South of the Border

Well CNN might call it The Border of Death, but it seems fine to me. Safer than ever probably. Everybody down here is super chilled out and all the Mexicans are, as usual, the calmest, nicest, and most CONSERVATIVE, people ever. I really think I'm going to stop listening to national news. It really is unnatural for a person to be constantly bombarded by the worst news possible from thousands of miles away. We should really be concerned about whats going on in our community, and not the disasters of the world on a minute by minute basis. I really don't think its healthy for us mentally. Down here its nice. Very easy to drop of out that horribleness. I just have to delete that RSS news feed from CNN from igoogle!

Well. The drive is fine. Right off the bat you know you're in Mexico. People come up to your car on the freeway offering you all sorts of food and stuff, and the smells are perfectly recognizable as Mexico. Burning plastic I think.

So I made it to San Carlos, and stopped off at the Club de Capitanes, and taked to Mike the owner about a place to sleep for the night. There are palces all around where a gringo can drive up and camp right on the beach. And you can probably have the place all to yourself, if you don't mind some cows moseying down to the ocean at night. It is all I've wanted it to be, this trek, to this sea at the end of the desert.

I camped that night next to some kite boarders and a dude from Alberta. All of us kicked burning cactuses in the campfire and chatted long into the night. This thing, this place, seems timeless. Far from CNN, and the stock markets, the snows of the north, and worrying in general.

Day Three ---- Zion to Tucson

Well. From Tucson, its only an hour to the Border. The dreaded border! I think CNN probably has a dramatized name for it by now, "The Border of Death," or some such thing. As it turns out, its all media hype. There is a wave of drug crime in Mexico, assinations, and murder, but not really random, or directed at tourists. Its more a a war, than crime and its a targeted war between the cartels and other cartel and the government.I woke up super early this morning to make it out the canyon before sunrise to watch the light come down on the the Court of the Patriarchs. I'll let the pics speak for themselves. Then is was more driving down through Vermillion Cliffs, and past the head of the Grand Canyon, and across the Painted Desert. I ran into a real dust storm in this area. At one point I had to slow to a crawl on the highway because the visibility was zero. I really really really do not like dust storms. My trusty steed the A6 sustained some damage in this bout. Tiny, scrathes to the windshield. Very sad. But, its nothing that I notice when I'm not being a hypocondriac, so I'll just keep on driving. I spend the night in a hotel in Tucson. A luxury after the dust of my various campsites.

Drivin Day Two

Day two was Utah. Warm. Mormons. Tract housing and huge, beautiful mountain ranges. Distant fires or.... dust? Yes. Maybe distant dust storms on the other end of the black rock desert.

I ended the day camped in Zion National Park. Here the moutains and canyon become truly breathtaking.

Drivin South

Day one I drove from Benton City, WA to Willard, UT. Great driving. A little boring. Amazing scenery. But it takes a while to get to you! Northeast Oregon is amazing and unheralded. There are some high and snowy mountains there. I got in the bad habit of taking photos out the window. Here's some of the results.


That night I camped in between Great Salt Lake and I-84 in a smoky campgound filled with Mormon boy scouts. Utah has amazing scenery and equally mesmerizing religious insanity going on. You can just feel it in the air. Like the dust.

Roadtrip South

Well. igoogle weather is telling me that its 35 degrees and raining in Seattle. I'm happy to report that sounds very strange and distant from my current reality. Every day is in the upper seventies and it cools of to 60 at night. I'm in San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico, where Sula has sat patiently in the desert for over a year, waiting to set her keel back in the brine again. I drove down here from Seattle. A great trip. I'll now go back in time and lay out some of the highlights