Big Sur Funk By Michael



Parked on a vista 800 feet above the ocean, Windy ducking behind the car to avoid the dust thrown
up by the medevac helicopter landing 50 feet away.



Our annual family camping pilgrimage to Big Sur was a highlight of my childhood. I’ve got a memory associated with almost every mile of the 6-hour drive from Southern California and almost every camping spot at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park—nearly all of them fond. So yesterday, I was eager to share those memories with my girls. And as we snaked down California’s Highway 1 from Monterey to Big Sur, I got more excited as eucalyptus, cyprus, and palm trees filled the windshield and the scent of sage filled the car.

Since she completed her 10-day wilderness first responder medical training, Windy has stumbled across more distress situations than most of us see in a lifetime.* Clearly there is a correlation between her getting trained and people deciding to need help when she’s around. I see a similar, inverse correlation between the eagerness I display in introducing something to the girls, and their interest in whatever that is.

For nearly 6000 thousand miles, the girls have been great. Between making paper dolls, drawing, playing car games, and listening to audio books, they have mostly kept occupied and content. But winding up and down Highway 1 in and around Big Sur (one of the most beautiful drives in the world) the girls were loud and squirrelly and fighting and oblivious to the vistas and 1000-foot cliffs.

Ages 5 and 7 are still a bit too young to appreciate the view
from our table at Nepenthe, let alone that Henry Miller once
hung out at this site (!). Instead, Frances spilled her
water all over the bench cushions and Eleanor
couldn’t settle down.

“Guys, look out there, you may see some sea otters in the kelp beds!”

“DAD! Eleanor poked me!”

“She wrote on my paper!”

Miserable.

To make matters worse, Windy felt like crap, and seemed to be getting worse. After lunch at Nepenthe, we decided I would take the girls on a hike along a river in the state park, back to a gorge I knew they would love, while Windy tried to sleep in the car. I walked that trail what seemed like hundreds of times growing up and could hardly wait to see it again with my girls. After getting changed into their bathing suits, we made it about 20 feet up the ½-mile trail.

“Dad, I accidentally swallowed a stick and it hurts to breathe.”

“Eleanor, why did you put a stick in your mouth? We’ve told you over and over…can you breathe okay?”

“Sort of.”

The girls (still in bathing suits and rash guards)
hanging in the foreground while a crew assists
the victim who was medivaced a short time later.

We cancelled the hike pending the threat of increasing difficulty breathing and the need to be in closer range of medical assistance. The $10 park entrance fee is non-refundable, even if you leave after a 45-minute stay during which time you see nothing but the camp store parking lot and the public restrooms where we changed.

No one's mood was improved.

Resigned to getting the heck out of Big Sur as soon as possible, we sped around a corner to find we were first on the scene of a car accident with injuries. Windy jumped into action trying to assess and help the injured and I managed traffic for about 45 minutes until more help arrived on the scene.

After this experience, the whole family felt better. We all had a lot to talk about after what we saw and did. The girls enjoyed the view all of the way down to San Simeon, asked good questions, and sang along to Tom Petty. Windy credits her resurgence to adrenaline. I was happy we were there to offer assistance.

* February 2011: Southwest Airlines flight from DC to Chicago, the guy in the seat next to her loses consciousness. April 2011: On Kennelworth Avenue just outside of D.C., she is first onsite after a pedestrian hits a bus and cracks his head open. July 2011: On Highway 1 in Big Sur, she is first onsite after a head-on collision between two cars.

--MR

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How Do We Get There? By Michael

Big milestone: second front tooth lost during first
couple weeks of the road trip. (Road trip offered a
convenient excuse for why it took the tooth fairy two
nights before she could take the tooth during the
night and leave some money.)

We are in familiar territory, no maps required as we drive through California towns we used to live in and travel between. (Though, this familiarity is juxtaposed with the odd sensation of sitting in the car we all associate with our D.C. lives.) Today we’re in the small town of Woodacre. Windy’s folks live here, just a few miles north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

While Puerto Vallarta is still more than 1,600 miles southeast of us (as the crow flies), our route is no longer certain. The original plan was to cross the border at Tijuana, drive south down the Baja peninsula, take the ferry from La Paz to the mainland at Mazatlan, and finish up with a 1-day drive to Puerto Vallarta. Our original thinking was that the Baja route would keep us away from the drug-related violence we associate with the mainland.

But part of our party questions whether this makes sense:

• Are the mainland toll roads safer because they are more traveled?
• Is the drug war violence really a problem on these highways?
• Is there a greater risk of crime on the less-traveled Baja roads?
• Are the other hazards of the relatively narrow Baja roads (livestock, maniac truck drivers, hairpin turns, washouts) a greater threat?

The other half of our decision-making body doesn’t have first-hand knowledge to answer these questions.

And there are other considerations that we will weigh:

• The overnight La Paz-Mazatlan ferry is expensive for a car and a trailer.
• We have friends in La Paz we are eager to see (though we could visit them later in the year by boat when we sail north).
• One of us has never driven the length of Baja and would really enjoy making that trip.

So if anyone reading this blog has made the trip, using either route, please comment or email to let us know your thoughts. Much appreciated. We plan to leave San Diego for Mexico around July 15 (!).

--MR

A Lot of Hellos By Michael

After 4,900 miles on the road, we caught our first glimpse
of the California coast in Crescent City. Our little Ford is
still leaking exhaust gas and radiator fluid, and she is still
struggling up every incline, but otherwise okay.

As expected, I am thinking often about the people, places, and things that were the fabric of our everyday lives for our dozen years in D.C. I miss being casual with our good friends and neighbors. I miss play dates and dinner parties that happened, unplanned, just because. I wonder about the team I left at work, how they are changed with the new hires, and how the next project is coming along. I miss a space to call my own (other than the car). I miss cooking in my own kitchen and with my own implements, left where I put them last. I miss the cats, Mit and Georgia.

And unexpectedly, our major life change hasn’t been all about leaving and goodbyes, but making connections with people and places.

Despite our best intentions, with just 3 weeks annual vacation in our previous D.C. life, we may
never have gotten ourselves to Port Angeles, Washington to reunite with our friends
(and former cruisers) Don and Jim. Nor would I have ever learned that my wife can't throw
a horse shoe near the pit to save her life.

Because of our new life and this blog, we made new friends in Olympia, Washington. Actually,
the crew of Wondertime only hail from Olympia. They left yesterday to start their new
cruising life and for the next few months, they are our new friends of Vancouver Island.
Next fall, they’ll be our new friends of Mexico. A link to the Wondertime blog is to
the right, and Sara wrote nicely of our visit. It was good for the girls to be able to
explore their boat and to see first-hand that they are not the only sisters embarking
on a new cruising life.

Richard and Kathy own the slip we rent in Puerto Vallarta. Here we all are aboard their 45-foot
wooden trawler in Washington. I hope that we prove to be half as adventuresome as
this couple—and can one day tell stories like they shared with us.



Despite our close friendship, the circumstances of our previous life conspired to keep me from meeting
Amy Jo's and Paul’s new baby. Surprisingly, he's now 3 years old. Here is Ossley and Frances in
his poet-tree.



The girls played with their cousins Eoin and Katherine at Portland’s Oregon Museum of
Science and Industry (OMSI). Because of our new life, my sister will fly them down to PV
for a couple weeks of solid togetherness next month.

I appreciated my brother-in-law
letting me change our oil in his
garage. Here he is cleaning up the
mess that resulted from his
poorly designed oil pan.



No, that's  pizza on the grill. Amy Jo's
subsequent attempts were more
attractive.





--MR

Over the Hump By Michael



Our last photo with our fast, 35mm prime lens. It soon after
rolled 40 feet down a hill and into the raging Kootenai Creek.
Despite her valiant attempt, Windy's cousin, Rosalee
(pictured wearing newborn Cora) could not catch the lens
as it whizzed by her. Everything has been wide angled since.



We successfully crested the Continental Divide this past Sunday at 6,393 feet. While this pass is low by comparison (I crossed via Colorado’s 11,312 Monarch Pass on a motorcycle 20 years ago), the last few miles are steep. You’ve likely been in a car on grades like this, whizzing past the line of lumbering semis that seem parked in the right lane. On this day, the semis were passing us while we inched up, petal-to-the-metal in second gear, hazard lights flashing, hoping nothing breaks. Even worse: it’s hot, we couldn’t use the AC, and I was trying to convince Windy and the girls we needed the windows up to reduce our drag coefficient.



Good times with Great Uncle Michael.



But the climb was worth it: our time in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley was filled with food, drink, family, and new friends. Windy’s Aunt Vicky, Uncle Michael, and cousin Aubrey hosted us in their two-story log cabin in Stevensville, the oldest continually inhabited home in Montana. It was built the year Custer led his men into the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Our timing was spot on as it coincided with a visit from Windy’s cousin Rosalee and her family. All five older second cousins had the time of their lives risking life and limb on the trampoline, setting up forts alongside the fast-moving brook on their property, filling up on marshmallows by the bonfire way past bedtime, collecting chicken eggs, and hiking with the adults on the dramatic Kootenai Creek Trail.

Eleanor and cousin Orion with the 1867 log cabin behind.

Frances and Ara hit it off.

Windy’s aunt and uncle are fixtures in the town of Stevensville; they own and publish the local newspaper The Bitterroot Star. While there, they introduced us to Gene, Robbie, and daughter Ali, owners of the Stevensville Hotel. Seven years ago, this family bought this building (used as the town’s hospital more than 100 years ago) and turned it into a warm and inviting 7-room hotel that feels much more like a B&B. Surprisingly, they bought the place after wrapping up their cruising lives in Australia aboard their 60-foot Laurie Davidson-designed ferrocement ketch. Despite selling their boat years ago and planting roots so far from the shore, they’re all eager to get out cruising again and have the business up for sale to make it happen. Meeting them, listening to Gene’s entertaining recounting of some of their adventures, seeing that Ali turned out okay (she was born while they cruised and spent her first five years afloat), and sharing their photo albums with our girls, fueled our desire to get to Puerto Vallarta and Del Viento.

Talking shop with cruising veterans Robbie, Ali, and Gene
(at Windy's great grandparent's dining room table we
hauled across the country).

We left Stevensville late yesterday morning, faced a string of steep grades all of the way to picturesque Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and woke today in Moses Lake, Washington. Today we’ll finish up in Port Angeles, Washington, our western-most destination—from there it’s all downhill to Mexico.

--MR

If I ever open my own beauty salon, I will steal this name.

Central to Mountain Time By Michael



Eleanor on the Nebraska plains



We laid our heads down last night in Bozeman, Montana. Today we head over the Continental Divide and hopefully make it to Windy’s aunt’s home in Stevensville, Montana, where we offload about 350 pounds of solid oak in the form of a dining room table and four chairs.

We’ve driven over 3000 miles to date and the car is still chugging along—though it seems to me we’ve lost a bit of power from when we started the trip. Most of our time underway is spent with the gas pedal to the floor, just to maintain highway speed. We downshift on every grade, however slight, sometimes all the way down to second gear. Otherwise…

• We’ve lost just over a quart of radiator fluid in that time (and not a drop in the years before this trip). I suspect a small leak someplace. Twice on the driveway in Scottsbluff, I noticed a small puddle of the stuff, but I can’t tell where it’s leaking from to save my life. The temperature gauge has not yet budged from the normal position. Fortunately our northern route is providing relatively cool temperatures.

• We’ve also developed an exhaust leak, either at the manifold or very close.
• Our power windows have begun to work intermittently. So far this has happened only a few times. If any window gets stuck up or down, our quality of life will deteriorate significantly.

Saying goodbye to Grandma,
Scottsbluff, Nebraska

Pioneer covered
wagon replica
beneath Scotts Bluff

Crossing the Great Plains was a pleasure this time of year. Everything is still surprisingly green. From the road we saw buffalo (bison), antelope, prairie dogs, and what we think were wild horses. Traversing Nebraska, we followed the Oregon Trail along the Platte River. The National Park Service interpretive center at Chimney Rock featured a letter from a pioneer addressed to his family and townspeople back east who may follow in his lead. It was filled with best practices for making the monumental journey. Correspondence from another pioneer warned would-be followers to not overload wagons with weapons and ammunition to defend against “savages.” He advised others to practice the Golden Rule and to not display arms to natives they encounter, as it may signal a hostile intent and create problems for no reason. I think the similarity between these correspondences and today’s cruisers’ pursuit of information from sources out there now, is fascinating.

Hole in the Bluff, on the hike to the top

 

Prehistoric-like views from near the top
of Scotts Bluff



 

There is a strong cultural theme in Sturgis, South Dakota.



South Dakota was also lovely. Her Black Hills are filled with small towns like Hot Springs: with a strong western feel in the form of a narrow main street where it is still easy to imagine wooden sidewalks and hitching posts, surrounded by towering rock formations, shaped by a river running through it, accented with a waterfall, and colored with pine trees.



Eleanor at her swearing in, having passed
her Junior Ranger exam at the Battle of the
Little Bighorn. Both girls enjoyed earning
their badges here and at Mount Rushmore



In Wyoming, we were taken by the town of Sheridan. It was miles from any large city or other influence (or revenue source), yet appeared like a bedroom community to a larger city. A large residential area was anchored by a main street that featured no vacant businesses, flower baskets hanging from the old-styled lamp posts, and bustling coffee shops with patrons at tables spilling onto the sidewalk. Sculptures large and small, permanently exhibited, were everywhere in the public spaces of this small town. Windy took (and passed!) her second HAM radio exam in Sheridan and while she studied in the morning, holed up at Starbucks, she met a Sheridan resident who spends the summers on his ranch here, the winters in Nice, France, and two weeks every year on his friend’s Amel 57 in the Caribbean. Seeing Sheridan a bit, this demographic seems oddly suited.

Exploring the outskirts of Sheridan, I came to an abrupt stop when I saw four young girls, probably 8 or 9 years old, two on each side of the road, stretching a piece of string or fishing line across the road, about windshield level. I was cursing under my breath and shaking my head when they all burst into a fit of laughter and dropped the imaginary string. Now that they had my attention, they all assumed their positions behind their makeshift stand, hawking lemonade. We bought four cups on the condition they tell us where they learned their trick. “YouTube!” they sang in unison. This episode reminds me of that Modest Mouse song, Float On: “Well, a fake Jamaican took every last dime with that scam; it was worth it just to learn some sleight-of-hand.”



A riviting lecture at the Battle of the Little Bighorn



Outside Sheridan, we stopped at the National Monument of The Battle of the Little Bighorn. This type of history doesn’t generally interest me and I was reluctant to stop. Fortunately, it does interest Windy and she demanded we stop. We were treated to and outstanding 20 minute lecture by a Park Ranger who is a former high school football coach. His telling of the battle and of the larger context, before and after, was riveting—and informative. Standing with a vista behind him, he told his story with props in hand and pointed to the actual hills and valleys as he referenced them. He summed up his animated, graphic, and impassioned lecture with a poignant reminder of the real cost of human warfare.

--MR

Fortunately, it doesn't always look like this. After all this time cooped up in the car and living as
transients, the boat will seem large and we will all welcome her as a permanent home.