November 9, 2007 6:00 pm
Gonna Have A Sand Blast
Posted by Will under travel
[2] Comments
This has been a pretty hectic couple weeks at work and it’s been a bit of a scramble at home, too, what with Susan traveling and us falling behind in finding a petsitter while we’ll be in South Carolina for Thanksgiving. Though our go-to sitter was booked, she referred us to a wonderful gal who we met Wednesday night and will be able to take care of our zoo while we’re across the country.
On top of all that we’re taking the dawgs with us and going to Death Valley’s Eureka Dunes this weekend, so getting all the logistics and provisions and transportation squared away (and mom onboard to cat-sit), added to the franticality.
It’s going to be an interesting outing unlike any other I’ve made out to one of my favorite places on earth. We’re driving out to the ultra-remote and primitive camping area at the foot of the amazing 700-foot tall pile of sand in a rented Toyota RAV-4 tonight — and leaving late… like around 8. So we’re not even going to arrive until well after midnight. Then if I have the energy I’ll somehow manage to pitch the tent in the pitch darkness and we’ll pile in to sleep until morning. That, or we’ll just get as comfortable as two dogs and two humans can get in a mid-sized SUV for the remainder of the night and make camp after daybreak.
Saturday’s gonna be spent climbing to the top of the dunes, and surveying the rugged great wide opens of Eureka Valley and just generally hanging out and decompressing and listening to the deafening silence that is out there. After dark I’m hoping the skies will be clear because Comet Holmes is out there moving around above the northeastern horizon and that would be cool to get some nice timed exposures of its visit. After another night we have a leisurely breakfast Sunday, take a last look around and load everything and everybody up and get on back home.
That picture above is from two years ago this Veterans Day weekend and my first and only visit to “Yoo Dee” back with Susan in 2005. I came back on top of the world only to have the rug pulled out from under my life the next day by the zoo which kicked me out after six years of faithful dedicated service as both an employee and a docent. When something so crap happens so close to something so cool it can’t help but sully the memories. So it’ll be good to finally go back and make some new ones.
November 10th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Your comments on sleeping in the SUV reminded me of when you and I went up to some Lake in Northern CA,(this would have been around 1982) the trip had its disaterous moments (my blowing a belt in the middle of nowhwere) but I especially remember that after you and killed just about a case of beer, I slept in my car and you woke me up at like 3 AM because you had been sleeping on the picnic table and a deer was getting frisky with you. Do you recall that trip or is it like memories of much of our youth, an inebriated haze?
November 11th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Mark, that trip to Lake Nacimiento near Paso Robles is etched epic in my mind. From the fan belt disaster in Bakersfield to parking amidst all those massive RVs in your sweet ’82 Firebird with nothing but cigarettes and a case of Old Milwaukee and like 100 cassette tapes of everything from AC/DC to Oingo Boingo to Tears For Fears.
I even remember after I don’t know how many beers at that picnic table we were playing cards in the pitch darkness and something rustled in the brush behind us and we went charging deep up the hill into the waist tall stuff until you had a “let’s think about this” moment in realiziing it might not be a deer in there with us but an alien or landshark, which sent us both careening back down screaming to the picnic table where we smoked more cigarettes and drank more beer until we practically passed out and I decided to sleep on that table and set up all the empties around me as some sort of stoopid early-warning sytem should the thing come back.
And as you correctly remember, I did alert you when the sucker came back and knocked over a can or two.
That excursion is the definition of Good Times.