Grey's Journal: Road Trip -- Yellowstone

In Yellowstone I performed the most dangerous and stupid driving of the trip.  Unlike most construction which is just painfully slow, the construction in mountainous areas is both painfully slow and, as a bonus, life threatening.  On the East Road in Yellowstone, bulldozers had torn up the one-and-a-half lane leading into the park.  They left behind an unsteady combination of rocks, sand, dirt and mud.  The road surface made traveling slow, the 50 foot drop off the side made it dangerous.

Signs on the road recommended a leisurely speed limit of 30-mph.  This was a limit I respected: the maximum velocity at which it is possible to safely drive.

The car crept along the twisted road, wheels slipping around every curve, sending gravel down the sheer face.  But, even at this cautious pace, I eventually came up against the back of another car.  A trail of six cars, actually, with a blue van going 5-mph in the lead.  5-mph is slow, damn slow.  5-mph is slow even on a road that threatens to take your life at every moment.

Though I felt I could have gotten out of the car and walked faster than the blue van drove, I justified remaining behind him because of the road's danger.  But, after a while, I noticed in my rearview mirror cars trailing behind us.  The number was difficult to tell because the road twisted and blocked the view.  But, when we went around a long u-bend in a valley, I counted 40 cars behind this van before the line disappeared around the corner.

I looked at the map, figured out my location based on the u-bend, and felt ill.  There were miles to go and, at 5-mph, it would take a long, long time.  My travels wore on me.  I had gotten up early that morning and didn't feel like being held up by this one man.  I chastised myself for not waking thirty minutes earlier, so I could have skipped this van and never known of its existence. 

According to the map there was one last straight pass before the road became a mandlebrot set of curves.  The creeping caravan turned onto the pass and -- in a foolish moment -- I pulled the car out onto the half lane and accelerated with tires riding the crumbling edge of the road.  I tried to pass the six cars ahead of me tight and fast to make it in front of the van before this last stretch of straight road ended.  The side-view mirrors of my car knocked against the other cars and folded in.  Angry horn blasts railed against my recklessness.

But, I made it past the blue van and looked in the rear-view mirror to see who had held us up so.  I assumed an old man must be the diver of that van, gripping the steering wheel with arthritic hands and peering at the road through cataract lenses.  But this was not the case.  A creepy, thirty-something, bald headed, sunken eyed psycho sat in the drivers seat.  One glance in his vacant eyes and I assumed he held pre-pubescent girls hostage in the back.  Before seeing the driver I had intended to flip him off in my virgin act of road rage, but I now reneged this idea because I feared he would write down my license plate number, find my address, and add me to his victim list.

For all the stress and effort of entry, Yellowstone rewarded me with a burnt out, dead park.  A massive fire must have spread through in the previous few years and tree husks covered the mountains I passed.  The geysers of Yellowstone are a Dr Seuss landscape.  Dramatic and bright colors contrast each other against thin trees with curly limbs hardened to stone from the heat and steam.

On my way out of Yellowstone into Montana, I got my first taste of the State's `big sky country.'  An enormous plume of smoke filled the sky.  I'd seen wildfires before, but never anything like this.  The closer I got, the darker the sky became until it felt like twilight.  I could see the flames at the base of the blackness and above the forest.  I pulled into a rest stop and joined a group of other gawkers. 

A church called Meditation Point sat on a hill near the rest stop.  I climbed it to get a better look.  Through the zoom lens of my camera I could see tiny specks in the sky: the fire-fighting helicopters.  They tried to put out the blaze by dropping thimblefuls of water.

Two dirty, fat boys of about thirteen sat on the front stoop of the church.  They wore tight fitting clothes and caps that made them look like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

``You guys know anything about that fire?'' I asked them.

``We were evacuated from there,'' said Tweedle Dee.

``No we weren't,'' said Tweedle Dum.

``Yeah we were, remember?  The men came and told us to leave.''

``Right.  They told us to leave, not to evacuate.''

``Stupid, that's what an evacuation is.''

Tweedle Dee turned to me, ``We live across the river from where the fire is now.  So our house should be OK.''

``I hope our house is OK,'' said Tweedle Dum, unaware that statements not directly addressed to him could still be relevant to the conversation.  ``It's on the same side of the river as the fire.''

``No it's not, we're on the same side of the river now.''

``Yeah, so is the house.''

``No, that's only because we crossed the river.''

I thought their conversation wasn't getting anywhere, so I diverted them.  ``Can you guys tell me about how long ago the fire started?''  `Two hours' and `twenty minutes' were the simultaneous answers I got, along with an argument from each on how the other was wrong.

I tried to get more information about the fire, but Tweedle Dum interrupted me: ``He sounds like he's from a movie, don't cha think?''

``Yeah he does.''

They, like many others, picked up on the twinge of British in my voice that causes me no end of annoyance and frustration upon returning to the States.  When I told them that I lived in England, they realized the movie.

``Harry Potter!  He sounds like he's from Harry Potter!''

They fought over which character I was, and I thought it best to leave them then.  As far as I know, they are still sitting on that hill watching the fire and arguing.

 

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Copyright © 2007 Wellington Grey


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Origional header photograph by Wellington Grey.