Road Trip: Day Five. Miles travelled: 1548
States visited: 5. Time zones covered: 2.
We left Kayenta at 8am this morning and hit the road to Santa Fe. Kayenta is a funny old place. The juxtaposition of its down-at-heelness with the curious mounds of Monument Valley piled up in the background, looking like a Disney ride, is a hugely curious sight.
Petrol here is mercifully cheap for a group of slightly hard-up men going on a road trip. It's usually in the region of $2.28 per gallon, which is a third of the cost of petrol in the UK.
A few miles out of Kayenta, we crossed another state line, which takes the total number of states visited so far to five. California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah (for about five minutes) and, now, New Mexico.
Crossing into New Mexico was rather special for me. As a twelve-year old lad I became obsessed with the idea of visiting this particular state, I'm ashamed to say as a result of watching an episode of Murder She Wrote where Jessica Fletcher goes to an archeological dig which is being haunted by the apparition of a Native American who chants on a hillside, cursing the dig and all those who dig in it! I was really drawn in by the intriguing desert-like landscape, which, when I think about it, was probably more likely to have been filmed somewhere near LA! I was somewhat disappointed to learn recently that Jessica's home in Cabot Cove, Maine, was actually filmed in up-state California!
On the way to Santa Fe you pass through nothing but Indian reservations. The Hopi Reservation. The Navajo Nation Reservation... It turns out that you can tell an area of reservation by the miles and miles of fence which run along the sides of the long, entirely straight highways. My assumption is that the major roads have remained state owned and controlled. You Indians can have the land... except the bits we want!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, what seems to be lacking from the Indian Reservations are the sorts of roadside diners I expected to find in abundance on this road trip. Perhaps it was the dreamer in me who expected to happen upon a plethora of over-friendly, family-run cafes by the side of the road specialising in Mama-made apple pie. If I'm honest I haven't found the native Indian people particularly friendly or warm. That's probably based on years of justifiable mistrust of the white man. My sense is that there's an inward-lookingness within the community. Take Kayenta, for example, which is right on the edge of one of the great wonders of the natural world, and yet nothing there is geared towards tourism. There are no native art centres, or homely-looking diners, or museums about Navajo life. It strikes me that they're just not that fussed about having outsiders to stay, which seems odd when you consider how much wealth tourism is likely to bring into an area which seems so poor. Every town we've passed through seems to have at least six pawn shops.
Everywhere you go in the US, billboards claim that shops and diners are "world-famous." What on earth constitutes world famous?
We passed "Something Sexy - the adult couple's megastore." It strikes me that the shop's name is fairly indicative of a society which can only justify advertising sex shops by making them for "couples only." A quick look at an online gay chat app last night revealed that the nearest gay person to Kayanda using the app was 90 km away! In San Francisco, there were forty seven people within a kilometre!
We had lunch in a little town called Cuba, where we finally found a road side diner approaching the kind I was hoping for. It was called "Bobby and Margie's Cuban Cafe" and it had a huge retro 1960s neon sign with an arrow. The walls of the diner were lined with shelves which were filled with toy trucks of all sizes.
The omelettes came with a choice of toast or something they called "biscuit and gravy." It turns out biscuit and gravy is a plain scone with a dipping sauce which our waitress described as "white and peppery." It was plainly a little bit bacony as well. One sniff of it told me that. I'd also hazard a guess that my hash browns had been cooked in bacon fat. I'm not sure the mountainous regions of the States are going to cater that well for vegetarians!
As we drove on the freeway towards Santa Fe, we started to see some worryingly backward billboards. One advertised creationism. The famous image of a series of apes slowly straightening themselves and becoming man had a red diagonal line painted through it. Another billboard said, "abortion stops a beating heart." Those kind of images don't exactly warm a wet liberal to a place...
Santa Fe itself is nice enough. Most of the houses are adobe-walled, or faux adobe walled, which gives everything a soft, somewhat Spanish quality. The houses are often washed in terracotta and dusty pinks, and many have sky blue windows and doors, which look really rather pretty. If I'm brutally honest, I'm not sure I entirely got along with the place. Everything was clean and tidy and terribly neat, but I tend to like a place with a bit of grit. Santa Fe feels like it's "doing" cute. It is, however, known as a very liberal place, and there's a wonderful classical music scene here. There's a chamber music festival on at the moment.
I think it's probably a great place to visit if you've got a bit of money in your back pocket for some nice jewellery or a charming painting in vivid colours. For me, however, almost every shop sold the same thing - and almost everything was geared towards women. Women outnumber men on the streets by two to one. It's all artsy-crafty, flowing bohemian garb, massive statement necklaces made from turquoise, healing crystals and non-specific ethnic plates and pottery served up at hugely-inflated prices. Many of the items claim to have Native American authenticity, but scratch the surface and most of what you're looking at is made in China and India. The streets were literally humming with the sorts of women the shops were aimed at. The sorts of women who marry wealthy businessmen and take up pottery and painting in their middle age because they're bored. They try ever so hard to present themselves as bohemian, but the idea of living as penniless artists would be utterly unacceptable for them. Their husbands humour them. There's one shop specifically for men which is full of the types of clothes that certain type of woman would buy her certain type of male husband to make him look "really trendy and colourful." He dutifully buys them, wears them... and feels like a tit!
I think I expected it to be filled with vintage shops and thrift stores and be a little rough around the edges. It really wasn't for me. It felt like a theme park.
We went to the San Miguel mission, which, built in 1610, is the oldest church in the US. A church built in 1610 is never going to overwhelm a Brit. Neither would the oldest house in the US, which, built in 1646, is probably about the age of my parents house in Thaxted! Said house has become a museum. It's tiny. We went in. I instantly got claustrophobic and ran outside again. I think I've been spoilt by all these glorious open spaces we've been visiting.
All that said, we did sit in a hugely charming cafe-cum-bookshop called Iconik, where I bought a book about Route 66 and we sat, drinking tea whilst watching the good folk of Santa Fe doing their thing. One man, with cool hair, talked obsessively on the phone about gravlax and another was writing letters on huge pieces of hand-made paper with a quill and ink pot!
Adobe bricks, I learned today, are made of straw, mud and cow manure. Fact.
Friday, 18 August 2017
Thursday, 17 August 2017
The monuments - and a load of dinosaurs
Road Trip: Day Four. Miles travelled: 1195
States visited: 4. Time zones covered: 2.
The stars were so bright last night. We stood outside our hotel, staring up at them in awe. The Milky Way was stretching in a giant arc, from horizon to horizon. I have never seen it looking so bright. In these parts, it's known as the "river in the sky." It's so prevalent that it has a name! Just before turning in for the night, I saw a shooting star. It finished the day off rather spectacularly...
We got up at 5am this morning so that we could watch the sun rising over the Grand Canyon. It was a deeply magical experience. We'd chosen our spot last night, some way away from the over-crowded viewing platforms where we'd jostled to watch the sunset last night.
It was still dark when we arrived at the canyon rim, but within a few minutes, an orange light had started glowing in the East. I feel rather smug to announce that for the entire two hours we spent in our special little spot, we weren't disturbed by anyone. It literally felt like the place was ours.
As the sun appeared over the rim of the canyon, both Nathan and Sam cried. It's places like this that you get such a clear sense of the power and absolute beauty of nature. I always feel like a sunrise is nature giving us all another chance. Less than 24 hours ago, we'd been in the plastic shimmer of Las Vegas, which pales into deep insignificance by comparison. We watched as the sun started to catch the columns of rock on the north side of the canyon. Two deer casually strode past. A blue jay hopped about. A rock squirrel appeared and ate a nutter butter biscuit out of my hand before posing with it for a series of photographs.
A group of girls sat and watched the sun rising from a perilously thin ledge jutting out over the canyon with a mile's drop underneath them. One of them looked a bit like a dolphin. At one stage she started dangling her legs off the edge. My testicles ascended. It slightly spoilt my enjoyment of the moment, and I spent some time wondering how many foolhardy, yet clumsy tourists fall to their deaths each year. What a way to go, eh?
We stopped off at various points along the rim of the Grand Canyon throughout the morning. Each viewing platform's vista is subtly different from the last. It's such an enormous land mark - nearly 280 miles long and with an average width of ten miles - that you can drive for ages and find yourselves back on the rim with a whole new backdrop. Helicopters from Las Vegas fly at speed over head, no doubt giving their passengers the ultimate Grand Canyon Experience.
Our last stop at the Grand Canyon was at the Desert Point Watch Tower, a somewhat curious, ancient-looking building, designed in the 1930s by Mary Colter. The tower, which is four-storeys high, is filled with wall paintings inspired by Native American symbols and has commanding views over the canyon. It's also close to the spot where, on June 30th, 1956, two passenger airplanes collided mid-air and crashed into the canyon killing all on board. The area where the planes fell has been designated a National Historic Landmark to protect any artefacts from the crash which remain on the ground. To this day, keys, cigarette lighters and other personal effects are being discovered.
A pair of Native American crafters had a stall within the tower which sold jewellery. Nathan bought a ring which was covered in Native American symbols (to match the tattoos on his arm) and Matt bought a charming wooden bracelet.
Tiny little stalls selling Native American produce - dream catchers, delicate necklaces made of seeds, and lengths of fabric - line the roads which lead away from the canyon. Some are sold from shacks, some are nothing but trestle tables underneath tatty umbrellas for shade. Flags flutter in the wind to lure the passers by.
We passed through an area of land where the hills were literally every conceivable colour. Reds, pinks, yellows, creams, browns, blacks - all in stripes. Eat your heart out Alum Bay! Moments later, the ground turned bright red and we started to see stacks of flat boulders of ever-growing size by the side of the road. It was like we were in some sort of brick yard. Dust everywhere. A true desert.
We stopped off at a place called Dinosaur Tracks, where a Navaho Indian lad called Tyler showed us what he claimed to be the footprints, eggs and fossils of dinosaurs, mostly belonging to dilophosauruses. He walked around with bottle, squirting water onto the outlines of the footprints so that we could see them more clearly in the rock hard red mud. I wasn't sure I entirely believed what I was being shown, or told. Tyler was keen to point out that he did it for tips only, but proceeded to name an amount he felt appropriate for the tour! He was highly engaging, however, and, even if the whole thing is a tourist scam, if that's how he makes his money, all power to him!
Later down the road we came upon the flashing lights of four police cars which had pulled up by the side of the road and were gingerly approaching a car on its roof in the scrubland by the side of the road. One hopes it wasn't a recent crash, and that the driver of the car managed to get out alive.
We arrived in a town called Kayenta in the mid afternoon and realised we'd been in an Indian reservation since leaving the Grand Canyon some three hours earlier. The town was plainly dirt poor. Feral dogs. Corrugated tin roofs. Caravans. The works. Almost everyone living there appeared either to be utterly obese or totally under-nourished! The streets didn't have pavements or even pedestrian crossings. Everything seemed completely run down. Churches of every denomination lined the roads. Baptist. Jehovahs Witness. Seventh Day Adventist. The Living Word Assembly of God. Lamb of God Church. You can't make this shit up! I wasn't really surprised. This is America, after all, and abject poverty often goes hand-in-hand with religion.
We decided to get some food. The woman in the hotel couldn't think of anywhere to recommend, so we went to the cafe across the road, which Sam and Matt instantly vetoed! It certainly looked like it would have offered us an experience, but we may not have left with our guts intact!
We ate instead in a pizza place opposite a dialysis centre, whilst outside, a man, wearing a Stetson hat, cleaned cars with a jet spray.
Kayenta is the home of Monument Valley, which has been top of my bucket list for many, many years. It's the place I've most been looking forward to seeing on this trip. It also turns out that it's the least well-signposted major attraction in the US! The only sign for it in Kenyenta has been torn in half!
Drivers, when they finally find the place, spend some time skirting around the edge of the site, before a badly-signposted right hand turn takes them into the park itself. This one belongs to the Navajo people, so if you buy a pass for all the US National Parks, this one won't be included. That said, it's only $5 dollars per person, and it turns out to be the best fiver I've ever spent.
Forget The Grand Canyon. Monument Valley is king of American parks. It sits on the border of Arizona and Utah and I suspect I shall never forget that bright orange earth glowing like Tizer in the early evening light. You'd think the entire park was a film set made of fibre glass and lit with heavy-duty, old-school studio lamps.
Cars are permitted to travel along a dusty single-track road, which weaves its way through all the "monuments," which are essentially huge rocks sticking out of the desert in the most extreme shapes. The first looks like a cloche hat. The next is a Manhattan sky line. Then there's a hand, flipping a bird. Then Stone Henge. Then an Egyptian mausoleum. A Disney Castle. An elephant... They all have names, of course. The ones which look like hands are imaginatively called East and West Mitten. Many of the rocks are said to have deep significance for the Navajo people, but the names are plainly too modern to have been named by them. One is called The Three Sisters, which is a load of old Catholic crud, and many are named after film stars.
The names don't matter. The joy is their shape and their colour and the hugely mystical nature of the experience of seeing them one by one. Cars on the road throw up huge spumes of dust which are back lit magically by the sun. The orange, orange earth glows against the bluest, bluest sky. Today was my turn to get highly emotional. I genuinely felt at one with nature.
My abiding memory will be standing, staring at a rock formation called Merrick, whilst a Navajo tour guide sang traditional songs to a group of the luckiest people in the world. As the sun sets, the monuments turn into pieces of molten lava which look like islands rising out of the plains. Oh. My. God.
States visited: 4. Time zones covered: 2.
The stars were so bright last night. We stood outside our hotel, staring up at them in awe. The Milky Way was stretching in a giant arc, from horizon to horizon. I have never seen it looking so bright. In these parts, it's known as the "river in the sky." It's so prevalent that it has a name! Just before turning in for the night, I saw a shooting star. It finished the day off rather spectacularly...
We got up at 5am this morning so that we could watch the sun rising over the Grand Canyon. It was a deeply magical experience. We'd chosen our spot last night, some way away from the over-crowded viewing platforms where we'd jostled to watch the sunset last night.
It was still dark when we arrived at the canyon rim, but within a few minutes, an orange light had started glowing in the East. I feel rather smug to announce that for the entire two hours we spent in our special little spot, we weren't disturbed by anyone. It literally felt like the place was ours.
As the sun appeared over the rim of the canyon, both Nathan and Sam cried. It's places like this that you get such a clear sense of the power and absolute beauty of nature. I always feel like a sunrise is nature giving us all another chance. Less than 24 hours ago, we'd been in the plastic shimmer of Las Vegas, which pales into deep insignificance by comparison. We watched as the sun started to catch the columns of rock on the north side of the canyon. Two deer casually strode past. A blue jay hopped about. A rock squirrel appeared and ate a nutter butter biscuit out of my hand before posing with it for a series of photographs.
A group of girls sat and watched the sun rising from a perilously thin ledge jutting out over the canyon with a mile's drop underneath them. One of them looked a bit like a dolphin. At one stage she started dangling her legs off the edge. My testicles ascended. It slightly spoilt my enjoyment of the moment, and I spent some time wondering how many foolhardy, yet clumsy tourists fall to their deaths each year. What a way to go, eh?
We stopped off at various points along the rim of the Grand Canyon throughout the morning. Each viewing platform's vista is subtly different from the last. It's such an enormous land mark - nearly 280 miles long and with an average width of ten miles - that you can drive for ages and find yourselves back on the rim with a whole new backdrop. Helicopters from Las Vegas fly at speed over head, no doubt giving their passengers the ultimate Grand Canyon Experience.
Our last stop at the Grand Canyon was at the Desert Point Watch Tower, a somewhat curious, ancient-looking building, designed in the 1930s by Mary Colter. The tower, which is four-storeys high, is filled with wall paintings inspired by Native American symbols and has commanding views over the canyon. It's also close to the spot where, on June 30th, 1956, two passenger airplanes collided mid-air and crashed into the canyon killing all on board. The area where the planes fell has been designated a National Historic Landmark to protect any artefacts from the crash which remain on the ground. To this day, keys, cigarette lighters and other personal effects are being discovered.
A pair of Native American crafters had a stall within the tower which sold jewellery. Nathan bought a ring which was covered in Native American symbols (to match the tattoos on his arm) and Matt bought a charming wooden bracelet.
Tiny little stalls selling Native American produce - dream catchers, delicate necklaces made of seeds, and lengths of fabric - line the roads which lead away from the canyon. Some are sold from shacks, some are nothing but trestle tables underneath tatty umbrellas for shade. Flags flutter in the wind to lure the passers by.
We passed through an area of land where the hills were literally every conceivable colour. Reds, pinks, yellows, creams, browns, blacks - all in stripes. Eat your heart out Alum Bay! Moments later, the ground turned bright red and we started to see stacks of flat boulders of ever-growing size by the side of the road. It was like we were in some sort of brick yard. Dust everywhere. A true desert.
We stopped off at a place called Dinosaur Tracks, where a Navaho Indian lad called Tyler showed us what he claimed to be the footprints, eggs and fossils of dinosaurs, mostly belonging to dilophosauruses. He walked around with bottle, squirting water onto the outlines of the footprints so that we could see them more clearly in the rock hard red mud. I wasn't sure I entirely believed what I was being shown, or told. Tyler was keen to point out that he did it for tips only, but proceeded to name an amount he felt appropriate for the tour! He was highly engaging, however, and, even if the whole thing is a tourist scam, if that's how he makes his money, all power to him!
Later down the road we came upon the flashing lights of four police cars which had pulled up by the side of the road and were gingerly approaching a car on its roof in the scrubland by the side of the road. One hopes it wasn't a recent crash, and that the driver of the car managed to get out alive.
We arrived in a town called Kayenta in the mid afternoon and realised we'd been in an Indian reservation since leaving the Grand Canyon some three hours earlier. The town was plainly dirt poor. Feral dogs. Corrugated tin roofs. Caravans. The works. Almost everyone living there appeared either to be utterly obese or totally under-nourished! The streets didn't have pavements or even pedestrian crossings. Everything seemed completely run down. Churches of every denomination lined the roads. Baptist. Jehovahs Witness. Seventh Day Adventist. The Living Word Assembly of God. Lamb of God Church. You can't make this shit up! I wasn't really surprised. This is America, after all, and abject poverty often goes hand-in-hand with religion.
We decided to get some food. The woman in the hotel couldn't think of anywhere to recommend, so we went to the cafe across the road, which Sam and Matt instantly vetoed! It certainly looked like it would have offered us an experience, but we may not have left with our guts intact!
We ate instead in a pizza place opposite a dialysis centre, whilst outside, a man, wearing a Stetson hat, cleaned cars with a jet spray.
Kayenta is the home of Monument Valley, which has been top of my bucket list for many, many years. It's the place I've most been looking forward to seeing on this trip. It also turns out that it's the least well-signposted major attraction in the US! The only sign for it in Kenyenta has been torn in half!
Drivers, when they finally find the place, spend some time skirting around the edge of the site, before a badly-signposted right hand turn takes them into the park itself. This one belongs to the Navajo people, so if you buy a pass for all the US National Parks, this one won't be included. That said, it's only $5 dollars per person, and it turns out to be the best fiver I've ever spent.
Forget The Grand Canyon. Monument Valley is king of American parks. It sits on the border of Arizona and Utah and I suspect I shall never forget that bright orange earth glowing like Tizer in the early evening light. You'd think the entire park was a film set made of fibre glass and lit with heavy-duty, old-school studio lamps.
Cars are permitted to travel along a dusty single-track road, which weaves its way through all the "monuments," which are essentially huge rocks sticking out of the desert in the most extreme shapes. The first looks like a cloche hat. The next is a Manhattan sky line. Then there's a hand, flipping a bird. Then Stone Henge. Then an Egyptian mausoleum. A Disney Castle. An elephant... They all have names, of course. The ones which look like hands are imaginatively called East and West Mitten. Many of the rocks are said to have deep significance for the Navajo people, but the names are plainly too modern to have been named by them. One is called The Three Sisters, which is a load of old Catholic crud, and many are named after film stars.
The names don't matter. The joy is their shape and their colour and the hugely mystical nature of the experience of seeing them one by one. Cars on the road throw up huge spumes of dust which are back lit magically by the sun. The orange, orange earth glows against the bluest, bluest sky. Today was my turn to get highly emotional. I genuinely felt at one with nature.
My abiding memory will be standing, staring at a rock formation called Merrick, whilst a Navajo tour guide sang traditional songs to a group of the luckiest people in the world. As the sun sets, the monuments turn into pieces of molten lava which look like islands rising out of the plains. Oh. My. God.
Wednesday, 16 August 2017
Vegas, Route 66 and a certain Canyon...
Road Trip: Day Three. Miles travelled: 985
Today started on a pair of rocking chairs on our hotel balcony eating Bran Flakes with ever-so-slightly off milk! I'm aware that I'm slightly staving off a cold. My throat feels a little hot and tickly. We're not acknowledging it...
We were in the car just after seven, and, within a few minutes had driven to a place in Death Valley called Zabriskie Point. The temperature was already 90 degrees, but it felt refreshing compared to the furnace of yesterday night! Zabriskie Point is where you get to see what Death Valley is all about. A little winding footpath takes you up a small hill to a vantage point with 360 degree views of rocks which have been shaped into mounds, ripples and ridges of magnificent colour over millions of years. It's a staggering sight. Imagine being one centimetre tall and looking out across the different tubs of ice cream in a proper Italian Gelateria. It's like that, except the rocks aren't in tubs. They merely flow in and out of each other. All the flavours are there: chocolate, coffee, vanilla, pistachio, lemon sorbet, even a small scoop of raspberry ripple. The earth is genuinely that many colours - deep umbers, yellows, browns, russets. And the domes and folds stretch as far as the eye can see. All against a deep blue sky. Not a tree, bush or tuft of careworn grass can be seen. It's truly staggering. The most inhospitable yet beautiful place I've ever visited.
I forgot to mention yesterday that the dreadful garage we visited in Beattie (pronounced Batey, by the way) was called Eddie Land. The enormous sign which told us this fact was accompanied by a circular, somewhat creepy, faded photograph of an eight-year old boy. It was the sort of thing you sometimes find on gravestones. My assumption is that Eddie off of Eddie Land was a child who'd died. All very strange. And all rather American.
Speaking of which, on the outskirts of Death Valley, we passed through a town called Pahrump. Imagine living in a town named after the noise a trombone makes?! I can't tell you much about Pahrump, but I can tell you that it sprawls over a large area, that it has a strip mall and an enormous fireworks warehouse and that cannabis is legal there. I know this because a huge billboard informed me of this fact! The same billboard suggested that cannabis should be kept out of the reach of children! The Americans in these parts seem to put anything on a billboard: "Thank you for your service, Deputy Becht." "Who cares? I care! Internationally recognised psychiatrist Ron Zedek." "Webuyuglyhouses.com." Endlessly fascinating reading...
You can see Las Vegas across the desert from at least twenty miles away. Its tall buildings loom on the horizon in the form of misty, light grey shapes. It's all rather beautiful.
As you get closer, however, the true horror of the city begins. First you see the billboards advertising Britney, Cher, Rod Stewart, Calvin Harris... Then you start to see the hotels. The first looks like a Disney Castle. The next is a giant pyramid and then there's a mini Chrysler Building, a fake Eiffel Tower and so it goes on. Each, of course, has a casino attached. The pièce de résistance, which told me that this was a city I was destined to loathe, was a giant, gold-plated Trump Tower. Literally. No. Words.
You witness everything, like an unfolding horror scene, from the freeway. A rather silly woman whom we bumped into at the Ghost Town yesterday told us the place to visit was Fremont Street, which actually bills itself as the "Fremont Street Experience." In my view this tells you about all you need to know. It strikes me that everything in Vegas needs to be billed as an experience before anyone will deign to enjoy it!
The first two shops we saw there aptly demonstrated the inherent contradiction of the American Dream. First up was a restaurant called Heart Attack Grill. ("Over
350lb eats free!") Next up was the Oxygen Bar, where, one assumes, stupid healthy people go to suck in air for extortionate prices. Actually, I'd rather like to give it a whirl. Anything for a quick high!
Fremont Street is covered in a huge, domed roof which doubles as "the world's largest Instagram screen." Thrill seekers can ride a zip wire along a cable which runs the length of the street. It is, in a word, hideous. We popped into a casino to use a loo. A battered-faced woman, holding a fag, bumped into me before blustering away. All of the slot machines have ashtrays. A man walked past wearing Elvis-style sunglasses with a pair of side burns attached to arms. He genuinely seemed to be wearing them with no sense of irony, or shame. At the back of the casino, next to the discount clothing racks, there's an area where old and broken slot machines have been rounded up and left to die.
Perhaps it picks up at night, when all the lights start flashing and all the hen parties start screaming, but, as far as we were concerned, Fremont Street was a bum steer!
We drove to the famous Strip, which I think is actually called Las Vegas Boulevard, and parked up. It's like Disney Land. Fake. Fake. Fake. Shopping centres with roofs which have projected clouds floating about on them. A reproduction St Mark's Square in Venice where the gondolas are powered by propellers. Everything is plainly terribly expensive whilst managing to look really cheap. Casinos blast lovely smells and cool air into the street to entice people in. Tatty, vapid showgirls with soggy arses stand on street corners, their sole purpose, apparently, to be objectified by men on stag dos. "Ooh, you're in there" shouted one particularly gross man as he photographed his mate. A bloke came up to us in the street; "you guys wanna party with sluts?" "No!" I said, horrified!
There are escalators taking people up and over bridges because the obese Americans can't be bothered to climb up stairs. A fat slob of a ten-year old girl gurned at me. She was wearing a T-shirt which said "I want it all." No love. You ATE it all.
Las Vegas, to me, can be entirely summed up by the only purchases we made whilst there. Two brownies. Nathan's was all frosting and no substance. Mine looked nice but was entirely burned!
We ran for the hills. Las Vegas "done" in two hours flat. I doubt I shall ever return.
Sam and Matt ate snickerdoodles, which is a sort of cinnamon biscuit and another example of Americans infantilising the sweet things they eat. "Cookies," "twinkies," "candies."
There was a gun store with an indoor range on the outskirts of the city. I'm sure there were hundreds. But I noticed this one. It made me feel almost as nauseated as the billboards celebrating Jesus.
Next up was, predictably, the Hoover Dam. It's very much on the tourist trail from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, and, well, why not? It's a spectacular example of 1930s engineering and architecture. It gleams in the bright sunlight - it was 101 degrees for the record - in absolute Art Deco splendour. High above the valley, a road and foot bridge oversees everything, but we didn't have the time to go up there today, having wasted an hour in the hell zone of Fremont Street.
We decided instead to walk across the dam and peer gingery over the edge to the jade-coloured river snaking along the valley 1000 feet below. Clinging to the side of the cliffs on either side are all manner of pylons, metal objects, curious cables and wires, which are plainly there to harness the hydro-electricity generated by the dam. I can't tell you a great deal more about it, having not had the time to trawl around the visitors centre. It was built in 1931, and dedicated to James Herbert Hoover and not, as I'd thought, J Edgar Hoover. I'm not altogether sure I know who either of these Hoovers are. We had a very interesting and highly ill-informed discussion about this very subject. It's fascinating the conversations you suddenly start having when you no longer have the ability to immediately google answers to the questions for which you don't have answers!
We left the dam via Route 93, and instantly crossed over from Nevada into Arizona, which becomes our third state on this road trip.
Along the 93, we encountered our first little truck stops and souvenir stores. Very much the sorts of things you might expect to find on Historic Route 66. The most tragic was almost certainly "This is it! Santa's Land!" Which had closed down and was now turning to dust in the Arizona desert. Theme park it was not. I assume it was a little road side store which sold Christmas decorations. Seeing anything boarded over like that is heartbreaking. It implies a dream which turned sour...
We turned onto Interstate 40 at Kingman and, for some time, found ourselves driving along the Historic Route 66 - or at least one of the roads which replaced that great American icon. The road is big news for tourism in these parts and many of the inns and roadside attractions bear the road's logo on their advertising hoardings.
We randomly came off the 40 at a place called Seligman which refers to itself as the birthplace of Route 66. A preserved section of the "Mother Road" exists in the town, lined by ancient general stores, a cafe called "Road Kill" and a 19th Century Jail house. This is exactly the sort of place I was hoping to find. The little general store was obviously a bit of a Mecca for travellers in the 60s. It had some totem poles, a few dusty wigwams which children would have probably played in, and a long-gone, yet still signposted pets' corner. There was everything inside from paints and hardware, through to trinkets, souvenirs and weird food stuff. We were able to buy glass bottles of Fanta in strawberry and pineapple flavour!
We chased the sunlight on our way to the Grand Canyon. There was a terrible panic that we wouldn't make it there before the sun set, which would have been catastrophic. To add insult to injury, the cars on the single carriageway road leading up to the national park seemed to be taking their own sweet time. I kept wanting to shout "haven't you got a date with a sunset?" We were plainly all heading to the same place!
It took about ten minutes to get through the barriers into the actual park, and we could feel the sun setting as we parked the car. The four of us literally jumped out of the car and sprinted across the car park and through a series of tree-lined walkways following signs for the "rim trail." It genuinely felt like an episode of Treasure Hunt.
The joy about the Grand Canyon is that you don't see it coming from a mile off. You pass through a line of trees and then suddenly, there it is. And it's bigger, wider, deeper, more colourful, more astounding, than you could possibly ever imagine. It literally takes your breath away. Nathan and I both swore as we saw it for the first time. Sam gasped. As the sun set, the colours of the canyon got more and more intense. Oranges. Reds. Mauves. Yellows. Deeper and deeper. Fading to purple as the light finally went.
For the next hour we took photos, found better spots to observe different views, dared ourselves to peer down into the abyss and gave ourselves the collywobbles. I played it safe. I hate heights. Nathan was the bravest of us all and took himself out onto a tiny little outcrop of rock where he sat with his legs dangling over the edge. The closer he got to the edge, the further I took myself away from the rim of the canyon. By the end I was standing in the trees about twenty metres away! It was truly terrifying and utterly toe-curling. Nathan reappeared with a flushed face, shaking with adrenaline and excitement. His joy was absolutely worth my pain!
My last view of the Grand Canyon was a dark purple silhouette against a thin strip of the brightest orange sunset.
I am astounded by the quality of days we're having, and the amazing things we're managing to pack in. San Francisco seems like a dream. London seems like a lifetime ago!
Today started on a pair of rocking chairs on our hotel balcony eating Bran Flakes with ever-so-slightly off milk! I'm aware that I'm slightly staving off a cold. My throat feels a little hot and tickly. We're not acknowledging it...
We were in the car just after seven, and, within a few minutes had driven to a place in Death Valley called Zabriskie Point. The temperature was already 90 degrees, but it felt refreshing compared to the furnace of yesterday night! Zabriskie Point is where you get to see what Death Valley is all about. A little winding footpath takes you up a small hill to a vantage point with 360 degree views of rocks which have been shaped into mounds, ripples and ridges of magnificent colour over millions of years. It's a staggering sight. Imagine being one centimetre tall and looking out across the different tubs of ice cream in a proper Italian Gelateria. It's like that, except the rocks aren't in tubs. They merely flow in and out of each other. All the flavours are there: chocolate, coffee, vanilla, pistachio, lemon sorbet, even a small scoop of raspberry ripple. The earth is genuinely that many colours - deep umbers, yellows, browns, russets. And the domes and folds stretch as far as the eye can see. All against a deep blue sky. Not a tree, bush or tuft of careworn grass can be seen. It's truly staggering. The most inhospitable yet beautiful place I've ever visited.
I forgot to mention yesterday that the dreadful garage we visited in Beattie (pronounced Batey, by the way) was called Eddie Land. The enormous sign which told us this fact was accompanied by a circular, somewhat creepy, faded photograph of an eight-year old boy. It was the sort of thing you sometimes find on gravestones. My assumption is that Eddie off of Eddie Land was a child who'd died. All very strange. And all rather American.
Speaking of which, on the outskirts of Death Valley, we passed through a town called Pahrump. Imagine living in a town named after the noise a trombone makes?! I can't tell you much about Pahrump, but I can tell you that it sprawls over a large area, that it has a strip mall and an enormous fireworks warehouse and that cannabis is legal there. I know this because a huge billboard informed me of this fact! The same billboard suggested that cannabis should be kept out of the reach of children! The Americans in these parts seem to put anything on a billboard: "Thank you for your service, Deputy Becht." "Who cares? I care! Internationally recognised psychiatrist Ron Zedek." "Webuyuglyhouses.com." Endlessly fascinating reading...
You can see Las Vegas across the desert from at least twenty miles away. Its tall buildings loom on the horizon in the form of misty, light grey shapes. It's all rather beautiful.
As you get closer, however, the true horror of the city begins. First you see the billboards advertising Britney, Cher, Rod Stewart, Calvin Harris... Then you start to see the hotels. The first looks like a Disney Castle. The next is a giant pyramid and then there's a mini Chrysler Building, a fake Eiffel Tower and so it goes on. Each, of course, has a casino attached. The pièce de résistance, which told me that this was a city I was destined to loathe, was a giant, gold-plated Trump Tower. Literally. No. Words.
You witness everything, like an unfolding horror scene, from the freeway. A rather silly woman whom we bumped into at the Ghost Town yesterday told us the place to visit was Fremont Street, which actually bills itself as the "Fremont Street Experience." In my view this tells you about all you need to know. It strikes me that everything in Vegas needs to be billed as an experience before anyone will deign to enjoy it!
The first two shops we saw there aptly demonstrated the inherent contradiction of the American Dream. First up was a restaurant called Heart Attack Grill. ("Over
350lb eats free!") Next up was the Oxygen Bar, where, one assumes, stupid healthy people go to suck in air for extortionate prices. Actually, I'd rather like to give it a whirl. Anything for a quick high!
Fremont Street is covered in a huge, domed roof which doubles as "the world's largest Instagram screen." Thrill seekers can ride a zip wire along a cable which runs the length of the street. It is, in a word, hideous. We popped into a casino to use a loo. A battered-faced woman, holding a fag, bumped into me before blustering away. All of the slot machines have ashtrays. A man walked past wearing Elvis-style sunglasses with a pair of side burns attached to arms. He genuinely seemed to be wearing them with no sense of irony, or shame. At the back of the casino, next to the discount clothing racks, there's an area where old and broken slot machines have been rounded up and left to die.
Perhaps it picks up at night, when all the lights start flashing and all the hen parties start screaming, but, as far as we were concerned, Fremont Street was a bum steer!
We drove to the famous Strip, which I think is actually called Las Vegas Boulevard, and parked up. It's like Disney Land. Fake. Fake. Fake. Shopping centres with roofs which have projected clouds floating about on them. A reproduction St Mark's Square in Venice where the gondolas are powered by propellers. Everything is plainly terribly expensive whilst managing to look really cheap. Casinos blast lovely smells and cool air into the street to entice people in. Tatty, vapid showgirls with soggy arses stand on street corners, their sole purpose, apparently, to be objectified by men on stag dos. "Ooh, you're in there" shouted one particularly gross man as he photographed his mate. A bloke came up to us in the street; "you guys wanna party with sluts?" "No!" I said, horrified!
There are escalators taking people up and over bridges because the obese Americans can't be bothered to climb up stairs. A fat slob of a ten-year old girl gurned at me. She was wearing a T-shirt which said "I want it all." No love. You ATE it all.
Las Vegas, to me, can be entirely summed up by the only purchases we made whilst there. Two brownies. Nathan's was all frosting and no substance. Mine looked nice but was entirely burned!
We ran for the hills. Las Vegas "done" in two hours flat. I doubt I shall ever return.
Sam and Matt ate snickerdoodles, which is a sort of cinnamon biscuit and another example of Americans infantilising the sweet things they eat. "Cookies," "twinkies," "candies."
There was a gun store with an indoor range on the outskirts of the city. I'm sure there were hundreds. But I noticed this one. It made me feel almost as nauseated as the billboards celebrating Jesus.
Next up was, predictably, the Hoover Dam. It's very much on the tourist trail from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, and, well, why not? It's a spectacular example of 1930s engineering and architecture. It gleams in the bright sunlight - it was 101 degrees for the record - in absolute Art Deco splendour. High above the valley, a road and foot bridge oversees everything, but we didn't have the time to go up there today, having wasted an hour in the hell zone of Fremont Street.
We decided instead to walk across the dam and peer gingery over the edge to the jade-coloured river snaking along the valley 1000 feet below. Clinging to the side of the cliffs on either side are all manner of pylons, metal objects, curious cables and wires, which are plainly there to harness the hydro-electricity generated by the dam. I can't tell you a great deal more about it, having not had the time to trawl around the visitors centre. It was built in 1931, and dedicated to James Herbert Hoover and not, as I'd thought, J Edgar Hoover. I'm not altogether sure I know who either of these Hoovers are. We had a very interesting and highly ill-informed discussion about this very subject. It's fascinating the conversations you suddenly start having when you no longer have the ability to immediately google answers to the questions for which you don't have answers!
We left the dam via Route 93, and instantly crossed over from Nevada into Arizona, which becomes our third state on this road trip.
Along the 93, we encountered our first little truck stops and souvenir stores. Very much the sorts of things you might expect to find on Historic Route 66. The most tragic was almost certainly "This is it! Santa's Land!" Which had closed down and was now turning to dust in the Arizona desert. Theme park it was not. I assume it was a little road side store which sold Christmas decorations. Seeing anything boarded over like that is heartbreaking. It implies a dream which turned sour...
We turned onto Interstate 40 at Kingman and, for some time, found ourselves driving along the Historic Route 66 - or at least one of the roads which replaced that great American icon. The road is big news for tourism in these parts and many of the inns and roadside attractions bear the road's logo on their advertising hoardings.
We randomly came off the 40 at a place called Seligman which refers to itself as the birthplace of Route 66. A preserved section of the "Mother Road" exists in the town, lined by ancient general stores, a cafe called "Road Kill" and a 19th Century Jail house. This is exactly the sort of place I was hoping to find. The little general store was obviously a bit of a Mecca for travellers in the 60s. It had some totem poles, a few dusty wigwams which children would have probably played in, and a long-gone, yet still signposted pets' corner. There was everything inside from paints and hardware, through to trinkets, souvenirs and weird food stuff. We were able to buy glass bottles of Fanta in strawberry and pineapple flavour!
We chased the sunlight on our way to the Grand Canyon. There was a terrible panic that we wouldn't make it there before the sun set, which would have been catastrophic. To add insult to injury, the cars on the single carriageway road leading up to the national park seemed to be taking their own sweet time. I kept wanting to shout "haven't you got a date with a sunset?" We were plainly all heading to the same place!
It took about ten minutes to get through the barriers into the actual park, and we could feel the sun setting as we parked the car. The four of us literally jumped out of the car and sprinted across the car park and through a series of tree-lined walkways following signs for the "rim trail." It genuinely felt like an episode of Treasure Hunt.
The joy about the Grand Canyon is that you don't see it coming from a mile off. You pass through a line of trees and then suddenly, there it is. And it's bigger, wider, deeper, more colourful, more astounding, than you could possibly ever imagine. It literally takes your breath away. Nathan and I both swore as we saw it for the first time. Sam gasped. As the sun set, the colours of the canyon got more and more intense. Oranges. Reds. Mauves. Yellows. Deeper and deeper. Fading to purple as the light finally went.
For the next hour we took photos, found better spots to observe different views, dared ourselves to peer down into the abyss and gave ourselves the collywobbles. I played it safe. I hate heights. Nathan was the bravest of us all and took himself out onto a tiny little outcrop of rock where he sat with his legs dangling over the edge. The closer he got to the edge, the further I took myself away from the rim of the canyon. By the end I was standing in the trees about twenty metres away! It was truly terrifying and utterly toe-curling. Nathan reappeared with a flushed face, shaking with adrenaline and excitement. His joy was absolutely worth my pain!
My last view of the Grand Canyon was a dark purple silhouette against a thin strip of the brightest orange sunset.
I am astounded by the quality of days we're having, and the amazing things we're managing to pack in. San Francisco seems like a dream. London seems like a lifetime ago!
Tuesday, 15 August 2017
A ghost town and a dead valley
Road Trip: Day Two. Total miles travelled: 633
The motel we stayed in last night was like something from Psycho. It was functional, yet slightly grubby, and deeply eccentric in a somewhat 1970s way, right down to the coffee machine in the bathroom! We sat out on the balcony outside our room for half an hour last night, but, if the truth be known, we're falling asleep almost as soon as it gets dark at the moment. This is largely due to the fact that we're tending to get up at dawn. This morning I was up at 6. The sky was full of streaky red clouds and it seemed to take an age for the sun to appear over the tops of the mountains.
We drove back into Yosemite National Park. The ranger who waved us through was delightfully charming and complimented Nathan on the tattoos on his arms, "they match your eyes" he said, flirtatiously!
Yosemite at dawn is one of the most magical places I've ever visited. The air was thick with a mist which smelt strongly of smoke. We later discovered that it was actually smoke. Lightning causes fires to break out all the time in the park and the wardens also carry out controlled fires. Fires are actually very good for nature. They create highly fertile soil and allow shoots of new life a chance to take hold. The places where fires have raged are often hugely verdant. We passed one such area. The pine trees which had been destroyed in the blaze looked liked giant pointy porcupine quills sticking out of the hillside.
We didn't actually see a fire, but in some areas the fog was really rather intense, its deep and sometimes acrid stench entirely catching the backs of our throats. The smoke nevertheless gave everything a deeply nostalgic quality. I think we all felt as though we were in a dream.
Our journey took us up into the mountains and we stopped briefly to look down into the misty abyss. The river snaking its way along the bottom of the valley was glinting in the sun in a way which made it look like a long, snaking pit of orange fire. It was genuinely one of the most breathtaking sights that I've ever witnessed. As we stood and watched, another area of the river started to glow orange through the brown mist. I doubt I shall ever forget that sight.
The road took us higher and higher. Signs told us we'd reached 5000, 6000, 8000 feet. Surely higher than I've ever been outside an aeroplane? The landscape changes somewhat restlessly. At first you're driving through lush forest, with the odd small, enticing-looking lake, and then giant granite rock forms start to crowd the sides of the roads. Some resemble huge, gently tilting platforms, others ascend into the air vertically like primitive art. One vista will be entirely purple and mauve. The next might be shades of deep green. Then everything you drive past will suddenly be monochrome. And, when the sun tries to inch its way through the smokey fog, things start to turn the colour of apricots.
We stopped off at the most delightful, ice-cold lake called Tenaya which Sam assured us his sister had recommended after honeymooning in the park twelve or so years ago. He says she described the water as being like angel tears, although he is subsequently trying to deny this particular fact, based on the likelihood of Katie actually reading this blog! It turns out that angel tears is a perfectly decent description of that soft, cool, delicate water. We all had a swim, staring, misty-eyed, at the mountains rising up from the water, which, when we arrived, was reflecting the sun like diamanté-encrusted cowboy boots!
I bought myself some Raisin Bran for breakfast, which I ate in a plastic bowl by the side of the lake. Heavenly. A fish jumped out of the water and back in again.
As we swam, the smokey fog descended on the lake, and everything turned an eerie shade of blue.
Further up the mountains, we found ourselves travelling through giant meadows, where babbling brooks carried snow water down into the valley. At times we found ourselves above the tree line in eerie lunar landscapes. At above 9000 feet I got a little light headed and started giggling uncontrollably.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the day was discovering a snowy field high up in the mountains. And yes! I said field of snow! Whether it was a glacier or destined to melt by the end of the summer I'm not sure, but it was deeply surreal to have a snowball fight in 90 degree heat in the height of August.
The mountains got higher and higher. Every new vista generated another gasp until we were almost all gasped out. A veritable embarrassment of nature's riches!
As we drove out of the park, we were confronted by a long, winding road which snaked its way somewhat perilously down the most enormous slope of scree I've ever seen. I should think it was 2000 feet tall, and the ridge where the road was, was exactly half way down, with no barriers. I have seldom felt so sick. I found myself tensing every muscle of my body as we slowly made our way down. Never again!
The landscape changes constantly as you head towards Nevada. There are huge grassy plains and then suddenly you're in desert landscape. Salt lakes. Stacks of slate. Weird cactus-like trees. Yellow earth. Brightly-coloured grasses. Red tails ride the thermals in the air above. The sky is bright blue. Telegraph poles stretch in V shapes to the horizon. The roads are like twisting rollercoasters in mountainous areas and then, suddenly, when you hit the plains again, they turn into single carriageways, stretching out for miles in front of you in dead straight lines, the white lines at the side of the roads and the bright yellow stripes in the middle creating the most curious optical illusions. And then, of course, come the mirages. The glowing, watery apparitions on the road which you never quite manage to reach. Temperatures were always high in the nineties, although it's an incredibly dry heat, so you never really find yourself getting sweaty. I think the sweat dries immediately.
You ought to be able to drive like the wind on those roads, but they send people up in aeroplanes to do speed checks. Seriously!
As we passed from California into Nevada we saw our first tumble weeds and then scores of dust devils dancing around and over the roads. There's a long stretch towards Beatty where vehicles are told to drive with their lights on during the daylight hours because dust storms are so prevalent in those parts.
Beatty itself is a horrible place. It took an age to buy petrol. Our foreign debit cards sent the system into meltdown and, in the end, we were forced to guess how much petrol we were going to need and pay up front. When we couldn't get that much petrol into our car, we were refunded. But there was a queue of massively fat people buying sweets to contend with every time we went into the shop. We wanted to stop for food and walked into a diner full of rather threatening-looking, bemulleted people, but it smelt of dead dog, mops and dirty flip flops, so we skipped lunch.
We went instead to Rhyolite, a ghost town which, for a brief period, from 1901 to 1913 had a population of 7500. In 1919, the Post Office closed. In 1920, the population had dropped to 14. There was gold in them there hills for that all too brief period and the place had shops, community centres, a bank and three railway depots. I'm told the bank had electric lights, steam heat and a marble floor, so someone in the town was doing alright out of the gold rush!
These days it's an incredibly eerie and highly atmospheric spot. There's not much left of it, and most of the buildings are too unsafe to go inside, but it nestles in a series of hills made of extraordinary coloured rocks. Reds, oranges, yellows, mauves...
There are some wonderful shells of buildings: a few shop fronts, a railway station. You wander from ruin to ruin wondering, making up stories, trying to build a picture of the place in its heyday. These days it's often struck by lightening. One of its best preserved buildings recently burned down as a result. The site is full of rattle snakes, chipmunks and hares. We saw a lot of hares. They're odd looking, very skinny creatures with enormous ears.
As we walked around, the sun got lower in the sky and the shadows lengthened. The whole experience became more and more magical.
Our hotel is in Death Valley, which we avoided like the plague on our way down, knowing it very regularly poles the hottest temperatures on the planet. We arrived as the sun was setting. It's a bleak, post-apocalyptic-looking place full of salt deposits and rocky soil. The mountains on the two sides of the valley were glowing in shades of lavender and it looked very similar to the area around the Dead Sea in Israel. Despite it being almost dark, we were astounded to discover that the temperature was 109 degrees! It's actually at an elevation of -190 feet, so somewhere between Yosemite and here, we've dropped like a stone! We parked the car and piled out onto the barren rocks. None of us had ever been anywhere so hot! Sleeping might be an issue tonight! Wind literally whipping us with oven-like hot air, which actually made me panic. That said, the sunset was quite spectacular!
The motel we stayed in last night was like something from Psycho. It was functional, yet slightly grubby, and deeply eccentric in a somewhat 1970s way, right down to the coffee machine in the bathroom! We sat out on the balcony outside our room for half an hour last night, but, if the truth be known, we're falling asleep almost as soon as it gets dark at the moment. This is largely due to the fact that we're tending to get up at dawn. This morning I was up at 6. The sky was full of streaky red clouds and it seemed to take an age for the sun to appear over the tops of the mountains.
We drove back into Yosemite National Park. The ranger who waved us through was delightfully charming and complimented Nathan on the tattoos on his arms, "they match your eyes" he said, flirtatiously!
Yosemite at dawn is one of the most magical places I've ever visited. The air was thick with a mist which smelt strongly of smoke. We later discovered that it was actually smoke. Lightning causes fires to break out all the time in the park and the wardens also carry out controlled fires. Fires are actually very good for nature. They create highly fertile soil and allow shoots of new life a chance to take hold. The places where fires have raged are often hugely verdant. We passed one such area. The pine trees which had been destroyed in the blaze looked liked giant pointy porcupine quills sticking out of the hillside.
We didn't actually see a fire, but in some areas the fog was really rather intense, its deep and sometimes acrid stench entirely catching the backs of our throats. The smoke nevertheless gave everything a deeply nostalgic quality. I think we all felt as though we were in a dream.
Our journey took us up into the mountains and we stopped briefly to look down into the misty abyss. The river snaking its way along the bottom of the valley was glinting in the sun in a way which made it look like a long, snaking pit of orange fire. It was genuinely one of the most breathtaking sights that I've ever witnessed. As we stood and watched, another area of the river started to glow orange through the brown mist. I doubt I shall ever forget that sight.
The road took us higher and higher. Signs told us we'd reached 5000, 6000, 8000 feet. Surely higher than I've ever been outside an aeroplane? The landscape changes somewhat restlessly. At first you're driving through lush forest, with the odd small, enticing-looking lake, and then giant granite rock forms start to crowd the sides of the roads. Some resemble huge, gently tilting platforms, others ascend into the air vertically like primitive art. One vista will be entirely purple and mauve. The next might be shades of deep green. Then everything you drive past will suddenly be monochrome. And, when the sun tries to inch its way through the smokey fog, things start to turn the colour of apricots.
We stopped off at the most delightful, ice-cold lake called Tenaya which Sam assured us his sister had recommended after honeymooning in the park twelve or so years ago. He says she described the water as being like angel tears, although he is subsequently trying to deny this particular fact, based on the likelihood of Katie actually reading this blog! It turns out that angel tears is a perfectly decent description of that soft, cool, delicate water. We all had a swim, staring, misty-eyed, at the mountains rising up from the water, which, when we arrived, was reflecting the sun like diamanté-encrusted cowboy boots!
I bought myself some Raisin Bran for breakfast, which I ate in a plastic bowl by the side of the lake. Heavenly. A fish jumped out of the water and back in again.
As we swam, the smokey fog descended on the lake, and everything turned an eerie shade of blue.
Further up the mountains, we found ourselves travelling through giant meadows, where babbling brooks carried snow water down into the valley. At times we found ourselves above the tree line in eerie lunar landscapes. At above 9000 feet I got a little light headed and started giggling uncontrollably.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the day was discovering a snowy field high up in the mountains. And yes! I said field of snow! Whether it was a glacier or destined to melt by the end of the summer I'm not sure, but it was deeply surreal to have a snowball fight in 90 degree heat in the height of August.
The mountains got higher and higher. Every new vista generated another gasp until we were almost all gasped out. A veritable embarrassment of nature's riches!
As we drove out of the park, we were confronted by a long, winding road which snaked its way somewhat perilously down the most enormous slope of scree I've ever seen. I should think it was 2000 feet tall, and the ridge where the road was, was exactly half way down, with no barriers. I have seldom felt so sick. I found myself tensing every muscle of my body as we slowly made our way down. Never again!
The landscape changes constantly as you head towards Nevada. There are huge grassy plains and then suddenly you're in desert landscape. Salt lakes. Stacks of slate. Weird cactus-like trees. Yellow earth. Brightly-coloured grasses. Red tails ride the thermals in the air above. The sky is bright blue. Telegraph poles stretch in V shapes to the horizon. The roads are like twisting rollercoasters in mountainous areas and then, suddenly, when you hit the plains again, they turn into single carriageways, stretching out for miles in front of you in dead straight lines, the white lines at the side of the roads and the bright yellow stripes in the middle creating the most curious optical illusions. And then, of course, come the mirages. The glowing, watery apparitions on the road which you never quite manage to reach. Temperatures were always high in the nineties, although it's an incredibly dry heat, so you never really find yourself getting sweaty. I think the sweat dries immediately.
You ought to be able to drive like the wind on those roads, but they send people up in aeroplanes to do speed checks. Seriously!
As we passed from California into Nevada we saw our first tumble weeds and then scores of dust devils dancing around and over the roads. There's a long stretch towards Beatty where vehicles are told to drive with their lights on during the daylight hours because dust storms are so prevalent in those parts.
Beatty itself is a horrible place. It took an age to buy petrol. Our foreign debit cards sent the system into meltdown and, in the end, we were forced to guess how much petrol we were going to need and pay up front. When we couldn't get that much petrol into our car, we were refunded. But there was a queue of massively fat people buying sweets to contend with every time we went into the shop. We wanted to stop for food and walked into a diner full of rather threatening-looking, bemulleted people, but it smelt of dead dog, mops and dirty flip flops, so we skipped lunch.
We went instead to Rhyolite, a ghost town which, for a brief period, from 1901 to 1913 had a population of 7500. In 1919, the Post Office closed. In 1920, the population had dropped to 14. There was gold in them there hills for that all too brief period and the place had shops, community centres, a bank and three railway depots. I'm told the bank had electric lights, steam heat and a marble floor, so someone in the town was doing alright out of the gold rush!
These days it's an incredibly eerie and highly atmospheric spot. There's not much left of it, and most of the buildings are too unsafe to go inside, but it nestles in a series of hills made of extraordinary coloured rocks. Reds, oranges, yellows, mauves...
There are some wonderful shells of buildings: a few shop fronts, a railway station. You wander from ruin to ruin wondering, making up stories, trying to build a picture of the place in its heyday. These days it's often struck by lightening. One of its best preserved buildings recently burned down as a result. The site is full of rattle snakes, chipmunks and hares. We saw a lot of hares. They're odd looking, very skinny creatures with enormous ears.
As we walked around, the sun got lower in the sky and the shadows lengthened. The whole experience became more and more magical.
Our hotel is in Death Valley, which we avoided like the plague on our way down, knowing it very regularly poles the hottest temperatures on the planet. We arrived as the sun was setting. It's a bleak, post-apocalyptic-looking place full of salt deposits and rocky soil. The mountains on the two sides of the valley were glowing in shades of lavender and it looked very similar to the area around the Dead Sea in Israel. Despite it being almost dark, we were astounded to discover that the temperature was 109 degrees! It's actually at an elevation of -190 feet, so somewhere between Yosemite and here, we've dropped like a stone! We parked the car and piled out onto the barren rocks. None of us had ever been anywhere so hot! Sleeping might be an issue tonight! Wind literally whipping us with oven-like hot air, which actually made me panic. That said, the sunset was quite spectacular!
Monday, 14 August 2017
The road trip begins
Road trip: Day One. Miles travelled: 234.
We woke up in San Francisco this morning and instantly made our way down Market Street to the hire car place. After collecting the car (with surprisingly little fuss) we took ourselves to Safeway to buy snacks and things for lunch on the road. A man was being pushed around the shop in wheelchair. He was wearing a crash helmet and carrying a small broom whilst shouting "I'm a witch" at his carer.
A homeless man at the tills asked if he could have a dollar. I obliged. I wished I hadn't. He was spending it on beer. "God bless you." He said. "I'm not interested in God's blessing" I said, a little tersely.
The streets of the city were like an apocalyptic scene from 28 Weeks Later. Everywhere I looked, another person was rocking, shaking, shouting, running or wailing. Something absolutely has to be done to help these people.
We drove out of the city via the Bay Bridge and instantly found ourselves in another world. Temperatures soared by 20 degrees. The fields were bone dry, and primrose yellow. The sky was powder blue. It was like looking at a washed-out Swedish flag! Eagles sailed through the sky. Wind turbines spun against the horizon. This particular scrubland is lined with horrible urbanisations. I can't imagine how awful it must be to live there. Your children go out to play on miles and miles of dry stubby grass which resembles a freshly harvested field. "Remember not to play on the freeway, honey..."
Urbanisations became depressing towns with names like Delhi and Tracy, full of Drive Thru' Starbucks and huge Walmart stores. Everything is gigantic out here. Massive advertising hoardings advertise realtors called things like Cristal Philips. Their enormous white teeth glow like beacons across the countryside. The trucks are huge, the cars are huge, the motorways are huge. And yet the gardens are tiny!
Some of the billboards are hysterical. A chair maker advertises himself with the slogan "come and check our stool samples." Other billboards inform us that "real Christians obey Jesus's teaching." Religion is everywhere in the States.
Trucks heaped with tomatoes fly along the freeways. They're not covered over. They're just piled up. Thousands of tomatoes, heading to Italian restaurants in San Francisco...
We came off the Freeway and enjoyed seeing little stalls by the roads selling avocados and strawberries. We also ran alongside one of those goods trains you think only happen in the movies. We wished we'd counted the carriages. There must have been two hundred. We imagined the frustration of waiting for that to pass by at a level crossing.
As we got higher, the scenery changed from tinderbox dry fields, to sweetcorn and apricot crops, to alpine trees. The colour of the earth changed as well. Smears of pink and red from heaven knows what processes of oxidisation cut through the brown earth. And then, suddenly, we were in an area of complete desolation, where some kind of catastrophic forest fire had plainly raged. The earth was charred. The ground was a mixture of black charcoal and pure white ashes. Fences had turned into twisted, melted piles of metal, and, as we went further into the area, we came across whole houses which had been engulfed by the inferno. Their owners had moved into trailers in the gardens. One of the burned houses had a for sale sign in cinders out front.
We passed through a town. Signs everywhere read, "thank you first responders, thank you fire fighters." We learned then that the fire had a name: "The Detwiler Fire." It happened in mid July and 70,000 acres of land burned.
We suddenly found ourselves in the Yosemite National Park. It is, in a word, stunning. White and light grey granite rock forms of increasing size look like elephants clinging to mountain tops. A clear, fresh river runs through the valley. People swim and paddle in the rapids.
You enter the park itself through a natural rock arch, and from that point in, the views become breathtaking.
First up is El Capitan, a stately old man of a mountain, which has thwarted rock climbers and abseilers for many years, but the main draw is the Half Dome, a mountain which is shaped like a loaf of bread which has had a run-in with a cheese grater. They considered it utterly unclimbable, but the summit was reached by an intrepid fella called George Anderson in 1875.
Waterfalls tumble down the mountains like wisps of smoke. There's a milky light. The shadows are blue. The trees are jade green. Cars dawdle along the single road which cuts through the valley. On a weekend day in the summer time there can be frustrating tail backs. I got into a bit of a panic as I felt the few precious hours we had there ebbing away into an air conditioned car.
We parked up after deciding to walk to the Yosemite Falls. At 740 metres, it's the tallest waterfall in the US and the 5th tallest in the world. It is fed entirely by melting snow, and, in the late summer, it entirely runs dry. Fortunately it was still putting on a show today.
The waterfall is divided into two: the upper falls and the lower falls. Both are accessible, but the upper falls take a couple of hours to reach, which was time we didn't have. On another day I would almost certainly have hiked up there as I'm told there are beautiful natural pools on the cliff edge.
That said, the shortish hike to the lower falls feels in no way a compromise. The paths run through lovely woodland. The squirrels in these parts are a subspecies. They have tortoiseshell markings and white necks. The bins are all bear-proof and mountain lions run about freely. Fortunately we didn't see any!
You can clamber off the path and up the rocks by the side of the stream which runs away from the falls. Signs encourage you not to go off the paths, with pictures of X-rays of people with broken skulls and things. But everyone does. The trouble with the Americans is that they're so litigious, they feel the need to put these silly posters up everywhere, but that means the posters entirely lose their impact!
The nearer you get to the falls, the more you feel their spray, and hear the roar of the water echoing on a nearby cliff. And suddenly the most magical view opens up. There's an ice-cold plunge pool at the base of the waterfall, and if you climb even higher, you're rewarded by the Half Dome which suddenly appears as a back drop. The later in the day it gets, the more the mountain seems to glow. Almost as though it's burning from within like something in a Sci Fi fantasy. It was, without question, the most stunning view I've ever witnessed. It made Nathan cry. The four of us sat and stared at it for an hour whilst a rock climber free-climbed his way up a nearby sheer rock face to the gasps of everyone watching.
As the evening drew in, the mountains turned purple and grey. All, of course, except for the Half Dome, which stayed lit up like a tart by direct sunlight a great deal later than any of his friends.
We drove back to our motel on a bat-infested road. As Nathan observed, it was like the opening of Scooby Doo. The motel has an open air pool. It was so lovely to do a few refreshing lengths before bed. Stretch out that car-battered back!
We woke up in San Francisco this morning and instantly made our way down Market Street to the hire car place. After collecting the car (with surprisingly little fuss) we took ourselves to Safeway to buy snacks and things for lunch on the road. A man was being pushed around the shop in wheelchair. He was wearing a crash helmet and carrying a small broom whilst shouting "I'm a witch" at his carer.
A homeless man at the tills asked if he could have a dollar. I obliged. I wished I hadn't. He was spending it on beer. "God bless you." He said. "I'm not interested in God's blessing" I said, a little tersely.
The streets of the city were like an apocalyptic scene from 28 Weeks Later. Everywhere I looked, another person was rocking, shaking, shouting, running or wailing. Something absolutely has to be done to help these people.
We drove out of the city via the Bay Bridge and instantly found ourselves in another world. Temperatures soared by 20 degrees. The fields were bone dry, and primrose yellow. The sky was powder blue. It was like looking at a washed-out Swedish flag! Eagles sailed through the sky. Wind turbines spun against the horizon. This particular scrubland is lined with horrible urbanisations. I can't imagine how awful it must be to live there. Your children go out to play on miles and miles of dry stubby grass which resembles a freshly harvested field. "Remember not to play on the freeway, honey..."
Urbanisations became depressing towns with names like Delhi and Tracy, full of Drive Thru' Starbucks and huge Walmart stores. Everything is gigantic out here. Massive advertising hoardings advertise realtors called things like Cristal Philips. Their enormous white teeth glow like beacons across the countryside. The trucks are huge, the cars are huge, the motorways are huge. And yet the gardens are tiny!
Some of the billboards are hysterical. A chair maker advertises himself with the slogan "come and check our stool samples." Other billboards inform us that "real Christians obey Jesus's teaching." Religion is everywhere in the States.
Trucks heaped with tomatoes fly along the freeways. They're not covered over. They're just piled up. Thousands of tomatoes, heading to Italian restaurants in San Francisco...
We came off the Freeway and enjoyed seeing little stalls by the roads selling avocados and strawberries. We also ran alongside one of those goods trains you think only happen in the movies. We wished we'd counted the carriages. There must have been two hundred. We imagined the frustration of waiting for that to pass by at a level crossing.
As we got higher, the scenery changed from tinderbox dry fields, to sweetcorn and apricot crops, to alpine trees. The colour of the earth changed as well. Smears of pink and red from heaven knows what processes of oxidisation cut through the brown earth. And then, suddenly, we were in an area of complete desolation, where some kind of catastrophic forest fire had plainly raged. The earth was charred. The ground was a mixture of black charcoal and pure white ashes. Fences had turned into twisted, melted piles of metal, and, as we went further into the area, we came across whole houses which had been engulfed by the inferno. Their owners had moved into trailers in the gardens. One of the burned houses had a for sale sign in cinders out front.
We passed through a town. Signs everywhere read, "thank you first responders, thank you fire fighters." We learned then that the fire had a name: "The Detwiler Fire." It happened in mid July and 70,000 acres of land burned.
We suddenly found ourselves in the Yosemite National Park. It is, in a word, stunning. White and light grey granite rock forms of increasing size look like elephants clinging to mountain tops. A clear, fresh river runs through the valley. People swim and paddle in the rapids.
You enter the park itself through a natural rock arch, and from that point in, the views become breathtaking.
First up is El Capitan, a stately old man of a mountain, which has thwarted rock climbers and abseilers for many years, but the main draw is the Half Dome, a mountain which is shaped like a loaf of bread which has had a run-in with a cheese grater. They considered it utterly unclimbable, but the summit was reached by an intrepid fella called George Anderson in 1875.
Waterfalls tumble down the mountains like wisps of smoke. There's a milky light. The shadows are blue. The trees are jade green. Cars dawdle along the single road which cuts through the valley. On a weekend day in the summer time there can be frustrating tail backs. I got into a bit of a panic as I felt the few precious hours we had there ebbing away into an air conditioned car.
We parked up after deciding to walk to the Yosemite Falls. At 740 metres, it's the tallest waterfall in the US and the 5th tallest in the world. It is fed entirely by melting snow, and, in the late summer, it entirely runs dry. Fortunately it was still putting on a show today.
The waterfall is divided into two: the upper falls and the lower falls. Both are accessible, but the upper falls take a couple of hours to reach, which was time we didn't have. On another day I would almost certainly have hiked up there as I'm told there are beautiful natural pools on the cliff edge.
That said, the shortish hike to the lower falls feels in no way a compromise. The paths run through lovely woodland. The squirrels in these parts are a subspecies. They have tortoiseshell markings and white necks. The bins are all bear-proof and mountain lions run about freely. Fortunately we didn't see any!
You can clamber off the path and up the rocks by the side of the stream which runs away from the falls. Signs encourage you not to go off the paths, with pictures of X-rays of people with broken skulls and things. But everyone does. The trouble with the Americans is that they're so litigious, they feel the need to put these silly posters up everywhere, but that means the posters entirely lose their impact!
The nearer you get to the falls, the more you feel their spray, and hear the roar of the water echoing on a nearby cliff. And suddenly the most magical view opens up. There's an ice-cold plunge pool at the base of the waterfall, and if you climb even higher, you're rewarded by the Half Dome which suddenly appears as a back drop. The later in the day it gets, the more the mountain seems to glow. Almost as though it's burning from within like something in a Sci Fi fantasy. It was, without question, the most stunning view I've ever witnessed. It made Nathan cry. The four of us sat and stared at it for an hour whilst a rock climber free-climbed his way up a nearby sheer rock face to the gasps of everyone watching.
As the evening drew in, the mountains turned purple and grey. All, of course, except for the Half Dome, which stayed lit up like a tart by direct sunlight a great deal later than any of his friends.
We drove back to our motel on a bat-infested road. As Nathan observed, it was like the opening of Scooby Doo. The motel has an open air pool. It was so lovely to do a few refreshing lengths before bed. Stretch out that car-battered back!
Sunday, 13 August 2017
Male knitters
We woke up a little later than yesterday and walked along Market Street in the misty, early morning San Francisco light. As so often in this city, a nutter was screaming at an invisible person in front of him at the tram stop. It was a rage of complete insanity, and it was a little scary. If that man had had a gun, there'd have been a massacre. Further down the street, we stumbled upon someone wearing a neck brace. He was dancing. Tubes from his recent tracheotomy were dragging along on the tarmac behind him!
There are so many mentally ill people in this city. I think a lot of the problems are caused by drugs. The stench of dope hangs over the streets of this city like fronds of seaweed discarded on a rock at low tide. A large number of homeless people are attracted by San Francisco's mild all-year-round climate. It rarely gets too hot or too cold, so living in the open air is a genuine option. But it can't be good for ones mental health.
The locals are obsessed with the notion that the city is actually really quite cold, and will happily quote Mark Twain, who said words to the effect of "the coldest winter I ever experience was a summer in San Francisco."
The fire engines here are singular creatures. Their design plainly hasn't changed since the 1920s. The giant bell on the front is probably for ceremonies and decoration only, because the sound the vehicle emits is like nothing on earth. It's like a mournful, desperate wail. Like a child with no energy in her tiny, weak, Tubercular body, screaming "help me"
Americans have no idea how to make a proper cup of tea. You see them taking a deep breath when an English person comes to the front of a queue and asks for a pot of English Breakfast tea... WITH COLD MILK! A piss-weak, highly-fragranced liquid then gets handed over, which has been topped up with a substance that tastes like pus. I'm not sure there's any diary in American milk.
Nathan had been invited to attend a brunch with a group of male knitters at a little bakery called Thorough Bread. The San Franciscans love a good pun in their shop names. In the Castro, filthy puns are king. There's a launderette called "Sit and Spin", a nail bar called "Hand Job" and a juice bar called "Slurp." Sometimes, they drop the pun altogether and just go with filth. "Rock Hard," "Knobs." I'd continue if I weren't blushing like a prude!
Nathan's new male knitting friends were delightful, and it was great to meet a group of men so flagrantly set on breaking down the gender stereotype. The group has over 100 members and 20 or 30 male knitters regularly turn up to their bi-weekly meetings. Obviously, as San Franciscans, they wear their eccentricity on their knitted sleeves. One of them specialises in crocheting gimp masks!
All knitters are charming, of course, regardless of gender, and some arrived with presents for Nathan. Another told me all about the Castro in the 60s and 70s, talking about how trans women in those days were only allowed, by law, to wear three subtle items of women's clothing. If they presented as women, they would instantly be arrested. Hallowe'en, however, was their best friend because, for one magical night, anything went, and drag queens felt safe. Hallowe'en in the Castro, as a result, has always been a massive party.
Many of the men we met today have got into the "knitted knockers" movement. They carefully, lovingly and really quite movingly knit fake breasts for women who have had mastectomies. In the early days after an operation, these fake breasts are, apparently, a hugely popular alternative to silicone products which tend to be too heavy and cumbersome for tender skin.
Later on, after most people had left, a middle-aged man entered the cafe and sheepishly pulled some knitting out of a bag. I nudged the organiser of the group: "is he one of yours?" Apparently he wasn't. The fact that he was knitting (and a man) was a complete coincidence. The three of us instantly went over and introduced ourselves and the man was invited to join the knitting group. He seemed delighted. So delighted, in fact, that he cast off the hat that he was knitting and presented it as a gift to Nathan. "What's knitting for if you can't give it away?"
Lunch happened in a cafe called Little Orphan Andy's (another pun) on the corner of Market and Castro. A violinist outside busked jazz music, playing nothing but relentless quavers, which was initially rather impressive, but eventually utterly irritating. Around the corner, a young black man was playing unaccompanied Bach on a bashed-up orange box of a Chinese 'cello.
The bar next to Orphan Andy's is called Twin Peaks. It has huge glass windows so passers by can look in and see the bar's clientele. It's known as a bit of an old man haunt and has developed the nickname "the glass coffin."
Sam and Matt met up with us after lunch. They'd been to Japan Town and a meditation forum. We walked back up to the Haight and spent a few hours window shopping. I was looking for cufflinks and walked into a Tibetan jewellery-cum-trinkety shop and asked if she could help me. "Cuplinks?" She said, confused. "No, cufflinks" I said, doing up the cuffs on an imaginary shirt. "Ah yes!" she said, her face lighting up, "no, we don't have. Next door. Mentals. They have lots of lovely cuplinks." I went outside to discover that "Mentals" was actually called "Mendels." Who'd have thought a charming Tibetan lady could be so anti-Semitic! I went into the shop with high expectations and immediately realised that Mendels sold stationery, not cufflinks. I wondered if she thought I meant paper clips!
I eventually found a pair of glorious cufflinks in a vintage store. They're lime green and made out of a really cool 60s plastic resin. $18. Bargain!
We drifted up to Golden Gate Park and attempted to find "hippy hill" where the be-ins happened during the Summer of Love. The guide book which I found in my camera bag informed me that it "has been a gathering spot for freeform improvisational drumming circles for years." I've always found the idea of non-drummers drumming in a circle fairly horrifying. You hand someone a drum and they instantly think they're an expert. Particularly if they're also smoking a joint.
We returned to Cafe Cole where I'd got in something of a hangry tizzy two days before, so it was rather lovely to exorcise that particular demon. I was doubly thrilled when they started playing ABBA. We sang along keenly. A girl across the cafe was similarly excited to hear the music. She knew every word.
On the way back down Haight Street, we happened upon the charming Mr Brandy, who sits at a "real" piano in the back of a grotty transit van, playing for tips. It's a deeply eccentric sight. We popped a few dollars in his pot and he obligingly played Space Odyssey for us. The piano was delightfully honky tonk. The moment became one of our favourites from the trip so far. We should have sung to show our gratitude.
When did they stop calling San Francisco Frisco? The shortened form is very definitely San Fran these days. I remember them making quite a big deal about it being uncool to call it Frisco back in 2000 when Fiona and I visited.
We walked over the top of the dramatic Buena Vista Park and stumbled upon a group of young people at the summit staring at a glorious view of the city. They were listening to sweary gangsta rap on a stereo which slightly put my back up, although one of the young lads slightly won me over by dancing to it in a somewhat abandoned and utterly unthreatening manner. A few seconds later, he stopped the rap music and shuffled his iPod, selecting Mozart instead. The juxtaposition was extreme and rather poetic. The Mozart suited the view a great deal better! We suddenly realised that we were below the mist which was rolling over our heads like dry ice.
The daylight of our last day in San Fran ended in Delores Park, where all the young, cool kids sit listening to music and playing games. A group of middle-aged Latin blokes were dancing like demons to the Lambada.
An old Chinese woman walked from group to group brazenly steeling food from picnics. People were astounded by her chutzpah. We watched her making off with a bottle of pop and an entire kitchen roll!
We walked back up to Market Street via Church Street, where we stumbled upon a fabulous drag queen, in a blue hat and a pink sash, wheeling a portable karaoke machine along the pavement on a little truck, almost like a hospital patient might wheel around a drip! She was singing into a mic as she walked. It was a gloriously sincere dance tune about saving the world: "All the animals are out of light," she sang... Again and again. She didn't give a shite that no one was listening!
We had soup for tea back at Chow and then ended the night at Martuni, a piano bar - and therefore another pun. Nathan sang My Funny Valentine. Brilliantly. The crowd went wild. Another bloke sang I Left my Heart in San Francisco, which became a curiously moving experience, and made me want to sing a song about London, but I couldn't think of a decent one. Are there any decent London songs, apart from London Town by Bucks Fizz?
There are so many mentally ill people in this city. I think a lot of the problems are caused by drugs. The stench of dope hangs over the streets of this city like fronds of seaweed discarded on a rock at low tide. A large number of homeless people are attracted by San Francisco's mild all-year-round climate. It rarely gets too hot or too cold, so living in the open air is a genuine option. But it can't be good for ones mental health.
The locals are obsessed with the notion that the city is actually really quite cold, and will happily quote Mark Twain, who said words to the effect of "the coldest winter I ever experience was a summer in San Francisco."
The fire engines here are singular creatures. Their design plainly hasn't changed since the 1920s. The giant bell on the front is probably for ceremonies and decoration only, because the sound the vehicle emits is like nothing on earth. It's like a mournful, desperate wail. Like a child with no energy in her tiny, weak, Tubercular body, screaming "help me"
Americans have no idea how to make a proper cup of tea. You see them taking a deep breath when an English person comes to the front of a queue and asks for a pot of English Breakfast tea... WITH COLD MILK! A piss-weak, highly-fragranced liquid then gets handed over, which has been topped up with a substance that tastes like pus. I'm not sure there's any diary in American milk.
Nathan had been invited to attend a brunch with a group of male knitters at a little bakery called Thorough Bread. The San Franciscans love a good pun in their shop names. In the Castro, filthy puns are king. There's a launderette called "Sit and Spin", a nail bar called "Hand Job" and a juice bar called "Slurp." Sometimes, they drop the pun altogether and just go with filth. "Rock Hard," "Knobs." I'd continue if I weren't blushing like a prude!
Nathan's new male knitting friends were delightful, and it was great to meet a group of men so flagrantly set on breaking down the gender stereotype. The group has over 100 members and 20 or 30 male knitters regularly turn up to their bi-weekly meetings. Obviously, as San Franciscans, they wear their eccentricity on their knitted sleeves. One of them specialises in crocheting gimp masks!
All knitters are charming, of course, regardless of gender, and some arrived with presents for Nathan. Another told me all about the Castro in the 60s and 70s, talking about how trans women in those days were only allowed, by law, to wear three subtle items of women's clothing. If they presented as women, they would instantly be arrested. Hallowe'en, however, was their best friend because, for one magical night, anything went, and drag queens felt safe. Hallowe'en in the Castro, as a result, has always been a massive party.
Many of the men we met today have got into the "knitted knockers" movement. They carefully, lovingly and really quite movingly knit fake breasts for women who have had mastectomies. In the early days after an operation, these fake breasts are, apparently, a hugely popular alternative to silicone products which tend to be too heavy and cumbersome for tender skin.
Later on, after most people had left, a middle-aged man entered the cafe and sheepishly pulled some knitting out of a bag. I nudged the organiser of the group: "is he one of yours?" Apparently he wasn't. The fact that he was knitting (and a man) was a complete coincidence. The three of us instantly went over and introduced ourselves and the man was invited to join the knitting group. He seemed delighted. So delighted, in fact, that he cast off the hat that he was knitting and presented it as a gift to Nathan. "What's knitting for if you can't give it away?"
Lunch happened in a cafe called Little Orphan Andy's (another pun) on the corner of Market and Castro. A violinist outside busked jazz music, playing nothing but relentless quavers, which was initially rather impressive, but eventually utterly irritating. Around the corner, a young black man was playing unaccompanied Bach on a bashed-up orange box of a Chinese 'cello.
The bar next to Orphan Andy's is called Twin Peaks. It has huge glass windows so passers by can look in and see the bar's clientele. It's known as a bit of an old man haunt and has developed the nickname "the glass coffin."
Sam and Matt met up with us after lunch. They'd been to Japan Town and a meditation forum. We walked back up to the Haight and spent a few hours window shopping. I was looking for cufflinks and walked into a Tibetan jewellery-cum-trinkety shop and asked if she could help me. "Cuplinks?" She said, confused. "No, cufflinks" I said, doing up the cuffs on an imaginary shirt. "Ah yes!" she said, her face lighting up, "no, we don't have. Next door. Mentals. They have lots of lovely cuplinks." I went outside to discover that "Mentals" was actually called "Mendels." Who'd have thought a charming Tibetan lady could be so anti-Semitic! I went into the shop with high expectations and immediately realised that Mendels sold stationery, not cufflinks. I wondered if she thought I meant paper clips!
I eventually found a pair of glorious cufflinks in a vintage store. They're lime green and made out of a really cool 60s plastic resin. $18. Bargain!
We drifted up to Golden Gate Park and attempted to find "hippy hill" where the be-ins happened during the Summer of Love. The guide book which I found in my camera bag informed me that it "has been a gathering spot for freeform improvisational drumming circles for years." I've always found the idea of non-drummers drumming in a circle fairly horrifying. You hand someone a drum and they instantly think they're an expert. Particularly if they're also smoking a joint.
We returned to Cafe Cole where I'd got in something of a hangry tizzy two days before, so it was rather lovely to exorcise that particular demon. I was doubly thrilled when they started playing ABBA. We sang along keenly. A girl across the cafe was similarly excited to hear the music. She knew every word.
On the way back down Haight Street, we happened upon the charming Mr Brandy, who sits at a "real" piano in the back of a grotty transit van, playing for tips. It's a deeply eccentric sight. We popped a few dollars in his pot and he obligingly played Space Odyssey for us. The piano was delightfully honky tonk. The moment became one of our favourites from the trip so far. We should have sung to show our gratitude.
When did they stop calling San Francisco Frisco? The shortened form is very definitely San Fran these days. I remember them making quite a big deal about it being uncool to call it Frisco back in 2000 when Fiona and I visited.
We walked over the top of the dramatic Buena Vista Park and stumbled upon a group of young people at the summit staring at a glorious view of the city. They were listening to sweary gangsta rap on a stereo which slightly put my back up, although one of the young lads slightly won me over by dancing to it in a somewhat abandoned and utterly unthreatening manner. A few seconds later, he stopped the rap music and shuffled his iPod, selecting Mozart instead. The juxtaposition was extreme and rather poetic. The Mozart suited the view a great deal better! We suddenly realised that we were below the mist which was rolling over our heads like dry ice.
The daylight of our last day in San Fran ended in Delores Park, where all the young, cool kids sit listening to music and playing games. A group of middle-aged Latin blokes were dancing like demons to the Lambada.
An old Chinese woman walked from group to group brazenly steeling food from picnics. People were astounded by her chutzpah. We watched her making off with a bottle of pop and an entire kitchen roll!
We walked back up to Market Street via Church Street, where we stumbled upon a fabulous drag queen, in a blue hat and a pink sash, wheeling a portable karaoke machine along the pavement on a little truck, almost like a hospital patient might wheel around a drip! She was singing into a mic as she walked. It was a gloriously sincere dance tune about saving the world: "All the animals are out of light," she sang... Again and again. She didn't give a shite that no one was listening!
We had soup for tea back at Chow and then ended the night at Martuni, a piano bar - and therefore another pun. Nathan sang My Funny Valentine. Brilliantly. The crowd went wild. Another bloke sang I Left my Heart in San Francisco, which became a curiously moving experience, and made me want to sing a song about London, but I couldn't think of a decent one. Are there any decent London songs, apart from London Town by Bucks Fizz?
Saturday, 12 August 2017
Golden Gates
We breakfasted this morning in a little diner called Sam's which is opposite our hotel. It wasn't quite as classy as yesterday's fodder up in the North Beach, but it filled our stomachs us up for a busy day of trudging around this majestic and very special city.
It was incredibly murky this morning, so we jumped into an uber and demanded it take us to Golden Gate Park where Sam was particularly keen to visit the Japanese Tea Gardens. It was rather exciting to enter Golden Gate Park with mist shrouding the tops of all the trees. This is the park which became profoundly synonymous with the Summer of Love, which, I realised today, was exactly 50 years ago. It carries an almost mythical significance.
The Tea Gardens are utterly magical. They are so beautifully kept, and are built around waterways which are filled with giant coy carp and made accessible by a series of little paths and stepping stones. Your ears can't escape the soothing sound of trickling water. There's an almost vertical wooden bridge over one little section. To scale it is a test of nerve and endurance. It's almost like climbing a ladder. Pagodas and ornately carved gates watch over the garden whilst stretching up into the mist.
Sam is something of a Japanophile, so it was a treat to be with him, explaining the thinking behind a zen garden and encouraging us to try mochi for the first time, which is a Japanese sweet not dissimilar to Turkish Delight but made from ground down rice. For the record, the best flavour was strawberry.
From the tea garden, we went to the wonderful AIDS Memorial, which has to be one of the most special places in the city. Rock and stone-lined winding walkways lead people through a verdant gully to a giant spiral of names of San Franciscans who have been effected by or killed by the disease. Many of the men were listed as couples, which I found somewhat heartbreaking.
As we stood and stared at the names, a family arrived. They were Latino. There was a mother and a father, two teenaged children and a pair of grandparents. They carefully laid two roses on two names in the circle and then wandered off, as a family, to walk, in contemplation around the rest of the memorial. I think it was that which set Sam off. But the experience felt incredibly powerful in general. AIDS affected all gay men, really. Even my generation were forced to endure Thatcher's brutal Section 28 because gay men were considered to be so dangerous. I could spit blood when I see the pathetic and illogical fringe feminist lesbian agenda which attempts to remove the G from LGBT because we're just too successful these days. We're successful because we fought tooth and nail for our rights to be recognised as human beings and we will not let that be forgotten. As you walk out of the memorial, you're left with one phrase, carved into stone blocks in the floor: "Walker within this circle pause. Although they all died of one cause remember how their lives were dense with fine compacted difference." Thom Gunn, 1986.
The next part of our journey took us down towards Ocean Beach through a somewhat dull part of town where there were no busses, no trams and no coffee shops. In the end we called an Uber just to escape.
Question: What's the main difference between American and English people? Answer: Americans think 100 years is a long time whilst Brits think 100 miles is a long way!
We reached Ocean Beach at about mid day. It's the part of San Francisco which sits on the Pacific Ocean, and, because our adventure revolves around traveling coast to coast in this huge county, paddling in that distant, alluring ocean felt important, despite it being freezing cold! Packs of pelicans kept passing overhead. They're such peculiar-looking birds: prehistoric like pterodactyls!
Surfers surfed in the misty waves as we walked up to the Cliff House, which looks down at an area of Beach where a huge Victorian swimming pool once stood. We learned today that it burned down in the 1960s. We dissed the Cliff House itself as an over-priced foodery, and chose instead to eat at Louis', slightly further along the cliff, which prides itself on well-made, reasonably-priced food. It's one of those 1960s, slightly grotty-looking diners with booths and friendly waiters and views across the sea to die for.
The uber driver who took us to the Golden Gate Bridge had lived in San Francisco all of his life. He'd been in a commune in Haight Ashbury during the Summer of Love and explained that all the self-respecting hippies had moved out when they turned Haight Street one way so that bus loads of tourists could come in and gawp at the hullabaloo.
Golden Gate Bridge looked extraordinary when we arrived. The tops of its famous uprights were shrouded in fog but a feint sun was making the whole thing glow like the dying embers of a fire. It's how I always wanted to see the bridge, but every time I've visited in the past, it's been overcast and a little disappointing. I tried, for the third time, to make it across, and, for the third time, failed miserably. I get on that bridge and immediately think a huge blast of wind is going to take everything I'm holding over the edge and into the deep, turbulent waters below. Sam and Matt were a great deal more successful and had a wonderful time taking photographs from the middle of the bridge, where, in Sam's words, it's "much scarier." I can't imagine anything I'm less likely to do!
Another fascinating Uber driver took us from the bridge back to the Castro and explained, as we passed it, that the Italianate Palace of Fine Arts was once made of papier-mâché as part of the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. The flim-flam structure proved so popular that locals demanded it be rebuilt in stone. It's therefore really nothing but an eccentric and highly decadent folly.
The cab took us through the Presidio, a vast area of the city which used to belong to the military. These days it's the site of scores of stunningly beautiful eucalyptus trees imported from Australia. The trees are controversial. They've spread out of control and are considered a invasive alien species. They're apparently also rather quick to fall down, and have caused a number of deaths.
Castro was bathed in beautiful late afternoon light. Sam, Matt and I went to a post office to buy stamps for postcards. There's a really cool set of internal postage stamps which have just been released which celebrate the eclipse in two weeks' time. If you hold you finger over the stamp, the sun depicted turns from a sun in eclipse to a sun shining normally.
Nathan was running a "meet and greet" at a local knitting shop, and I went along to find a little cluster of male knitters, all of whom follow his podcast, sitting in a circle knitting everything from socks to cowls. A lone girl knitter was working on her first ever double knitting pattern - inspired, of course, by Nathan.
It was incredibly murky this morning, so we jumped into an uber and demanded it take us to Golden Gate Park where Sam was particularly keen to visit the Japanese Tea Gardens. It was rather exciting to enter Golden Gate Park with mist shrouding the tops of all the trees. This is the park which became profoundly synonymous with the Summer of Love, which, I realised today, was exactly 50 years ago. It carries an almost mythical significance.
The Tea Gardens are utterly magical. They are so beautifully kept, and are built around waterways which are filled with giant coy carp and made accessible by a series of little paths and stepping stones. Your ears can't escape the soothing sound of trickling water. There's an almost vertical wooden bridge over one little section. To scale it is a test of nerve and endurance. It's almost like climbing a ladder. Pagodas and ornately carved gates watch over the garden whilst stretching up into the mist.
Sam is something of a Japanophile, so it was a treat to be with him, explaining the thinking behind a zen garden and encouraging us to try mochi for the first time, which is a Japanese sweet not dissimilar to Turkish Delight but made from ground down rice. For the record, the best flavour was strawberry.
From the tea garden, we went to the wonderful AIDS Memorial, which has to be one of the most special places in the city. Rock and stone-lined winding walkways lead people through a verdant gully to a giant spiral of names of San Franciscans who have been effected by or killed by the disease. Many of the men were listed as couples, which I found somewhat heartbreaking.
As we stood and stared at the names, a family arrived. They were Latino. There was a mother and a father, two teenaged children and a pair of grandparents. They carefully laid two roses on two names in the circle and then wandered off, as a family, to walk, in contemplation around the rest of the memorial. I think it was that which set Sam off. But the experience felt incredibly powerful in general. AIDS affected all gay men, really. Even my generation were forced to endure Thatcher's brutal Section 28 because gay men were considered to be so dangerous. I could spit blood when I see the pathetic and illogical fringe feminist lesbian agenda which attempts to remove the G from LGBT because we're just too successful these days. We're successful because we fought tooth and nail for our rights to be recognised as human beings and we will not let that be forgotten. As you walk out of the memorial, you're left with one phrase, carved into stone blocks in the floor: "Walker within this circle pause. Although they all died of one cause remember how their lives were dense with fine compacted difference." Thom Gunn, 1986.
The next part of our journey took us down towards Ocean Beach through a somewhat dull part of town where there were no busses, no trams and no coffee shops. In the end we called an Uber just to escape.
Question: What's the main difference between American and English people? Answer: Americans think 100 years is a long time whilst Brits think 100 miles is a long way!
We reached Ocean Beach at about mid day. It's the part of San Francisco which sits on the Pacific Ocean, and, because our adventure revolves around traveling coast to coast in this huge county, paddling in that distant, alluring ocean felt important, despite it being freezing cold! Packs of pelicans kept passing overhead. They're such peculiar-looking birds: prehistoric like pterodactyls!
Surfers surfed in the misty waves as we walked up to the Cliff House, which looks down at an area of Beach where a huge Victorian swimming pool once stood. We learned today that it burned down in the 1960s. We dissed the Cliff House itself as an over-priced foodery, and chose instead to eat at Louis', slightly further along the cliff, which prides itself on well-made, reasonably-priced food. It's one of those 1960s, slightly grotty-looking diners with booths and friendly waiters and views across the sea to die for.
The uber driver who took us to the Golden Gate Bridge had lived in San Francisco all of his life. He'd been in a commune in Haight Ashbury during the Summer of Love and explained that all the self-respecting hippies had moved out when they turned Haight Street one way so that bus loads of tourists could come in and gawp at the hullabaloo.
Golden Gate Bridge looked extraordinary when we arrived. The tops of its famous uprights were shrouded in fog but a feint sun was making the whole thing glow like the dying embers of a fire. It's how I always wanted to see the bridge, but every time I've visited in the past, it's been overcast and a little disappointing. I tried, for the third time, to make it across, and, for the third time, failed miserably. I get on that bridge and immediately think a huge blast of wind is going to take everything I'm holding over the edge and into the deep, turbulent waters below. Sam and Matt were a great deal more successful and had a wonderful time taking photographs from the middle of the bridge, where, in Sam's words, it's "much scarier." I can't imagine anything I'm less likely to do!
Another fascinating Uber driver took us from the bridge back to the Castro and explained, as we passed it, that the Italianate Palace of Fine Arts was once made of papier-mâché as part of the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. The flim-flam structure proved so popular that locals demanded it be rebuilt in stone. It's therefore really nothing but an eccentric and highly decadent folly.
The cab took us through the Presidio, a vast area of the city which used to belong to the military. These days it's the site of scores of stunningly beautiful eucalyptus trees imported from Australia. The trees are controversial. They've spread out of control and are considered a invasive alien species. They're apparently also rather quick to fall down, and have caused a number of deaths.
Castro was bathed in beautiful late afternoon light. Sam, Matt and I went to a post office to buy stamps for postcards. There's a really cool set of internal postage stamps which have just been released which celebrate the eclipse in two weeks' time. If you hold you finger over the stamp, the sun depicted turns from a sun in eclipse to a sun shining normally.
Nathan was running a "meet and greet" at a local knitting shop, and I went along to find a little cluster of male knitters, all of whom follow his podcast, sitting in a circle knitting everything from socks to cowls. A lone girl knitter was working on her first ever double knitting pattern - inspired, of course, by Nathan.
We ate our tea in the Castro again, in the same restaurant as last night. At one stage, three elderly gay vicars came in, two of whom were holding hands. It was a curiously moving sight.
As we walked home, we stumbled upon a group of people desperately trying to keep a faulty public loo door open whilst some poor woman inside was trying to pee! Only in San Francisco.
As we walked home, we stumbled upon a group of people desperately trying to keep a faulty public loo door open whilst some poor woman inside was trying to pee! Only in San Francisco.
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