Alone and Unobserved

One aspect of my vacation that I did not mention in the otherwise COMPLETELY EXHAUSTIVE post on the subject is what it was like being in close quarters with my family for two weeks straight. I could write/talk about this for hours, but I’ll restrict myself to the following points:

First, it was very nice to spend time with my family, especially towards the beginning when we were all in good moods. My family has always gotten on fairly well in the general run of things, even when we are crammed ankle-by-jowl in a tiny Ford minivan for hours at a time, forced to drink lukewarm water and eat nothing but cheese sandwiches and peanuts.

Second, my family is Mormon. “Duh!” you cry. “Surely you were aware of this previously, having been raised Mormon in their midst!” And, yes, I was aware of it . . . but not of how Mormon they are. “Bah!” you say. “Of course you knew.” All right, yes, I knew. But it’s been years since I’ve had to experience/endure their Mormon-ness in such close quarters for such a length of time. On a camping trip, there is no privacy, no time to oneself. I was present (if at a remove of several yards) for daily prayers and scripture reading; I drove them into town both Sundays for church and listened stoically as they recapped their worship services to me afterwards; I sat through a “Family Night” discussion of why the Mormon church was the only true church on the face of the earth (no lie); I listened to my father quote at length from C.S. Lewis’s inane theology; etc., etc. Strange how I live in Utah, but I usually have to go to California to associate with Mormons…

Third, everyone’s getting older. My little sisters are growing up very fast, and my parents are slowing down and feeling aches and pains they aren’t quite sure how to deal with yet. On hikes, instead of my dad racing off ahead and outpacing everyone, he lagged behind with my mom while my littlest sister blazed the trail at high speed. My mom says she may not be able to sleep in a two-person tent for much longer because she has trouble bending to get in and out of them; what this means for the family’s future camping trips has yet to be decided.

I’m done traveling for the next little while, for which I thank any number of imaginary deities. Over the weekend I flew to Vegas for a school-related seminar on diversity in libraries, which was held at a shoddy little casino out in the middle of nowhere, and then flew back Sunday night. I brought my camera, but didn’t take any pictures because nothing interesting happened and there was nothing worth photographing. And now I’m home, and am trying to adjust to the idea that I’m home, and that I have school starting next week that I have to pay for somehow.

P.S.: the original vacation post has been updated to include charming photos of Lake Tahoe and of various people hiking.

Preliminaries

My one assignment from my mother before the trip, besides bringing my own personal essential items, is to load up on audiobooks to listen to in the car. Somehow this doesn’t clue me in to how much car travel is in my immediate future. [Ominous chord] I dutifully ransack the library audiobook shelves and pick six titles I think will entertain my family. These are:

• Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
• The Mummy Case, by Elizabeth Peters
• Lion in the Valley, by Elizabeth Peters
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
• The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale
• The Areas of My Expertise, by John Hodgman

[Spoiler: we do not end up listening to all of the above audiobooks.]

I finish my only print book (Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lavinia) halfway through the flight from Salt Lake to Oakland. This will leave me to depend on Sudoku puzzles, recorded books, showtune choruses and (shudder) personal conversation to wile away the long, weary hours to come.

My family—which should be read to mean both of my two parents, the older of my two younger brothers and the youngest four of my six sisters—meets me at the airport, only two hours late, as opposed to the five hours late they had threatened. We listen to The Areas of My Expertise as we zigzag across the Bay Area and up the coast towards Crescent City.

In book form, The Areas of My Expertise is one of my favorite almanacs of hilarious made-up facts, but in audio form it is deadly dull and seemingly interminable. Also, it contains the word “masturbate” in the introduction. I writhe in embarrassment as my family exchanges puzzled, bored looks. We switch the CD to The Mummy Case and things settle down to a comfortable, humdrum pace, marred only by Dad’s energetic driving style and the occasional backseat altercation.

We stop at a beach in Northern California. I am reminded of how much I loathe the smell of the sea and the existence of sand in any form. The waves, however, are pretty.

Abandoned

Devil’s Darning Needle

Location One: Del Norte Coast Redwood State Park and Crescent City, CA
Duration: 3 days

I lose my cell phone signal shortly before entering Del Norte Coast Redwood State Park and realize how attached I am to the rushing stream of information I usually swim in, now that I can no longer sip from it at will. This will be a recurring motif over the next two weeks.

Our campground features numerous posters, signs and placards warning us of the dangers of bears and mountain lions and instructing us to cram all foodstuffs, perfumed toiletries and other potentially delicious-smelling, bear-attracting objects into the “bear box,” a green metal monstrosity that lurks in one corner of the site. I crawl for the first time into the tiny backpacker’s tent my mom has provided. It is called “The Walrus,” and it is cute on the outside and claustrophobic on the inside, exactly as I imagine a real walrus to be.

The Bear Box

Inside the Walrus

We go on two hikes. The first is misty and gloaming and ends at a beach and involves an hour of skipping down a steep slope and then an eternity trudging back up. The second is more level. It begins on a road with more dust than I thought was contained in the entire universe. The dust is dispersed uniformly over the road surface itself, the foliage that lines it and, inevitably, the cars that drive along it. It ends with a picturesque but slightly disappointing waterfall. Both hikes are rife with redwoods.

Ferns and Mist, with Redwoods

Rocks and Tide Pools

Roxanne & TatiAnna, Unawares

Aida & Katrina: We Got Here First

The first Sunday of the trip arrives while we are at Del Norte. The family dresses up in wrinkled Sunday finery and I drive them into town for church. While they drink in the good word, I sit in Starbucks and drink in burnt-tasting coffee while checking my email on my phone. Church never seemed this long even when I actually attended.

This is what I look like at the end of our three-day stay at Del Norte Coast Redwood State Park:

Camping Begins to Take Its Toll

Note the disheveled hair, the wan complexion, the drawn, red eyes. Undoubtedly these are due to my inability to send or receive tweets whenever it crosses my mind to do so. Withdrawal is not pretty.

Location Two: Lassen Volcanic National Park
Duration: 2 days

Lassen is gifted with myriad hideous volcanic wonders, like bubbling mud pits and reeking fumaroles, but it is also home to lakes and flowers and trees and such. Unfortunately, we haven’t been at Lassen more than a half hour before part of the beautiful natural scenery—a downed branch, I believe—takes it into its head to trip, wound and cripple me by clawing the skin off my left foot. I will limp about for the rest of the trip, wishing I hadn’t chosen to walk across a beautiful, harmless-seeming meadow in sandals instead of tough boots.

Summit Lake

Wildflower

Location Three: Sugar Pine Point State Park (on Lake Tahoe)
Duration: 1 day

Lake Tahoe is enormous and freezing cold. We are only there one day, but I take a dislike to the stupid, winding, badly marked lanes of the campground, and the long walk to the showers. If I only knew the horrific campground that is in store for us the next day, I would beg to stay there forever, but I do not.

Wait for Me

Slipper

Location Four: Bass Lake, Sierra National Forest and Yosemite National Park
Duration: 2 days

Bass Lake is a concentrated mélange of the worst aspects of California: heat, noise, stupid persons, bugs and ennui. Our campsite is also infested by manzanita, pines or fir or some such thing, and oak trees and saplings. The lake itself is long and narrow, and its surface is torn and worried by watercraft. The rednecks in the adjoining campsites stay up late listening to annoying country music and speaking to each other about stupid things in annoyingly loud voices. I grind my teeth to stubs that first night.

Manzanita

Pine or Fir or Somethin’

Oak Leaves

Miserable

Our second day at Bass Lake we fortunately do not spend at Bass Lake itself. Instead we drive fifty miles north to Yosemite National Park, where the true test of my character will take place. I have decided to hike Half Dome.

Yosemite Valley

Half Dome, the Terrible

We (my father, my brother, two of my sisters and I) set out from Glacier Point at nine-thirty in the morning. One by one, the others drop out and turn back or sit down to wait, until by the time we reach the base of the cables only I and my miniature 15-year-old sister Roxanne are left. Neither of us is particularly strong, but after an agonizing interval the two of us reach the summit and collapse on the hard rock. Our elevation: 8,836 feet. We drag ourselves briefly to the edge to take some photos, and then—urged on by the waning sun—we set off back down the cables again. Two young women have hysterics in the middle of the descent, and we are forced to cling to the rock face, wondering how long it will be before our grip gives out and we plummet to our deaths. Finally solid ground is beneath our feet again.

Cable Climb

Vernal Fall

We start the hike back down, collecting Dad and TatiAnna on the way. We are sweaty, aching and very much disheveled. And thirsty, since we ran out of water hours before. By the time we reach Emerald Pool at the of Vernal Fall, we have begun to hallucinate. “Where’s Mom?” we ask each other. “And why didn’t she bring the car to the top of this waterfall to collect us?” The bitter truth—that we still have a few miles of hiking and a few thousand feet of elevation change left—is not well received. Morale is low.

Comin’ Down

Dad & Roxanne

Somehow we stagger down the giant stairs that lead from Emeral Pool to the base of Vernal Fall, and somehow we drag ourselves the mile or so through forest and stream to the trailhead. Where the most beautiful sight possible awaits us: a water fountain. We drink our fill, and then, greedily, drink more.

Bear Encounter

Sweet, Sweet Heaven

The sun has firmly set by the time we stumble out of the wilderness into the arms of our family. Time for pictures!

Journey’s End

Hail, the Conqu’ring Heroes!

Location Five: Mt. Diablo State Park, Walnut Creek, CA and San Francisco, CA
Duration: 5 days

We are setting up camp at Mt. Diablo when a pipe bursts. The ground next to one of the water spigots bulges and cracks, then seeps, vomits and finally fountains water, drenching half of our campsite. The rangers and maintenance crew rush around, trying valve after valve to no effect. We contemplate the idea of sleeping in the middle of a tropical rain forest for the next few days. But at last the correct valve is found, the pipe is replaced, and the campsite begins to revert to its usual arid state.

KABLOOIE

Accidental Geyser

Tropical Rain Shower

Aftermath

Besides interesting plumbing mishaps, Mt. Diablo State Park boasts gorgeous sunsets, stunning vistas, hot, dry, mosquito-free weather, bold wildlife, restrooms with soap(!!) and a convenient East Bay location. Fortunately, we don’t spend much time there.

Sunset

Vista

Nature

Unwanted Guest

Location

It is Sunday again, and my family descends into Walnut Creek to attend church. Once again, I go instead to a coffee shop, this time armed with my brother’s laptop. Three blissful hours later, I am sated on both internet and caffeine.

The next three days we spend in San Francisco and Berkeley. We walk down the Embarcadero and Lombard Street, tour Berkeley campus, enjoy the Conservatory of Flowers and the Botanical Gardens and, quite by accident, have lunch in the National AIDS Memorial Grove.

View from Hyde Street

Lombard Street

The Campanile, Berkeley Campus

Carnivorous

The audiobook breakdown at this point is:

• Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie: NOT LISTENED TO
• The Mummy Case, by Elizabeth Peters: LISTENED TO!
• Lion in the Valley, by Elizabeth Peters: ONLY PARTIALLY LISTENED TO
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams: LISTENED TO!
• The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale: NOT LISTENED TO
• The Areas of My Expertise, by John Hodgman: PARTIALLY LISTENED TO, THEN ABANDONED

As you can see, we have been left in medias res with Lion in the Valley. Who is the murderer of Prince Khalenischeff? What is Miss Debenham’s game?? Who is the Master Criminal????

But we will have to live with this uncertainty, at least for a little while longer, because it is time to go home.

I buy David Sedaris’s latest, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, in the airport and laugh my way all the way back to Salt Lake. At last, my vacation is over, and I can go back to boring Normal Life.

Except, of course, I’m leaving town today, AGAIN. But this time I will only be gone one day, and I get to stay in a hotel, instead of in a sleeping bag in the dirt. PLUS: I will be able to shower.

I got back yesterday afternoon after two exhausting, up-and-down weeks on the road camping with my family. I promise I’ll tell you all about it, including how I almost died on Half Dome with my younger sister, how my family and I were almost eaten alive in the night by tarantulas, how we ate sandwiches EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR LUNCH, how we belted showtunes to keep our mother awake while she drove through Yosemite at night and how I drank coffee(!) in front of my family not once but three times(!!!). Later. But for now, here is some delightful filler!

First, some pictures of my adorable niece, Vienna, stolen (as usual) from my sister’s blog.

Second, the Inverse Astrology Test from Isocrat.org, which informs me that I’m really a Virgo, not a Scorpio like I always thought.

Your Inverse Astrology Results from Isocrat.org
Aries Mar 21 to April 19	54.8%
Taurus April 20 to May 20	51.4%
Gemini May 21 to June 21	61.1%
Cancer June 22 to July 22	50.0%
Leo July 23 to Aug 22	53.2%
Virgo Aug 23 to Sep 22	62.7%
Libra Sep 23 to Oct 22	56.8%
Scorpio Oct 23 to Nov 21	50.5%
Sagittarius Nov 22 to Dec 21	58.3%
Capricorn Dec 22 to Jan 19	53.3%
Aquarius Jan 20 to Feb 18	61.8%
Pisces Feb 19 to Mar 20	46.1%
You claim to be a Scorpio but we predicted Virgo. Please consult a parent or guardian as to your actual date of birth. Go to the Inverse Astrology Test

And third and last, a promise to write something else here within the next few days. Unfortunately I’ll be out of town (AGAIN, ack ack ack) over the weekend, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to post before Monday. But then again, MAYBE I WILL. I hope you will be satisfied with that vague, doubtfully optimistic pronouncement and come back!