicle it normally was), but my headlight was burnt out. Dammit. He was heading out of town for the weekend, so we said goodbye. I drove over to the auto parts store and had both the gas cap and headlamp installed within 10 minutes, for a total of $25. From there, I got on the Bay Bridge and headed east.

Outside Oakland, it’s all rolling hills, dry grass, and wind farms. I loved all the windmills lined up along the tops of the hills. They were cool and menacing at the same time. The farther I got from the bay, the warmer it got. It had been 50 degrees and misty in SF. By the time I exited 520 in Manteca, it was in the mid-80s.

The route to Yosemite was pretty, but slow. It winds through little towns and produce farms. I stopped at a roadside farmer’s market and bought one of nearly everything. About 40 miles from Yosemite, the mountains start. On the steep parts, I had to turn off the air conditioning, and at that point it was over 100 degrees. With all the windows and the sunroof open, it didn’t feel that bad, but my back and the backs of my legs were soaking wet.

I stopped for gas outside Yosemite. I had to pee badly, so I locked the car and ran into the gas station first. Then I came back out and went to pump gas. When I pulled on the little fuel door, it wouldn’t open. It was stuck! I tugged some more, and it wouldn’t move. I thought maybe someone had bumped my car, and indented it or something. I yanked harder and harder, and finally it popped open. My car beeped and the doors unlocked, and I realized what had happened: the little door locks shut when you lock the car. I felt like an idiot. I looked up and saw a girl sitting in the car behind me, watching. I smiled and shrugged.

While the gas was pumping, I went to wash the windshield. The squeegee had the longest handle ever, probably for big trucks. I was hurrying, and paid the price for my reckless squeegeeing: I hit myself in the mouth with the handle. At that point, nothing stupid I could do could possibly surprise me, so I finished with the window, put the gas cap back on (at least I remembered that), and got back in the car. I looked in the mirror, and my lip was bleeding down my chin.

I got to Yosemite around 11am, and congratulated myself on the fact that my National Parks pass had already paid for itself. I drove up to about 6000 feet, then down into the valley. I stopped and hiked to Bridalveil Falls. The spray was a relief from the heat. There were lots of people there, wading around in the stream, trying to keep cool. The heat made visiting the pit-toilet restrooms an endurance test: how long can I hold my breath while peeing? How fast can I run away and find someplace to wash my hands? I noticed that all the tourists there were slow-moving, although maybe it was the heat. I felt bad barging my way through them to experience America’s natural wonders, but I had a schedule to keep.

I parked and walked to Yosemite Village. I shopped at the general store, which was annoyingly mobbed. I went to the deli and got the biggest, blandest veggie sandwich I had ever tasted. I picked it apart and drank my americano while writing postcards. While I was sitting outside at a picnic table, I looked up and a few tables over, a girl was sitting there with her sandwich, a notebook, and a stack of postcards, with a stuffed-full backpack by her side. My counterpart! All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so alone.

I finished lunch and took the rest of the drive through Yosemite valley, then headed back. The drive was slow and boring, and the heat wasn’t letting up as the sun went down. I distracted myself by talking on the phone, as usual. The view of SF coming back over the Bay Bridge was amazing. I was proud of myself for figuring out where to exit and how to get back to Jay’s without even looking at the map, and especially for getting a spot right out in front of his building. I walked to Whole Foods and got a tofu sandwich, which was just as bland as the veggie sandwich I had eaten for lunch. I did laundry, packed up my stuff, and loaded the car so I could get on the road as fast as possible the next morning.

– – – – –

random notes from my travel journal:

that was a whole lot of pms yesterday. i hope that goes away quick. anyway.

my nose and forehead are peeling today. my scraped hand is killing me. the skin feels tight, and i keep bumping it. also, i left my sunscreen at jay’s. i am smart.

i’ve decided the strangest places to travel alone are the national parks. they’re all family-oriented. it’s weird to see a group of fewer than four people here.

i hope my car will see me through. i worry even more when it’s so hot. me and chico, we’ve been through a lot together.

i think i want to keep this up when i get back. probably not handwritten, although my handwriting would improve. it’s too slow, but tactile, which is nice. hmm. maybe someday it’ll develop into that journal-writing project.

tomorrow night, la. i consider sf the midpoint of my trip, so that means that everything from here on out is technically heading towards home.

my pants are too big. they need a belt. go figure.

ok. i think that’s it from sf. what a strange feeling.

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