Birthday Trip 2023: Day One
Saturday, May 27th, 2023: 2023 Trips, Colorado Plateau, Regions, Road Trips.
After making a solitary trip to my desert land last fall, I told everyone I would return for a more social visit in the spring. But over the winter I became immersed in finishing my book project, and as it got better and closer to being finished, the desert trip got pushed back.
The book was essentially completed a couple of days ago – I ordered a one-off print copy for my mom, who will be my first reader – so I was finally free to travel, just in time for my birthday.
On the planned day of departure – to my amazement – I was fully packed with a full gas tank, and left precisely on time, at a reasonable hour in the morning but with plenty of time to reach my first day’s destination long before sunset. For some reason, for the first time in my life, I was starting a trip not frantic and beside myself with stress, but fully prepared, having checked and double-checked my packing list. For perhaps the first time in my life, I was starting a trip in a state of perfect calm.
My little Sidekick was packed with everything I would need for a ten-day backcountry trip, yet it looked nothing like the humongous “overlanding” rigs every yuppie is now expected to have for expeditions like this. One reason I chose and keep this vehicle is that you don’t have to climb up or bend over to reach any of the cargo, and the rear passenger doors provide easy access to stuff packed in the middle. There was even plenty of headroom left to see out the back.
My usual starting point for this trip is a small town in southeast Utah. But it’s seven and a half hours from home, and years ago I vowed never to drive more than six hours in a day. In the past, I’ve started later and made an intermediate overnight stop. With a stop to make lunch, today’s drive would last more than eight hours, and by the time I reached the north end of the Navajo Reservation my calm was gone, I was thoroughly frazzled, and both my hip and shoulder were in pain. I did arrive long before sunset, but I still had to shop for supplies before dinner and a shower.
I’d booked a room in the motel Katie and I had discovered on our “rock art expedition” in April 1987. Designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, it’s a small, modest structure that nevertheless won our admiration with its clever adaptation to its high-elevation Southwestern habitat.
I’d stayed there once since, a few months before COVID, and found it in harsh decline. The original clerestory windows that you opened with a long-handled crank had been replaced by fixed windows, the beautiful built-in hardwood furnishings hadn’t been maintained, and the place had been clumsily rewired so that my neighbor woke me up in the night because his TV was plugged in to my room through a ragged hole punched in the wall between us.
After COVID, two local women bought and refurbished the place. Now, it’s modern and fairly comfortable, but it’s lost much of the old “Wright” feel.
