Let's go, I guess

Today I headed west, with Alix. Spring semester finished almost a month ago, and Naomi’s baby girl was born a week ago, on May 24^th. I’ve been putting together my kit for months, and now it’s time to go. Though, as at the start of long trips past, I’m reluctant to depart….

I’m driving out to Boise first, to see my grandfather. He fell and broke his hip recently, so that visit will be different than in the past; he’s at a rehabilitation hospital, with a new hip. Alix will fly back from Boise, and a week later I’ll fly down to L.A., get a ride up to the Pacific Crest Trail and start walking. That’s the idea anyway. It all seems a bit unlikely here at the start.

I packed the van in the morning, then wandered around the house, trying to remember everything I needed to remember and saying goodbye too. Alix called and said she needed an extra half hour, so I went out to the yard and weeded…. Hard to imagine the house and life in Minnesota going on without my participation, but hopefully it will.

Alix and I set off at nine…. Out I-94 west, up across Minnesota.

Just before we made our first gas stop, in Moorhead, we heard a country song on the radio with a narrator who had just bought his four-year-old boy some drive-thru nuggets (“you don’t get the toy till you’re finished”); but then the man has to hit the brakes and the boy’s orange drink goes flying, and the boy says the “s-word.” The man wonders where the boy could’ve learned such language, but then realizes, with rueful sorrow, that it must be from him.  

But we didn’t listen to local radio much. Alix prefers to make her own choices, rather than rely on the unpredictable serendipity of fm and am. We listened instead to selections from George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” and several podcast episodes of Stuff You Should Know (topics included Spam, knights, cheese). Later we began Anna Karenina.

At a Dairy Queen in Bismarck, North Dakota, Alix asked for two hot fudge and banana Blizzards, and the owner, a balding, middle-aged man, showed two trainee girls how it was done, moving so slowly that significant melt pooled around the top of both cups by the time they reached us. Still, we enjoyed our ice cream treats, and Alix didn’t even leave any of hers for me as she usually does.

We thought to camp in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota, but we weren’t making good enough time…. At eight we pulled off at a lonely exit, and drove a few miles to a newish BLM site, Schnell Recreation Area. A half dozen grassy sites lay in a line along the bottom of a shallow swale, and cows lowed nearby, and we could hear the distant whispery sound of trucks on the interstate.  A few small trees grew at the back of each site, but beyond was the plains grasslands all around. Only the first site was occupied, by a family with a big trailer, beside which a man and a small boy were playing catch.

We decided to stay, and within a few minutes Alix had a fire going in the fire pit. I cleaned the attached grill with a wire brush, then carried the cooler and food bag to the picnic table. When the fire was ready, Alix cooked pork chops, waiting to the end to coat them with barbecue sauce because that way you don’t get that carbon-y, burned flavor; but then we discovered I’d forgotten the barbecue sauce. She used a little balsamic vinaigrette instead, and that worked out. We sat at the table and ate the pork chops  and pasta salad she’d made at home.

The sky was dark to the west and the storm was headed our way, the wind picking up….. We had time to eat, but not much to sit around the fire before the rain arrived and we had to repair to the van…

Inside we watched the first part of New Moon on Alix’s computer, but then the battery ran low and we had to stop. Alix expressed admiration for Jacob, and I could see why. Edward, on the other hand, was a bit moody and pasty, I thought.