Stochastic Synaptic Activity: Road Trip with Alex

Back in Late May, I flew to Denver one-way where Alex, who was driving cross country from Boston picked me up so I could join in on the roadtrip yumminess. We spent almost a week in the car cruising through some beautiful places and meeting some interesting folks. Holding true to the no interstates mantra, we kept to smaller roads less traveled.

Our high level itinerary looked something like this:

Denver International Airport
Routt National Forest, Colorado
Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado/Utah (1 2 3 4)
Flaming Gorge, Utah
Uinta National Forest, Utah
Great Basin National Park, Nevada (and Lehman Caves)
Route 395 and 120 (Sonora Pass), California
San Francisco

We enjoyed meeting a handful of people along the way, and generally found everyone very friendly and accomodating. One of my favorite stories is fromt he first day. We were in Grand Lake, CO which is right near Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park. We needed to buy some fuel for my latern, and went to a little corner store to see if they carried the right type of fuel. After describing what I needed, the owner said they didn't carry it. She asked me to hold a moment though, and then yelled across the store to one of the other patrons. Apparently the owner of the camping supply store in town happened to be in the store with me. The grocery owner asked if the camping store was still open. It wasn't, but the camping store owener said he's open it back up and sell me the fuel because it wasn't much work. How cool is that? People willing to work around their schedules to help others out. It might seem insignificant, but it left both Alex and I with a warm and fuzzy feeling (and a canister of fuel).

The real highlight was when we decided to take a dirt road short cut in the Unita Nat'l Forest. To make a long story short (and less embarrassing), we ended up stuck in a 150' long patch of almost 1' deep mud. Alex drives a Scion (the littler one) and the combination of testosterone, excitement, and optimism (read: stupidity) led us to an unusual predicament. We were very stuck and about 15 miles from either exit, and there wasn't a soul around. Oh, and it was about 45 minutes from nightfall... when it would get very cold (we were near 10k feet). We lucked out and found an emergency shelter about a mile away, where we camped for the night. The shelter had some blankets, a wood burning stove, and fire wood. It was pretty stocked in fact, and would serve us very nicely for the evening. We decided that we'd figure out what the hell to do about the car in the morning. We made a nice fire, ate a surprisingly tasty dinner, and played scrabble (I won, but barely :)). It ended up being the best night of the trip, despite the misfortune, because we just hung out and made the best of it. It's usually the unexpected events that end up being the most enjoyable. In the morning, we hiked for a while and when we crested a saddle between mountains, found ourself with cell coverage. After a few calls and about 2 hours we had Larry, the one handed tow operator, pulling us from the mud. It took him all of 10 minutes to get us out. Nice work Larry.